The Wanganui Chronicle "Nulla Dies Sine Linea." SATURDAY, OCT. 27, 1917. THE PLOT THAT FAILED.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LX, Issue 17124, 27 October 1917, Page 4

The Wanganui Chronicle "Nulla Dies Sine Linea." SATURDAY, OCT. 27, 1917. THE PLOT THAT FAILED.

1 The disclosure last month of the cor- | respondence which passed between tne , | Kaiser and the Tsar in 1904, fuller i j details oi which have now come to hand 'by mail, forges another link in the | chain of evidence by which is proven the Kaiser's personal responsibility for ] the present awful war. The originals |of the extraordinary telegrams which passed between the two autocrats were discovered in the archives at Petrograd. They show that the Kaiser thrice proposed to the Czar to conclude a secret treaty of alliance between Germany and Russia against Great Britain, and to drag France into ifc. The treaty was to be signed by the two emperors before it was shown to France. It would have confronted I 1 ranee with an accomplished fact, and —as the Kaiser hoped—would have compelled her to join in an attack upon ourselves. The plot failed because the Czar insisted upon showing the treaty to France before signing it. But, as is pointed out by a London contemporary, that does not lessen the perfidy of the Kaiser's action. Only a few weeks before he engineered this conspiracy n B had entertained King Edward with embraces and effusive speeches at Kiel. During it and after it he posed as Great Britain's friend. The moment which Le chose was one of great tension and peril. On October 23 it became known that the Russian Baltic fleet had fired on the British fishing fleet in the North Sea, killing two fishermen and wounding several other men. The Russian fleet ad been warned from Germany beforehand Hliat a Japanese attack would be made m the North Sea, and the Russians mistook the British trawlers for Japanese torpedo craft. The Kaiser did his best to aggravate the incident. and to turn it to Great Britain's ruin. There was then no Triple Entente and no understanding with Russia. The Anglo-French Agreement, however^ had been published on April Bth, 1904, and had caused an outburst of rage against Great Britain in Berlin. The Kaiser's evident purpose was to force France to quarrel with her old ally Russia, or with her new friend Great Britain, and thus to play Germany's game. The Kaiser's apologists may argue that ho was alarmed by tne' lapprochement between Great Britain and France, and that Ins action was dictated by fear of the possibilities of that understanding; but such an excuse is voided by the fact that the Entente in its origin was entirely pacific, and that it was the unceasing attempts of Germany to make a breach between the two countries that ultimately brought the disaster upon the world. Perhaps the chief interest of this sen-, sational revelation is the light it throws upon tb.6 conditions under which Europe has lived in the past. While the world of men were working and trading on the assumption that the foundation of things was stable and enduring, secret diplomacy was preparing a volcano beneath their feet. "Here,"1 says one writer, "we see two men, without a whisper reaching the ear u» the world, discussing, in as matter-of-fact a way as they would discuss a question of market prices, how they should deal with the fate of two hundred million people, and what the nature of the world-war should be. There was no appeal to Parliament, and no more thought of appealing to it hi either country than there was of appealing to Jupiter. The hundred and forty millions of Russians and the seventy millions of Germans, whose liv-is were the subject of the barter, were not considered any more than if they were ants upon an. ant-hill." Which goes to prove the truth and wisdom of the words spoken by President Wilson on the 3rd of April last:—

i The menace to peace and freedom lies in the existence of autocratic Governments backed by organised force which is controlled wholly by their will, and not by the will of their people. . . . Self-governed nations do not fill their neighbour j States with spies, or set in course an I intrigue to bring about some critical posture of affairs which would give them an opportunity to strike and make a conquest. Buch designs can be successfully worked out only under cover, where no one has a right to ask questions." Clearly ifc is not enough to have the forms of democracy. We must have the reality of the thing if humanity is to save itself from a recurrence of this disaster. And as the "Leader" says, the key to that reality is an instructed people, organised not for mere questions of wages and trade conditions, but for the establishment of a people's peace founded upon the people's will and power to govern.