Our Responsibility for Mexican Atrocities. THE main part of Mr. Roosevelt's indictment, however, is along the line of our partial and guilty responsibility for "some of the worst acts ever committed even in the civil wars of Mexico." By permit ting the transmission of arms over the border, the President "not only actively aided the insurrection but undoubtedly furnished it with the means essential to its triumph," at the same time preventing Huerta from organizing an effective resistance. By interfering in behalf of one faction, we "thereby made ourselves responsible for the deeds of that faction," and these deeds are recalled by the ex-President in some detail. He presents a translation of a manifesto issued by Carranza and Villa, which deals with the "conditions under which the Roman worship will have to be practiced." This decree forbids, among other things, "any sermons which will encourage fanaticism," any fasts or similar practices, the payment of any money for christenings or marriages, the celebration of masses for the dead, confession to priests, and the assumption by a priest of any garb that will indicate his profession. He also presents evidence given to him by priests, bishops and others of atrocious assaults upon nuns, of the profanation of sacred vessels and churches, the torturing of priests, destruction of educational institutions, and confiscation of church property. He writes: "I have been given and shown letters from refugees in Galveston, in Corpus Christi, in San Antonio and Havana. These refugees include seven archbishops, six bishops, some hundreds of priests, and at least three hundred nuns. Most of these bishops and priests had been put in jail or in the penitentiary or otherwise confined and maltreated. Two-thirds of the institutions of higher learning in Mexico have been confiscated and more or less completely destroyed, and a large part of the ordinary educational institutions have been treated in similar fashion. Many of the affidavits before me recite tortures so dreadful that I am unwilling to put them in print." The Big, Dominating Fact in Our Mexican Policy. that he could borrow money enough to put down the insurrection; but when he asked whether any peace which Huerta could bring would be a lasting peace, "the answer was invariably, 'No!" The N. Y. Evening handled there would have been small satisfaction in the Post feels that however the Mexican situation had been result; but it thinks that the President has "come as near as possible to making the best of a bad job." In his determination to let the Mexicans fight their own way out of their troubles, it asserts, he has the solid backing of public sentiment in this country. The Springfield Republican also feels that in such a world crisis as is now on hand, taxing all the resources of the administration to meet our own problems of neutrality, leaving Mexico to shift for herself may have the appearance of selfishness but it is in reality "a thoroly statesmanlike policy.' FRO Our Mexican Policy as "An Unrelieved Failure." ¡ROM start to finish, asserts the N. Y. Tribune, the Mexican policy has been "a grotesque interlude in the history of our foreign relations." There were sound reasons for intervention in Mexico, but these the President refused to accept. We could have intervened to protect our own nationals or to prevent a general relapse into anarchy; instead, we intervened "with the professed aim of compelling the 15 per cent. of the ins to share their property with the 85 per cent. of the outs"-referring in this to a speech by President Wilson in Philadelphia on July 4. The only authority for the occupation of Vera Cruz was that given by Congress when it empowered the President to employ the army and navy to obtain reparation from Huertal for indignities to the flag. The one thing he was empowered to get he has never gotten, and in the Niagara Falls A-B-C conference he abandoned the demand for a salute of the flag and promised not to ask any indemnification from Mexico. The Tribune says further: "The country sadly realizes that the Wilson policy in Mexico has been an unrelieved failure. It could not be anything but a failure, because it was based on mis IN REPLYING to these criticisms made by Mr. conceptions and unrealities. The slinking away from Roosevelt, the N. Y. Times holds that there is no evidence to produce even a reasonable belief that the recognition of Huerta would have prevented the atrocities or changed the results in Mexico. The assumption that he would have been able to restore order if we had recognized him is "without basis." It is probable that the struggle would have been just as bloody and revolting and even more prolonged. By taking Vera Cruz we did indeed shorten Huerta's career and thereby shortened the conflict. That affair, we are told, was "an expedition, not a war," but the Times does not elaborate the distinction. The big, dominating fact, as it looks at the matter, is that President Wilson did not get us into a war