Audubon Republican. [volume] (Audubon, Iowa) 1894-1925, 1921-01-20
DIsARM GERMANY FIRST

DISAltM GEkMANI FlRSI
The logic OF ex-President Poin-
cares position is incontrovertible.
The place to begin disarmament is
in Germany. Germany pledged her
self to strip down her military equip-N
ment in men and war materials to
certain clearly defined limitations.
She pledged herself to do this by the
LIST of January, 1921. She has not
done it. She has refused to do it.
Pleading an excuse that is an alb
surdity, she says she cannot do it.
Now, with Germany taking this at
titude, the ex-President of France
holds that talk of disarmament
among other nations is inappropri-
ate and untimely. The fact that
Germany at this moment is impotent
so far as another brigand raid on her
neighbors is concerned, is beside the
question. The prime objective of
the war was to disarm and cripple
her that further criminal endeavor
on her part would be impossible
impossible not merely for decade
or for many decades, but for all
time. For nearly half century she
had been an oyerhanging menace to
the civilized world. She made good
her long-standing threat. She plung-
ed the world into such welter OF
slaughter and ruin as it had never
before known. She was beaten at
last-beaten to her knees. There
was but one thing to do with her.
She must be so hobbled and ham
strung that never again would she
be able to work the havoc she had
wrought in the world during the four
years of horror when she had run
amuck.
1t was with that object in view
that the demands for the reduction
of her army to a bare skeleton and
for the destruction of her weapons
of thuggery were made 1t was her
assent to these demands that Undue
ed the American and the Allied
forces to let her up when they had
her down with their hands on her
throat. And no sooner was she on
her feet than she began her whin-
ings, her lodgings and equivoca-
lions. Concession after concession
was granted her, and with every con-
cession came her pleas for more
concessions. These pleas at last be-
gan to ring with the accent OF de-
mands. There was a distinct note
of turbulence in her last flat refusal
to reduce her armed forces to the
limits to which she stood pledged to
reduce them.
AS ex-President Poincare very
truly says, there is nothing the Ger
man understands save force. This
has been demonstrated with every
passing day since the terms of the
armistice were signed. From that
day to this, there has been per-
sistent assertion and reassertion in
Germany that Germany was not de-
feated in the war The yielding at
titude of the Allies in all the sub
sequent conferences with her seems
only to have confirmed that asser-
ton. 1t has now apparently become
an article of faith in Germany that
she was not defeated in the war.
From that assertion 1t is only step
to the enunciation of the dogma that
Germany won the war; Indeed, the
entire German attitude of late might
easily be construed into an assertion
that Germany did win it.
The French have arrived at the
conclusion that it is now high time
that this nonsense came to an end.
Ex-President Poincare feels, and his
countrymen agree with him, that 1t
is time Germany were made to know
once and for all that the length OF
her tether has been reached. In that
attitude both the Allies and the
American people will heartily con-
cur. So far as France is concerned,
she has asked no indemnity of Ger
many. All she has asked is that
Germany Shall pay for the wanton,
coldly calculated havoc she wrought
during her brutal invasion of French
territory. By spending countless
millions of money in PREPARATIONS,
France has, even by that much, adj
vanced cash to Germany. Germany
must repay this money. She must
in addition, pay the staggering bal
ance still due for her devastation OF
French soil.
| Next May the total OF Germany's
bill of damages will be determined
and rendered. Meanwhile, not one
fraction of Germany money must not
be diverted to the maintenance of
military forces beyond the exact Inn
itations laid down in the terms of
the armistice and accepted by Ger
| many