Hokitika Guardian & Evening Star FRIDAY, DECEMBER 20, 1918. THE FIRST HURDLE.

Hokitika Guardian, 20 December 1918, Page 2

Hokitika Guardian & Evening Star FRIDAY, DECEMBER 20, 1918. THE FIRST HURDLE.

The Peace Conference will be assembling soon, and no doubt there will bo many obstacles to the free running of (the machinery designed to givo the world lasting peace. The old saying of “many men, many minds,” , will operate rather freely, and one of the first hurdles will be in regard 'to the much involved question of “the freedom of the seas.” What President Wilson means is not at all clear, and even his countrymen find a j difficulty in reconciling the formula with • the conditions as they are. There ap- j pears to be something more than meets ! the eye in the fact that ex-President j Roosevelt is so persently championing j the cause of the British Navy in the j United States, together with the clear ! note sounded by British statesmen when ; discussing the matter in England. So far Mr Wilson has maintained a complete silence on the details of the schemo. It is well, perhaps, he should do so. The trip he will make through northern France and possibly parts of Belgium, will be educative as to the sort of being Europe had to put up with. Looking at the devastation wrought by the Hun, and viewing the millions of graves where lie the victims of lluu ambition, or visiting the hospitals and sanatoria where the broken and sick are suffering and dying because of Hun atrocities, as well as learning first hand of the horrors put upon civilian populations in the invaded territories, Mr Wilson will come, doubtless, to regard the position wth a different outlook to that which he had when comfortably seated in his study at Washington. If this change of mind is brought about, fho negotiation of thy first hurdle might not be so hard a task after all. Early in 1917, in January in fact some three months before the United States entered the war, Mr Wilson in one of his wordy orations to Congress thus referred to “the freedom of the seas,” as then in his mind: OUTLET TO THE SEAS. “So far as practicable, moreover, every great people now struggling towards a full development of its resources and of its powers should bo assured „a direct outlet to the great highways of tho sea. Where this cannot be done by the cession of territory, it no doubt can be done by the neutralisation of direct rights of way, under the general guarantee which will assure the peace itself. With a right comity of arrangement no nation need be shut away from free access to the open paths of the world’s commerce. “And the paths of the sea must alike in law and in fact be free. The freedom of the seas is the sine qua non of peace, equality, and cooperation. No doubt a somewhat radical reconsideration of many of the rules of international practice hitherto thought to bo established may be necessary in order to mako the seas indeed free and common in practically all circumstances for the use of mankind, but the motive for such changes is convincing and com polling. There can be no trust or intimacy between the peoples of the world without them. The free, constant, unthreatened intercourse of nations is an essential part of tho process of peace and of development. It need not be difficult either to define or to secure the freedom of tho seas if the Governments of the world sincerely desire to come to an agreement concerning it.” Ur to this time, it should be remembered that United States did not approve of Britain’s conduct of the blockade of the German ports and tho right exercised (to stop and search ship 6 for contraband. Tho British procedure led to diplomatic correspondence with several neutrals of which the United States was the principal. Mr Wilson's oration of January quoted above in the light of Britain’s acts in searching | American ships takes on a certain meaning. Probably, the actual experience i\lr Wilson has had of war since, and the knowledge of how tho contraband taken in by neutrals helped to prolong the war with the consequent loss of life, Kas likewise had its educative side to the President’s opinion, and after all “the freedom of the seas ’ might he modified into a very harmless doctrino of administration in the e ll( L