The Dominion. MONDAY, JULY 8, 1918. THE NECESSITY OF GOING ON

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 248, 8 July 1918, Page 4

The Dominion. MONDAY, JULY 8, 1918. THE NECESSITY OF GOING ON

It is the keynote of much that was said and written in the United States on the fourth of July that the celebration of ■ the time-hon-oured anniversary has finally assumed an international significance. Press and public utterances alike express a settled conviction that not only in this war but for all time the American Republic has left behind, it the days when it held aloof in splendid isolation, guardian of its own interests and of the Monroe Doctrine, but taking no part in European quarrels and admitting no responsibility for tho preservation of world peace outside its own wide sphere of rule and influence. Americans are now able and ready to perceive that_ tho ideals uDon which their national celebration formerly centred, though high and noble in themselves, were much too limited to meet tho actual conditions of life in the world, and that it is essential to the preservation of their own liberties that thev should Iμ prepared to resist aggression not only in their own territories, but as a member of the world-family of peace-loving and law-abiding nations. Tho spirit which to-day fills the American nation, .and is the inspiration of a whole-hearted and swiftly expanding war effort, is nowhere better expressed than in the speech delivered by President Wilson on the national anniversary at the place where Washington lived and lies buried. His words will be accepted as a splendid rallying call to the nations whom the war has brought together in a common resolution to bear every sacrifice that may be demanded in order that freedom and justice may be preserved' and may i.'Jidurc in the world. The cardinal issues of tho war and the conditions which alone will make a just and lasting peaco possible have never been more lucidly or emphatically stated. In its setting, with America a foremost partner in the company of nations which -have set themselves to compass Germany's litter defeat as the first condition to future peaceful existence, the speech tends not a little to give substance to the ideal of a league of free nations to make peace and justice secure which Phesident Wilson and many other enlightened thinkers in his own and other countries regard as the only safe guarantee of national independence.

At a more immediate view such a speech has very great value as tending to. anticipate and defeat in anticipation whatever new efforts the enemy may mako to cloud the issues of tho war and pave tho way for an inconclusive peace which in essentials would be hardly less, disastrous to humanity than the decisive defeat of the Allied nations. Tliiv President's words arc timely and to the point also as an admirably emphasised warning and reminder that the issues at stake in this war admit of no halfway decision and no compromise. At times the essential conditions of victory have been made a subject of involved discussion, and the distinction President Wilson himself has often drawn between the governments and peoples of the Teutonic Alliance has on occasion been pressed into service by those who contend, professedly in a spirit of reasonable moderation, that the Allies must content themselves with something less than overwhelming victory. In his spseeh on Independence Day President Wilson swept iiwav and destroyed such obscurities with masterly skill. Then, as on former occasions, he drew a distinction between the rulers and the ruled in Germany and her vassal States, but the distinction is between active forces of evil and material which is freely at the disposal of these forces. This is a precise presentation of the truth. It is , for the people of Germany and those of the nations with whom she_ is allied to alter and amend their existing political condition if they have the ability and resolution to do so, but while they remain the helots of Prussian despotism they aro part and parcel of the forces that are seeking to enslave and degrade the world, and must expect to share the fate of their masters. President Wilson rightly defines the war as a struggle between a group of governments to whom tho people over whom they nilo aro so much fuel and cannonfodder and tho nations of the world to whom freedom and justice

[ are ideals to be upheld and defended, at all costs. Compromise as between such antagonists is assuredly impossible and unthinkable. A peace by understanding with Germany could he nothing else than an agreement to concede recognised standing and defined scope in the world to forces that arc wholly evil. It is because such a peace is utterly incompatible with the continued existence of freedom and free nations that President Wilson 'is manifestly right in declaring that the first aim and end of the associated peoples of the world arrayed against the Teutonic Alliance must be "the destruction of every arbitrary power anywhere that can separately, secretly, and of its single choice disturb the peace of the world, or if it cannot at the moment bo destroyed, at least its reduction to virtual impotence."

The- full force of the President's contention that the settlement of tho war must be final appears when we consider that the forces of freedom arc to-day arrayed in a strength that can never be reproduced if the world is left exposed to the repetition of such an attack upon its liberties as Germany launched in 1914. Any compromise with the Prussian barbarians whose only aim is the criminal exploitation of their ow.n countrymen and tho inhabitants of other countries would be a frightful moral catastrophe. It would fatally disturb and upset the ideas of national and international right and wrong which a great part of the world is now prepared at all costs to defend. It would in greater or less degree confer the standing that comes of accepted usage upon tho infamous methods by which Germany provoked and has conducted the war. A law successfully challenged is weakened if not overthrown, and no more terrible fate could be imagined for the world than that of being condemned to enter a new era with a knowledge o'f vile wrongs unpunished and with confidence in moral law dethroned. The inevitable result would be a more or less widespread reversion towards the standards of primitive barbarism. Such a catastrophe would most certainly not take shapo only on the moral plane. It is only too evident that if Germany were allowed to pain a peace which left her free to develop under her present organisation no detail limitations would safeguard the world against an even more terrible onslaught than the Allies arc striving to repel and defeat to-day. On the other hand pajtial failure in this war would enfeeble and sap tho resolution of some at least of the nations which havo banded together in resistance to_ criminal aggression. It may be said to-day that the League of Nations which President Wilson powerfully advocates is taking shape in the stress of war. Twenty sovereign States, big and little, have declared war on Germany siuce her armies invaded' Belgium and France, and of that number only two. Russia and Rumania, can be said to have withdrawn from the conflict. Rumania would still be in the arena had she not been betrayed by Russia. Serbia and Montenegro arc overrun, but they have made no submission, and their soldiers are fighting on indomitably. In spite of detail failures and defeats, the alliance of free nations opposed to Germany is sound and unimpaired, and the foundations of the League of Nations are being firmly laid. But if the Allies shrank at the eleventh hour from completing their task and weakly conceded Sermany such a, peace as would leave her free to hatch new schemes of conquest and world dominion the firm ties which now unite them would be rent asunder. The mutual confidence, made possible, by common loyalty to high ideals, which is now their greatest asset, would vanish into thin air. The essential conditions making for a- strong combination of free- nations would bo destroyed.' It is not more certain that an inconclusive,, peace would leave the peace-loving nations of the world exposed to renewed attack thian that it would leave them weakened, divided, and in poor shape to resist such an attack. Every hope that this war may be followed by an age of light, marked by growing amity bctweon friendly nations and by solidly established security, is contingent upon Prussian militarism being destroyed or made impotent. In giving forceful expression to this great truth, President Wilson has performed a sterling service not only_ to the Allies, but to all humanity.