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Otago Daily Times, Issue 18516, 29 March 1922, Page 4

JHE PACIFICATION OF EUROPE. However true it may be that the Peace Conferences and meetings of the Supreme Council of Allies have neither had the effect of pacifying Europe nor yielded satisfactory results, the implication conveyed by Sir Donald Maclean in the House of Commons that the responsibility lies at the door of Mr Lloyd George is clearly unjust and ungenerous. The publication of the Prime Minister’s memorandum for the consideration of the Peace Conference of March, 1919, affords a very interesting glimpse of the mental attitude which he brought to bear upou th© problems that confronted the Allied statesmen at Versailles. The pact which was framed there was far from a perfect instrument. Like wisdom after the event, the recognition of the imperfections of the Treaty has been borne in upon the minds of people by the developments of the past three years. It is impossible to say how the Treaty is going to stand the test of time. But the memorandum makes it clear that, however Mr Lloyd George may have attuned his note to the feeling of the electorate in the early days of victory, when indignation at Germany’s war methods was still at whiteheat, he took to the Conference a very just appreciation of the broad conditions that should he observed in the framing of the terms of peace. The memorandum was a warning against any display of arrogance or injustice in the hour of triumph and a warning, also, of tho risk of patching up a peace of such a character as might provoke a fresh struggle. Even Mr Lloyd George's opponents admit that the document is statesmanlike and not unworthily ex- I preasive of the voice of a great nation The Daily Chronicle’s explanation of the

manner in which the Prime Minister had, at the conference, to compromise with the liberality of his views, is doubtless adequate to the occasion. In the friendly columns of the same journal a well-known publicist recently wrote: “The popular view of Mr Lloyd George a's a man who provokes crises, who has an unrivalled power of invective and stinging phrase, who is a driver of men and an organiser of victory, sometimes obscures the fact that he is in essence one of the most patient and prudent of men. He is a real peacemaker. He has probably settled more disputes—political, industrial, international—than any man alive. He sueceeds because he always tries to understand the difficulties of the other side, because he is tolerant of other people’s prejudices and convictions, and because he is unfailing in rejecting formulas in order to probe the real grounds of agreement.” The contrast which Sir Donald Maclean drew between the results of the Washington Conference and those of the European Conference was as unconvincing as his effort to saddle Mr Lloyd George with the failure of the Conferences of the Allies to achieve their purpose in the settlement of the war issues was unfair. The difficulties which had to be surmounted at Washington were not only of a different character from, but were also of much smaller magnitude than, those which had to be faced at Versailles, at Brussels, and at Cannes. There wafc, in fact, no real point of comparison between them.