Our Responsibility for Mex that he could borrow money enough to put down the ican Atrocities.

insurrection; but when he asked whether any peace THE main part of Mr. Roosevelt's

indictment

, however, is along the line of our partial and guilty

which Huerta could bring would be a lasting peace, responsibility for “some of the worst acts ever com

"the answer was invariably, 'No!” The N. Y. Evening mitted even in the civil wars of Mexico.” By permit- handled there would have been small satisfaction in the

Post feels that however the Mexican situation had been ting the transmission of arms over the border, the President “not only actively aided the insurrection but

result; but it thinks that the President has “come as undoubtedly furnished it with the means essential to its

near as possible to making the best of a bad job." In triumph," at the same time preventing Huerta from

his determination to let the Mexicans fight their own organizing an effective resistance. By interfering in

way out of their troubles, it asserts, he has the solid

The behalf of one faction, we “thereby made ourselves backing of public sentiment in this country. responsible for the deeds of that faction," and these

Springfield Republican also feels that in such a world deeds are recalled by the ex-President in some detail.

crisis as is now on hand, taxing all the resources of He presents a translation of a manifesto issued by

the administration to meet our own problems of neuCarranza and Villa, which deals with the "conditions trality, leaving Mexico to shift for herself may have under which the Roman worship will have to be prac

the appearance of selfishness but it is in reality "a thoroticed.” This decree forbids, among other things, "any

ly statesmanlike policy." sermons which will encourage fanaticism," any fasts or similar practices, the payment of any money for

Our Mexican Policy as “An

Unrelieved Failure." christenings or marriages, the celebration of masses

FROM

ROM start to finish, asserts the N. Y. Tribune, the for the dead, confession to priests, and the assumption Mexican policy has been "a grotesque interlude by a priest of any garb that will indicate his profession. in the history of our foreign relations.” There were He also presents evidence given to him by priests, sound reasons for intervention in Mexico, but these bishops and others of atrocious assaults upon nuns, of the President refused to accept. We could have interthe profanation of sacred vessels and churches, the tor vened to protect our own nationals or to prevent a turing of priests, destruction of educational institutions, general relapse into anarchy; instead, we intervened and confiscation of church property. He writes: "with the professed aim of compelling the 15 per cent.

of the ins to share their property with the 85 per cent. "I have been given and shown letters from refugees in

of the outs"-referring in this to a speech by President Galve on, in Corpus Christi, in San Antonio and Havana.

Wilson in Philadelphia on July 4. The only authority These refugees include seven archbishops, six bishops, some hundreds of priests, and at least three hundred nuns.

for the occupation of Vera Cruz was that given by Most of these bishops and priests had been put in jail or

Congress when it empowered the President to employ in the penitentiary or otherwise confined and maltreated.

the army and navy to obtain reparation from Huerta Two-thirds of the institutions of higher learning in Mexico

for indignities to the flag. The one thing he was emhave been confiscated and more or less completely de- powered to get he has never gotten, and in the Niagara stroyed, and a large part of the ordinary educational insti Falls A-B-C conference he abandoned the demand for tutions have been treated in similar fashion. Many of the a salute of the flag and promised not to ask any in· affidavits before me recite tortures so dreadful that I am demnification from Mexico. The Tribune says further: unwilling to put them in print.”

“The country sadly realizes that the Wilson policy in

Nexico has been an unrelieved failure. It could not
The Big, Dominating Fact in
Our Mexican Policy.

be anything but a failure, because it was based on misIN N REPLYING to these criticisms made by Mr. conceptions and unrealities. The slinking away from

Roosevelt, the N. Y. Times holds that there is no Vera Cruz was a fit termination-one entirely in harevidence to produce even a reasonable belief that the mony with its flabbiness and futility. The end became recognition of Huerta would have prevented the atroci it.” More striking because less subject to discount for ties or changed the results in Mexico. The assumption political reasons are the utterances of the N. Y. World. that he would have been able to restore order if we The World was one of the first papers to hail the had recognized him is "without basis.” It is probable President's policy in regard to Mexico and South that the struggle would have been just as bloody and American republics in general as one worthy of Abrarevolting and even more prolonged. By taking Vera ham Lincoln and marking a new era in our history. Cruz we did indeed shorten Huerta's career and there- Step by step it has supported his policy, not grudgingly by shortened the conflict. That affair, we are told, was

but enthusiastically. But with the evacuation of Vera "an expedition, not a war," but the Times does not Cruz it has changed its note. That was not an evacuaelaborate the distinction. The big, dominating fact, tion, it says, but an abandonment. We did not deliver as it looks at the matter, is that President Wilson did the town to anybody; we simply marched out and sailed not get us into a war with Mexico. Everybody believes away that he has made some mistakes, but men do not agree as to just what those mistakes have been. But the

Why Did We Go to Vera

Cruz Anyhow?
American people
the President as

the Mexican seaport, how a special representative to Mexico City, has at last

the IVorld asks, can its relinquishment now be exexpressed his views, and in one point, at least, they plained? It adds: support the contention of the Times as to Huerta. In an article in the Bellman, of Minneapolis, he admits “The flag has not been saluted. There is no assurance that nearly all the Americans in southern Mexico

of peace. Except for our naval forces we are in no posithought that Huerta should have been recognized so tion to fulfil our engagements with foreign powers. Set

