which we can do. Two of them mean peace. One of them-so far as human foresight can judge-means war. First-We can bring both belligerents back to the limits of international law. We can threaten to break off present commercial relations with either belligerent which does not give up his starvation campaign, whose conduct abolishes the established rights of neutrals to trade and travel on the high seas of the world. We can threaten not only present severance of commercial relations with the offender, but we can also levy a penalty tariff against his goods, to apply for a long time. ahead. The economic losses, present and future, which would confront either belligerent opposing our demand are such as to insure compli ance. This course would mean peace, and the full restitution of the rights of neutrals on the part of all who violate them. Second-We can ignore the breaches of international law on the part of both offenders and declare that we are indifferent to what either of them does. We can remove all occasion of conflict with either belligerent, by forbidding our citizens to try to export to Germany, and by warning our citizens to stay off British merchant vessels. Then no matter how many of these ships are sunk by Germany, it could not cause friction with us. This course would mean peace and the abandonment of neutral rights on the high seas of the world, at least during the period of this war. Third-We can disregard England's violation of international law, and devote ourselves exclusively to removing the German offenses. In the unlikely event of diplomatic success in this undertaking we shall have peace and gain the restitution of a part of neutral rights, from one offender, Germany. In the likely event that Germany will not consent to return to the legal limits alone, we shall have a diplomatic break, war, and shall lose all opportunity to act as the defender of neutral rights. We shall render ourselves unfit to act as mediator between the combatants in any way, or to shorten the conflict. Each sovereign citizen of this democracy decides these issues on these facts. The sum of these reasoned decisions is the final word of the nation. America should not abandon its rôle as defender of the rights of neutral nations. Never in history has such a call come to a nation as that which this war has brought to us. Let us rise to it and with equal vigor insist that the law of nations shall be respected by both belligerents. Our President was right when he defined his position as that of "spokesman of humanity." Let him indicate that he intends to enforce international law, no matter from what quarter violated, and the obstacles that now seem so formidable will melt away. Sensible men in both belligerent countries, the conscience and public opinion of the world will support him.-April 22, 1916. "COME NOW, LET US REASON TOGETHER" The President has America solid behind him when he insists that belligerents observe international law and the dictates of humanity. That means, in simple English: Germany and England, in their rage to destroy each other, shall not practice indiscriminate highway robbery and murder on the seas. It means that the peaceful nations shall retain their prior right to the highways of the world, and that international bandits shall not lay embargoes upon neutral trade and travel which are not specifically sanctioned by international law. Our demand that the belligerents shall follow the dictates of humanity means that they shall not so use their naval forces as to threaten or take innocent human lives which have no part in the making or prosecution of the war. These are the principles upon which we stand. Their application to the situation in hand is clear. Both belligerents are transgressing against the commandments of international law and humanity. By our own confession of faith we are pledged to reassert law and compel observance of the rules of civilized warfare. The German violations of law and humanity are grosser and more palpable; the British, however, may fairly claim that they were first in the field and gave the Germans an excuse for their acts. Two weeks after the war began Great Britain passed an order in council which for bade us to ship food to Germany. No blockade of Germany was maintained, and for England to interfere with food shipments to the German civilian population was against the first principles of international law. It was also against the dictates of humanity. It was a measure which, if effective at all, would carry famine to the non-combatants of Germany, for every one knows that the army is supplied first. Indeed, British statesmen confidently expected a civilian famine. On November 9, 1914, Churchill said: The economic pressure brought about by the navy will spell the doom of Germany as certainly as winter strikes the leaves from the trees. If this is not inhumane, nothing is. We became involved in the process when our food ships going to Germany, like the Wilhelmina, were held up. To some in America the British seizure of the Wilhelmina was a mere matter of property, not to be compared with German submarine