NO PEACE CONFERENCE. T HE ideas which we expressed last week
about the great dangers of a Peace Conference have had the good fortune to receive strong support from converging lines of argument on both sides of the Atlantic. In the American Senate last Saturday Mr. Lodge, who is now the leader of the Republican Party in the Senate, in effect declared himself in favour of a dictated Peace. The terms he proposed included the restoration of Belgium • the unconditional surrender of Alsace-Lorraine ; Italia Irredenta for Italy ' • the independence of Serbia and Rumania ; guarantees for Greece ; the independence of both Poland and the Jugo-Slays ; the creation by means of these new States of a bather between Germany and the Near East the restoration to Russia of all that was taken from her under the Brest-Litovsk Peace ; the removal of Turkish power from Europe, and the placing of Constantinople as a free port in the keeping of the Allies ; Palestine to remain free and Christian, and Asia Minor to be Oven security. Nothing could be more welcome than 11r. 's declaration. It will be seen that he is under no Illusions about the possibility of satisfying the South Slays with a semi-independence. Just as the Slav races of South- Eastern Europe were the cauldron which Germany stirred into this boiling war, so would that cauldron inevitably be made to boil over into another war if Austria-Hungary were still allowed to suppress her subject races. Let this fact be recognized once for all. Even if Vienna could be trusted— which it could not—through a growing sagacity or through inertness to leave the Jugo-Slays alone, the same thing cannot possibly be said of the Magyars. It is from Magyar arrogance that the South Slays must be saved, and they can be saved by independence alone. We may hope that we are now long past the stage when our Government seriously thought it worth while to try to detach Austria from Germany by effecting an accommodation with her more or less at the expense of the subject races. What Mr. Lodge has done for his countrymen Lord Hugh Cecil has done for us here in a considerable sense by a remark- able letter which was published in the Times of Monday. With all his eloquence and attractive power of argumentation, Lord Hugh Cecil points out that this war is characteristically a crusade, inasmuch as it is war not for interests but for principles. " Moloch must be humiliated in the sight of all his votaries if they aro to accept a purer faith." We have often quoted from Burke's " Letters on a Regicide Peace." One of our correspondents, the Rev. Theodore P. Brocklehurst, invites us to do so again by reminding us of the amazing aptness to the present circumstances of much of Burke's language. Consider, for instance, the following sentences which he quotes :— We cannot arrange with our enemy in the present conjuncture without abandoning the interest of mankind. The Allies and Great Britain amongst the rest have been miserably deluded by this fundamental error. that it was in our power to make peace with this monster of a State whenever we chose to forget the crimes that made it formidable. They could not, or rather they would not, read in the most unequivocal declamations of the enemy and his uniform conduct that more safety was to be found in the most arduous war than in the friendship of such a being. Its hostile amity can be obtained in no such terms that do not imply an inability hereafter to resist its designs. We are in a war of a peculiar nature. It isnot with an ordinary community, which is hostile or friendly, as passion or interest may veer about, but with a State that makes war through wantonness and abandons it through lassitude. We are at war with a system which by its essence is so inimical to all other governments and which makes peace or war as peace and war may best contribute to their subversion. It is with an armed doctrine we are at war. The very idea of a negotiation for peace, whatever the inward sentiments of the parties may be, implies some confidence in their faith, some degree of belief in the professions which are made concerning it. A tem- porary and occasional credit at least is granted—otherwise men stumble at the very threshold. I therefore wish to ask what hope we can have of their good faith who as the very basis of their negocia- lion assume the ill-faith and treachery of those they have to deal with."
