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The line of arrows above the solid line shows the advance made by French and American troops between Reims and Verdun.

LENS

President's statesmanship none of them are quite so enthusiastic as the editor of the Louisville Courier-Journal (Dem.), who writes:

"In a few words the hypocrisy of the Central Powers is exposed and left to the scorn of humanity, and the whole field of attempted negotiation is so cleared of ambuscade and pitfall and stealthy shelter that it becomes a vast sunny plain where the nations must stand with their pretensions and aims naked utterly."

Critics of the Wilson reply are carefully answered by the Democratic New York World and independent Newark News. The World points out that, owing to differences of wording and

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or self-exposure as arch hypocrites." The Detroit Free Press (Ind.) praises the President's reply as "brief, clear, pungent, and comprehensive." The Chicago Tribune (Rep.), frequently a critic of the President, is now enthusiastic over the "masterly skill with which he parried the German thrust," or, as the Nashville Tennessean (Dem.) more picturesquely puts it, "with a keen, glittering sword of justice and right the President has foiled the would-be cunning maneuver of the Hun and has shivered the latter's blade to the very hilt." The St. Paul Pioneer Press (Rep.) agrees that "the Hun Government has been outmaneuvered," and the Minneapolis Tribune (Ind.) is quite certain that the German Chancellor will not be able to answer the President's questions "without loss no matter which horn of the dilemma he elects to seize." The same point is made by The Globe (Dem.) and The Post (Dem.), of Boston, while the Springfield Republican (Ind.) points out what a searching test the President's questions are of the good faith of the German Government. The Boston Record and the St. Louis Republic (Dem.) both consider the President's peace note a subtly worded demand for surrender. The New York Evening Post (Ind.) says the President is simply serving notice on the adversary that he will not strike if an honest surrender is intended, but otherwise

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In the Senate Mr. Borah, of Idaho, a Republican, finds the President's note "well designed to clarify a very involved situation." While such prominent Senators as Messrs. Reed (Dem., Mo.), Hitchcock (Dem., Neb.), Overman (Dem., N. C.), and Thomas (Dem., Col.) applaud the

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THE GAIN BETWEEN CAMBRAI AND ST. QUENTIN. After having been in sight of Cambrai for nearly four years, British and French troops captured the city, as shown in the shaded section of the map, which records the direction of their continuing drive toward the Belgian border.

circumstances, the Austrian and German proposals called for wholly different answers. The German note contained a trap in which The World sees the German rather than the United States Government now caught. Berlin, we are told, knows full well that radical opinion in France, Italy, and Great Britain would never be satisfied with an abrupt and curt dismissal of the Chancellor's proposition. A refusal by the President to consider any communication from Germany would have "meant playing into the hands of the Junker and Pan-German elements, which are trying to hold the German people together for another winter of war by solemn warnings that the Allies are determined to dismember and destroy the German nation." It would further have meant "creating a new opportunity for the German propaganda to work upon the credulity of British, French, and Italian labor, which has been held in line largely by the President's

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place in the situation since that address? Would some of the
fourteen points not need amendment? Moreover, are not many
of them so phrased that a formal acceptance of them would
leave many issues open for dispute and easily lead to a renew
of hostilities? ..

"If the achievements of the world's proper purpose in war demands, as it does, an unconditional surrender of a tr cruel, and untrustworthy foe, why not say so now and frank in our language as we ask him to be in his?"

Mr. Gifford Pinchot points out that "discussion weakens the attack far more than the defense-weal more than our enemies." The Chicago Evening Po the note "certainly a source of danger for the future thinks, if the rulers of Germany "can talk and ser will have a chance to string their people along til and compels the dying away of Foch's mere This note, the Boston Transcript thinks, "falls of popular expectation, and its "tone and tern memories of the sterile Lusitania series." all to be numbered among the President's! The Democratic New Orleans Times-Picayun note as it stands will impress millions on both as a modification, even in some sense a reta and straightforward position which he took September 28." The Memphis Commer in Tennessee also condemns the idea of outlaw and a murderer except on an 'un basis." In the Far West vo find the (Ind.) regretting "that the ide more decisive," and the De is very much afraid that Pr beginning "of diplomatic cor and Berlin regarding construct enemy time to mend the brea

President Wilson's diploma "nimble and adroit, worthy because his note "succinctly either compel a statement of ment of the assertion th

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ed States will be asked to join in a matter well worth considering ise course."

natural kindly sentiments of our own ls, observes the Philadelphia Inquirer, I that "we are not treating with civilized ," and if we give the Hun a dose of his own egin to whimper for salvation, for "every and the German is particularly cowardly when antage." A semiofficial statement on German iven by Mr. Jules Cambon, the former French t Washington and one of the foremost figures in s, who is quoted in an Associated Press dispatch is saying:

moment the Central Empires address themselves, to . Wilson to obtain an armistice and begin negotiations e the German armies renew the horrors they have been ting in all the occupied territories.

