THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES MONDAY,JULY 28, 1919. GREAT BRITAIN AND THE PEACE TREATY.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 17688, 28 July 1919, Page 4

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES MONDAY,JULY 28, 1919. GREAT BRITAIN AND THE PEACE TREATY.

The speech -which Mr Lloyd Georgo delivered in the House of Commons on Friday last with reference to tho Peace Treaty does not seem to have added any comment of special significance to what has been already said upon the subject. His purpose was to justify the treaty iii those of its aspects in respect of which it may have been regarded as open to criticism. Among these aspects are those which have reference to the measure of reparation that is to be exacted frem Germany. The criticism, which has been directed against the reparation clauses of the treaty, has, as Mr Lloyd George has pointed out, bee:i based by one party of critics on th ground that the clauses are too harsh and by another on the ground that they are not haTeh enough. What tho Allies have done is to insist upon reparation to tho extent of what they believed to bo the capacity of Germany to make reparation. "All tho ,Allied experts," we aro told, " concluded that tho reparation attached to the treaty was the limit of Germany's capacity to pay." Germany did riot finish tho war with tho resources with wliich she began it. She has suffered tho loss of three-fourths of her iron ore and one-third of her coal. She has suffered the loss, also, of sovon millions of her population and of all her colonies. "Was there the remotest chance," Mr lioyd George "of exacting from

her-all the costs of the war?" When tho dimensions of the sum which tho full cost of the war ropresonts aro realised tho question would seem to bo sufficiently iinsworcd. Mr Lloyd Georgo csprcssos tho view that, for her part, Great Britain obtains a measure of reparation which will ailord material relief to her. ' She is to receive substantial compensation for the wholo of her shipping that has been sunk, for tho lives lost on shipboard, and for tho injury sustained by sailors, and for the considerable damage caused by air raids, and in respect to the annual charges which the payment of war pensions and allowances imposes upon her. However much it may be folt that Germany is escaping much hotter than she deserves, there is, after all, very little further to bo said when the Prime Minister offers the assurance that " the question of what Germany must pay was examined by the most able Allied experts, who had endeavoured to exact the uttermost farthing possible, and it was beyond doubt that they had done so." Mr Lloyd George does not commit himself to any optimistic prophecy regarding the operation of the scheme of the League of Nations. The league must necessarily he treated, he reaffirms, as " a great experiment." While she believes in the wisdom of the experiment, France feels the need of justifying her belief by an alliance with Great Britain and the United States. She considers—no doubfc very correctly—that in such circumstances the league will have a better chance than vrould otherwise be the ease of establishing itself as a permanent organisation. What Mr Lloyd George said respecting the trial of the exKaiser is suitably epitomised in the statement that "if war is to be ended it must he treated as a great crime and not as an honourable game." When n sentiment such as this receives -worldwide endorsement the task essayed by the League of Nations will be simplified. It is the war of aggression that is the crime; it is the provoker of war and the aggressor the criminal. The Prime Minister was not allowed to conclude his speech without a reference to Ireland. In reply to an interjection by Mr Devlin, who suggested the application of the principle of self-determination to Ireland, he declared this to be impossible owing to the internal conditions of that country. The effectiveness of this declaration is weakened by the fact that self-determination has been granted to States composed of various racial elements. The reference to the endeavour and failure of the Irish Convention to find a basis for the application of selfdetermination was more to the point, but the introduction of the question in relation to the Peace Treaty is in any ease irrelevant. The state of Ireland does not arise out of the war, and, so far as self-determination is concerned, Great Britain cannot afford to have upon her flank a republic friendly to her late enemies. If the majority in Ireland hold the views with which they are credited, there seems little hope of a solution till there is a reversion to the frame of mind that prevailed in Ireland when the Home Rule Bill was passed.