CHAPTER XXVI

PRESIDENT WILSON AND PEACE

Once the Kaiser said to me, "I wish I had as much power as your President. He has far more power than I have."

What would the Kaiser say of the power and prestige now enjoyed by the President of the United States?

At first blush it seems almost ridiculous for us to rush to war shouting against autocracy while the man with the greatest power the world has ever seen announces to the world that we fight "to make the world safe for Democracy."

Charles I must turn enviously in his grave when his spirit sees the obedient Parliament of Washington; and a line of fallen Kings, from Charles to Nicky Romanoff, must wish that they had had the opportunity to attend lectures at Princeton University where our President, Woodrow Wilson, once held forth on the science of government.

But it is characteristic of the high intelligence of our people that we have recognised that war to be waged effectively must be directed by one head. We know that after the war we shall be able to recover all the powers delegated to the President. We have gained by our temporary surrender all the efficiency of autocracy and risked none of its dangers, and have simply followed the custom of the free German tribes which elected a leader for war and gave him a power never given the chiefs in time of peace.

How much more enduring is our Government! Since the war the government cabinets of England have twice changed radically, that of France five times, and Italy very frequently indeed. Few realise that our Constitution is the oldest in the world to-day. Since its adoption the government of every land in some material

## particular has changed many times, France, for instance, from

King and Republic, then to citizen kingship, then to Republic, then to Empire, and finally to Republic. In England the form has remained the same, but the power passed, in 1830, with the passage of the Reform Bill, from nobles to commoners, as great a revolution as any in France.

And I admire the very inaccessibility of President Wilson. He does not waste time on non-essentials, on useless polite conversation or pointless discussion. This may add to his enemies but makes for efficiency.

When I saw the President on one occasion about German affairs we talked for four and a quarter hours without intermission. In that period he extracted from me all the information he required at the time. He is a wonderful man to have at the head of our nation in war or peace.

Gradually the splendid peace message of our President (Jan. 8, 1918) will sink into the consciousness of the German people.

There are liberal and reasonable men among them striving for peace and for disarmament.

In January of 1917, just at the moment when the military autocracy brought on war with America by their sudden announcement of ruthless submarine warfare, the liberals of Germany were preparing to co-operate with our President in the efforts that he was then making for peace.

A Socialist member of the Reichstag, a man whose name is known throughout the world, wrote at that time two articles to be used in the effort for peace, and I print them in order that those outside of Germany may obtain a glimpse of the mind of one of the leading Socialists of that country. These articles have never before been published.

I feel that now when we are at war with Germany perhaps it would cause embarrassment to this man should I publish his name. In a country where a man may be sent to jail for speaking without respect of some act of the Kaiser's ancestors, committed more than four hundred years ago, it is dangerous for any German to put his name to utterances which might not march with the wishes of despotic Germany.

It has always been the desire of the Kaiser's government to draw the Allies into a peace conference with the hope of detaching some of the Allies from their combination. Perhaps these articles, although written by a Socialist, were part of a clever governmental peace propaganda to which the majority Socialists so readily lent themselves during the year 1917. But on the other hand I think these articles represent the sincere real expression of the writer who is still a member of the Minority or Haase faction of the German Socialist Party. Though written a year ago they discuss points still unsolved and which must come before the peace conference that settles the war:

HOW AMERICA CAN HELP EUROPE.

BY ---- ----, MEMBER OF THE REICHSTAG

The immediate reply of the Central Powers to President Wilson's note (Dec., 1916) has been a polite refusal to indicate, beyond some generalities open to the blame of ambiguity, in a clear way what their demands of peace would be. It has been followed by their note to the neutrals of the 11th of January, which also avoids giving a distinct delineation of their demands. The Central Powers maintain that only a peace conference of the belligerents themselves would be the proper place to bring forth the respective peace conditions, and they state they would produce theirs when once the conference has met. Putting aside every insinuation of motives one cannot help being reminded by this of the attitude of the Central Powers during the fateful twelve days of July-August, 1914, when they refused any outside mediation and insisted on direct conversations between Russia and Austria, whilst the punitive military expedition of the latter against Servia had to take its course. In so far their suggestion would not augur well for the execution.

