he Daily News of London.*

When peace is seriously desired in any quarter, the questions to be
discussed by the plenipotentaries will fall into three groups:

1. Those which affect all Europe.

2. Those which chiefly affect Western Europe.

3. Those which chiefly affect Eastern Europe.

The first group is, of course, the most important, both practically and
sentimentally. And the main question in it is the question of Belgium.
The original cause of the war was Germany's deliberate and advertised
bellicosity, and it might be thought that the first aim of peace would
be by some means to extinguish that bellicosity. But relative values may
change during the progress of a war, and the question of Belgium--which
means the question of the sanction of international pledges--now stands
higher in the general view than the question of disarmament. Germany has
outraged the public law of Europe, and she has followed up her outrage
with a series of the most cowardly and wanton crimes. She ought to pay,
and she ought to apologize. Only by German payment and German apology
can international law be vindicated. Germany should pay a sum large
enough to do everything that money can do toward the re-establishment of
Belgium's well-being. I have no competence to suggest the amount of the
indemnity. A hundred million pounds does not appear to me too large.

Then the apology. It may be asked: Why an apology? Would not an apology
be implied in the payment of an indemnity?

It is undeniable that Germany is now directed by hysteric stupidity
wielding a bludgeon. Granted, if you will, that half the nation is at
heart against the stupidity and the bludgeon. So much the worse for the
half. Citizens who have not had the wit to get rid of the Prussian
franchise law must accept all the consequences of their political
ineffectiveness. The peacemakers will not be able to divide Germany into
two halves.

For Potsdam a first-rate spectacular effect is needed, and that effect
would best be produced by a German national apology carried by a
diplomatic mission with ceremony to Brussels and published in all German
official papers, and emphasized by a procession of Belgian troops down
Unter den Linden. This visible abasement of German arms in front of the
Socialists of Berlin would be an invaluable aid to the breaking of
military tyranny in Prussia.

So much for the Belgium question and the sanction of international
pledges. The other question affe