The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1917-12-04


her.
Threw Away Triumphs of Peace.
But at the moment when she had
conspicuously won her triumphs of
peace, she threw them away to estab-
fish 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. The peace we make
must remedy that wrong. 1t must de-
| liver the once fair lands and happy
peoples of Belgium and northern
France from the Prussian conquest
and the Prussian 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 in Asia, from the i'm
pudent and alien domination of the
Prussian military and commercial
autocracy.
We owe it, however, to ourselves to
say that we do not wish in any way to
impair or to rearrange the Austro-
Hungarian empire. 1t is no affair OF
ours what they do with their own life,
| either industrial1y or politically we
do not purpose to or desire to dictate
/ to them in any way. We only desire to
see that their affairs are left in their
| own hands in all matters, great or
| small. We shall hope to secure for the
J
! for the people of the Turkish empire
| the right and opportunity to make
| their own lives safe, their own for-
| tunes secure against oppression or IN
justice and from the dictatlon OF Ior-
| eign courts or parties.
Free Germans as Well as Ourselves.
! Our attitude and purpose with re-
gard to Germany herself are OF a IKE
kind. We intend no wrong against
] interference
/ with her internal affairs we shouio
deem either the one or the other alb
sOIuteIy unjustifiable, absolutely con-
| trarv to the principles we have pro-
fessed to live by and to hold most sa-
cred turnout our life as nation.
The people of Germany are being
told by the men whom they now per-
/ nit to deceive them and to act as
their masters that they are hght1nS
for the very life and existence of their
empire war of desperate sell de-
! tense against deliberate aggression.
Nothing could be more grossly or
Jvantonly false, as we must seek by
the utmost openness and candor as to
| orr real aims to convince them of its
falseness. We are in fact fighting for
their emancipation from fear, along
with our own, from the fear as well
as from the fact of unjust attack by
neighbors or rivals or schemers after
world empire. No one is threatening
the existence or the independence or
the peaceful enterprise of the Ger
man empire.
Future Peace Partnership.
The worst that can happen to the
! detriment of the German people is
this: that if they should still, after
/ the war is over, continue to be
| obliged to live under ambitious and in
/ triguing masters, interested to disturb
| the peace of the world, men or class
| es of men whom the other. peoples of
| the world could not trust, it might be
| impossible to admit them to the part
] nership of nations which must hence
| forth guarantee the worlds peace
| That partnership must be partner
ship of principles, not mere part
! nershiD of government. It might be
impossible also in such untoward cir
| cumstances to admit Germany to the
| free economic intercourse which must
inevitably spring out of the other
partnerships of a real peace. But
there would be no such aggression in
| that; and such a situation, inevita Bile
because of distrust, would in the
very nature of things sooner or later
cure itself by processes which would
assuredly set in.
Very Deep Wrongs Committed.
The wrongs, the very deep wrongs,
committed in this war will have to be
righted. That, of course. But they
| cannot and must not be righted by
the commission of similar wrongs
against Germany and her allies. The
world will not permit the commission
of similar wrongs as means of rep
! aration and settlement. Statesmen
must by this time have learned that
the opinion of the world is everywhere
wideawake and fully comprehends the
issues involved. No representative of
anv self-governed nation will dare dis
regard it by attempting any such COW
enantS of selfiShness and compromise
as were entered into at the congress
of Vienna. The thought of the plain
people here and everywhere thruout
the world, the people who enjoy no
privilege and have very simple and I'M
sophisticated standards of right and
wrong, is the air all government must
henceforth breathe if they would live.
1t is in the full disclosing light of that
thought that all policies must be con-
ceiVed and executed in this midday
hour of the worlds life.
Upset Peace of the World.
German rulers have been able to
upset the peace of the|World only be-
cause the German people were not
suffered under their tutelage to share
the comradeship of the other peoples
of the world either in thought or in
purpose. They were allowed to have
no opinion of their own which might
De set up as rule OF conduct Tor
those who exercised authority over
them. But the congress that con-
cludes this war will feel the full
strength of the tides that run now
in the hearts and consciences of free
men everywhere. Its conclusions will
run those tides.
, All these things have been true from
the very beginning of this stupend-
? GUS war: and 1 cannot help thinking
/ that if they had been made plain at
, the very outset the sympathy and en-
? thusiasm of the Russian people might
/ have been once for all enlisted on the
side of the allies, suspicion and dis
trust swept away and real and last
ing union of purpose effected Had
r they believed these things at the very
moment of their revolution and had
: they been confirmed in that belief