The Entente Allies, on their side, have been somewhat more explicit. Their answer to President Wilson includes the delineation of demands that certainly are open to criticism, but just for this call for a reply or even compel it. At the time these lines are written only newspaper comments have so far come forward, and it is not necessary to dwell upon these. Nor does it seem appropriate to anticipate the reply of the Chancellor, which in some form or other will surely be given in the course of the next weeks. What matters is that there is a programme given for discussion and we are able to scrutinise its nature and bearing.

The demands explicitly or implicitly contained in the note of the Allies can be summarised under five heads, viz.:

1. Restitution of occupied territory to its former political community,

2. Reparation for inflicted material and moral wrongs,

3. Territorial changes motivated by alleged

a. rights of nationality,

b. need for freeing suppressed or protecting consistently maltreated nationalities,

4. Reform of International Law,

5. National and international treaties for the protection of inland and maritime boundaries.

Of these the demands under 1 and 2 are certainly in their principle quite reasonable, and if it comes to actual and exact formulation are apt to lead to a fair agreement.

The demands under 3 are partly on principle also unobjectionable, whilst some, as e.g., the cession of the Polish provinces of Prussia to a Polish state under Russian tutelage or the cession of the European vilayets of Turkey to Russia or some newly created community under Russian tutelage, can hardly be supported by reasonable argument in the face of the fact that they could only be carried out by dictation after a complete and crushing victory of the Allies over the Central Powers. That is to say, after a prolonged war more murderous and more embittered than that behind us. It is to be expected that public discussion will in regard to demands of this nature create an opinion resulting in their reduction if not disappearance. What is reasonable in them falls either under number 3, letter "a," or under numbers 4 and 5.

Now as regards the demands under 4 and 5, the settlement of most of them belongs rightly to an International Conference of all the nations. In their good and efficient regulation all are interested. They are also of the greatest concern to the future of mankind as a whole. The demands or questions can as regards their general character also be divided under three other heads, viz.:

Firstly, questions of justice to nations or nationalities as political or sociological entities,

Secondly, questions of the most expedient settlement of disputes between individual Powers or groups of such where no fundamental principles of nationality or similar rights are concerned, and

Thirdly, questions which concern all the nations through their common interest in general security and protection against the disturbance of international peace and traffic.

Both the Allies and the Central Powers agree to the idea of settling these latter questions in a better way than before; i.e., by an International League of the Nations to enforce peace. But both want the creation of this League to be settled after the war. It can, however, with good reason be upheld that there is in this a fault against logic which would have to be paid dearly by them as well as by the neutral world. Both base a number of their demands on the necessity of protecting themselves against renewed onslaughts by their opponents. Now such protection might be a necessary thing under the present state of an International Law which has been outraged and

## partly been made inane by themselves and has

## partly turned out not to meet the conditions of

modern warfare as they result from the modern weapons of destruction. But it would be made unnecessary or its requirements be greatly reduced if the League of the Nations, such as is in principle accepted by them, did already exist or had its rules and regulations already laid down in detail. Is it reasonable to allow this contradiction to cause now innumerable deaths and mutilations of human beings and unbounded destruction of material wealth instead of seeking means to dissolve it as early as possible? Ought not all our wits be exerted to find this earlier solution?

There are within the means of the neutrals, if

## acting together, two ways to bring the war to an

earlier end than that to be expected from the free decision of the belligerents. The one is to drop all considerations of neutrality such as at present regarded and, without directly supporting the one section to the detriment of the other, withdraw from both of them all supplies in food, raw material, half and wholly manufactured goods, not minding which section would by this be more damaged than its opponents. In fact, it would most likely be a decidedly unneutral measure against the one section which now benefits more than the other by these supplies, and because of this and from other reasons there is little probability that it would find general acceptance. The other way is to reduce the justification of the continuation of the war by minimising the objects for which it is led in the belief of the great masses of the people engaged as much as in the eyes of the outside world.

