Pioneer

SThe I.L.P. and the War. THE JUSTIFICATION OF OUR STAND, J. n. MACDONALD AND THE MISSION OF THE INTERNATIONAL SOCIALISTS. THE FAILURE OF CHRISTIANITY. What is perhaps the most important responsi- ble statement of the l.L.P. position on the war is reproduced hereunder in the shape of a verbatim report of the speech of our Leader, Mr J. R, Macdonald, M.P., delivered in the Market Hall Brvnmawr, before an audience of at least 1,500 on Friday last. It was a remarkable au- dience, especially in view of the fact that Brynmawr is not one of our fastnesses, and the meeting was a ticket meeting with a charge for admittance. It was believed by the local Comrades that many in that huge audience had come to curse whether they remained to pray we know not, but certainly they did not curse. We believe the speech to be of such im- portance to the movement that we would like to see it reprinted throughout the whole of the British, aye, and foreign, Socialist press as a statement of our case. and we are giving it at fun length in the hope that it will be spread am- ongst those who do not follow us in South Wles, Miss Minnie Pa-llister presided in her usual excellent manner. MR. IIAMSAY MACDONALD sa.id: "I have come down to South Wales with very great pleasure. It is not the first time that the in- stinct for righteousness that characterises our I I "I I- 1 Celtic miuds has stood the J E.-r. in gooa stead. To-day the superficial onlooker regards the In- dependent Labour Party as something out in the wilderness. If yon take up the ordinary newspapers you find it stated there that the I.L.P. has ranged itself against the country, and having ranged itself against t country, will never be forgiven by the country. That is a profound mistake. The I.L.P. lias not ranged itself against the country, and never will. (Cheers.) The country to the Independent La- bour Party is not a mere political entity it is a great spiritual fact that stands for ideas and ideals and to-day there is no party in the country that is more entitled to say that b stand's for the soul of England than the I.L.P. (Cheers.) I want to-night to make good that statement. We have now been at war for 20 months, the course of it is only too well known to the people of this country—to the women of this country, to the children of this country the end of it: what man can tell? You have been reading your ners for the last 18 months—full of false prophesy, full of false ex- Pee t,!l ,io-ns not a single forecast, not a single statement of what was going to take place has been true, and to-day the same old policy of de- ceiving the people is being pursued. The LL.P. alone has the-courage, the honesty and the manliness to tell you the truiff1. (Cheers.) To-day the war judging by appearances, is no nearer an end than it was the day it broke out. 4.1 What has been the position that we would have taken up? First of all, when it broke out. we told you that all wars were always the result of policies. Was there any quarrel bet-I been the people of Europe? I sav No! there was not. There was a quarrel between the Governors of Europe, there were certain sections in Europe—military and diplomatic-that. as the result of years of suspicion, years of fear, years of rivalry, had got themselves into an impossible position. It might be perfectly true that the rulers of one country were more res- ponsible for the war than the rulers of an- other. I believed that that was trii, ln(I t said it from the very beginning that the men responsible for our policy strove hard to keep the peace. But when July. 1914. came, they were like men who. at the edge of the water- fall. put out his oars and said. 'I never meant to coniti here,' and pulled against the stream, but the stream was too powerful for them. and down over the waterfall this country ha.d to 2:0, whether it liked it or not. And we have been opposing the country going on that stream that was bound to end in the disasters of the waterfall in which we are struggling at pre- sent. (Cheers.) Policies cause wars'; policies bring countries to the verge: and countries brought to the verge cannot turn back they have to go over and meet the consequences of their own short-sightedness.. We told you that 10 or 12 years ago. We told you 10 or 12 year's ago that the policy being pursmed by Europe, not by this country alone, whether the Governors meant it or not, were bound to land the whole of Europe in a great devasta- ting war. and our prophecies came true in August, 1914. That is the origin of the war. Now, a great many of you ask if this coun- try could have kept out of this war in August, 1914. You do not begin earl-v enough. Could a man fail to go over Niagara when he finds himself 20ft. from the end? The man who puts that question is not putting an intelligent ques- tion. He puts his question at a time when the die has been cast, and the consequences are being reaped. I say that in August, 1914, with our policy behind us, with our pledges be- hind us, this country could not have kept out of this war; but I say that ten years before, four years before, if this country had been wiso enough to listen to the advice given them by Labour and Socialists, there would have been a condition of affairs in Europe that would have made this war absolutely unnecessary-nay ab- solutely impossible. That is the reply that I give to that question. (Cheers.) You