OUR LETTERBOX
To the Editor, Amman Valley Chronicle
Sir, — Your correspondent, “Mark Time,” in your last issue asks the above question, and adds that the question is being daily asked.
But assuming that the reference is to the desolating war now being waged from the North Sea and the Baltic to the Persian Gulf, it is disappointing, after reading nearly half a column of pointless twaddle, to find that he evades or avoids all reference to the question; and, like Socialists generally, the writer runs off on another scent.
Some fourteen or more months ago, the Prime Minister, without ambiguity or equivocation, stated before the most critical assembly in the whole world what we are fighting for, and I cannot believe that it is possible for any man of ordinary intelligence, with an honest desire to know the truth, not to know that, in the words of Mr. Asquith then and on subsequent occasions, that we are fighting for the sanctity of treaties, the rights of small nationalities, the securing of an invulnerable Franco-German frontier, and the destruction of the military domination of Germany – a Power that has for many years been a menace to the peace of Europe and the world, and which within the last fifty years has waged no less than four aggressive wars in Europe, and which since the close of the Franco-German War of 1870-71 has been a growing menace and danger to her neighbours and the world generally.
Had we at the beginning of August, 1914, delayed even for twenty-four hours taking the steps we did take, the Germans would have crossed the Marne, and would, within a short time, have invested Paris, and the Berlin programme would have become an accomplished fact. But fortunately the makers of that programme had counted the chickens before they were hatched.
The British met the Germans at Mons; but being out numbered by at least four to one, they had to retreat, but not before they had prepared what turned out to be a complete and brilliant victory to the Marne, from which the Germans have not yet recovered.
Stopping the Germans in August, September, October, 1914, has effectually prevented the devastation of the property of the leaseholders of the Amman Valley, among many others, for many a long day. British land laws, though mainly made by landowners, are preferable to those of the Germans. Besides, we are fighting in order to secure peace to the cultivators of the soil – for security for the cultivators to reap and enjoy the fruit of their labour, and for liberty for the peaceably disposed citizens to sit under their own fig and olive trees unmolested, none daring to make them afraid.
GWYNFAN-FAB.
