GERMAN DEMOCRACY AND PEACE

Taihape Daily Times, Issue 220, 28 April 1917, Page 2

GERMAN DEMOCRACY AND PEACE

Recent cables have suggested that the downfall .of the Hohenzollern dynasty is a possibility of the near future, and other messages have suggested that the Allies should refuse to-re-cognise the Hohenzollern when the tim e for discussing peace terms arrive. If the prophecies regarding the collapse of the house of Hohenzollern should prove correct —and there are serious obstacles in the way of a German revolution —it would follow as a natural consequence that the Allies would not treat with theiff in the final settlement. In an interesting article appearing in Current History, Dr. H. D. Sedgwick, a”' distinguished American historian and essayist, comes to the conclusion that the cause of the war was in the first place due to the traditional military policy of Prussia, and in the second place to the“apprehension entertained by the military and capitalistic classes of the risingpower of the social democracy. “Now” he adds, “ if this hypothesis of the cause of the war (as most Americans believe) be true, then the primary cause of the war is the military party in Prussia, with the Hohenzollern dynasty at its head. Mr. Asquith so thinks, for he stated that Great Britain would not sheathe her sword ‘until the military domination of Prussia is wholly and finhlly destroyed.’ And this is also what the President of the United States must meafl 'by his recent words. “Throughout the last two

years there has come more and more into my heart the conviction that , peace is going to come to the world only with liberty. Peace cannot come so long as the destinies of men arc determined by small groups who make selfish choices of their own.’ Such being the causes'of the Avar, it is nec-

essary, in Mr. Asquith’s phrase, to destroy the military domination of Prussia, or, in Mr. Wilson’s, to overthrow the small group of men whose selfish choices directly or indirectly caused the war. But as it is obvious that the present Government of Germany would not consent to self-anni-hilation, and as it i~ also o'bvious that the Allies, even if they Avere to march into Berlin, could not set up a stable Government of their own choice in Germany, it will be necessary for the Allies to continue pressure by force from Avithout and by Avant within until the social demo'crats or the proletariat shall rise of themselves, put doAvn the military party, and take the GoA'ernment into their oavo hands. If the social democrats Avere in power all questions as to terms of peace would virtually adjust themselves.”