Mr. Balloter in the House of Commons on Thursday week
dealt faithfully once more with the appeal of the premature Pacificists for "negotiations," after Mr. J. M. Robertson had assured them that he, a Pacificist all his life, was "fighting to secure a permanent peace." Mr. Balfour told them that they were seeking peace on terms which would leave an immense fraction of the civilized world under the German heel, as it had been planted in the Near East. Germany posed as a liberator. Next to being enslaved by Germany, there was no worse fate than being liberated by her. She held Rumania, for example, in economic as well as military domination. We desired an honourable, safe, and durable peace ; but an almost immeasur- able abyss still separated the belligerents. We could not give back to Germany, in her present mind, her African colonies, to be used as one instrument for universal evil. Those who asked for negotiations now seemed incapable of realizing the magnitude of the German obstacle to their own ideals.
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