announcing the sinking of the two hospital steamships _Donegal_ and
_Lanfranc_ without warning by submarines; nineteen British and fifteen
wounded German officers were drowned. In their statement the British
authorities denied the German charge that hospital ships were employed
to transport troops and military supplies.... Germany was notified
that, if her course was persisted in, reprisals would follow, yet the
British hospital ship _Asturias_ was torpedoed without warning on the
night of March 20. The ship was steaming with all navigation lights
burning and the proper Red Cross signs brilliantly illuminated.... On
the night of March 30-31 the hospital ship _Gloucester Castle_ met with
a similar fate. On this occasion the Berlin official wireless message
again published a notification that she was torpedoed by a U-boat, thus
removing any possible doubt in the matter.
--_The New York Times Current History._
[Illustration]
_The Annexation of America_
“_I think, All Highest, we had better not insist upon the annexation of
America._”
In the inscription “Ten Million Men Between 21 and 30” on the Statue
of Liberty, Raemaekers has as usual gone to the heart of things. Ten
million trained citizen soldiers!!! What an insurance of peace and
security against attack or insult. Universal Citizen Military Education
and Training.
From the beginning the first article in our International Creed has
been the Monroe Doctrine--America for Americans. If the result of the
present war shall be to add two additional items to that creed, namely,
Universal Military Education and Training, and the United States, the
First Air Power in the world, it will be worth all that it costs, and
this great nation can go on in peace and security to work out the
mighty destiny awaiting it.
Raemaekers’ placing “All Highest” and his aide upon the conning tower
of a submarine, suggests another most vital matter at this present time.
The submarine has held the world’s spotlight for the last two years.
Its deadly efficiency is universally conceded. That deadly efficiency
is the direct result of Admiral von Tirpitz’s unyielding insistence on
a centralized, independent, untrammeled Department for the submarine.
_We must adopt the same methods if we expect to attain equally deadly
efficiency in the air._
But the possibilities of the aeroplane are greater than those of the
submarine. The aeroplane is capable of offensive in the air against
aeroplanes or dirigibles, on the surface of the sea against ships, and
under the sea against submarines. The offensive capabilities of the
submarine can and soon will be restricted to under-surface activities.
Again, the submarine is limited to the oceans. The aeroplane is limited
by nothing. It can go wherever there is air, and that means everywhere.
In other words, the aeroplane is the master of the submarine.
If we today had a thousand swift, heavily armed seaplanes continuously
patrolling the water within a radius of three hundred miles of Sandy
Hook (from Portland, Maine, to Norfolk, Virginia), we should have our
five Atlantic sea gateways well guarded, and could feel secure against
any further serious damage from these pests.
Thus equipped, submarine raids upon our coast would be an
impossibility; and even the imagination of a Raemaekers would not
dare to conceive of a hostile submarine within sight of the Statue of
Liberty.
PEARY.
[Illustration]
“_Welcome, Mate; You’re Just in Time!_”
“I am in the happy position of being, I think, the first British
Minister of the Crown who, speaking on behalf of the people of this
country, can salute the American Nation as comrades in arms. I am glad;
I am proud. I am glad not merely because of the stupendous resources
which this great nation will bring to the succor of the alliance, but
I rejoice as a democrat that the advent of the United States into this
war gives the final stamp and seal to the character of the conflict as
a struggle against military autocracy throughout the world.”
--_From the Speech of the Rt. Hon. David Lloyd-George at
the American Club in London, April 12, 1917._
[Illustration]
_The Editor:_
“_Use always the American flag and commit as much high treason as you
like._”
“Woe to the German-American, so-called, who, in this sacred war for a
cause as high as any for which ever people took up arms, does not feel
a solemn urge, does not show an eager determination to be in the very
fore-front of the struggle; does not prove a patriotic jealousy, in
thought, in action and in speech to rival and to outdo his native-born
fellow citizen in devotion and in willing sacrifice for the country
of his choice and adoption and sworn allegiance, and of their common
affection and pride. As Washington led Americans of British blood to
fight against Great Britain, as Lincoln called upon Americans of the
North to fight their very brothers of the South, so Americans of German
descent are now summoned to join in our country’s righteous struggle
against a people of their own blood, which, under the evil spell of a
dreadful obsession, and, Heaven knows! through no fault of ours, has
made itself the enemy of peace and right and freedom throughout the
world.”
