PRESIDENT WILSON : THE PERFECT ALLY.
DURING the long period in which President Wilson was parleying with. Germany, hoping against hope that she was not so brutal or so appallingly cynical as she seemed, and giving her continually fresh opportunities to redeem her character, he learned that there was nothing for it but to ban the authors of the war. Their word could never be accepted ; they would cheat and prevaricate time after time : the fairest words, as they used them, disguised some new deception, some fresh trap for those who still thought it worth while to converse with them on the terms common to honourable men. The results of Mr. Wilson's bitter, but very instructive, experiences are written broad over the memorable speech which he made on Thursday week. Without remembering what Mr. Wilson went through in his negotiations with Germany, it would be impossible to appreciate the sources of his force and determination and of his passionate and sincere eloquence on the subject of Germany. He feels that it would be a wicked dereliction of his high duty if he were to give Germany " another chance," not only because his experiences have shown him the futility of trusting the German leaders. but because the responsibility he has accepted —the preservation of the democratic principle of government— is too precious to be played with. Now that the President is on the side of the Allies he is, in fact, there heart and soul. His experiences bind him to us with unbreakable links. There is not the remotest chance that he will want to change his mind. No one who reads his striking speech of last week can suppose for a moment that the convictions he has arrived at admit of change. If the United States had come into the war when Belgium was invaded, Mr. Wilson might just conceivably have been tempted later by his well-known humanity to say : " Germany has probably learned a wholesome lesson. It might be safe to trust her a little now." For of course if the United States had entered the war earlier none of the particular sinister light of the negotiations between her and Germany would have been shed. As it is, Mr. Wilson is on the safest ground. He does not merely argue as a reasonable and patient man that he is right ; he knows that he cannot be wrong. He sees with a clearness that shines brilliantly through all his speech that if the military rulers of Germany were allowed to have peace now they would hare won their point. They would have kept in 1.eing an autocratic and militaristic principle of governance .powerful enough to condemn the whole world to an indefinite epoch of restlessness and suspense. In that epoch men would -never know when the next war might be forced upon a weary and reluctant world in order that a clique of entetes political .degenerates might gratify their lust for conquest and power. To. Mr. Wilson the talk of peace now, when Germany has not' even given an indication that she is ready to right one single wrong she has committed, is a mockery and a base repudiation of a trust. Again and again in his speech he pointed out that if peace were made on the basis of things as they are, Germany would have carried out " the greater part " of the scheme she plotted. The splendid fact about the speech is that it nowhere suggests that Mr. Wilson is jealous of Germany's acquiring territory, or wealth, or power, or repute, as such. He cries passionately that Germany must not be allowed to keep what she has won simply because of what it means. It means n hardened heart and a brain excited and made dangerous by the fumes of militaristic thought. " If," the German rulers would say,-" we have won so much though half our plans went astray and half our expectations were falsified, what could we not win at a second attempt ? Let us then cultivate the mar- vellously swift and centralized control of our militaristic- autocratic bureaucracy. We will yet show democracy that it cannot prevail against us. We will have another test of strength, and we will finally beat democracy out of the field." These German leaders, as Mr. Wilson said, have never regarded
nations as peoples of men, women, and children of like blood and frame with themselves, for whom Governments exist and in whom Governments have their life. They have regarded them as " serviceable organizations " which they could bend or corrupt to their purpose.
