Washington standard. [volume] (Olympia, Wash. Territory) 1860-1921, 1917-12-07
WHAT DOES PEACE MEAN?

''No annexations, no contributions, no punitive
ndemnities, phrase to which much publicity
has been given during recent months and which,
as President Wilson says ''has been made dill
gent use of by the masters of German intrigue to
lead the people of Russia astray, is nevertheless
accepted by the president as expressive of the
basis upon which the United States will seek
peace when the power of autocracy is encom-
passed. .'The fact that wrong use has been
made of just idea is no reason why right use
should not be made of it, he says, but in the
next sentence points out that sit is impossible to
apply any standard of justice so long as such
forces are unchecked and undefeated as the pres
ent masters of Germany command
''But when that has been done, he continues,
tive shall at last be free to do an unprecedented
thing and this is the time to avow our purpose to
do it. We shall be free to base peace on gener-
osity and justice, to- the exclusion of all selfish
claims to advantage, even on the part of the
victors,' another thought which is repeatedly
stated throughout his address.
He proceeds to point out that Germany s sue
cess by skill, by industry, by knowledge, by en-
terprise, did not grudge or oppose, but adj
mired rather She had built up for herself real
empire Of trade and influence, secured by the
peace Of the world = : but at the moment
when she had conspicuously won her triumphs of
peace she threw them away, to establish in their
stead what the world will no longer permit to be
established, military and political domination by
arms by which to GUST where she could not excel
the rivals she most feared and hated.
Having thus clearly established the fact that
the United States became Germany's enemy only
I When convinced that she had started out to DOM
mate the world by arms the president proceeds
to break Germanys long-cherished dream of
s Mitteleuropa' with the declaration that s'the
peace we make must remedy that wrong" He
sets forth Americas version of peace in these
words:
1T must deliver the once fair lands and happy
peoples of Belgium and Northern France from
the Prussian conquest and the Prussiag menace,
but it must also deliver the peoples of Austria
Hungary, the peoples Of the Balkans and the
peoples of Turkey, alike in Europe and Asia,
from the impudent and alien domination of the
Prussian military and commercial autocracy''
There is no installing his meaning-the dream
Of Prussian mitarists, the burden of the teach
ings of Prussian scholars diplomats, journalists
preachers and commercial leaders since the war
of 1870, of German empire stretching from
Berlin to Bagdad, yes from Antwerp to Bag
dad" dominating commercially and industrally
if not governmentally all the intervening smaller
nations well Austria Hungary" Mittel-
europa as it was fondly called-is to be shat
tered.
So the president puts before the world
spokesman America s declaration of the objective
we seek, with the affirmation that we Americans
are impatient with those who desire peace by
any sort of compromise, deeply and Indignantly
patient" and with the further and even more
emphatic assertion that s'those who desire to
bring about peace before that purpose winning
the wary is achieved, counsel to take their adj
vice elsewhere--we will not entertain it,
But. "when this thing and it's power are indeed
defeated and the time comes that we can discuss
peace-when the German people have spokesman
whose word we can believe and when those
spokesmen ready in the name of their people
to accept the common judgment OF the nations as
to what shall henceforth be the bases Of law and
OF covenant for the life of the world we shall be
willing and glad to pay the full price for peace,
and pay it ungrudgingly.''