"IF PEACE WERE DECLARED."

Oamaru Mail, Volume XLII, Issue 12822, 14 April 1916, Page 7

"IF PEACE WERE DECLARED."

A French official communique issued on the 7:h of last month stated : .At the celebration of the anniversary of the death of a Socialist .Mayor, who succumbed to wounds received on the field 01 honour, the Socialist Vandervelde, Minister of Stale of the Belgian Government, and the .Socialist Sembat, Minister of Public Works in the French Government once more atlirined the necessity for the prosecution of th« war until a complete and definite victory is achieved. The leader of the Belgian Labour Party, in the course of his speech, said: "We have seen men, women, children, and the aged Dying before the hordes of the invaders." When 1 left Belgium our towns were burning, having been set fire to by the German armies," ami having lived through all these terrors how would it be posible for us not to have hatred in our hearts for this fratricidal war, .which scars and burns a deep gulf of mud and of blooi between the peoples and the proletariats of Europe* "Hut there would be. my comrades, something even more frightful, more abominable, than this war, and this is that it:s re«ponsible authors, those who let loose this monster, who willed it, premeditated it, and declared it. should enjoy a sense of impunitv. You may, perhaps., ask yuurselves at times if the time has not vt't come to put an en<\ to this horror, to call forth peace at all costs, and to free voui consciences from the nightmare of "this war. Then think what Europe would bo if peace were declared to-day. We would be face to face with the triumph of the most menacing, the most decisive., the most redoubtable militarism. "The nations would say to themselves that in order to live it is necessary to abdicate into the hands of a fatal Imperialism all that -now belongs to them, tha* they must arm themselves to the teeth, and that a peace resting on such foundations would be only a dangerous armistice, and one to be viewed with never-ceasing fear and trembling, wherein all parties would be only preoccupied by" the ever-preseiifr necessity to resume a condition of war, wherein still more victims would come to swell the millions of dead who now sleep under the soil of Europe throughout. "If any should tell you that anything, no matter what this may be, is better than war. that it is necessary to yield,that the game must be abandoned, and ! that this fight mus4 now end, with France sadlv crippled and Belgium assassinated, I would advise you to answer only one thing: If we make peace to-day, the dead bodies of those who have died and were "buried after the battles of Belgium and of Northern France would sleep in soil in' thj hands of their enemy. We will not have it so,, we will regain our dead. They died for lis, we will continue to fight■ for them." -■■'■.■