From the News

Dated:

While we celebrate the cessation of hostilities and the submitting Germany to armistice of stern terms, Germany tho defeated in the field still schemes. That she should endeavor to bargain and get the best possible terms is only natural, but judging from clippings from German newspapers and German articles issued for publication by the Allied press, one gathers that she is trying to do more than break down the stern terms which she must expect. While Germany cries to the world that she is starving and moans about the Allied army occupying the banks of the Rhine and interfering with her industrial , she still carries on propaganda in Holland and Switzerland, with the object of fomenting social revolutions. The obvious reason for this is, Germany would wish her future to be decided by a socialist conference, which would wipe out her past and free her from the burden of her crimes. A federation, embracing the German States, German Austria, Holland, Switzerland and Sweden. That is what she would like, but hasn't quite the nerve to say it, so she schemes have the peoples of these countries propose it. The men who are scheming to carry out this play by socialist revolutions are the old friends of the Kaiser. She howls over having to give up 5,000 locomotives and 150,000 cars, and I dare say, there are those of us who, in ignorance, think that the demand is a bit stiff, and we get soft hearted and generous and believe she is starving, although the British authorities on the Food Supply affirm Germany is not badly off for food. We must not listen to these appeals. Rather should we ask ourselves, what terms would Germany have given us, had she been the top dog and we were the under one? I doubt much whether the names of France and Belgium would so much have been left on the map of Europe. I imagine I hear the Kaiser saying, "We are masters and you are slaves", "Your country is ours, work for us, you swine, you dogs". No, we must not forget this war has cost billions of money, and ships and good British, French, Belgium, Italian and American lives. We are weaker in manpower today, than we were five years ago and we have a huge debt. Germany forced this war on us, it is her war and she must pay for it. Any plan which will give her manpower must be firmly stamped upon. Leniency on our part is regarded by Germany as weakness. Many men have gone from the British Isles who will not return and many have come from the colonies across wide oceans and given their all that Prussianism might be defeated. Nothing less than a stern judgment, with no compromise will be doing them justice. Un-Christian as it may sound, we would do well if the Kaiser and his followers were swung from a scaffold as a warning to future nations and monarchs who might have military ambitions.

Leslie Sellar
England, November 19, 1918