A REASONABLE MAN'S PEACE.

Northern Advocate, 12 November 1917, Page 4

A REASONABLE MAN'S PEACE.

THE SOUTH AFRICAN PIVOT.

[By H. G. Wells in the "Daily Mail and Leader."]

The international situation at the present time is beyond question the most wonderful that the world has ever seen. There is not a country in the world in which the great majority of sensible people are not passionately desirious of peace, of an enduring pecae, and —the war goes on. The conditions of peace can now be stated in general terms that are a 9 acceptable to a reasonable man in Berlin as they are to a reasonable man in Paris or London or Petrograd or Constantinople. There are to be no conquests, no domination of recalcitrant populations, no bitter insistence upon vindicative penalties, and there must be something in the nature of a world-wide League of Nations to keep the peace securely in future, to "make the world safe for democracy," and maintain international justice. To that the general mind of the world has come to-day; WHY THE KILLING GOES ON. Why, then, does the waste and - killing go on? Why is not the Peace Conference sitting now? Manifestly because a small minority of people in positions of peculiar advantage, in positions of trust and authority, prevent or delay its assembling. The answer which seems to suffice in all the Allied countries is that the German Imperial Government —that the German imperial Government alone —stands in the way, that its tradition is incurably a tradition of conquest and aggression, that until German militarism is overthrown, etc. Few people in the Allied countries will dispute that that is broadly true. But is it the whole and complete truth? Is there nothing more to be done 6n our side? Let us put a question that goes to the very heart of the problem. Why does the great mass of the German people still cling to its incurably belligerent Government? The answer to that question is not overwhelmingly difficult. The German people sticks to its militarist imperialism as Mazeppa stuck to his horse; because it is bound to it and the wolves pursue. The attentive student of the home and foreign propaganda literature of the German Government will realise that the case made by German imperialism, the main argument by which it sticks to its power, is this, that the Allied Governments are also imperialist, that they also aim at conquest and aggression, that for Germany the choice is world empire or downfall and utter ruin. This is the argument that holds the German people stiffly united. For most men in most countries it would be a convincing argument, strong enough to override considerations of right and wrong. I find that I myself am of this way of thinking, that whether England has done right or wrong in the past—and I have sometimes criticised my country very bitterly—l will not endure the prospect of seeing her at the foot of some victorious foreign nation. Neither will any German who matters. Very few people would Tespect a German who would. FAILURE OF WORLD'S STATES- . MEN. . In many respects this war has been an amazing display of human inadaptability. The military history of the war has still to be written, the grim story of machinery misunderstood, improvements resisted, antiquated methods persisted in; but the broad facts are already before the public mind. After three years of war the air offensive, the only possible decisive blow, is still merely talked of. And at least equally remarkable is the dragging inadaptability of European statecraft. Everywhere the failure of munsters and statesmen to rise to the urgent definite necessities of the present time is glaringly conspicuous. They seem to be incapable even of thinking how the war may be brought to an end. They seem incapable of that plain speaking to the world audience which alone can bring about a peace. They keep on with the tricks and feints of a departed age, with bureau politics. Both on the side of the Allies and on the side of the Germans the declarations of public policy remain childishly vague and disingenuous, childishly "diplomatic." They chaffer like happy imbeciles while civilisation bleeds to death. It was perhaps to be expected. Few, if any, men of over five-and-forty completely readjust themselves to changed conditions, however novel and challenging the changes may be, and nearly ali the leading figures in these affairs are elderly men trained in a tradition of diplomatic ineffectiveness, and "now overworked and overstrained to a pitch of complete inelasticity. They go on as if it were still 1913. Could anything be more palpably shifty and unsatisfactory, more senile, moro feebly artful, than the recent utterances of the German Chancellor? And, on our own side — Let us examine the three leading points about this peace business in which this jaded statement is most apparent. Let the reader ask himself the following questions: Does he know what the Allies mean to do with the problem of Central Africa? It is the clear common sense of the African situation that while these precious regions of raw material remain divided up between a number of competitive European imperialisms, each resolutely set upon the exploitation of its "possessions" to its own advantage and the disadvantage of others, there can be no permanent peace iv the world. There can be permanent peace in the world only when tropical SHARLAND'S MOA BRAND EGG PRESERVATIVE never fails to kesp fresh egge sweet and goo<3.

ami Miti-!ro|jii'al Africa constitute a fieUl free to the commercial enterprise of everyone irrespective of nationality, when this is no longer an area (if competition between nations. This is possible only under gome supreme international control, a control in which each nation interested can exercise a share corresponding to its original possessions. It requires no special knowledge nor wisdom to see that. A schoolborly can see it. Anyone but a statesman absolutely flaccid with overstrain can see that. However difficult it may prove to -work out in detail, such an international control must therefore be worked out. The manifest solution of the prdblem of the German colonies in Africa is neither to return them to her nor deprive her of them, but to give her a share in the pooled general control of mid-Africa. So she can be deprived of all power for political mischief in Africa without humilation or economic injury. So, too, we can head off—and in no other way can we head off—the power for evil, the power of developing quarrels inherent in "imperialisms" other than German,

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