September 19, 1918 
LAND &? WATER 
latter have shown the sHghtest tendency to reciprocate such 
fervid acknowledgments of favours received. We have 
been betrayed and seen our own folks drowned and tortured 
in defiance of all good faith and humanity, by German inter- 
nationalists. What of that ? Let us show our unabated 
confidence in their high character by putting it in their 
power to betray us again. That is the plain meaning of the 
Trade Union Congress vote at Derby on the renewal of the 
International. I rejoice that American Trade Unionists and 
Socialists, as represented by Samuel Gompers, Charles Edward 
Russell, Simons, and others, refuse to have anything whatever 
to do with any meeting with such ruf&ans as the war has 
shown the German Social-Democrats of to-day to be. 
A Long-Winded Compromise 
I have said that the resolution is not in accord with the 
War Aims Memorandum of the Labour Party. Neither is it. 
That too was a compromise. It was also long-winded, 
obscure, and indefinite. It has been taken so far, however, 
as the irreducible minimum of the claims of the Allies as 
voiced by "Labour." It at least made plain that the Allies 
were fighting the modern Tartar-Teutons, not merely to get 
the invaders out of the territory they have seized in France 
and Belgium, but to secure justice, full compensation, and 
permanent national freedom for Serbia, Rumania, and 
Poland, the recovery of Alsace-Lorraine by France, fair 
treatment for Russia, as well as the reconstitution of Europe 
on the basis of the emancipation of all oppressed nationalities. 
This policy is not put very plainly, but that is what it has 
been taken to mean. We are supposed to be waiting for a 
reply from the German Social-Democrats tf) that Memorandum 
at the present time. And now, just 2ft this critical moment, 
when at last the devastating German armies are being swept 
back out of the country they have ruined to positions which 
it is very doubtful whether they can hold, just when we hear 
the beginning of lamentation and woe in the German camp 
from the Kaiser and Hindenburg downwards — at this critical 
moment our Trade Unionists and Labour men, whose rela- 
tions and friends on land and on sea are safeguarding them 
and their families from German outrages and German 
butchery, proclaim themselves ready to trade their defenders 
away for the sake of a wTetched compromise which is nothing 
better than a confession of moral cowardice ! I have no 
feeling but contempt for the whole paltry business. There 
was no necessity whatever for any climb-down of the pro- 
Ally section. The splendid public" meeting attended by- 
many thousands of people arranged by Will Thorne, and 
addressed by himself, Ben Tillett, Jack Jones, J. H. Thomas, 
and others, which carried a thoroughgoing anti-German 
resolution with only seven dissentients, went far to prove 
this." That is what our speakers find everywhere. The 
defeatists here, as in France, are losing such following as 
they had among the people, and unity can best be attained 
by declaring boldly for a peace dictated to the aggressors 
on their own soil. I am confident that if a complete referen- 
dum were taken of the adults of this country, including the 
fighting men ashore and afloat, they would repudiate with 
littlfe short of unanimity the time-serving policy of the Derby 
delegates. 
We have only to consider seriously what the result of 
entering upon peace negotiations would be when the German ^ 
troops had "withdrawn voluntarily or by compulsion from 
France and Belgium" to recognise at once what a ruinous 
policy this would be for Europe and the world. Anything 
short of the complete defeat of Germany and the reorganisa- 
tion of the nations on a democratic anti-militarist basis 
would be a victory for the 160,000,000 of people whom the 
Kaiser and his Junkers still have brigaded under the German 
Flag. Supposing that France and Belgium were completely 
cleared of the aggressors, the German armies would still 
hold huge territories at their control and a sphere of un- 
challenged influence from the Arctic Circle to Asia Minor. 
We have already seen what sort of use Germany makes of 
an armistice ! To negotiate for peace, therefore, which 
means to begin by an armistice and to go on to some sort 
of Congress, while Germany remains mistress of Central 
Europe and the East, would be fatal. What chance would 
the -Allies have of obtaining compensation for the wreck and 
ruin wrought in France and in Belgium ? What possibility 
would there be of developing the nationalities of Austria, 
of restoring Serbia, and of making Russia and- Rumania 
whole again by clearing them of their German plunderers ? 