must not begin on August 3, 1914; you must begin when this country began with the policies that inevit- ably meant war, and there you must answer the question as to whether this country could have kept out of the war or not. A farmer reaps wheat in August because he sows it in wint?el'? he reaps barley in July or August because h saws it in spring; you reap war in 1914 because you sowed the seeds of war since 1904, and more particularly since 1906. You sowed the seeds of" war, and not the seeds of peace. That is the position of the I.L.P and now to-day where are we? We are told that the I.L.P. is I not giving national service as some people are giving ft: I say to you that the I.L.P. is Giving service just as precious for the future as the naÜonaJ service given by the men in the trenches and no man puts a. higher value on that than 1. The LhP. is standing for the Liberty, the traditions and the good name of England. We know perfectly well and you know it—that we cannot crush PrussJan Milit- arism abroad, and accept it at home. We know perfectly well that no greater curse fell upon Germany than her success against France in 1871. Germany beat France down to the dust. Germany used force—and force alone. She lost her own soul, and developed all those spirituali characteristics that you see developing in the Tribunals erected under the Military Service Act. (Cheers.) There you have Prussianism. Everyone of these men who have been treating Conscientious Objectors as some of these Triou- nals have been treating them, are Bismarcks or Moltkes in miniature. (Cheers.) These are the men who ought to be interned in Alien Camps. (Cheers.) You get this spirit of Prus- sianism in the passions of the crowd; you get it in the preachings of the great people of England —of this great England that has raised itself to distinction on its love of Liberty and hatred of Militarism. In this Prussianism you get the beginnings of everything that has cursed Ger- many being expounded into vour minds by the Tory papers and the pro-war Liberal papers. Compare this press with that of > Germany in 1871, and you get all the evil characteristics of that earlier press. We, of the I.L.P., are fighting against it because we are giving na- tional service. To fight for the retention of the ideals of England is as essential as it was for men to light against the physical foe who might come and invade this country. That is our position, and in explaining it I offer no apologies, (Cheers.) Through the passions and the prejud- ices of the leaders of the majority, through the daily press this country has started on pre- cisely the same road that has cursed Germany and has brought her into such unenviable pro- minence as she is in at the present moment in the eyes of the whole world. We stand for Eng- land; 1e stand for our country; and there is no political organisation in the whole of England at the present moment that is so well entitled to claim the approbation of the people as we are on these grounds. (Cheers.) And then you tell us that we are hampering the country in its fight. I deny it. We never have. Of course; I am perfectly willing to admit that there are two points of view with regard to that. There 13 the point of view of the ignorant newspapers of the majority which tell you quite candidly, We cannot tell the people the truth. We have got to tell them every two months or so that Germany is smashed and broken that food prices are so high that in the course of a. week or two there are going to be riots they tell you all sorts of stories about the destruct jon ot Germany.' I admit that if it is true you must be kept in. ignorance; if you must be told that the war is nearer an end than it is actually; that you must be sort of intoxicated mentally in order to be kept under foot, then we are hampering the country. But I deny the truth of that. I say this. that the more facts the people know, the more they are able to see their position: the more accurately will they fight and the more accurately will they make peace. To my mind war at best is only a means to an end. What do you do with. war ? Uas any State ever been built !,p Never! It may have raised its head on the sword, it may have power to brandish the sword in the eyes of the world for a generation or two, but the statement that he who draws the sword will perish by the sword is not the statement of an exceptionally saintly man it is an expression of the immutable laws of creation. The man or the nation who goes swaggering about boasting of his force, and trusting to his force is a man or nation surroun- ded by enemies. Every enemy beaten down on- ly makes a place for a new enemy to take its place. His existence is challenged from day to day; from generation to generation, and at last somebody arises, some combination arises, he himself gets sapped of his energies, age comes upon him with decay, and down he goes. smitten by the very weapon that raised him to distinc- tion. That is true of men; it is true of na- tions. That must be true of men and nations so long as creationuremains rational, and so long as there is a mdilH order that we must con- form our conduct to. (Loud cheers.) That being so, we say to England to-day: 'You may defend yourself; you may have to fight; but if you start trusting to the sword if military ideas fill your mind to the exclusion of other ideas