There is no mistaking the response of the Allies to
Itfr.• Wilson, though their formal answer has not yet been transmitted. On December 22nd, when his Note was published in England, the King's Speech closing the Session of Parliament declared that " the vigorous prosecution of the war must be our single endeavour until we have vindicated the rights so ruthlessly violated by our enemies and established the security of Europe on a ears foundation." The whole British Press was unanimous in main- taining that this was no time to talk of peace, unless indeed the enemy should offer the fullest measure of reparation and the fullest guarantees of security. In France Mr. Wilson's Note was received with equal coldness. The Temps in an admirably judicial article pointed out that his fundamental error was in minimizing "the capital fact that one of the two -groups of belligerents which talk and think of peace deliberately broke it, while the other did every- thing-to- keep- it," and that the German offer was " a peace trap" into which France had no intention of falling. Italian comment' on the Note is just as unsympathetic.
Previous page