Both belligerents, to say it again, put in the first line of their requirements security against renewed attacks, protection against the continuation of the insecurity of peace. Both admit that the proposed League of the Nations has become a necessity; both admit that it might indeed protect mankind against new wars and a state of incessantly endangered peace. Why then wait and let the disaster go on instead of proceeding at once to lay the foundation of this League?

The step is not so impossible as it might appear. Supposing one neutral state took the matter in hand and, after having ascertained the consent of the other neutrals or at least a majority of them--which it is almost sure to obtain--would invite all the nations, the belligerents included, to a conference or a congress at a neutral place for the discussion and the arrangement of the principles and rules of the proposed League of the Nations. Would the belligerent nations refuse to send their delegates to such a conference? Could they do it without damaging their case before the world of the neutrals and the masses of their own people? It is most improbable that they would do such a thing. And even if they did they would not by this put the conference to naught. It would be there and would give palpable substance to an idea which until now lived, in spite of great and most ingenuous work spent on it, politically only in the sphere of lofty speculation or projects.

And the conference could do more. Starting from the maxim which finds such impressive accentuation in President Wilson's note that war in general must not, and the present war in particular can not, be regarded as the private affair of the individual states that engage in it, the conference could also take into consideration some questions of consequence connected with the present war. It could, e.g., whilst laying the foundations for the security of countries against wilful attacks lay down opinions about the just settlement of disputed questions of nationality and the liberation of nations or part of such from allegiance to a state or empire of different or mixed nationalities. It seems to become a necessity to make clear whether a Power or coalition of such can be justified to put in the list of their war aims the liberation of nationalities without sufficient proof that the latter all want to sever their connection with the state or empire to which they just belong.

The Tcheques in Austria and the Finns in Russia strive for their full autonomy within these empires, but they have very little shown of a desire to become a separate state. An opinion that wars for abstruse benefits never asked for can under no circumstances be regarded as liberation wars would wrong nobody because it would apply to all, but it may contribute much to have designs given up which otherwise would uselessly cause bloodshed and prolonged enmities.

The conference would also be justified in taking measures to procure an impartial expert opinion on the origin and the legal conduct of the war and the general principles of national and international right involved.

If the conference would invite neutral experts in international law of general renown to investigate the questions indicated above and draw up reports it would not by this offend in the smallest degree against the requirements of impartiality. But the reports could, if based on careful examination and considerately worded, contribute very much to soften the excited minds in the countries engaged and facilitate the preliminaries of a genuine peace.

There are, no doubt, all sorts of objections that could be raised against this suggestion. But they can be met satisfactorily if the matter is taken up in earnest and with practical mind. The principal difficulty to overcome is _time_; no time must be wasted by research in far-fetched details. It is a comparatively short list of pertinent questions which would have to be answered, and the materials of their examination are already at hand in the declarations and documentary publications of the different governments themselves which want to be verified by juxtaposition with the corresponding publications of the other side and to be scrutinised upon their intrinsic significance. Works of conscientious legists and historians that could serve as specimens are not missing. But they are occasioned by private enterprise and express opinions not always in the measured language that would alone fit the purpose here in view.

This purpose is to direct the minds of the greatest possible number of people in the affected countries to such way of regarding the questions of the war and to such comprehension of the feeling of the other side as are the necessary conditions of a sane and sober appreciation of the nature and the possibilities of a reasonable peace. The present feeling in these sections of the public which form public opinion in this country as in England and in France, is as full of bitterness as can be. A cure is badly wanted, but it does not proceed automatically. Weariness of the war is there, but it is counteracted partly by the manifold incidents of the war itself, by the appetites it has awakened, by the mutual distrust it has created.