if, even in the midst of war, with all its pressure, all its harassments, all its doubts and fears, if you send out from your mind all the thoughts of reason and fairplay. all desires eo believe that other people are honest; if you simply al- low your mind to be obsessed with the idea of force, of compulsion, of power, of beating down; of crushing; then you may profess to the world that you are not trusting to force, but your professions will be of no avail, for, as a matter of fact, you will be trusting to force, and you will be putting yourself in precisely the position that Germany took up in 1871; a.nd the curse which is passed by civilisation to-day on German militarism will be passed upon British mil- itarism by the next generation or so. and you will be held to be the responsible parties. To day you cannot fight the war, unless you pre- pare for Peace. Are you' going to take up this position that you are going to ask men to lav down their lives for you. and when you have done that you are not going to say how their lives are going to be made effective. Are their sacrifices to be of no avail? Are they to go and fight, fight, fight like two dogs in the street. until one or another lies down exhausted and beaten, and then when you have done that, you will turn round and survey the world that is left to you?' It is! That is what the country is being taught to do by your oppon- ents, the so-called majority. We say that in the midst of war you have to keep your minds, as the men at the front had to keep their eyes—vigilant. It is their duty to look for and face and meet, the enemy. It is your duty to 1 Keep the Home Fires Burning,' not m-erely in men's hearts, but the Home Fires which Te-i present the best in England—her liberties, her! intelligence, her love of freedom—of freedom of speech and freedom of action; her belief in co-n- science—although that is sneered at. (Cheers.) That is what our England is to us. That is the country we stand for; that is what we mean by country! The spirit of our country, not the passions of our country;, the soul of our coun- try, not the mere enraged emotions of our country. In the midst of war we want the bet- ter England, the spiritual England, to speak. and think, and to live; and not to go to sleep and put these things on one side whilst the battles are raging. (Loud cheers.) If we quarrel with the churches, as I do, it is that the .churches have surrendered their mission. (Loud applause.) Any fool, any Atheist can make a recruiting speech it i-equires a, Christian to teli England to keep her soul alive. And Christians are not doing it. They are ranging themselves with the world We decline, as a political party, even in times of war, to range ourselves exclusively with the world. (Loud cheers.) If you are sitting at home asking other men to lay down their lives whilst you read your newspapers in comfort, pat yourselves on the chest and say, I am a patriot; I would like to shoot those traitors of the I.L.P. then you are basely deserting the men who are fight- ing for you and the country. You are doing no- thing to safeguard the spirit that these men are believing they are safeguarding at the muzzle of-the rifle, and at the end of their guns You use grandiloquent phrases you say We are going to have a fight to a finish.' You believe that that expresses something definite. You are being misled. You believe that that means that your country is determined, and that there is going to be no humbug and no slackening. A fight to a finish! Does anyone who uses that phrase ever ask himself exactly what it really does mean? I invite you when you leave this meeting, to sit down and ask votr.self—remembering that this means human life, means widows and orphans remembering it means colossal debts; remembering it means the destruction of national treasure—to sit down and ask yourself what do you mean by a fight to a finish. I am in favour of a fight to a huish, But I know exactl- what I mean — you don't. (Laughter.) What is the finish of war? You say Berlin. I say No, you are not far enough. I will tell you why! What did the Germans say was the finish of the Franco-Ger- Iltam War—Paris, They got there, and they round they had not got far enough, because they could not make a Peace. The Franco-German War ended with a. patched-up peace, because Germany crushed her opponent to the dust. To-day. this war, in one of its most important aspects, is simply a sequel to the Franco-German War. There was no peace. after that war—only a military truce—you armed, France armed, Germany armed. Russian armed, because it was only a military truce. The Franco-German War has not been fought to a finish yet, although it was .started in 1870. That is the finish a jot 01 hi are working for at the moment. I am in favour of fighting to a finish, but the finish of all war is a permanent peace. (Loud applause.) If I can get a permanent peace to-morrow, a just peace—and you will have no permanent peace unless it is a just peace—and do not make any mistake about it, and do not make any mistake about it, a lot of you have not thought it out—I will accept it. A permanent peace must be a just peace, a peace accepted b altl the peoples of Europe. And if I could, get that, the war has been fought to a finish—• a more real finish than if you -,let your soldiers encamped on Wilhelmatrasse, and your Head- quarters Staff