A CASE FOR TRUE STATESMANSHIP.
Whatever the TRUE and the FALSE friends of PEACE may hope and say, it is
perfectly useless to close our eyes to the glaring fact that its
restoration can only be the result of military effort combined with the
highest practical statesmanship. After all what has happened, and the
oft-repeated declaration of the Rulers of the belligerent nations, it
would be a complete loss of a very valuable time to indulge any longer
in the expression of views all acknowledge in principle, but which no
one, however well disposed he may be, is actually able to traduce in
practical form.
When writing my French book, in the fall of 1916, reviewing the
situation as it had so far developed, I said:--
"All are most anxious for peace. However it is infinitely better
to look at matters such as they are. It is evident that the
military situation does not offer the least hope that the war
can be immediately brought to an end. Successes have been
achieved on both sides. But nothing decisive has yet happened.
The armies are facing one another in defiant attitude. The
belligerent nations, on both sides, have yet, and for a long
time, great resources in man-power and money."
"If Germany, which should first give up the fight in
acknowledging her crime, is obdurate to final exhaustion, how
can it be possibly expected that the Allies who were forced to
fight, will submit to the humiliation and shame of soliciting
from their cruel enemy a peace the conditions of which, they
know, would be utterly unacceptable. Consequently they must with
an indomitable courage and an invincible perseverance go on
struggling to solve, for a long time, the redoubtable problem to
which they are pledged, in honour bound, to give the only
settlement which can reassure the world."
I am still and absolutely of the same opinion. The present military
situation has certainly much improved in favour of the Allies since
1916. However, looking at the question, first, from the standpoint of
the developing military operations, there is no actual, and there will
not be for many months yet--more or less--practical possibility of a
satisfactory peace settlement.
Secondly, looking at the question from the standpoint of true
statesmanship, it is very easy to draw the inexorable conclusion that,
again, there is not actually the least chance of an immediate
restoration of peace.
Statesmen, responsible, not only for the future of their respective
countries, but, actually, for that of the whole world, are not to be
supposed liable to be carried away by a hasty desire to put an end to
the war and to their own arduous task in carrying it to the only
possible solution:--A JUST AND DURABLE PEACE.
A broad and certain fact, staring every one, is that the Berlin
Government will not accept the only settlement to which the Allies can
possibly agree as long as her armies occupy French and Belgian
territories. If Mr. Bourassa and his "pacifists" friends--or dupes--have
really entertained a faint hope to the contrary, they were utterly
mistaken.
Present military events, however proportionately enlarged by the
increased resources, in man-power and money, of the belligerents, are
not without many appropriate precedents. History is always repeating
itself. Great Powers having risked their all in a drawn battle, do not
give in as long as they can stand the strain, considering the importance
of the interests they have at stake.
For the same reason above stated, but reversed, the Allies will not
negotiate for peace before they have thrown the German armies out of
French and Belgian soil, and repulsed them over Teutonic territory. I do
not mean to say that peace must necessarily be proclaimed either from
Berlin or from Paris. But it will only be signed as the inevitable
result of a final triumphant march on the way either to Berlin or to
Paris. There is no possible escape from the alternative. In such
matters, there is no halfway station.