chastisement, but certain sooner or later to languish in the hell of payment and go down into utter ruin." This sounds like fairly lurid language for a conservative paper; but it is no more lurid than that of many other conservative papers. Here is a passage to match it from the N. Y. Evening Post: "It really seemed impossible that the German rulers had left for themselves a climax in deeds fitted to shock the civilized world, and to bring upon them the abhorrence of all humane people; but they had, and they have now attained it. Solemn treaties made scraps of paper; Belgium trampled into bloody mire; Louvain followed by Rheims; asphyxiating gases-it seemed hard to make that atrocious record blacker, but it has been done. As if the ruthless militarists now in control of the German Government were desirous of depriving their country at one stroke, of every remaining shred of sympathy in neutral lands, they devised this crime of slaughtering the innocents so as to outstrip in hideousness all that had gone before, or that it entered into the imagination of man to conceive." "In the history of wars," says the N. Y. Times, "there is no single deed comparable in its inhumanity and its horror" with the destruction of the Lusitania. "Nothing that the bloody buccaneers did in the days of pure and unconcealed piracy," says the Boston Traveler, "surpassed it in the fiendishness of the spirit that inspired it and the means that carried the terrible plans into direful completion." A The Word "War" Glares Out LARGE section of the American press, complains Herman Ridder in his paper, the N. Y. StaatsZeitung, is "clamoring for war." We do not find that to be the case; but it is true that a large number of American journals have been discussing war as a possibility, or even a probability if the President's demands are not met by Germany. There is no shying at the word war. It glares out from headlines and editorial titles in papers all over the land. "No graver question of national policy," says the Charleston News and Courier, "has arisen since the United States became a nation." It deprecates any rushing ahead with fury, but it can see no practicable way for us to remain at peace other than by "acquiescing in Germany's assumed right to close a large portion of the seas to our ships and our people." George W. Wickersham, ex-Attorney General, thinks Congress should be called in session at once, Count Bernstorff sent home, Gerard summoned back from Germany, one hundred submarines provided for and a conference of neutrals called to "plan a contest of Civilization against Germany and give the Kaiser's case a trial on its merits." He adds: “Let America get ready to show that this is a real nation and not a mere dwelling-place for one hundred millions of people, a rich people, ready spoils, helpless in the face of insults." Another eminent lawyer, John R. Dos Passos, sees no defense in international law for Germany's course and says: "Every hand and voice must now be uplifted against her. Her acts are hostis humani generis, they are against the teachings of Christianity, civilization, humanity, and while we must be the principal complainants, every other neutral nation, every individual, is called to protest against this massacre. It is pure mockery of principles and terms to seek to sustain it by law or reason of any kind." Mr. Roosevelt was heard calling for immediate and vigorous action as soon as the news of the large loss of life came. He denounced Germany's course as one of pure piracy and wholesale murder, and declared that we shall merit measureless scorn and contempt "if we heed the voices of those feeble folk who bleat to high Heaven that there is peace when there is no peace." UPON Is Germany Trying to Force Us Into the War? PON the threshold of this the most momentous moral crisis since the crucifixion of Christ”— such are the opening words of an editorial by Henry Watterson in the Louisville Courier-Journal. He sees in the destruction of the Lusitania not a mere incident of war but "a parting of the ways upon the broad Highway of Life, one of the crossways leading to Heaven, the other to Hell." He sees in Germany's course a "species of paranoia" which has developed into "an emotional insanity, losing all distinction of moral values, of national character and of international relations and obligations." We are not interested, he goes on to say, in the physical triumph of any of the forces engaged on the other side; but we are very much concerned for the future of the world. He asks: "Has not the time come not only to put an end to all this but to exclude the German Empire from recognition by the family of nations?" Nowhere do we find more emphatic words than in New York City, where the mere mention of war is usually strongly deprecated. "The patience of the United States," says the Wall Street Journal, “is exhausted. The United States can no longer look upon the war area in Europe as a field for neutrality. The system of German 'kultur,' which means material expansion by organized warfare under a military autocracy, has thrown down the gauntlet not only to the democracy of France and of the British Empire but to the democracy of the world. There is, there can be, but one answer. Democracy must take up the challenge." The same paper speaks of the possibility that Germany is trying to provoke war with this country, in the belief that while our ships and troops could make little difference in the