CURRENT AFFAIRS 97 96 THE CLASS STRUGGLE the German Government job all the easier, and served to increase the moral effect of its manoeuvre.
The remarkable success of that manoeuvre encouraged the German Government to try again. This time the chosen instrument was the Catholic Party. Dr. Spahn, the Centrist leader, was made Prussian Minister of Justice, and the services of the Holy Father were secured. Between Stockholm and Rome there might be endurance enough secured from the German people to last, perhaps, the necessary two years, or at least a considerable part thereof.
It seems, however, that this time Germany expectations will not be realized. The aid and comfort which the German Government had a right to expect from the stupidity of its opponents, in view of their past performances, has not materialized. For this time the Vatican has found its peer in the American President. As a move in the diplomatic game, Mr. Wilson reply is undoubtedly an unqualified success.
Whatever moral advantage the German Government may derive from the third refusal of her adversaries to consider an offer of peace is completely counterbalanced by the knowledge which is brought home to the German people that they may have peace any time they want it bad enough to sacrifice their autocratic rulers for it. In this respect Mr. Wilson has probably said more than he intended to say: For should the German people take their destinies into their own hands, the peace they want so much would not depend upon the grace of Mr.
Wilson or any other Allied statesman.
But the adequacy of Mr. Wilson reply to the Pope, as a move to checkmate a diplomatic move on the part of the Central Powers, should not blind us to its real meaning, which is: That Mr. Wilson and his associates do not intend to conclude a peace which would of itself assure its continued obIt is quite evident that Mr. Wilson does not think of a peace the existence of which would not be subject to the whim of any individual or set of individuals, no matter how malevolent or ambitious. Nor of a peace that would of itself do away with autocracy by making it so clearly superfluous as to become quite untenable. Mr. Wilson evidently thinks of a return to the status quo ante in international organization, in which to engage in war was a sacred right, and to arm for war an unavoidable necessity.
It also means that Mr. Wilson and his associates are ready to continue the war uniti peace can be secured by imposing upon the German people a form of government wihich they evidently believe the German people would not otherwise adopt.
The upshot of all of Mr. Wilson lofty talk about peace without victory, and international organization, as, therefore, to be: peace imposed upon Germany upon terms dictated by its enemies, to be secured after the manner in which peace used to be secured under the international regime which brought on the present war.
People Council and National Alliance The Socialists and ternationalists of this country owe Mr.
William Hale Thompson, Mayor of Chicago, a vote of thanks.
His courageous action in sticking to his Irish guns in the face of the howl of the patriotic press has saved us from the humiliation of having to father the People Council and its Constituent Convention as if they were fresh from our flesh and bone from our bone. Inter arma silent leges, says the old Latin maxim, which may be freely translated thus: In the face of martyrdom it behooves every critic to hold his tongue. And the People Council was in a fair way of becoming a martyr, owing to the incredible stupidity of our authorities. But the Mayor of Chicago, by the grace of Tammany (or whatever the name of its Chicago equivalent may be. has spoiled this martyrdom and saved the day for the Socialists and Internationalists. Not only was the Constituent Convention actually held, but when the Mayor of Chicago welcomes what the Governor of Illinois proscribes, the sanction of authority is fairly evenly divided, and we may be permitted to discuss the subject on its merits.
The chief merit of the People Council Convention consists in the fact that it proved again and beyond peradventure servance.