stationed at Potsdam. So ou.seól men are being asked to lay down their lives to fight the war to a fin' li?, and the gentlemen who write about it, who talk most about it. do no: themselves know what they are talking ab- out. (Loud cheers.) I wish that there was just as much uncertainty about the sacrifice of life as dwre is uncertainty of the common-sense of these gentlemen who stay at home to stir up the venom to those sacrifices. I am not in favour of a patched-up peace, but I would like these military gentlemen, these stay-at-home patriots, these far-sighted (?) Britishers who pat poor Tommy on the back at a safe distance of South Wales, to be good enough to tell me. when they criticise the I.L.P. what treaty or peace during the last century—and they could go back if they liked over any century—was not a patched-up peace when it was settled by the military and tho diplomatists alone? That is a nice iittle conundrum for the remaining part of the winter I do not care what war they take there has been no settled treaty made by the military alone. There were only two treaties in the whole of last centurv that give promise of being permanent. One was that between Germ- an v and Austria, after the Austro-German War, and that was settled oy Bismarck as a politician and not as a soldier. The Prussians wanted to impose a peace from military necessity; Bis- ma.rck said £ No this treaty must be a perman- ent one; and. therefore, you have to allow me to settle it as a politician." And he did, and And he did, an d it was. r-he, other was our settle- ment of the South African War-which was fought to a finish. By the dispensation of Prov- idence the pro-Boers came into office before the actual ending of things. Before the settle- ment came the pro-Boers—the men you had hounded from your platforms, the -men who had been branded as traitors by the men who brand us to-day—came into office and immediately set about giving self-government to South Africa. The men who fought the war were all opposed to it. Mr. Balfour and all the Tory Party shook their sage (as they thought, but unwise and unpatriotic as we know) heads. for if the pro-Boer Sir Henry Campbell Bannerman had not unsettled the military settlement and set in its place a political settlement, you would have had no General Botha and no General Smuts to- day you would have had revolution and rebel- lion in the Transvaal and Orange Rivefr State as thev were then. These are the only treaties that were peace treaties, and the I.L.P. wants this war settled in exactly the same way as these two wars; namely, by political sagacity and not by mere military power. (Cheers.) You can fight; you can recruit; you can clear the Germans out of Belgium; you can drive them back to the Rhine; you can cross the Rhine, and you can get to Berlin—but in the process you will lose hundreds of thousands of lives; you will pile up your National Debt over four, five, six thou- sand million pounds, and then you can win, and when you have won, and when you have imposed your will upon the Germans, then it will be a patched-up peace, and everything that you have striven to get will escape you. (Cheers.) You will be like the man in the mythological tale who bent down to drink of the refreshing waters of the river, and as he bent and his lips were touching the waters, the waters receded, and he had not a drop. That is the fate of military go- vernments. that is the fate of people who ima- gine they are going to establish peace by force. If you could we would be silent. If we thought you could do what you want to do. in the way you want to do it, I for one would hold my peace and allow you to go on with the work, but because I am convinced that you are going further and further into the wilderness, be- cause I see my country misled; because I see great sacrifices heaped up that are to produce no results; because I see you repeating every mistake that your fathers and grandfathers made; because I see you are going along the old road that leads to the morasses, that leads now here at all; I am speaking, not to hamper my country not to take from it its energy, its determination, and its ideals; I am speaking be- cause I believe somebody must speak to point out your mistakes—(loud cheers)—to warn you; to exhort you, not to say to yon that your ideals of liberty are wrong; not to say to you that your detestation of a. threatening milit- ary power is unworthy of you; but ranging my- self along with you, to say to you that you can- not secure your ends by your present means, and to point out to you how you can secure your ends Surely, that is the greatest patrio- tic service any man or party can render to a country in the state of things in which our country is now. How is it to be done? If I had answered that question before the war, I should have said it is to be done in two ways. It is to be done by the operation of International Christianity and of Internation- al Politics. I am not so sure about the Christ- ianity now. There are my dear old Gerrman friends like Prof. Ilernac, men—I willmention no ii,iiiies--yoti can each select from those who used to lead you in Christianity, in the ex- pression and in the practice of Christianity, whom you like and all these men after the manifestoes they have issued, the sermons they have preached, how can they re-establish them- selves upon International