with Mexico. Everybody believes that he has made some mistakes, but men do not agree as to just what those mistakes have been. But the Vera Cruz was a fit termination-one entirely in harmony with its flabbiness and futility. The end became it." More striking because less subject to discount for political reasons are the utterances of the N. Y. World. The World was one of the first papers to hail the President's policy in regard to Mexico and South American republics in general as one worthy of Abraham Lincoln and marking a new era in our history. Step by step it has supported his policy, not grudgingly but enthusiastically. But with the evacuation of Vera Cruz it has changed its note. That was not an evacuation, it says, but an abandonment. We did not deliver the town to anybody; we simply marched out and sailed away. Why Did We Go to Vera Cruz Anyhow? main result of his policy it believes the American people ASSUMING that there ever was a sufficient reason approve. John Lind, who was sent by the President as a special representative to Mexico City, has at last expressed his views, and in one point, at least, they support the contention of the Times as to Huerta. In an article in the Bellman, of Minneapolis, he admits that nearly all the Americans in southern Mexico thought that Huerta should have been recognized so for our occupation of the Mexican seaport, how, the World asks, can its relinquishment now be explained? It adds: "The flag has not been saluted. There is no assurance of peace. Except for our naval forces we are in no position to fulfil our engagements with foreign powers. Set MEXICO'S BANDITS SURPRISE THE WORLD RECOGNITION Mr. Wilson instals the new President of Mexico. ting out to establish constitutional government in Mexico, we are leaving Mexico to its own resources at a time when its internal affairs are more chaotic than they were when we interfered with them. "Have we served the Mexicans? Have we served ourselves? Have we served mankind?" Another equally significant utterance from a Democratic paper that has heretofore given the President support comes from the Charleston News and Courier. A great many friends of the administration, it now says, were unable to feel anything but disgust for the flag incident at Tampico. Nevertheless it felt that the only thing to do in a matter of such importance was to follow the President, assuming that he had a definite policy in mind. "But," it remarks, "if our stay in Vera Cruz has accomplished anything of value, this is not easily apparent with the lights before us." The The Charleston paper does not wish to see the United States assume charge of Mexican affairs. There is nothing better to be done that it can see than to let Mexico "stew in its own juice" until the right man comes along. The American people are grateful to the President for having kept us out of war, even at the sacrifice of his consistency; but we have a responsibility toward Mexico which is not to be disposed of simply by avoiding hostilities, and it is high time to recognize the fact that a republican form of government for Mexico is an idle dream. What she must have is a benevolent despot, or else it will be necessary for us to intervene and restore order. But that, the News and Courier thinks, means the blotting out of Mexico's nationality. "A Predicament of Helplessness." [F DEMOCRATIC papers are talking in this strain, one can easily guess in what strain the Republican papers are talking. The San Francisco Chronicle, for instance, finds that our "diplomacy"-it puts the word in quotation-marks has been made the laughingstock of the world, and the President has been "a potent con 7 tributor to the anarchy which prevails in Mexico." The Boston Transcript says the administration has put itself into "a predicament of helplessness for protecting either American or European interests south of the Rio Grande," and at the same time has not by any means "got out of Mexico." The Philadelphia Evening Star is still more scornful. "If ever there was a monumental failure," it declares, "it is that of the Wilson policies in Mexico." They are worse-they are "an absurd and gigantic disaster," and the worst of it is that we are not at an end of the trouble. As we do not permit other nations to protect their own people on this continent, we remain under obligations to protect them ourselves. "We are either mice or men, as nations as well as individuals, and if we are men we have something to do." The Chicago Tribune has always sympathized with the President's purposes in refusing to recognize Huerta. It disagrees with Mr. Roosevelt in that. But it agrees with him in his conclusions. Mr. Wilson and Mr. Bryan, declaring they would not intervene, did intervene, not to protect Americans but to aid the Constitutionalists. Says the Chicago paper: "Exasperated friends of the President ask: What would you have done? The answer is another question: What heretofore have American governments always done? They have seen that