The Otago Witness. (WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 30, 1918.) THE WEEK.

Otago Witness, Issue 3333, 30 January 1918, Page 35

The Otago Witness.

(WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 30, 1918.) THE WEEK.

WITH WHICH Ifc INCORPORATED ffffiS 80CTHKBN MBBOUBS.'

"Nunquam allud nutura, allud iapientla dixit." —Juvekal. "Good nature and good sense must ever join."— Pors. The German Chancellor's speech to the Main Committee of the Germany's Reichstag may be accepted Official Reply, as Germany's official reply to the statements made on behalf of Great Britain and America respectively by GMr Lloyd George and President Wilson. If accepted at its face value, this speech, said to have been drafted at a meeting of the German Crown Council, presided over Jgy the Kaiser, and at which Hindenburg, Ludendorif,- Hertling, and Kuhlmann were all present, reveals the undeniable fact that the German militarists are determined to prosecute the war to the bitter end, and they bitterly resent the insinuation that they are a conquered nation. This perhaps is the most significant point in the whole speech, and it, presents the real outstanding difficulty in the way of any negotiations for peace. "They speak,' 1 said von Hertling, referring to the Allies, "as the conqueror to the conquered. The actual position is that our position was never so favourable. If our enemies force us to continue, then they must take tRe consequences." In the very fine sequel to that very fine book, "The First Hundred Thousand," that racy writer "lan Hay" humorously refers to the unpardonable sin in war time. "The one tiling

you must not do in war time," says "lan . Hay," "is to call a thing by its real name. To take a hackneyed example, you do not call a spade a spade; you refer to it officially as 'Shovels, General Service, One.' This "helps to deceive and ultimately to surprise the enemy; and, as we all know by this time, surprise is the essence of successful warfare. On the same principle, if your troops are forced back from their front line trenches, you call this 'successfully straightening out an awkward salient.' " Just as in actual warfare the scene-painter's art, technically known as "camouflage," . haa 'raised the concealment of batteries and their observation posts to the realm of the uncanny, so in the realm of diplomacy things are' very far from being . what they seeTni. And it is just because of the impossibility of ascertaining the exa-ct truth in regard to the condition of Germany that" the difficulty of realising the value of thjp German Chancellor's reply becomes manifest. Obviously a part of it is- bluff, , sheer bluff, as, for instance, when he talks of a freedom of the seas which entails the abandonment by Britain of Gibraltar, Malta, Aden, Hongkong, the Falklande, and other strong points d'appui; and itia\ references to Belgium, to Alsace-Lorraine, and the occupied portions of North France are _ conceived in very much the same strain. It has to be remembered, also, : that from the German point of view the utterances of. Mr Lloyd George and of President Wilson are permeated by the ; same spirit of camouflage. And the,very fact that Germany suspects Great Britain and A mer "'ca of keeping something up their diplomatic sleeves obviously inclines her to stress her strong points and magnify the weak points in the position ./of the Allies. The net result of a calm perusal of the speeches and statements of Mr Lloyd George,. President Wilson, and Baron von Her tang, is to deepen the conviction of the impracticability of any "peace negotiations at the present juncture. So long as official Germany adheres to her false premises in regard to the origin and causes of the war, and so long aa she persists in her arrogant attitude in regard to the post-war settlement, "official Great Britain .and official Germany have no alternative but to continue in the vigorous prosecution of the war. And 1 all indications, from the purely militarist fioint of view, are for the. indefinite proongation of the conflict, ere either side is able to achieve that decision which ia the prelude to victory and to a permanent peace. ' ~:

