The Press Friday, March 8, 1918. Lord Lansdowne's Latest.

Press, Volume LIV, Issue 16155, 8 March 1918, Page 6

The Press Friday, March 8, 1918. Lord Lansdowne's Latest.

Lord Lansdowne's latest letter to the "3>aily Telegraph" gives further proof tlxat ho has lost his grip of the realitios ' of the Avar and the objects for which wo aro fighting, and it makes one wonder whether he was not tremendously "overrated when he was our Minister of Foreign Affairs. To our view it is simply appalling to think of any British statesman suggesting that we should begin to make signs of weakness, if not of surrender, at th o very moment when it is essential that we should set orfr teeth harder than over in a final effort to win the war, Russia has collapsed, Roumania has bson compelled to sign n peace at the bayonet's point, and except on the Western front and in Palestine and Mesopotamia the Gorman hordes are apparently triumphant so far as the land war is concerned. How can any sane man believe that at this juncture there is any possibility of securing the only po ico which the Allies can accept—a peace which will do justice to the smaller nations, and a peaco which will he lasting, so that wo shall not have to face another war oven moro horrible than that in which we are now plunged? President Wilson, months ago, said very truly that all talk of an early peace is '"one of the evidences of "misdirected thought, and should not cloud the vision of those who under- " stand that the United States is fight- " ing now for the same ideals of democracy and freedom that have always "actuated the nation." Ex-President Taft, speaking at Montreal, on September 26th, put the same truth in even more pregnant language. He said:— ''The Allies cannot obneede peace until they conquer it. When thoy da so it will be permanent. Otherwise they fail. . . . He who proposes peace now. either does not see the stake for which the Allies are fighting, or wishes the German military autocracv still to control the destinies of all of us as to peace or war." The Germans cannot beat us in fair fight, either on eea or land, and they

will not outlast us in endurance unless, indeed, tho British national fibre has degenerated from what it used to be. But where they are far more clever than we are is in chicanery, espionage, and deceit of evory kind, in n introducing subjects of dissension among >• their opj>onents, in fostering the delusion in the ranks of the latter that the best way for thc-m to win the war is to loavo off fighting and begin to talk about it. M. Cheradame, in the January number of the "National Review, sots out what he calls ''The six leading " Pacifist German intrigues.'' Most of them are intended to assist in playing d what he calls "the armistice trick" on the Allies. This, as he explains, is based upon an astute calculation founded on the war-weariness of the com--10 batants. At Berlin they reason thus: " If an armistice is agreed upon tho "Allied troops will say 'They're talk- " ing, so pcace is coming, and, before "long, demobilisation.' Under these " conditions our adversaries -will under- = "go a relaxation of their moral fibre." ° Tho Germans would ask nothing more. They would enter upon peaco negotiao tions wirh the following astute idea: j If, hypothoticsily, the Allies should 0 make the enormous blunder of discussing terms of peaco 011 bases so craftily 4 devised, Germany, being still entrenched a behind her fronts, which had been mode '• almost impregnable, would end by say--0 ing: "I am not in accord with you. 0 "After all is said, you cannot demand " that I evacuate territories from which "you r.re powerless to expel me. If " you are not satisfied, go on with the "war." During tho negotiations, everything essential would have been done by German agents to accontuate tho moral relaxation of tho country which was most exhausted by the conflict, and the result would be the breaking asunder of the anti-German coalition and finally tho conclusion of peaco substantially on tho basis of existing conquests. Thus Berlin's object would l>o obtained This was the view put . forward by M. Cheradame more than two months ago, and will anyone deny that what has happened sinco in Russia gives tho fullest confirmation of his analysis of the German schemes? Wo have been warned moro than once that the moment of the greatest danger to tho Allies would bo the moment when the talk about peaco bogan. AVe always knew that tho disloyalists and tho whole army of fainthearts would then try to seize their opportunity to help the Germans. But wo certainly never expected to find an English statesman of Lord Lansdowne's past reputation falling into tho trap so cleverly set by the Huns.