PRESIDENT WILSON'S SPEECH.

Southland Times, Issue 17934, 27 January 1917, Page 4

PRESIDENT WILSON'S SPEECH.

It is not likely that the Allies will take the trouble to reply jointly to President Wilson’s Senate speech, but their attitude is admirably summed up in the address delivered by Mr Bonar Law at Bristol. Mr Bonar Law, with the patient courtesy that has marked all Britain’s dealings with the United States, gives Mr Wilson credit for meaning well, but at the same time he exposes the utter hopelessness of discussing peace terms which are not based on the destruction of the power of German militarism. It would be absurd to form a new treaty with Germany without some security that Germany would not immediately break it when the moment suited her, and the experiences of this war are surely an abundant proof that Germany would break any treaty or any law of humanity just so soon as she felt strong enough to do it. As Mr Bonar said, Germany has violated conventions and pledges wholesale. No neutral Power was able to stop her, and no neutral, indeed, has even protested. In a few more months we shall be entering the fourth year of the war, and even now the moment is not in sight when we can say for certain that Germany will be punished for her crimes, that Belgium, Serbia and Roumania will be restored and adequately compensated, that Poland will be freed, that Turkey will be banished from Europe, and that the foundations of a lasting peace will be established. The only way to make Germany's signature to a treaty worth anything at all is to destroy the power of the Prussian military caste, and the Allies are now exerting their every effort to that end. Mr Bonar Law does not attempt to argue with Mr Wilson, who in every reference to the war invariably blinks its moral aspects. Mr Bonar Law contents himself with a calm reiteration of the fact that this is a struggle between right and wrong, and his concluding words are a firm and sufficient answer to interfering outsiders: “What President Wilson is longing for we are fighting for, our men folk are risking their lives for, and we mean to secure it.”