The Dominion. WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 1918. AUSTRIA AND PEACE

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 309, 18 September 1918, Page 4

The Dominion. WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 1918. AUSTRIA AND PEACE

To-day's cablegrams show that there is a certain amount of speculation regarding the conditions in which Austria formulated her proposal for.a Peace Conference, According to one view she simply a-ot-ed at Germany's bidding and as her catspaw, but the correspondent of the Daily Chronicle at Amsterdam asserts that the Austrian demand for peace proposals was so insistent as to force Germany to give an unwilling consent. The correspondent adds that Germany took care to have the proposals so framed as to ensure their rejection, but if he is correctly informed in regard ,to Austria's insistence on peace proposals a oertain amount of support is given to t the opinion expressed by some British newspapers that the j proposals mean that the Dual Monarchy is on its last legs. As they are presented the proposals can only be rejected with contempt, but it is conceivable that they mark tho opening of a serious breach between the two main partners in the Central Alliance. The importance of such a development, however, would be in its tendency to weaken tho Central Alliance as a whole, and not as raising any prospect of separate peace with Austria. Tho fact is by this time very dearly established ■ that there ia no common ground on which the Allies and the Dual Monarchy could meet and come to terms. The moral distinction, such as it is, that is to be drawn between Germany and Austria wasi well summed up by an English writer who observed not | long ago 7

Tho great point to bear in mind is that Austria-Hungary is equally responsible (for the war); no dupe of Germany was she. The only difference is that Germany was out to rob the world, while Austria did not wish to disgorge lonsstolen goods. , This is a simple statement of fact, and one which obviously would make it quite useless for tho Aus-tro-Hungarian Government to approach the Allies with overtures for a separate peace providing for tho territorial integrity of the Dual Monarchy as. it is at present constituted. The demand for the dismemberment of the Dual Monarchy does not originate with the Allies, but is raised by races within its own borders 'who represent in tho aggregate a majority of its population. The _ Austro-Hunganan Government, which professes patriotic indignation at the proposal of the Allies to dismember tho Hapsburg Empiro, represents a minority, and, only rules over the Slav and Latin majority in the Empiro by bruto force and terrorism. The Allies would as definitely violate tho principles for which they stand if they allowed Austria to remain in undisturbed possession of the territories she has been acquiring by violence and fraud during •centuries as if they allowed Germany to retain Alsace-Lorraine and the lands she has occupied since 1814. It_ can only cement their determination that the _ immediate though not the underlying occasion of this war was an attempt by Austria-Hungary to extend its policy of conquest and spoliation in the Balkans. It is an elementary condition of a just peace that the oppressed races of the Hapsburg Empire should be granted and guaranteed full freedom to determine their own future.

As a whole tho questions raised are complex, but the vital point in every case is recognition of tho right of self-determination by races which arc insistent in their demand for that right and are taking every opportunity of enforcing it by supporting the Allied cause. A good deal has been heard of late about the gallant struggle for liberty that is boirig waged by tho different subject races of the Dual Monarchy. The Czecho-Slovaks have nobly earned their recognition by the Allies as an independent nation, and the Jugo-Slavs (the Southern Slavs) havo not less strikingly demonstrated their determination to achieve liberty. At a meeting which was held recently in London to inaugurate the Jugb-Slav National War Aims Committee-, and was attended by tho British Foreign Secretary (Mn. Balfour), the Serbian Minister declared that his 1 people, including those under Austrian domination, would either achieve unity and freedom or perish. A declaration of Serbian war aims which was read at the meeting . is equally striking on account of. the prospects it opens and as an indictment of the policy consistently followed by tho Dual Monarchy and its ally, Germany.

Serbia's first and chief aim {hho statement declares in part) in the union of flic Jugo-Slavs (the Serbo-Croata and the Slovenes) who live in compact masses and on one continuous territory, some within the frontiers of the Kingdoms of .Serbia and Montenegro, some in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy— she waitts them united in one free, independent, and national State. This is to-day the wish and the will of all the Jugoslavs whcrovor they may bo, in .Serbia and Montenegro, in Austria-Hungary, or in Allied and neutral countries. For this union of the nation of the Jugo-Klavs, Serbia and Montenegro have sacrificed every thins; not less the Jugo-Slavs in Austria-Hungary themselves. They have fought, and they are still fighting today (on t'ho Salonika, front and in .Russia), in order to liberulo their countries and live in national independence and union, to exclude any partial and temporary unsatisfactory settlement—or adjournment of the final solution of their problem. They will continue to fight at the side of the Allies until they are united. As Mr. Balfour observed, in commenting on this statement: "Even if the hope aver existed that Austria could dovolop into a free and

homogeneous nation, as we conceive freedom, it has been shattered by the new state of things brought about by the war." The actual trend of events is seen in the evergrowing movement for liberation amongst the subject races of the Monarchy and in the increasing countenance afforded them by the Allies, including Italy. The appearance of an opening breach between Germany and Austria would lx> a welcome sign of the times and a proof that the developing power of the Allies is telling even more heavily on the enemy than lato events on the battlefield would suggest. But no question of meeting Austria-Hungary ha-lf-wh,,' can ever arise until full justice has been done to the subject and oppressed races within her borders.