has been. That is a question again of a purely domestic nature.

You may call it, if you will, the refusal of the government to attempt to enforce the enjoyment of a customary privilege. But that is just what neutral governments are always doing in times of war. What is the recognition by neutral governments of the right of visitation and search of neutral vessels by belligerents on the high sea, or of the right of belligerents to blockade enemy's ports against neutral commerce, except a refusal on the part of the neutral government to attempt to enforce the enjoyment of the customary privileges, or rights, if you prefer, of its citizens in reference to the freedom of the high sea or of entering the ports of a friendly nation?

The manifest anxiety of the administration to work this domestic power of the government of every Sovereign nation over its relations to its own citizens around into some sort of a duty to the belligerents under the behests of international law is the thing of sinister import which no patriotic American citizen dare. allow to escape his eye. Stripped of all the sophistries of rhetoric and presented in the full nakedness of its iniquity, it simply means that this government and nation shall acknowledge an obligation to Great Britain, Russia and France to deliver safely in their ports the arms and munitions of war sold to them in this country under the cover of the imperiled persons of American citizens.

This pseudo obligation is termed the right of American citizens, and the maintenance of it is called a question of national honor! Was there ever such folly manifested be

fore in responsible places? To me such a course of argumentation is making straight for national dishonor. It is making straight also, for national catastrophe. No government dare bruise the intelligence, conscience and the sense of justice, fairness and truth of its citizens by any such legal fallacies. That conscience and that sense of truth will, sooner or later, revolt against such bonds and rend them asunder.

"You cannot fool all the people all the time."

These are the reasons of my conviction that Congress should now take the submarine warfare controversy into its own hands for solution and should at once set aside this fictitious international law which the administration has invented, to the serious impairment of our national sovereignty over our own domestic questions.

Congress, and not the administration, is, under our constitution, the determiner of international law and international obligation for our citizens. The administration, by its erroneous interpretations of both international and constitutional law, has bound itself hand and foot to the policy of Great Britain. It has rendered itself impotent to act freely. Congress, however, is as yet uncommitted, and should, therefore, exercise its full power and authority to save the country from foreign war, which, once entered on, will not in my opinion, cease without a thoroughgoing internal economic revolution, as likely to be destructive as constructive.

Newport, Feb. 28.

JOHN W. BURGESS.

-March 1, 1916.

PEACE OR WAR

Again the issue of the submarine is before the country for decision. In the last analysis, it is the issue of peace or war. There is no evading the gravity of the situation. Certain interests in the United States are urging us towards a "diplomatic break" with Germany. The ultimate outcome of a diplomatic break, with the resulting inflamed feelings here and in the central empires, is war.

America will not evade this war if it is a just one, necessary to protect the vital rights of our citizens and sustain the national honor. No sense of unpreparedness will hold us back; to defend America we can and will make the sacrifices to prepare, even during war. We are not afraid to fight. To-day we face the issue, count and weigh the facts and decide where our honor and our interest takes us.

The State Department gives us the facts upon which to make our decision. The essential facts are contained in the diplomatic correspondence of the first nine months of the war. In those nine months the entire present situation developed. This diplomatic correspondence was published by the State Department in a "White Paper," My 27, 1915. Any American who decides for war without considering the facts which the government thus lays before him forfeits his right to citizenship in a democracy, for a democracy's existence is built on the exercised intelligence of its citizens.

All through these papers the fact stares us in the face that German and British lawlessness cannot be considered separately. Our first

move was to attempt to restrain both the belligerents within the limits of law. On August 6 (page 5 of the "White Paper") we sent a joint telegram to all belligerents asking them to accept the Declaration of London as their code of naval warfare. This declaration was a clear statement of neutral rights of trade cepted our proposal (page 5); the and travel. The central empires acallies rejected it (pages 6 and 7). That is, the allies "accepted" the declaration "with modifications." The modifications destroyed the declaration as a document protecting the rights of neutrals. So on October 24 (page 8) we wrote England and withdrew our suggestion that th belligerents operate under the provisions of the declaration, on the ground that, as modified by England's acceptance, it was no longer any protection for us.