foundations ? Protest- ant Germany praying to God as sincerely as Protestant England for the success of German arms! Protestant England praying as sincerely as Protestant Germany for the success of Brit- ish arms! What a farce! (Cheers.) All this fine spirit of our faith; the spirit of forgiveness, the spirit of generosity, the spirit which arouses in a belief that we are all sons of a common Father—crushed and insulted from the very pulpits themselves. What hope can we have that that organisation is going to do the work that sincere Christians believed it was going to do? I am bound to confess that International Poli- tics do not seem to be in a much better state. We had our International. Before the war broke out every country in the world was represented in Brussels in the International 9 Socialist Bureau—Austria, France, ourselves, Germany, Russia. Belgium—and stilll to-day we fought. But we had got to sa-, tliis-that in j every country, every belligerent country, there was a Socialist minority that remained true to its Socialist fath. (Cheers.) And that never was swept off its feet by the gusty passions of ca- pitalist nationalism that swept the majority before it. (Loud cheers.) The Austrian work- ing man never accepted the war there was al- ways a small minority in Germany, beginning first of all with two members in the HeiCihstag- not "enough to save Sodom and Gomorrah, but perhaps enough to save Europe; then it increas- ed by slow degrees until it became about 40; then its opposition was so strong that the other day 18 or 20 seceded from the German Social Democratic Party, and formed a party independ- ent of the old one for the purpose of preaching peace and securing peace so far as German Socialists can. There has always been a min- ority in France; that minor it- to-day is one- third of the Parliamentary Party in France, and very nearly one-half of the party ouside it is represented by some of the most influential Socialist papers in France, and that minority is seeking peace and pursuing it diligently now; the Socialists of Russia—as t-ou know from the speeches they have delivered in the Duma want peace; the Socialist Party in Italy has never accepted the war, never agreed with the Government; the Socialist Party in Bul- garia has always opposed the war the Social- ist Party in Serbia ojjposed the war; there is a small Socialist Society even in Turkey that IS i opposed to the war. the Independent, Labour Party at home, to its eternal credit, 'be it said, ha, never accepte d the war, but took upon itself the national service that I have been talkina' I about to-night. (Loud cheers.) And outside what]1 a feeling is growing up The widows and or- phans the people who are bereaved by the war the men in the trenches; the five men with whom I have travelled up to-day. with the mud or the trenches on them, the rusty old-too-well .used rifles in their hands, asking me whether we had any idea how long the war was going to last here. They told me they would be only too glad when it was all over two of them going back in memory to the extraordinary Christmas before last in which they took part, saying that that was the right thing to do, and hoping the time was not far distant when they may be repeated on days other than Christmas. In every belligerent country the desire for peace is growing. What is in the wa,y?W ecre we cursed with an evil spirit? Before the war the governors, the military classes, the diplomatists all saw what was happening; the evil influ- ence got stronger and stronger round about them, and pressed closer and closer in upon them; they were just like men in a mad house, they were afraid to move, fear seized on their hearts. Before the war broke out there were all sorts of whisperings and promptings for them to act, and they were afraid to act. And the promptings and murmurings became more insistent, and they acted, and destruction was let loose upon Europe. No sooner was it let loose than you had people saying that if you did not fight, and fight and fight, you would have the Germans landing here, and you will have the same demonstrations that you had m Belgium. (A voice1: Hear, hear.) And the Ger- mans say if you do not fight and fight Germany will be destroyed. vviiau iinmo You are as afojaid to make peace as your gov- ernors were afraid to make war. This diabolical curse is upon you. Everybody wants peace all the belligerents want peace; yet everybody is afraid to make peace, because you haven't confi- dence, because you are all terror stricken. If you would just rub your eyes., if you would just become sane and throw this nightmare off you, peace is as simple as walking to your wor k to-morrow morning. How are you going to make it ? By the people of the belligerents co- ming together and felling each other what they want, and shaking hands and- getting confidence. When the war broke out you did not hate the Germans as you do now. The Germans did not hate you as they do now. There was a German military caste that, like all experts, wrote about its own knowledge and posed about its own affaire. We all do that. Politicians write ab- out politics as though they were going to save nations. These tremendously able military ex- pe,rts of Ber l in sai d perts of Berlin said, There is nothing but military necessity. The prototypes of the British Tribunals, the Bernhairdis who are mili- tary