THE TIGER'S PEACE.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LX, Issue 17125, 29 October 1917, Page 7

THE TIGER'S PEACE.

BY THE DUKE OF ARGYLL

No ono need be too much impressed or waste too much attention over the fresh Governmental stage management in Berlin.

Dr. Michaelis, the new Chancellor, may or may not have a " Hindenburg-like mind," but certainly he speaks as Hindenburg .wants him to speak. He is the Prussian Tiger's cub.

Nothing is changed, except that the new Chancellor has none of his old speeches to disown, and has a freer hand for dealing with the future.

For the Allies the speech is nothing. It disposes, indeed, of the illusion that there might be some possible ground for an understanding between Germany and her enemies at this stage, but few can have been so simple as to read any meaning into the events that led to the fall of Bethmann-Hollweg. It is from the point of view of the Prussian militarist that we must examine this new Chancellor's declaration or policy.

Ho has had to contrive a. formula which will satisfy the Pan-Germans and still convey to less bellicose parties the impression that the German Government's inordinate ambitions are not the obstacle to peace.

The one need of the ruling clique is to persuade the people to hold on somehow. Tne people would be coerced in any case, but coercion would imply a waste of energy, and so the Chancellor's whole effort is directed to convincing them that they have only to wait io reap the fruits of victory, to pointing out what are the alternatives of victory, «md to convincing them that the war will not be prolonged for the mere sake of conquest.

For that reason he has adopted something less than the formula of the PanGermans, and this he can afford better to do than could Bethmann-Hollweg, for the Pan-Germans know that he .is their man.

They know now that the promises of political reform mean nothing. They know that two meanings may be attached to every statement of peace aims, and that it is their own interpretation which the Chancellor has in mind.

Finally, they know that the Allies will not consider a peace in which the German is to be regarded as acknowledged victor—a peace "concluded as those would have successfully carried through their purpose." Therefore, they can hear with calm the repudiation of ideas of conquest and the make-believe references to internal reform.

The whole performance must be construed as a combined stimulant and sedative for the German people, who have to be more heavily drugged as the war, with its accumulating losses and privations, goes on.

It is but small wonder that three years of disordered time-tables have considerably fostered a change in the point of view of such Germans as have considered them. Unrest there is, especially in Austria. It will be remembered that the young Austrian Emperor and Empress were largely educated in England, for he was at Stonyhurst College, and the Empress Zita was brought up in a well-known convent in the Isle of Wight.

From the moment of their accession to the tottering empire, the legacy of the old Emperor's dotage and senility, it was well known that the view they took of the Prussian yoke imposed on them was not such as the All Highest would see eye to eye with. Many things have come to the writer's knowledge as to the trend of feeling in Catholic and Southern Germany, as to their growing dislike at being tethered to the Lutheran war-cha-riot, a feeling entirly brought about by events having turned out less propitiously than was hoped. In the first month of the war the writer had some correspondence with an American friend on this very topic, viz., the likelihood, especially if things went wrong, of a cleavage eventually arising on the lines of religious differences in the Central Empires. t

. The Junker Party, which is Lutheran is so far as it can be called anything, has always been detested by the German Catholic peoples. It was only the successes of 1.870 that welded the two sections into an upstart united empire. The course of the war has awakened Austria, the catspaw of Prussia, to gome idea of the minor role she would in future play if Prussia continues her leadership over the Germanic Confederation.

The absorption of German-speaking Austria, as well as her other subject races, fiscally and physically, has long been one of the humbler, openly-expres-sed plans of the Pan-German maniacs. Herr Erzberger, who has always posed as a Catholic, assumed 'a thoroughly Prussian attitude to the protests of his co-religionists in the invaded countries, traducing them in all possible ways. He his not the acknowledged leader of the Central Party (whose leader is Herr Spahn), but a iree lance , like we have specimens of here, butjais attack on the ex-Chancel-lor s speech on Saturday was certainly flue to the latter's refusal to consider any peace projects without annexations and indemnities. We can only gather dimly what is happening admidst the bickerings of the Gorman parties, because not only is there the strictest ± ress censorship over their pearls of speech, but also a further censorship over what is sent on to neutral countries.

As Erzberger has been howling like a maniac for three years for ruthless annexations, and announced that if London could be obliterated by Zeppelins the world would be purified, his recent change of front (if genuine) is a remarkable portent, not exactly of penitence, but of a modified posture. Sig. nmcant of future developments was the recent visit of the Austrian Sovereigns to one of the South German Courts. ■Berlin jealously was instantly excited at this sign, and the Kaiser had to rush oil to Vienna to try to correct the uneasy feeling. That sooner or later a violent revolution will come in Germany is probable, but whether it will come •= during' the

actual progress of the war is quite another matter. It lies with the drugged and throttled masses of Germany, who were as maniacal in their lust for world domination as their masters who instilled those principles into them, bnt who will beginto see things in a different light as the days draw nearer for the invasion of their own land —it may be by air or by other ways.

But the undrugging and awakening, of the German masses will taJce place on' the day they really learn that their own country is seriously threatened on one of its frontiers. If in that hour they still harness themselves to the Hohenzollerns that will he their outlook, and will only show th© truth of the saying that every people is hlest with the form of. government it deserves. What has happened then in the German Government is a mere change of persons— there may he many such before the war ends —and through'most of those changes the unchanging spirit of Prussia will endeavour to make itself felt even up to the final abyss.

As long as the despotism of the Emperor or of any masquerader of his House and lineage controls the Chancellor, who is himself a despot, to listen to peace proposals and phantom franchise reforms is to listen to the purriri's of masked tigers. The Hohenzollerns have not the smallest intention of abrogating a- title of their power whilst they can help it, and as long as the German people put up with the mushroom dynasty founded by the petty iMargraves of Brandenburg they have only themselves to thank for any undue prolongation of the strife into which their inordinate ambition alone plunged the world. When the vampires of Hunland encouraged by their theologians and professors, are still feeding on the bleeding body of Belgium, and on those invaded districts from-which they are now being blasted out, yard by yard and parish by parish, of what use is'it to pretend "that the Prussian military spirit is now being appreciably undermined" ?

tt To most people it seems clear that the killing of single German soldiers," and that in such numbers as to diminish their armies' powers of mischief, remains after three years of this process still the best way of attaining a lasting and durable peace. For this great end with its aftermath of security, and not for any academic ideas as to how other nations elect to govern themselves (since their stages of advance are i-o varied), both America and the great mass of the Allied nations have*undertaken their task. I venture to think with many others, that this task has now entered on its final stage, and that the goal is within reasonable attainment. .