CONDITIONS OF PEACE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIV, Issue 16656, 28 September 1917, Page 5

CONDITIONS OF PEACE.

STATEMENT BY MR, ASQUITH

NO MERE PAPER PACTS.

(Received 9 p.m.)

A. and N.Z.-Reuter. LONDON, Sept. 27.

Mr. Asquith, speaking at a war aims meeting at Leeds, emphasised that with negligible exceptions we still presented an unbroken front and an unshakable resolve after threo years of war. It did not require a repetition of the righteousness of our cause to sustain that resolve, but ; t would be useful to repeat to others that the peace for which we were fighting could not be found in a cessation of hostilities, to be followed by territorial bargaining ultimately embodied in paper pacts, and there left to the mercy of chance. Still less conld we look for a peace worthy of the name in any arrangement imposed by the victor upon the vanquished, which ignore ('no principles of right and defied the hirtoric traditions, aspirations and liberties of the peoples affected. Such so-called treaties would simply provide a fertile breeding ground for future wa's. An example of this was to be found in the treaty of 1871, to which and to a single act of international spoliation the calamities now devastating the world could be traced.

Tho German reply to the Pope's Note teemed with nebulous and unctuous generalities. There was no indication that Germany would not repeat the crime of 1871. Was she ready to restore Alsace and Belgium to full independence, without reservations and with as complete a material compensation as possible i'or the devastation of the country and the sufferings of the people? A definite re-ly to those inquiries could be given in a couple of sentences and would be worth a whole column of pious "latitudes.