Evening Republican, Volume 59, Number 98, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 May 1917 — TIME NOT RIPE SAYS HOLLWEG [ARTICLE]

TIME NOT RIPE SAYS HOLLWEG

Chancellor Spurns All Demands For Peace Discussion at This Time— Will Introduce Republic. Berlin, May 15k—Tlie socialist leader, George Ledebour, declared in the reichstag today that it was impossible for Germany to win a war of subjugation and expressed the conviction that a revolution must happen in Germany as it had happened in Russia. “We shall propose a constitutional committee,” he said, “to take preparatory steps in the direction of introducing a republic in Germany.” In one of the most vigorous and plain spoken speeches he has yet made before the reiehstag since the outbrak of the war, the imperial German chancelldr-today bluntly refused to enter into a discussion of Germany’s peace aims as demanded in interpei'latioHs by the conservatives and socialists. Dr. Bethmann-iHoil'lweg asserted that these eallcd for the government’s specific peace program, the announcement of which would at the present time not only be premature but which it wnuldbe difficult to formulate and also of no practical service to.the nation in the present situation. While appreciating the passionate desire of all classes to know the government’s views, the chancellor plainly declared that he would not permit himself to be swayed by pressure from any source, and that he was not under the spell of any party or clique, The best interests of the~na--'-tion, he believed, demanded that the reticence he had imposed on himself in the face of continuous clamor since December, 1915, should be observed by him until the moment was ripe.