AFTER a Peace Conference which lasted six months, the Peace Treaty was signed in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles on Saturday the 28th day of June. The German delegates, two “very commonplace figures,” were of necessity the first to sign. After them came the delegates of the Allied and Associated Powers, who in succession signed the Treaty. The whole business occupied about an hour—from 3:15 till 4:10 p.m. The occasion was certainly a very memorable one, sealing, as it did, the end of the greatest War in history, and ushering in, as we hope, in God’s merciful and over-ruling providence, a beneficent and lasting peace. It is striking to note that the Peace Treaty was signed on precisely the fifth anniversary of the murder of the Archduke of Austria by a Servian, the tragic incident which, like a spark, kindled the fuse that led to the terrible conflagration of the Great War.
There is great reason for thankfulness to God that such a Treaty has been signed, though there are many elements in the situation that are fitted to sober and humble us. When we consider the tremendous carnage of the War, with the loss of millions of precious lives and the waste of a vast amount of valuable treasure—not to speak of the intense sorrow and strain experienced by millions of human beings who were not immediately engaged in the conflict—we cannot be too thankful to the Governor among the nations that the fearful contest, with its heart-rending horrors, has come to an end. May the God of grace, through Jesus Christ, give us wisdom to benefit spiritually by the far-reaching deliverance, and may His great goodness lead our own and other nations to repentance!
The credit is given in the public press principally to “the council of three,” M. Clemenceau, the Right Honourable D. Lloyd George, M.P., and President Wilson of the United States, with special emphasis on the name and toils of our own Prime Minister, for carrying through the arduous and intricate deliberations to a successful issue. The Word clearly teaches us to give
honour to whom honour is due, and we desire not to mitigate in the least the praise to which these distinguished men are entitled. Let them get all credit for what was rightly and nobly done. At the same time, no truly Christian person can fail to observe that there have been serious defects of a fundamental kind in connection with the Peace Conference and the Peace Treaty. The apothecaries’ ointment is not without dead flies of a very nauseous description. Though we attribute the happy results of the deliberations to the controlling hand of the King eternal, who can say that He has been acknowledged as He ought to have been in connection with such great and important work for the benefit of the world? The President of the Conference, Clemenceau, we understand, is an Agnostic or Materialist, and we have no evidence that there was any public acknowledgment of God or of Christ in the peace deliberations, no prayer at the beginning or close of the many meetings of the delegates. We shall not presume to say that there was no thought of God or Christ in the secret mind of any single delegate, but, so far as the audible discussions were concerned, it was manifestly a godless and Christless Conference. And the Treaty, as far as we have seen, is like unto it. This is a very solemn feature of the business, and unless the Lord, in His sovereign mercy, maintain by His power, the compact, the Treaty will prove only another “scrap of paper.” Certain it is that there is no peace in the breast of the Germans, and that their signing of the agreement was compulsory in the last degree. Another bad feature was the almost universal disregard of the Lord’s Day by the Peace delegates, to which attention was called at our recent meeting of Synod. The sacred Day of Rest, which is commemorative of the resurrection of the Prince of Peace, is now abused for any purpose that human caprice may consider desirable or necessary. Its holy hours are snatched for travelling purposes. The Prime Minister returns from France by boat and train on the Lord’s Day, and the King and other persons of high rank meet him at the railway station, and all imagine that they are doing God service by such profanation. “If the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is the darkness!” We are truly a people that have grievously departed from God’s commandments, and nothing but a new publication of the truth with power out of Zion will bring us back to Him from whom we have revolted.
The Peace Treaty has not produced universal peace, nor will produce it, unless the Prince of Peace puts His hand to the task. Look at the terrible confusion and strife still continuing in Russia, and the efforts of the Allies, not without weapons of war and bloodshed, to quell the tumult. And let us also observe the industrial unrest at home. Peace in a deep and real sense is hardly to be seen anywhere. We do not expect deliverance, as some do, in the Second Personal Advent of Christ to reign over the earth—for Scripture, in our judgment, warrants no such prospect—but we look for the outpouring of the Holy
Spirit at the appointed time, when “the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established on the top of the mountains, and all nations shall flow unto it,” and when the King of righteousness and peace shall have dominion by the power of His Word “from sea to sea and from the river even unto the earth” (Psalm 72).