result, the Allies would be hampered by the necessity under which war would place us to fortify our own resources in munitions of war, instead of sending munitions abroad. The same thought is given utterance in other papers. "If Germany has become our enemy," says the N. Y. Times, "if she has resolved to make war on us, as an unworthy newspaper printed here in the German language rather too plainly intimates, then we cannot too soon be advised of her purposes." IN German-Americans in the Event of War. N THIS situation the utterances of the Frankfurter Zeitung have excited comment. "The chief reason,' it thinks, "why a war would be unthinkable, is the presence of an enormous German element in the United States. What could be done, for instance, with the 3,000,000 German-speaking immigrants? And what with their 9,000,000 children? And their grandchildren who in many cases still think along German lines? Even if only some of these millions would have to be brought into concentration camps, the American Army would not be enough to watch over them." This question of the attitude of the German-Americans in the ONE FLAG FOR ALL AMERICANS case of a war with Germany has elicited quick assurances from their leaders. Henry Kersting, president of the German-American Alliance of St. Louis, says: "The manner in which the so-called German-American citizens receive the President's message shows that as a matter of fact there is no such thing as a GermanAmerican or any other hyphenated American." Herman Ridder, of the N. Y. Staats-Zeitung, has this to say of the position of the German-Americans: "Nor is this a time to burden millions of the American people with unjust and unnecessary anguish of mind. The German-Americans must suffer in any conflict between the United States and Germany pains of which their fellow citizens can never know anything. It is rather a time for showing them the greatest degree of consideration. They have fought to uphold the flag in the past and they will do so against any enemy whatsoever. They deserve the fruits of past loyalty until they have forfeited the right to claim them. There has never been but one flag under which the German-American has fought. There never can be but one flag under which he will ever fight. And that flag is the Stars and Stripes." The President's Note to Germany is held by Mr. Ridder to be diplomatically correct and it must, he thinks, "compel the support of the entire American people." Rudolf Bernard, president of the Deutscher Kriegerbund von Nord-Amerika, with a membership of 20,000 sons of German war veterans, commends the Note as "a masterpiece of construction and framed in the friendliest expression," and he adds: "In the event that war should be declared between the United States and Germany, a thing which I do not look for, we will find German-Americans to a man enlisting under the Stars and Stripes and fighting against the Fatherland." The German Catholic Union of Baltimore, with a membership of 8,000, sends a resolution to the President saying: "While proud of our German ancestry, we know only one flag, the flag of our country, and we 385 tender to you, the standard bearer, our undivided loyalty." Similar expression from many other GermanAmerican sources indicate that if Berlin is counting on America's impotence as a result of the divided loyalty of German-Americans, she is making another mistake similar to those she has already made as to the feelings. of the Belgian people, the Italians, and the Boers of South Africa. Our Unpreparedness for War. WOBODY denies that we are unprepared to fight Germany effectively if it comes to fighting. The issues forced upon us by the Lusitania affair have stirred the advocates of military and naval increase to renewed activity. activity. The Army and Navy Journal takes direct issue with President Wilson's idea that "there is such a thing as being so right that a nation does not need to convince others by force that it is right." Where in all history does Mr. Wilson, a student of history, find any illustration of the truth of this statement? asks the Journal. The Navy League, of which General Horace Porter is president, calls for an immediate extra session of Congress and the authorization of a bond issue of $500,000,000 to provide additional naval and military strength. Congress, thus called, should consider the single question of national defense, in the opinion of the Washington Post. The National Security League, sponsored by Joseph H. Choate, ex-Ambassador to Great Britain, Henry L. Stimson, ex-Secretary of War, exGovernor Alton B. Parker of New York, and others, makes an appeal in more general terms. In view of "our deplorable condition of unpreparedness"-with only 30,000 mobile troops, short of officers and equipment; an inferior National Guard; inadequate coast defenses; a navy "neither adequate nor prepared for war"-the League asks support for a definite military policy, an effective mobile army and organized army and navy reserves. Statements regarding naval unpreparedness made by the National Security League Secretary Daniels characterizes as a libel of the navy, which, according to Admiral Dewey, "was never in a better or more efficient condition." But it should be stronger. We are entering upon an era of progress such as the navy has never known before, Secretary Daniels continues, "an era marked by the lifting of our navy out of politics and by the subordination of all things afloat or ashore to the efficiency of the fleet, in order that by our very strength we may be able to demand the right to live at peace with all the world." And President Wilson, reviewing the Atlantic Fleet at New York, sees in our navy "no threat lifted against any man, against any nation, against any interest, but just a great, solemn evidence that the force of America is the force of moral principle, that there is not anything else that she loves and that there is not anything else for which she will contend." BRAVE WORK! Onward Christian submarines?