"PEACE IN TWO WEEKS."

Taihape Daily Times, Issue 220, 29 August 1917, Page 6

"PEACE IN TWO WEEKS."

IF “BILL” AND “CHARLEY” ABDICATED. TAFT ON THE WAR. Ex-President William Howard Taft speaking at Grace Methodist Episcopal Church, said that permanent peace ■would never come until) “William and Charles have been relegated to the rear, the same as Nicholas. ’ ’ “We are in the war,” declared Mr. Taft, “to say to Mr. Hohenzollern and Mr. Hapsburg, “You’ve got to get out the same as Mr. Romanoff got out, so we can have peace in the world, If Wilifiam of Hohenzollern and Charles of Hapsburg cease to be controllers of those two people they now rule over, and the German and Austro-Hungar-ian peoples come to rule thetffselves, they will not be a menace to the peace of the world, as the German junkers and the Hungarian war lords have been

“You know that if Emperors William and Charles abdicated to-morrow we’d have peace in two weeks, and that is what we are in the w*ar for —and when this is accomplisher we’ld add the German people and the Austrian people to our league and have peace ever after,” Mr. Taft said America had a most glorious role in the war. “We have nothing to do with the policies or the polities of Europe,” he added “but we are going over there because we are for the right and are willing to fight for it. Isn’t’ it a great function, too, for us to be able to say at the peace table that we have a right there and that we demand a peace with justice? How it will strengthen our position, to be able to point to the fact that we have gone into the struggle from pure motives, and how it could weaken us to have to say, if we were permitted to sit at the peace table at all', and had not gone into the war. ‘We are sorry we couldn’t take any part, but our policies wouldn't let us.’ ”

Mr. Taft, who is president of the League to Enforce Peace, said further of America and the war: "If ever this nation will be in a league to enforce peace, it is in now. We don’t intend to abolish war, but we intend to make it as improbable as human nature will permit. "To have a League to Enforce Peace among nations we must be willing to abide by the decision of the arbitration court, and not be in the attitude of ‘Heads I win, tails you lose.” Of course there are non-justiciablc questions that courts of the law cannot pass judgment upon between individual's and between nations. The United States has such a problem in that we exclude the Japanese and Chinese. We have the right to exclude them if we want to. It is not a question that couli properly be submitted to a court or a arbitration, but we might get into a dispute over the question that would lead to that dispute being presented for

arbitration.’' Mr. Taft discussed America’s responsibilities toward the Governments of some countries outside of the United States.

“We don’t own Cuba,” ’he said, “but we are worse off than if we did. We guarantee its government, and we don’t furnish it. Every time they have an election in Cuba I feelJ goose-flesh all over me. Then we have Mexico, an international nuisance just across our back fence. Zimnaermann wrote a note about it. He suggested moving our back fence up on this side of Texas. Think of what would happen if Burleson and Joe Bailey were turned over to Mexico.”

Mr. Taft said Germany had illegally committed suicide by destroying American lives on the high seas, There was great applause when he said: “We have cast off—our swaddling clothes and are now standing up to meet the cbligtion our power has brought us. We are in the war because w eare opposed to a military autocracy which violates the peace of the world, and in so doing harms our own interests. Republics sometimes make mistakes, but in the long run you can count on government of the people by the people being carried on for the interest of that people. ’ ’