Cross had to write and ask donors of Red Cross supplies for the central powers to take back their gifts or allow a different disposition to be made of them

This is the message that had to be passed on from the State depart

ment:

The American Red Cross has received notification through the State department of the decision of the British government that Red Cross supplies destined to enemy countries will not be passed through the blockade established by the entente allies.

Under such conditions the American Red Cross loses its name and nature. It becomes nothing more than an auxiliary branch of the hospital and ambulance services of the entente allies.

But American members of the Red Cross were not satisfied with this disposition of the case. After much urging Mr. Taft, chairman of the organization's central committee, was induced to write to Secretary Lansing and ask him to formally protest the British action:

The authorities of the American Red Cross believe that, under the Geneva convention, to which the United States and all the belligerent powers are signatories, the United States has the right to

insist that aricles serving exclusively to aid the sick and wounded, in the form of hospital supplies. shipped by the American Red Cross to the Red Cross of the central powers, shall not be declared contraband, but shall be allowed safe conduct to their destination.

Secretary Lansing-so Washington announced on May 12-is to make a formal protest.

Americans cannot help feeling a hope that the secretary will insist on our "treaty rights" with all the mighty force at his disposal. That force is an irresistible one. He proved it when he compelled the release of the German and Austrian subjects unlawfully removed by a British cruiser from the American steamship China. He will prove it when he comes to apply that force to the removal of the illegal British blockade.

The secretary has a logical and consistent mind. With unanswerable logic he insisted on our lawful right to ship munitions of war to the allies.

Then-O God of Christian peoples! is there anything in human or divine law to prevent us from insisting on our right to heal the very wounds we make?-May 16, 1916.

WAR'S HORRORS VISUALIZED

The columns of the press of the belligerent nations are teeming with ghastly reminders of what war means to the individual, to twenty millions of individuals scattered in the world's battlefields. In a London publication, just arrived, the excellence of a large variety of artificial limbs is set forth for the benefit of its readers. Here are some of the descriptive phrases which occur:

Artificial leg for amputation above the knee.

Double ball-bearing ankle-joint. Supporting and operating harness for artificial arm.

Raising the hat by means of artificial

arm.

The artificial foot and ankle-joint.
Ball-bearing knee-controller.

Sponge rubber foot; ankle and foot action obtained by stepping as with the natural foot.

Picking up a coin with artificial hand. Side view of artificial arm, showing operating mechanism.

And so on down the appalling list of mutilations, the work of shot and shell and bayonet, of tearing and thrusting and rending implements of destruction.

All these tragedies are not enacted in pitched battles, deciding the fortunes of campaigns. For the most part they are the work of those obscure and futile exchanges of projectiles that are going on day and night along fighting lines extending more than 2,000 miles upon the scarred face of Europe These

engagements may mean nothing in the long run of military operations. They may not result in the loss or gain of a single yard of ground. But the killing and the mutilation goes on, even in those casual, routine, matter-of-fact workings of the military machine which in the official reports are characterized in a stereotyped paragraph, something as follows:

In the Gorizia sector everything was quiet to-day.

Quiet? Yes. The quiet of newly made graves. The quiet of silent, inanimate objects which once were The quiet of the death which Europe is dying many thousands of times a day. Nov. 30, 1915.

men.

PILING UP HATRED

Our neighbor, the Globe, prints prominently a long article from its European correspondent, Mr. Herbert Corey, in which, on the authority of an unnamed "major of Canadians," two horrible stories are linked. The first of these concerns a Canadian sergeant, unnamed, who is said to have been crucified at

Ypres, where he had been found, wounded, by the Germans in a shed which the Canadians afterward retook. As Mr. Corey tells it:

"I saw him myself," said the major of Canadians, talking in Paris, "cruci fied on the door of a sort of a shed like. They had jabbed holes through his hands and feet with their bayonets and then

thrust wooden plugs through them to sustain his weight. We all saw it. I tell you, we went mad."

live with Germany for a long time." Similar advice might well have been given by cool men in every country

"We had some prisoners," said the major. "Twenty-three, I think. The boys killed them and cut their bodies in pieces and strewed them in the road along which the Germans must come. On some of them we pinned the Canadian emblems from the uniforms of our dead, just so they would know how Canada takes revenge. Ever since then the Germans have been afraid of us. They believe that we do that often. They think we are savages."

The Globe correspondent does not vouch for the stories himself. He sprinkles the recitation with a few comments intended to suggest his own doubt about the crucifixion, such as: "It is a bit too inhuman, that story; too hellish." As for the alleged killing of the twenty-three prisoners, he indirectly suggests that it was not possible for men like the Canadians to have done such a thing.

The most important thing about the matter, from the American point of view, is that a story printed. as prominently as this was printed is believed in toto by a large number of persons whose willing minds automatically discard all suggestions of doubt as to the truth of the tales. Your anti-German will come to the end of the column raging over the idea, welcome to his imagination, that the Germans crucified a Canadian. Your pro-German will be incensed at the supposed butchery of the German prisoners.

It was an Englishman-Jerome K. Jerome, we believe-who advised his countrymen early in the war not to say too many wild things about the foe. "Whether we like it or not," he said, "we have got to

rope have got to live with one another after this war is over-at least until there is another war-just as we will have to live with Canada, even if this Corey tale were a thousand times true.

