The Manchester journal. [volume] (Manchester, Vt.) 1861-current, 1916-05-25

! could endure.
Take, now. the peace terms Ger
many Offers II will be seen at ono,
: that they will not bring about a situ
4 alton greatly improving German pros
poets before the war. France, Great
, Britain and Russia are TO keep al
! that they had before, save in the cas-,
! Of Poland. By way of restoring the
, balance, Poland is TO be erected into
free state. But this means that
! 100000 Poles will be substracted
I from Austria TO balance l0000,00C
taken from Russia, and the 4,000,00C
Poles in Eastern Germany, who will
not be liberated, will look to Russia
for aid to complete the restoration Of
Poland, as SARDINIA looked 20 France.
In the Balkans it is possible that
! the Allies might abandon Serbia, just
as il is possible that they might
! abandon Belgium, but it is unthink-
able. Suppose they did. Serbia would
become a vassal TO Austria, but Bull
garia would be expanded, and when
Russia did similar service to Bull
, garia a generation ago Bulgarian
statesmen promptly turned their backs
} on Petrograd. If Bulgaria broke with
Germany the keystone of the whole
Bagdad- Berlin arch would crumble
Turkey, too, at the end of the war
will resume her freedom. She will
need money, and only in Paris and
London can she get money. If Russia
will renounce the dream Of Byzantium
then Turkey can afford TO make terms
with the sea powers as opposed to the
Central Powers. Turkey was yester-
day the ally of Britain. Britain the
protector of Turkey, and the change of
alignment in Europe may restore the
situation of the Beaconsield era. But
this would destroy all hope of Ger
man empire in Asia Minor.
The day that peace came the battle
of intrigue would be resumed at Sofia,
at Constantinople. The battle be-
tween the Slav and the Magyars and
Germans in Austria would be resumed.
The rivalry between the Italian and
the Austrian in the Adriatic would be-
gin. Would such an estate, dependent
upon the will or whim of other races,
counterbalance in the German mind
the French colonies in North Africa
or Asia, the British possessions the
world over, the Russian dominion in
Asia? Certainly not Would Ger
many have materially improved her
position in the face of the world as a
result of her great and, from a mill
tary point of view, magnificent effort ?
Patiently not.
These are the reasons why it must
be plain to all observers that Ger
many, on her own statement of ccndi-
tions, has lost the war. But she has
not lost the desire for her place in the
sun, and she has not lost confidence in
that tremendous military machine
which almost brought her victory in
September, 1914. She stands in pre-
cisely the position that Louis XIV
stood after his first encounter with the
coalition of Europe in which his
armies had overrun the Low Countries
and Southern Germany but had miss
ed supreme success because of the
fact that Europe had risen against
him.
Louis XIV made peace; he made
peace on terms quite as reasonable as
those Of Germany to-day. But few
years later he resumed his effort, and
it was not until the Peace of Utrecht,
almost at the end of his life, that he
gave over the effort to assert the SUI
premacy of France in Europe. If the
terms of peace that Germany now
offers mean anything they mean that
Germany, recognizing that she has
lost this war, seeks to close out bad
investment before her military power
is shaken or her army has lost its rep
utation for something like invincibil-
ity. After Waterloo there was no
Napoleonic legend in France for a
generation, but before Waterloo the
defeats Of the Empire were insignifi-
cant when compared to the victories,
and France was willing TO try once
more.
Europe, Paris, London and Petro- /
grad believe that peace now would be
but a truce. They accept as true
what the Germans have been asserting
FOR a generation, namely, that the
German people are determined to up ,
set the balance in world affairs, which /
they believe is inequitable to them.
They believe that the German army's
really wonderful successes in the field,
despite the fact that these have not ,
quite availed to bring a decisive ter /,
10 the conflict ard impose !
German will on Europe, will enable ;
German Statesmen 10 enlist the Ger