Life — April 17, 1919 — page 22: what you’re looking at

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APRIL 17 1919 ‘While there is Life there's Hope” No. 1903 Published by LIFE PUBLISHING COMPANY Anokew Mitter, President and Treasurer James S. Metcatre, Secretary t7 West Thirty-first Street, New York English Offices, Rolls House, Breams Bldgs., London, E. C, F the season were just a little further ad- vanced and the world could go off and play golf somewhere until the Peace Conference produced a peace, it would be a gain to tranquillity gf mind and very little loss of time. Tt cannot be doubted that the dele- gates are working hard—Mr. Wilson, at this writing, is temporarily disabled by his exertions—but the task is evi dently immensely difficult, and very fluctuating. To-day one thing is im- possible; to-morrow, another; at least that is what our faithful newspapers tell us. If one reads enough news- papers one cannot but despair of see- ing this poor, bedeviled world pulled out of the hole it is in, The papers that oppose the League are quite con- fident th nished hope or an aborted plot, just as you prefer. Bre. Simonds, who was quite strong for it for a while, now sends wild cries to the Tribune saying it is dead, and ex- plaining why, at great cost of cable tolls, Bro. Brisbane-Hearst keeps screeching in large type that it is alla British ind must. perish, and the Sw plugs along, sometimes in long, leaded columns, and sometimes less ostentatiously, but always faithful to the proposition that it is up to the Republican party to beat Wilson and all his works. As to the idea of the League, the need of it, and its usefulness, there has een no change for weeks, and since Mr, Root wrote his letter there has it is conspiracy been no important new criticism of details, The trouble now at Pari about terms of peace; how much can Germany pay, and how it shall be shared, and about new boundaries, and the disposition of ports on the eastern coast of the Adriatic, and the limits and the ports of the new Poland, and such matters—oh, a whole Pandora's box of them, Wilson, one gathers, is fighting for the principles of the fourteen points which declared against bogging, and others, driven by the plight of their dis- tressed countries, are striving desper- ately to get what they can for their own. And the wranglers are tired, and the Bolshevists are, apparently, crowding, and the world is waiting and grumbling with horrible impatience! Let no one grieve that he is not a delegate to the Paris Peace Congress. It is a bad job, in which anyone implicated must re- joice if he gets out alive. Nevertheless, at the bottom of Pan- dora’s box was Hope, and Hope is im- mortal, and always begins again just when things are blackest. Our great ally in our hopes for a League and a Peace is Necessity. Those delegates must pull something ‘off. And they may be nearer to it than appears. What the papers get just now is mostly tattle, There are a lot in Paris with wages to carn and space to fill, and every day they send something. Sometimes it is news, and sometimes it is merely noise, and, as suggested, if we could lay aside of correspondents all our cosmic responsibilities and play golf till something really happens, we would not lose any time. The gentle- men who are on the peace job must thrash it out. Still, as heretofore, our delegation is striving for someth’ equitable enough to last. With notli- ing to gain for these States except a condition of world-peace that has a chance of being maintained, the seem to be fighting patiently for such a settlement as will stand the tests of time. The immense needs and deserts of France, and the profound sympathy that all feeling people must have for her, and the deep concern, for civiliza- tion's sake, to leave her hopeful and active, add to the difficulties of the case. Peace must not leave France prostrated. The German plan to de- stroy her factories and put her out of business must not succeed. And it is the same with Belgium. The repara- tion to be contrived for those coun- tries must be of a sort that will re- store their industrial activity before Germany has time to gobble up their trade. It is a problem of the utmost difficulty. To cede the Saar valley coal mines to France for good would not do, but to give her the Saar coal for sev- eral years until her own mines are re- stored looks more practicable. And there are the complicated as- pirations of Italy to consider, conflict- ing as they do with the hopes of the Serbs and Croats! These are great difficulties, and our delegates, trying to hold the balance, are not helped by the violent cries at home. But the too-long lane has a turn in it, and perhaps the expectation of a treaty ready by April 13th and signed by April 3oth will he realized. om, Oh, 63 HE desire of people hereabouts who have friends or relatives in the Seventy-seventh Division to have that division parade in New York is strong and natural and _ legitimate. There is as much interest in’ the Seventy-seventh as there was in the Twenty-seventh. The services of one were as gallant and distinguished as of the other. The Seventy-seventh trained nearby, and that increased the local interest shared by both divisions comicbooks.com