WHEN PEACE COMES-WHAT?

Waipawa Mail, Volume XXXVII, Issue 7914, 4 August 1917, Page 3 (Supplement)

WHEN PEACE COMES-WHAT?

THE POSITION OF THE HOHENZOLLERNS. LOUD TALK PROVES NOTHING. British people are rather given to shouting when they’re stirred, and so what often passes lor enthusiastic determination is simply an effect of noise. Just lately, and for a year or two past, we have been clamouring against the House of Hohenzollern. There has been reason enough. The Kaiser is the soul of Germany’s transgression. Had it not been *for thiv inordinate and unscrupulous am bitions that sway him and the people nearest him, there would have been no war. Every infamy of German hate has carried the sitamp of his approval. He cannot evade his rc- •*:-' JiivibiliV*". It is he who has desecrated sacred places, exalted cold brutality into a science, driven the innocent into unimaginable hells, loully outraged young girls and decent women, abominably murdered jKior old people who have done no wrong. Should such a man the permitted to continue to ravage and menace tho world ? Would! the Allies bo justified ill consenting to any peace terms that left th c Kaiser and his blackguard son in tJieir present positions ns regards the German peo-ple ? At the time the answer wor from British people would lie an emphatic No! But British people have short memories. The matter is here dtscus6(*d in the London Daily Chronicle, by a prominent British journalist and sound democrat.

TS the “No Peace with the. Hohenzollerns'’ cry merely another stunt lor office bqvs from the regular factory, or is it Business and War?

definitely attributes the authorship of all Germany's crimes to its autocracy - to the Kaiserism which rules there.

This question deserved consideration before America’s formal entrance into the war. That momentous event has given it, as 1 shall presently show, an added significance. Jt will not have escaped the most casual reader that President Wilson, n the great speech which announced war with Germany, drove a tremendous wedge between the Hohenzollern autocracy and the German people. To most Englishmen it will seem that Mr. Wilson unnecessarily laboured, this point. In this country we do not believe there to be any real difference hetween the spirit ot the Prussian Court and the spirit of the Prussian j>eople generally. The guilt qf making the war and the everlasting infamy of the manner in which it has ibeen waged must seem to the close observer to be the crime of rf people almost ais much as that of a Court.

NOTICE TO QUIT. President Wilson hat “bided l his time” a long while. It has. taken nearly three years of Germany’si obscene barbarism to elicit the measureless denunciation which he gave it a few days ago, and which many of us think a couple of years overdue. But my point tor the present is that it has come at last, and with America ranged with France and England, the driving weight behind this demand has become irresistible. The Kaiser must go. Tn sonic memorable wc-rclu used when (•aptcan Fpyatt was muTdered Mr. Asquith announced that the reprisals of the Allies would fall upon those really responsible, however exalted) their rank. Mr. Bonnr Law has just spoken of our immediate reprisals .for the sinking of hospital ships Something may be done “immediately,” but it is obvious that no really effective reprisals can be taken short of holding the Kaiser and those near him directly responsible. It i.i no real “reprisal” for us to murder German civilians because our own wounded and nurses have been foully slain. Fortunately, the Kaiser has left us in no doubt whatever as to his direct and personal responsibility for Germany’s crimes, from the sinking of the Lusitania to the theft of tho last poor chemise and pair of knickers which his Swinish creatures have stolen from tho French women in the Department of the Somme and sent home to their fat and >f flows'? f rnus in Prussia and Bavaria. “Only one L Master in Mv Empire,” lie announced in a speech just before Armageddon broke out. “You'must all have one will, and l that is My will. I will tolerate no other. There is only one Law, and that is My- law. If I order you to shoot down your brothers, even your parents, you must obey Me without a murmur.”

