PEACE ON ONE CONDITION.

Taranaki Daily News, 6 December 1916, Page 6

PEACE ON ONE CONDITION.

MR. ASQUITH'S FINE SPEECH. London, Nov. 10. At the Guildhall banquet Mr. Asquith at the outset of his speech referred to Turkish misrule in Europe, and mentioned the massacre of Armenians under Germany'* eyes as an example of the real meaning of a Germanised Turkey. He proceeded to refer to the fleet as maintaining and ever tightening its grip upon the inlets of enemy supplies, and more than ready to try conclusions. Our gallant armies were ever gaining ground on the Somme, and never yielding an inch. It was a splendid record, land was the same at Salonika, Egypt, Mesopotamia and East Africa. Dealing with German propoganda in .neutral countries, Mr. Asquith said that it was suggested in those countries that the Allies had a sinister design for a post-war combine against them, and to built up an impenetrable stone wall against their trade. "It is a childish fiction," he added. "If it were true it would mean that one and all were bent on economic suicide. Nothing wa? more essential to the Allies after the war than to maintain the best industrial relations with neutrals."

The real purpose of his propaganda the Prime Minister declared, was to influence opinion in favor of a separate peace—with different arguments in different countries. He instanced how in Great Britain it was insinuated that Germany was prepared to restore and compensate Belgium, and thus meet the British casus belli. It was alleged also that we were being dragged on in order to secure the special aspirations of France, Russia and Italy. "But," Mr. Asquith said, "we are equally pledged to the restoration of Serbia, which it has never been suggested that Germany would be prepared to concede." He emphasised, without hesitation or reserve, the fact that the Allies were fighting in a common cause. Their interests were ours An essential condition of a lasting peacL' was a victory securing them all. German propagandism in Russia represented Great Britain as a power anxious to continue the war, and to prevent the possibilities of a separate or general peace, We were represented as lending the Allies money and usuriously making huge munitions and shipping profits, and fulfilling a traditional role attributed to us by Napoleon of being a nation of hucksters and shopkeepers.

PEACE—ON ONE CONDITION. It was difficult to imagaine this as a plausible, or even a credible, hypothesis. Mr. Asquith dwelt upon the terrible sacrifices of wealth and lives that we were making, and asked, "Who ha 3 greater reason than we to long and pray for peace? Peace! Yes, but on one condition only, namely, that war, with its waste and sacrifices and untold sufferings and glorious examples of courage and unselfishness, shall not have been in vain." He concluded that there could be no question of a separate peace, but it was impossible to the conviction that the struggle would tax ail our resources and our whole stock of patience and resolve. When peace came it must be such as we could build upon a sure and stable foundation of the security of the weak, and the liberties af i Europe, and a free future for the world.