It should be added that an Austro-Hungarian Note of the same general tenor, but different in certain particulars, was handed to the diplomatic representatives in Vienna of the United States, the neutral European Powers, and the Vatican. The reference in the German Note to the "provocation by Serbia " is thus elaborated:

As regards particularly the Austro-Hungarian ultimatum to Serbia, the Monarchy, in the years which preceded this step, displayed sufficient proof of its forbearance towards the ever-increasing hostility, aggressive intentions, and intrigues of Serbia, until the moment when finally the nefarious murder at Serajevo made further indulgence impossible.

In the catalogue of the Allies' alleged misdeeds the Austrian Note refers to "the tragic fate of the Irish and Finnish peoples," where the Germans speak only of the Irish. On the other hand, the Austrian Note omits the references to the alleged breaches of international law by the Allies since the beginning of the war. It also omits the reference to Belgium.

The U.S. President's Speech to the Senate.

On January 22nd, the President of the United States made a very important speech to the United States Senate. As the full text of the speech was formally communicated to other Powers, the speech is in effect also a second Note to the Powers on the subject of Peace. We give Mr. Wilson's speech in full :—

"On December 18th last I addressed an identic Note to the Governments of the nations now at war requesting them to state, more definitely than they had yet been by either group of belligerents, the terms upon which they would deem it possible to make peace. I spoke on behalf of humanity and of the rights of all neutral nations like our own, many of whose most vital interests the war puts in constant jeopardy.

"The Central Powers united in a reply, which stated merely that they were ready to meet their antagonists in conference to discuss terms of peace. The Entente Powers have replied much more definitely, and have stated, in general terms indeed but with sufficient definiteness to imply details, the arrangements, guarantees, and acts of reparation which they deem to be the indispensable conditions of a satisfactory settlement.

"We are much nearer a definite discussion of the peace which shall end the present war. We are that much nearer the discussion of the international concert which must thereafter hold the world at peace. In every discussion of the peace that must end this war it is taken for granted that peace must be followed by definite concert of the Powers, which will make it virtually impossible that any such catastrophe should ever overwhelm us again. Every lover of mankind, every sane and thoughtful man must take that for granted.

"I have sought this opportunity to address you because I thought that I owed it to you, as the council associated with me in the final determination of our international obligations, to disclose to you without reserve the thought and purpose that have been taking form in my mind with regard to the duty of our Government in the days to come, when it will be necessary to lay afresh and upon a new plan the foundations of peace among the nations.

'It is inconceivable that the people of the United States should play no part in that great enterprise. To take part in such a service will be the opportunity for which they have sought to prepare themselves by the very principles and purposes of their polity and the approved practices of their Government ever since the days when they set up a new nation in the high and honourable hope that it might in all that it was and did show mankind the way to liberty. They cannot in honour withhold the service to which they are now about to be challenged. They do not wish to withhold it. But they owe it to themselves and to the other nations of the world to state the conditions under which they feel free to render it.

“That service is nothing less than this: To add their authority and their power to the authority and force of other nations to guarantee peace and justice throughout the world. Such a settlement cannot now be long postponed. It is right that before it comes this Government should frankly formulate the conditions upon which it would feel justified in asking our people to approve its formal and solemn adherence to a league for peace. I am here to attempt to state those conditions.

The present war must first be ended, but we owe it to candour and to a just regard for the opinion of mankind to say that, so far as our participation in guarantees of future peace is concerned, it makes a great deal of difference in what way and upon what terms it is ended. The treaties and agreements which bring it to an end must embody terms that will create a peace that is worth guaranteeing and preserving, a peace that will win the approval of mankind, not merely a peace that will serve the several interests and immediate aims of the nations engaged. We shall have no voice in determining what those terms shall be, but we shall, I feel sure, have a voice in determining whether they shall be made lasting or not by the guarantees of a universal covenant; and our judgment upon what is fundamental and essential as a condition precedent to permanency should be spoken now, not afterwards, when it may be too late.

"No covenant of co-operative peace that does not include the peoples of the New World can suffice to keep the future safe against war; and yet there is only one sort of peace that the peoples of America could join in guaranteeing. The elements of that peace must be elements that engage the confidence and satisfy the principles of the American Governments, elements consistent with the political faith and the practical convictions which the peoples of America have once for all embraced and undertaken to defend.

