General Smuts, speaking in London on Wednesday, said that recent
events had cleared the air. Prince Licluiowsky's memoirs, combined with Dr. Mahlon's story and Herr von Jagow's admissions, had proved beyond all doubt that Germany deliberately planned and willed this war. Again, the Reichstag resolution for a peace without annexations or indemnities had been shown, as we said it was from the first, to be more camouflage. The shameless Gorman peace forced on Russia and Rumania included vast annexations and huge indemnities under the thinnest verbal disguise, and had been accepted with glee by the Reichstag. Again, Germany had had an opportunity of offering fair terms in the West after Mr. Lloyd George's very moderate statement of Allied war aims in January. She had preferred to deliver what she thought would be a knock-out blow against the British Army to secure what Marshal Hindenburg called a "forcible German peace." The issue was thus perfectly clear, and so was our duty.
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