It might be objected that one can hardly expect a number of even neutral experts to come to a concerted opinion on these points. But it would be of little consequence if the experts, instead of agreeing on a common report, would publish majority and minority reports. What matters is that opinions of qualified experts are at all drawn up and published, so that discussion is as much as possible free from the effects of the biased speeches of interested statesmen and other politicians and their press. The report or reports would also be of use when an armistice at least had been agreed upon and a conference for the conclusion of a peace is sitting. And even if the work of the invited experts should take more time than the conclusion of the peace itself, the reports might still be of considerable value. For what matters is not only that a peace is come to but also that the nations should afterward possess authoritative impartial opinions on the main questions of consequence connected with the origin and the conduct of the war. For such opinions would educate the poisoned minds to an objective and argumentative discussion of the means to prevent a repetition of the present disaster.

Only those who live in the affected countries can be aware how great the need is for providing the general public with unbiased authoritative expositions of these questions.

Finally the conference could and should also discuss in a pertinent way the question of _disarmament_. This question has to-day reached a stage much beyond that of mere desirability. It is now a question of commanding necessity, one can justly say of life and death of the reached stage of civilisation. Not pious wishes or theoretical expositions will in regard to it now suffice. We must have practical proposals, proposals of a scheme to put disarmament into practice and proposals of the means to induce the different states to accept the scheme and to carry it out.

It is a big and pretentious programme here suggested, the first to be decided by breaks with the old principle of non-interference in state affairs. But the times are so exceptional that extraordinary measures cannot be shunned. If one sees two lads fight each other with their fists or even sticks one may well say, "Let them first fight it out and then we shall see to bring them to reason." But if they stand on board a ship and, mad with rage, and, without interruption and unremittingly, throw incendiary matter at each other you would rather stop them before the ship is in flames. Under other conditions it might be the right thing to convoke a conference to be held after the war is over. As it is now, reason would demand not to adjourn the term to that juncture. This is not the place to adjudicate responsibilities. Suffice it to say that the present aspect of the conflict is the worst since its beginnings and threatens aggravations of its horrors.

Of all the neutrals none is more predestined to take the initiative in this grave matter than the United States of America, by their great power, by their geographical position, by the ethnological composition of their citizens and last, but not least, by their historical traditions they before all are called to act. The small European nations are already, as it were, too much under the fire around them to be so free in their action as is the government of the giant republic on the western hemisphere. But that they would with the greatest readiness join in the convocation of a conference for the settlement of at least the two first of the described subjects is sure beyond any doubt.

The leader in the arrangement of this conference is, in my opinion, the least objectionable, and at the same time it is the most promising help that in the present appallingly entangled situation America can give Europe. The Old World is poisoned. The virus of the most irrational hatred of its component sections against each other, inoculated into them by all sorts of false leaders of opinion, eats deeper and deeper and threatens to mortify all the roots of a wholesome life. May the United States of America help a disunited Europe to find the way out of the deadly miasmatic jungle into which it has lost itself.

THE HELPLESSNESS OF EUROPE

BY ---- ----, MEMBER OF THE REICHSTAG

Europe is in the position of a wanderer who has gone astray into a swamp. In vain he labours to regain firm ground. The more frantically he struggles the surer he is to become submerged. Like an infant child he is unable to help himself. Help must come from people outside the swamp.

We are now in the third year of the biggest, the most fratricidal and the most hopeless war the world has ever seen. It is hopeless in so far as on the one side none of the two coalitions is likely to be in a visible time as much the victor over the other that it can dictate it its own terms, and as on the other side there is no common basis to be seen for a sensible compromise. It is not the extravagance of demands that forms an insuperable barrier for peace. Extravagant terms of peace have indeed been formulated by unauthorised persons or groups but they have nowhere received the sanctioning stamp of the responsible governments. The latter prefer rather to shine by the moderation of their demands, at least as far as territory is concerned. But it is just this apparent moderation that makes peace such an almost insoluble problem.