destruction of life. But the British seizure of the Wilhelmina and her food cargo was an attempt on the lives of a thousand German civilians whom that cargo would feed. Nationally, from the American viewpoint, the seizure was perhaps only a violation of a property right. But internationally the seizure was an attempt on life itself. And we, who sit in judgment on the nations and apply international law, must think internationally. When the Germans, six months after the war began, started their starvation campaign, they prosecuted it in the only way open to them, by using submarines to torpedo merchant vessels without warning. International law requires that a warship-a submarine-shall not harm a merchant carrier until it has visited and searched her. Then, if the merchant ship is found to have a cargo more than half contraband, she may be sunk, but not until passengers, crew and ship's papers are saved. Germany's present procedure breaks this law. The sinking of crews and passengers on unarmed British merchant vessels, unwarned and helpless, is a crass violation of the first principles of humanity. No word we have said to the Germans is untrue. We have exercised all patience with them. They must return to the civilized rules of warfare. Their attempt to defeat England must proceed along lawful and humane lines. No more can we permit England to prosecute her starvation campaign along equally unlawful and inhumane lines. Both these belligerents must wash their hands and clean up their records. The President of the United States has at different times framed a platform upon which he can stand and rally every true American to his side. Only July 21, 1915, he wrote to Germany, speaking of the freedom of the seas-the right of neutrals to use them freely for trade and travel in war time: The United States will continue to contend for that freedom, from whatever quarter violated, without compromise and at any cost. On February 3, 1916, he said at St. Louis that the United States aspired to have the world say: That it was we who kept the quiet flame of international principle burning on its altar while the winds of passion were sweeping away every altar in the world. On that day he further said: I want the record of the conduct of this administration to be a record of genuine neutrality and not of pretended neutrality. To-day the judge of international law is the President of the United States. The jury is Congress and the people of this country. Our economic and military power stands ready to punish as we condemn. The trial of the two offenders has been completed. Both are guilty in the eyes of the law and of common humanity. Shall we give them both the choice of immediate reform or punishment? Shall we let them both go free? Shall we punish one and release the other? If the judge will charge the jury with the facts and with the stirring statement of the principles of law and neutrality in his July and February utterances, there will be a unanimous and just verdict.-April 24, 1916. OUR PROBLEMS If ever an administration was beset with difficulties, it is the present administration at Washington. The President and his cabinet deserve the loyal support and honest aid of every American in solving the pregnant problems that confront America. Every nation is taking advantage of our crisis with Germany to press its demands upon us. Carranza orders us out of Mexico. We entered Mexico to catch and punish a bandit who murdered our citizens in cold blood. It was "Villa alive or dead." We are still in Mexico. Villa is still alive in some mountain fastness, planning to relaunch his wrecked bark upon the tide of a national Mexican resistance to the Gringoes. We went to Vera Cruz to get the flag saluted. We came away without the salute. We went over the border for Villa alive or dead. Are we to come away with him alive and with American dead on the trails over which we vainly pursued him? With American prestige-the Mexicans and world may say "American honor"-thus lowered, what will be the future safety of American property and lives on our side of the border? If we withdraw, what will be the impression the world will get of our military efficiency and the strength of our national purposes? The administration is weighing the loss with the gain if we are now to quit Mexico at the demand of a Mexican schoolmaster. Great Britain chose the days of the approaching German crisis to send us her notes refusing our demand that she cease confiscating our mails on the high seas, and refusing our demand that she give up the passengers captured from the American steamer China off Shanghai. On Thursday, April 20, 1916, the very day after the President delivered his address to Congress with its ultimatum to Germany, London cabled that the long-delayed reply to our note of October 21, 1915, requiring the withdrawal of the British "blockade," is on its way. Britain has already let it be known that her reply was to be a refusal. In this crucial hour, when she believes our hands are tied, when she believes we are in no mood and no position to defend ourselves against wrongs from the