DIPLOMACY AND WAR.

Taranaki Daily News, 28 December 1915, Page 2

DIPLOMACY AND WAR.

A GERMAN CONTROVERSY. Under the title of "OlTicia] Contributions to the History Before the War," the Yorwarts makes a sharp rejoinder to the Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung for its statement that "Sir Edward Grey threw over the reins to Petrograd and Belgrade on the eve of the great crisis that led to the war":— "According to our view, that is spinning the thread altogether too fine. To compare the English Government to a marionette which danced to the bidding of the Serbian Prime Minister is foolish, and. speaking generally, we might have a great deal to say about the statements of the Allgemeine Zeitung on the Entente if we had the same freedom of expression as they have or the Labor Lender has. On one point, however, we fully share the view of the official organ, that the people in England and France did not desire the .war, lint were driven into the misfortune. The French people, so it is said, would have been thankful if they could have been, protected by an arrangement between England and Germany, not onlv from the attacks which Germany had planned, but also from the Chauvinists of their own country.

The Yorwarts then quotes a passage from the Xorddoutscho Allgemeine Zeitung, which declared that never had a nation been driven with such reckless frivolity into war as the English people bv their Government. To which the Yorwarts replies:

It is surely contrary to sense that the Allgemeine Ze.itung should refuse to attribute a leading role in the Entente to the English Government, and should discern her chief offence in a certain frivolity and nerveless passivity which finally precipitated her into the arms of the Dual. Alliance,' which was so intent on war. But we 'must leave further discussion on this point to Count Rcventlow and his friends. We believe that the nations were strongly opposed to war. The great problem of the future is to make the expression of this feeling in any event possible, so that It may _ prevail against the blind folly, of individual statesmen and the inflaming of public opinon by certan cliques. And the revelations of the Xorddentsehe Allgemeine Zeitung seem to teach the lesson that this end might have been achieved if the Government had expressed its views and revealed its policy in the doubtful sphere of foreign politics in time nf peace as freely before the forum or public opinion as it has now done in time of war. But they did nothing to prevent that incomplete and distorted reading of events which caused the people of one country to misconstrue the standpoint of another. The Socialist paper, as it says, dare not state its opinion, more openly. But It clearly believes that Its own (Tovernment Is as much to blame as any other for the war.