. Quentin, Lens, Cambrai, Douai are burned, mined, ruined. ing formerly been Prefect of the Department of the North, I w what this new terror means to the regions devastated by the rman armies. These represent the richest territory of France, here the largest French industrial establishments are located. All these centers have a glorious past. They are filled with splendid monuments and museums and libraries of priceless treasures. In Cambrai stands the tomb of the illustrious Fénelon.

"One can not view without profound sadness all the ruins the German invaders are leaving behind them-ruins that represent not only material losses, but also moral losses.

"The conduct of the German armies is an outrage to civilization and humanity."

The Buffalo Express notes that the city of St. Quentin had a population of 56,000 when the war began, and when the French recovered the place they found not one man, woman, or child to be rescued. Even the aged, the infants, and the invalids had been removed or were dead. The city is badly damaged and homes have been looted of everything valuable where they have not been destroyed. Speaking of this despicable deed, the Providence Journal says that organized wickedness sums up the whole German four-year campaign, and "everything that is repellent in the primitive savage is made more repellent by the trained ingenuity of the veneered barbarian." The Chicago Post urges that the Allied Council in a note to "his Satanic Majesty of Potsdam," solemnly pledge themselves that for every city hereafter destroyed by his "retreating imps" a city of like size in Germany will be burned to ashes-beginning preferably with Berlin. The Post avers that such reprisal is "sanctioned by international law," and is the only kind of language that the "blond, beast" will understand or heed. The New York Sun proposes a table of approximately equivalent retributive values as follows:

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"We have no doubt that this table can be improved in detail and extended in geographical application. Perhaps the method of prevention and protection which it suggests can be rendered most effective, not by promising to destroy the equivalent German city, but by promising to hold it and its inhabitants to convict labor until it has paid the last pfennig of its nation's shameful debt for the destruction of the French or Belgian city set against it in the foregoing list.

"Which plan of reprisal would seem more dreadful to Hunnish apprehensions? We confess we don't know."

influence, and to renew the old argument that the war goes on only because of the inexorable greed of capitalism and commercialism." But now the burden of proof is upon Prussian autocracy "both at home and abroad; unless it is prepared to surrender on President Wilson's terms, its peace offensive has failed as signally as its military offensive."

The Newark News after due reflection is convinced that most Americans realize that the President's note is "stronger and more confounding than a brusk dismissal of the Chancellor's proposal would have been; they understand that it has checkmated the Kaiser's plan of appealing to the German people with a claim that he has honestly tried to make peace and that responsibility for the prolongation of the war rests upon the wicked enemy." The very frequency of the criticism that the note should have been more peremptory shows, however, what the sentiment of this country is. The President's demands "are a minimum; if Germany wants to know what the American attitude is she is answered by the people directly." The News would quiet the fears of those who think that compliance with the President's suggestions would enable Germany to withdraw to safety great masses of troops and large stores of munitions. It believes that his plan is not to let Germany retire unmolested from invaded territory, but to refrain from suggesting an armistice until Germany has actually evacuated it, and

"How she is going to evacuate that territory is Germany's problem, for the Entente armies will not let up harassing and hammering her while she is going out, or abate their efforts to destroy the German armies and capture their munitions and supplies in the process. Let her get out if she can; but not until she has got out will we take an armistice under consideration."

In both Paris and London, according to correspondents for New York dailies and the Associated Press, the President's note was considered clever, logical, and effective. The London Westminster Gazette says "it fulfils the hopes and expectations of the Allies in Europe." An official statement has announced the British Foreign Office's approval. The popular verdict in Paris, according to one dispatch, is "that the note could not be improved upon," and the Journal des Débats says:

"The Vienna and Berlin Cabinets sought to place the United States before a dilemma-either to accept the armistice, which would give Germany time to reconstitute her harassed troops, or to evoke in Germany, by a refusal of the offer of peace, a patriotic movement which would rally round the new Government the whole nation, including the Socialists. President Wilson has not allowed himself to be caught in this dilemma. He demanded enlightenment, and lays down a preliminary condition. President Wilson's last question strikes at the very heart of the German Government. It is a blow in the Kaiser's face."