None whatever. An armistice agreed and negotiations once 
set on foot, the people will not sanction the recommencement 
of the war. The Germans know that very well, and so do 
the defeatists on the Allied side. That is wb.y this vigorous 
I)eace offensive has begun before the German armies are 
completely routed, as with the American forces crowding 
into France thej' now can be. Nobody wants to go on 
fighting a moment longer than is necessary. But we must 
put an end to war for the next generation, at least, by proving 
to the most formidable aggressive combination of all time 
that war does not pay. And this can only be achieved by 
such a victory as will convince the Germans oh their own 
soil, and by taking security for the c^arrying out of the peace 
which the Allies shall formulate. Anything short of that 
means, I repeat, victory for the Teutonic combination ; and 
Germany — League of Nations, or no League of Nations — 
will at once begin to prepare for another effort to carry out 
her policy of military domination over Europe and the 
world. She will use the interval to learn how to remedy 
her mistakes. 
That is what the French, at any rate, very clearly see. 
France has suffered, France has sacrificed far more than we 
have. Ever}- household across the Channel is in mourning, a 
quarter of her whole country — and that the richest — has been 
turned into a desert as her enemies exultingly proclaim. 
But for these very reasons Frenchmen are determined that 
the horrors inflicted upon them for the second time in fifty 
years shall not befall the children who are growing up to 
take their place. Germany must be deprived of the power 
of perpetual menace which she has employed ever since 
1875. The defeatists are on the run. The whole nation is 
determined now, at whatever further sacrifices, to see this 
thing right through. The magnificent old man, as one of 
my Paris friends calls him, who leads them is a guarantee of 
that. The name of Clemenceati is the pledge of the France 
of to-day not to prove false to. the France of to-morrow. 
But nothing short of the full realisation of the Allied policy 
can bring about that permanent peace which shall ensure 
to her the power to work out her own destinies undisturbed. 
Surely we Englishmen who have undergone such terrible 
trials and disasters ourselves will not enter upon negotiations 
when France, which has suffered far more in every way, 
has decided to go on to the end ? 
Piracy and Peace 
It is very significant, surely, that at the same time — almost 
on the same day — that Austria tries to trap the Allies into 
non-committal negotiations for peace a piratical attack of 
the Lusitania description should be successfully made on a 
South African liner and Paris should be thoroughly bombed. 
Germany knows well that if she can, bj- using poor, weak, 
subservient Austria as a "bonnet," inveigle the Allies into 
"a conference with the mere second-hand promise of with- 
drawal from France and" Belgium — curiously in accord with 
that Trade Union Congress resolution, by the way — then- 
she and confederates will have virtually won the war. Ger- 
many and Austria together are every bit as untrustworthy 
and treacherous to-day as they were when they began the 
war. Not the slightest confidence can be placed in them, 
and not a single clause of any agreement or treaty will either 
of them observe except under the strongest compulsion and 
with full security for performance in our hands. All the 
Allies really know that. I hope sincerely they will act 
, upon their own convictions, regardless of Germans, pro- 
Germans, or pacifists. 
Mr. Lloyd George tells us he is sick of programmes. That 
may well be after the result of his own Smuts pro- 
gramme in Switzerland last year. Negotiations witli the 
enemy, as he mav then have learnt, are bootless until that 
enemy is convinced that to surrender at discretion is the 
only course open to him. It is quite impossible to carry out 
Dr. Woodrow Wilson's policy, which all the Allies say they 
are ready to accept, until this has been achieved. Why 
should Germany, who entered upon this war in order to 
secure, in the East especially, what she has now got, give up 
all her territorial booty, pay heavy compensations for her 
shameless brigandage and piracy, look on while all the nations 
she or Austria now dominates are loosed from her yoke and 
given full political and economic freedom, see France rein- 
stated in Alsace-Lorraine, and her own influence in Sofia 
and Constantinople gone ? There is only one answer to that 
question. Because she must. And this answer cannot be 
given until she has been deprived of all hope of success either 
now or later. 
The Allies are flighting for a great ideal as well as in self- 
defence. It is the struggle of democracy against militarism. 
There will be no Congress of Vienna at its close to cut up the 
map of Europe in order to satisfy monarchical greed or to 
favour in any way imperial expansion. But the first step 
towards the realisation of the national, social, and economic 
emancipation of the people is the enforced surrender of the 
common enemy of all. 