-Baltimore American. Times come when a man would rather be most anything than President. Washington Post. German torpedoes are of two types-those discharged with regret and those discharged without regret.-N. Y. Evening Post. As a collector of political skeletons the Colonel has proved to be a faunal naturalist of first rank.-Philadelphia Ledger. One of the leading Japanese statesmen says that Japan will take over the Philippines if we'll pay them a billion dollars. And yet some people persist in saying that the Japs are not inclined to do the right thing by us.-Southern Lumberman. MENACE TO THE UNITED STATES IN JAPAN'S AMERICAN newspapers are not hastening to con gratulate Japan on her bloodless victory for an Asiatic Monroe Doctrine in China. Whatever the final terms of agreement may prove to be by which war with China was averted last month, the tendency in America to distrust Japan's word regarding her purposes is still apparent tho it is less marked than it was a few weeks ago. At one stage during the month's negotiations the N. Y. World, for instance, declared that "Japan asks more of China than Austria asked of Serbia last July." The World now admits that "there has been some misunderstanding of the deadlock between China and Japan, and uncertainty has tended to magnify difficulties." Japan's Foreign Office, in a statement made public by the Embassy at Washington, reproaches the Chinese government "for having made public the Japanese proposals in various exaggerated forms and having endeavored to stir up ill feeling among the powers against Japan, and for attempting to shake the confidence placed in Japan by her allies." It must be admitted that there is considerable difference between two versions of a demand, as cabled to this country from Peking, the earlier of which reads: "The central government of China shall employ influential Japanese subjects as advisers for conducting administrative financial and military affairs"; and the later, which reads: "Before choosing any foreign political, military or financial advisers, China must consult Japan." But whether it be vassalage or merely advice which China must accept at the hands of militant Japan, most of our papers see her pitiably helpless and suspect the aggressor of unscrupulous ambition. C A Kind of Monroe Doctrine HINA seems to have yielded to a modified ultimatum by which it is understood that Japan secures even less than China was willing to concede at one time during the negotiations. Japan waives present consideration of the group of demands which China claimed would impair her sovereignty. Let us, therefore, be on our guard, urges the N. Y. Evening Post ironically, against Oriental duplicity and guile. "A nation that presents an ultimatum to a much weaker nation in which it concedes half its case, in which it restores to the weaker nation territory lost to a third Power, in which it guarantees to the weaker nation the integrity of its coasts and harbors-such a nation embodies the slimy methods of the 'yellow peril,' at its worst, to a world so recently instructed in the manfully direct methods of white civilization." But this disposition to give Japan the benefit of the doubt concerning her professions of insuring honorable peace in the far East is not yet widespread. In April Premier Okuma cabled a message to the American people insisting that no treaty violations were proposed, that "Japan has no ulterior motive, no desire to secure more territory, no thought of depriving China or any other peoples of anything that they now possess." The Japanese Embassy statement, already quoted, explains in detail how even Japan's rights in Kiao-chau, conquered from Germany, are to be subject to the terms of peace that shall be agreed upon by the Powers when war ends. That Japan should institute a kind of Monroe Doctrine for Asiatics finds here and there a certain amount of American approval.. So. "Japan has the same rights in Asia that we have in America under the Monroe Doctrine-that is, the right to maintain Asia for the Asiatics as we do America for the Americans. Not only has Japan this right to assume the political primacy of the Far East, but it is her duty to do Otherwise China may be dismembered and Japan may be compelled to wage further wars against encroaching rivals. When China becomes Japan's equal in power, as she surely will in a very few years if left to herself, then she can share with Japan the responsibility of maintaining Asia against the White Peril." What Japan Is Ready to JF, THE FACE OF YUAN SHI KAI SAVED AGAIN on, believing that a series of peace and arbitration treaties will protect us from the fury of an enraged Nippon when the hour comes for her to strike." On the other hand, Lindsay Russell, president of the Japan Society of America, while he admitted that Japan would probably fight for her own Monroe Doctrine, says that she "has never violated a treaty and that she values