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Count Czernin then came to the final principle which he said it was necessary to observe to insure the free and pacific development of the world, namely, economic freedom. He said economic war must absolutely be eliminated from every future arrangement.

Before we conclude peace we must have the positive certainty that our present opponents have relinquished the idea of economic war. These, gentlemen, are the basic principles of the new world order, as they present themselves to my mind, and they are all founded on all-around disarmament.

The question of indemnities which the Entente is always advancing assumes remarkable completion when one considers the devastation their armies have wrought in Galicia, Bukowina, Tyrol, the Isonzo, East Prussia, in Turkish territories, and the German colonies. Does the Entente intend to compensate us for all this, or is it so completely mistaken in its judgment of our psychology that it hopes for a onesided indemnification?

We do not seek strength in big words, but in our glorious armies, the firmness of our alliances, the steadfastness of our people and the wisdom of our war aims. We do not demand a Utopia. We can neither be bent nor destroyed. Conscious

of our power and clear as to what we must attain, we go our ways.

Saying that he had been blamed both at home and in unfriendly countries for plain speaking with regard to the Austro-Hungarian peace terms, Count Czernin proceeded:

In broad outline our program for the reestablishment of order in the world has been laid down in our reply to the Pope's note. It may appear to be inconceivable to any people that the Central Powers desire to make renunciation with respect to military armaments, but the war has produced new facts, conditions, and conceptions which have shaken the foundation

of European politics as they previously existed.

Especially has the idea crumbled which held that Austria-Hungary was a moribund State. It was the dogma of impending dissolution of the monarchy which made our position in Europe difficult. By proving ourselves in this war thoroughly sound, and, at least, equal to the others, we destroyed the hopes that we could be overthrown by force of arms.

Now that this proof has been given, we are in a position simultaneously with our allies to lay aside arms and regulate future conflicts by arbitration.

We have from the beginning stated our aim and adhered to it. But let no one cherish the delusion that this pacific and moderate program of ours can and will hold good forever. If our enemies compel us to continue the war we shall be obliged to revise our program and demand compensation.

I speak for the present moment, because I am convinced that world peace can now come on the basis which I have set forth. If the war, however, continues we reserve for ourselves a free hand. I am absolutely convinced that our position a year hence will be incomparably better than today. But I would consider it a crime to carry on the war for any material or territorial advantages for a single day longer than is necessary for the integrity of the monarchy and our future safety.

If our enemies refuse to listen and compel us to continue this murder, then we reserve the right to revise our terms. I am not very optimistic of the disposition of the Entente to conclude peace by agreement on the above basis. An overwhelming majority of the entire world wants peace by agreement, but some few men are preventing it.

We shall in this case pursue our way with sang froid and steady nerves. We know that we can hold out at the front and at home. Our hour will come, and with it a sure guarantee of the free and peaceful development of Austria-Hun

gary.

The British Viewpoint

The British viewpoint of peace was expressed by former Premier Herbert H. Asquith in an address at Leeds Sept. 26, under the auspices of the War Aims Committee. He described the German reply to the Papal note as teeming with "nebulous and unctuous generalities," but giving no indication that Germany would take any practical steps to open the road to a real and lasting peace. asked:

He

Is there any reason to think that Germany has learned the lesson of the inevitable consequences of international spoliation? Is there in the Chancellor's dispatch or in any recent authoritative declaration of the German Government any indication that it is prepared not only to repeat the crime of '71, but to take any practical steps which alone can open the road to a real and lasting peace?

Is Germany ready to restore what she then took from France? Is she ready to give Belgium complete independence,

political and economic, without fetters or reservations, and with as complete an indemnity as any merely material compensation can provide for the devastation of her territory, the sufferings of her people? A definite reply to these questions would be worth a whole column of pious platitudes.

German Barbarity an Obstacle Alluding to the necessity of destroying Prussian militarism, Mr. Asquith referred to the American revelations of the German machinations in Bucharest as fresh proof of the brutality and callousness with which Germany had waged war. [This exposure is treated elsewhere.] He said that nothing had aroused more worldwide surprise and consternation than the fact that the German Nation applauded with fervor the most barbarous transgressions of the German Government.

It shows [he said] from what unmeasured perils, from what a setback to the whole machinery of civilization mankind has been delivered, now that the Allies have shattered forever the dreams of German hegemony.

War Aims

Passing to the subject of war aims, he said:

We are fighting for two aims, one immediate, the other ulterior. The first is, not the restoration of the status quo, not a revival of what formerly was called the balance of power, but the substitution for the one and the other of an international system under which both great and small States can be assured of a stable foundation and independent development.

I assume, as a matter of course, the evacuation by the enemy of the occupied territories of France and Russia. I have already referred to Alsace-Lorraine and Belgium. But wherever you turn in Central and Eastern Europe you see territorial arrangements which are purely artificial in their origin, which offend the interests and wishes of the populations concerned and which remain seedplots of potential war.

