The New Zealand Times. MONDAY, OCTOBER 14, 1918. THE GREATEST TASK

New Zealand Times, Volume XLIII, Issue 10100, 14 October 1918, Page 4

The New Zealand Times. MONDAY, OCTOBER 14, 1918. THE GREATEST TASK

“No man las discoursed so eloquently on the League of Nations as the Kaiser,” declared Mr Lloyd George, with biting sarcasm, in a recent address delivered in the City Temple, London, to the National Council of Evangelical Free Churches. “He would have satisfied the most exacting critic in the Free Church Council. His reply to the Pope breathed the spirit of brotherhood and Christian kindliness. There was never a word about giving up Belgium, but there were whole passages on disarmament. Not a syllable about surrendering Lithuania and Courland, ■but on the League of Nations he was absolutely sound. He said ho would not only accept the League of Nations, but Germany was prepared to place herself at the head of it. When I saw that I know what he really meant. Then you found the spirit of dominancy still there—a dagger wrapped in the Sermon on the Mount.” Thus scathingly did the British Prime Minister expose and trounce the hypocrisy of the Kaiser. Thus clearly and cogently did he demonstrate the danger of a League of Nations, including and dominated by an unconquered Germany. The Central Powers are prepared to be lavish, even unctuous, to a degree, in their lipservice of Democracy, if only they can thereby save their skins, escape the severe punishment which is justly their due, and get clear with their warmachine more or less intact and their hold on Russia secure, so that later on they may. again make yet another desperate hid for the domination of the world.

Happily, Mr Lloyd George very keenly realises this danger. He warned his audience very emphatically against mistaking phrases for facts; pointing out that there is nothing more deadly than such a mistake even in time of peace, but it is disastrous in war. “I could frame (ho said) —any man could—declarations of the most resounding equity as a basis for peace, every one of which would be accepted with a loud tongue by the Prussian war lords, and yet you would find, exactly as the Bolshevik! did, when these phrases came to be interpreted, that they were but sounding brass and tinkling cymbals.” The Bolsheviki, he stated, have taught the rest of the world one lesson, at any rate—that a real League of Nations does not come by talking about it. The Bolsheviki forgot something which was essential —that once you have begun you have got to fight for it. And tho result was that, while they were writing dispatches and making speeches about the League of Nations, they were left with barely half a nation to enter into a league with anybody. While they were talking about the rights of self-determination and allowing their armies to fall to pieces, the Germans were stripping Russia of province after province.; and, while tho Bolsheviki still went on talking, tho Germans added Reval to Riga, and were on their way to make Odessa a German port. That, manifestly, is not tho way to got a real League of Nations. - The, only true the only safe way, as Mr Lloyd George proceeded to demonstrate, is to utterly smash the Prussian war-machine, hurl the war lords to the ground, and exact just punishment for all the wrongs they have done, all "the havoc they have wrought. Restating the aims of the Allied Democracies—“ Vindication of international rights, the restoration of conquered and trodden territories, the freeing of oppressed populations wherever they aro, whether in Europe, in Africa, or in Asia, from tho thraldom of alien despots, and, above all, making sure that war shall henceforth ho treated as a crime, punishable by tho law of nations”—Mr Lloyd George declared that, “As society is handed together for the punishment and repression of murder, theft, fraud, and all kinds of wrong and injustice inflicted by one individual upon another, so nations shall bo banded together for tho protection of each other and the world

as a whole against the force, fraud, and greed of the mighty. To falter ere all tills be achieved would be to doubt the justice of the Ruler of the world. To carry tho war on a single hour after those aims can he attained would he to abandon the world to the spirit of evil.” Clearly, in Mr Lloyd George’s view, there is no more necessity for Germany to be a member of tho League of Nations than there is need for burglars, murderers, and other criminals to be members of the police force set up to put an end to thoir unlawful activities and bring them to justice. Clearly, too, in tho British Prime Minister’s view, this is no time for treaties; and, even if it were, the Hohenzollerns and the Hapsburgs arc not men with whom treaties can safely be made.

We have had treaties before (says Mr Lloyd George); we must now know that we can give them reality. Millions of young men from the British Empire, trom Prance, and Italy—and in due time there will be millions from America—are engaged in demonstrating to the Prussian war lords that the world has reached that stage of civilisation where justice can be enforced against the most powerful nations that trample upon its decrees. These are the true apostles of tho league of nations. If they fail all leagues will be shams, and all treaties will continue to be nothing but scraps of paper. If they succeed—and they will—the league of nations will be an established fact. Then you may beat your swords into ploughshares, ■not till then. . . , ' You cannot halt wage a war. You must give the whole of your strength or not at all. I That- great Old Nonconformist who waged many wars and faced many misunderstandings, Oliver Cromwell, said, “Prosecute it vigorously, or don't do it at all.” That is sound. If any man, here or elsewhere, can show me any way by which we can make peace without betraying the great and sacred cause for which we entered the war, and for which so many millions have sacrificed their lives, to him I will listen gladly, gratefully, and thank God for the light which is given me. Short of that, mere peace talk is undermining fibre and morale. I confidently ask my fellow ■ Free Churchmen to use their potent influence in this land to sustain the heart of this great people to enable them to carry through to a triumphant end'the greatest task that Providence has ever y*t entrusted to their •hands.

When such is the spirit and such tho clear-sightedness with which the statesmen of the Allied Democracies face the supremo crisis of the world-war, surely Prussian Machiavellianism cannot fool them, nor will they falter till the end is reached and a lasting peace has been achieved.