New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1917-10-16


When this fact is established, nation,
= people which has made an industry out
of war for the last century and half
which has attacked and pundered one
state after another, Austria, Poland, Den
mark, France; which has found new eX-
tensions for It's industry in fresh despo-
liations Of It's neighbors, will have to turn
away from war. will have TO accept the
facts as they are and live in conformity
with the rules and the regulations TO which
civilized mankind conforms.
Remember the long story of the making
of modern Germany; recall the assault
upon Austria by Frederick the Great, in
defiance of his pledge. which won Silesia
and made Prussia a considerable state.
Recall the partitions of Poland the first
engineered by Frederick, which gave Ger
many Dantzic and Posen; the attack upon
Denmark, which won Schleswig- Holstein;
the war with Austria, planned to drive
Austria out of Germany; the war upon
France, designed to get territory, money,
the iron mines of Lorraine and the savings
of the French nation. Does anybody sup
nose q nation which has made all This
profit out of war, out of predatory war
can be persuaded to abandon this sort OF
thing short of a final demonstration that
it can no longer yield profit?
We shall not have done with the German
peril until we have destroyed the structure
on which German foreign policy rests
and has rested for more than century
We shall not be free from recurring dan
gers on the side of Germany until we have
proved that Germany will be the worst
sufferer from such wars. No one need
think twice of any appeal to German con-
science or German humanity; these are
attributes which have still to be acquired
by Germany, so far as international rela-
tons are concerned. Our sole chance for
permanent peace lies in establishing the
fact in the German mind that there is no
profit in international thieving. assassna-
ton and other equally characteristic leu
tonic enterprise.
Whatever he may be at home, abroad
the German is Hun, barbarian. tie
murders. he pliers, he defles and he de-
stroys solely to profit himself. He does
these things because in the past ne has
profted by them. He can see upon the
map. written in German colors, the proof
of the wisdom of such policies, as he has
pursued them in the past. And as long
as this evidence stands uncontradicted we
shall have the German barbarian coming
out of the north on plundering expeditions
In the future as we have had him in the
past ever since Rome had to face similar
incursions.
We shall not get permanent peace by
treating a Hun as if he were not Hun.
One might just as we'll attempt to cure
man-eating tiger of his hankering for
human flesh by soft words as to break the
German of his historic habits by equally
futile kind words. The way to treat
German, while Germans follow their pres
ent methods, is as a common peril to all
civilized mankind. Since the German en-
plovs the method Of the wild beast, he
must be treated as beyond the appeal of
generous or kind methods. When one Is
generous 10 a German he plans to take
advantage Of that generosity to rob or
murder: this is his international history,
never more conspicuously illustrated than
here in America. Kindness he interprets
as fear. regard for international law as
proof of decadence; agitation for disarm-
ament has been for him the final evidence
of the degeneracy of his neighbors.
The beginning of security for the world
and of civilization for the German will be
the demonstration by this war that the
German cannot win, cannot escape defeat,
with all its fatal consequences, whenever
he attacks his neighbors solely for plumber
and for power. The whole German sys
TEN is founded upon military victories and
the legend of successful wars followed by
profitable plunderings. This legend can
be destroyed only upon the battlefield, and
under the contemporary British attack it
is fast being destroyed. Fools and faint