"I do not mean to say that any American Government would throw any obstacle in the way of any terms of peace the Governments now at war might agree upon, or seek to upset them when made, whatever they might be. I only take it for granted that mere terms of peace between the belligerents will not satisfy even the belligerents themselves. Mere agreements may not make peace secure. It will be absolutely necessary that a force be created as a guarantor of the permanency of the settlement so much greater than the force of any nation now engaged or any alliance hitherto formed or projected, that no nation, no probable combination of nations, could face or withstand it. If the peace presently to be made is to endure it must be a peace made secure by the organised major force of mankind.

"The terms of the immediate peace agreed upon will determine whether it is a peace for which such a guarantee can be secured. The question upon which the whole future peace and policy of the world depends is this: Is the present a struggle for a just and secure peace

or only for a new balance of power? If it be only a struggle for a new balance of power, who will guarantee, who can guarantee, the stable equilibrium of the new arrangement? Only a tranquil Europe can be a stable Europe. There must be not a balance of power but a community of power; not organised rivalries, but an organised common peace.

"Fortunately, we have received very explicit assurances on this point. The statesmen of both of the groups of nations now arrayed against one another have said, in terms that could not be misinterpreted, that it was no part of the purpose they had in mind to crush their antagonists. But the implications of these assurances may not be equally clear to allmay not be the same on both sides of the water. I think it will be serviceable if I attempt to set forth what we understand them to be.

"They imply, first of all, that it must be a peace without victory. I beg that I may be permitted to put my own interpretation upon it, and that it may be understood that no other interpretation was in my thought. I am seeking only to face realities, and to face them without soft concealments. Victory would mean peace forced upon the loser, a victor's terms imposed upon the vanquished. It would be accepted in humiliation, under duress, at intolerable sacrifice, and would leave a sting, a resentment, a bitter memory, upon which terms of peace would rest not permanently but only as upon quicksand. Only a peace between equals can last-only a peace the very principle of which is equality and a common participation in a common benefit. The right state of mind, the right feeling between nations, is as necessary for a lasting peace as is the just settlement of vexed questions of territory or of racial and national allegiance.

"The equality of nations, upon which peace must be founded if it is to last, must be an equality of rights; the guarantees exchanged must neither recognise nor imply a difference between big nations and small; between those that are powerful and those that are weak. Right must be based upon the common strength, not upon the individual strength, of the nations upon whose concert peace will depend. Equality of territory or of resources there, of course, cannot be; nor any other sort of equality not gained in the ordinary peaceful and legitimate development of the peoples themselves. But no one asks or expects anything more than an equality of rights. Mankind is looking now for freedom of life, not for equipoises of power.

"And there is a deeper thing involved than even equality of right among organised nations. No peace can last, or ought to last, which does not recognise and accept the principle that Governments derive all their just powers from the consent of the governed, and that no right anywhere exists to hand peoples about from potentate to potentate as if they were property. I take it for granted, for instance, if I may venture upon a single example, that statesmen everywhere are agreed that there should be a united, independent, and autonomous Poland, and that henceforth inviolable security of life, of worship, and of industrial and social development should be guaranteed to all peoples who have lived hitherto under the power of Governments devoted to a faith and purpose hostile to their

own.

"I speak of this, not because of any desire to exalt an abstract political principle which has always been held very dear by those who have sought to build up liberty in America, but for the same reason that I have spoken of the other conditions of peace which seem to me clearly indispensable-because I wish frankly to uncover realities. Any peace which does not recognise and accept this principle will inevitably be upset. It will not rest upon the affections or the convictions of man

kind. The ferment of spirit of whole populations will fight subtly and constantly against it, and all the world will sympathise. The world can be at peace only if its life is stable, and there can be no stability where the will is in rebellion, where there is not tranquillity of spirit and a sense of justice, of freedom, and of right.

"So far as practicable, moreover, every great people now struggling towards a full development of its resources and of its powers should be assured a direct outlet to the great highways of the sea. Where this cannot be done by the cession of territory, it no doubt can be done by the neutralisation of direct rights of way under the general guarantee which will assure the peace itself. With a right comity of arrangement no nation need be shut away from free access to the open paths of the world's commerce.