American rights were respected. They have seen, where they assumed even a slight degree of responsibility, and we do assume it with regard to Mexico, that cruelty and inhumanity, waste and destruction, were not unrebuked and uncorrected." The Silver Lining in the Mexican Clouds. NOTES of optimism are not, however, wholly lacking in the discussion of the Mexican situation. John Lind, for instance, speaking in Chicago a few days ago, declared that the Mexicans are not turbulent by reason of their race but by reason of their wrongs, economic and social as well as political, and until their elementary rights are restored they are not going to be content and should not be. "I feel," said Mr. Lind, "that they are a people of great promise. They have suffered vicissitudes which we have escaped. I believe that they are emerging into the light of a new and better day." It is noted with satisfaction by some of the journals that in spite of all the trouble in Mexico, her import and export trade has been maintained on a high level and the ordinary affairs of the people have not been so very seriously interfered with. The condition of Mexico City when Zapata took possession of it has been a great surprise to many an editor. "Can any one," asks the Springfield Republican, "point to a more stunning surprise than the 'good ruler' in Mexico City since the bandit Zapata entered the capital?" For four years no one had read or heard a single good thing about Zapata. Yet when the worst happened and the city fell at last into his hands, we find that robbery and violence were promptly punished, money borrowed from bankers and business men was restored, the property taken from the tram-car company by Carranza was returned by Zapata, the Spaniards were treated with consideration, and his conduct, in short, according to the Brazilian minister, was eminently civilized. Says the Republican: "In view of these unexpected developments in the history of Mexican civilization, what can be done but be resigned and leave Mexico to its bandits?" Germany seems to have lost all of her foreign possessions with the exception of Milwaukee, St. Louis and Cincinnati.-Houston Post. All this war over whether we are to have our Kultur with a K!-N. Y. Evening Sun. Catskins are to be made into furs for the soldiers in Poland and Galicia. It seems that even the cat can't preserve its neutrality in this war.-Grand Rapids Press. Since all hands are denying responsibility for it, this war must be a self-starter.-Washington Herald. BRITISH ANXIETY OVER GERMAN INTRIGUE IN JOURNALISTS in touch with the foreign office in Berlin give space in German newspapers to hints that there has been too much eagerness respecting the United States. The neutrality of the Americans, however benevolent, must have a tendency to favor England, to follow the reasoning in the Rheinisch-Westphälische Zeitung, understood to be in close touch with German diplomacy always. After all, it says, Americans are in closer touch with the English than with any other European power. American literature, American. laws, American institutions and American ideas reflect in their essentials whatever is English. England, adds the Kölnische Zeitung, is the mother country of the Americans. The Germans will not feel irritated if the people of the United States show plainly which way their sympathies lie, nor will Germans doubt the good faith of American professions of neutrality. At the same time, the German government and people will note facts as they are. These make too manifest the truth that, as between Germany and Great Britain, the American people incline to the side of the latter. The influential Cologne daily says furthermore: "During this second quarter of the war, we shall concern ourselves rather less about the souls of neutrals. critical as the notorious Dutch pamphlet which professes friendship and which at the same time breathes fire and hatred. Expostulation is love's labor lost. The main thing is that our conscience is clear. Not only our good conscience but the simplest and most logical considerations speak for us. "Let neutrals remain neutrals. Let those who live far beyond the range of shots and view with cool egoism our fierce struggle for existence believe what they like." New Attitude of the German DIPLOMATISTS connected with the Wilhelmstrasse give no encouragement to efforts by certain influential German-Americans to influence opinion in the United States. This assertion, altho made in more than one German daily, is scouted by the English press. There exists at this moment a concerted effort among Germans in the United States to poison American opinion against the English, say the London Post, the London Times, the London Standard and their contemporaries. These efforts are encouraged by the Berlin government, we are told further. The agent of the German "intrigue," as the British dailies deem it, is, of course, Doctor Bernhard Dernburg. He becomes a sinister as well as an absurd figure in the accounts of