RUSSIA'S EFFORTS FOR PEACE.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 1502, 27 January 1916, Page 4

RUSSIA'S EFFORTS FOR PEACE.

Mr Hilaire Belloc writes that : ■‘We must keep in mind three main points in the whole of this all-important business : (1) The effort for peace is coming from Prussia; (2) It is coming from Prussia because the Prussian Government knows that it.has passed its military maximum, and that in material and numbers the future in general is full of disaster, even the immediate future full of peril; (3) The terms of peace will be made as favourable as possible lor the allies because Prussia needs only one thing : time to recuperate —that is, to be left intact and strong, Conversely such a peace would be, for the allies, a defeat — however favourable the terms —so long as Prussia was left intact and strong. The indications that the general effort for peace has begun are many. The first and most important is this, that the matter is now being discussed or suggested in a general fashion and not by appeals to various members of the allies. We have had in the past about half a dozen separate and fully detailed offers to Russia and France respectively, perhaps at one moment to both, and in the smaller field of the Balkans there appears to have been a definite offer made for a Servian surrender. But the tone since then has been different. It has concerned the whole field of operations. It has been coloured by the most general consideration of humanity. It has based itself also upon the most general considerations of finance. That the neutrals should have been thus worked upon for the first time in the course of the campaign to effect a general settlement it it were possible, is, I repeat, the most significant element in the present position. It was plain to anyone who cared to follow the known figures of the enemy’s man power and the known figures of his wastage, that this effort would begin when his efficient reserves were nearing their end. His efficient reserves have now neared their end and the effort has begun.”