WILL THE GREAT WAR BE FOUGHT OUT?

Frederick James Gregg

WILL the Great War be fought out? Will it be settled by a Peace Conference, resulting from the gen eral conviction on the part of the ations involved that they have had enough of carnage? Or will exhaustion on both sides ompe1 them to accept a settlement that they now in their hearts to be only temporary, nsecure and so a direct incentive to another var? These are questions that thoughtful Americans are putting to themselves just now.

The first rift in the solidarity of either side occurred on June 26, when the German Socialist party published in the Vorwaerls of Berlin, an official manifesto, which led to the immediate suppression of that newspaper by the German Government.

This demand for peace was important as showing that the German Socialists thought that they should not go on backing up the Kaiser, once Germany was no longer "in danger," and that they were opposed to anything like aggression, or the extension of Germanic influence over other nations. They admitted frankly, however, that the vast majority of the Socialists of England and France considered Germany a peril and so insisted on having the war continued until she was beaten.

President Wilson's personal investigator, Colonel House, on returning from Europe the other day, declared that he saw no signs of peace anywhere. The representative of the Woman's Hague Peace Congress was received with chilling politeness by the President of always-neutral Switzerland. Mr. Asquith refused recently, in the House of Commons, to admit that the Cabinet had any peace terms whatever that it cared to talk about. The priests in the Italian churches are offering up a special daily prayer for the success of the army and the accomplishment of Italian designs on Trent and Trieste.

SPEAKING as a Socialist, Anatole France now declares that peace is neither possible nor desirable at the present time, and that any Frenchman who talked of such a thing, while a single foct of the soil of the Republic—including Alsace and Lorraine—or of Belgium, was in the hands of the enemy ought to be treated as a traitor. Baron D'Estournelles de Constant, for years a leading enemy of war, says that there can be no peace, as long as Prussian militarism continues effectual.

We, as Americans, are not paying enough attention to the Civil War, a source of significant lessons and precedents.

Two capital mistakes were made in the North about the Civil War. People thought it would be short and, later on, when it had drawn cut into the work of years, peace-atany-price advocates plagued Lincoln with plans for bringing it to a close by means other than conquest. He took his stand on the impregnable theory that the Union must be saved, whole, and that it must be made secure, as far as it was possible for the wit and valor of man to make it so.

The War was fought out.

The great battles were but incidents in the process by which gradually, tediously, and almost imperceptibly, the South was worn out. It was only afterwards that people in the North realized the part which their sea power had played in the game—the sea power which destroyed Southern trade and threw the South on its own gradually shrinking resources.

Europe thought that the present war would be short, and, when indications changed, certain neutrals imagined that the bloodshed could be ended for humanitarian reasons. But while it is possible to kill a man, it is not possible to kill an idea. Here one idea is set up against another—1, Germany's that she is cramped and must be free to expand; 2, England's and France's, that their institutions, social and political, are in danger and must not only be preserved, but made secure.

Imagine a Peace Conference with Germany still occupying Belgium and a strip of France! Being bound by the argument of peace-for-all or peace-for-none, the very first suggestion of concessions on the part of the Germanic allies to offset concessions by the anti-Germanic Allies would bring all negotiations to an end.

TF Germany offered to get out of Belgium and France, but refused to give up Alsace and Lorraine, France could not agree. If she offered to give up those provinces, in return for Holland and some sort of control over Belgium, nobody could agree. If she offered to get out of France and Belgium, Alsace and Lorraine, in return for the German parts of the Austria-Hungarian Empire, her ally, whom she has saved temporarily at least, from Russia, could accuse her of treachery. If she asked for compensation in South America through abrogation of the Monroe Doctrine, the United States would immediately declare war. If she demanded a free hand in South Africa there would probably be forthcoming a declaration of Independence from the United States of South Africa. If she insisted on the return of the islands taken from her by Australia, that Commonwealth would probably decide that it was time to sever the partnership with the mother country.