--_From Otto H. Kahn’s “Right Above Race.”_
[Illustration]
_German Intrigues in Mexico_
Many things in the present war have aroused and enraged the people
of the United States against Germany. The defilement of Belgium,
the ravage of Serbia, the assassination of Armenia, all crimes
against human nature in which we Americans share. Besides that, some
revelations apply especially to us,--grievances, injuries and outrages,
things that seem so far removed from the secret thoughts of decent and
self-respecting nations that we hesitated to believe them. We must
believe them now for we know at last that Germany has for not less
than twenty years been working against the influence and good name of
the United States. It was not for nothing that one of our best-known
public men, when he visited Germany as far back as 1911, said that it
was a country where he felt that “every man, woman and child looked
upon him with hatred,” because he was conspicuous in this country which
had become rich and powerful and prosperous by the road of democracy
instead of by the German path of militarism.
Every day reveals some new evidence that the German mole was working
in South America, in Central America, in almost every American state
and city, to prepare the minds of those who were to take part in the
infamous conspiracy. Before the war broke out in Europe, Germans were
trying to organize an active cohort within our boundary. The effort to
arouse Mexico against us while we were still neutral, is no worse than
other German diplomacy such as the “spurlos versenkt” radiograms of the
scoundrel Luxburg, directed against the Argentine; but the appeal to
Mexico to “reconquer” Texas and the Southwest was worse than a crime,
it was a blunder, especially resented by the people of that part of the
country. Nothing but an absolute breach with Germany has made possible
the revelation of the cynical violation of diplomatic privileges by
German and Austrian officials in this country from titled Ambassadors
down through consuls-general and consuls-particular and military aides
and secretaries and clerks and hangers-on and spies and jackals, all
uniting to stab the land which gave them hospitality. Whatever else may
happen, a hundred years will not efface from the minds of the people of
the United States the belief that “Germany cannot be a Gentleman.”
ALBERT BUSHNELL HART.
[Illustration]
_German “Militarist” Socialism_
Does not the cartoonist Raemaekers fail in this cartoon? The artist
Raemaekers is inspired--here as always. But does the cartoonist succeed
this time in burning the right idea, his idea, into the reader’s brain?
Here is the real Kaiser and here are real German workingmen. It is they
who are carrying the burden of Kaiserism. All this is convincing. But
do not other workingmen in other countries carry burdens?
The failure is only at first glance. Raemaekers is not concerned to
reproduce the conventional cartoon of workingmen carrying a burden of
other classes on their shoulders. The point lies not in the burden,
but in the nature of the burden, the contrast, so perfectly portrayed,
between the character of the Kaiser and the characters of his proud
and willing slaves. The Kaiser, crafty and contemptuous, but neither
so ignorant nor so stupid as to be wholly unconscious of the foolish
and contemptible position he occupies! The workingmen evidently once
strong, intelligent and enthusiastic, though now blinded and crippled,
are utterly unconscious of what they are doing. Carrying the heavy
burden of Kaiserism seems no more to them than their day’s work.
You see Raemaekers _knows_ both Kaiser and workingmen, and so will have
nothing to do with the conventional portraits of either. The Kaiser is
neither a beast nor a fool--however foolish his position may be. The
workingmen are neither labor heroes ready to revolt, nor conscious and
beaten serfs.
So much for the picture--at second glance. It leads to an endless
chain of reflections. But the first and most obvious is on the sort
of burden these men are carrying. Here is an accepted ruler who is
allowed to monopolize the _force_ of the nation, as the cartoon clearly
indicates. This of itself gives him an absolute and unlimited power
over his workers. The only possible alternative use of that force is
to make slaves of the workers of other nations. The German workingmen,
it is suggested, lend themselves blindly to this work of enslavement
also--naturally, for it is no different for their Kaiser to rule by
force and lies over non-Germans than to rule by force and lies over
Germans. The face of the Kaiser shows a subconscious realization
of these lies. The workers show utter unconsciousness. The rule of
autocracy over themselves and the extension of that autocracy over
others by means of their blood is to them as much a part of nature as
the motions of sun and moon or the rise and fall of the tides!
