GERMANY

Taranaki Daily News, 27 January 1916, Page 5

GERMANY

DISSATISFIED SOCIALIST? Received Jan. 26, J5.5 p.m. Amsterdam, Jan. 25. The Socialists of Wurtemburg passed a resolution demanding a general Party Congress. PRUSSIA'S EFFOF.TS FOR PEACE. Mr. Hilaire Belloc writes that: "We. must keep in mind three main points in the whole of this all-important business:—(l) The effort for peace is coming from Prussia. (2) It is coming from Prussia because, the Prussian Government knows that it has passed its military maximum, and that in material and numbers the future in general is full of disaster, while the immediate future is full of peril. (3) The terms of peace will be made as favorable as possible for the Allies because Prussia needs only one thing; time to recuperate—that is, to be left intact and strong. Conversely such a peace would be, for the. Allies, a defeat—however favorable the terms—so long as Prussia was left intact ami strong. The indications that the general effort for peace lias begun are many. The first and most important is this, that the matter is now being discussed or suggested in a general fashion and not by appeals to various members of the Allies. We have had in the past about half a dozen separate and fairly detailed offers to Russia and France respectively, perhaps at one moment to both, and in the smaller field of the Balkans there appears to have been a definite offer made for a Serbian surrender. [But the tone since then lias been different. It has concerned the whole field of operations. It has been colored by the most general consideration of humanity. It has based itself also upon the most general considerations of finance. That the neutrals should have been thus worked upon for the first time in the course of the campaign to effect a general settlement if it were possible, is, I repeat, the most significant element in the present position. It was perfectly ciear to anyone who eared to follow the known figures of the enemy's man-power and the known figures of his wastage, that this effort would begin when his efficient reserves have now nearcd their end, and the effort has begun."