If Germany should get peace with her present rulers still in control, the influence of those rulers and their diabolical doctrines would be perpetuated. Mr. Wilson states that fact with more cogency than it has yet been stated anywhere. In effect, though he does not say this verbally, he demands that no peace shall be made with the Hohenzollerns. To make peace with them would be tacitly to. support their moral and dynastic credit. Mr. Wilson's words deserve to be printed at the head of every written discussion of the terms of peace :- ` Peace, peace, peace' has been the talk of Germany's Foreign Office for a year or more, not peace upon her own initiative, but upon the initiative of the nations over which she now deems herself to hold the advantage. A little of the talk has been public, but most of it has been private, through all sorts of channels. It has come to me in all sorts of guises, but never with the terms disclosed which the German Government would be willing to accept. . . . The military masters under whom Germany is bleeding see very clearly to what point Fate has brought them ; if they fall back or are forced back an inch, their power abroad and at home will fall to pieces. . • . Deep fear has entered their hearts. They have but one chance to perpetuate their military power, or even their controlling political influence. If they can secure peace now, with the immense advantage still in their hands, they will have justified themselves before the German people. They .will have gained by force what they promised to gain by it—an immense expansion of German power and an immense enlargement of German industrial and commercial opportunities. Their prestige will be secure, and with their prestige their political power. If they fail, their people will thrust them aside. A Government accountable to the people themselves will be set up in Germany.... Do you not now understand the new intrigue for peace, and why the masters of Germany do not hesitate to use any agency that promises to effect their purpose,' the deceit of nations ? Their present particular aim is to deceive all those who, throughout the world, stand for the rights of peoples and the self-government of nations, for they see what immense strength the forces of justice and liberalism are gathering out of this war. They are employing Liberals in their enterprises. Let them once succeed, and these men, now their tools, will be ground to powder beneath the weight of the great military Empire."
We do not -hesitate to say that the man who spoke those words is a perfect Director and Adviser of an Alliel nation. He is safe from the common danger of neglecting his responsibility through well-meaning desires to bring c'to an end somehow,. anyhow, the present spectacle of devastation and slaughter. He is immune from the infection of the hasty and misunderstanding judgment. He has himself suffered, and he intends that the German power to inflict such suffering shall not continue. The present rulers of Germany are the symbol of a policy of materialism and might. The policy will not be discredited till the symbols are removed. There must be no peace with the Hohenzollerns.
And how good are President Wilson's plain words about the Liberals who are lending themselves to the German intrigue for a- speedy peace 1 There is not a jot of evidence that the German rulers offer to make restitution. For the German Majority Socialists at Stockholm annexation is not annexation when Germany has seized the land ; nationality is not nationality when Germany wishes to maintain her grasp. Yet Liberals, not only here but in the United States, can bemuse themselves into believing that the German rulers may be trusted after all. For such minds as these the new Emperor of Austria has already become a handsome, debonair, chivalrous harbinger of goodwill and tenderness among men I The writer of a letter to the Manchester Guardian of Monday says " It will help us greatly to read an article in the New Republic of May 19th, called . The Greater Victory.' This journal warmly advocated the entry of America into the war, long before this occurred. It now asks the Allies to face the very great danger of Russia withdrawing from the war, and insists that they have .kept Germany united by ` subordinating political to military considerations,' and because their statesmen have insisted that a knock-out must precede negotiations.' It draws a hideous picture of the state of the world if we have to wait for the ` knock- out' till America is fully mobilised, and bluntly tells Englishmen and Frenchmen that they have no alternative to seeking their political objects by 'a political adjustment rather than by military decision. If they find it repellent to make such a concession in order to retain the co-operation of pacifist Russian democrats, they can console themselves with the recollection of the far more dubious concessions which they did not scruple to make in order to secure the loyal co-operation of Imperialistic Russian autocrats.' " There speaks the eternal sophist. Of course it is all well meant ; yet it means nothing, and points the way to nothing —except disaster. " Nothing can of nothing come." The article in the New Republic goes on :- " The American -people did not enter this war to add to the sum of human goods and beings which were being calamitously annihilated ; they entered it chiefly in order to make a promising and indispensable contribution to a scientific and just settlement. Such a settlement cannot be obtained merely by working for victory. Victory itself can best be obtained by working for the settlement."
Fortunately President Wilson takes precisely the opposite view. He sees -that- democracy can be saved by victory, and by victory alone. For that is the only " victory " he and we desire—utterly to discredit the present rulers of Germany, to require them to make good the wrongs they have done, and to prevent them by absolute guarantees from troubling the world again.
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