PEACE PROPOSALS.

Taranaki Daily News, 30 December 1916, Page 7

PEACE PROPOSALS.

Ofl:\iOX IK Kx'GLAXD. fiEIiMAX V. BRITISH IDEALS. A Xapior ly'-idenl has received a letter f'olll, a rel;iin Croat Britain, under date Xoveni.ii r I, which suc-metlv expresses the Cerman ideal of Kult'ur as understood bv the Teutons, and the abhorrence felt bv the Anglo-Saxon for the doctrine. 'l.'ir pertinent portion is as follows: * .

As for th. l war ending soon, T cannot m'p it, nor d'( 1 wish it. that is. in order It secure a lasting peace. We cannot rely on a listing peace until*we have thoroughly thrashed the Germans. A real peace em be no longer dependent on •l mere "scra,»,of paper," Tt, is impossible for us to trust the Germans so cong as thev are possessed by the'devils I f envv and jealously of Great Britain, nor »o long as they imagine that might ;■= right. The whole Herman people worship only the Cod of War and are taught in all their ;ohools and nnivers.ities that their Kiiltur must lie imposed on a]l other nations at. all hazards fm their own good i"ii! that Germany must be dominant, i have just, been reading a review of a hook bv, a German named Nippojd. on 'Herman Chauvinism." written in lfll.l irfcre the war. I will just qrote a few of the German ideas: "War." ?ays Keim, "does not depend ni (lie hunr'.n will'at all. Tt is for the most part abnormal; it cannot he averted. It is a daemonic force which thrusts itself forward, against which all written treaties, and peace conferences, all strivings after h'li-'.anily, arc miserably shattered." "War," says "Dor Tag." "speaks the last and decisive word. , . Over against it everything else vanishes, including all pi.utle about goodwill, right, humanity, and peace of the world, and the sacrifices of the German people." "From the standpoint of biology and true Kultur/' says Schniidt-Bicheiifels, "war is the best and noblest of things. It create? an! preserves genuine Kultur. l!y breaking out at the right time, it enable? us t-> avoid the dangers of over-, civilisation. ?f is, in fact, a part of the Divine ordering of this world," "If middle-ciass morality condemns war.'" says Fuclis, ''so milch the worse for mid-ule-elass morality. Whom do the heartbeats of th; German people embrace with warmest love? Is it Goethe. Scholar, Wagner. Marx? Oh, no, but Barsbitrossa, Frederick the Great, Bhicher, Moltke. Bismarck, the hard' men of blood, the men who sacrificed thousands of lives." (What price the Crown I'rincc?) "War," says the editor of "Di Vest" with unconscious humor, "is the ■ only thing, v.'iich can cure all incurable slackness and enervation, physical and psychical. In peace we cannot in the long run res-si the influences which are destroying the German people, body arid soul." Germany, in fact, like the ghosts in Homer, can only recover its strength by drinking blood. These quo'at ions will show yon the irue character of the enemy we have to deal with—a people so filled with arrogance as to imagine that frefeborn na'ions will ever consent to live under such a system of vaunted Kultur; a system v hereby most Germans believe that the State is supreme and its actions above all laws, human or Divincvjyhere every | 'i,dividual t.'ihiks it his highest, glory to I form part of an enormous machine, askI ing no questions, and being moved oi 1 ("riven by an unconscious ' mechanism We Britons revolt from such an idea of ri'e State, ar.d as Asquith said, two years ago. "We would rather be blotted out of the book of nations than submit to audi tvranny." ,So I say again we must on until Europe is rid of such, damnable atheism and treason to the dearest right of mankind for centuries to come. Do we want to revert to barbarism and brute force,? Then let us crave for a humiliating peace, l et us in future lift our hats to every German and lie down beneath his feet. Ho you like tin- prospect? If you don't llian you will only be sorry you have not more son? to go to overthrow the damned system. I met a man in Leeds lately who has lost all his four sons in this war, bat he never uttered a conn fitint.

IF PEACE SHOULD BREAK OUT. Various amateurish definitions oi what the Allies' peace terms are likely to be have, appeared from time to time, but they bear no relation to tbe facts (says the Weekly Dispatch).' What arcthe real terms of peace which the Allies would be prepared to accept? They are, it is understood, as follows: (1) The. withdrawal of the German forces from all Allied territory before any discussion takes place at all, coupled with the retrocession of AlsaceLorraine to France before conversations take place. (•2) An indemnity of five hudred. milliards- of marks. This, of course, is twenty-live thousand million pounds. (3) Ton for ton of all shipping destroyed by German submarines.

(4). The rehabilitation of the destroyed factories at Lille, lloubaix, and the various towns of Belgium. (.">) A receivership on all German railways and mines until the final payment of the indemnity is made. (0) Retention by Allies of the captured colonies. GERMAN PEACE TERMS A large section of German public opinion is said to favor these terms being accepted rathoi. than that there should be a continuance of the increasing slaughter on the Somme, the grim facts about which are gradually becoming known throughout Germany. The heading-off of the American peace proposals and the peace project directed from Spain was coincident with, a promise to Russia, that if she would stand out of the war she would get'? Constantinople. The Russian reply- was similar to that given by Mr." Lloyd George, though conveyed by a round-about channel. iiermany's willingness to allow Constantinople to revert to Russia suggests that Germany has no scruples in profiting at the expei'.se .territorially of her dupes. A* a matter of fact/the throw-ing-over of Turkey:; was 'decided upon long ago. That is'tlie German way.