Far behind this moderation in regard to territorial demands looms the desire to destroy the opponents' chances of political predominance. The war is, for the present at least, in the first instance a struggle about the supremacy in Europe. And this perhaps more in a negative sense than otherwise. Jingoes are, of course, everywhere in high and low quarters, but it is very doubtful whether one of the responsible heads of the belligerent nations pursues for himself or his nation seriously and consistently what might be called the mastery of Europe. All are, however, dead against the idea that this mastery might pass into the other camp. Comparatively easy as it is to settle a dispute on questions of territory by arbitration or to work out schemes for compromise in regard to such, so difficult or almost impossible it would be to arbitrate on a question of actual supremacy or to settle it by compromise.

## Particularly in the camp of the Allies is the

possibility lest Germany might emerge out of the war the actual arbiter of Europe conceived as an unbearable thought. None of the allied Powers, neither England nor France and not even Russia, Italy being in this respect quite out of question, has during the last decades shown a disposition or a pretence to play up to such a part.

But Germany is suspected of nourishing ideas of this kind, and utterances of some of their prominent men, _occasional sayings of the Kaiser included_, tend to give substance to this suspicion. In vain Germans object that their country has all the 44 years since 1870 kept the peace in Europe. We have done the same, would the others reply, and we have not, as Germany has done, again and again threatened war when things did not run according to her wishes or humours. _Germany has in fact abstained from actual peace breaking. But she was regarded and has not a little done to acquire the fame, as the latent or virtual disturbing element in European politics._

This view in regard to political Germany has greatly been enhanced through many of her actions during the present war. It is natural enough, though not particularly edifying, that in a war each party ascribes all the guilt thereof to the opponents and poses as the innocent who maliciously was surprised when not dreaming of any harm. But the cantankerous way in which almost the whole political and intellectual Germany has handled this question and has treated it as a crime not to take in every respect the German view of the case and of all the details of warfare has strengthened the feeling that this nation has come to regard itself as a sort of high judge of Europe. People were reminded of that ill-considered harangue to German soldiers at the time of the China expedition when they were entreated to act towards the Chinese like the Huns under Attila. _This and the eagerness to crush by overwhelming power every small nation that ventures to take sides with the Allies as well as the proclaiming of rights for submarines and Zeppelins upon her own authority--these and similar measures have only been too suited to nourish the conception that Germany places herself in the rôle of the scourge of God._

How this feeling reacts upon political thought is illustrated by a conversation a German socialist has had in the summer of 1915 on neutral ground with a French socialist politician of no jingoish leanings at all on the possibilities of peace. Even if Germany declared herself ready to relinquish Belgium and to return to France every inch of ground occupied, his countrymen would not accept peace from her, explained the Frenchman. And on the question, "Why not?" he replied passionately: "Because it would be the German peace; because it would yet leave Germany the all powerful of Europe; because it would make us depend upon the whims and tempers of that conceited military nation."

"But are you going to bleed yourself to death?" was the next question, and the reply, uttered in a voice where sadness mingled with determination, was:

"Yes, rather be ruined!"

This is a specimen of the feeling created by the present war, and I am afraid the sentiment has not abated a whit yet. Germans have done a good deal in attempts to detach the French from the English. They have told them that they are only the poor seduced tools of the base and egotistic Britishers, that Germans did not bear them any malice, that they rather pitied them and would fain be ready to come to terms with them. But declarations of this sort proved only how little the French mentality was understood this side of the Vosges. The French nation is too much impressed by the memory of her great past and the part played by her in European politics to stand being pitied and patted like children of tender age. It will be respected as an equal who acts with the full knowledge of the state of things and is too much given to political reflection to accept willingly any view of the war that visibly is coloured by the interest of Germany in the dissension between the two great Powers of Western Europe. The anti-German feeling runs still very high in France; her leading papers excel without any exception in extremely harsh language against everything German, and the great mass of those who in former years had propagated the idea of a Franco-German understanding are now dead against it.

