There is a third alternative-that the United States will acquiesce in silence in the latest violation of the American flag by a belligerent. But such an eventuality is hardly conceivable.-Dec. 14, 1915. FRANCE YIELDS QUICKLY tunes could be made by the owners of these ships if they could employ them in the transatlantic trade. But they dare not, for the British would seize the vessels wherever they found them. Shut off from the rich commerce of the transatlantic, the owners keep their vessels in such business as they can get with South America and distant ports where British warships are not like There is something of the traditional Gallic courtesy in the promptly to be lurking. ness of the decision of France to surrender the German subjects taken off four American ships by the Descartes. The seizures were plain violations of the law of nations as established by the Trent affair in the closing year of the Civil War. The State department acted with firmness and without much loss of time. The response of the French government has come quickly, and the men who were taken illegally from the protection of the American flag, flying over American ships, have already been handed over to the American consular authorities at Port de France. The incident is now closed with the complete vindication of the honor of the American flag. The only wonder is that the French should ever have undertaken to violate so plain a principle of international justice on the sea.-January 4, 1916. THE BLACKLIST OF THE SEA Eighty-five ships of peace owned by citizens of America, Norway, Sweden, Greece and other countries and flying the flags of neutral powers are fugitives of the ocean. The freight rates between the United States and Europe are higher than ever before in history. For If these eighty-five steamers could be utilized in general commerce it would lighten to some extent the terrific strain on ocean tonnage, somewhat lessen the freight blockade on American railroads, make possible the shipment of more goods and, consequently, be of benefit to every branch of American industry. are But the eighty-five are on the British blacklist of the sea. They are proscribed. Their names, their tonnage, their crimes catalogued as are the names, the fingerprints and the offenses of human criminals. They are to be hunted down, seized and detained wherever they are found by warships of his Britannic majesty. The crime of the eighty-five pariahs of the deep is that the British authorities know or suspect that some one of German nationality or German sympathies has a financial interest in them. A dozen times over owners of some of these ships have tried to sell their vessels, but the British will not sanction such dealings. They persist in classing the ship as criminal, and refuse, whether it is innocent or guilty, to permit it to divest itself of its criminal attributes. Due to scarity of available ships, ocean freights increase, returning enormous profits to the foreign owners of ships, over fifty per cent. of whom are British.-January 27, 1916. CENSORSHIP OF TRAVELING We A dispatch from London tells us that "neutral diplomatic circles" are convinced that Britain will release the thirty-eight citizens of the central empires unlawfully taken by a British cruiser from the American steamship China en route from Shanghai to San Francisco. have had one note from Britain telling us that she would not free these captives. Early this week Secretary Lansing wrote a sharp note demanding their immediate release. Today we have the interesting evidence that when we make a sharp demand on England it is met. Controversies with England on this subject are over a hundred years old. Before the war of 1812 British warships, applying the doctrine of "once an Englishman always an Englishman," searched American vessels and impressed into the British service naturalized American citizens of American birth. This indignity was one of the reasons why we went to war with England. In the peace treaty of Ghent, closing that war, no mention was made of this impressment matter, but the practice was dropped by England and the world knew that it would never be resumed. In 1861 the British ship Trent was held by our warship San Jacinto and our captain, Charles Wilkes, removed two Confederate commissioners, Mason and Slidell, en route for Great Britain. There was great rejoicing in New York and Boston when the Confederate commissioners were brought to port, but Great Britain peremptorily demanded their release. Secretary Seward was disposed to assert what he considered as American rights, but President Lincoln counseled moderation: We fought Great Britain for insisting by theory and practice on the right to do precisely what Captain Wilkes has done. Lincoln's view prevailed and the Confederates were set free. The matter slept for over forty years. In the earlier part of the European war French cruisers took from American vessels trading to the West Indies various German members of the crews. On strong representation from our State department France released these captives. In regard to one of them, August Pipenbrink, our State department wrote to France. There is no justification in international law for the removal of an enemy subject from a neutral vessel on the high seas bound to a neutral port, even if he could be regarded as a military person. France assented to the principle, England did not. In our first note protesting the China seizures we pointed out to her the analogy of the Trent case, but she retained the thirty-eight men taken from American sovereignty, from under the American flag. Sir Edward Grey informed us that some of the captives on arrival in America might have engaged in plots against England. The seizure could so little be supported that even the newspapers of Japan, Great Britain's ally, denounced it as a violation of international law. To-day Great Britain submits. It is possible to measure ex actly the right which Great Britain had to take off an American ship the subjects of a power with whom we are at peace. Great Britain had the same right to do that as she would have to send troops across our border, take the same persons from an American railroad train and carry them off to Canada. Above all, is it possible that Britain, this writer of stern notes, this arbitrary maker of sea law in definance of neutrals, is really so tractable when she is sternly spoken to? Is our Mr. Lansing a Petruchio who is about to demonstrate the "Taming of the Shrew"?