The Sun SATURDAY, MARCH 15, 1919. GAMBLING IN FUTURITIES.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume V, Issue 1587, 15 March 1919, Page 8

The Sun SATURDAY, MARCH 15, 1919. GAMBLING IN FUTURITIES.

-One tiling at least is certain of the Peace Conference—there will be many turned sorrowfully away. Of the Greater Po\vei# it is probably true that their one aim is lo make wars impossible: it is not equally certain thai some of the smaller groups have the same purely altruistic intentions. There is a sense in which this conference, like all others, looks periodically like a scramble for booty. In most cases, no doubt, the plunder to be divided is long since due. Belgium, Italy, Rumania, Jugoslavia—perhaps even Greece, Albania and the Baltic Provinces—have their "irridentist" sorrows and age-long injustices. But nations, like individuals, have their sudden temptations too. It is not life-long injustice that is inspiring many of these fervent appeals in Paris, but a sudden recognition of a golden opportunity. Poland, for example, has borne the yoke for weary years; but the enthusiasm of the Poles now for an abiding place in the sun is just a little too ardent to be innocent. Italy and the Slavs are lighting vehemently for Fiume—both equally determined to liberate the inhabitants from the horrors of slavery. Isolated, their ardour Would melt the world; but since one hearting has a cruel way of neutralising another, Paris looks on with a knowing smile. Then there arc the liberty-loving Albanians. In an unfortunate address to the Italian Parliament soon after New Year, President Wilson warned Iris breathless listeners that the Balkan States "must be free to exercise their own national independence." Well, is Albania not a Balkan State, in struggling possession of its independence for seven long years? What could an alert people do after Mr Wilson's pronouncement but send a delegate posthaste to the United States to prove that "Albania's future is a factor of world-wide importance"? Why should so much mention be made of the Jugoslav claims on the Adriatic coast, this delegate now wants to know, and the world be left entirely ignorant of "the preponderatingly Adriatic position of Albania"? As for Greece, everyone knows how \ long her heart has been burning for the inhabitants of ancient Troy. For years she has been hungering to liberate Smyrna. Indeed, though it is in the cause only of Christianity that she has thought of it, she has announced quite definitely in Paris recently that she would not refuse to absorb Constantinople. Probably President Wilson alone of the world's readjustees has not smiled. Of Serbia and Rumania, of course, it would not be fitting to be over-critical. If ever a nation earned compensation it is the victims of Mackensen and "the Balkan Fox." If ever there was a people whose claims for reparation should not be too coldly scrutinised, it is the race whose villages were sacked in l!)l(i by Bulgars and Huns. But if one chose to be cynical, would it not be possible to chuckle a little over that discovery the other day of a "Serbia Irridenta" in the richest corner of the Hungarian plain? Rumanians, we know, have been cut off for ages in Transylvania, but are there so many there after all as we heard during the last few ;

months'? Are Ihey concentrated precisely round the richest mineral and oil deposits in the Carpathians j and Transylvanian Alps'? Even ! Belgium—dare we say it?—is just a ; trifle timely in her recollection of I the treaty of 1839. Holland, she says, abrogated the treaty in November by i allowing the Germans to tread on her ? I tail a little in (heir scramble for I Deutschland and home. Belgium was as grateful as her Allies at the time that Fritz got hack by the short- ■ est possible route. It may have been a good treaty, and it may have been • a bad—territorially it was certainly a little queer—but the claim for it's i revision cannot be ingenuously based , on the trespass committed, a few • weeks ago alter Hindenburg's "sauve qui pent." He laughs loudest, they say, who laughs last. It is plain to any shrewd observer that there is a good deal of grimacing in Paris just now that will freeze up suddenly in ; another week or two. Neither Germany nor Austria nor Bulgaria nor Turkey is worth an honest international tear; but to parcel them out in accordance with a few recent notions of the rights of the smaller nations would be to set all the sticks again for another big fire. Many of those who are "gambling in futurities" will go home soon with a very sore gambler's head.