Of the very few surviving Allied leaders of the last world war, it has been left to General John J. Pershing, Commander-in-Chief of the American forces in that conflict, to produce a typical realistic utterance on the present struggle. Hitherto, Versailles and the inequalities.imposed, have been discussion points of both sides. On the Allied side, there has been recognition of the mistakes of this treaty and an intention that they will not be repeated. On the German side, Versailles has proved the rallying cry for the re-assertion of German strength, and therefore aspects of military and economic conflict have been completely subor-dinared to political examination. General Pershing will have none of this. His view is that of the soldier who regards only the objective. Nothing has happened since the last war to induce-him to change his conviction that the Allies should have penetrated Germany in 1918 or demanded unconditional surrender, he told the American press, Europe, he added, would not have been involved in the present war. if the Allied War Council had heeded his advice against an armistice and, instead, had proceeded to destroy the Imperial German Army for it enabled the Germans to march away posing as victims of political conditions. There is a good deal of truth in what General Pershing says for the German military machine of today is essentially the machine of 1918 with Nazi improvements and livery, but it is doubtful whether the General's proposal could ever have been completely carried out, Other virile nations exhausted in defeat have revealed similar powers of recovery as Germany has shown, but few have been so eager in so brief a respite to precipitate another catastrophe. Post Versailles thinking runs counter to the General's view but, at least, it is the honest statement of a man to whom position and preferment mean nothing and expresses a definite military attitude towards what is largely a political problem
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.