PREREQUISITES OF PEACE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LV, Issue 16969, 1 October 1918, Page 6

PREREQUISITES OF PEACE.

EQUAL RIGHTS FOE ALL. COMPROMISE IMPOSSIBLE. ENDING THE BULE 06 FARCE. I i. sua SJS. new .tftaac. Sept. 29. The President, in his speech at the oponing of tho campaign for the fourth Liberty Loan, said: "Individual states' men may have started the war, but norther they nor their opponents can stop- it is they please. It has become a peoples' war, peoples of all sorts and races of every degree ore involved, and the issues have become such that they must be settled by no arrangement or compromise or adjustment of interests, but.definitely, once for all, and with an unequivocal acceptance of the principle that the interest of the weakest is as sacred as the interest of the strongest.

"The Brest Litovsk .and Bucharest treaties and peace agreements convinced us that the Governments of the Central Empires are without honour, and do not Intend justice. They obsprve no covenants, and accept no principle but force and their own interest. They have made it impossible for us to com? lv t«rm r with them if it be, indeed, and I. trust .» is, the common object of the Government* atwlated against Owmany and the nutans they govern to achieve by tho coming settlements a lasting peaco. It will be necessary that they .all shall sit at the peace table and shall come ready and willing to pay the price that will secure it, and blbo create in some virile fashion, the only Instrumentality by which it can be made certain that the agreements of peace will be honoured and fulfilled. That price is impartial justice In uvery item of settlement, no matter whose interests are crossed. League of Nation Indispensable. "That indispensable instrumentality is a League of Nations formed under covenants that 'fill be efficacious. Without such instrumentality the peaco of the world will rest in part upon the word of outlaws and only upon that word, for Germany will have to redeem her character, not by what happens at the pea-ie table, but by what follows. Such a league cannot be formed now; if so formed it would be meroly a new alliance confined to the nations associated against the common enemy. It is not likely that it could be formed after that settlement, Peace cannot be guaranteed 'as an afterthought." Dealing with some particulars, Mr. Wilson declared that ho spoke with the greatest confidence because he\could state these particulars authoritatively' as the Government's interpretation of its own duty in regard to peaco. These particulars were that-the impartial justice meted out muc-t involve no discrimination to those .to whom we wish to be just, and to those to whom we do not wish to be ju&t. • Wa must know no standard but the equal rights of the several peoples involved! no special or separate interest of an'.' single nation or group of nations can be made the basis of any part of a settlement consistent with the common interest of all There can be no leagues or alliances, or special covenants and understandings within the general and common family ot the League of Nations, no special selfish economic combinations within the league, and no employment of any form of economic boycott or exclusion; except that the power of economic penalty by exclusion from the markets of the world may bo vested in the League of Nations itself as a means of discipline and control. All international treaties of every kind must be made known entirely to the rest of the world. Special alliances and economic rivalries and hostilities have been a prolific source of the passions producing war. It would he an insincere and insecure peace, which did not exclude them in definite binding terms. ~Bejponsibuity 0! America. The United States was prepared to assume its full share of responsibility for the maintenance of common covenants and understandings on which peace henceforth must rest. They could still read Washington's warning against entangling alliances with full comprehension, but only special and limited alliances would entangle, and wo recognise and accept the duty in the new days in which we are permitted to hope for a general alliance which would avoid entanglements and clear the air of the world for common understandings and the maintenance of common rights. He made this analysis of the international situation which the war had created not because he wag doubtful whether the leaders of the great nations and people with whom they were associated were of the same mind and entertained a like purpose, but to clear the air of mist, groundless doubtings, and mischievous perversions.. The President then strongly nrged the neoessity of placing the whole issues clearly and openly before the peoples of the world in language they could translate, and from which they could gather replies to>- questions they were asking, adding, "My one thought is to satisfy those who struggle in the ranks and are, perhaps above all others, entitled to a reply whose meaning none can have excuse for misunderstand--1 ing." He believed the leaders of the Governments with which tho United States was associated would speak, as they had occasion, as plainly as he tried to speak. The only real peace would be an assurance which would make the recurrence of such a struggle of pitiless force and bloodshed forever impossible,

SECURITY NEEDED FOR ALL. VIGILANCE NECESSARY. LONDON, Sept. 29. | Mr. Asquith, addressing the National j Liberal Federation, said that we must be; on guard so that our unexampled sacrifices would not be frittered away. They would be fritted away unless we could, procure a clean peace which did not offend tbo conscience either of the viotim or the rest of mankind. We could havo no clean peace if there were a continuation; of veiled war, or a peace designed to inflict j permanent humiliation or dismemberment. I The Austrian peace note was impracticable, and the only acceptable peace was! one giving self-determination and security' to all nations, large and small. It was in the highest degree undesirable I to have a general election during the war to dissipate energy and break up national unity, Nothing in the war suggested that we should bo better off after peace by any system <H preferential, differential, punitive, or prohibitive. i