The Brawl About Mandates.

ON another page of this issue there will be found the translation of an article published recently in a leading newspaper in Germany; and therein the student of international affairs may see an indication of the probable train of events in relation to mandates generally and the Mandated Territories of the Pacific in particular.

The German article was written in response to cer tain opinions expressed in this journal in September last. We said then that we believed that the end of the League of Nations was in sight, and that with the collapse of that fantastic creation and the end of the mandatory system, the Powers inevitably would be come involved in bitter argument concerning the dis posal of the territories affected by the mandatory system. So far as the Pacific is concerned this meant the Territory of New Guinea (held by Australia), Western Samoa (New Zealand), and the Carolines and Marshalls (Japan). We expressed the belief that nothing less than the final arbitrament of shot and shell would remove those territories from the possession of the nations which now hold them under mandate.

This necessarily angered our German friends, and we are told that, in expressing such a view, we are running true to the English breed of Queen Elizabeth’s

day, when our sea robbers and pirates went out and seized, in England’s name, lands and ships and treasure and, indeed, everything that greedy and covetous England might desire. Well, we shall not argue about that. The Britain that we love and honour has been called everything from “bloody cut-throats” and “perfidious Albion” to “a nation of shopkeep ers” and a “race of degenerates”; but the greatest freedom and security in the world are still found under the British flag; and when the world finds itself crawling out of the present economic morass, the people of the British race will still be responsible for leadership, just as they always have been for 300 years.

To-day, just as we foretold, the League of Nations is about to die; Germany is returning to monarchism and sabre-rattling; and the question for readers of this newspaper is the fate of New Guinea, Samoa and the Marshalls and Carolines. Are they to remain under their present administration or will they be returned to Germany? We think all the “eyewash” about international justice and the rights of subject peoples, and the world’s requirements in the matter cf raw materials can be forgotten. The main dom inating fact for consideration in connection with the disposal of the territories is the war guilt of Ger

many. If Germany was guilty of causing the world war, then the loss of her colonies is the least punish ment she should suffer. If Germany was not the aggressor, then unquestionably she should have re turned to her those territories which, in the period from Bismarck down to the Great War, she governed and developed so admirably. But no one who took an intelligent interest in world politics prior to 1914 can have the least doubt about Germany’s war guilt.

This mighty, Prussianised nation, drunk with a sense of achievement, wealth and military power, was a direct menace to the world’s peace for many years prior to 1914. It is sufficient to remember that when there dawned the fatal “Der Tag” of 1914 Germany and her allies were equipped for war to the last but ton and the last death-dealing machine, and were filled with the spirit of military aggression. On the other side, there were France, only half ready, and Britain, with no armaments whatever apart from her navy, and a people without the slightest thought of or desire for war.

The thing itself really does not bear argument —to contend that the guilt for the 1914-1918 crime against humanity does not lie with Germany is simply fan tastic. For years before 1914 those of us who took an interest in the world's politics saw the danger; and the writer was one humble journalist who repeatedly urged that the existence of this fire-eating, swash buckling Germany, fully equipped in shining armour, must inevitably drag the world into war; and also he was one who then could see little chance of ill equipped France and unready England defeating the Prussians, and he repeatedly drew word-pictures of the British peoples humbly goose-stepping under the eye of a merciless German sergeant-major. That this forecast was only partly correct was emphatically not the fault of Germany.

No one in his senses can defend the Versailles settlement —one can only say it was a fitting end to humanity’s four years of madness. No nation could possibly have paid the monetary punishment imposed on Germany, and no combination of nations could possibly have endured indefinitely the frightful strain imposed on the economic world by the post-war adjustment of international debts. It was the attempt to do these things, of course, which landed the world in the economic morass in which it is still scrambling.

Force of circumstances, as well as the mercy of the Allied nations, has released Germany from her obliga tion to pay tribute to the victors (otherwise called “reparations”) ; and Germany, instead of accusing John Bull of half the crimes in the calendar, should rather thank Great Britain for the generosity with

which the defeated nations have been treated. As a matter of fact, apart from the loss of her colonies, Germany has escaped from the war more lightly than any other combatant. There was much truth in the man who said “The Allies won the War; but Germany won the Peace.” We do not forget that Germany escaped her internal obligations by an ultra-clever manipulation of her currency which ruined hundreds of thousands of her upper classes.

Therefore it surely is in accord with fundamental justice that Germany, who escaped so much of the later evils which her lust for war brought upon the world, should suffer at least the minor punishment represented in the loss of her colonies.

Frankly, we cannot see that the possession of these former German colonies is much of an advantage to the countries concerned. Apart from its gold, New Guinea is a source of considerable financial expense to Australia; while, politically and financially, the responsibility for Western Samoa has been nothing but a bleeding sore in the side of New Zealand — whose administrative record hitherto had been excel lent. It may be that as sources of raw materials, the possession of these Pacific territories would be much more advantageous to Germany than to us. We recog nise that a nation such as Germany must have new lands —particularly tropical territories —to develop.

But that is a matter better left on the knees of the high gods. To hand back her colonies to a war guilty Germany at this stage would be farcical. It all depends upon how the Germany now emerging from the chaos of virtual revolution will develop. If she is to be a Germany who has learned her lesson in the fires of war and bitter punishment, and who recog nises that the British and Germans are not mutually antagonistic, but actually are closer together in national psychology than any other two peoples, and will develop accordingly, then there should be much for Germany to do in the future in the way of colonial development. Germany must realise that we British people do not regard our Britain as a rapacious and grdedy land-grabber. The British people recognise just as clearly as the Germans do that a nation like Germany must have room for colonial expansion; and they recognise, too, that prac tically the whole world’s habitable land is already parcelled out. Then (it is asked) what is Germany to do? The answer lies in the fact that the material strength as well as the spiritual power of the British Empire is founded on justice. The Germany that treacherously attacked Britain has lost all. The Germany that is Britain’s friend may possess much.