TO BETHMANN-HOLLWEG.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 1673, 10 February 1917, Page 4

TO BETHMANN-HOLLWEG.

OPEN LETTER BY A FAMOUS CANADIAN.

The Rev. Major Chas. W. Gordon, the writer of the appended letter, is a chaplain with the Canadian Forces serving in France, and for nearly two real’s he has been sharing the life of the men at the front. Ho has now returned to Canada to engage in recruiting work. Major Gordon is belter known to the literary world by his nom de plume of Ralph Connor, the author of tho “Sky Pilot” and other delightful stories: —

My dear Melhnmim-I lohveg.—Allow me to introduce myself—-a mere Canadian, but a professional peacemaker and an enthusiastic peacelover, as all Canadians are. You will understand, therefore how my heart leaped with joy the other day when 1 saw the headline in one of the London newspapers, “Germany Offers Peace." We Canadians ardently long for peace. 'lt is for peace some thousands of us are on the warpath just now. For 2n years our sky lias been disfigured by a dark cloud-bank on the horizon, which we recognised as the German Menace. We grew tired of that cloud-bank, and now that it has broken into a fiery halo of war we are here to do what little we can to change the world's sky into the bright, sunlit blue of peace. Canadian we are: do you know us? Ask your boys who were at Ypres, once, twice, thrice; those, also, who were at the Somme, determined to “hade through." We were some of the chaps that took your “hacking,” but you didn’t get “through,” and — a friendly warning—you won’t . You can’t imagine how bitterly you disappointed me by your speech in which you introduced your “world-historic” peace offer. You may earnestly desire peace; I firmly believe you and your people do; but as a preliminary to peace negotiations your speech was hardly a success. In short, if you will pardon my blunt, alliterative way of speaking, your speech, at this distance, sounded like blazing, bombastic, bullying bunkum. The dove of peace is supposed to coo; your dove pawed the earth like a bellowing bull. MAPS AND HEX. You say “Look at the map.” You have been changing the colour in spots, and so pleased are you that you summon the world to admire your handiwork. “Look at the map,” you say. We answer: “Look at the men.” Maps don’t win wars, men do —men, my dear Bethmann, men, do you hear? You can roll up a map with one hand; but can you roll up men? Look at the men on your every front; those hosts of Russian men, of Italian men, those steady, stem-faced, enduring men

of France, and those cool-headed, cheery-hearted, dogged men of British breed. Have you rolled them up? You thought you had rolled up the men of little Belgium-gal-lant little Belgium —and the men of Servia; but they are coming back at you again. True, you have rolled back those men on your every front, but you haven't rolled them up, and to-day there are millions of us unbroken, unbeaten, and —note this carefully, my dear Hollweg—when next they come at you they will come with the machinery of war, and will meet you on something like even terms; and they ask nothing more than a fair field and no favour. You know this is true. You learnt this at: Verdun —disastrous, glorious Verdun —you learnt this on the Somme. 1 can nut speak for other armies, but throughout that section of the British Army that met your men on the Somme there is only one conviction, and .that is that they have “got you beat.”

They may be mistaken, hut I’m telling what I know —that they are absolutely convinced that they have got you beaten. So, my dear Holly, when yon are writing your next peace speech get your eyes off maps for a time, and Jet them rest upon men. Then your dove of peace will utter itself in notes more in keeping with its own gentle nature.

No, my deal 1 Herr von BethmannHollweg, because we earnestly and continuously long and pray for peace we intend to press this bloodred path of war for months, or for years, it matters not, until your people are ready to accept the just and honourable peace that we and our Allies stand ready to offer —a peace, that shall for ever eliminate from the world the mad menace of German Militarism.