ONE felt interested in the “Campaign for Honorable Peace,” until it was learned that the propagandists designed to proceed on Herr Bethmann-Hollweg’s formula. But the map to which the German Chancellor referred has already altered since he offered it as a basis for negotiation, and before the German speakers have stumped the Fatherland it may happen that still deeper modifications will appear on the existent lines. The “honorable peace” at present in the minds of Prince Wedel and his committee bears a suspicious resemblance to a very respectable victory for Germany, and it is only the continued, carefully fostered ignorance of that country that can make the forthcoming campaign less ridiculous to the German man-in-the-street than it appears to ourselves. The Kaiser’s sham door is still stuffed with high explosives, and Herr Bethmann-Hollweg’s tears will help to water no olive branch.

Consider the only possible conditions of peace that do not involve a treasonable attitude of mind in England and the Allies, and then observe Germany’s attitude to those conditions.

We may reduce the vital points to three, with M. Gustave HervÉ; and in taking his terms, be it remembered that we speak with the lips of a great man and a great pacifist.

He recognizes the awful need to destroy the domination of the Central Powers and crush German militarism for the sake of his own ideals; and, that done, dreams of the only possible peace and sees it based on a triple foundation. The first and obvious need is that which the Union of Democratic Control and those who think in its terms seem unable to perceive as the most vital: a defeated Germany. Germany is the obstacle that militates against any sort of future safety for great or small States. It follows, therefore, that until we can impose our peace ideal upon her, no Allied peace worthy the name is possible; and since our terms must be profoundly distasteful to Germany and her first accomplice, it is vain to present them until her power to decline them has been destroyed.

Only from a vanquished Germany may the remaining vital conditions of peace follow. With her defeat she must be called upon to scrap the fatal poisons that led to her insanity, and take her daily food no more from the hands of war lords, hireling professors, and publicists. She must be cleansed, freed of her seven devils, and taught that the only sovereign power human progress can henceforth recognize is the sovereignty of a people’s will. For the fighting kingdoms know now at this bitter cost one eternal truth: that not nations, but their rulers will wars and make them.

If ideals of internationalism falter before this condition, and M. HervÉ’s peace will increase the enthusiasm of nationality, his far-reaching view sees greater hopes beyond. For his third stipulation allows no subject peoples. He would have Europe found a practical and living system of justice upon these ruins—a system sprung of honor and honesty, and based on international physical strength.

From such a system federation must sooner or later spring, and the peace ideals of nationalist and internationalist alike grow from dreams into realities.

The victory that can win such terms will in truth be “a victory of industry, commerce, the arts, and humanity.”

EDEN PHILLPOTTS.