THE PEACE OUTLOOK.

Hokitika Guardian, 24 December 1918, Page 3

THE PEACE OUTLOOK.

A PASSING NOTE. (By Civis) President Wilson we learn, is to visit the waste places of France and Belgium tracing there the hoof-marks of the Huu. That is well. The human mind is enlarged by travel. Conceivably the President may spend his time to greater profit in perusing the battlefields of the West, strewn witn ruinous heaps and pockmarked by shell holes than in elaborating counsels of perfection for the Peace Congress. He would get a better idea of how the doctrine “No annexations, no indemnities” presents itself to the peoples cf Belgium and France. Also he would be reminded that there was a good deal of serious fighting before the Americans came in, and that it all counted towards the. winning of the war. The Saturday Review (October 12) complains that he President’s Congressional Address and Message ignore certain facts, namely: “Tlilit the peace now slowly emerging from the smoke of the guns is not the President’s peace, and has not been won by the abstract doctrines of demoeeraey, but by the blood and money if Britain, France and Italy poured out like water during four terrible years.”

If through absence of mind or presence of national vanity the President ignores these cardinal facts, his education evidently needs an added touch or two.

"Frankly,” continues the Saturday Review, “there is no person of whom we are so much afraid at this hour r.s President Wilson, and we say it with a profound respect for his high character and station.” Dread of a breacn in our friendship, of even the tiniest rift within the lute has rendered the British pi-ess soft spoken about the President’s League of Nations —a scheme 5 carved out of oloudland—and his “freedom of the, seas,” though this latter seems to mean by implication the ending of the British navy. On the other hand the President, to his credit be it spoken, in making the world safe for de mocraey has stopped short of proclaiming the abolition of Kings. He has come very near it, but luckily seems to have discovered in time that there are kings amongst the Allies who not only enjoy a popularity equal to his own but are as good democrats as himself He has other discoveries yet to make and will go home not necessarily a sadder man, let us hope, but certainly a wiser .