But Mr. Wilson's adroit wedge, though it makes a difference in favour of the German people which they do not deserve, sit any rate give, them the chance of disavowing their leaders and teachers so soon us adversitv shall have sufficiently chn-etened them. THE TWO CHIEF QUESTIONS. Two matters chiefly to (be considered by the Allies before demanding oft the Germans the overthro - of the Holicnzollern dynasty are: 1. Can wo demand such term"'? 2. Ought we to demand them ? The first question is easily disposed of. It we can win a victory sufficiently decisive as to obtain the other terms which the Allies have already set out, there will he no difficuHjv in adding to them marching orders for the Holienzollerns. Tin* plea of the. pacifists that such a demand would unite the German people to resist to the last 'men and the last ditch, and so indenitel.v prolong the war, mav be entirely disregarded!. When the Germans are ready to surrender the other things they will have to give up they will make no hones alwnt throwing to the lions the Kaiser and his litter. It is not conceivable that such a proposal would prolong the war by a week. In saving this, I do not wish to belittle the loyalty of the German people to their Emperor. 1 have .spent some years, in Germany, and I do not believe there is no country on earth in which tlie attachment of the people to the throne was so general and enthusiastic as it was in Germany when wr.fr broke out.

Thero are some timid folk who argue that the destruction of dynasties by outward compulsion is- dangerous from the point of view of a possible repercussion in limited and harmless monarchies such as Italy’s and our own. In the present state of the world’s progress k'uc-h fears must be overcome. The risk is small, and it must be faced. CONDITIONS OF SECURITY. Eyen if we cast from our minds the very ideas of reprisals and pimisbaienr, there is still a sufficient reason for the overthrow of this evil housle. The guarantees for the future will be even more worthless than the scrap of paper about Belgium whilst the Hohenzollerns remain in power. Effectually to guard the future .from another long infliction of infamy and horror Europe must be freed from the dynasty. That an international police would keep these malefactors in order is, as Professor L. P. Jacks slays, the most fatuous of suggestions. The Professor adds ; The positions of a Caesar, a Tsfar, or a Kaiser, whether his name lie Caligula, Nicholas, or William, is a position which no human being is fitted to occupy, and the certain penalty for placing him there, or keeping him there, is madness, horror, and crime. Crimes such as Germany’s are the work of despotic dynasties, and of their criminal entourage, as all the leaser examples of similar crimes h'ave ever been since the world began. . . . The people are out against the despot;, and when the last despot goes the end will ho won, and all the peoples, friends and foes, freed from the curse which has blighted! Europe for ages. Rii-sia has come—most marvellous' and hopeful of miracles—to the realisation of these truths, and has thrown off tho despot’s yoke. If Germany can regenerate her soul o.f slavery and do likewise, well and fair. But if not, then must Europe —and America—take the t’fpk in hand and topple the Throne of tin* Hohenzollerns into the dus't.

Rightly or wrongly the German people believed that their reigning hoipse had led them in glory and expan-

sion on the field of war, and to prosperity and pre-eminence in the paths of peace. Utter failure in this war will undeceive them, as Napoleon’s) colossal failures undeceived thc French people. Conquering, he luyl been their idol more than any Kaiser has been in Germany, but when defeat and disaster overwhelmed him, and France with, him. they readily fell in with the demand of*the Allies' that no member of lias family should have anything to do with the Treaty of Peace. We can, therefore, demand an end of this dynasty if our victory is absolute. WHAT GERMANY WOULD DO. Tli- question of whether wo ought to insist on such a revolution ij more complex. They are difficult to answer who contend that tiny might, in utter defeat. throw him over at the point of the sword, though left with a free choice they might still keep him at the head of the State. All the Allies, now including America, profess democratic principles. Would it he in accordance with these principles to dictate to seventy millions of people their future form of government? Their own poet Heine said of the German people that they had slavery n their very souls, and no doubt the sway «f Kaiserdom lias awed almost everything to this. But ought the chains to ho snapped except by awakened GorI think the answer is Yes. And 1 I think so because I believe that the Allies have so tremendous an account to settle with tho Hohonzollernsj that they will ho justified in ignoring German sentiment in the matter. In tho early days of the war Mr. Bernard Shaw wrote a canting and ranting pamphlet, in which he spoke of “the pathetic Kaiser.” When this pathetic Kaiser telegraphed to Mr. Wilson that his heart “bled for Louvain,” the American President in B.M probability knew him for the Imperial liar lie was and is. Indeed, the terms of Mr. Wilson’s recent sj>e(*cli make it clear that he had taken the measure of his man from the beginning of the war. He