New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1916-08-27

come. If the Allies have won no decisive
victory as yet, their successes on all fronts
have convinced them that they at last have
the measure of their foe and that time
will give them complete victory.
Now, with the feeling that victory is as
sured, there has come a marked change in
the view of the terms of peace that will be
imposed upon Germany. Germany's very
success in mobilizing her own nation, her
extraordinary skill, resource and genius in
organization. have awakened the rival ma
tionssof the world to the extent of German
menace to their own existence, and they
are now resolved that they will continue
the war until the menace is abolished.
The New Peace Terms.
Take an example: In her great cam
paigns Germany has actually wrecked the
industrial regions of Belgium, of France
and of Russia. She has literally burned
the factories and transported the machin-
cry to her home provinces. If peace were
to come to-day Germany would be the only
one of the great powers on the Continent
who are fighting whose industrial estab-
lishment was intact. Even Austria has
Suffered through the invasions Of Galicia.
While Germany put her factories to work
to supply the markets of the world,
France, Belgium, Poland would have to
restore their factories, purchase their ma
chinery and begin again.
A treaty of peace, then, that left things
territorially as they were in 1914 would
mean on the economic side real victory
for Germany, who, if she had not been able
to occupy her neighbours house, had burned
it down. Now, this is exactly what the
nations which are fighting Germany do
not mean shall happen. They are resolved
that Germany shall not be able to estab
| lish the fact that she can, when she
chooses, invade her industrial rivals lands,
destroy their industrial machinery, and
then retire to her own soil without suffer
ing any other penalty than the costs of the
war, while they have to bear both the costs
of the war, on their side, and the costs of
rebuilding their plants.
Lorraine Iron.
/ Further than this, the German success
1 in the early part of the war disclosed a
German determination to annex the in
dustrialized districts of France, Belgium
and Poland. The great iron deposits of
France are within sight of the German
frontier about Briey, northwest of Metz
In 1871 Germany took large portion of
the Lorraine iron fields. She took all that
we're then known. Since then discovery
has proved that the best deposits were in
French soil. Accordingly Germany at the
outset of the war boldly affirmed her pur-
pose to annex the Briey iron districts.
This was merely an extension of old
German policy. In 1915, at the second
Congress of Vienna, after Napoleon had
been defeated and sent to st. Helena, she
took the coal district on the Saar, about
the town of Saarbriicken, which had been
left to France in the first Vienna agree
ment In 1870 she took the iron districts
then known; in 1914 she proclaimed her
purpose to take the Briey iron region,
which she has seized and now holds
Now it is the settled purpose of the
French to reclaim not alone the Briey dis
tricts. theirs in 1914, but the Lorraine dis
tricts taken from them in 1871, and the
Saar coal regions, taken in 1915. France
is badly provided with coal. In taking her
best coal deposits in 1915 Germany pushed
France out of the race for industrial su-
premacy in the great years OF develop
ment that came in the nineteenth century.
France means, after the war, to restore
the situation, and no French statesman
will now consider peace which does not
restore the lost lands, the Lorraine iron
districts, the Saar coal districts, and also
the remarkable deposits of phosphate,
along the foot of the Vosges between Bel
fort and Mulhausen.
But Germany will not surrender these
until she has been overwhelmingly defeat
ed. for this surrender means the loss of
portion at least of the foundation of her
great industrial prosperity. A year ago
most Frenchmen would have been willing
to make peace on the basis Of the reacqul-
sition of Alsace-Lorraine, but to-day the
Saar district is also fixed idea in the
French mind.
Turning East now, similar situation
confronts us. In the southeast corner OF
Silesia, where Germany, Austria and Rus-l