THE Daily Telegraph WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE WAIHI MINER SATURDAY, MAY 3, 1919. THE PEACE TREATY.

Waihi Daily Telegraph, Volume XVII, Issue 5608, 3 May 1919, Page 2

THE Daily Telegraph WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE WAIHI MINER

SATURDAY, MAY 3, 1919. THE PEACE TREATY.

Here shall the Press ‘he People’s Right mamta’ i,Unawed by influence ard unbribed by gain. Here Patriot Truth her glorious precepts draw. Pledged to Religion Liberty and Law.

To-day the Peace Treaty, as the news now stands, will be presented to Germany, and will be handed to the press lor publication. A broad iidea of the terms has already been gained by cable reports, but only by the full text will mi accurate account, with all the de tails, be made available.- In their appeals for clemency and protests against what they assert is unfair treatment, the Germans have prated about the democratisation of Germany and about the danger that she may become a prey to Bolshevism, The really material, fact to be kept in mipd is that the German people are as far from showng even a suspicion of repentance m m , the days when they cheered over the sinking of tbo Lusitania and celebrated other infamies. Instead of being repentant. the German people are clamouring and whining for kindly treatment. Thei r machinery of government is to some extent cut of but not so seriously as to prevent their leaders uniting in all sorts of schemas and inti igues intended to' weaken or deflect the Allied purpose. It would baffle those people‘in Allied countries who are most anxious to deal tenderly with Germany to show any real break between the German policy which made the war and that which is being developed in Germany to-day. The only change is from the active pursuit, of crime to a. refusal to admit and expiate guilt. Germany is asking not merely for immunity, but that her colossal crimes shoiid be rewarded. She lias wrought inconceivable 'desolation in France, Belgium, and other countries, and is directly and absolutely responsible for the nightmare of horrothat has descended in Russia. She heiself, as an American writer observed recently, has come out of the war without injury to her own territory or any permanent or lasting injury to hci scciaJ and industrial life. “ She has her factories, her towns, her countryside, her social organisation, intact. One has only to compare the devastated regions of France, where normal life cannot beam again for years, with the situation Ui Germany to see that.” Bearing such cardinal facts in mind, it is plain enough that the Treaty about to bo published will be a poor guarantee ot future peace if it dobs .not exact pitiless reparation from Germany and subject her to the severest possible control impose upon her, in fact, such conditions as are merited by a crimmal amunrepentant nation.' The right spirit is shown in the arrangements made for Hie reception of the German delegates nt Versailles, where they are to be m-, closed within barbed wire and treated as become them. The same spirit well find expression hi the Treaty if it _ n-ally capable of seaning. its intended purpose.