Indeed, the workingmen are clearly proud of their burden and his
successes and undoubtedly feel that any people is blest to be brought
under his benign rule. And here is the moral of the tale. It is the
Kaiser’s successes that have so utterly blinded his serfs. Then there
is one remedy and only one. We need hardly say what that remedy is.
WILLIAM ENGLISH WALLING.
[Illustration]
_The Old Hammer and the New_
_President Wilson elected for a second term._
[Illustration]
_The Spirit of Washington_
_President Wilson’s answer to Hertling._
“Woodrow Wilson is in no sense a herald. The revolution of betrayed
idealism has been in progress for more than a century, and in the
last decade particularly there has been steady assault upon evil and
outworn institutions. These passionate gropings of the spirit in the
direction of ideals professed and not practised have merely lacked
great leadership and authoritative expression. This is what Woodrow
Wilson gives. He comes as a leader, as a nucleating force, as a clear,
rallying cry to the almost mystic passions that are peculiarly the
dominant note of the day. He fits the need of the bloodless revolution
as skin fits the hand, bringing purpose and courage to the struggle
for nobler fulfilment of the hopes and aspirations that thrilled those
who first sought refuge in the New World from the oppressions of the
Old--the struggle for real democracy.”
--_From George Creel’s “Wilson and the Issues.”_
[Illustration]
_The Massacre of the Innocents_
[The following lines are dated July, 1916. “As it stands,” writes
Mr. Howells, “the poem ignores the glorious retrieval of our former
sufferance. It might better now be called A Shame Lived Down.”--ED.]
THE AMERICAN PEOPLE
What was it kept you so long, brave German submersible?
We have been very anxious lest matters had not gone well
With you and the precious cargo of your country’s drugs and dyes.
But here you are at last, and the sight is good for our eyes,
Glad to welcome you up and out of the caves of the sea,
And ready for sale or barter, whatever your will may be.
THE CAPTAIN OF THE SUBMERSIBLE
Oh, do not be impatient, good friends of this neutral land,
That we have been so tardy in reaching your eager strand.
We were stopped by a curious chance just off the Irish coast,
Where the mightiest wreck ever was lay crowded with a host
Of the dead that went down with her; and some prayed us to bring them
here
That they might be at home with their brothers and sisters dear.
We Germans have tender hearts, and it grieved us sore to say
We were not a passenger ship, and to most we must answer nay,
But if from among their hundreds they could somehow a half-score
choose
We thought we could manage to bring them, and we would not refuse.
They chose, and the women and children that are greeting you here are
those
Ghosts of the women and children that the rest of the hundred chose.
THE AMERICAN PEOPLE
What guff are you giving us, Captain? We are able to tell, we hope,
A dozen ghosts, when we see them, apart from a periscope.
Come, come, get down to business! For time is money, you know.
And you must make up in both to us for having been so slow.
Better tell this story of yours to the submarines, for we
Know there was no such wreck, and none of your spookery.
THE GHOSTS OF THE _Lusitania_ WOMEN AND CHILDREN
Oh, kind kin of our murderers, take us back when you sail away;
Our own kin have forgotten us. O, Captain, do not stay!
But hasten, Captain, hasten! The wreck that lies under the sea
Shall be ever the home for us this land can never be.
WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS.
_July, 1916._
[Illustration]
_In the Ring to Stay_
It is Ambassador Gerard’s opinion that when the German government
issued its final insult to the United States, all the Kaiser’s advisers
were convinced that no provocation would make the American people
fight. President Wilson, they argued, had just been re-elected on a
peace platform. They counted, it was evident, upon the influence of
the millions of German-Americans to frustrate hostilities, and Herr
Zimmermann of the Foreign Office openly threatened the revolt of
500,000 German reservists in America if the United States dared “to
do anything against Germany.” The Western States were reported to be
indifferent to the technicalities of the submarine dispute. The East
was described as interested in the submarine sinkings only because they
interfered with the traffic in munitions and the profits therefrom. The
whole country was supposedly averse to war, unwilling to enter into
European entanglements, and devoted solely to peaceful industry and
money-grubbing.