above all things her honorable position in the family of nations." Mr. Russell believes that we can rely on Japan's giving equal opportunity of trade and maintaining the "open door." He writes in the N. Y. Sun: "There has been but one political desire in China cherished by the Japanese government, and that is to help China grow strong, remain independent and continue to develop her resources in peace and prosperity. "Through this policy, and this alone, can Japan expect to reap any permanent or increased profit. Whatever concessions she may now or at any future time obtain from China, seeming thus to interfere with the independence of that country, will merely be to safeguard China's integrity against the aggression of other nations or to prevent the establishment of military or naval bases close to her own shore. For this latter cause she would probably fight, even as the United States would uphold the Monroe Doctrine against the establishment by any other country of a naval base in Vera Cruz or souther. California." PRESID The "Open Door" for Whom? RESIDENT WILSON'S abandonment of "dollar diplomacy" was definitely applied to China in 1913, reversing the policy of Secretary Knox. He considered the proposed six-power loan plan of development and control obnoxious to the principles of our government. An "open door" policy, therefore, does not mean the same thing to the present administration and to those seeking concessions in China on the former basis. Similar confusion obtains regarding what Japan really means by an "open door." A Chinese situation that excites New York and leaves Peking tranquil affords food for reflection to the N. Y. Journal of Commerce. It says: ... "Public opinion has traveled far since American statesmen, like Secretary Sherman and Representative Dingley, were asking, What have we to do with the dismemberment of China? and were complacently assuring the business. community that they would do more trade with a divided China than with a united one. In any case, it is difficult to see how, in presence of a China which is slowly but surely crystallizing as never before into one united and progressive nation, Japan or any other power can hope to impose more than a semblance of her will on three or four hundred millions of people. Having regard to the steadily increasing ability of China to stand alone, it is difficult to see any great cause for alarm in the effort of Japan to become the adviser and director of the policy of the Republic." The Nashville Tennessean thinks that the outcome of the Far Eastern diplomatic contest may be immensely more significant than that of the European war: "If China awakes and goes into the morning of her new day under Japanese guidance, the East will have become capable of coping with the West. The result would probably be an antagonism between Caucasian and Mongolian that would 'uproar the universal peace' through a long period of time, perhaps for centuries. It might mean the Mongolian race would dominate the world, as the Caucasian race has so long done. Conceivably, there might be a realization of Macaulay's nightmare of a single naked fisherman on a ruined pillar of London Bridge." 387 No Adventure in World Politics. tions of the past few weeks, as interpreted in Berlin, is the practical reduction of Peking to dependence upon Tokyo. Premier Okuma is even accused of having purposely inserted in the ultimatum sent by his foreign minister certain preposterous demands for the mere sake of seeming to save China's face when he withdrew them. That restoration of Kiao-chau to China of which so much was made lately will be a restoration, we are asked to believe, in the Tokyo sense of the expression. A change of ministry in Japan may occur in the very near future, but that will not help Yuan Shi Kai in the least. Japan is firmly determined to take advantage of the present situation in Europe. She believes the great war will continue for at least two years more. Premier Okuma has been assuring the Americans that China's integrity remains unaffected. There will be no Japanese monopoly of anything, despite interested insinuations to the contrary. Such talk is nonsense. Thus runs the stream of German comment, which interprets the month's negotiations as a blow to America. Why China is Helpless in the YUAN SHI KAI must not be accused of lacking energy in coping with the situation prepared for him by Premier Okuma. For the past few months, as the Berlin papers assert, the soil of the republic has felt the tread of increasing brigades of Japanese troops. In one or two of the provinces, agents of the Tokyo gov ernment give themselves the airs and assume the authority of official functionaries. There have been outbursts in the vernacular press on this subject. The army at the disposal of Yuan Shi Kai is unable to cope with the forces of the foe either in the matter of numbers or of training and equipment. The Chinese army has, to be sure, made progress, especially within the past few years. It is provided with modern rifles and machine guns. It has been trained by competent Europeans and Japanese officers. To-day it numbers some 400,000 men; but their distribution is so wide, in view of the necessity of holding down certain regions, and the artillery is so antiquated except in the capital garrisons, that Yuan could put barely 150,000 men in his firing line. The ammunition has run short. As for the navy, it is beneath contempt. Tokyo can, it is