Life — November 14, 1918 — page 16: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

NOVEMBER If, 1918 “* While there ts Life there's Hope" Pullished by LIFE PUBLISHING COMPANY A. Miter, Sec’y and Treas. 17 West Thirty English Offices, Rolls House, Brea: S Lire goes Saidt ide to press it fairst— is Monday in Anything-May- Happen week. The Presi- win his Democratic Congress y lose it; Whitman may be elected governor, or Alfred Smith; Germany may accept the armistice terms from Versailles, or decline them; the Kaiser may lose his job, or his wits or his life, or he may not; the lid may come off of France, and the Allied soldiers boil over into Germany, and the tire may come off of Germany and all her fragments lie in the road. What has been due for Austria has now happened, and the same as to Tur- key, as lately to Bulgaria, whose recent ibstitute monarch has quit and cut stick. Germany, now the only hog left in the pen, waits ruminating whether to become sausage or salt pork, or make a final exit as wild boar on the hoof. People’s minds are no longer on mil- itary operations, nor very deeply set on the elections, What they think about now is terms of peace, and how soon the war will stop. There has been a great chatter about the elec- tions, and much discussion whether Mr. Wilson did right to seize the offe and beg the people to support him by sending Democrats to Congress. But the public that this issue of Lire will reach will have ceased to bother about that. If the Democrats keep their ma- jority in Congress My. Wilson's repu- tation for political astuteness will go up a little, and if the Republicans win they will have to support the President whenever their Congress meets, until vell, you rst Street, New York Bidgs., London, E. C. the war is cleaned up, and mankind gets out of the woods. Whether Mr. Wilson acts wisely or unwisely on some detail of domestic politics is not so vital as has been made out. His main part now is in world politics, and he will play it through, and Congress will support him, & net WE Americans do not have to think very hard just now. Our job for the moment tends to be contemplative. Our thinking about an armistice been done for us at Versailles. Our military operations are in excellent hands, The influenza is subsiding. It is a week since we have had any very bad accident, and our minds, satisfied at last that the war is substantially won, turn to speculations as to when the fighting will stop, and the drafters cease to draft, and the money-spenders cease to blow in our funds, and our children abroad begin to turn their faces this way. Our great job, in a ’ i way, 1s done. Our machinery has been set up and is working; we have got the raw material of all sorts to feed into it, and the capital to keep it run- ning, and can fill orders indefinitely. Germany knows that, and understands at last what, in conjunction with other great facts of a like nature, it means to her. So it is Germany's time to think, and undoubtedly she is thinking. We have only to keep busy, and go right along on the path before us, but Germany must make a new departure, and it must be radical, and it looks as though she must make it very soon. The real question is whether she will make it in an orderly or a disor- derly fashion; whether she will sur- render while there still remains within her borders an authority that can keep order, or crash down in fire and blood and something like the red terror which her malefactors contributed so much to provide for Russia. To either method the Allies wi doubtless try to accommodate them- selves. All they want is a thorough job; a beaten Germany, thoroughly walloped, and conscious of it to the last man who has worn a spiked hat, and the last woman who has spit in the face of a wounded prisoner. Whenever that is accomplished—this week, next week, next month, after Christmas, in the spring—of course the Allies will sit down to consider what next, and try to think out the problem of the continuance of Germans on the terrestrial sphere without too much damage to the sphere. In relation to that, the reported dis- position of Bavaria to assert herself anc fetch loose from Prussian domina- tion is timely. Bavaria has sent word to Berlin that if the Hohenzollerns should be retiring from office, the Bavarian family of Wittlesbach will be happy to furnish an emperor for Germany. That will probably be un- necessary, since, if William quits, the job will not survive. But it is comfort- able that the South German antipathy to Prussia dares to raise its head once boohoo! RO move german chickeniced! N the armistice terms given to Tur- key nothing was said about St. Sophia, or, indeed, about Constantino- ple. But, of course, the tail goes with the hide. Armistice terms relate only to military matters, and provide means for a beaten army to quit without be- ing killed. The arrangement of terri- torial and other details goes over to a peace tribunal, with assurance that the beaten power will obey the decision of the court The same general fact applies to Austria, and will apply to Germany Ccomicbooks.com