A PARLEY AND A TRUCE.

Taranaki Daily News, 31 December 1917, Page 7

A PARLEY AND A TRUCE.

WIIYi ;WE WILL NOT ACCEPT THE -..'■.. ENEMY'S DEMAND. , ;: | K ,, A PRODIGIOUS CHANGE IN THE TONE OF THE WOULD-BE MASTERS OF EUROPE AND .WHAT IT IT MEANS. "No parleying nowl. In England is one voice, We all are with you now from shore to shore. •Ye men of Kent) 'tis victory or death!" ■ —Wordsworth. Mr. Hiliare Belloc states, with even [more vigor and emphasis than usual, in Land and Water, why we cannot heed the enemy's whine for a parley and a truce—only now asked for because he knows he has lost the war and is beaten. ■m THE BEGINNING!' "The one thing that stands historically unassailable is the original motive and action of our enemies," says Mr. Belloc. "They proposed to master Europe. They were certain of their power to do so, and they affirmed" in theory (and carried out in practice) the rapid achievement of victory by a contempt for all the. old; traditions <of Europe at war. , "There! waa aid talk in those days, when the ißsue waa clearly marked, of the war being an aggression on Prussia by England'. That wa9 merely an afterthought, and.a clumsy one. So far from its being true, it is clear that the enemy believed up to the) last moment that England would not enter the lists. There was no talk of the horrors of war, the pity of their continuance; on the contrary, they were proclaimed as a sort of good—because it was believed they would fall upon the opponents of Pdussia. There was no talk of freedom of tlie seas, or freedom of nations or races, or freedom of anything. There was a plain plan of conquest !by meilißtls admittedly devoid of morality. THE 'ALLIES' (PLAN, "On the other side, there was an equally plain political thesis. Its base was the defence of all that' had been known as iEuropean civilisation. It stood for the maintenance of sovereign national rights, especially in the smaller Bover. eign States, for the observance of an accepted chivalry in war, and for the saving of all our traditions. It was clear that the only means of doing this was to break the Prussian military machine. In other words, to defeat it decisijely in the field.

: A' PRODIGIOUS CHANGE. I "The general purpose of the Western Allies remains what it was at the beginning. On the enemy's side there is • prodigious change. It is a change affecting" whole populations, and the'very mind of the combination which* eet out to conquer us. They have come to an open repudiation of their original intenton and to a negation of what seemed in 1914 their ineradicable political philosophy. Prussia (for the first time in all her history), is using the word 'freedom' and talking of 'national rights.' The most enormous of aTT'the enormous symptoms of the thing is the fact that Prussia is now at last compelled to propitiate Poland. "That, I say, is> the capital mark of the whole affair. It should be the foundation of our judgment to see it clearly-r«nd therefore it is the great object of the enemy andt bis supporters direct andf Indirect, atTthis nioment to confuse us upon that capital point. THE ENEMY'S CHANGE, '•''rney assure us that the movement is a general one; that 'all parties' are equally weary; that the tone is 'everywhere' changed. So stated it is a falsehood. Obviously, three years of war will weary all men, victors as well as vonquished, more than one, ,year. But so tar as direction of effort is concerned, the change is a change upon the enemy's part and not upon ours. And the reason is simple. It is that the enemy, ioxmd erly certain of victory on a. purely mili? tary calculation, is now, on the" same calculation, equally certain of defeat. He has only the politieariivenue of escape left him. and therefore he (has turned to that,

'A'* ENEMY. PROPAGANDA '"This, then, is our conclusion on the fundamental point. The Peace Propaganda is an enemy propaganda. It is tho enemy that turned to it, and not | we; it is the enemy who is trying to drag us in to it, and we who must resist. "There follows an immediate corollary from this fundamental truth, .which.' is' itliat the statements on whie* M iis proipaganda reposes are necessarily suspect in our eyefi. When, we look at those statements we shall rfnd that our suspicion is very reasonable, quite apart .from the fact, that the proposition is an [enemy proposition. "The enemy statement we are considering here may he put thunrfcriefly in simple words: i " 'You cannot defeat mo, of course; [yet I am willing to give you part o**he things which only defeat could wring from me.'

"Of course, the matter is not put so simply, or with a contradiction so glaring. The way it is put is: 'A decision in the field is impossible short of mutual ruin, therefore let us negotiate.' But the briefest and truest form of it is wJiat I have said: 'You cannot defeat me, of course, but I am willing to give you part of the things that can only be wrung from nle l>y defeat,' A strauge attitude! /T WON'T DO '"lf we were to put the matter in plain question and answer, it would stand somewhat thus:

" 'Why did. you not talk like this dur ing the battle of Verdun?'

" 'Because I then thought I could get a decision in my own favor.' " 'Why did you not talk like this before the Trontino fiasco?' " 'Because I did not think it would be a fiasco. I expected a decisive victory, the cutting off of the whole Italian Army and the overrunning of the Italian cities.'

"It comes, fhen, to this. So long as the chance of victory was with the enemy, a decision was possible and negotiation was ridiculous. Now that the progress towards victory is on our side and against him, behold!' a decision is impossible and negotiation is the only way out! Rcnlly. the argument is a little too one-sided.

■ "Tlie truth is that the whole argument depends upon the statement that a decision is impossible. It is a statement which the enemy and his friends make, and it is a statement manifestly false. WHY' "PERMANENT" DEFENCES? "The enemy constructed his original defensive lines in the West with the •nw«ife»t inteatipft o£ boldint thgni ift-

tact until he could secure an inconclusive peace. In their largest plan, as in their details those lines are a clear confession of such) a .policy. No one who has seen the work he put, into them caji doubt that. They amounted to a declaration that it was worth while to do so much 'because doing bo much gave hiin an impregnable positioa." Mr. Belloc then shows Kow l the 'Allies have broken down these defences and the assumptions (behind; them, and concludes thus:— "The doctrine that a decision is impossible is nonsense. If we under-estim-ate the time required to arrive at such a result, we shall naturally be disappointed. If we make no guess at any precise term, but appreciate the direction and inevitable progress of the operations, we have a true judgment of the situation. "Both parties suffer. Both parties increasingly suffer. But the party which is now in the process of undergoing progressive defeat, suffers, on the civilian as on the military side, in material as in men, in casualties as an morale, more and more, and the victors less and less. curves are separating,' and it would fie madness now that that separation is. getting accentuated to check it by accepting the enemy's demand for a parley and a trude."