[Illustration:  EMILE BOUTROUX. (Photo from Bain News Service.) See Page 160]

When Peace Is Seriously Desired

By Arnold Bennett.

From The Daily News of London.

When peace is seriously desired in any quarter, the questions to be discussed by the plenipotentaries will fall into three groups: 

1.  Those which affect all Europe.

2.  Those which chiefly affect Western Europe.

3.  Those which chiefly affect Eastern Europe.

The first group is, of course, the most important, both practically and sentimentally.  And the main question in it is the question of Belgium.  The original cause of the war was Germany’s deliberate and advertised bellicosity, and it might be thought that the first aim of peace would be by some means to extinguish that bellicosity.  But relative values may change during the progress of a war, and the question of Belgium—­which means the question of the sanction of international pledges—­now stands higher in the general view than the question of disarmament.  Germany has outraged the public law of Europe, and she has followed up her outrage with a series of the most cowardly and wanton crimes.  She ought to pay, and she ought to apologize.  Only by German payment and German apology can international law be vindicated.  Germany should pay a sum large enough to do everything that money can do toward the re-establishment of Belgium’s well-being.  I have no competence to suggest the amount of the indemnity.  A hundred million pounds does not appear to me too large.

Then the apology.  It may be asked:  Why an apology?  Would not an apology be implied in the payment of an indemnity?

It is undeniable that Germany is now directed by hysteric stupidity wielding a bludgeon.  Granted, if you will, that half the nation is at heart against the stupidity and the bludgeon.  So much the worse for the half.  Citizens who have not had the wit to get rid of the Prussian franchise law must accept all the consequences of their political ineffectiveness.  The peacemakers will not be able to divide Germany into two halves.

For Potsdam a first-rate spectacular effect is needed, and that effect would best be produced by a German national apology carried by a diplomatic mission with ceremony to Brussels and published in all German official papers, and emphasized by a procession of Belgian troops down Unter den Linden.  This visible abasement of German arms in front of the Socialists of Berlin would be an invaluable aid to the breaking of military tyranny in Prussia.