AN AMERICAN VIEW.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 1506, 5 February 1916, Page 2

AN AMERICAN VIEW.

Mr. Joskph H. Coatis, who was once American Minister in London, and the American delegate to the Second Hague Convention, spoke very freely on the war at a Toronto University gathering, in connection with the American Peace Centenary. He said :—“ I am a neutral, and therefore ray tongue is nationally tied, but I can say for myself that wherever men are fighting for liberty and justice and civilisation, I am in full sympathy with them. Perhaps it is only fair for me to say

that I believe that of the 100 millions of my countrymen, at least 90 millions are in full sympathy with me. When I went to The Hague as the delegate of the United States in 1907, to attend the second Peace conference, all nations of the world, great and small were living in peace with each other. We sat four months cheek by jowl with the Germans, the Austrians, the Turks, and all other outlying nations. We all thought that we had done something at the end of the four months to advance the cause of peace, to prevent the breaking out of war, and, if war must come, to mitigate the horrors of war. Well, it seems that our success was only for the moment, it was only transient. Everything we did at that conference, every provision that we enacted for the purpose of preventing war or mitigating its horrors, has been trampled upon and violated and all our agreements have been torn into shreds of paper and thrown to the winds. I have little confidence in although much sympathy with, all the schemes that are on foot for promoting peace, but it is no use crying ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace—no possibility of peace until the authors of this awful war are brought to a condition where their adversaries and the whole world can see that hereafter they will obey our rule, the rule of good faith, the rule of keeping contracts, the rule that when they make a treaty they must stand by it, whether it is to their interest or not, and put an end for ever to this awful theory which they have propounded and which they have acted upon during the last 12 months ; that whenever their interests required they could throw all treaties and contracts to the winds.”