AND IN THE MEANTIME?

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 5, Issue 238, 29 December 1916, Page 6 (Supplement)

AND IN THE MEANTIME?

PRESIDENT WILSON SAYS: "AMERICANS ARE READY IN YEARS TO

COME TO LEND THEIR FORCE FOR THE PRESERVATION OF

PEACE"—ROOSEVELT'S ROUGH REBUKE

President Wilson has just made the extraordinary statement that he docs not know why Europe is at war! Forhaps the Kaiser's submarines will supply the missing information.

the United States and the silence of the Pope in the face of an internation-

al infamy. It should be noted that even the j Italian papers are attacking the Pope I because he has protested against Italy j resuming the Piazza Venezfa, which

President Wilson says that the United States "held off from the present conflict" because " the part she wanted to play was a different part from that."

Austria stole years ago. They contrast this protest with his silence on Germanys' part in laying waste Belgium and on other German atrocities. If the lurid facts of this war, painted blood-red across the world, are not readable to all men, then they would

THE KAISERS AMEN. The Kaiser would say "Amen" to that most fervently. This was not the sort at war he wanted.

. not understand though one rose from the dead to tell them. There is a time I to be silent and there is a time to ; speak, and woo to those who change , the times of each! There is a time

The Allies all, too, could say what the President says—that the part they wanted to play in the world "was a different part from that" forced on them by the Kaiser. Every tragedy, personal or national, is due to the fact that men did not want things to happen as they have hopepned. Most people have to take facts as they come. As the President wants "to play a different part" from that which today's facts pemrit, he can do nothing more than say that when the war is over "Americans are ready in years to come to land their- forecs, without stint, to the preservation of peace in the interest of mankind."

when men do well to be angry. There ii a time when, because they are neither hot nor cold they pass under tire curse of the lukewarm.

• WHAT ARE NEUTRALS DOING? | What at this moment are neutrals doing to protect neutral Norway and | neutral Holland against the destruction of their shipping by German submarines? What collective action are I they taking to see that the Hague Convention is respected? "There were then in high places in this country men almost as foolish as the war professors of Berlin —m-en who imagined that we could sit by with folded hands, as in 1864 and 18<"0, unacknowledged adherents of the policy of blood and iron," says the "World's Work" (London). "Not only would this country have been inevitably drawn in to prevent the Germanic domination of Europe, but no man witnessing the present plight of neutrals can find it in his heart to regret our appeal to the sword. No Briton would care to see his country suffer the humiliation and loss of prestige which has followed the

THE PEOPLE WHO RUN*. In the meantime " the people who "run" —the people of Belgium, of France, of Poland, of Russia of Serbia, of Macedonia, and elsewhere —are under the heel of the German. And jet in a world where the plain man knows right from wrong without being told, the President says "the singularity of the present war is that its origin and objects have never been disclosed/' Whatever the result of the recent Presidential Election, there, are happily millions' in the United States who understand quite we! Ithe " origin and objects" of this war. NO INTERFERENCE SUGGESTED.

determination of the Government at

Washington to avoid war at all costs

J WE, TOO, WERE UNPREPARED

! "Perhaps full consideration lias not

The answer to all who do argue as the President does—no one wishes the United States to take part in this war —was wall put by the Spectator" lastweek.

been given to the terribly unprepared condition confronting President Wilson whenever it seemed as if he might have to back up the pen with the sword. But wo too were unprepared, yet we have saved our souls, and our imperial honour bears no stain for our citizens murdered and our authority insultingly impugned," adds the " World's

"Nothing could be further from the truth," says the "Spectator." "The present writer has taken, the opportunity of discussing the American problem with an immense numebr of people o fall shades of opinion, but he cannot recall one single instance of any person expressing the wish that America should go to war with Germany. On the contrary there has been an almost universal expression of opinion that )t was not the business of the Americans to interfere, and that it would be most unwise for them to participate in the (juanol.

Work." " Lincoln said on the eve of the Civil War that no country could endure half slave and half free. It must be wholly

one or the- other. That truth lias a wider application to-day," says the 'Daily News.' —"The ideals of liberty and of despotism cannot divide the .world. One or the other must suivive unchallenged if there is to be peace on the face of this earth." | The best account of President Wilsons' spsech to which we refer was sent by the "Telegraph's" New York cor- ' respondent. The President was speaking at Omalia, Nebraska, and. says the "Telegraps,' he

BUT "But though there was so wide a desire that America should keep out of the quarrel, there was, of course, an intense feeling of disappointment that, while refusing to engage in hostilities, she did not make that protest which one would have expected h!sr to make against German violations of the laws oMiunienity ; and also of the customs and conventions of international law," adds the Spetctator. "If America, neutral as regards hostilities, but not neutral on ths mora] issue, had outlawed Germany as long as she regarded treaties as 'scraps of paper,' shot hostages contrary to the Hague Convention, and violated the humano laws of sea warfare in cases like the Lusitania, the moral effect on future wars would have been worth a wilderness of Leagues to Enforce Peace. There is no complaint here against the attitude of the American people, but only regret at the missing of a great opportunity by the American Government."

" Sought to neutralise the effect of his remark, 'too proud to fight' by declaring that America is as ready to fight as any nation, but the cause must be just. " AFTER THE WAR, he said, America must join the league of nations to preserve; tha peace of the world.

