THIS New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. MONDAY, MAY 9, 1921. SECURING THE PEACE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LVIII, Issue 17776, 9 May 1921, Page 4

THIS New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. MONDAY, MAY 9, 1921. SECURING THE PEACE.

The announcement by the United States Government that it will resume participation in the deliberations of the Allies is the best news Europe has had for many a long day. It is no exaggeration to say that half the misunderstandings over mandates and cables are due to American dissociation from Allied decisions and more than half the difficulties the Allies are encountering in the enforcement of the Treaty of Versailles are due to misinterpretation of the United States' attitude. It does not matter that millions of Englishmen have had enough faith to believe that the great heart of America was still sound, and that she sympathised with the Allies' efforts to enforce the peace which was written for the most part in Anglo-Saxon and French blood. It is beyond question that Germany entirely misconstrued the failure of America to ratify the Treaty and her withdrawal from the common council of the Allies. To Germany it represented the crumbling of the alliance. It was the first fruits of the policy of separation she has pursued so diligently, and she hoped it would be followed by a dissolution of the Entente, leaving'her free to defy the Allies severally when she dare not flaunt them jointly. To this deduction and this hope must be attributed the growing truculence of Germany. With the United States visibly associated with the Allies, it is at least doubtful if Dr. Simons would have gone so far a s to repudiate Germany's responsibility for the war—a responsibility acknowledged in the Treaty and forming indeed the whole basis of the Treaty—it is doubtful if the German Government "would have neglected to try the war criminals although the evidence collected by the Allies against them has been in its hands for months; it is doubtful if Germany would have permitted military organisations, some open, some clandestine, to spring up all over the country, equipped with arms that should have been surrendered; it is doubtful if Germany would have rejected with contempt the Allies' just demands for reparation and submitted counter-proposals which, to quote Mr. Lloyd George, were " an offence and an exasperation." It is certain that she would not have dared to offer these combined proofs that she is neither regenerate nor penitent, nor even conscious of military defeat. German arrogance had fed on Allied lenity till it again threatened the peace of Europe. It would have been humbled by France and Britain, but American help is nevertheless welcome. America's armies were the final factor in winning the victory; her moral support, even if belated, will secure the peace. There are already indications tha*= the peace has been won. The reports that Germany is about to surrender gain credence from the resignation of the Fehrenbach Government. A Cabinet crisis is in Berlin the usual signal of a diplomatic surrender. One preceded the signing of the armistice and another the signing of the Treaty. For a third time Germany's bluff has been called, and it is apparent that during the past week the firmness and unanimity of the Allies have made a deep impression on the financial and industrial powers behind the German Government. In some respects the new Allied formula is different from the Paris programme, but it will be wholesome for the Germans to observe that, adapted to the latest report of the Reparation Commission, it is, if anything, more severe. The course of the negotiations may be statistically summarised as follows :—

Total Present Liability Value Millions of Millions of £ £ First Allied demand . . 11,300 4 000 First German offer No estimate 1'350 Second German offer 10,000 2,500 Second Allied demand 13,500 6,600 It should be noted that the first demand included also an export tax of 12J per cent, on exports, and that the second is exclusive of £150,000,000 to cover Belgium's war borrowings from the Allies. The full bill for reparation was about £17,000,000,000, so that the Allies have abated something of the rights they reserved under the Treaty of Versailles, and those rights were expressly confined to compensation for damage to property and injury to civilians, including pensions and separation allowances on an artificially low scale. To their actual war costs the Allies are not asking Germany to contribute one paper mark. How different the attitude of Germany would have been had she proved victor may be inferred from Prussia's anxiety to destroy France in 1814-15, and by Germany's treatment of France in 1871, and of Russia and Rumania at BrestLi tov.sk. The reparations are not punitive. ihey are a moral vindication of the Allies' cause and they are in fact only a measure of simple justice to the suffering cilizens of the Allied btates, but especially of France. Germany set out not only to conquer hurope, but to ruin the industries of France and Belgium. Without any military justification she destroyed factories, dynamited bridges, flooded mines, and tore up railways. If she escaped the consequences of these outrages she would have won the war economically after losing-it militarily. The Germans have prate ; d of economic enslavement. If any people is threatened with such enslavement jit ls _the French. They are paying I pensions to 3,500,000 persons-the I pensions list of the British Empire , numbers 1,700,000 names-they have this year provided £480,000,000 to- , ward restoring the devastated pro jvinces, and the item will reappear :

in probably ten Budgets. The Germans' plea that they cannot pay is as shameful as it is false. The German debt nominally stands high, but by the process of depreciating the currency it has been reduced to almost the pre-war liability. During the, war Britain raised £3,000,000,000 in taxation : Germany made no such effort. Heavy direct taxation has been imposed on German wealth, but it is not fully collected and the indirect taxes are ridiculously low. Moreover, the German Budget provides many food and industrial subsidies which are an abatement of taxation. The Allied experts, after a most exhaustive investigation, are agreed that Germany is less heavily taxed than Allied countries, and that she can pay the sum demanded of her. To excuse her merely because she is unwilling, because she would prefer to have others repair the damage she has wrought, would be to place a premium on " frightfulness " and to encourage Germans to believe they can break the rules of war and the laws of humanity and actually profit by their .transgression. The. Allies are not plotting the enslavement of Germany. They wish to avoid the enslavement of France and Belgium, and they are removing a fraction, only a fraction, of the' burden on to the shoulders Btf the Germans, who are better able to carry it and by every test of morality should bear it.