There are the just claims of Italy, Rumania, and Serbia. There is Poland, concerning which, I believe, all our people heartily indorse the wise and generous words of President Wilson. The cases of Greece and the Southern Slavs must also not be forgotten, and what is required is the permanent liquidation of all these dangerous accounts.

Coming to the second aspect of an enduring peace, Mr. Asquith said:

We must banish once for all from our catalogue of maxims the time-worn fal-· lacy that if you wish for peace you must make ready for war.

I am not a sentimentalist, and do not expect the sudden regeneration of mankind, when in the world's war offices the lion will lie down with the lamb and international relations become a perpetual love feast. I fear that even the youngest of us will not live to get more than a distant and imaginative glimpse of that beatific vision, but, speaking not as a Utopian or dreamy idealist, I assert that we are waging not only war for peace but war against war, and for the first time in history we may make an advance to the realization of an ideal, to which great men of action in the past, such, for instance, as Henry IV. of France, who was not visionary but a practical statesman, have been groping their way.

You will not at first, perhaps not for a long time, be able to dispense with coercion, military or economic, against the disloyal and recalcitrant, but we may well hope that the positive law, with its forcible restraints, may gradually recede into the background and sovereign authority be recognized to rest in the common sense of mankind.

It is impossible to believe that this universal upheaval will not leave abiding traces in the industrial and economic worlds. When the storm has passed over must we not, after such common discipline which has spared no class in society, see things that concern our daily lives and our relations to one another in a new and truer perspective than was ever possible before? In the meantime we must keep our powder dry.

Mr. Asquith said that peace could not be found in a cessation of active hostilities, followed by a process of territorial bargaining to be embodied ultimately in paper protocols and pacts and left there at the mercy of a chapter of accidents, which had wisely been called "the Bible of fools." He added:

Still less can you find peace worthy of the name in any arrangement imposed by victor or vanquished which ignores the principles of right and sets at defiance the historic traditions, aspirations, and liberties of the peoples affected. Such socalled treaties contain within themselves their own death warrant and simply provide fertile breeding ground for future

wars.

We have a crucial example of the folly and futility of such a transaction in the treaty of 1871. That act of high-handed, short-sighted violence, against which Europe ought to have protested, is the primary cause of the race in armaments,

which proceeded at an ever-accelerated pace for forty years before the outbreak of this war.

Mr. Asquith said that both Bismarck and von Moltke foresaw the evil conse

quences of the treaty, von Moltke asserting, that Germany must be armed to the teeth for fifty years to keep the provinces won in six months.

America's View Expressed Through the League of
National Unity

President Wilson's attitude toward the German peace agitation, as expressed in his reply to the Pope, was reiterated Oct. 8 at Washington in an address by him at the White House to the newly organized League of National Unity. The President gave his indorsement to the purposes of the league in an address emphasizing the need of team play by the forces of American thought and opinion. He expressed the belief that American public opinion, although understanding the war's causes and principles, needed guidance to remember that the war should end only when Germany was beaten and Germany's rule of autocracy and might superseded by the ideals of democracy. The President gave warning that it should not be forgotten that German success would mean not only prevention of the spread of democracy, but possibly the suppression of that already existing.

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We believe in the wise purpose of the President not to negotiate a peace with any irresponsible and autocratic dynasty.

We approve the action of the National Government in dispatching an expedionary force to the land of Lafayette and Rochambeau. Either we fight the enemy on foreign soil, shoulder to shoulder with comrades in arms, or we fight on our soil, backs against our homes, and alone.

While this war lasts, the cause of the Allies is our cause, their defeat our defeat, and concert of action and unity in spirit between them and us is essential to final victory. We therefore deprecate the exaggeration of old national prejudicesoften stimulated by German propagandaand nothing is more important than the clear understanding that those who in this crisis attack our present allies, attack America.

We are organized in the interests of a national accord that rises high above any previous division of party, race, creed, and circumstance.

We believe that this is the critical and fateful hour for America and for civilization. To lose now is to lose for many generations. The peril is great and requires our highest endeavors. If defeat comes to us through any weakness, Germany, whose purposes for worldwide dominion are now revealed, might draw to itself, as a magnet does the filings, the residuum of world power, and this would affect the standing and the independence of America.

We not only accept but heartily approve the decision reached by the President and Congress of the United States to declare war against the common enemy of the free nations, and as loyal citizens of the United States we pledge to the President and the Government our undivided support to the very end.

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A. Barrett, President Farmers' Educational and Co-operative Union of America, and George Pope, President National

Association of Manufacturers. Director,
Ralph M. Easley, Chairman National
Civic Federation.