If a distinction may be made between the peoples of the belliThe Condition gerent nations 'and their ol the Belligerent official heads, there are .not Nations. wanting signs of a general - revolt against the tyranny of the war. The revolutionary sweep which has laid low all settled government in Russia has infected Austria-Hungary, and is even invading Germany itself. All information in regard to Germany which is allowed to pass the censorship must be received with a meed of suspicion, but a certain amount of credence may be given to the statements in the Berlin newspapers that Count Rioderu3 has seni. a memorandum to '.he Kaiser, i warning him that the condition of "the nation renders the further development of an offensive inadvisable; and it is said that other influential. authorities are trying .to induce the Kaiser to check operations* The reports of disaffection among the German soldiery culminating in the confinement to barracks in. Berlin of soma 8000 of their number furnishes another illustration of a new spirit spreading in this land of -habitual and enforced militarism. The Bolshevik demonstrations reported from all parts of Austro-Hun-gary, and which in many of the chief cities —and notably in Budapest-—have taken the form of huge organised strikes, are all a part of the same spirit. When once the people of Europe begin to perceive, be it ever so dimly, the folly and the fallacy of war, this growing ness will prove the beginning of the end. The enthusiastic reception accorded to the Bolshevik emissary, Litvinoff, at the Nottingham Labour Conference affords an-t other indication of the self-same spirit. Litvinoff ridiculed the idea that the Bolsheviks were merely a lot of adventurers, nor did he believe that the German people would continue to shed blood for the benefit of capitalists. "The Russian revolution," he affirmed, "was a revolution against war": and "if peace did result from the Brest-Litov<:k negotiations, then a revolution in Germany) would come within the bounds of immediate possibility." It has to be admitted that the situation to-day is so full of contradictions, and so many... uncertainties abound, that a clear view is impossible to attain. The trend of events, however, appears to point to the possibility of the peoples of the Central European nations, satiated with war-weariness, wresting the reins of government out of, the hands of their, present rulers and uniting in a world-wide agitation against war itself. The continuance of the war—and: no one is more ready to recognise the truth of the assertion 'than Mr Lloyd .George himself —depends upon >'be continued assent to war by the peoples from whom the combatants are continually recruited. If once an agreement is reached among the peoples of the warring nationalities themselves, apart altogether from theixf official heads, that war is to cease, then the basis will have been formed of a permanent peace —a League of Nations hitherto undreamt of. This would seem to be the goal towards which the Bolsheviks are dimly groping, and it remains to be seen whether the tremendous' obstacles in the way will be overcome and the dream realised. Meanwhile all humanity stands aghast at the spectacle of catastrophe, Catastrophe, chaos, and crime which the Chaos, world, as reflected in the and Crime, newspaper's, to-day present. Scarce any catastrophe quite so terrible has ever been reported as of the virtual destruction by flood and

cyclone of the town of Mackay, m North Queensland; but even this tragedy fades into nothingness in comparison with the chaos prevalent in Russia. "The sudden metamorphosis," so runs a recent cablegram, "of the hitherto temperate and orderly Russian masses to lawless, pillaging, murdering mobs is due to the unlimited manufacture of vodka. The revolution swept aside the ex-Czar's prohibition decree, and distilleries have been started everywhere." The food shortage in England is becoming acute, and the unprecedented spectacle is presented of queues of people a mile long in the London suburbs clamouring for the essentials of life itself. America is coming to the rescue in magnificent fashion, but the un/satisfactory distribution of the food available is creating* the gravest trouble in the Homeland. It is alleged that the •well-to-do still waste food while the poor starve; and already workers are downing 'tools as a protest against this inequality. America, too, is having troubles of her own. It is alleged that Germany, alarmed at the completeness of America's war preparations, has organised, and is "carrying out by means of German sympathisers in ■the States, a fire offensive, aimed at the munition works, dockyards, and other -•works of importance to the war campaign. 'President Wilson is said to have receive* 'an anonymous warning of a nation-wide •plot to destroy docks and war plants in the United States; and already fires of mysterious origin have occurred at warehouses, munition works, and dockyards, ' evidently designed to delay the preparations America is making to participate in the fighting on the Western front. In Great Britain the attacks upon Sir Douglas Haig and the doubts cast upon his generalship are all operating in the same direction, and helping to intensify the general feeling of uneasiness in regard to the- future. 'lt would almost seem as if the peoples of the world, dissatisfied with the conditions under which they have been ruled and their affairs regulated, baro decided to run amok, regardless of the consequences. In which case the war will gradually degenerate into a worldwide anarchy, levelling to the ground all ' existing institutions and shattering society, after which everything will have to begin over again.