EARLY PEACE.

Taranaki Daily News, 4 January 1917, Page 8

EARLY PEACE.

APPEAL BY A GERMAN PRINCE. Prinet Alexander of Hohcnlohe appeals in the Ncue Zuerchcr Zeitung to the Pope and President ;Ison to step in and stop the butchery in I.urope. Let them combine in "a common work of rescue," to save, even at the eleventh hour, European civilisation, from "utter ruin." . Like many other Germans, the Prince has come to a belated ser.se of the horror of it all. "To ;wak now," he confesses, "of peace, mediation or intervention between the belligerents might seem almost childish. To seek to "put a stop to this murdo.v of nations, wftieli is developing more and more into a frenzy, k. almost to ant like a man who throws himself across the rails to stop an express train ir Jul' speed. Nevertheless he means to dare ridicule. "Anvone who can look en at this deliberate brin.srinsr about of the suicide of Europe in silence and indifference can have neither heart nor consignee.'" Not a moment should be left m seeking a way out. "Is the life of these hundreds of thousands not worth the breach or abandonment of the old etiquette which requires that one of the adversaries shall be brought to the <1 round before the fight can be proclaimed at an end by the diplomats'!" That etiquette applied to the tld wars between Governments and lured armies, but it does not hold good cf a war in which whole nations are i« arms. Any sensible man .can see that theie is going to be neither victor nor vanquished in this war.. The only "> ( '« r ' many is the group "who prattle of a future Germany extending iroiu the hlbo to the Equator, and of the necessity ot ci ushing England first to attain that end." "Such fantastic hopes and decisions," lie says bluntly, "will never be fulfilled." ... ~ What >s the alternative' AH the armies are fighting with an unprecedented courage, a perseverenee and firmness unknown in history. Will their glory be greater and will peace be more honorable if some millions more of nitis are sacrificed, more villages and towns razed to the "round, more territory turned to desert upon which no srovs. and t.ie burden of debt that already will weigh upon Eui-opo for generations to come, increased by further milHaids until it ends in the universal barkruptcy of Europe? That is what the continuation of the war means."