officers and not English grocers, the Bern- hardis who.plot and plan the tactics of getting through Belgium to strike at the heart of France; there were, too, French tacticians who had their plans for attacking Germany, and our tacticians who came to an agreement with the French about the disposition of the Fleets. They were all at it. They were all plotting and planning; they were all sitting down in their nice, alluring, enticing schemes and plotting out how to attack and how to defend. And whilst that was being done, you were doing no- thing at all. On the night that war broke out I remember a deputation of working men from my own constituency met me, and said they were going to Duisiseldorf, where a deputation of German workers was waiting for them, and they were surprised and disappointed that they could not go. They said it was impossible that we could be at war with Germany, and that was the position of the whole of Europe 24 hours before war broke out. Who was to blame? You cannot put your finger on John Smith or Tom Brown and say that is the black- guard. That is not the way these things are done. You cannot put your finger on a date and say that is when it all first began. That is not how these things happen. The,, come on in- sensibly, just like your mountain torrents coming down your Welsh valleys. Go to the source, and you find a miserable streamlet; that will run under the instep of your boot, yet within four or five miles you have a deep rushing torrent that has to be bridged by the art of man. That is how wars came. And on that day when war broke out, when diplomatists were stealing fur- tively from room to room. trembling, with heads hanging down and hearts filled with fear, you were going about your business as though noth- ing was happening, as though there was no cata- strophe about to astound Europe and civilisa- tion. Is tlmt Democracy? I put it to you, wheth- er you are Liberal, Labour or Tory, are you go- ing to defend that? What have you got to say for it? Are you going to condemn those who pointed it out? You have to begm there;; that is the source of all war; that is the founda- tion of peace. I say that if the International Socialist Bureau now would only get into opera- tion and ask the French workers. What do you. want? What will you consjder the conditions of a permanent peace ? Ask us what we consider as the conditions of a peace-the restoration of Belgium, the security of France, and so on. Let us put it down in black and white let. us throw up any asking men to lay down their lives for vague perorations and grandiloquent, phrases. We will not sheathe the sword Let. them say to the Germans, and more particular- ly the German Socialist minority that has or- ganised in the country lately to state their grounds of a. permanent peace, and let them, receive a statement. Let them enter into it, a nd, then bring these statements together, and issue- a common statement to the working clsases of i.;uro(pe as a manifesto appealing to the working, c l asses of Europe to rally round and make peaeffe- on it. Then you can get all that you want by the war. You can get it and save human life., You can make a peace that will not be a pre- mature peace; that will not be patched wp,' that will be a just, and, therefore, a permanent peace. '(Loud cheers.) By negotiations, by under- standings, by a coining together of the peoples,. and alone by that can the peoples win the-- great goal of liberty to which their armies are-, marching to-day. That is the position of the' Independent Labour Party. (Loud cheers,) Tliafe is what we are out for. That is what we rnean" Is ic wrong? (Loud cheers.) Why, in these- days when so much sacrifice is being rnadB; why, are you afraid to sit down and reason,. and! listen? Why, in these days when it is so easy to, st ir up emotions that mean desolate- misery why are you putting such small value on inde- pendent and honest thought l-1 Why in those days when the mass mind is all bubbling up, do you insist that everybody must be a mere- echo of that mass mind? Never, was there a time' when England called for thought more than she- does now never was there a time when England-; called for men to be honest and independent,, to be robust, to be sincere, as she calls now" Never was there a time when those of us who' can influence majorities, influence crowds to, greater responsibilities; to make those rational; to open their eyes; to make them reflect; to turn them away from the passions of the newspapers to the calm pages of; history never wa,s there a time when the ealt of; England to her people to think, to torl- be calm, to consider, was more insistent, more- j necessary than now. And that is what I db. We say learn from your past experience trust your moral nature believe in the rational order of creation. Do not lean upon the sword; do not repeat the mistakes of your grandfathers-^ Say to-day that this war shall be fought as nos other war has yet been fought, See to it" that all your political instincts remain alive, VVliile the cannons are speaking and doing- I their deadly work, see to it that a peace will' be made which will finally secure peace m- ..tinope, and give the peoples of Europe that guarantee of fair play, of just consideration, of treatment upon which, and upon whieh, alone, any permanent peace can be riised Several questions were asked and answered*.