Norwich bulletin., 1917-12-05
NO PEACE PARLEYS WITH
 ANY AUTOCRATIC RULERS

commerce that were involved for us in her success and stand or fall as we had or did not have the brains and the initiative to SurpaSS her. But at the moment when she had conspicu- ously 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 oust where she could not excel the rivals she most feared and hated. The peace we make must remedy that wrong. It must deliver the once fair lands and happy peoples of Belgium and northern France from the PrhsSian 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 impudent and alien domination of the Prussian military and commercial autocracy.
 Not to interfere with Dual Monarchy.
 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. It is no affair Of ours what they do with their own life, either industrlally or politically. We them in any way. We only desire to see that their affairs are left in their own hands, in -an matters, great or small. We shall hope to secure for the peoples of the Balkan peninsula and 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 1n- justice and from the dictation of for eign courts or parties.
 Not Against German People.
 And our attitude and purpose with regard to Germany herself are of a 1xS- TTr 1-1f arr ir1c the German empire, no interference with her internal affairs. We should deem either the one or the other abso- lutely unjustifable, absolutely contrary to the principles we have professed to live by and to hold most sacred throughout our life as a nation.
 The peoples of Germany are being told by the men whom they now per- init to deceive them and to act as their masters that they are fighting for the a war of desperate self defense against deliberate aggression.
 Nothing could be more grossly or wantonly false, and we must seek by our real aims to convince them of its falseness. We are in fact fighting for their emancipa ton 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 German empire.
 To Emancipate Germans.
 The worst that can happen to the Getriment 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 intriguing masters intended to disturb the peace of the world, men or classes of men whom the other peoples of the world could not trust, it might be iInpossi- ble to admit them to the partnership Of nations which must henceforth guarantee the worlds peace. That partnership must be a partnership of peoples, not mere partnership Of governments. It might be impossible also in such untoward circumstances to admit Germany to the free eco homie intercourse which must inevit- ably spring out of the other partner ships of a real peace. But there would be no aggression in that; and such a situation inevitable because of distrust would in the very nature of things sooner or later cure itself, by processes which would aSSuredly set in.
 To Right Wars Wrongs.
 The wrongs, the very deep wrongs, committed in this war will have to be lighted. That of course. But they cannot and must not be lighted by the commission of similar wrongs
 
 The world will not permit the conn., mission of similar wrongs as a means of reparation and settlement. States men must by this time have learned that the opinion of the world is every where wide awake and fully compre- hends the issues involved. No repre- sentative of any self governed na- ton will dare disregard it by attempt ing any such covenants of SelfiShneSS and compromise as were entered into at the congress of Vienna. The thought of the plain people here and everywhere throughout the world, the people who enjoy no privilege and have very simple and unSophiSticated standards of right and wrong is the air all governments must henceforth breathe if they would live. It Is in the full disclosing light of that thought that all policies must be conceived and executed in this midday hour of the worlds life
 German Rulers Have Upset Peace
 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 They were allowed to have no opinion of their own which might 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 with those tides.
 Russians Have Been Deceived.
 All these things have been true from the very beginning of this stu pendouS war; and I cannot help think ing that if they had been made plain at the very outset the sympathy and enthusiasm of the Russian people might have been once for all enlisted on the side of the allies. suspicion and dfstrust swept away and a real and lasting union of purpose effected Had they believed these things at the very of their revolution and had they been confirmed in that belief since. the sad reverses which have recently marked the progress of their affairs towards an ordered and stable government of free men might have been avoided. The Russian people. have been poisoned by the very same that have kept the German people in the dark and the poison has been administered by the very same hands. The only possible antidote is the truth. It cannot be uttered too