The official statement upon the proceedings of the Supreme War Council at Versailles last week is eminently satisfactory. It tends to dispel the deceptive “fog of peace” which has been gathering - and has been artificially thickened - in many Allied capitals during the drear months of winter. It reaffirms the determination and the objects of the Allies in unmistakable terms and with a welcome note of virility.
After “the most careful consideration” of the recent utterances of the German Chancellor and of the Austro-Hungarian Minister for Foreign Affairs, the Supreme War Council has been “unable to find in them any real approximation to the moderate conditions laid down by all the Allied Governments.” In other words, the national declaration of our war aims laid before the representatives of British Labour by Mr Lloyd George as the irreducible minimum of our conditions of peace, and the notable message of President Wilson, have evoked no response from enemy spokesmen that reveals any honest disposition to accept the principles upon which a lasting and honourable peace can alone be founded.
The plans of “conquest and spoliation” openly disclosed by the representatives of the Central Powers at Brest-Litovsk have but strengthened the conclusions drawn from the statements of Count Hertling and Count Czernin. These conclusions are that the only immediate task before the Allies is the prosecution, with the utmost vigour and in the closest and most effective cooperation, of the military efforts of the Allies. When these efforts shall have brought about in the enemy Governments and peoples such a change of temper as to bring them to accept the Allied terms we may hope for and talk of peace without moral treason to our cause. Until that moment comes, suggestions of peace will, indeed, imply the abandonment “in the face of an aggressive and unrepentant militarism” of all the principles of “freedom, justice, and respect for the law of nations” which the Allies are resolved to vindicate.
Nor is it only their purely military efforts that the Allies are determined to continue. There will be a “closer and more effective co-ordination” under the Council, of all the efforts of the Powers engaged in the struggle against the Central Empires. To this end, the functions of the Supreme War Council itself have been enlarged, and the postulates of unity of policy and action, tardily recognized at Rapallo last November under the pressure of the Austro-German offensive against Italy, have been given further “concrete and practical development.” If, after the fullest discussion of policy and of measures, the Allies are “united in heart and will”, their ideal and practical agreement is of the happiest augury. They cherish no hidden designs, but are unshakably resolved jointly to defend democratic civilization against an unscrupulous and brutal attempt to force German military mastery upon the world.
The French Premier, M Clemenceau, is understood to regard the outcome of the Conference, or rather session, of the Supreme War Council with marked satisfaction. Throughout the British Commonwealth and the United States, no less than in Italy and among our sorely-tried Allies in Belgium, Rumania, and Serbia, this declaration of the Allied purpose will be received with hearty approval. The movement of Italian opinion in favour of a thoroughly democratic national war progranune, to which our telegrams again bear witness, will be strengthened and encouraged by it. Signor Orlando, whose forthcoming statement of policy is eagerly awaited throughout the Peninsula, will be able now to speak in terms that should remove the last trace of misapprehension from Italian minds; and we trust that, despite the criticisms directed against some aspects of Italian diplomacy in the past, Baron Sonnino, the Foreign Minister, will be able fully to support his chief.
Advertisement
The heroism of the Allied Armies and the privations which the Allied peoples are enduring alike demand that the result of the struggle shall prove their faith not to have been vain. It is only by the full co-ordination of Allied efforts and aims in the defence of the principles of freedom that the military success of the Allied arms will be crowned “with the glory of a great moral triumph”.