PEACE ON GERMAN TERMS.

Taihape Daily Times, 29 January 1918, Page 7

PEACE ON GERMAN TERMS.

HORROR GREATER THAN WAR,

LONDON, Jan 11

Speaking at Edmburgn, Mr. A. J. Balfour, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, said:—The day on which America entered the war was one of the most important in the annals of mankind. We are not fighting for selfish objects. While a Power like Germany exists, with her methods and ambitions, not one of Mr. Lloyd George’s or Mr. Wilson’s objects can be realised. It requires more than a parochial outlook to see that our highest moral and national interests are bound up with the fate of Belgium. I recognise the difficulties in the way of the ideal of a League of Nations, but I hope that the world will take the problem in hand and see it through.

All the horrors through which we have gone cannot equal the horror that would befall us and our children if the war ended in a German peace.

There has been no essential modification of the allies’ war aims. I regret that the attitude of Germany'aTrd her satellites is unchanged, except to the extent of expressing the hope that an arrangement' might be made to avoid future wars. Although perhaps it was not a wholehearted declaration, it shows an improvement in their moral tone. We must remember that the Germans regarded war as the greatest instrument of progress. A whole school of statesmen still exists in Germany maintaining that it would be criminal folly to abandon Belgium. Admiral von Tirpitz wants Calais and Boulogne. If the Germans evacuated Belgium to-morrow they would leave dereloct a starving population, yet they are unwilling to repair the hitler wrongs, premeditated wounds, and wanton outrages. Any nation capable of a spark of generous feeling would hasten to assist the innocents, but Germany has a different sense of honour.

The world is now panting for peace. What is the obstacle? The aims of the contending parties are apparently examine the Allies’ aims to understand Germany’s, viz., the prevention cf Belgian independence ,the prevention of the completion of Italian unity the prevention of the adjustment of the wrongs of Alsace-Lorraine, Poland, and of the sufferings of Roumania, Servia, and Montenegro, the restoration of Mesopotamia, Arabia, and Jerusalem to the Turk, the handing of Greece to its betrayers. These are the purposes for which Germany is sending her youths to the slaughter, and for which she is prepared to keep the world plunged in war. If the League of Nations be successful m guarding international stability it must start with an arrangement of territory based on equity and freedom. A German peace would leave Europe in a worse state, with every passion embittered and wrong triumphant.