The French are not talking. Regarded, as a rule, the most explosive people in Europe, they are to-day the most reticent, the most confident and self-contained. If they are retiring political generals by the dozen—as happened here in our Civil War—nobody is any the wiser. The Russians are repeating the tactics of Napoleonic times. It is well not to forget that our own Washington lost battles, but never lost a campaign. The English say that German commerce, under the German flag, has been wiped off the Seven Seas. To those who ask about the Von Tirpitz submarine campaign they retort that troop-ships are not sunk and that trade is going on pretty much as usual. But how about the weekly toll of merchant ships? To this they answer by pointing to the fact that the wonderful submarines, with all their efficiency, can not hope to equal, proportionately, the staggering damage done to British shipping by privateers in the year of Trafalgar, the very year in which the British navy reached the highest mark of its glory.

THEY go further. They deny that the damage done by the underseas craft is military. They admit that it is magnificent, but they doubt if it is war—for one crowded troop-ship sent to the bottom between Portsmouth and Havre might be a greater military blow than the sinking of several Lusitanias. They contend that if even France and Russia dropped out they would still be in a position to keep Germany bottled up, as the South was by sea, in our Civil War.

The great surprise of the war has been the capacity of the belligerents for using up ammunition. If Germany can advance on Russia, the answer is—shells. If Joffre and French don't go ahead, the explanation is— shells. If there is surprise over the initial bungling in the Dardanelles, the solution of the problem is the demand of the Petrograd government for artillery supplies. The Allies had the ships and the men and the money too, but they were not ready with supplies. Germany was ready on land with the finest fighting machine ever perfected. She was ready too with the submarine to make trade exciting but not to stop it.

IN the American Civil War northern generals were appointed, removed and reappointed. The public clamored for results. Lincoln even expressed a preference for leaders who won battles. The three days of Gettysburg left matters undecided. Only three soldiers, Grant, Sherman and Sheridan, grew steadily in the confidence of the nation. It was the South that did the spectacular things. But in the long run money, men and the command of the sea won. The ring of steel was finally joined and then drawn tighter and tighter. Yet even until the last tragic moments there were those in the North who did not see the grim logic of the process.

Italy's final determination to go into the war was a reasonable indication of how the cat was going to jump, in the opinion of most observers. The German machine is greater than any of its manifestators. Joffre enjoys the admiration of friend and foe. The ArchDuke Nicholas looks as if he would be accepted as the most resourceful general of his time. As for the English, whether Kitchener or French, is their McClellan, only time will tell. But who their Grant is going to be—nobody can guess.

THERE are three elements which are now fighting for the Allies: Time, Men and Money. It is admitted that their forces, now with the colors, are greater than those of the Teutonic combination. Even if the English and French resources, as far as troops are concerned, have a limit, those of Russia have none, and those of Italy are enormous.

The entry of Italy into the war has solidified Austria-Hungary. It may, in the long run, mean the salvation of that Empire by preventing the political break-up which the PanGermanists have of late had in mind. Even if Italy got the territory she is after, the loss would be more than made up for by the ending of the feud between Hungarians and Austrians, which was kept from flaming up again and again only by the great influence of the old Emperor Franz Josef.

There is no sign that Russia can be beaten to a stand-still. Again and .again she has been thrust back only to come on again. Germany's hoped for drive for Calais is always complicated by that fact.

On the side of the Allies there is no delusion as to what German success would mean—the destruction of the British Empire—as it is to-day: the absorption of Belgium, the Netherlands, Holland and probably Denmark; the reduction of France to the status of a third class power, a scheme which Bismarck had in mind for a few years after 1871; German control of the Baltic and the North Sea; the sweeping away of the Monroe Doctrine—a Doctrine which now equally prevents an attempt at the conquest of Canada and the acquisition of provinces in Brazil now largely settled by Germans; the restoration of the Turk as the "over lord" of Egypt, and so the upsetting of the whole existing scheme of spheres of control on the north coast of Africa.

Both sides profess to be fighting for their existence. But the important question is which side would gain more by bringing about a peace at the present time?