7

MEXICO'S BANDITS SURPRISE THE WORLD

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 RECOGNITION Mr. Wilson instals the new President of Mexico.

you have done? The answer is another question: What -Weed in N. Y. Tribune

heretofore have American governments always done? They

have seen that American rights were respected. They ting out to establish constitutional government in Mexico, have seen, where they assumed even a slight degree of we are leaving Mexico to its own resources at a time when responsibility, and we do assume it with regard to Mexico, its internal affairs are more chaotic than they were when that cruelty and inhumanity, waste and destruction, were we interfered with them.

not unrebuked and uncorrected.” “Have we served the Mexicans? Have we served ourselves? Have we served mankind?".

The Silver Lining in the

Mexican Clouds. Another equally significant utterance from a Demo- NOTES of optimism are not, however, wholly lackcratic paper that has heretofore given the President

ing in the discussion of the Mexican situation. support comes from the Charleston News and Courier. John Lind, for instance, speaking in Chicago a few A great many friends of the administration, it now days ago, declared that the Mexicans are not turbulent says, were unable to feel anything but disgust for the by reason of their race but by reason of their wrongs, flag incident at Tampico. Nevertheless it felt that the economic and social as well as political, and until their only thing to do in a matter of such importance was

elementary rights are restored they are not going to to follow the President, assuming that he had a definite be content and should not be. “I feel,” said Mr. Lind, policy in mind. “But." it remarks, "if our stay in

"that they are a people of great promise. They have Vera Cruz has accomplished anything of value, this is suffered vicissitudes which we have escaped. I believe not easily apparent with the lights before us." The that they are emerging into the light of a new and better Charleston paper does not wish to see the United States day.” It is noted with satisfaction by some of the assume charge of Mexican affairs. There is nothing journals that in spite of all the trouble in Mexico, her better to be done that it can see than to let Mexico import and export trade has been maintained on a high "stew in its own juice” until the right man comes along.

level and the ordinary affairs of the people have not The American people are grateful to the President for been so very seriously interfered with. The condition having kept us out of war, even at the sacrifice of his of Mexico City when Zapata took possession of it has consistency; but we have a responsibility toward Mex

been a great surprise to many an editor. “Can any ico which is not to be disposed of simply by avoiding one,” asks the Springfield Republican, "point to a more hostilities, and it is high time to recognize the fact that stunning surprise than the 'good ruler' in Mexico City a republican form of government for Mexico is an since the bandit Zapata entered the capital?” For four idle dream. What she must have is a benevolent years no one had read or heard a single good thing despot, or else it will be necessary for us to intervene about Zapata. Yet when the worst happened and the and restore order. But that, the News and Courier city fell at last into his hands, we find that robbery thinks, means the blotting out of Mexico's nationality. 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 “A Predicament of Helplessness."

returned by Zapata, the Spaniards were treated with IF DEMOCRATIC papers are talking in this strain, consideration, and his conduct, in short, according to

one can easily guess in what strain the Republican the Brazilian minister, was eminently civilized. Says papers are talking. The San Francisco Chronicle, for the Republican: “In view of these unexpected developinstance, finds that our “diplomacy”—it puts the word ments in the history of Mexican civilization, what can in quotation-marks—has been made the laughingstock be done but be resigned and leave Mexico to its banof the world, and the President has been "a potent con dits ?"

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.

Jo

in their essentials whatever is English. England, adds DIPLOMATISTS connected with the Wilhelm

BRITISH ANXIETY OVER GERMAN INTRIGUE IN

THE UNITED STATES

critical as the notorious Dutch pamphlet which professes Berlin give space in German newspapers to hints friendship and which at the same time breathes fire and that there has been too much eagerness respecting the

hatred. Expostulation is love's labor lost. The main thing United States. The neutrality of the Americans, how

is that our conscience is clear. Not only our good conever benevolent, must have a tendency to favor Eng

science but the simplest and niost logical considerations

speak for us. land, to follow the reasoning in the Rheinisch-IV est

“Let neutrals remain neutrals. Let those who live far phälische Zeitung, understood to be in close touch with

beyond the range of shots and view with cool egoism our German diplomacy always. After all, it says, Ameri

fierce struggle for existence believe what they like.” cans are in closer touch with the English than with any other European power. American literature, American

New Attitude of the German laws, American institutions and American ideas reflect

Foreign Office.

