LIBTHLE

What candles might be lit or blown out, in so large an Establishment as that of Versailles, no man . . . would like to affirm.'-CARLYLE.

IN the June issue of this Review Mr. Harold Wyatt strongly asserted that the Armistice ought not to have been granted to the Germans last November. He would have had the Allies march on without palaver, to overwhelm all opposition, and take charge in Germany; proceeding to the punishment of the various leaders and subordinates, who, on the showing of repeated declarations by our statesmen, were guilty of crimes during the War and in having caused the War. I always read Mr. Wyatt's articles with interest, whether agreeing with them or not. One can tell what he is driving at. He does not shift his ground to suit the vogue or some shallow passion of the moment. I shared his disappointment that the Allies did not exact unconditional surrender. I should have liked to see them march to Berlin. VOL. LXXXVI-No. 509

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Quite apart from hanging the Kaiser, a proposal I always thought tumultuous-and too reminiscent of the Prussian Blücher who wished to kill the Emperor of the French, and was curtly set down by the Duke of Wellington-unconditional surrender and a march to Berlin would have made a fitting military close. It would have led to more bloodshed in actual fighting; but it is doubtful whether more lives would ultimately have been lost by this trenchant course than have been lost by the revolts and disturbances that have swept through Europe between November 1918 and July 1919. The Allies, fairly in Berlin in force, would have had a beneficent, steadying effect on Central Europe. The long series of rapscallion outbreaks in sundry countries would have been largely restrained by that impressive, assuaging spectacle. The blockade would have been over sooner. Peace would have been hastened somewhat. History would have been edified by an

excellent curtain.

I agree with Mr. Wyatt that our interests required such a course. But he is on debateable ground in assuming that our politicians arranged the Armistice, or that they had the power-assuming the will-to deny it. My own rather strong impression was, and is, that the Armistice did not wait particularly on British politicians. Certainly the British Army was keen to get on-the little rush for Mons at the last moment was a straw to tell which way the wind blew. It is no secret it wished to clear Belgium. The British Army was ready to clear Belgium and round off its part in the War. It breathed 'the high temper of the great affair.'1

Why then the Armistice instead of that 'unconditional surrender' which we had over and over again announced we should exact? I suggest that, before answering the question, we must scrutinise a great deal of mixed motive, very human motive, in several nations. For one thing, we must consider the sufferings through four years of war in countries less fortunately situated than ours. In this country-so far as bodily comfort and reasonable security were concerned-there was no suffering compared with Continental suffering. Margarine was not suffering. A super-tax was not suffering. On the contrary, margarine means good fat, super-tax means plenty of money. Nor should it be forgotten that the German Army in November 1918 had not been squatting four years and three months on the most essential portions of English

1 In a speech lately the Commander-in-Chief pointed out that the German Army was finally beaten and made powerless by our victory on the Sambre last autumn so that the Allies, if necessary, could at any time march through Germany. That is unquestionably so. Yet those who hold, as I do, that Sir Douglas Haig has proved the most effective leader of men, and the most trusty servant of the State since Wellington, ardently wished to see him at the head of his Armies in Berlin; and they are convinced that the order and safety of Europe would have gained thereby.

soil, as it had on French soil. To do our politicians bare justice, I do not think Whitehall peremptorily ordered the Allied legions, I do not think it ordered the Allied statesmen, to stop the War.' It had not the power.

However, we did not press the pursuit. We plunged forthwith into peace negotiations, out of the broad preliminaries of which, so far as Germany and Austria are concerned, we are at length beginning to emerge, now that our chief opponent has decided to sign. The terms to Germany are sharply criticised by those who think the penalties are too soft, and by those who think they are too hard. There is hostile criticism, too, about the plans generally for the settlement of Europe, the chief complaint all through the Conference being perhaps the extreme slowness of the Big Four. I cannot see that the statesmen have been slow, considering the enormous amount of conflicting material with which they elected to cumber themselves from the start. On the contrary, it seems to me that, wisely or unwisely, they have rattled through the business at a high speed; and that the unfortunate result has been much scamped work which will have to be done over again. There has not in all history been at a conference of nations a world-problem comparable with the present one. Vienna was Lilliputian compared with Versailles. If we could put together all the peace and settlement conferences which Europe has engaged in during the entire eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, they would represent a whole less complex, less bristling with every sort of difficulty and danger -except the religious one-than the problem to be solved to-day. A charge against the representatives of the chief Powers at Versailles to-day that they have ambitiously tried to 'rush' many grave questions in regard to the lesser nations to be set up-lesser nations which with their great populations would have been substantial Powers a century ago-would not be unreasonable. In their skurry, somehow, to get through, the Powers have relegated to the new-born League of Nations a tangled skein of delicate and immensely important questions big with the possibilities of conflict in the near future. One of the statesmen has frankly confessed that, until he went to Versailles, he did not know what Teschen was. Alas! for the fame of Maria Theresa, and the war about the Bavarian Succession. Yet, how many of us would have heard of Teschen except for Carlyle? There is a shrewd suspicion that in this matter the confessing statesman has an eminent colleague or two as innocent as himself. Teschen, for what most statesmen knew to the contrary, might have been a little Prussian maid. It sounds like one. Yet it has turned out to be a not impossible cockpit of war between even affectionate neighbours. And there are so many Teschens! The Balkan area has visibly widened-that

Quite apart from hanging the Kaiser, a proposal I always thought tumultuous-and too reminiscent of the Prussian Blücher who wished to kill the Emperor of the French, and was curtly set down by the Duke of Wellington-unconditional surrender and a march to Berlin would have made a fitting military close. It would have led to more bloodshed in actual fighting; but it is doubtful whether more lives would ultimately have been lost by this trenchant course than have been lost by the revolts and disturbances that have swept through Europe between November 1918 and July 1919. The Allies, fairly in Berlin in force, would have had a beneficent, steadying effect on Central Europe. The long series of rapscallion outbreaks in sundry countries would have been largely restrained by that impressive, assuaging spectacle. The blockade would have been over sooner. Peace would have been hastened somewhat. History would have been edified by an

excellent curtain.

I agree with Mr. Wyatt that our interests required such a course. But he is on debateable ground in assuming that our politicians arranged the Armistice, or that they had the power-assuming the will-to deny it. My own rather strong impression was, and is, that the Armistice did not wait particularly on British politicians. Certainly the British Army was keen to get on the little rush for Mons at the last moment was a straw to tell which way the wind blew. It is no secret it wished to clear Belgium. The British Army was ready to clear Belgium and round off its part in the War. It breathed 'the high temper of the great affair.'1

Why then the Armistice instead of that unconditional surrender' which we had over and over again announced we should exact? I suggest that, before answering the question, we must scrutinise a great deal of mixed motive, very human motive, in several nations. For one thing, we must consider the sufferings through four years of war in countries less fortunately situated than ours. In this country-so far as bodily comfort and reasonable security were concerned-there was no suffering compared with Continental suffering. Margarine was not suffering. A super-tax was not suffering. On the contrary, margarine means good fat, super-tax means plenty of money. Nor should it be forgotten that the German Army in November 1918 had not been squatting four years and three months on the most essential portions of English

1 In a speech lately the Commander-in-Chief pointed out that the German Army was finally beaten and made powerless by our victory on the Sambre last autumn so that the Allies, if necessary, could at any time march through Germany. That is unquestionably so. Yet those who hold, as I do, that Sir Douglas Haig has proved the most effective leader of men, and the most trusty servant of the State since Wellington, ardently wished to see him at the head of his Armies in Berlin; and they are convinced that the order and safety of Europe would have gained thereby.