THE PEACE TREATY

Otago Witness, Issue 3414, 20 August 1919, Page 49

THE PEACE TREATY

CANTERBURY WOMEN'S INSTITUTE'S CONDEMNATION. (Feom Onu Own Cohhespondent.) OHRISTCHURCH, August 16. At a meeting of the Canterbury Women's Institute on Friday the- members unanimously agreed to a long protest against the Peace Treaty with Germany, which, in the opinion of the institute, violates the terms and principles on the faith of which the German nation laid down its arms. As such it constitutes an indefensible breach of that international morality whose vindication it was the declared aim of the Allies and associated Governments to ensure. The protest details various points in support of those allegations, and goes on to say that those particular examples merely typify the general purpose underlying every section of the treaty. That the purpose is obvious: It is to the now democratic Germany to the position of a vassal State, to render her commercial recovery impossible to drive her out of international life, to crush the spirit of her people, the failure to include them in the League of Nations, their disarmament alone, among the Powers of Europe, the imposition upon them of enormous and indefinite financial burdens, combined with numberless handir caps to their commercial and industrial rehabilitation, display this purpose in tho clearest light. The prospects for the German people, under the treaty, is that of a people of serfs, working for their conquerors in arms. Not thus can a better world arise from the ashes of the past; not thus can atonement be made to the peoples for the long agony of war. The members of the institute, therefore, refuse to recognise the treaty, an'd resrord as their chief task the institution for it of a peace which will correspond with President Wilson's 14 -points, and with the aspirations and ideals of the common people everywhere, the institute omits to say how it proposes to set about this task.