Atlanta semi-weekly journal. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1898-1920, 1917-01-30

ment may be made and whenever it may be reach
ed, it will represent peace of victory over Prus-
sian Militarism. But that is quite different from
a peace of subjugation and pitiless revenge.
Americas's counsel will be needed for a salts
factory ending of the war, thinks Mr.. Wells, be-
settlement worked out by the belligerents
alone would be altogether different in effect well
in spirit from a world settlement, made pri-
marily to establish phase in the history of
mankind"
In every country at present at war; he
adds the desire of the majority of the peo-
pie is for non-contentious solution that will
neither crystalline triumph, propitiate
an enemy, but which will embody the eco
nomic and ethnologic and geographic sense
of the matter"
That is precisely the principle which President
Wilson enunciated. He stated the economic and
geographic sense of the matter when he said that
as far practicable every great people should be
assured a direct outlet to the great highways of
the seas, and that where this could not be effect
ed by a cesson of territory, it could be done
doubt by the naturalization of direct rights way,
under a general guarantee of a concert of Powers.
He stated the ethnologc sense of the matter when
he said, in referring to- a united and autonomous
Poland, that mo right anywhere exists to hand
peoples about from sovereignty to sovereignty
if they were property" and when he added still
more forceful1y that,
"Henceforth inviolable security of life, of
worship and of industrial and social develop
ment should be guaranteed to all peoples who
have lived hitherto under the power of Gov
ernments devoted to a faith and purpose hos
tile to their own"
At the outset of its mission of reconstruction
the United States would be at a disadvantage,
thinks Mr.. Wells. Nowhere in Europe" he
didy points do people now seem to be in love
with the United States" There is a strong dispo-
sition, he says, to regard America "fundamen-
tally Indifferent to the rights and wrongs of the
European struggle-sentimentally interested per-
haps but fundamentally Indifferent" Naturally,
then, the first offers and efforts of the United
States TO bring disinterested counsel and friend
ship into the tragic of the Old Worlds af-
fairs will be met with certain cynicism if not
resentment. But the important question, Mr..
Wells declares is not whether the belligerents
dislike Americans, or Americans dislike the bel
ligrents;" the important question is "the duty of
a great and fortunate nation toward the rest of
the world and the future of mankind" Wherefore,
he says:
'I cling also to the persuasion that there
. are intellectual forces among the rational
elements in the beligerent centers, among
the other neutrals and in America, that will
co-operate in enabling the United States to
play the role of the Unimpassioned Third
Party which becomes more and more neces-
SHY to a generally satisfactory ending of the
war"
This is not the persuasion of only one man
but of millions. Beneath the dreams of diplo-
matists and the ambitions of kings, beneath the
rage and bitterness and which the wars
red caldron brews are the longing of millions in
every land who feel, vaguely perhaps but deeply,
that there is an upward way out OF this CHASTITY
struggle way that will lead to justice for all
nations and freedom for all peoples. 1t is the
heart and hope of those silent millions that Pres-
dent Wilson has spoken out to the world.
The peace dove is becoming more and more
FESTIVE in it's cage.
Why the continued high cost of living? Have