The Austrian and German Governments wilfully forget that the important point is not to consider who are the belligerents that are NOW forced by the fortune of arms to wage a defensive struggle. It is to ascertain who started the conflict of an OFFENSIVE war. To that question, the voice of the truly civilized world has answered with no uncertain sound. It was given, and ever since most energetically emphasized, the very day the first Austrian shot was fired at Belgrade, the first thundering German gun and the first German soldier ordered to cross over the Belgian frontier. The Austrian tentative peace document pretends "_that all peoples, on whatever side they may be fighting, long for a speedy end to the bloody struggle_." This is so evidently true that the writer of the communication might very properly have dispensed with asserting it. But have the Austrian and the German Governments forgotten that the peoples were equally longing for the maintenance of peace during the many years of intense war preparation prior to the outbreak of the hostilities in 1914? If they are not yet aware of it, the Central Empires must be taught that the Allied nations have another longing than that for peace, to which they have given precedence and for which they will continue to fight strenuously until it is fully gratified. They long for an honourable, a just and lasting peace. They long to see once more the old landmarks of Civilization and Political Liberty emerging safe and radiant from the waves of Teutonic Barbarism. They long, and most earnestly, for peace restored under such conditions as will put an end to extravagant, ruinous and autocratic militarism, which will henceforth relieve the peoples from the drastic obligation of maintaining, at a cost more and more crushing, an ever increasing military organization for fear of being suddenly subjugated by an ambitious foe bent on dominating the world. Using the very words of the most admirable speech addressed by President Wilson to the United States Congress, on the 11th of February last, the Allied Nations long for a peace which will provide "_that peoples and provinces are no longer to be bartered about from sovereignty to sovereignty as if they were mere chattels and pawns in a game, even the great game now for ever discredited of the balance of power; but that every territorial settlement involved in this war must be made in the interest and for the benefit of the populations concerned and not as a part of any mere adjustment or compromise of claims amongst rival states_." The Allied peoples are longing for a peace by which "_all well defined national aspirations shall be accorded the utmost satisfaction that can be accorded them without introducing new or perpetuating old elements of discord, and antagonism that would be likely in time to break the peace of Europe and consequently of the world_."