CURRENT TOPICS.

Taranaki Daily News, 10 November 1916, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS.

PEELINGS FOR PEACE. Professor Hans Delbruck, the noted historian, recently said that Germany is ready to accept a World Comt of Arbi tration for the purpose of settling disputes between nations. If Germany made such an announcement, he said, it might stop the Allies' grim determination to continue the war, and probably shorten the conflict, He condemned Germany's failure to accept Mr. W. J. Bryan's arbitration treaties, and said:— "If we gave our opponents, particularly our Weticrn foes, a more correct idea of our aspirations, no doubt we would be immediately much nearer to peace, and we should remove the impression that Germany in the past had shown a distaste for arbitration." Professor Delbruck, according to Mr. Frederick William Wile, in "Who's Who in Hunland," is the best known of modern German political professors. Lord Palmerston once called Germany "that damned land of professors." Delbruck succeeded the venomous Treitschke as professor of his tory at the University of Berlin, and beloags to one of Prussia's ' ruling families." Men named Delbruck aro always in higu office. A cousin of the professor i» Vicc-Chancellor to the Empire and Imperial Home Secretary at present. Professor Delbruck, in an interview in the Daily Mail in the winter of 1911-12, after the Moroccan embroglio, categorically forecasted that Germany would go to war to get "what she wants," if England and the Entente Cordiale "continued to frustrate the realisation of hei legitimate ambitions." It was one of the frankest and earliest warnings of what the Germans intended to do, when the moment was ripe, that was ever uttered. Delbruck is chiefly famed in his own country as editor of the Preus-sische-Jahrbucher (Prussian Monthly Review), which Treitschke edited before him. Although an ardent patriot, Delbruck is not a fire-eating Jingo, and. as far as is known in Allied countries, has not identified himself with the ferocious '"Hate" party. He has been perniciously active of late in sending peacefeelers abroad, particularly in the United .States, and is identified with an important political clique which opposes annexation by "Germany's victorious armies." Delbruck has lectured in London, and is well posted on British affairs. No German knows better tho hopelessness of the Kaiser's passion to overthrow an enemy with the potential resources of the British Empire.