New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1916-06-10

man statesmen and German men and
women were not satisfied TO live under
the law of humanity. Louvain is in ashes;
Rheims, Arras. Scissors, Nerdun nave
been destroyed; but there are few Germans
who do not now have some mixing OF
what rape. arson and murder abroad cost
in German lives.
1t is a great and useful thing, this re-
pulse of the German proposals for peace
Had they been accepted. all those who
have died from Li6ge TO Lutsk would nave
died in vain. All the sacrifice and suf-
fering would have been wasted, because
they would not have contributed to pre-
venting a new German foray, new Ger
man attack. when the wounds and the
scars of the present had healed and Ger
mans saw. not the cost of aggression, but
the rewards in new provinces and other
captured cities.
There can be no peace, short of com
plete Allied defeat. which does not estab-
Gsh the fact that it does not pay the Ger
man. and il never can pay him, to seek
the world power of Bernhard or the more
modest but not less selfish aims of Fred
erick the Great. France had to learn the
same lesson. She learned it in the mill
tarv defeats of Napoleon; she learned 1t
at Leipzig and at Waterloo she learned
it in the campaigns of Moscow and of the
winter of 1914. When she had learned
il she accepted the frontiers which were
hers by the will of the people living with
in them. and to-day she seeks no other eX-
pansions.
Had we stopped our Civil War in 1864,
no man can say how soon the old ques-
ton would have had new raising. NO
man can say how soon there would have
been a desire on one side or the other, a
desire of designing politicians or selfish
sections, to see profit in a new debate
We settled our question at Appomattox;
it was never raised again, and it never
will be.
In the present European War the issues
are not provinces, places IN the sum- colo
MES or feets-these are but incidental. The
issue is naked and clear Germany has de
clared that nothing in the laws of nations
or the conventions of humanity is Of
value when it comes between Germany
and n purpose. She has applied this pur-
pose to the map Of Europe, and at terrible
cost she has so far established 1t that
her frontiers. which are firing lines. now
cut deeply into France, include Belgium
and Luxembourg and open bleeding
wound in the flank of Russia.
On this basis Germany would make
peace, she would give up a portion OF the
bootv to save her strength. She would
take half instead of all Of the reward for
her crimes. But to leave her any reward
would be to invite a new application OF
the Prussian doctrine. Europe can have
neacs when the repeal of the Prussian law,
the negation of all other laws, has been
written on the battlefield and the Prus-
sian military legend has been as complete
" broken as was the Napoleonic. When
Germans no longer think it pays to do the
things they have done in Europe recently
and Prussia has done for more than
century and a half, then there can be an
accommodation. a settlement. treaty
made on the basis of settling the old ques-
tions and avoiding the creation OF new
ones.
This is what Lloyd George means. this
is what Allied diplomacy and statesman
ship mean. This is the voice of England
of Russia, and. above all. the voice OF
heroic France, which has borne so far a
wholly disproportionate burden Of the
losses and the suffering. but has borne 1t
with heroism that will remain forever
memorable and with an endurance un-
shaken after nearly two years. Nerdun
will vet rank as a second Thermopyl@
in the history of our civilization, Their
mopyle which surpasses the ancient in the
single fact that it was victory, and not
defeat, since the Barbarians did not
pass.