“PEACE TALK”
SIR E. CARSON’S VIEWS.
A TRENCHANT LETTER.
Sir Edward Carson has sent the following letter in reply to a correspondent:
Office of the War Cabinet, S. Whitehall-gardens, S.W. 1, Sept. 6, 1917.
DEAR SIR – I agree with you that there is a great deal of very loose and mischievous talk about peace. Some people seem to imagine that we have only to conclude a treaty with Germany and all will be well. But I should like to ask what is to happen then? Are the nations of the world to proceed with preparations for the next conflict – to pursue their researches in the application of science to the expansion and creation of still more deadly weapons of warfare; to spend their resources in the creation of enormous cohorts of aeroplanes and submarines for the destruction of unfortified towns and the murder of innocent, women and children that inhabit them; to take advantage of the experiences gained in this war in the improvement of lethal and poisonous gases for the destruction of humanity; and are we to live in daily terror, with the knowledge that at any moment another conflict may arise which might almost lead to the extinction of civilisation itself?
The truth is that a treaty of peace does not necessarily secure peace is the only sense in which it can be of any real use to progress and humanity. We talk platitudes about a League of Nations to enforce peace, without considering the conditions essential to its success. But there was a league of nations to protect Belgium – there were solemn treaties and conventions at The Hague to apply the principles of humanity as far as possible in war and to give effect to international law. How did these avail on the outbreak of war? “There is no international law,” said the German Emperor. “Treaties are but scraps of paper,” said the German Chancellor. “We claim the right,” said the German nation, “to sink ships of any nation, even neutrals, at sight, and to murder their crews. We claim the right to use engines of death forbidden by our own conventions, if only it will assist us in the prosecution of war.” I have not yet seen a single suggestion made as to how in future those calamities are to be prevented from recurring, if the lawless temper of the Germans remains unrepentant, and their power to repeat their crimes remains what it has been in the past relatively to the rest of the world.
President Wilson is right when he declares that no terms signed by the present rulers of Germany would afford the slightest security for the peace of the world, and nothing is more certain than that just in proportion as the military defeat of Germany is incomplete, the duration of peace will be short. Whatever terms Germany might now bring herself to accept in order to recuperate her strength for another aggression, her people would soon forget such economic privations as they have had to endure, and would remain convinced that they had proved themselves invincible. With their armies in occupation of vast tracts of conquered territory any concession, such as the evacuation of Belgium, would be trumpeted as proof of German magnanimity, and their children would be taught to remember the present war as the greatest of Germany’s military triumphs. The prestige of the house of Hohenzollern and of the Prussian military caste would suffer no diminution, and the inherent weakness of democracy would be represented as the chief lesson to be drawn from a conflict in which all the democracies of the world in coalition had been unable to defeat the armies of the War Lord.
If this war is to put an end to all war – as is the earnest desire of every sane man in every democratic country in the world – if in the Prime Minister’s phrase, there is to be “no next time,” it must be waged until German military power has been sufficiently crushed to make fresh aggression by her impossible for a long time to come, and until it is no longer possible for the German people themselves to be deluded by the legend of their invincibility in arms. When this has been achieved it may be possible for a league of nations to be established with some reasonable hope of being able to safeguard a peace thus set on a durable foundation. But unless this war attains such a result, and so enables the nations of the world to feel that they can enter upon problems of development and progress without the constant terror of a future war, all the sacrifices of this struggle will have been made in vain, and the world will not have been made “safe for democracy.”
Surely, therefore, our course is obvious. We must carry on until such a victory is gained as will remove all practical danger of war for the future, and any man who tries, whatever his motive may be, to distract the attention of the country from this goal of deliverance is the worst enemy of a real peace. – Yours faithfully,