Premier Painlevé on Alsace-Lorraine and the Only Peace
France Will Accept

The following official declaration in the Chamber on Sept. 18, representing the views of the French Government, expresses the minimum aims of France and discloses the irreconcilable attitude of France and Germany with respect to Alsace-Lorraine. The statements on this subject made in the Reichstag by the German Chancellor and Foreign Minister, as given elsewhere, are in direct opposition to those of France, making Alsace-Lorraine the present storm centre of the issues of the war. M. Painlevé said:

No enemy manoeuvre, no individual

weaknesses can turn France from her unshakable determination. That determination she draws from the purest traditions of our race-those generous principles of liberty which the Revolution sowed among the peoples and which today bring together the civilized universe against German imperialism. If France pursues this war it is neither for conquest nor vengeance. It is to defend her own liberty, her independence, and at the same time the liberty and independence of the world. Her claims are those of right; they are even independent of the issue of battles. She proclaimed them solemnly in 1871 when she was beaten. She proclaims them today when she is making the aggressor feel the weight of her arms.

The disannexation of Alsace-Lorraine, reparation for the damage and ruin wrought by the enemy, and a peace which shall not be a peace of constraint or violence, containing in itself the germ of future wars, but a just peace, in which no people, whether strong or weak, shall be oppressed, a peace in which effective guarantees shall protect the society of nations against all aggression on the part of one among them-these are the noble war aims of France, if one can speak of war aims when it is a question of a nation which, during forty-four years, despite her open wounds, has done everything in order to spare humanity the horrors of

war.

As long as these aims are not reached France will continue to fight. To prolong the war one day more than necessary would indeed be to commit the greatest crime in history, but to stop it a day too

soon would be to deliver France into the
most degrading servitude, to a moral and
material misery from which nothing would
ever deliver her.

That is what each soldier in our
trenches, each worker, each peasant in his
factory or in his furrow, knows. It is
that which causes the indissoluble union
of the country through all its trials; it is
that which is the secret of that discipline
in liberty which victoriously combats the
ferocious brutality of German discipline.
This discipline, springing from reason and
mutual confidence, previous Governments
have maintained for three years of war,
and the present Government has no con-
ception of any other.

But it is not only the will of the country that must be directed to this single aim of the war. We must direct to it also all our material forces. National defense is an entity which is not to be split up into fragments. Men, munitions, supply, transport, are all problems to which isolated solutions cannot be supplied, for they are interdependent. We can only cope with them by means of a vast effort of co-ordination and synthesis which, comparing the various needs and possibilities, will be able to secure the increase of production, the imposition of indispensable restrictions, the stoppage of speculation and of the rise in prices by putting at the disposal of the nation herself all the resources which she commands.

It is a difficult program that the Government will set itself to carry out, making private interests yield to the general interest, but it is aware of the fact that it is the nation itself in its conscious spirit of patriotism that can make the effort which shall count for most when the safety of the country is at stake. Who, then, would hesitate to impose on himself the necessary sacrifices, trying enough, but so light compared with the sufferings of our soldiers?

This necessary co-ordination of the forces of the country is no less imperative between the Allies, fighting together yesterday or today, brought together by the same holy cause. It is necessary that they act as though they constituted a single nation, a single army, and a single front for the defeat of the one would be the defeat of all, just as the victory of the one will be the victory of all. All must equally contribute of their men, their arms, and their money. On this condition

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only the superiority of their resources, still too scattered, will become crushing. Such a policy will allow France, without completely exhausting herself, to meet at once her economic needs and guard her frontiers. Since August, 1914, the French Army has been the invincible shield of civilization. Her blood has been shed in torrents. It is necessary for the happy issue of the war that she should keep to the end the plenitude of her vigor.

The problems of war, however absorbing they may be, ought not to make us unmindful of after-war problems which otherwise might take us by surprise. The period which will follow the conclusion of hostilities must be prepared for a long while in advance, and with as much minute care as mobilization itself. To restore the reconquered districts; to prepare an extensive program of public works which will multiply our industrial forces

and regulate the return to normal life by avoiding crises of unemployment for the demobilized men; greatly to increase the production and credit of France; to associate the nation in the working of new industries; to prepare for the transformation to peace conditions of munition factories; to establish our fiscal system on just, bold, and well-thought-out taxes; to carry out loyally the recent reforms introduced into the relations between workmen and employers, so as to adapt these to practical conditions and to make them part of our social life-these are some of the dominating ideas which should guide the development of our ardent democracy. When, after these hard years of suffering, our soldiers return to their homes, to these conquerors who will have made right triumph among the nations, no one will grudge either gratitude or justice.

Written on Going Into Action

By ERNEST GARSIDE BLACK

[The author is one of the many Canadian college men at the front in France. He is a graduate of McMaster University, Toronto.]

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