The Taihape Daily Times AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE MONDAY, OCTOBER 21, 1918. DEMOCRACY AND PEACE.

Taihape Daily Times, 21 October 1918, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE

MONDAY, OCTOBER 21, 1918. DEMOCRACY AND PEACE.

(With whieh is Incorporated The Tfti* hape Post and Walmnn-ao News)..

There is a large and influential sec tion of what may be termed the govern ing class in England that has still the audacity to publicly persist that Germany is sincere in her desire for peace. This propaganda may to a very considerable extent sway Britisn public opinion towards granting a peace that is in no way in accordance with the war situation. It may he well noted that Germany in all peace manoeuvres has hased her offers and proposals since early mid-year in 1917 on what is termed the war situation. 'A people whose military campaigns and acts are built upon the doctrine that might is right have no other guide; force is supreme; force, according to German culture, is divine. The divine right of kings, the Hohenzollern House of Germany has sought to demonstrate, lies in the magnitude and brutality of the force it can command, and it knows no other directing or controlling power. The god of war is the god that the Kaiser has appealed to since he became obsessed with the thought that his god would assist him to drown the civilisation of the world in its own blood. Force to kill and destroy is the only arbitrament that sways German militarism; the German god of war is the only arbiter known, acknowledged and trusted T>y the culture of' which Germans "boast. At no time since war began can it De said or shown that Germany has been guided pr even influenced by anything humane, by anything removed from the war situation. When the Kaiser became impressed by uefeats and losses, that his god of war was smiling upon the arms of his enemies ne wanted peace, and he made peace proposals, but every arrangement was to be in accordance with the war situation. When the campaign of treachery and murder in Russia developed satisfactorily for the apostles of force all peace proposals were revoked, the Reichstag peace enactments were repealed and the membef"~that"aare tals peace was laughd at as'a maudlin sentimental imbecile. No annexation ancr no indemnity resolutions of the Reic?istag were substituted with others providing for peace on the war situation, that or the blood and iron abitrament must be continued till the Allies begged for peace; till Paris and London were desecrated and their peoples degraded. The Allies were to be the slaves of Germany, working and dying to pay whatever indemnities German force and greed had the want of conscience to impose. The Berlin Press spoke of the crisis- of 1917 as being of only historical value; a deputy in the Prussian Diet said, "the damneo peace resolution was dead." German arms were again in the ascendant; the blood and iron god of German cultur was once more smiling on its devotees, and no peace was thinkable that did not lay open wide the door to worldwide orgies of blood-lust, to hugely oppressive indemnities and annexations that would render future blood and iron campaigns beyond any shadow of doubt about their ultimate success. The military fiends did not oppose a short respite from killing, hut it must be based on the war situation. There was no party in Germany that dissented from this view. The Socialists of Germany were of one mind with the junkers, they did not oppose peace with the Bolsheviks of Russia, with Ukraine and Roumania; they did not refrain from disdainfully flouting the Reichstag peace resolutions adopted when German arms were unsuccessful. The Socialist politicians an<t Socialist Press of Germany went body and soul with the junkers for determination by force or for peace on the war situation. Their eagerness to accept peace on a basis of disarmament, self-determination, ao annexations ant* no indemnities had quite vanished with the success of German arms on the east, and they spurned any thought of a League of Nations to establish a system of world-wide uniform justice, so long as they thought German arms could by force make Germany the dictator of the whole world. German Socialism went no deeper than the lip-skins of German Socialists, in their hearts German Socialists were inseparable and indistinguishable from German junkers of the deepest dye. Force was once' more winning and they did not hesitate to discard all their erstwhile peace protestations. Russian Bolsheviks "were told that hope of Socialist revolution in Germany was sheer madness; there

v/tis no room in Germany for Bolshevik

methods of revolution. .There is n«i more real life in German democracy than in a stone; .German' Socialism is | part of a scheme ■ of organisation to cajole labour in the countries that Germany sought to conquer into Harassing governments in their determination to oppose German aggression. Socialists are as deep in the doctrine of might is right as are tne junkers; they want peace in accordance with the war situation while the sword is lifted over their heads, but as the sword goes so vanishes their professed Socialist ideals and they are as Teady as the professed junkers to enslave their neighbours. Evidence of the most convincing character is plentiful; in the Prussian Diet it was saw, "The Poise must be thoroughly taught that they belong to Prussia." Hindenburg said, and the, Socialists applauded, "I shall not neglect to obtain adequate strategical safeguards for the eastern marches." German Socialists took the means of existence from Poles, Russians and Roumanians, leaving them to die of starvation; but their god of battles has once more, and finally, deserted them, and they are again crying to Socialists in Britain, America, as well as in New Zealand, on behalf of that country whose people know no power but that of might, and no mercy but that which comes vy the sword. In their latest prayers for peace let th.e Allies reply by giving that peace which is German-made anc which only Germans can understand. The conditions of peace they themselves laid down early in 1917 they cannot logically reject or reasonably complain about, as they are peace conditions which have the full virtue of being in accordance with the war situation. German militarists, which undeniably include those Germans allowing themselves to be called Socialists, commenced a campaign of force with th 6 prime object of wiping the word democracy out of all languages, and it is difficult to postulate anything more absurd than that which assumes that world-wide democracy j could ever spring from complete military subjugation with the German Kaiser as the dictator of the world. The peace that Germany is entitled to is that peaTe that is German-made; that peace that is in, accordance with the war situation That peace that Germany was endeavouring to force on the world in 1917 is the only peace Germany can reasonably and logically expect to : day ;the only peace Germany is entitled to and the only peace the democracy of the world can, in its own life interests, afford to agree to, a peace that comes through unconditional surrender.