Yet within a year afterwards, America had accepted conscription
and raised an armed force of two million men. It had contributed
billions of dollars to the war through government loans that were
more popularly subscribed than even the German or the English loans.
Government control had been accepted without question in every sort of
private activity. Food regulations, fuel regulations, the regulation
of industry, shipping, labor and transportation, voluntary censorship
of the press, military censorship of the cables and the telegraph and
the mails, prohibition of distilling, the enforcement of price-fixing,
the curtailment of profits and the levying of confiscatory taxes had
all been submitted to without a murmur. It had come to be a byword in
Washington that “the people could not be asked to do enough”; that the
fund of patriotism was so great it was difficult to find channels for
it; that no war in the history of the nation had ever been supported so
unanimously.
What explanation is there for the miracle of that change? Washington
believes that it is chiefly due to one man. It believes that President
Wilson, by his patient efforts to maintain peace, convinced the whole
nation of the impossibility of avoiding war before he gave voice to
that conviction. It realizes that, even then, a great mass of the
people were loyal but unenthusiastic, until he outlined the country’s
war aims in his famous messages, and at once lifted the conflict to
a higher level of purpose and gathered to his fervent support every
sentiment and hope of democracy in the land.
Washington is now convinced that the war can have but one issue. There
is no question of the outcome. The leaders of the nation are aware that
the United States is “in the ring to stay.” As the Secretary of War has
said: “The American people were slow to rouse to this war. They will be
as slow to cool. They wished peace. They still wish it. But they have
learned that there is but one way to obtain peace, and they propose to
obtain it that way. They know what they are fighting for, and they will
fight till they achieve it.”
HARVEY O’HIGGINS.
[Illustration]
“_We Attacked the ‘Fortress of London’_”
[Illustration]
_Not a Bad Start!_
Can a Republic fight a successful war? Can a people with a century and
a quarter of free thought, free speech and free press change suddenly
from words to deeds? Can custom and tradition yield gracefully to
necessity? Is the heart and brain of the Republic so impressed with
the magnitude and importance of this war as to induce it to forget the
things which are past and to press forward to the things which are
needful?
The Imperial German Staff thought not. It imagined that a people, whose
daily sport was carping criticism of their public officials, whose army
was hardly as large as a policeman’s squad, whose sentiments were all
for peace and arbitration, whose ordnance was archaic and whose only
gas-bombs were perfervid oratory could never right-about-face and set
themselves to engage in the horrific warfare desolating the fields of
Europe.
The mistake in this German opinion sprang from a misconception of what
liberty really means and of the things for which freedom really stands.
Its assumption was that there could be no courage with kindliness nor
strength with flexibility. To the slow-going mind of the methodical
German his mistaken view is beginning to appear. His first jolt came
when the traditions of a century and a quarter with reference to
military service were, without riot, tumult or disorder, set aside and
10,000,000 young men of America, without murmur, submitted themselves
to conscription. He was further prodded when he learned that, as each
successive liberty loan was presented to the people of America it was
promptly taken, and what is more important, taken by larger and larger
numbers of citizens.
No wonder Uncle Sam and the world think it no bad start that we
have made. Like all reforms, it has been accompanied by lapses, by
weaknesses, by mistakes of judgment, but through it all there has run
the golden thread of a cohesive, coherent and indomitable American
public opinion that this country, having set itself to the task of
assisting the Allies in forever freeing the world from the menace of
German military power, will never turn back in the breaking of a single
furrow until the blood-guiltiness of the German race shall be put
underneath the sod and the world shall be planted with the asphodels of
a permanent peace.
Uncle Sam still smiles confidently, knowing full well that every day
is rectifying mistakes and that every day is adding to the bull-dog
tenacity of a people, who are willing to defend to the uttermost the
principles for which they stand against invasion from without and
sedition from within.
THOS. R. MARSHALL,
_Vice-President of the United States_.
[Illustration]
_An Echo of the Luxberg Case_
The Junkers: “These Lansing disclosures are bad. We don’t know how to
counteract them because we don’t know how much more evidence he has
got.”
