New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1916-05-22
Why Germany Cries for Peace.

peace. For the first time the subterfuge
Of using neutral or apparently neutral
organs and citizens to express German
desires for peace has been laid aside. 1t
is from Berlin that the cry for an end of
fighting comes most insistently and per
sistently, and this appeal finds no echo
in the press or among the public men Of
the nations that are fighting Germany.
Il is worth remembering, too, that the
terms that Germany now suggests are
inconmensurate with her actual military
posture at the present hour, so far as
this is disclosed by the map, and, what
is most vital, amount to remuneration of
the precise purposes that were in the
German mind when the war began.
In sum, after two years Of war, Ger
many, by her peace proposals, seems to
lag aside the hope Of breaking that iron
ring which her enemies, to use the Ger
man view, had drawn about her before
the war. The ring is not broken; rather,
it has been forged by the terrible strug-
gle. and what was a loose entente is now
a close alliance. The political situation
remains as it was in 1914, but the mill
tary situation has worsened immeasura-
bly. because a Europe approximately as
well armed as Germany, possessing abso-
Lutte control of the sea, now maintains
more men on the firing line than Ger
many has or ever can hope to have, even
with the aid of her allies.
Now. at the bottom of this whole great
war. so far as the Germans are concerned,
there has lain the conviction that a.
strong. brave. efficient Germany was, by
reason of ancient agreements and out
worn parchments of international law,
excluded from a fair share in the terri
tories and prosperity of the world, and
that those nations who enjoyed the Ger
man rights were no longer strong enough
TO maintain them. The Germans saw a
decadent France, slothful, lazy, doomed
Britain and a Russia potentially giant
but not yet come to the full power of its
manhood.
Accordingly the whole tribe of German
professors, publicists, military leaders,
who have fourished since Bismarck went
into retirement, have preached that the
present belonged to Germany and that
her strength and her efficiency entitled
her morally and would permit her physi-
caly to take her rightful position in the
world, now filled by interiors. They have
also insisted that if the present oppor-
tunity were permitted to pass the future
would see the balance turned against her
fatally and permanently. The numbers
of the Slavs, the ambitions of the Italians,
the growth Of British overseas dominions
the organization Of French colonies, all
would combine to create forces that Ger
many could not overcome and would leave
the German race hemmed in between enc
mics in narrow European domain and
commercially limited by the tariff from
tiers of other great colonial empires.
In the years before the war Germany
saw France take Tunis, Madagascar, ex-
pand her West African colonies into
great empire, round it out with Morocco,
consolidate in Indo-China a colony larger
than Germany. She saw Great Britain
take the South African republics fortify
her position in Egypt, develop her South
African territory; She saw the British do
mains in Australia and in America grow
ing apace in wealth and population. She
beheld Russia expanding in Asia and
Transforming the wastes Of Siberia into
second American Far West. She wit
messed Japan more and more openly as
suming the supremacy in the Far East.
She saw Italy take Tripoli, seat herself
on both sides Of the Mediterranean and in
the Greek Isles seize a post at the gate
of Smyrna TO await a splendid reversion
OF Turkish estates. Even the United
States, growing with the years, was be
coming too powerful to be challenged over
the Monroe Doctrine, and South America
was closed to a German future.
To balance all this mighty expansion
Germany could point only to a few pieces
of African SOIL widely separated, walled
in by British and French colonies and
utterly at the mercy Of the British feet,
as the war was to prove absolutely. This
was the harvest Of the present, this was
the prospect for the future, Of nation
of 100000 of people, with an indus
trial organization which surpassed any
thing The world had ever seen, not merely
in actual efficiency but in the intelligence
with which it cared for the workers. A
nation bursting into new life, new prog
ress industrialy, new triumphs CONNER
cially. looked out upon a future restrained
beyond any measure that the German
mind could endure
Take. now. the peace terms Germany
offers, II will be seen at once that they
will not bring about situation greatly
improving German prospects before the
war. France, Great Britain and Russia
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