30 DECEMBER 1916, Page 5

PRESIDENT WILSON'S NOTE.

PRESIDENT WTLSON'S Note has caused not only a great deal more hostile feeling than he expected, but very much more than it need have caused. Trained and experienced diplomatists with a natural as well as an acquired gift for international diagnosis may say that it was not tactful to launch such a document at a time when people were obviously much too excited to take things calmly and quietly, and when the turn of a phrase might throw whole nations into a frenzy of suspicion. But apart from a certain inexpediency in time and place and manner, there is nothing in the Note to cause either indignation or alarm. In the first place, the peoples and Governments of the Allies ought to have remembered that President Wilson has no power, and obviously makes no claim to any power, to intervene in or to stop the war, or to make the combatants accept his or anybody else's terms. After all, as far as the diplomatic world is concerned it is a world of free speech. Any Government is free to ask any question of any other Power or Powers. Such Power or Powers are also of course equally free not to answer the question put to them if they judge it injurious or inconvenient to do so. Again, if they think silence seems rude and unfriendly, they can answer the question in one of the many ways in which questions are put off—i.e., by giving a general rather than a specific reply, or, as the Germans were quick to see, by repeating their proposal for a Conference. While all these courses are obviously open to the Allies there is nothing to complain of in President Wilson's action. No doubt it would have been otherwise if he had put his question in the form of an ultimatum, and had told the various Powers to whom he addressed his Note that he would be compelled to take this or that course if he could obtain no reply. But ho merely tried to get information, and being a man versed in affairs he must have known that, thoUgh information may appear exceedingly desirable, it is not always possible to secure it. We cannot then profess to feel in the least hurt, angry, or annoyed at the action of the United States _Government. Instead of our news- papers expressing amazement or showing resentment at the Note, we think it would have been very much better if they had advised the Government to give President Wilson as much information as they could.

Our Government should, in our opinion, have met the question in the same naive spirit in which it was put to them. As we have tried to show in the two articles which follow this, they could easily set forth the general lines on which the Allies can -alone consent to grant peace. They might even go further, and point out more or less in detail what must be the logical result of.putting into practice the principles of action which the Allied Governments; have already laid down. In order to prove their perfect sincerity, they might add that they do not suppose that the Central Powers will be likely to accede to these terms, because the military power of their enemies has not yet been sufficiently broken. Indeed, it would probably be prudent to go An to say that it was perhaps fortunate that Germany was not likely at present to .accept the only peace terms which the Allies could grant, for the breaking of that power was bound to be one of the guarantees against future warfare which the Allies ought to obtain in the interests of the world before they themselves laid down their arms. The Allies would also, if they took the action we have suggested, need to put in a caveat to the effect that it must not be sup- posed that the terms they had sketched to President Wilson must. be regarded as remaining open. They were not terms about which they would enter into negotiations, but terms which they were willing to grant. 'Further, they were -terms which were only applicable immediately and in the present circumstances. If they were not accepted by the enemy, and the war was thus prolonged and further blood- shed took place, then those terms must inevitably be revised And made more severe. Their answer might be concluded by thanking President Wilson for giving them BO good an opportunity of making clear to the Central Powers the terrible responsibility which they incurred, both to their own subjects and to the world at large, by_prolonging, the war. 'The more- they prolonged it, the greater the amount of reparation that would be required from them and the more stringent the guarantees which the Allies weuld be forced to demand to ensure the world against a repetition-of the crime of 1914 and the crimes that flowed from it.