The assumption that this war must be ended by a Peace Con- ference of the traditional stamp, with the diplomatic representa- tives of Powers great and small sitting round the council table, has, we admit, been popular if not universal. We earnestly hope and believe that the present tendency of thought, both here and in France and the United States, will be the death- blow of this pernicious assumption which is founded on a misreading of history. The reason for Peace Conferences at the end of various wars in the past was not, as is often supposed now, that such conferences were thought to be the best and most logical means of settling terms of peace. The reason for them was that powerful neutrals were strong enough to insist upon their right to be heard. Powerful neutrals beheld the belligerents walking away, as it were, limp and exhausted from the battlefield, and the temptation to profit by their weakness was much too strong for the neutrals to reject the opportunity of making a bit for them- selves. Of course it •must be admitted that some neutrals insisted upon their right to be heard with the best of inten- tions. They same in sometimes as the champions of smaller Powers and, as it were, held a watching brief on their account. Great Britain herself played this part on several occasions. But the point is that a neutral Power could not have insisted on a hearing at a Peace Conference unless she had been powerful. At the Treaty of Berlin in 1878, for example, the settlement was controlled not by the belligerents but by the neutrals. The parts played by Bismarck and Lord Beaconsfield are, of course, among the most dramatic episodes in diplomatic history. In the present situation, however, there are no neutrals in a position to make themselves felt out of the superfluity of their strength ; and it should be one of the clear objects of our statecraft to explain to neutral Powers that they cannot hope to have any say in the settlement after this war, either directly or indirectly, unless they prove their willingness now to aid the efforts of the Allied nations who are determined to remove a foul disease from the world. One would think that the lessons of the Congress of Vienna in 1814 and 1815 would be a warning for all time ; yet they seem continually to be forgotten. Talleyrand was the repre- sentative of the beaten Power who ought, according to all reason and logic, to have been kept in an inferior position, but thanks to his supernormal skill he managed to play off the Powers against one another. Ho took the principal part in contriving a secret alliance between Britain, Austria and France in order to prevent the absorption of Poland by Russia and of Saxony by Prussia. This alliance had the effect of saving much more power for the restored House of Bourbon in France than it had any right to expect. Talleyrand, in fact, dominated the Peace Conference. That is the kind of performance which the Germans devoutly hope and intend to imitate if they are given an opportunity of playing at a game of wits in a great and unwieldy Peace Conference. It would be mad for us to enter into such a trap.
The only proper and safe line for us to take is to regard the German rulers as criminals in the dock upon whom sentence is to be pronounced. Nothing else will kill the crime of mili- tarism, and if this war is not being fought to kill militarism it is being fought to no purpose. A judge on the bench does not " negotiate " with the criminal in the dock. This is not to say that the terms imposed upon Germany should be in any sense vindictive. We are very clear in our own minds that we should be defeating our own purpose if our Peace terms contained even a hint that it was desirable to bring about wantonly the national destruction of Germany. The best judges have always been men who leaned to humanity, and when we present our terms to Germany, informing her that she must either accept them entirely or continue to be crushed in the field, we would even go so far as to make a distinction between the authors of German crime and the German people, even though the latter have undoubtedly aided and abetted that crime. If the German Government refused our terms because popular clamour in Germany was not strong enough to force them to yield, we should be entitled to regard both the Government and the people in Germany as in an equal degree criminals. The .Allies ought to agree as quickly as possible on the terms that they will grant. Moreover, we hope that they will publish them to the world. Russia unfortu- nately cannot be consulted, for there is no proper Government to represent her. But it would be absurd to urge that fact as an objection. The Allies will be much better custodians of the interests of Russia than is the so-called Russian Government. On the present reading of the facts Russia can scarcely hope to avoid destruction. Every point that we can gain for her—and if we beat Germany we can gain all the points essential to the welfare of Russia—will be something to the good. The unconditional surrender of Germany is the only safe insurance for the world. The military news of the week encourages us to believe that this splendid insurance can be obtained. To compare with such a result the problematical fruits of a Peace Conference, or of a League of Nations estab- lished before Germany is defeated, is commercial madness, to put it on no higher grounds. Those who talk in and out of season of a League of Nations as a cure for all ills seem to have quite forgotten that the magnificent League of Nations formed by the Allies in this war is performing the precise function—suppressing evil by force—which is to be the culminating duty of the League of Nations, with Germany included, that figures in countless airy visions.
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