THE GERMAN EVASIONS.
SINCE the publication of our last issue there have been two events by which we may judge the German attitude towards peace. The first of these is the German reply to President Wilson's Note of Monday, October 14th ; and the second is the speech of the new German Chancellor, Prince Max of Baden, in the Reichstag on Tuesday. Both the article and the speech creak and groan, as it were, with the effort to save the position for Germany without saying anything that will impede the arrival of the peace that is so the effort to save the position for Germany without saying anything that will impede the arrival of the peace that is so urgently desired. Germany is, in fact, afraid at once to accept peace and to frighten away peace. The existence of internal convulsions and agonizing searchings of heart is written all over both the Note and the speech. One can picture the framers of the German Note sitting round a table refining and refining their words so as in some small measure to gratify their pride even while they cling to the prospect of safety through humiliation. In the end they produce suck a vague and involved document that it is very difficult for any one to understand it. We doubt whether the Germans themselves understand it. It is obvious that it is addressed as much to the conflicting parties of Germany as to President Wilson himself. When the critic of the future gets to work on the composition of this strange Note he will no doubt discover in this or.that phrase traces of the particular political principle which was trying to assert itself in the Council Chamber at the moment. He will trace various recensions of the Note, just as the higher critic traces the work of the Jahvist and the Elohist writers in the Book of Genesis.
The Note entirely distorts what President Wilson said, about the possibility of an armistice. President Wilson said that the terms of an armistice must be left entirely to the military commanders of the Allies—that is to say, to Marshal Foch so far as the land is concerned, and to Sir Rossiya Wemyss so, far as the sea is concerned. The German Note wilfully misinterprets this to mean that President Wilson will consent to the principle that " the actual standard, of power " on both sides in the field may form the basis for guaranteeing this standard. In other words, the Germans want to break off the fight and receive from the Allies a promise that if Germany wishes later to continue the war she shall be able to do. so with her present degree of strength but in very much better conditions. The German armies are now.. fighting under the heaviest pressure to make good their escape to the shortest possible line of defence. It is likely that as things are going they will not reach that line without being battered out of recognition. They suggest, therefore, that they should be allowed to gain the line they are aiming at without let or hindrance ! It is of course quite out of the question. If ever an armistice is granted. to Germany, it must be on such terms that she will be crippled in a military sense. She must abandon every inch of occupied territory, including Alsace- Lorraine ; pay deposits of money towards a wholesale com- pensation ; send back all the non-combatants and the women and girls whom she has deported in servitude from their homes ; and hand over every U '-boat.
It will hardly be believed, in spite of our experiences of the impossibility of trying to think in the terms of German political language, that the authors of the Note should have thought fit to speak of their " honour." Nevertheless they do so. In any terms of peace " the honour of the German people " must be consulted, and the peace must be " a peace of justice." In his speech Prince Max of Baden develops this idea at con- siderable length. The peace, he ssys, must not be one of violence but of justice. But have the German people ever re- flected upon what they themselves considered to be justice when they believed that they were winning the war, or have they ever considered what justice means in the Courts of a civilized people when prisoners are convicted of serious crimes ? The appallingly cruel Treaties of Peace imposed upon the Russian and Rumanian peoples were the German notion of justice when the stream of war was running in favour of Germany. As for what justice means when it is dispensed by the Allies, the German people must remember that they cannot escape the penalties of murder, rape, arson, and burglary. A Judge when he has convicted a prisoner for the foulest crimes in the calendar does not step down from the bench, sit down by, the prisoner in the dock, shake hands with him, hobnob with him, tell him he is a good fellow, and hope that they will live together in very happy relations in future. No ; justice requires that the penalty shall be paid by the prisoner, and when he has made his amends for the sake and benefit of ordered society, there may be hope of his reform. Of course the Germans profess, as might have been expected, that they are not criminals. They deny in the Note that the German Navy has ever purposely destroyed passengers escaping from torpedoed ships, and they want a Neutral Commission of Inquiry into the whole matter. As a matter of fact, the murders which have been committed on the high seas, the shelling and ramming of men, women, and children in boats that had got clear of sinking ships, have been sworn to over and over again and the evidence has been sifted by experi- enced judicial minds. But, for the purpose of argument, let us assume that the Germans could plausibly show that the many thousands of lives which have been lost in recorded instances of brutality were all sacrificed through a series of misunderstandings. Even then we have the Germans' own admission of -what they intended to do. It will be remembered that the State Department in Washington obtained the key to the cipher used by the German Minister at Buenos Aires, and then decoded some of the German sipher telegrams sent by the Swedish Minister at Buenos Aires to the Swedish Foreign Office at Stockholm to be forwarded to Berlin. In those telegrams it was proposed that for the •sake of keeping Argentine indignation within bounds Argentine ships should if possible be spared,, but if it were not practicable to do this, the ships were to be sunk without leaving a trace=—" Spurlos Versenken." This meant that even when there was a possi- bility of saving people from torpedoed ships, they were not to be saved. They were to be committed to a most cruel death on the open seas. Men who survived after the foundering of the ship were to be left to perish miserably. If there was any chance of their reaching land or being picked up, they, were to be methodically shot or knocked over the head. That is the meaning. That was the policy of the German Government.
The discussions in both Nate and speech about German reforms and, about the League of Nations, are not worth pausing over. We have been told that reform is complete in Germany, yet the Note is only able to speak of " a Bill " which is, being introduced into the Reichstag. As, we have pointed out several times, to give the German people the reality of power the whole German Constitution would have to be overhauled. The real power in Germany rests. with the Federal Council. No political institution in• Germany can prevail against it, and yet we do not.learn that this secret body has yielded up, anything of its authority. Nor do we learn that the leadership of Prussia in the German Federation is to be forfeited, though that leadership has been the source of all evil. Readers of history will recall the discussions which took place in the Salle des Glaces at Versailles in 1870, when the predominance of Prussia was grudgingly accepted by Bavaria and the other States, and the King of Prussia was recognized as the " German Emperor "—though he would, of course, have liked to be " Emperor of Gerfaany." All the results which flowed from this arrangement remain. They are not changed by promises, above all by German promises. There is only one way of safety and sanity for the Allies— to make it physically impossible for Germany to continue to make war. We want peaee, we want justice, we want .a rapid rehabilitation of the world. Thera is only one short and sure way to obtain these benefits.
Previous page