The only suggestion of dissent from any representative of the Allies is found by a Washington correspondent of the New York World in a statement given to the press in Washington by Sir Eric Geddes, First Lord of the British Admiralty, who said: "We can not win by talking of peace. To get us all talking of peace is just what Germany wants.

"The Allied armies and Allied navies will bring peace. the Kaiser talk while Foch shoots."

Let

That Foch has been shooting to more advantage than the Kaiser has been talking is shown by the smashing of the Germans' great defense-line in the Cambrai region and the relentless pressure in the Champagne sector, both indicated on the maps on the preceding page.

The program of world peace which the German Chancellor must now unequivocally accept or reject was thus stated by President Wilson in his address to Congress on January 8 last:

1. Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at, after which there shall be no private international undertakings of any kind, but diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in the public view.

2. Absolute freedom of navigation upon the seas outside territorial waters, alike in peace and in war, except as the seas may be closed in whole or in part by international action for the enforcement of international

Covenants.

3. The removal, so far as possible, of all economic barriers and the

establishment of an equality of trade conditions among all the nations consenting to the peace and associating themselves for its maintenance. 4. Adequate guaranties given and taken that national armaments will be reduced to the lowest point consistent with domestic safety. 5. Free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims, based upon a strict observance of the principle that in determining such questions of sovereignty the interests of the population concerned must have equal weight with the equitable claims of the Government whose title is to be determined.

6. The evacuation of all Russian territory, and such settlement of all questions affecting Russia as will secure the best and freest cooperation of the other nations of the world in obtaining for her an unhampered and unembarrassed opportunity for the independent determination of her own political development and national policy, and assure her of a sincere welcome into the society of free nations under institutions of her own choosing; and more than a welcome assistance also of every kind that she may need and may herself desire. The treatment accorded Russia by her sister nations will be the acid test of their good-will, of their comprehension of her needs as distinguished from their own interests, and of their intelligent and unselfish sympathy.

7. Belgium, the whole world will agree, must be evacuated and restored without any attempt to limit the sovereignty which she enjoys in common with all other free nations. No other single act will serve as this will serve to restore confidence among the nations in the laws which they themselves set and determined for the government of their relations with one another. Without this healing act the whole structure and validity of international law is forever impaired.

8. All French territory should be freed and the invaded portions restored, and the wrong done to France by Prussia in 1871 in the matter of Alsace-Lorraine, which has unsettled the peace of the world for nearly fifty years, should be righted in order that peace may once more be made secure in the interest of all.

9. A readjustment of the frontiers of Italy should be effected along clearly recognizable lines of nationality.

10. The peoples of Austria-Hungary, whose place among the nations we wish to see safeguarded and assured, should be accorded the freest opportunity of autonomous development.

11. Roumania, Servia, and Montenegro should be evacuated, occupied territories restored; Servia accorded free and secure access to the sea, and the relations of the several Balkan States to one another determined by friendly counsel along historically established lines of allegiance and nationality; the international guaranties of the political and economic independence and territorial integrity of the several Balkan States should be entered into.

12. The Turkish portions of the present Ottoman Empire should be assured a secure sovereignty, but the other nationalities which are now under Turkish rule should be assured an undoubted security of life and an absolutely unmolested opportunity of autonomous development; and the Dardanelles should, be permanently opened as a free passage to the ships and commerce of all nations under international guaranties.

13. An independent Polish state should be erected which should include the territories inhabited by indisputably Polish populations which should be assured a free and assured access to the sea, and whose political and economic independence and territorial integrity should be guaranteed by international covenant.

14. A general association of nations must be formed under specific covenants for the purpose of affording mutual guaranties of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike.

