INDICTMENT OF AMERICA

Taihape Daily Times, Volume 8, Issue 136, 12 June 1916, Page 3

INDICTMENT OF AMERICA

ROOSEVELT ON WILSON Mine eyes have scon the glory of the coining of the Lord. Ho is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath arc stored; He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword, His truth is marching on A whole bookfnl of Mr Theodore Roosevelt’s views on America’s position in regard to the European war is published by Hodder and Stroughton. It is dedicated to the memory of Julia Ward Howe, and her famous "Battle Hymn of the Republic,’ written at the time of the American Civil War, is printed at at- the beginning, as voicing Mr Roosevelt 's sentiments for the present war. The book is entitled ‘Fear God and Take Tour Own Part.' a phrase used by the heroine of ‘Lavengro, ’ and that, again, voices its definite purpose. Taking his title as text, Mr Roosevelt says of America:— ‘lf this nation had feared God it would have stood np for the Belgians and Armenians: if it had been able and willing to take its own part there would have been no murderous assault on theLusitania, no outrages on our men and women in Mexico, True patriotism carries with it not hostility to ,o‘'v-rin v tionsu but a. quickenedjsense of responsible goodwill of acts and not merely of words. I stand for a nationalism of duty, to oneself and to others; and therefore, for a nationalism which is a means to internationalism.

The ex-Presidcnt’s indictment of President Wilson’s war policy is sweeping as may bo gathered from this extract:

‘‘When Mr Wilson and Mr Bryan made this nation shirk its duty towards Belgium, they made us false to ail our high ideals: for they acted and caused this Government to act in that spirit of commercial opportunism which refuses to do duty to others, unless there is in it pecuniary profit for oneself. The combination of mean timidity and mean commercal opportunism is peculiarly odious, because those practising it have sought to hide it by profuse outbursts of wardy sontimentallity and loud professions of •ritachment to impossible and undesirable Ideals.” Next Mr Roosevelt describes what his attitude to President Wilson would have been had the policy of the latter been different:— ‘lf President Wilson had shown the disintrested patriotism.- courage and foresight demanded by this stupendous crisis I would have supported him with hearty enthusiasm. But his action, -or. rather, inaction, has been such that it

| has become a .matter of high patriotic | duty to oppose him. No man can support Mr Wilson without being false to j the ideals of national duty and inter-

! national humanity,’’ ! Examining th 0 several parts the Allies j have played in the war. Mr Roosevelt i praises our Navy unreservedly;— ! The English Navy was mobolised with ! a rapidity and efficiency as great as that l of the German army.lt has driven every 1 warship, except an occasional subj marine, n’nd every merchant ship of Ger- | many off the seas, and has kept the

ocean as a highway of life, not only for England, but for France, and largely also for Russia. In all history there has been no such gigantic and successful naval feat accomplished as that which the seamen and shipwrights of England have to their credit during the last eighteen months.” Mr Roosevelt also pays honourable tribute, to the achievements of the British Army and to the greatness of the effort which has made it what it is now.