The weekly Alaska citizen., 1919-05-12

pressing need for providing securit, against aggression, and because be ing accustomed to constitution which has slowly brOadened down from precedent to precedent they are more prepared than 1 find people here to be to regard the draft as a foundation susceptible to alteration and improvement than as a finished building.
 In France. on the other hand. there has been a demand for security first and foremost ever since the peace conference assembled. When we con. slider that the losses of France have been far greater in life than those oi Great Britain and in property beyond all comparison. this demand is per. fectly natural; almost the whole of the criticism of the league of na- tions in France has been designed to prove first that the league of nations is delaying the settlement with Ger. many. and secondly that the league will not provide France with the guarantees which she must have.
 Had Appearance of Delaying Pact
 The first criticism is. l believe. supported by great volume of pub, lie opinion. am not prepared to say that the attempt to frame constf tuition for the league has delayet the preparation of the preliminariea of peace with Germany. It had not done so up to the time when l left Paris early in March and it seems to me to be quite probable that there may be other reason for the delay, but it had the appearance of doing so and in the present state of France il was, l think. mistake to allow the proceedings of the conference to create such an impression.
 The conference would in my judg' ment have been better advised If aft CT laying down the broad principles of the league of nations it had pro. ceeded to settle the terms to be i'm. posed upon our enemies in accord ance with those principles and left the debates of the constitution for the league for later consideration.
 There is, I believe, in France a very widespread feeling in favor of the league and 1 anticipate that this will find much fuller expression when settlement with Germany has been formulated.
 The second criticism that the league does not provide France with the guarantees which she needs throws upon the critics the burden of providing an alternative policy and in this they have so far failed. No argument will alter the plain fact that on one side of the future iron. tier there will be some seventy i've mil. lions of Germans and on the other some forty million French.
 Frontiers ot Little Avail
 A peace which leaves in Europe an other sore spot such as the treaty ot Frankfort left when it tore Alsace and Lorraine from France will soon. CT or later drive the seventy-five mil. lions to arms and all the experience of the past shows that attempts to prevent a people suffering from a grievance from arming have ended ill failure. In that even no arrange ment of the frontier can provide the numerically weaker power with real security.
 was much struck by an incident which occurred in Paris last Febru- ary. An outcry arose that the great French iron fields of Briey. to the northwest of Metz, which fell into the hands of the Germans at the oue. break of the war. had not been bonn. barded by the French army because undue influence had been brot l. bear by the proprietors upon tn, French government in order to save their work from destruction.
 A debate took place in the French chamber and during that debate M. Viviani, who was prime minister oi France at the outbreak of the war. stated that the French government had at the end of July. 1914, ordered General Joffre to withdraw all French troops to distance of ten kilometeps from the frontier in order to avoid all possible danger that subordinate French officer might act in such a way as to give the Germans occasion for accusing the French of an act of