him in our British contemporaries. A serious discus sion has arisen in London organs respecting the advis ability of organizing a campaign in this country against the Germans. They are trying to entrap President Wilson into some preposterous peace plan. The London Saturday Review notes that the English case is endorsed by the better American element-the Doctor Eliots-but the masses of the people may fall victims to the German intrigue. The latest stratagem is described in the London Times as peace talk. It professes to feel at ease regarding this peace talk: "The truth is that American views of right and wrong in international affairs, as in private life, are in the main the same as our own. They spring from the same principles, and are embodied in the same system of morals and of laws. It is not wonderful, therefore, that Americans distrust and abhor, as Professor Ladd writes, a theory and a form of government which are founded on the philosophy of Nietzsche and on the doctrine that might makes right. The two conceptions of life, the Anglo-Saxon and the Prussian militarist, are irreconcilable. The one must 'wholly and finally' destroy the other. If doubts still linger anywhere as to their antagonism, two letters which Professor Lasson, of Berlin, has addressed to a Dutch friend ought to dispel them. They are, perhaps, the crudest of the many crude expositions of Kultur which have 'staggered humanity.' The gist of them lies in a sentence. 'We are,' the Professor proclaims, 'morally and intellectually superior to all men. We are peerless. So, too, are our organizations and our institutions.' . . . The characteristics of the Germans are truthfulness, humanity, sweetness, conscience, and the Christian virtues, and they are the freest people on the earth because they know how to obey. And yet, the Professor mournfully confesses, they have no friends!" E INFLUENCE OF SEA-POWER ON THIS WAR What President Wilson Knows About William II. NGLISHMEN need not worry themselves on the subject of President Wilson's capacity to form a judgment between Germany and Great Britain, according to the London Post. President Wilson, it says, is not an unsophisticated being and he has kept himself fully informed on every phase of German activity in the United States. This is precisely the impression of the Paris Figaro. President Wilson, it explains, will not address himself to the allies in a plea for peace because he knows how useless such a proceeding would be. He is not ignorant of the fact that Germany alone wanted the war and precipitated it. He knows that William II. caused the breaking off of all negotiations by his two ultimatums to Petrograd and to Paris just when these negotiations were succeeding and an accord Anybody who can say "Pacificist in Przemysl" without getting the lockjaw can consider himself as having passed Professor Münsterberg's efficiency test.-Boston Transcript. WHE 9 between Russia and Austria was in sight. The feelings of the Figaro find expression through the medium of these personal remarks: "Alone, moreover, Germany, who feels that she is lost, seeks peace to-day. "Her adversaries, bound by an indissoluble pact, wish to hear no proposition and still less to make one. "There is no peace possible with a power that disregards the treaties it has signed and which treats them as scraps of paper except a peace that is imposed upon it. "One does not treat with a criminal. "One executes him! "William II. is not a sovereign! "He is a bandit chief! "He will be executed! "After that, Herr von Bethmann-Hollweg may rest assured, peace will be permanent." Mme. Rosika Schwimmer of the International Suffrage Alliance says Americans could stop the war in a week. That is the view the man took of the buzz-saw-at-first.-Chicago Herald. EFFECT OF THE SEA BATTLE ON THE NAVAL WHEN the German cruiser squadron commanded by Admiral Count von Spee was defeated off the Falkland Islands by a British squadron under ViceAdmiral Sir Frederick Doveton Sturdee, a fundamental change ensued in the naval aspect of the war. Italian naval experts, who have followed the destinies of the war at sea with the closest scrutiny, and whose inferences and conclusions are not revised by the censor, foresaw what happened. As the Rome Tribuna reminds us, the war at sea is prosecuted under no such fire of contradictions as bewilders the student of the war on land. When, for instance, the Vossische Zei Emperor William's land forces have been put by his loss of command of the sea, because to a layman the connection between command of the sea and success in a war on land is not obvious. Now that a dramatic encounter at sea has extinguished a German squadron, the public at large will revise its impression that the British navy is less efficient than it was. The moral effect in Germany will be offset by recent attacks upon the coast of England which London professes not to take seriously. Will This War Be Decided by Sea-Power? tung (Berlin) announces a great German victory in