said on quarters are in boats on the waterways. The leaders are too shrewd as a rule to risk capture. They organize and pillage at will. A system of brigandage spreads by degrees over the whole land. On the other hand, as the London News reminds us, China has suffered severe financial losses through the European war. Trade has been dislocated. The customs revenue dropped heavily. Exports, notably silk, have declined. Yuan has, in spite of a demoralized finance, met his financial obligations. Nor has he ceased to wrestle with the opium problem, altho the disorganization of Europe has facilitated the revival of that drug as a narcotic and a comfort in many provinces. How American Distrust of Japan is Promoted. the same authority, land 600,000 perfectly equipped PARIS papers take pains to trace to their source many troops in China whenever she pleases. Her army is on a war footing. The navy has been mobilized for weeks. Even the transports for the troops are waiting. These are the facts which explain the obscurity of the crisis in the far East, which account to the Berlin press for the reluctance of official London, official Paris and official Washington to cite chapter and verse, to dot i's, to depart from that becoming reticence which, concludes the Berlin daily, is always in the public interest when blunders are being made or defeats have to be endured. China a Prey to Robber Bands. of the month's rumors respecting tension between Tokyo and Washington, and they usually find German diplomacy to blame. The world has been misled, says the Temps, into supposing that Washington has withheld all moral support from Peking and has been urging Yuan Shi Kai to yield to Tokyo. Nothing of the sort! The American representative in China has confidential instructions for his ultimate guidance, but not in that sense. Ever since the arrival of Emperor William's new minister in Peking, Herr von Hientz, the ear of the American public has been filled with rumors and alarms from Peking. Herr von Hientz is described in our French contemporary as an expert on the whole subject of China, where he has spent many active years, cul CHINA has been asked to do little more than give tivating opulent mandarins, dining with chiefs of revo formal sanction to a state of things which in fact exists, as influential Tokyo dailies interpret the new situation. Japanese publicists resent the tone of the lectures read to them in Europe, and in the Rikugo Kasshi we are reminded that when so disgraceful a drama as that unfolding itself in Europe is enacted in the world, Japanese faith in western civilization sustains a severe shock. Japan will act in China as a trustee for the interests of humanity, to give the gist of an article in the Kokumin Shimbun, which, like its contemporaries generally, has pessimistic notions regarding the capacity of the Peking administration to protect property and life. Brigands and robber bands flourish. This assertion finds corroboration in The North China Herald, according to which the vicinity of Shanghai itself is ravaged now and then. There are gangs whose head Japan is willing to maintain a Chinese "open door" if she is allowed to keep the chain on.-Wall Street Journal. lutionary movements and hobnobbing with spies and even hired assassins. He proved too genial in such mixed company and had to be recalled by the Wilhelmstrasse as the result of a compromizing episode or two. The outbreak of the war found him in Mexico, where he had been exploiting his peculiar talents for the exacerbation of international feelings. Berlin needed him elsewhere and he was summoned to Berlin, eluding the English, who tried to intercept him, eluding the French, who had been warned how dangerous he is. Herr von Hientz has a propensity to pass himself off upon the innocent as an Englishman, for he can speak the language better than King George can. In Berlin William II. embraced him and hurried him to Peking. The Japanese were told of his coming, but he eluded them, too. Even the stanchest advocate of prohibition wouldn't object if all the rulers would take a sociable drink and make up.-Washington Post. GERMANY'S DETERMINATION TO DEFY THE WORLD THE degree of reliance that can be placed upon last month's report that Emperor William made a hasty visit to Vienna and Budapest for the purpose of a conference with his allies remains a theme of conjecture. Nor is it easy to find a justification for English newspaper assertions that Emperor William and his great military magnates feel that their fortunes are at a turning point, that desperate steps must be taken to check signs of disaffection in the people they rule. Nothing in the comments of the German press justifies these insinuations, altho it is true that the tone of that press alters from day to day with such swiftness as to make IN ARMS Nevertheless it a summary of its verdict hazardous. seems true that the great dailies of the fatherland are confident still. They may talk less of the German offensive, of domination and conquest, but, in the words of the Kölnische Zeitung, "Germany can say to herself that the world and even her enemies are admitting that she possesses resources that were never dreamed of, and that she can neither be starved out nor in any way seriously injured." There exists, in the opinion of the Kreuz-Zeitung, a combination of the world to keep Germany down, to hem her in, to balk her progress and her aspiration towards legitimate expansion through |