I

TO PUNISH HUN "FRIGHTFULNESS NSTEAD OF AWAKENING TERROR, it is evident from a reading of the American press that Germany only arouses a fierce desire for revenge by the ruin and pillage that blacken the line of her retreat. "Ruthlessness is a blade of two edges," remarks the Chicago Tribune, and for every act of destruction avoidable in the ordinary progress of warfare Germany must pay. If Germany surrenders, there must be indemnity, and "if the war goes over the Rhine, there must be destruction in kind." This thought is voiced by sundry other journals, including the Washington Post, which tells us that "if the Allies will give notice that the destruction of Brussels will mean the destruction of Berlin, and then faithfully execute their threat, the insensate Germans, from Junker to peasant, will know and remember for all time to come that civilization will surely punish them for crime." We should know well enough by this time, says the Spokane Spokesman-Review, that it is useless to appeal to the enemy's sense of decency and right. He must be controlled by fear, and now that he is beginning to fear the invasion of his home soil, he should be given to understand that strict retribution will be exacted for acts of vandalism. The Baltimore Sun recalls that in his retirement in 1917 Hindenburg made "as complete a desert of the abandoned terrane as could be found anywhere on the face of the earth,” and reports now coming from France and Flanders indicate there has been no change in the "policy of incendiarism and desolating cruelty." The Seattle Times notes that German leaders openly gloat over the fact that the Empire has been spared the suffering and the losses inflicted by its armies upon

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France, Belgium, Servia, Poland, and Roumania, and it maintains that "to make peace before Germany has experienced a measure of the wanton suffering it now plans to inflict upon Belgium and the portion of northern France which it still holds, but which it will be forced to relinquish, would be a hideous travesty on justice." The Charleston American, which before our entry into the war was never suspected of being pro-Ally, thinks that a warning of reprisal to Germany by the Allies would be "somewhat curious," for

"If it be, as we are led to believe, the determination of the Allies to rend Germany in a thousand tatters, what is the meaning of this warning, which likewise implies an agreement; for surely if Germany desist in her course the meaning of the note must be that the Allies will be equally gentle and considerate, and all the tremendous destruction which Germany has already committed will be unavenged.

"It is stated that the United States will be asked to join in these remonstrances. It is a matter well worth considering whether after all this is a wise course."

Much as it revolts the natural kindly sentiments of our own people to exact reprisals, observes the Philadelphia Inquirer, it must be remembered that we are not treating with civilized men, but with brutes," and if we give the Hun a dose of his own medicine he will begin to whimper for salvation, for "every brute is a coward, and the German is particularly cowardly when he is at a disadvantage." A semiofficial statement on German wantonness is given by Mr. Jules Cambon, the former French Ambassador at Washington and one of the foremost figures in French affairs, who is quoted in an Associated Press dispatch from Paris as saying:

"At the moment the Central Empires address themselves, to . President Wilson to obtain an armistice and begin negotiations for peace the German armies renew the horrors they have been committing in all the occupied territories.

"St. Quentin, Lens, Cambrai, Douai are burned, mined, ruined. Having formerly been Prefect of the Department of the North, I know what this new terror means to the regions devastated by the German armies. These represent the richest territory of France, where the largest French industrial establishments are located. All these centers have a glorious past. They are filled with splendid monuments and museums and libraries of priceless treasures. In Cambrai stands the tomb of the illustrious Fénelon.

"One can not view without profound sadness all the ruins the German invaders are leaving behind them-ruins that represent not only material losses, but also moral losses.

"The conduct of the German armies is an outrage to civilization and humanity."

The Buffalo Express notes that the city of St. Quentin had a population of 56,000 when the war began, and when the French recovered the place they found not one man, woman, or child to be rescued. Even the aged, the infants, and the invalids had been removed or were dead. The city is badly damaged and homes have been looted of everything valuable where they have not been destroyed. Speaking of this despicable deed, the Providence Journal says that organized wickedness sums up the whole German four-year campaign, and "everything that is repellent in the primitive savage is made more repellent by the trained ingenuity of the veneered barbarian." The Chicago Post urges that the Allied Council in a note to "his Satanic Majesty of Potsdam," solemnly pledge themselves that for every city hereafter destroyed by his "retreating imps" a city of like size in Germany will be burned to ashes-beginning preferably with Berlin. The Post avers that such reprisal is "sanctioned by international law," and is the only kind of language that the "blond beast" will understand or heed. The New York Sun proposes a table of approximately equivalent retributive values as follows:

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"We have no doubt that this table can be improved in detail and extended in geographical application. Perhaps the method of prevention and protection which it suggests can be rendered most effective, not by promising to destroy the equivalent German city, but by promising to hold it and its inhabitants to convict labor until it has paid the last pfennig of its nation's shameful debt for the destruction of the French or Belgian city set against it in the foregoing list.

"Which plan of reprisal would seem more dreadful to Hunnish apprehensions? We confess we don't know."

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