[Illustration]
_German Chivalry to Wounded Officers_
They do these things differently in France. While in France in May and
June, I saw many squads of German prisoners working at the railroad
stations, on the roads and in the factories. Of the several thousands
I saw, not one looked underfed, ill clothed or abused. While their
barracks did not have steam heat, electricity and all the comforts of
home, the board and lodging they received compared favorably with that
of the average French soldiers, and the franc a day thrown in as wages
could all go for extras if desired. I was told that they all preferred
to be prisoners in France rather than to return to the “freedom” of
Germany while the war lasts.
Once I obtained permission to question a gang of Prussians working in
France on an American road under a British guard. This is what they
said to me: “We believe America intends to conquer France. Certainly
you will never leave this country after having spent so much money on
docks and wharves and warehouses and railroads.”
Evidently the common German mind cannot conceive of a people going to
another’s territory and spending money there unless with some sinister,
ulterior, selfish, political motive behind it.
As Irving Cobb says, we must extract the mania from Germania.
HAMILTON HOLT.
[Illustration]
_Socialism in Germany_
It is one of the tragedies of history that the great Social Democracy
of Germany, in which liberal thinkers of all lands reposed so much
faith, proved, when the testing time came, to be utterly devoid of
intellectual and moral integrity, a base betrayer of international
Socialist ideals and a subservient tool of Prussian autocracy.
The great majority of the German Socialists, led by such men as
Scheidemann, Sudekum, David and Legien, upheld the Imperial German
Government and thus became the accomplices of the assassins of Potsdam.
These so-called “Socialists” even stooped so low as to attempt to bribe
the Socialists of other countries in the interests of the Kaiser and
his cowardly crew. In Italy and in Russia in particular, and in other
countries less effectively, they used their Socialist connections to
assist the military schemes of Germany, notwithstanding the fact that
these were designed to destroy every essential Socialist principle.
Herr David, perhaps the ablest of the leaders of the Majority
Socialists, declared in the Reichstag that “The German armies must
continue to fight vigorously _whilst the German Socialists encourage
and stimulate pacifism among Germany’s enemies_.” The whole policy of
the Majority Socialists has been based upon that sinister principle.
The small and uninfluential but heroic minority, led by Karl
Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg and George Ledebour alone have exemplified
the ideals of Socialism. They deserve our lasting honor as fully as the
others deserve our lasting contempt.
Socialism is not dead in Germany: only the great political party of
Socialism is shattered. In the hearts of the brave men and women of the
Minority Socialists the sacred flame still burns. In that lies the only
hope for German Socialism.
History will record this bitter judgment of the German Social
Democracy: It was an active partner in the crimes of the Hohenzollern
dynasty against civilization; it infamously betrayed the Russian
Revolution and prostituted itself to the most malefic despotism of a
thousand years.
JOHN SPARGO.
[Illustration]
_The Spirit of German Science_
The moral revulsion of the world against the Germans is justified by
their use of science.
It is not a question of the excellence, amount, or character of
science--all subjects of legitimate debate--but of the use the Germans
make of science. While science has been used in war at all times and
has been a formidable arm in the hands of those who have known how
to use it, still the limits of its use have been fixed with more or
less rigor. Even before the conventions of The Hague were formulated,
there was the general recognition of the natural distinction between
civilized and barbarous warfare. The savage’s poisoned arrow has been
the symbol of what, though scientific, was barbarous. The murder of the
wounded soldier or of the disarmed prisoner has always been condemned
as the crime of the _apache_, not the method of the gentleman. Pity for
the innocent--women, children, even the animals--and merciful treatment
of the helpless--the drowning, the famished--seem to mark man, even in
the profession of intentional killing of his fellow-man, as moved by a
certain sentiment, a certain sense of human superiority to the brute
which takes blood simply from the love of it.
Even against the legitimate foe there are certain means of offense
so base--the use of poison in wells, the diffusion of microbes of
disease--or so treacherous--the dynamite-loaded cigar--that the
chivalrous man redresses himself at the thought of them with a shudder
of mingled moral contempt and physical nausea.