Great Britain, however, continued to wage war under the Declaration of London as modified to suit herself. She prevented us from shipping all foodstuffs to Germany, though Britain was maintaining no blockade, and, without a blockade, such stoppage of our foodstuffs exports was contrary to all law and to British precedents themselves. We set all this forth in our first protest to England of December 25, 1914 (page 40). Great Britain, in her answers of January 7 and February 10, 1915, declared her intention of continuing to proceed in the very course we had declared as lawless (pages 41 and 45).

In the meantime Germany, which had learned to become dependent upon America for many foodstuffs and especially fodder-such as cottonseed meal-saw the approach of famine. On January 28 she com

mandeered flour and grain in the empire for governmental distribution, and issued bread cards to limit consumption. As a retaliation against the British starvation policy Germany announced on February 4, effective on February 18, a submarine compaign which would sink British vessels whenever and wherever found. Neutrals were warned to keep off such ships. Neutral vessels were advised to keep out of the war zone, because the British policy of flying neutral flags put them in peril. All this was communicated to us in the German memorandum dated February 4, 1915 (page 53).

The whole situation looked very grave to us. A German policy had been announced which, added to the British, promised to abolish all neutral rights at sea. On February 10 we wrote to England (page 55) and asked them to stop using the American flag, thus removing any German excuse for torpedoing an American vessel. On February 19 (page 59) Great Britain refused to give up the use of our flag to shield her vessels from submarines.

Dispatches from London indicated that England was going to stop all traffic to or from Germany, as a reprisal against the submarine warfare. So on February 20 we tried for the second time to make both England and Germany return to the limits of law. Both were justifying their lawlessness as an act of retaliation against the other. We proposed to remove the ground for any retaliation. We asked England to let us send food to the civilian population of Germany, and in return we asked Germany to give up her submarine warfare. This was our note of February 20 (page 59). Germany accepted our proposal on

March 1 (page 60); England refused it on March 15 (page 64).

Instead of giving up her lawlessness, England multiplied it. On March 1 (page 61) she declared she would seize all goods moving to or from Germany. It is not pretended that any blockade is maintained; its rights are assumed, but its obligations are evaded. There is no lawful blockade, because all nations are not kept out of Germany; Sweden and Norway trade unhindered with German Baltic ports, for Britain does not hold the Baltic. Therefore it is unlawful to stop our ships moving to Baltic ports. Moreover, our government contends that for us to accede to this illegal British obliteration of our rights is equivalent to a refusal to trade with Germany, and is so a violation of that neutrality which we choose to observe. is the argument of our note to England of March 30 (page 69).

This

In the meantime Germany was putting the submarine policy into effect and on May 7 sank the Lusitania, an act that shocked our whole people. On May 13 (page 75) we told Berlin in no uncertain terms that we should hold Germany strictly accountable for American lives lost through submarine activities.

This May 13 note is the last in the "White Paper," but the succeeding events are fresh in the minds of all. The State Department ceased to regard German and British lawlessness as joint offenses, tied together by an avowed reprisal policy. Washington ceased to hold to account the prime originator of offenses against us and the one who has twice openly refused to return to law. All our pressure has been exercised against Germany, whose offending began seven months after

England's and who has twice accepted our just request for a joint return to the limits of law. All our notes to England since March 30, 1915, have been argumentative and rather protests against interference with our shipments to neutrals than against interference with our shipments to Germany.

On the other hand, the sternest threats were used toward Germany until in December she let us write a Lusitania note that suited us with regard to apology and reparation for the disaster, and guarantees for the future.

While this note was in Berlin being signed, we sent a note to the entente powers asking them to disarm their merchant vessels in order to make possible that visit and search which we had forced upon German submarines as a substitute for undiscriminate destruction. We said in our note that we were inclining to the argument that armed merchant vessels were auxiliary cruisers and so suitable for destruction without warning.