But nations do not live any happier with their neighbors for things like this, true or false. If true, these horrors should be dealt with as crimes. If untrue, then the crime of calumny is at somebody's door, perhaps the unnamed major's. There have been in this war so

atrocities, the records of which have been set down with names, places and dates, that there is no need of drawing upon the imagination for fresh hellishness. We do not say that Mr. Corey's story is manufactured, but we do say that to print it without naming the source is unfair to our neighbors, the Canadians, and unfair to the Germans, too.-Dec. 17, 1915.

WHERE WOULD REPRISAL END?

It seems to be the intent, in certain political quarters of Germany, to throw away a grievance by avenging it, even when that very grievance has indeterminably great value. We refer to the unanimous demand, made at a recent session of the Reichstag, that the government avenge the reported murder of the German submarine fleet in the Baralong affair.

In that particular matter Germany had what appeared to be a "good case"; one in which she

could at least prove that brutality was the weakness of other nations; one in which, by sane procedure and patience, she could show that she had not discarded the laws of war. Germany's brief in the Buralong case was a moral weapon, for it appealed to every neutral.

If Germany, blinded by fury, turns to bloody reprisal against the British, lawless brutality will increase, instead of ending, the ratio of horror, doubling as it goes on. It would be impossible to forecast the end if both Germany and England should abandon all the conventions of battle.

England and Germany have been appealing for American sympathy in cases like the tragedy of Miss Cavell and the seeming horror of the Baralong. The appeals have been made, not to our government, but to the American people, who can do little more than murmur and regret.

It is time for the government of the United States to do something to appeal to these two nations not to disgrace what remains of twenty centuries of Christian civilization by acting like wild beasts. Let us offer our services for an inquiry. With an umpire looking on, we believe, foul work would stop.-Jan. 29, 1916.

WARRING FOR HUMANITY

On March 10 a letter from Premier Asquith was publish in London giving 3,153 as the number of noncombatants killed by the atrocious Germans in the war, through coast bombardment, air bombs and submarines. On March 9 Lord Bryce published in London a pamphlet explaining that Britain was

warring "especially for the exemption of noncombatants from the suffering and horrors which war brings."

Three thousand one hundred and fifty-three noncombatants. It is a terrible number. Naturally the British have taken every care that no such charge as this can be laid against their souls, in their righteous struggle for the exemption of noncombatants from the sufferings of war.

Have they been successful in the accomplishment of their high aims? When the war broke out England began to seize every shipment of food going to Germany, whether consigned to the army or to civilians. No pound of food that the British fleet could capture on the high seas has gone through to Germany. Such procedure is not only inhuman, it is even unlawful, unless an effective blockade is maintained. Not until March 1, 1915, did Britain attempt any such measure, and she has not to this day dared to call it a blockade. It is an unexampled interference with our commerce on the seas.

It is an interference to which we cannot accede-so Mr. Lansing contends-without surrendering our rights and violating our neutrality.

To return to the sturdy British fight in behalf of noncombatants. Britain has refused even to let us send food to Germany to be distributed among civilians by our own consular officers. It could not be plainer proved that the British measures are directed against women and children in Germany. No one imagines that the German army is going to suffer from shortage of food. They are fed first. The hope is that the nation will sicken at the

view of the suffering of these noncombatants, for whose protection Great Britain is warring. There are 35,000,000 females and some tens of millions of male babies and other male noncombatants in Germany.

The campaign has not been without its effect. Judge Ben Lindsey, of Denver, has come back from a few weeks in Germany. He told a New York audience of a million civilian deaths in Germany last year; 500,000 were children and a very great number of these died from lack of milk. That is because American fodder, used to feed German cattle, could not get through the British fleet.

The Russians, retreating in Poland, kill all the cattle they cannot drive away. To-day there are no more babies in Poland. But Russia does not pretend to be warring for noncombatants. England does.

Britain is fighting "especially for the exemption of noncombatants from the sufferings and horrors which war brings.'

How long, O Lord, how long? O noble nation! O liberty! O hypocrisy! What crimes are committed in thy name!-March 21, 1916.

Anglo and Saxon brothers sunk to the level of the lowest beasts? Is our own immediate human nature thus red in tooth and claw?

The saving thought is that it may not all be true, not quite true On Saturday, November 11, 1758, the gentle Dr. Samuel Johnson wrote in the Idler:

In time of war the nation is always of one mind, eager to hear something good of themselves and ill of the enemy.

At this time the task of news writers is

easy; they have nothing to do but tell that a battle is expected, and afterward has been fought, in which we and our friends, whether conquering or conquered, did all and our enemy nothing.

Scarcely anything awakens attention like a tale of cruelty. The writer of news never fails in the intermission of action to tell how the enemy murdered children and ravished virgins; and, if the scene of action be somewhat distant, scalped half the inhabitants of the province.

Among the calamities of war may be justly numbered the diminution of the love of truth which interest dictates and credulity encourages. A peace will equally leave the warrior and the relater of wars destitute of employment, and I know not whether more is to be dreaded from the streets filled with soldiers accustomed to plunder, or from garrets filled with scribblers accustomed to lie.

On Saturday, November 11, 1758, the news writer at the front was very much as he is to-day. But in 1916 we have more highly trained correspondents, official news bureaus

and all the conveniences of cable and wireless to invent and spread the same old tales.-March 30, 1916.

MAKING WAR NEWS

The many fantastic shapes that war news sometimes takes in the course of its wanderings from producer to consumer are pointedly illustrated by the adventures of Lady