"If Germany, which should first give up the fight in acknowledging her crime, is obdurate to final exhaustion, how can it be possibly expected that the Allies who were forced to fight, will submit to the humiliation and shame of soliciting from their cruel enemy a peace the conditions of which, they know, would be utterly unacceptable. Consequently they must with an indomitable courage and an invincible perseverance go on struggling to solve, for a long time, the redoubtable problem to which they are pledged, in honour bound, to give the only settlement which can reassure the world."
I am still and absolutely of the same opinion. The present military situation has certainly much improved in favour of the Allies since 1916. However, looking at the question, first, from the standpoint of the developing military operations, there is no actual, and there will not be for many months yet—more or less—practical possibility of a satisfactory peace settlement.
Secondly, looking at the question from the standpoint of true statesmanship, it is very easy to draw the inexorable conclusion that, again, there is not actually the least chance of an immediate restoration of peace.
Statesmen, responsible, not only for the future of their respective countries, but, actually, for that of the whole world, are not to be supposed liable to be carried away by a hasty desire to put an end to the war and to their own arduous task in carrying it to the only possible solution:—A JUST AND DURABLE PEACE.
A broad and certain fact, staring every one, is that the Berlin Government will not accept the only settlement to which the Allies can possibly agree as long as her armies occupy French and Belgian territories. If Mr. Bourassa and his "pacifists" friends—or dupes—have really entertained a faint hope to the contrary, they were utterly mistaken.
Present military events, however proportionately enlarged by the increased resources, in man-power and money, of the belligerents, are not without many appropriate precedents. History is always repeating itself. Great Powers having risked their all in a drawn battle, do not give in as long as they can stand the strain, considering the importance of the interests they have at stake.
For the same reason above stated, but reversed, the Allies will not negotiate for peace before they have thrown the German armies out of French and Belgian soil, and repulsed them over Teutonic territory. I do not mean to say that peace must necessarily be proclaimed either from Berlin or from Paris. But it will only be signed as the inevitable result of a final triumphant march on the way either to Berlin or to Paris. There is no possible escape from the alternative. In such matters, there is no halfway station.