THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES THURSDAY, DECEMBER 28,1916. THE PEACE NOTES.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 16888, 28 December 1916, Page 4

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES THURSDAY, DECEMBER 28,1916. THE PEACE NOTES.

The implication that the Note from the United States inviting the belligerent nations to communicate the terms upon which they would be prepared to make peace was prompted by Germ a a influences is somewhat discounted by the fact that Germany has, in hefr reply to the Government a,t Washington, evaded the request that sho should make known her terms of peace. The unfortunate coincidence of the issue of the United States Note with the circulation of the peace overtures of Germany and the countries associated with her is not the only circumstance that has given some colour to the assumption that, in making representations to the groups of warring Powers, President Wilson was not indifferent to suggestions that had reached him

more oar less directly from the Central Empires as well as from countries, like Switzerland, which for their own eakeg are earnestly desirous of a termination of hostilities. But it is not necessary to look to the operation of German influence for an explanation of the action which the Government of the United Sbates taken. There is another explanation which is perhaps more compatible with the fact that President Wilson's Note was suddenly sprung upon the world less than thrco months after the date upon which Mr Lloyd George had, in his "Hands off" interview, warned the United States that intervention on her part would be unwelcome and unacceptable. Mr Lansing, the Secretary of State in the United States, is reported to have declared, in one of two or three cryptic utterances that accompanied the issue of the Note, that it was not unlikely that tlio country was verging on war and that it was for the regulation of her own conduct that her Go vern merit desired to ascertain the aims of the belligerents. Despite the fact that President Wilson has repudiated Mr Lansing's statement in so fa.r as it represented the United States as in danger of being drawn into the war, it is not improbable that the Secretarv of State really disclosed the secret influences which controlled the action of the Government. For it is the actual fact that several delicate international questions arising out. of the war have to be faced by the United States. The most serious of these emerge out of the sinking of merchant vessels by German submarines since the undertaking that was ■ given by Germany to tie United States several months ago. From the date of that undertaking (Mav 5) to October 21, twenty-two British merchant vessels were attacked and sunk by German submarines without warning. In the same period 107 ships, all of British registry, were sunk by -German submarines in circumstances in which the lives of the crews and passengers were imperilled through their being forced to take to the sea in open boats while their ships were a target for the enemy's guns. The evidence respecting several of these cases of destruction of merchant vessels has been called for by the United States with the view of ascertaining whether it revealed a violation by Germany of the undertaking of May last, and at least five of the cases—one involving a loss of American Kves and two others involving a loss of American ships— that are under investigation by the Government at Washington have been described as " critical " in the sense that any one of them may entail a diplomatic rupture with Germany, if tho United States is to adhere to the stand she took up'in the discussion with Germany in the earlier part of the year. But, if the President is to be accepted as an authority on the subject, the pride of the United States is such that fighting would be repugnant to her. A desire to escape from the need of taking the steps that would be appropriate to a proved case of violation by Germany of her pledge of May last, in these circumstances, would in itself be sufficient to explain the issue of the United States Note. In that case, panic at the White House would be the motive that prompted the preparation of the Note. Such a conclusion is not inconsistent with MiLansing's statement. There is a rather striking resemblance between some of the passages in the United States Peace Note and corresponding passages in a series of articles that appeared last month in the New York Times from the pen of a contributor " Cosmos " —" a source, the competence and authority of which," that paper asserted, " would be recognised in both hemispheres." The resemblance, indeed, extends further than this. President Wilson declared in so many words in a recent speech that he was puzzled to know how the war originated. And " Cosmos " takes, as the starting-point for his consideration of the question of peace terms, the amazing statement that " the question as to who or what Power is chiefly responsible for the war has become one of merely historical interest." If it were so—if the causes that brought the war about were immaterial—the settlement of peace terms' might be as simple as President Wilson affects to believe it is. But no person who appreciates the Allies' point of view can fail to understand that the causes which lay I at the root of the war are of farreaching importance and that it is only upon the removal of them that any hope of an enduring peace can be built. The articles by " Cosmos " supply the clue to the extraordinary assertion in the United States Note that "the objects which belligerent statesmen on both sides have in mind are virtually the same " —an assertion which President Wilson has since explained as meaning that statesmen on both sides have expressed in similar terms the objects that they have respectively in view. The reference is, it seems, to a speech by Viscount Grey in London on October 23 last and to a speech by the Imperial German Chancellor on November 9. "We shall fight," Viscount Grey said, —in repetition of a statement made a few days earlier by Mr Asquith—" until we have established the supremacy and right of free development under equal conditions, each in accordance with its genius, of all States, great and small, as a family of civilised mankind." In collocation with this is placed a pious pronouncement by Herr von Bethmann-Hollweg that Germany would, after the war, co-operate in the establishment of measures to prevent the recurrence of such a conflict as the present, the more especially " if the war brings about conditions that do full justice to the free development of all nations, of small as well as of great nations." The mere fact, however, that the Imperial German Chancellor adopted Mr Asquith's and Viscoimt Grey's expressions does not imply the existence of any similarity between the objects at which the two sets of belligei-onts are aiming. Plainly, the sense in which the two speeches are to be read depends upon tho conception entertained by the speakers as to the conditions whereby the free development of nations may be secured. It is needless to say tliat

tho British conception on this point differs from the German so widely as to render a comparison diilicult if not impossible. The records of history dispose of the suggestion that, even if specially-selected extracts from statesmen's speeches aro to be taken as expressing the complete mind of their respective countries, there is any agreement between Germany and Great Britain respecting the objects which should be secured by the war. Tho mind of Gennany is not. to be discovered through an isolated quotation from a speech by her Chancellor, particularly when it is remembered that it was he who regarded a solemn treaty as of no value greater than that of " a scrap of paper." Thoro is the good faith of Germany—an extremely frail factor—to consider, and there is Germany's " prestige of triumphant crime," as Professor Gilbert Murrav puts it, to consider. There are guarantees to be secured for the payment by the enemy of adequate reparation for the wrongs perpetrated by her and guarantees, also, against ■uc-h a recrudescence of the German spirit of militarism as would expose ■ ui'opo to the risk of another catastrophic war. Germany cannot be trusted. There is no nation among the Allies, there are probably few nations in Europe, that would now I accept the pledged word of Germany. I There is only one argument that ap- j peals to Germany. That is the argument of force and compulsion. And it is only by the imposition on Germany of terms that will render her incapable of repeating her crime of 1914 that.an enduring peace can be secured. It will not be until tho Allies force such terms as these upon Germany that they will have accomplished their task. They may have a long way to travel yet before (hoy reach their goal, but to any appeals which may be made to them to consider the probable cost of their determination to prosecute the war to a triumphant issue they may reply in words that will not be unfamiliar to President Wilson—in words that were used by Abraham Lincoln many months before the conclusion of the American Civil War:

It is a pertinent question, often asked in the mind privately, and from one to tho other, When is the war to end? Surely I feel as deep an interest in this question as any other can, but I do not wish to name a day, a month, or year when it is to end. I do not wish to run any risk of seeing the time come without our being ready for the end for fear of disappointment because the time had come and iiot the end. We ac cepted this war for an object, a worthy object, and the war will end when that object is attained. Under Cod I hope it never will end until that time. . . .

This war has taken three years; it was begun or accepted upon the line of restoring the national authority over the whole national domain, and for the American people, as far as any knowledge enables me to speak, I say we are going through on this line if it takes three years more.

"If it be hard," said Viscount Grey in the sp&och to which we have already referred, " that the present generation in its prime should be called on to sacrifice all, it is for tie sake of the future of the nation and the generations that come after."