COMMAND of the sea in every quarter of the world Poland, the London Post of that very day will herald a magnificent triumph for Russia on the same field. Each daily will explain the story of the other by calling it a wild invention. The outcome of a great battle at sea is known more certainly. Berlin official versions correspond, except in points of minor detail, with London official accounts. Naval experts can anticipate events more intelligently, and the Italians, to whom the factor of sea-power is so vital, have reached the conclusion that Germany must feel on land the consequences of what she has endured on the water. UPON soning of the Giornale d'Italia, the main effect of the British triumph off the Falkland Islands will be moral. There is little doubt, it thinks, that recent events had dimmed the glories of the mistress of the seas. The laity, unable to grasp the significance of technical details, had been told that the submarine is too subtle a foe for the battleship. This delusion, as our contemporary calls it, seemed ineradicable when the Germans put a hole in each of three British cruisers at once. The perfect ease and simplicity with which German commerce was swept from the seas at a stroke, at the beginning of the war, owing to the superiority of the British fleet, prevented a realization of the unprecedented magnitude of such an achievement. Only a trained expert can comprehend the plight into which passes now to Great Britain, and the effect upon Germany is set forth unsparingly by the Italian experts. THE SPUR -Harding in Brooklyn Eagle There can be no serious interference henceforth with the passage of troops from oversea dominions, to the mother country. This fact alone renders abortive such enterprizes as the rising in South Africa and the effort to detach Egypt. It insures the permanent extinction of the German colonial empire. German victories on land become ineffective, seeing that there can be no renewal of the supplies of copper, oil and food except through lucky and occasional accident. Britain, too, enforces her view of such subjects as contraband and neutrality. Prize law is made in her courts. The precedents she recognizes alone have validity. Thus, to our Italian contemporaries, are vindicated the propositions of the late Admiral Mahan, who really discovered the influence of sea-power upon history. How important is such power is seen in the outcome of the American Civil war, which was determined by the blockade of southern ports by the north. Again, as the Italians remind us, the United States would not have achieved its independence but for the sea-power contributed by the squadrons of King Louis. The French fleet kept the English fleet out of the Chesapeake and the surrender at Yorktown became inevitable. In Italian expert opinion, apparently, the destiny of this war has already been decided and the decision has taken place at sea. German raids on the English coast are not very important to these observers. British Anxiety Over the BRITISH naval experts have not permitted their sat isfaction at the result of the naval battle in southern waters to banish from their minds the formidable German battleship squadron locked up out of Sir John Jellicoe's reach. That mighty fleet has not yet struck a blow to secure the free importation of supplies into Germany, we are reminded by the expert of the Manchester Guardian. It may do so, he adds, when the German army begins to feel severely the lack of such necessary materials as petroleum, rubber, nitrates and copper. That time has possibly come, altho our contemporary observes that the Berlin government has taken steps to restrict the use of rubber and oil by private individuals. "A few months hence the economic pressure will have become urgent." One consideration may expedite matters. The great general army staff in Berlin can not endure the deadlock in the western theater of the war. The efforts of the Germans to secure a result of some kind have not proved successful. What, however, if the deadlock persists until, say, next April or even May? The great army of Lord Kitchener-a million men-is to make its first appearance on a continental battlefield. The event an event turning upon naval supremacy-may definitely turn the military scale against the fatherland. Berlin must certainly feel the absolute necessity of forestalling the arrival of a million fresh British soldiers in France and Belgium. The fleet of Dreadnoughts under command. of that German naval hero, Admiral Ingenohl, now lurking behind the Kiel Canal, may dash forth, if only to take desperate chances. A comparison of this fleet with that of England was instituted by the Berliner Tageblatt with results unflattering to German hopes. Germany's high-sea fleet, it said, comprising thirteen Dreadnoughts, four fast battle cruisers, many older battleships, armored and protected cruisers, must break -From a Berlin Picture Post-Card through the iron ring the British fleet has forged. AS IT WAS TO HAVE BEEN |