THE PRICE OF PEACE.

NZ Truth, Issue 889, 9 December 1922, Page 13

THE PRICE OF PEACE.

Dear "Truth," — Armistice Day and Tress comments thereon suggest the ciuentlon: "What was the price or po.ice m 1914 V" For no doubt peace could havo been had If those m office had been prepared to pay it. Lloyd George sometime back aaid: "Nobody wanted war m 1914." (Nobody ever does, of course). But he said: "Wo were tangled up In treaties and commitments that compelled us to net as we did. 1 ' So then these mighty diplomats who aspire to rule tho world were loci into war by fetters of their own making;. But why not have snapped them? Ah, that was a higher price Jo pay for peace than they wore prepared to pay. The chains that then led them Into war have been dragging them along ever since. They led to the dismissal of Asquith because ho wanted peace, and our Allies wanted peuce oven more badly. They led to the Lloyd Gcorjo Premiership, and later on they were tho dominant factors at tho Versailles Poaco Conference and tho Treaty of Versailles, which all must have known could never be anything else than a step to tho next war. To-day tho price of peaco has more than doubled hliico 1914, for there arc now ovor half a dozen treaties to elthor Bcrap or amend. Tho foil of tho mark tells us that Germany Ih racing to bankruptcy niul repudiation. Tho boom on the Berlin stock exchange tells us that before lonic tho Gcrmun3 will bo about completely bought up by foreign hoJUtti'g of marktt. so that when tho Allies come ulonsr with their little bill next February and March, tho tables will bo swept pretty clean, and

upwards of 60 million human beings must then choose between death by slow starvation, like the Austrians,' or death by the bullet, like the Turks, for it is very obvious that Germany at the present exchange cannot buy either food or raw materials nor pay any indemnity. But the scrapping of the treaties is only part of the price of peace to-day. Europe must be economically .restored — not by loans, for that is only like offering brine to a man dying of thirst — but by putting an end to the merciless exploitation that has been going on. That is the final price of peace. Are they willing to pay it, high as it is, or will they permit the chains that have brought the world to its present state to drag them into a war of extermination that will send the Capitals of Europe to heaven m smoke, and civilisation into perdition? That's the alternative at the Lausanne Conference. — I am, etc., . ' H. C. THOMSEN; Carrington. '