A similar feeling has step by step got hold of the British nation. From not being very popular at its beginning in England, the war has come to be regarded as a greater national concern than any of its predecessors. The frantic if not hysterical outbursts of hatred against England in Germany when the former decided to stand by France in the war were at first not taken too seriously. But by and by the unceasing utterances of spite have, together with the known acts of German aerial and submarine warfare, deeply reacted on the British mind. The feeling is now general that England has never before had an enemy so full of hatred against her, so ardently desirous of causing her irreparable harm as she now has in present day Germany.

Even such socialist papers as the _New Statesman_, which before the war had no anti-German bias at all, have arrived at the same conclusion concerning what may be called a German peace as the French socialist politician whose opinions were given above characterised it. In an article called "The Case for the Allies," and especially addressed to Americans, the _New Statesman_ explains in its number of December 30th that peace with an unbeaten Germany would mean "Mittel Europa from the Baltic to the Black Sea," that nothing would prevent its expansion through the Balkans to El Arish and Bagdad, that throughout this vast area the authority, if not the suzerainty, of Berlin would be acknowledged and that the small European States north and northwest of Germany would without any resistance--by the mere force of things--come to be subjected to the dictate of Germany. In the words of the _New Statesman_, as the result of an inconclusive peace, "militarism would be more firmly established than ever by the record of its marvellous success and by the manifest need for a military organisation proportionate to so vast an expansion."

Is this feeling justified? Does it appreciate facts at their exact value? _There is undoubtedly an influential section in Germany which entertains feelings of this kind._ It has its adherents

## particularly in naval circles and amongst the

intellectuals of the nation and in a considerable degree also in the financial world. These sections hate in England partly the happy possessor of what in their opinion ought by right to belong to the German race and partly the power without which German expansion would meet with no resistance worth speaking of by European nations. _This section of anti-English on principle or by deeply rooted hatred, influential as it is, is, however, not the whole nation._ It has only now the hold of her mind because it has succeeded in instilling into her the belief that England is the secret manufacturer of the present war, that she is the selfish fermenter of hatred in Europe, the scheming brewer of strife on the Continent. England has become to the average German mind a real nightmare, a sort of a Frankenstein or any such spookish monster, and as she now, by the vicissitudes of the war, has indeed become the most dangerous of Germany's opponents it is not possible to educate people from the inside to a more rational view of her part in this war and in European politics altogether.

There you have the greatest hindrances to peace in Europe. I did not mention Russia. But the war between Germany, inclusive of Austria-Hungary, and Russia is of quite a different nature. It is more of a war of the older order. It has, of course, also evoked a good deal of hatred. But on the whole it is as wars go, more of an objective nature. There are material differences on which it would not be impossible to compromise. But there is no such deeply-seated irrational opposition, which now sets Germans and English and French and Germans against each other. The war between the Central Powers and Russia is, comparatively speaking, an accident in the political history of Europe. _The war between England, France and Germany is a catastrophe in European civilisation. As a war it is most irrational, and just because of its absurdity it is so utterly difficult to find a solution for it, and there is little hope that unless some outside force intervenes, it may end otherwise than by absolute general exhaustion._

Things would be otherwise if there were reasonable hopes of a concerted action on the part of the international union of the socialist parties. But such hopes, if they ever could be entertained, have by now become a thing of the past. In the three countries named the majority of the leaders of organised labour have taken sides in the war alongside of their governments and have by this more or less given up independency and lost the confidence of their former comrades in the opposite camp. Distrust, which in general has so much contributed to bring about this war, prevails also in the ranks of the socialists in regard to the leaders of the movement on the other side of the frontier. Minorities everywhere work for a greater independency as a step to a better international understanding. But they have as yet nowhere succeeded in winning the majority of the movement over to their views and policy, and even if they did, all sorts of hindrances would by the governments be put in the way of these Socialists to assemble internationally in sufficient number for work of this nature.

