Jan. 6.
Tue crisis at present existing owing to Germany's failure to carry out the terms of the Peace Treaty is not entirely her own fault, and in saying this we are not raising a plea for more favourable consideration of Germany's position, so much as suggesting that the responsibility rests, to a great extent, upon the Allies themselves. It is an alarming fact that humanity never seems really to learn the lessons taught it by experience. Rather it would appear to proceed with the faint hope that "'things will be different this time,'' whereas Prussian history shows that the only thing we can be quite certain of is that Germany will do ell in her power to evade her liabilities. Exactly how far these evasions go is not clear: undoubtedly they are grave, possibly very much more serious than would appear on the face of things, for while the numbers of the various species of armament undelivered look in themselves imposing, that is as nothing compared with the potentialities which possession of this war material by Germany entails, As an example of what is meant aircraft may be taken, In some degree the case is exceptional, but, as it is the weapon with which a treacherous nation can strike first and quickest, aerial possibilities will always now be looked upon with the gravest concern.
By the terms of the Treaty of Peace, Germany was bound to deliver 160,000 aeroplane engines. This through German representations and the complaisance, if not gullibility, of at least one of the Allies was reduced to 25.000 and that number was, in fact, handed over. Marshal Foch, who trusts the German not quite as far as he can see him, appears to have made his own investigations as the result of which it appears that no fewer than 12,000 engines in excess of the number originally demanded were possessed by the Germans. In other words, if the Marshal's information is_correct, our late enemies possess no fewer than 135,000 engines,—the 12,000 being confiscated. Also by the Treaty one aerodrome was allowed the vanquished enemy; she has now sixteen, with fifty-two companies engaged in the manufacture and operation of air-
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.