PRESIDENT WILSON'S "NEUTRALITY "

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2375, 3 February 1915, Page 4

PRESIDENT WILSON'S "NEUTRALITY "

The proposal of the .United States Government to purchase from the German owners, under the powers o! the Ships Purchase Bill now before the Legislature, the German merchant ships at present interned in United States ports, raises an international principle of great importance. The United States Government very naturally _ sees in the present European conflict with its attendant disorganisation _of shipping traffic, and the certain extinction of German prestige in merchant shipping, a great and valuable opportunity for establishing its own mercantile marine interests upon _ a stronger and more permanent basis. But the acquirement of vessels by the means proposed in the Ships Purchase Bill is a very different thing from the creation of a United States mercantile marine. Tho German merchant vessels at present lying in United States ports sought the security of these ports for the very obvious purpose of escaping capture by tho warships of the Allies which lay in wait for them in the open sea, and the purchase of these by the United States Government would bo inconsistent with tho obligations imposed by international usage upon a neutral State. The German owners, for one thing, would be saved the loss which otherwise they would inevitably incur. In effect, that is to say, the action of the United States Government, if the Ships Purchase Bill becomes law, and operative, would be the arct of a professedly neutral State assisting Germany against the Allies. Britain, France, and Russia, not unnaturally, have entered a protest. Having regard to the foregoing considerations, it is very difficult to understand President Wilson's reported determination to force the Bill through at all costs, for he must know that the chief end. and aim of naval warfare is to cripple —annihilate, if possible —the enemy|s fighting fleet, capture or destroy his merchant shipping, and ruin his commerce at sea, and any act by. a neutral State which interferes with that process is an act to the detriment of the one belligerent and the advantage of the other. President Wilson must surely have studied the writings of his distinguished countryman, the late Admiral Mahan, one of the greatest literary exponents of naval strategy, and unless his impulsive' desire to push the Ships Purchase Bill through is checked by sober opinion in his own country, the passage of the Bill will introduce regrettable possibilities of friction in the relations between his Government and the Allies.