PRESIDENT WILSON'S VINDICATION. T HE vindication of President Wilson's first answer
to Germany by means of questions lies in the fact that his method prepared the way for the paralysing answer which he addressed to the rulers of Germany on Monday. Now that every one is delighted by President Wilson's attitude there is no harm in saying that his original questions raised a 'few doubts in this country. It evidently appeared to some people—a very small minority, we think—that in asking his questions President Wilson was entering upon a perilous course of parleying with Germany. The critics would have preferred the stiff upper-lip, the imperious negative; from the first Moment. Our readers will remember that we expressed last week the opinion that by his very searching questions President Wilson was, as it were, taking a step back to leap better. This of course turned out to be true, and it may be hoped that there will never again be any question as to the absolute firmness of President Wilson's intentions. Really it was unlikely to the point of flat impossibility that a man of his temperament could ever parley with Germany after the language which he had already held. For President Wilson is first and foremost an intellectual. All his addresses, all his writings, are characterized by his intellectual view of life. Now we venture to say that all students of their fellow-men will agree upon this one point, that a man who is proud and confident in his intellectual reading of affairs never tolerates the impertinent challenges of very clumsy minds which have tried to trip him up at his own game. Over a long and tedious period President Wilson put up with all the brutal intrigues and all the infamous disingenuousness of German agents who firmly believed that they were overreaching " those idiotic Yankees." When President Wilson had given the Bernstorffs, the Papens, the Boy-Eds, and the Dumbas every chance of showing some glimmer of candour and intel- lectual clearness of vision, if they were capable of such things, he came to the conclusion that they were incapable of them. To believe, then, that such a man as President Wilson, having come to this conclusion, could ever go back upon it and reopen infructuous argumentation was to believe that President Wilson could be false to his whole nature. Before we leave this particular subject let us say that, nevertheless, there ought never to have been even an opportunity for questioning President Wilson's wisdom. Long ago the Allies ought to have drawn up the terms which they would impose upon Germany and have published them to the world. Over and over again we have besought the Government to take this course. It always seemed not merely probable but certain that Germany would one day throw a peace bombshell into our midst. If our terms had existed in black-and-white, President Wilson would never have found it necessary to do anything but refer Germany to them.
Nothing could be sounder than President Wilson's announce- ment on all the issues that matter. He points out that an armistice could never be granted except on the terms laid down by the soldiers and sailors who represent the Allies. That announcement removes the matter for ever from the region of danger. As regards the Government which at present professes to represent Germany, President Wilson is on the only right and solid grounds. It was absolutely necessary for him to ask his original question as to the char- acter and authority of the present Government of Germany, for his only alternative to asking that question would have been to seem to throw over the terms which he himself had proposed. It will be remembered that the German appeal to Washington ostensibly accepted all President Wilson's proposals. President Wilson therefore could not say : " I reject the acceptance of my own proposals." What he could do, and did do, was to ask whether the people who accepted his terms really stood for Germany or not, whether they were the old gang under a new guise. When the very vague and perfectly unconvincing answer came from Germany, President Wilson was free to sweep aside all the vagueness and come with heavy hammer-blows to the heart of the matter. He quoted his own words of July 4th " The destruction of every arbitrary power anywhere that can separately, secretly, and of its single choice disturb the peace of the world, or, if it cannot be presently destroyed, at least its reduction to virtual impotency." When he added the words : " The power which has hitherto controlled the German nation is of the sort here described. It is within the choice of the German nation to alter it," he showed that in his opinion no effectual change whatever has yet taken place in the nature of the German Government. It is not enough for German spokes- men to say that the Kaiser has promised popular reforms in a letter, or that the Reichstag " approves of what is being done, or that the people of Germany approve of the resolution of the Reichstag. It is not enough for Herr Erzberger to deplore the sinking of the Leinster,' when every one knows that if he and his fellow-Ministers had the reality as well as the form of power they could stop such deeds at once.
The simple effect of President Wilson's two Notes—the effect at which he obviously aimed—is to throw the German nation back upon the necessity of a very simple choice. They must choose between the will of the Kaiser and their own will. We know it is said in criticism that the distinction which President Wilson has always tried to draw between the German autocracy and the German people is unreal. We have no doubt ourselves that it is an unreal distinction so far as it is sought to prove that the German people have not backed their rulers in this war. Unfortunately it has been only too clear that they have backed them. There has been no act of murder or oppression, no deed of greed or equivocation, which the German nation has not openly rejoiced in so long as things were going well. But, after all, unless the whole German nation is to be annihilated—and that is not and cannot be proposed—it is necessary to promote popular rule over autocratic rule in Germany in order that responsibility may be distributed among a great number of persons, and not depend upon the mere caprices, or the single choice," of an absolutist junta. If this be admitted, as we think it must be, the dilemma to which President Wilson exposes Germany will serve its purpose, and we need not trouble overmuch about the degree of the German people's guilt. If the German people are forced to throw over their autocracy, they may gradually become divorced from it in spirit as well as in fact. If they are so mad as to choose Kaiserism, they will bind themselves, as far as we can see ahead, to the dislike and contempt of the whole world, and the whole world will refuse to associate with them. H they stand for their own rights and for the development of whatever good they may be capable of, hope enters in. They might even reach the stage some day of denouncing the crimes which they have hitherto applauded. It must be confessed that up to the present moment, however, there has been no sign of apology and no sign cf sorrow for their infamy. The only thing they are sorry for is that they have failed.
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