In uttering here this word “magnanimity,” I only reflect the thought expressed by the leaders of the three great allied countries, on the day following the armistice: Lloyd George, Clemenceau, and Woodrow Wilson.
And as Mr. Winston Churchill declared on the 4th of July last, at Westminster: “We are bound to the principles for which we are fighting. Those principles alone will enable us to use with wisdom and with justice the victory which we shall gain. Whatever the extent of our victory, those principles would protect the German people. We could not treat them as they have treated Alsace-Lorraine or Belgium or Russia, or as they would treat us all if they had the power.”
It is because the population of a country is composed for the most part of women and children, and because we could not, without stooping to the level of the methods employed in Belgium, for example, make war against women, against children, against property.
Justice will have a field of operations large enough, if it wishes, to reach the conscious authors of the war and of the deeds incompatible with humanitarian principles and contrary to international laws.
(The End.)