Nor is it to be expected that revolts of the discontented masses will be vast enough to force the governments into peace negotiations against their will. The possibilities of centralised governments against revolutionary upheavals as long as these remain locally isolated, which in the face of the enormous extent of the section of the globe directly drawn into the war is most probable, are too great to let these movements have a great chance of changing the policy of the rulers. This would only happen when at least some of these classes or parties which at present support the war come round to their opinion, of which very few signs are at present to be seen. The work of small minorities everywhere, the war has got hold of the minds of the millions in all countries and has filled nations against nations with such distrust and spite as in the history of civilised mankind never before have been witnessed.

How little we are justified to expect peace from the action of these socialists who stand by governments in the war is, as far as my own country is concerned, shown by the fact that the big meetings now (and, I am willing to admit, it is the intention of the initiators to hold them in favour of peace) led by the leaders of the majority of the social-democratic party, such as Messrs. Scheidemann, David, Ebert and others, turn out in practice as meetings in support of the policy of the government in regard to the question of war and peace. In order to defend their own political attitude the speakers are compelled to shift the responsibility for the war and its continuation wholly on the shoulders of the governments of the opposite countries and their supporters, and by this they increase in the mind of their hearers the conviction that nothing short of a defeat of these countries will bring the war to a desirable end. In England the majority of the Labour Party and a considerable number of the best known socialist leaders and in France the most influential leaders of socialist party support also the war policy of their respective governments in all principal issues. The well meant and praiseworthy attempts to convene a full International Socialist Congress for the purpose of settling these differences by finding a common line of action are, I am sorry to say, under the circumstances most likely to prove abortive. _They will founder on the self-contradiction that the Socialists of the Entente countries argue that their governments hate the idea of German militarism coming out unbeaten and unreduced out of this war which in their opinion was provoked by it, whilst the leaders of the German Socialists in power would rather see this same militarism which they in former years have so violently attacked and denounced, come out victorious than have it interfered with by outside influence._

In short, sections of the socialist movement will assist other forces in the action for peace, but the movement as a whole is incapable to act in the matter as a force of compelling strength.

Help must in the main come from outside. Consequently President Wilson's action in his note to the belligerents of December 20th would have been the right thing, even if it had offended in some way against the rules of diplomatic procedure. Under so exceptional circumstances as these occasioned by the present war extraordinary steps are certainly justified and breaches of etiquette of little significance. But the note was faultless in this respect, and it can moreover be said that in no way did it endanger legitimate interests of the one or the other section of the belligerents. It offends only in spirit against Cain's word, "Am I my brother's keeper?" and in distinct words against the conception that war is a private affair of states may it ever so much interfere with the material and moral welfare of other nations.

The step has not at once succeeded. But it has opened the way; nay, it has forced the door open for discussion in a fashion that nobody will be strong enough to shut it again. True, the Central Powers have by their offer of peace negotiations forestalled the note by a week. But this offer would have come to naught without Mr. Wilson's

## action. Harsh as the reply of the Allies is to the

offer, it would most likely have been put in much more negating terms had not the American note caused the Entente Allies to avoid a blunt "No" and content themselves with raising objections and interjecting accusations. By this they have willy-nilly provoked a debate and instead of shutting the door kept it well open.

People may call this a small success. In fact it is a beginning, and for the first as such sufficient. The question is now what shall the next step be and how can the debate be directed to positive proposals?

Of course, as these articles were given by this Socialist-Author for publication any one is at liberty to reproduce them.

In conducting the peace negotiations, President Wilson will have the benefit of the services of Colonel House, the one man who, I believe, is best fitted to protect the interests of America and of humanity at such a conference. I, of course, saw Colonel House during the war in Berlin and in America and I consider that no man alive is his superior in either knowledge of the whole situation or in ability to cope with the trained diplomats of Europe. Human nature is much the same and the gentle mannered Texan who has been so successful in American politics will not fail when representing us at the table of Peace.

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