Basing on this note of ours, Germany issued her warning that after March 1 she would sink all armed British merchant vessels. After our note to the entente we cannot logically go to war to avenge American lives lost on what we call auxiliary

cruisers.

We already have an answer from the entente. They refuse to disarm liners. In the last two weeks has come a new memorandum from Germany, again offering to return to law if England will, and submitting to us proof of offensive actions by "defensively armed" merchantmen, as the British call them. In the last few days various British ships have been sunk carrying passengers,

among them the Sussex, a transChannel liner.

Proof is not in yet whether the Sussex was sunk by a submarine and whether she was unarmed, unresisting and did not attempt to escape. If all these conditions are true we may, if we choose, go to war over the matter. Germany will probably say that there are bound to be occasional mistakes in sinking "unarmed" British ships so long as Britain refuses America's demand to disarm them all. For a submarine to rise and approach an “unarmed" ship that turns out to be armed is to court destruction.

We can go to war, but there is another way out. It is to recognize the essentially joint character of the British and German issues. It is to compel their joint return to law, which every consideration of evenhanded justice dictates and which our own diplomacy has twice suggested. International law is codified in the Declaration of London, which protects us against both illegal blockades and submarines. By a threat of breaking commercial intercourse, followed-if necessary-by war, we can force each belligerent to abide by that declaration.

What do we really want? Does America prefer to go to war to enforce our sense of justice upon one combatant while leaving the other free to violate our rights as it chooses? Or does America choose to recover from both belligerents for ourselves, the peaceful world and the future, the neutral rights of trade and travel which international law has handed down to us?

Which course do honor, justice and interest dictate?-March 31, 1916.

THINKING AMERICA

Come now, let us reason together.

To-day America stands face to face with participation in a great war, whose end none can see, whose sacrifices in blood and treasure awe the intellect. A democracy, if it is to exist, is a nation of thinking citizens. Every American is false to his duty who to-day shuns the mental effort of shutting his ears and mind to clamor and prejudice and of thinking straight on these great issues. A chain is as strong as its weakest link. A nation's thought is only as clear and straight as that of the mass of citizens who compose it. Whoever shirks his individual duty of thinking does not thereby fail to contribute to the action of the nation. But he contributes to it the impetus that comes from willful ignorance.

No American chooses to be in this unthinking class. No American need be. The facts in this pending war are all known. The issues lie on the table for all who will view them. The President has told Germany that she must give up her starvation campaign against England, that she must forego wholly the use of submarines against British freight vessels. For to tell Germany that her submarines must emerge, visit and search freighters which Britain refuses to disarm-this is to say that these frail craft must commit suicide. In effect we demand that submarines shall not be used against the carriers of British food supply, and that Germany must give up her attempt to starve England.

But when we turn to the diplomatic papers published by our State department, we find that England. began a starvation campaign against

Germany by an order in council of August 20, 1914, two weeks after the war began. We find that England's method of conducting the campaign, barring food shipments to Germany on the sea, was in violation of the very precedents of international law which England had established. We find that our government said this to England in sharp terms on December 26, 1914, and March 30, 1915.

We find when we look for the facts

that Germany started her starvation campaign against England by means of a submarine warfare on February 18, 1915, six months after England had offended, and that this submarine campaign, endangering the lives. of Americans on British vessels, was fully as great a violation of international law as England's.

Then the thinking citizen turns the pages of the government White Paper and finds that on February 20, 1915, we asked both belligerents to come back to law. England was to give up her interference with our foodstuffs moving to Germany, Germany was to call off her submarines. And, to his amazement, the citizen finds that Germany agreed, England refused. As a joint agreement could not be secured, both continued their evil ways.

The citizen, continuing, discovers that since then all our pressure has been applied to Germany. The socalled British "blockade" (England has never dared to call it a block

ade) has tightened. The President now proposes to break diplomatic relations and have war with Germany because she will not give up the use of her submarines.

These, then, are the facts of the case. What is America's duty in the premises? There are three things