BRITAIN'S WAR AIMS.

Taranaki Daily News, 26 September 1917, Page 8

BRITAIN'S WAR AIMS.

OUR OBLIGATION TO KRANOa PROSPECTS OF CONVERTING GERMANY. Mr. J. A. Bryce, (Liberal M.P., alluding in the House of Commons to the recent statement of Lord Robert Cecil, Minister of Blockade, that the disinenberment of Austria was not one of Great Britain's war aims, said the statement would create difficulties, because Great Britain's engagements with her Allien could not %e continued if the Austrian Empire was to be maintained. Italy, on the strength of these engagements, Mr. Bryce said, would not be content ms~ely with a rearrangement of the Trent»ino region. The references to Great Britain's war aims by Mr. Bryee and others, including Mr. Noel Buxton, who said that an ui\fortunate impression had got abroad yy Europe as a result of the speeches in the House of Commons last month that Great Britain favored a ipoliey of annexation, but would not define her aims, brought an interesting reply from Mr. A. J, Balfour,, Minister for Foreign Affairs.

Mr. Balfour said that the Government had been asked to declare its policy, but he was not sure if that would be a wise course. The broad questions animating the Government had been expounded by the late and present Premiers, the Foreign Secretary, and others who held high office during the past three years. When every Ministerial statement was treated as a pledge, it was dangerous to accede to requests for definite announcements. With respect to the Jugoslav and Austrian question, it was impossible to' foretell the position in which the iwrld would find itself when these problems came to be decided, and he would be doing a very ill service to the country were he to attempt to define the position now. The Government believed the nationalities composing that heterogeneous State should be allowed to develop along their own lines, and to carry on their civilisation in their own way.

' "As everybody knows," continued lis. Balfour, "we first entered the war to defend Belgium and prevent France from being crushed before our eyes. Nobody with the smallest knowledge of the facts supposed that Sir Edward Grey (formerly Foreign Secretary), and the Government of which he was a member when lit made the fateful declaration on August :}, 1014, made it with the smallest thought of the great problems which the course of the war has opened up. We did not enter the war for any selfish purposes, certainly not for Imperialistic aims or to get indemnities. Our purposes were completely unselfish; therefore we stood in a different position from any of our Allies. We hoped to see Europe freer and more stable." If France asked it, he failed to see how Great Britain could refrain from going on to assist her until she got back to the position which existed before the attack engineered against her by Bismarck in 1871, namely, that "she obtain restoration of that of which she was violently robbed more than 40 years ago." Mr. Balfour expressed an opinion which was simply hi s own when he sai'd that if France asked for Alsace-Lorraine Great 'Britain should support her, but he declared that France was not fighting lor Alsace-Lorraine alone: alio was fighting for her very existence. The questions the House had discussed were occupying the attention of the whole civilised world almost to the exclusion of every other subject. As to the denioeratisatlon of Germany, said Mr. Balfour, it had been hoped that autocracy 'would give plae; to Parliamentary institutions, as they are understood, but nobody was foolish enough to suppose that it would be possible to impose on Germany a constitution made outside of Germany. Until Germany was made either powerless or free he did not think the peace of Europe could be secured. The fight must go on, for if this war ended with a German peace, that would only be a prelude to a new European war. If the peace was to be onar that England and America, which hdu no interest on the continent, could approve, then it would lead to a permanent settlement which would in turn conduce to that great understanding of the nations, which mould give Europe a security it had never known before. "Germany must work out her salvation/ continued Mr. Balfour. ''You do not mend matters "by imposing a constitution, even if you have the power. Nations must make their scheme of liheity for themselves, according to their own ideas and based on their history, character, and hopes. "But if it is true that the great power of German imperialism is still depending upon the belief—the belief driven into the German nation by the wars of 18811 and 1870—that only under the imperial system can Germany be great, powerful, and rich, then if experience shows that the imperialistic system can produce not merely a triumph one time, but inevitably lead to corresponding disaster at another, it may well he that those views which found such powerful expression in Germany in IS4B, and which animated all German teaehers for more than a generation before the Bismarekian domination, will revive with new lustre and | new strength, and that Germany, with iall her powers of organisation and all [her inherited cultivation, will be added to those nations which before the war could hardly conceive how a universal war of this sort could be deliberately provoked in order to further the commercial or political interests of any single community. * '•When Germany has come to the level of the United States and Great Britain in that respect, we hope that one of the great disturbers of the peace will for ever be eliminated. I do not know who will venture to say for a moment that, looking at the internal condition of German)*, as far as we are allowed to see it at the present time, the ideas of which I have been speaking will really grow in such fashion as to raise legitimate hopes that in our lifetime we shall sea that established. But I am sure that if it is not established the security of Europe will not be established either."