LETTERS TO THE EDITOR,.
TERMS OF PEACE.
[TO Ins EDITOR 07 TSB " SPECTATOR-1 5IR,—Your resolute leading article of last Saturday on " Terms of Peace " is as useful as it is timely, and I shall take care that it gets a wider circulation. German agents have in Holland continually spread sinister rumours that Great Britain might ultimately leave noble France in the larch, and not insist that she gets back what in 1871 was wrung from her. To us that has always been unthinkable. Neither have we thought it possible that Great Britain, after the terrible sacrifice which the German rulers impelled her and her Allies to make, would ever consent to an inconclusive peace. This is a matter of particular interest to our country. Only last week our paper repeated the statement that the defeat of German militarism is for Holland at least as great an Interest as for the Allies, and perhaps for Holland a greater interest. That is in my opinion clear enough. Should the peace leave the military power and tho prestige of the present rulers of Germany unbroken, she would certainly prepare herself for another and even more terrible war, to be waged especially against Great Britain. The German menace would then be increased for her other small neighbours, with their useful harbours in the North Sea. And that danger would become the greatest for Holland, whose coastline would be for Germany a very tempting base to be used against this country. The Pan-German dream of getting possession of the outlet of the Rhine, which an influential German newspaper last year dared to call the " German mouth of the Rhino," would then in the meantime be fulfilled. An excuse could of course easily be found, based on the German maxim that " necessity knows no law." But that danger for Holland will pass, by destroying Ike German power for evil, and therefore your firm leading article must be particularly pleasing to all Dutchmen, who intensely love the liberty and the independence of their country. That being so, I could but wish that our country was in this glorious fight for liberty and justice, and in my recent address to the Leeds Luncheon Club I did not hesitate to declare that all countries ought to have risen collectively against the disturber of the world's peace. But at any rate we shall, in spite of German hatred, continue to preach the variation of Gambetta's well- known saying ; "L'ARemagne, c'eitt l'ennemi / "—I am, Sir, &c.,
JOHN C. VAN DER VEER,
London Editor of the Amsterdam Telegraaj. 49 Minster Road, N.W.
[When the war is over, but not till then, the small neutral States that will surround Germany—Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland—should surely consider whether it would not be good policy on their part to form a league of neutrals, with but one operative condition, a mutual guarantee against invasion of each other's territories. —En. Spectator.]
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