-May 6, 1916. THE WILHELMINA SETTLEMENT Eighteen months after the American steamship Wilhelmina was unlawfully seized by Great Britain. while on her way to Germany with a cargo of foodstuffs, the owners are recompensed by Great Britain. There is a tendency to regard this settlement as in some way satisfactory. Even those who admit that the British settlement does not atone for the violation of principle seem to think that this payment proves that the wrongs Great Britain is doing us can be paid for, while those of Germany cannot. Such is the opinion of Saturday's New York World: As neutrals see it, the seizure of the Wilhelmina's cargo was as truly a grievance as the sinking of the Lusitania. But it is John Bull's immense advantage that wrongs like the Wilhelmina's can be righted at any time by payment, while all the sorrowing years will not bring back the Lusitania's dead. The World will think differently when it looks deeper. Not even the wrong to the W. L. Green Commission Company, which chartered the steamer, is righted by the payment. The company eventually made a good profit upon that one cargo of foodstuffs, but their attempt to reestablish their business with Germany failed. Had it succeeded, they would have made a profit not on one but on a hundred cargoes. The Wilhelmina carried grain and flour and provisions. After this ship was seized no one dared to attempt to ship foodstuffs to Germany. This meant a great and permanent loss to producers of foodstuffs in America, a loss not of to-day, but of to-morrow and all the future. To be sure, farmers have received high prices for their produce during this war, thanks to the central powers, who locked up the Russian wheat supply and made the neutral and allied nations dependent upon *sn But a state department must look further than immediate effect. The stoppage of the Wilhelmina, and our accession in that stoppage, has for all time closed the German foodstuffs market to us. Germany is now either producing all she needs or importing it from her allies, and will continue to do this after the war. We shall sell no more wheat, flour or provisions to Germany, and little fodder. We shall sell them no more oil, phosphates, steel, naval stores, copper, cotton, in so far as they can by the greatest stretch of ingenuity find substitutes at home. or in friendy countries accessible by land. After the British use of sea power in this war no country will in the future dare to depend on an oversea source of supply for the necessities of life. Least of all will the central powers again risk such dependency. The currents of international trade have suffered a permanent diminution. We have refused to enforce our asserted right to ship to an unblockaded country all goods but contraband of war. Thereby we have infinitely reduced the worth of oversea sources of supply, yet we are an oversea source of supply for all our export markets except Mexico and Canada. We have stood by while the sea was being made a barrier that separates us from nations, not a link that binds us to them. For this precedent is part of the interna tional law of the future; it is by precedents that international law is made. pers on the Wilhelmina does not settle with America. It does not settle with us any more than the $15,000,000 in gold, paid us by England, settled for the harm done us in the Civil War by the Alabama and her sister ships, Confederate privateers fitted out by England. They sank half our merchant marine and drove the other half to the British flag to escape destruction. During the Civil War we were a weak nation, fighting for our lives against the Confederacy. We could not effectually protest against the wrong Great Britain did us nor stop it in its course. To-day it is different. We are the most powerful nation in the world. No belligerent can resist our demand to return to the limits of law. Germany could not. Nor can England.-July No, the $392,000 paid the ship- 18, 1916. Red Cross "BY LEAVE OF ENGLAND" The American Red Cross is thwarted in its charitable purposes by the unwillingness of England to admit certain kinds of medical supplies to countries with which she is at war. Such supplies, it appears from an official letter written from Red Cross headquarters in Washington, can be forwarded only by leave of England. To the suggestion that such supplies, urgently needed to carry on the work of the American Physicians' Expedition of New York, be taken to Germany on board an American warship, the reply from Red Cross headquarters in Washington is that as England has objected to the transportation of such articles on merchant vessels, she would object equally to their being sent on an American warship. Such is the outcome of the attempt of the American Physicians' Expedition, of which Mr. Arthur, von Briesen is president, to obtain a removal of England's ban upon rubber gloves and rubber bandages for the use of the four surgeons sent out from New York, under the personal guarantee of the American ambassador to Germany, that the gloves and the bandages would be applied only to the purpose designated. One member of the expedition, Miss Emma Duensing, of New York, has already died in the midst of her noble work from infection against which rubber gloves might have protected her. The expedition, as an article on another page of this issue will show, has sought the aid of the Red Cross, and through that organization, of the government at Washington, in its attempts to protect the remaining four members of its staff in Germany from a misfortune similar to that which has laid Miss Duensing low. And the reply is that England would not consent to relax its stringent regulations even to make possible the continuation of the laudable hospital work of Americans who are tending the wounded of all nationalities alike. Since when has charity become contraband? Since when have the laws of nations permitted England to kill the wounded or the surgeons or nurses in the hospitals by denying them supplies indispensable for their protection from deadly infection? And since when has America acquiesced in such a heartlessly arrogant policy? How much further is our status in the world to be determined "by leave of England"?-Dec. 23, 1915. THE AMERICAN RED CROSS For many months the allies have refused "permits" for the passage to Germany of Red Cross supplies collected in this country. Our State department has informally negotiated with London, but in vain. At last, on April 18, the American Red |