TOPICS OF THE DAY • PEACE FEELERS.
CHATTER about peace has begun in America, and is being reflected hero. For example, the special corre- spondent of the Daily Mail, Mr. Sydney Brooks, telegraph- ing from New York on Monday, after some rather cryptic allusions to President Wilson's intentions, ends his telegram by asserting " that those who regard America's part in this war as over and done with and who rule out the interven- tion of the United States as inconceivable are destined to be considerably surprised." He concludes with the proviso : "More than this it is impossible to say at present "---a journalistic caveat which reminds us of a tag which Mr. Murrell Froude is said to have placed at the end of the Life of St. Patrick which he undertook to finish for his then Tr:Latvian brother : " This is all we know of the life of St. Patrick, and perhaps a good deal more." In addi- tion to these rumours, there have been indications in other newspaper quarters that the Germans are endeavouring to manoeuvre President Wilson into taking up the part of intermediary. They hope, as they would say, to enlist his sympathies and the sympathies of the great American people in the sacred cause of peace. The real German point of view is, we venture to predict, something of this kind : " Our object in approaching Washington is a double one. We want not only to get its backing if we are compelled by shortage of supplies or any other unfavourable circum- stance to make a definite bid for peace, but tike, and in any case, to induce America to adopt the policy which has become a primary German objective—the policy of refusing munitions to the Allies. If we could get the American Government to champion what would appear to the American people reasonable peace proposals, and those peace proposals were rejected by the Allies, we should then have good ground for suggesting to the Washington Government that they should take a firm line with the Allies—a line of this kind: • We have passed on proposals from the Germans which are in effect • great victory for you. Germany is willing to abandon all Belgium except Antwerp, which, after all, had become before the war virtually a German town, and which gives Germany a port of the kind to which she is entitled by her size and her commerce. At the same time she gives back the whole of Alsace and Lorraine to France, which is a tremendous concession on her side. Next, she contributes a great buttress to the future peace of Europe by erecting into a buffer State that portion of Poland which she has already conquered, and to which she has added Austrian Poland and a not inconsiderable part of Prussian Poland. If the Allies refuse to accept these terms, it will be a proof that after all Germany is right in saying that they are not fight- ing to re-establish the peace of Europe upon a solid founda- tion, but are fighting vindictively to crush Germany to the earth and wipe out a great people from the map of Europe. Although the world-conflict does not primarily concern America, and although she has consistently refused to mix herself up in it, she must now consider whether it is not her duty to tell any Power or Powers who will not agree to terms so sound that she cannot find it in her conscience any longer to allow her manufacturers to supply munitions of war to maintain in the field armies the object of which has become, not to protect their countries from German aggression and invasion, but merely to carry out the evil policy of exterminating the German race.' " In a word, the German idea is to manoeuvre the United States into saying that unless the Allies will be reasonable she will reverse her policy of selling munitions of war to anybody who has got the money to pay for them.
That the Germans would achieve a veritable triumph if they could get America to use language of this sort is obvious. But they will not achieve it. We venture to assert that, much as President Wilson and the State Department would no doubt like to have the honour of putting an end to the war and securing peace once more for a blood-drenched world, they will not fall into this very apparent German trap, or be sa foolish as to. let themselves be made the cat's-paw of the Central Powers. Neither President Wilson nor his expert advisers in the State Department are quite so innocent as Berlin imagines. They may seem " idiotic Yankees " to German diplomats, but they are not going to (Waco to any and every tune played on the Teutonic flute. They will net as a post- office for any German proposals, good, bad, or indifferent.
The statesmen of America. know quite well what the answer of the Allies would he to any such terms as we have outlined. It might no doubt be extremely incon- venient to the Allies to have the supplies of munitions which they are now expecting from America cut off, and be forced to rely solely on their own resources. NeVertheless we are as convinced as we are that the sun will rise to-morrow that they would refuse such pro- posals even under the threat of—no munitions. But what would be America's feelings if, after having made that, threat, it wore not listened to and she had to carry it into action ? It would mean for her nothing more nor less than losing her whole trade with the Old World, and almost all her trade with the Far East. No one can suppose that in the case imagined the Allies would be content to go on buying luxuries and food from the United States. What they would say would be: "No munitions, no commercial inter- course ! " At present America, owing to the blockade, can send nothiuk direct to Germany and very little indirectly through the neutral States. To these impediments to trade would be added the cutting of commercial intercourse with all British possessions—with the United Kingdom, with Canada, Australia, South Africa, and India— with Russia, France, Italy, and Japan, and with those parts of Asia dominated by Russia and Japan. America would have become a voluntary martyr in the cause of Germany and Austria. The thing has only to be stated in plain terms to show its absurdity. There is yet another reason why such action on the part of America is absolutely inconceivable. One of President Wilson's chief reasons for insisting upon being neutral even on a moral issue—peace-Iover as he is and champion of international law and the rights of small nationali- ties—has been his desire, and per se it is a very statesmanlike one, to maintain the internal unity of. his country. Hitherto he has thought chiefly of not offending the Germans and Austrians in the United States, but we may be quite sure that he has not forgotten that America also contains large numbers of men of British birth and British sympathies, of Frenchmen, of Italians, and of Russians. If it came to be a question of America's, intervention on the side of Germany—for such it would be held to be, whatever its intention—the United States would be rent from top to bottom by the very typo of controversy which the President has made such sacrifices to avoid. Further, what have become some of the greatest commercial interests in America would be ruined by a policy of intervention through the instrument of a self-imposed blockade. Is it likely that the business men of America in the trades now getting orders by the ten and twenty millions would submit without protest to such a result ? The fear of Washington attempting to bring the Allies to their knees by eutting off the supply or munitions is groundless. Perhaps it will be said that, short of this, the Washington Government might very reasonably express the opinion that we ought to give some answer to the German overtures for peace. The Allies would put them- selves morally out of Court if they refused to discuss terms, and merely replied that they were going to boat the Germans before they talked of peace. We agree ; and we do not suppose for a moment that if America passed on German proposals, however absurd, we should refuse, her an answer. We should do nothing of the kind. What we should say would in effect be this : " You ask us to say what terms of peace would satisfy us.
Terms which will give us security for the future. We are not fighting for aggression ; we are not fighting
vindictively in order to punish Germany for her evil deeds. What we are fighting for, and what we shall go on fighting for for another ten years if necessary, can be expressed in one word—Security. We are not going to face the prospect of a Second, or possibly a Third, Punic War. We are not, out of cowardice and selfish., nese, or to pacify the pacificists, going to purchase five or six years of peace with another bloody war at the end of it We may lose our material wealth, and have little or nothing to leave our children, but at any rate we will leave them the heritage of security and peace. They may receive an estate mortgaged up to the hilt, but it shall not ha a elammoott hereditas."
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