Peace!

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXIII, Issue 36, 7 September 1905, Page 1

Peace !

Russia anrt Japan have proclaimed a new Truce oi God. They have agreed to return dripping sword to dawg|ing scabbard» and after their long encounter can sit and get black their Hreatto, and patch up, as best they) may, the physical and financial gashes through which their blood and treasure have so freely poured. Fon tooth J&p and Russ it is a peace with honor. Russia won at the last a diplomatic victory that neutralised to some extent the generally anticipated results of the: splendid ootiiqluesls achieved by Japanese skull and daring by flood and field. To France, in 187 1., one of the most gaining conditions of defeat was the vast war Sndiemnity of five milliards of francs (about £200,000,000) with which the Man *of Blood and Iron meant) to cnush his fallen foe into the very dust and keep him there. The! cession of Alsace and Lorraine was vitriol thrown upon the open wiqund. Payment of the indempity'—the greatest ever exacted for a warwas to be exi/efaded over four years. German garrisons were to remain on the soil of France till the last franc was paid. But, with unexampled patriotism, the people emptied their private hoards into tihe coffer si of the Treasury, and in a little over two years— in July, 1873— tihe last Prussian helmet disappeared beyond the country's eastern bo>rrier. Russia has, happily, escaped the jpaiyiment of the indemnity, the demand for which threatened, up to the last mtoment, to rupture the peace negotiatiionsj After the Cowgress of 18^8 Disraeli held that the peace then canclufded would be a lastjilwg cme. And why 1 ? * Because,' said he, ' I see that every one of the Powers is benefited by the peace, and no one is humiliated.' For toe same reasons we venture the hope that the Russo-J<apanese peace of 1905 wiU long endure.