"And the paths of the sea must alike in law and in fact be free. The freedom of the seas is the sine quâ non of peace, equality, and co-operation. No doubt a somewhat radical reconsideration of many of the rules of international practice hitherto thought to be established may be necessary in order to make the seas indeed free and common in practically all circumstances for the use of mankind, but the motive for such changes is convincing and compelling. There can be no trust or intimacy between the peoples of the world without them. The free, constant, unthreatened intercourse of nations is an essential part of the process of peace and of development. It need not be difficult either to define or to secure the freedom of the seas if the Governments of the world sincerely desire to come to an agreement concerning it.

"It is a problem closely connected with the limitation of naval armaments and the co-operation of the navies of the world in keeping the seas at once free and safe, and the question of limiting naval armaments opens the wider and perhaps more difficult question of the limitation of armies and of all programmes of military preparation. Difficult and delicate as these questions are, they must be faced with the utmost candour and decided in a spirit of real accommodation if peace is to come with healing in its wings, and come to stay.

"Peace cannot be had without concession and sacrifice. There can be no sense of safety and equality among the nations if great and preponderating armaments are henceforth to continue here and there to be built up and maintained. The statesmen of the world must plan for peace and nations must adjust and accommodate their policy to it as they have planned for war and made ready for pitiless contest and rivalry. The question of armaments, whether on land or on sea, is the most immediately and intensely practical question connected with the future fortunes of nations and of mankind.

"I have spoken upon these great matters without reserve and with the utmost explicitness, because it has seemed to me to be necessary if the world's yearning desire for peace was anywhere to find free voice and utterance. Perhaps I am the only person in high authority amongst all the peoples of the world who is at liberty to speak and hold nothing back. I am speaking as an individual, and yet I am speaking also, of course, as the responsible head of a great Government, and I feel confident that I have said what the people of the United States would wish me to say. May I not add that I hope and believe that I am in effect speaking for Liberals and friends of humanity in every nation and of every programme of liberty? I would fain believe that I am speaking for the silent mass of mankind everywhere who have yet had no place or opportunity to speak their real hearts out concerning the death and

ruin they see to have come already upon the persons and the homes they hold most dear.

"And in holding out the expectation that the people and Government of the United States will join the other civilised nations of the world in guaranteeing the permanence of peace upon such terms (as) I have named, I speak with the greater boldness and confidence, because it is clear to every man who can think that there is in this promise no breach in either our traditions or our policy as a nation, but a fulfilment rather, of all that we have professed or striven for.

"I am proposing, as it were, that the nations should with one accord adopt the doctrine of President Monroe as the doctrine of the world; that no nation should seek to extend its polity over any other nation or people, but that every people should be left free to determine its own polity, its own way of development, unhindered, unthreatened, unafraid, the little along with the great and powerful.

"I am proposing that all nations henceforth avoid entangling alliances which would draw them into competitions of power, catch them in a net of intrigue and selfish rivalry, and disturb their own affairs with influences intruded from without. There is no entangling alliance in a concert of power. When all unite to act in the same sense and with the same purpose all act in common interest and are free to live their own lives under a common protection.

"I am proposing government by the consent of the governed; that freedom of the seas which in international conference after conference representatives of the people of the United States have urged with the eloquence of those who are the convinced disciples of liberty; and that moderation of armaments which makes of armies and navies a power for order merely, not an instrument of aggression or of selfish violence.

"These are American principles, American policies. We could stand for no others. And yet they are the principles and policies of forwardlooking men and women everywhere, of every modern nation, of every enlightened community. They are the principles of mankind and must prevail." (Senate, January 22nd, 1917.)

The Kaiser's Instructions,

The Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung has recently published the following autograph letter from the Kaiser to the German Imperial Chancellor, dated Neues Palais, October 31st, 1916:

MY DEAR BETHMANN,-I have since been turning our conversation thoroughly over in my mind.

"It is clear that the peoples of the enemy countries, who are kept in the hard endurance of war by lies and frauds, deluded by fighting and hatred, possess no men who are able, or who have the moral courage, to speak the word which will bring relief-to propose peace.

"What is wanted is a moral deed to free the world, including neutrals. from the pressure which weighs upon all.

For such a deed it is necessary to find a ruler who has a conscience; who feels that he is responsible to God; who has a heart for his own people and for those of his enemies; who, indifferent as to any possible wilful misinterpretation of his action, possesses the will to free the world from its sufferings.

"I have the courage; trusting in God, I shall dare to take this step.