THE Pukekohe and Waiuku Times PUBLISHED ON TUESDAY AND FRIDAY AFTERNOONS. TUESDAY. JANUARY 30, 1917 MR WILSON'S PEACE BASIS

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 6, Issue 246, 30 January 1917, Page 2

THE Pukekohe and Waiuku Times PUBLISHED ON TUESDAY AND FRIDAY AFTERNOONS.

TUESDAY. JANUARY 30, 1917 MR WILSON'S PEACE BASIS

" We nothing extenuate, nor let down auaht in malice."

President Wilson has delivered an address to the American Senate on the terms on which peace should be declared, and as the line which he takes is the same which is advocated by a small minority of impracticable folks in Europe it is worth while to consider his views. He advocates a league of peace after the war founded on equality of rights and based on an independent, united and autonomous plan with full freedom for the development of small nations, freedom of the seas, and limitation of armaments, neither recognising nor implying differences between small and great nations. He holds that peace can only last if based on equality and participation in a common benefit, and declares that peace must came in Europe without victory or the imposition of terms on the vanquished. One's first feeling after reading this summary of his speech is how much of it does President Wilson himself believe. The outstanding factof thisdevastating war is that a nation which considered itself, and which the world considered to be, in the forefront of civilisation was capable of plotting and scheming for three decades against the peace of the world; having resolved on a date it started the war, and began it by an act of unparalleled treachery to Belgium, followed by the commission of crimes in that country and on the high seas, crimes which were specially forbidden by the Hague Convention, to which Germany was a party. Now, supposing that we had a league of nations united in agreement to maintain peace and to compel aDy country which considered she had a grievance to submit its case to arbitration. Does anyone suppose that such a loaguo of nations would have restrained Germany from the action which she took in 1914 ? At the present time Great Britain, France, Russia, Italy, Japan, Serbia, Rou-

war, if those nations dared to resent it. One is obliged, therefore, to ask what chance President "Wilson thinks that his league of peace would have in restraining a country which, like Geimany, has imagined vain thing', and devoted long years to secret preparation. Evidently the President is one of those well-meauiug but mischievous folks, who hope to deal with hard facts by soft words. President Wilson is too good a man for this world, and evidently would be more at home as president of Utopia, where it is to be hoped he would enencounter no people prepared to break the law in order to obtain some illegal advantage. He does not shine in dealing with such people, for he is quite unable to see any difference between them and the other people who are in arms to prevent the breach of law. The crime is to fight; the occasion for so doing is a matter of no consequence.

mania, Belgium, Portugal and Montenegro are in arms To what extent would they be strengthened , , S a • ?r n i by the ass.stance of Spain, Holland and the Scandinavian powers? It can scarcely be imagined that the knowledge of the intention of these countries to participate in the war iji j n u„ :»„»,. would have made Germany hesitate, Even now Germany threatens Switzerland, and ever day she offers the neutral nations insults and iujurles which are sufficient causes f or