'non h we hold so strongly the view that there was nothing essentially unfriendly in President Wilson's Note, and therefore nothing which ought to offend the people of any of the Allied countries, we must injustice to our own people admit that it was not very felicitously worded. Mr. E. P. Bell, the able and far-sighted London correspondent of the Chicago Daily News, has pointed out, what the President meant to say was that both sides affirmed or alleged that they were fighting for virtually the same things. Unfor- tunately, however, President Wilson put the matter, not in this form, but in the absolute form that both seta of combatants were fighting for the same thing. But the dropping out of some such limiting word as " say " or " affirm ' or " allege " appeared to alter the whole sense. If both sets of combatants were really, in Mr. Wilson's opinion, fighting for the same thing, and that thing was a good thing- i.e., the protection of small nationalities—then no doubt a benevolent Power like America would be deeply concerned to stop the war at all costs, and to explain to all con- cerned that they must not cut throats any longer owing to a mistake or merely out of hot blood. In fact, on the President's apparent assumption the war becomes nothing but a huge and ghastly misunderstanding, and there is no need to ask for conditions of peace. All that the President would have to do in those circumstances would be to insist upon a return to the status quo arta bellum. But that is a reductio ad absunflum. Clearly what the President meant to say was: "Both sides tell me and the world that they are fighting for the same objects. Mich side am I to help as far as I can, for it may become necessary for me to take one side or the other ? In giving that decision I shall be helped by knowing the conditions upon which each side is willing to make peace." Unquestion- ably the request for a statement of terms is likely to prove more embarrassing to the Germans than to the Allies. We did not prepare for war. We had no designs upon our neighbours. We did not commit any act like the violation of the neutrality of Belgium. We did not commit breaches of the laws of war and of the specific agreements entered into at the Hague Convention in order that we might theiaby gain certain combatant advantages. We did not adopt a policy of frightfulness involving the shooting of countless hostages, the burning of towns, the giving up of whole districts to rapine and murder, and the revival of Nebuchadnezzar's policy of -carrying off the civilian population in chains.

And here we may add that President Wilson's demand to know the conditions under which we would make peace seems to have given the Allies,. and especially this goentry, just the very opportunity for skilful propaganda which our own publicists, whether writing in this country or as correspondents in America, are now telling us we have missed owing to our national supineness and stupidity. We should have no difficulty whatever, while stating our conditions of peace in general terms, in setting forth the origin of the war and the way in which it has been waged. Indeed, wo could not make good our reasons for demanding Reparation for -the past and guarantees for Security in the future without letting the world know the treacherous way in which the war began and thediabolical manner in which it has been conducted. President Wilson by his request gives us the ear of the American people. It binds them to listen to our plea, and we are sufficiently confident, as we are sure also are our Govern- ment, that our answer would carry conviction, for we agree that the American people have never really mastered the case of the Allies, though, owing to Count l3ernstorff's adroitness and activity, they have heard in season and out of season the case for our enemies. Without loss of dignity, and yet in- a manner which is bound to impress the American people by its friendliness, we might repair our sins of omission and commission in the past. Hitherto no doubt the people of this country have suffered from what, curiously enough, the Northern States suffered from throughout the Civil War. When we misunderstood them because they did not instantly abolish slavery, as we thought they ought to have done, they were too proud to explain, too sore at what they thought was their kinsmen's unkindness. In the same way our people have been too proud to explain and too sore for dialectic. Again and again careful observers must have noted that sensitive nations would rather be misunderstood than undergo what they think the humiliation of explaining in public that they are not robbers, cowards, and swindlers. Let our deeds speak for us. We are not going down on our knees to any one to tell him that we have not shed innocent blood. We will not even explain to him the nature of our enemies. If people think we fight for the love of it, that our young men give their lives, our women are left widows, our children orphaned, and our fathers and mothers made sonless because we were jealous of Germany and wanted to overthrow her, let them leave us with our deail. It is they, not we, who are dishonoured by such thoughts."

Pacificists when they read what we have written will no doubt tell us that our way of treating President Wilson's Note is utterly disingenuous, is worse than a demand that no answer shall be given except a mere non possumus. " You are only using the President's request for terms in order to continue the struggle under conditions which you think more favourable. You are not trying to bring about peace." We gladly meet such an objection. We recognize that the terms which we have put forward elsewhere as the only terms upon which we could grant peace are not at the moment likely to prove acceptable to the Germans, But that does not make us insincere in our desire for peace any more than it made Abraham Lincoln insincere when, longing for peace as he did, he insisted on continuing the war till the power of the South was utterly broken. Listen to his words in the Second Inaugural, for we can find nowhere else a better conclusion to what we have written. Let the words of one President of the United States be remembered by his successor, the man who, like him, stands as the chosen guide and interpreter of the larger portion of the English-speaking race :- "Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God ; and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces ; but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered—that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. ` Woe unto the world because of offences 1 for it must needs be that offences come ; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh.' . . . Fondly do we hope—fervently do we pray—that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondman's two hundred and fifty years of unre- quited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said : `The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.' With malice toward none ; with charity for all ; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in ; to bind up the nation's wounds ; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations."