The Times. PUBLISHED ON TUESDAY AND FRIDAY AFTERNOONS. FRIDAY, JANUARY 10, 1919. PEACE CONFERENCE PROBLEMS

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 8, Issue 440, 10 January 1919, Page 2

The Times. PUBLISHED ON TUESDAY AND FRIDAY AFTERNOONS.

FRIDAY, JANUARY 10, 1919. PEACE CONFERENCE PROBLEMS

"We nothing extenuate, nor set down aught in malice."

What promises to be the great. est event of the current year, the Peace Conference, is near at hand, and the whole world is alive with speculation as to its outcome. The dominant hope is that the terms arranged will be such as to render impossible a recurrence of the horrors of the past four years, and while it may be doubtful as to whether such a splendid triumph ot international concord is capable of effective achievement, there is at least reason to hope that the representatives of the nations will succeed in establishing peace upon such a basis as will greatly lessen the possibility of war. It is plain from the coalition manifesto issued prior to the recent elections that Great Britain will be on the side of a drastic reduction of armies, and there can be no doubt that the hands of the British delegates will be substantially strengthened by the Government's overwhelming victory at the polls The American attitude towards this question i.s equally clear, and, indeed, it may be reasonably assumed that the Conference will be practically unanimous in regard to it. The decision will be not to abolish armies, but to reduce them in scale. President Wilson is evidently determined to do his utmost to bring about the constitution of a League of Nations, and if that League of Nations is entrusted with the maintenance and control of its own army, the nations themselves will probably be limited to a defensive militia, modelled, as some think, on the new army suggested by the French Socialist leader Jatires. The attitude of the Powers towards naval policy is not so clear. President Wilson has yet to give a cleai definition of what he means by the freedom of the seas. The phrase has been aptly described as a relic of the early correspondence between President Wilson and the German Foreign Office, in which there were many references to the benefits derived from Prussia by Benjamin Franklin. It has been construed and welcomed by German Chancellors as a pledge that America will insist on the dismantling of all British naval stations, on the re-1 turn of Gibraltar to Spain, and in a great reduction in the Untish navy. So far the most striking comment from the United States has been made by Mr Secretary Daniels, in urging Congress to adopt a three years' naval programme which will provide for one hundred and fifty six vessels, including ten battleships and six

battle cruisers, Mr Daniel? evidently recognises the broad distinction between an army and a navy, which was present to ihe minds of the German mintsters. It is possible, as one student of this question has pointed out, to prepare an army by stealth, as the Germans did in 1913. A man may be trained as were recruits in America before- being sent to France in ten weeks. Even a munition factory may oe rapidly ( fitted up if tools and raw material I are obtainable, A navy cannot !be improvised. In peace time it I took more than two years to fit a : battleship tor service. It may | have taken much less in war time, i but neither in war or in peace can ! the crew of a modern warship be ' trained in an emergency. There i is therefore a broad distinction ! between naval and military policy, which must be observed until the ; League of Xations has been perI manently established or the i national character of Germauy ! has been changed. There are many formidable difficulties in the way of the constitution of a League of Nations ; but it would certainly seem that a league of some sort must of necessity be formed in order to safeguard the work of the Conference. The Allied nations are responsible for the New Bohemia, the Greater Servia, the new Arabia, the new Palestine, and also, to some extent for the new states on the Russian border. For years to come these new-born nationalities will need the guardianship of a protecting army, and that army must, perforce, be *< provided by the Powers who have so valiantly championed the cause of the weak and defenceless.