with the Wilhelmthe Kölnische Zeitung, is the mother country of the

strasse give no encouragement to efforts by cerAmericans. The Germans will not feel irritated if the

tain influential German-Americans to influence opinion people of the United States show plainly which way

in the United States. This assertion, altho made in their sympathies lie, nor will Germans doubt the good

more than one German daily, is scouted by the English faith of American professions of neutrality. At the

press. There exists at this moment a concerted effort same time, the German government and people will

among Germans in the United States to poison Amernote facts as they are. These make too manifest the

ican opinion against the English, say the London Post, truth that, as between Germany and Great Britain, the

the London Times, the London Standard and their conAmerican people incline to the side of the latter. The temporaries. These efforts are encouraged by the Berinfluential Cologne daily says furthermore:

lin government, we are told further. The agent of the

German "intrigue," as the British dailies deem it, is, “During this second quarter of the war, we shall concern

of course, Doctor Bernhard Dernburg. He becomes a ourselves rather less about the souls of neutrals. . . “Let us cease to bombard foreign lands with balls of

sinister as well as an absurd figure in the accounts of paper. We have better things to do. Whoever is still

him in our British contemporaries. A serious discus. ignorant as to where the right is to be sought and where

sion has arisen in London organs respecting the advis. the wrong lies does not wish to know. Many neutrals will ability of organizing a campaign in this country against not allow themselves to be convinced. They are as hypo 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. 'lle 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. SIMPLE SAMUEL

And yet, the Professor mournfully confesses, they have no He'll never get past “B is for Belgium.” -- Rogers in N Y. Herald

friends !"

HERR PROFESSOR

FOR

IS

ULTURE

EXCUSE FOR ALL

IS FOR

URIME

ELGIUM

ALL DELUGED IN

B

SÀN INFLUENCE OF SEA-POIV'ER ON THIS WAR

9 What President Wilson Knows between Russia and Austria was in sight. The feelings About William II.

of the Figaro find expression through the medium of
subject of President Wilson's capacity to form a

these personal remarks:
judgment between Germany and Great Britain, accord “Alone, moreover, Germany, who feels that she is lost,
ing to the London Post. President Wilson, it says, is seeks peace to-day.
not an unsophisticated being and he has kept himself "Her adversaries, bound by an indissoluble pact, wish to
fully informed on every phase of German activity in hear no proposition and still less to make one.
the United States. This is precisely the impression of

"There is no peace possible with a power that disregards
the Paris Figaro. President Wilson, it explains, will

the treaties it has signed and which treats them as scraps not address himself to the allies in a plea for peace

of paper except a peace that is imposed upon it.

“One does not treat with a criminal. because he knows how useless such a proceeding would

“One executes him ! be. He is not ignorant of the fact that Germany alone

“William II. is not a sovereign !
wanted the war and precipitated it. He knows that

"He is a bandit chief!
William II. caused the breaking off of all negotiations “He will be executed !
by his two ultimatums to Petrograd and to Paris just “After that, Herr von Bethmann-Hollweg may rest as-
when these negotiations were succeeding and an accord sured, peace will be permanent.”

Anybody who can say “Pacificist in Przemysl” without getting the Mme. Rosika Schwimmer of the International Suffrage Alliance
lockjaw can consider himself as having passed Professor Münster says Americans could stop the war in a week. That is the view
berg's efficiency test.— Boston Transcript.

the man took of the buzz-saw-at-first.–Chicago Herald.
EFFECT OF THE SEA BATTLE ON THE NAVAL

BALANCE OF POWER
WHEN the German cruiser squadron commanded Emperor William's land forces have been put by his
Falkland Islands by a British squadron under Vice- connection between command of the sea and success in
Admiral Sir Frederick Doveton Sturdee, a funda a war on land is not obvious. Now that a dramatic
mental change ensued in the naval aspect of the war. encounter at sea has extinguished a German squadron,
Italian naval experts, who have followed the destinies the public at large will revise its impression that the
of the war at sea with the closest scrutiny, and whose British navy is less efficient than it was. The moral
inferences and conclusions are not revised by the cen effect in Germany will be offset by recent attacks upon
sor, foresaw what happened. As the Rome Tribuna the coast of England which London professes not to
reminds us, the war at sea is prosecuted under no such take seriously.
fire of contradictions as bewilders the student of the

Will This War Be Decided
war on land. When, for instance, the Vossische Zei-

by Sea-Power?
tung (Berlin), announces a great German victory in COMMAND of the sea in every quarter of the world
,

passes now to Great Britain, and the effect upon
a magnificent triumph for Russia on the same field. Germany is set forth unsparingly by the Italian experts.
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 Lon-
don 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 con-
clusion that Germany must feel on land the conse-
quences of what she has endured on the water.

Restoration of British
Prestige at Sea.

,
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

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 un-

to romano precedented magnitude of such an achievement. Only

THEIR PLACE IN THE SUN a trained expert can comprehend the plight into which

-Coffman in the Atlanta Georgian

seas.

There can be no serious interference henceforth with
the passage of trocps 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 propo-
sitions of the late Admiral Mahan, who really discov-
ered 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 Chesa-
peake and the surrender at Yorktown became inevita-
ble. 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.

1

British Anxiety Over the

German Battleships.
RITISH naval experts have not permitted their sat-

isfaction at the result of the naval battle in southern
THE SPUR

waters to banish from their minds the formidable Ger-
-Harding in Brooklyn Eagle

man 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 Man-
chester 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 con-
temporary observes that the Berlin government has
taken steps to restrict the use of rubber and oil by
private individuals. “A few months hence the eco-
nomic pressure will have become urgent.” One con-
sideration 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 suc-
cessful. 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 appear-
ance 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 feet has forged.

!