"I DON'T CARE A PEPPERCORN" i

"Another notable phrase was: 'As compared with the verdict of the next twenty-five years, 1 don't care ft peppercorn about the verdict of 1916.' His political managers besought the President to tell the hard-headed voters of the Middle West that the words 'too proud to fight' might bear two interpretations." "Altogether it was a great day for the President, who was greeted by tens i of thousands of peopie and cheered en- ! thusiastically. After alluding to the entry of Americans into world affairs, not to say European alliances, after the Spanish War, Air. Wilson said that while they had a domestic programme they had no world programme, and he I continued: —

That is well said and very much to the point. In this world there are always two points before us—the thing we should like to do fluid the thing we have to do, and they are not always the same.

ROOSEVELT'S INDIGNATIOV Mr. Theodore Roosevelt has made a a frank statement to the same effect as the "Spectator". In an interview in "Answers" he makes no secret of his fierce wrath at what hia regards is tho supimnosa of his own country. "When we sit idfly by," he says, "while Europe is in conflagration, and small nations liko Belgium and Serbia are being overwhelmed, we have no right to prattle, with unctuous seltrghteonsness, about the 'duty of neutral tv.'

NO WORLD PROGRAMME. " 'To carry out a programme, you must have a unification of spirit and purpose in America which no influence can invade. There is no use in having a programme unless you have concerted united force behind that programme, and you can reverse the proposition and say you cannot have a programme until you have got a unified force, because only such a force can conceive a self-consistent programme. In making that programme what are we to say to ourselves, and what are we to sav to the world?

"By c!< ing this we show an odious ferr rf the devil, and a mean readiness to serve hi in!

" 'lt is very important indeed for statesmen in other parts of the world to understand America. America has held off from the present conflict with which the rest of the world is ablaze not interested, not because she is indifferent, but because the part she wanted to piny was a different part from that.

"The profosisTmal pacifists," he says, "have held wetings and parades m this country and hV.ve gone on silly missions to Europe. And the peace they might thus impose on heroes who are battling against infamy was a peace conceived in the interests of the authors of that infamy !'•

HIS MIND ARRIVED TOO LATE. T'pon tha question of our blockade and its effect on American interests, tlie United States he holds, has put herself out of court by lier tame acquiescence when Germany was outraging all international laws by her acts in Belgium and by sinking the Lusitania.

ORIGIN UNKNOWN. " 'The singularity of the present war h that ITS ORIGIN AND OBJECTS HAVE NEVER BEEN DISCLOSED. They have obscure European reasons which we do not know how to trace. So great a conflagration could not have broken out if the tinder had not been there and the spark in danger of falling at any time. We were not tho tinder. The spark did not come from us. It will take a long history to oxiil.iin tin's war.

•'Failure to act, not merely to speak or write Notes, when our women anil children were murdered," concludes Mr. Roosevelt "made protests against interference with American biiM'ness piofits both offensive and ludicrous;" ''There is one thing. [ think, that President Wilson naturally might have been expected to do. and did not do in the war." says Mr. E. Price Bell, the doyen of th ■ American correspondents in London, in the "Daily News." "He did not protest against Teutonic aggression. He did not act upon the need he since has declared—the ertvd o f a world of independent nations leagued together to prevent ndwn ture.s of conquest and plunder. His mind for protests arrived too late. And' when he did protest he protested on behalf of America alone, when, in my feeling, he should have protested oil behalf of righteousnos and humanity without any regard for the special interests of Amtrica."

" 'Europe ought not to misunderstand ii-. We arc holding off not because we do not fed concerned, hut because, when we exert the force of this nation, we want to know what wo are exerting it for. You know «;■ have always remembered and 'reveivd the advice of the great Washington, who advised us to avoid foreign entangleinents. Hy that 1 understand him to mean avoid being entangled in the ambitions and national purposes of other nations. It does not mean, if T may be permitted to venture an interpretation of the meaning of that great man, trliat we are to avoid entanglements or the world, for we are part of the world, and nothing thai concerns the whole world can be indifferent to us. We want always to hold the force of Ainer-■«-1 to fight for what!- Not nierelv for the. rights of .property or of national ambition, but for the rights of mankind. (Loud cheers.)

TIMID NEUTRALS. It i becoming plainer every day that if neutrals, great and small,' had from the first maintained their rights as neutrals by pointed protests to Germany, that demented country would never have defied God man as it lms done*. To the historian of the future one of the great facts of the war will be the silence of the President of

"IN YEARS TO COME?" " 'Nothing that concerns humanity nothing that concerns the essential liirhts of mankind can be foreign or indifferent to us, but in fighting r or these tilings, my fellow citizens, we ought to have a touchstone; we went to have a test; we ought to know

whenever we act what the purpose is, and what the ultimate goal is. Now the touchstone is this on our own part, absolute singleness of heart and purpose in our allegiance to America by holding the doctrine that is truly American, that the States of America were set up to vindicate the rights of man, and not the rights of property or the rights of self-aggrandisement and aggression.

" 'We want,' continued the President, 'all the world to know that AMERICANS ARE READY IN YEARS TO COME TO LEND OUR FORCE, WITHOUT STINT, TO THE PRESERVATION OF PEACE IN THE INTEREST OF MANKIND. The world is no longer divided into little circles of interest. The world no longer consists of neighbourhoods. The world is linked together in a common life and interest such as humanity never saw before, and the starting of wars can never again be a private and individual matter for nations.' "