enemy of Germany-in this hour England sends us her denial. The London dispatch of April 20 significantly adds: Since its arrival in Washington certain cable changes have been made in the original note. But Washington knows when governments are trying to take advantage of us, and Britain may yet find that in her ingenuity she has overreached herself. Japan is taking this time to press its objection to our sharp form of Asiatic exclusion. The national immigration laws, and especially the California land laws forbidding the Japanese to own property, are a thorn in Japanese pride. These are the days which Ambassador Chinda thinks suitable to reopen the case at Washington. Washington. Back of it all, eventually, is what? Shadow by shadow, stripped for fight The lean black cruisers search the sea. Washington knows the million veterans of the Russo-Japanese war. The citizen may see an impressive section of them being reviewed by the Emperor Yoshihito on the pictorial pages of last Sunday's New York Times. But Washington is not ignorant that this is the way in international affairs. Every nation is looking for its own advantage and chooses the most favorable time to press its claims; that is, the time when its adversary will feel least able to refuse them. Washington will recall the premature recognition of the Confederacy by Britain and France. It will recall that Napoleon III. took advantage of our preoccupation during the civil war to violate the Monroe doctrine and send Maximilian's expedition to Mexico. Washington does not forget that we also have taken occassion to press our will on embarrassed friends. When Great Britian was harassed by the Boer war we put upon her the Hay-Pauncefote treaty, which gave us the power to build the Panama canal alone, to own and operate it as we choose, and to fortify it. We had none of these rights under the Webster-Ashburton treaty, which the Hay-Pauncefote superseded. seded. The earlier treaty provided that England was to be our partner in the enterprise. When Colombia was in the throes of a revolution we recognized and supported the revolutionaries and bought from them the Panama canal zone. And nowEven-handed justice Commends the ingredients of the poisoned chalice Even to our own lips. Interna It has always been so. tional relations are no love feast. They are a game where the choicest minds of nations, backed by their united physical force, play for the world's prizes of possession, trade, power, dominion. At the gentlest, At the gentlest, the play is with sharpened wits, with far-sighted seizure of opportunity, with calculating use of an adversary's or a friend's-extremity. At the worst, the mask and costume of diplomacy are thrown aside and the armed warrior stands revealed, as we see him to-day in the earthquakes of artillery operations at Verdun, the desperate infantry desperate infantry charges on the Tigris, the roving aeroplanes over Bulgarian headquarters at Doiran, the silent stroke of the submarine in the North Sea. These are the issues, the eventualities, which President Wilson and those around him face. Every one looks out for himself, and he looks out for America. Sauve qui peut. It is no time for a divided America. We seem to be facing merely the question of neutral rights in this war-the right to travel and trade on the high seas. Beyond this thin veil of the high seas problem is the great, burning, inescapable issue of America's security, her respect, her place, her influence, perhaps her existence, among the nations of the world. To meet these issues we must supply the President with the power to uphold America. That power will consist partly of material things; an adequate army, an adequate navy, a nation industrially prepared to defend itself. But he also deserves the spiritual power that comes from a nation united behind him. Stand by the President!-April 25, 1916. FACING THE FACTS At last we are beginning to hear plain speaking. The last issue of the New Republic points out to its readers what it considers the essential unneutrality of the course which this government has taken during the present war. The New Republic cannot be accused of being pro-German. It is frankly proally, and when it refers to a German naval officer, speaks of him as "a frightened or drunken submarine commander." The New Republic does not love the Germans. It only wants us to recognize that our government proves by its acts that it does not love them and is determined to avoid any protection of our rights which could be of aid to the Germans in winning the war. The New Republic says that the American people would not stand for any policy of true neutrality. Nor would the New Republic itself. It then states that true neutrality would have required us, in February, 1915, to force a joint return to international law, instead of merely suggesting it and tacitly accepting Britain's refusal. The New Republic says that as neutrals we should have threatened England with an arms embargo in order to compel her to join Germany in accepting the Declaration of London. But, the New Republic says, the people would not have sanctioned |