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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Personal Volume

Germany's "Pay Day" Must Come

Germany's "Pay Day" Must Come.

It may be said if Germany now wants peace, why should she not get it. Certainly, give her peace if she admits she is conquered, and is willing to pay indemnities for her many crimes, and to give guarantees for her future conduct. But that is not her attitude. She does not admit that she is conquered and she denies she committed any crime or did any wrong. The "pay day" for her conduct and action must come.

There are some people who think that criminals can be reformed without punishment. They do not realise that the dread of a denial of liberty—and that is all the punishment we inflict on our prisoners—may be the most useful factor in the strengthening of the will of a criminal so that he shall not offend again. So with nations, they must realise that crimes committed and wrong done must meet with their proper reward. No one wishes to see the German people deprived of their country; no one desires to see them in bondage as a vassal nation to any other nations. So far as I know, no one proposes to partition Germany, or to take any portion of the country page 13 that properly belongs to the German people. Germany has talked of freedom to Poland. Is it proposed to retake from the Government of Germany Prussian Poland and set it up as a separate nation? That has not, so far as I have seen, been suggested, and the Polish nation has suffered cruelly from Prussian dominance. The punishment asked by the Allies is only that Germany shall pay for the damage she has done, and that she must cease to terrorise humanity. As to her colonies, to many she had not even the colour of right. Let us take Samoa as an example. It was contrary to the expressed wish of the Samoan people that she seized Upolu and Savaii. This was accomplished by the weakness of our Secretary of State for the Colonies, Mr Joseph Chamberlain. In 1885 the Samoans asked to be annexed to New Zealand, and sent two chiefs as delegates making this request to us. The Home authorities refused, however, to grant their request. During the Boer war the Secretary of State for the Colonies, to appease Germany, weakly agreed to allow Germany to take Upolu and Savaii as her territory. It is time that the wrong then done was redressed. It was Britain that had civilised and instructed the Samoans, and they longed to be under British protection. I know this of my own knowledge from conversations I had with the leading chiefs in 1892 whilst in Samoa.