LANSDOWNE PEACE LETTER

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 272, 6 August 1918, Page 5

LANSDOWNE PEACE LETTER

MR. CHURCHILL REPLIES

DECISIVE VICTORY THE FIRST

ESSENTIAL

(Rgc. August 5, 7.50 p.m.)

London, August 4,

Mr. Winston Churchill, Minister of Munitions replying to Lord Lansdowne, 6ays:—"To onter a struggle like this, to proclaim tho vital and "sacred issues at stake, to cast the flower of the nation's manhood into the furnace for four devastating years, and then to discover that tho foe is so stiff that reasonable accommodation should be arranged, is not tho way to an honourable peace. We liavo but to persevere to conquer. All tho world is marching against Germany and her confederates. Peace now, when the German triumph is tottering, would shut off mankind from its native and basic rights. Aro tvc," he asis, "to doom our children to acccpt for ail timo tho Germans at their own extravagant valuation, and allow them to stamp their false values upon tho world, after going through all wo have done? Why seek pcaco at tho moment when Germany is about to fall. Ought wo td seek to negotiate a treaty which would bo a brand on the heads of our race for generations! 1 A fictitious inferiority? A sham defeat? That is what Lord Lansdownc is obstinately beseeching us to do. The Germans must be decisively beaten in tho field by tho Allied armies. That is an indispensable preliminary to the sion of hostilities. The German people, before they can bo received into tho League of Nations, must make a definite break wltli tho military system whicli has led thorn into so many fearful and monstrous crimes."—Aub.-N.Z. Cablo Aesn.