TOPICS OF THE D.Y.
REPARATION.
" We accepted this war for an object, a worthy object, and the war will end when that object is attained. Under God I hope it never will end until that time."—AnnknAm ageots.
TIP we were the Government we would meet the German peace proposals with one word—Reparation. We would tell the Kaiser and , his Chancellor that if they will accept the principle of reparation for Belgium ruined and desolate, for the devastated cities and fields of France, for Serbia ravaged and overrun, for the massacre of the Armenian nation, for the nameless horrors that have dogged the footsteps of the German Army, East and West, of reparation for every woman outraged, every child bayoneted, every hostage murdered, every home given to the flames— then, but only then, will we enter into peace negotiations. On the basis of reparation we can tell them our terms, but on no other basis. If they will not promise full reparation for deeds whose infamy cannot be matched in the records of mankind, then we would answer that we have nothing further to say to them. No matter how tempting their actual terms may be, not one of the Allies will listen. Silence is the only reply. If it takes us another five years to uphold the right, we will uphold it. We did not attack the Germans. We did not prepare for war. We have not prosecuted the war in order to gain any selfish ends. But we do not mean to leave off fighting till voluntarily or by compulsion Germany has purged her crime.
Many things have become the British people in this war. Noble was the face they showed during the retreat from Mons and when our little Army, as brave as it was small, seemed destined to utter destruction. Noble too was the attitude of the country when it learned at the first battle of Ypres that the German defeats on the Marne and the Aisne and the ebb of the German tide were but a temporary alleviation of a situation which seemed all but desperate to our wisest counsel- lors, and realized that the thin line with which we held our trenches in Flanders was to be exposed to the full fury of the Prussian onset, an onset in which the odds were five to one in men and some twenty to one in cannon and shell. Even nobler was the way in which the nation met the knowledge that not only were we short of every munition of war, but that we had not even got the plant for making munitions. Before we could begin to manufacture the mere necessaries for a field army we must sit down and slowly and laboriously manufacture the means for manufacturing them. It was not a question of making rifles, but actually of building the places to make them in. Here indeed was cause for despair, and yet not a trace of despair clouded the public mind, either here or overseas. In spite of the shrill clamours of a section of the Press which raised the cry that we were betrayed, the nation kept its head and held its peace. The foreigner could read not only our past history in our people's eyes, but the history of the future, the determination to hold on to the end.
And now the people are showing what' is perhaps the noblest trait of all in the way in which the peace proposals have been received. In spite of the longing for peace, so natural and so genuine, which moves every heart, the British nation saw their duty instinctively and in a flash of inspiration— the duty of refusing to be beguiled by such overtures as those which the Berlin wireless sent round the world coupled with the subtle talk of the Kaiser's Junker Vizier. If the Germans imagined, as no doubt they did, that the vision of peace would dazzle and excite men's minds here, would do what it has apparently done in Germany, throw them off their balance and make the longing for a cessation of the war almost intolerable, it only proved how little they know our countrymen. There was not even the faintest ripple of such a feeling in England. The world of London and of every part of Britain went unmoved about its "business. If there was any feeling it was one of amusement and contempt at the clumsy antics of the Chancellor and the Reichstag. The national attitude was perfect.
If our readers will not think us frivolous, we cannot better illustrate that attitude than by the_very old but very good story of the way in which Noah met the overtures of the Devil. Noah, during the Flood, looked out of the window of the Ark and saw the Devil row by in a punt. " Misty weather, Mr. Noah," began the Arch-Diplomat with an evident desire to open negotiations. !` You be damned ! Japhet, shut the window," was the reply of the master of the world's first cattle-boat.
Very different has been the reception of the peace propoaals in Germany. It can only be described as one of trembling, almost pathetic, anxiety. To the German people the door of their dreary, if at the moment safe, prison-house has been opened, and those who sit in darkness within have seen a vision of light. It has perturbed them as a half-starved man, weighed down with a sense of his misery, is perturbed by the sight of a well-spread table. And no wonder. Remember that the German, miserable as is his real condition, has always had instilled into his mind the belief that the Allies are already beaten, that the occupation of territory by the Germans and of the so-called four capitals makes final victory absolutely certain. He expects, therefore, that the Allies will prove as eager as ho is to snatch at any chance of relief from the agonies of war. How will he feel when in the course of the next few days those hopes are dashed to the ground, and when he sees in his enemies not an answering hope but the iron face of an unmovable determination ? He may have pushed off the Allies for a time from his doors, but all round him stand his enemies, the men he has wronged beyond forgiveness. Belgians, British, French, Italians, Russians, Rumanians— all are there ; and in all these faces, so different each from each, the eyes are turned in the same direction and have one message in them. " Though the way may be long and strewn with suffering, the cause of Germany and her subject allies is lost : if they will not make reparation voluntarily, reparation will be exacted from them in terms that will grow sterner and more terrible as each day, each week, and each month passes away."
If the Allied Governments have not yet reached the point of reminding the German State of the Sibylline books, the Allied peoples are at this moment sending that message by their own system of wireless into the hearts of their enemies.
The German Government did not apparently foresee the dreadfully depressing effect which the reception of their proposals must have on the spirits of the German people. No doubt they expected total rejection, but levidently their hope was and still is that rejection would call forth fresh reserves of energy from Germans and Austrians, Bulgarians and Turks. They are going to prove mistaken there. In addition to this there seems good reason to believe that the Germans want an excuse for a fresh and greatly aggravated campaign of frightfulness. The rejection of negotiations will, they hold, go far to obtain justification for such frightfulness in the public opinion of the world. There are already hints of what the new frightfulness is to be. In our opinion the German people are past responding to such manceuvres. The iron has entered into their souls. A galvanized Press will flame with theatrical anger and the troops will still obey with slavish courage as before, but the hearts of the German and Austrian peoples will feel the chill of utter desolation, not less dreadful because it must be borne in silence.
We must end as we began with the call for Reparation. Unless that pledge is given to the full, we must hand back the poisoned chalice.
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