The Taihape Daily Times AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE TUESDAY, JANUARY 30, 1917. WILSONIAN INCONSISTENCY.

Taihape Daily Times, Issue 219, 30 January 1917, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE

TUESDAY, JANUARY 30, 1917. WILSONIAN INCONSISTENCY.

(■With which is incorporated The Taihape Post and Waimarino News).

It is difficult indeed to bring all President Wilson's peace utterances into anything like understandable accord. The attitude he takes towards Japan does not, by a long way, synchronise with what he prescribes with respect to Europe. The other day he said the United States must be willing to join other nations in a guarantee of peace and justice throughout the world. All nations, he said, must •have a direct outlet on the great highway of the sea, and he summed up his ideas as an extension of the Monroe Doctrine to the whole world. He wants for the nations of the world an equality of rights based on an independent united autonomous plan, whatever that may mean, full freedom of seas, limitation of armaments, neither recognising nor implying differences between small and great nations. How Germany must smile, and with what disgust must Japan regard Mr. Wilson’s Utopian talk. The pill he prescribes for Japan and all other nations does not agree with the stomach of Uncle Sam. The rest of the world must not recognise or imply any differences, and yet America is persistently doing that which she objects to in others. America has occupied the Phillipine Islands, that were captured in the war with Spain, and yet if President Wilson has assumed any definite position it is that America disclaims any aggressive attitude; he has specifically asserted time and again that the United States would never seek to additional territory by conquest. President Wilson favours conquest when it is in accordance with American interests to conquer, as evidenced in the seizure of the Phillipinos, and •when circumstances are favourable he adopts the attitude of the trader and buys up additional territory, as in the case of the purchase of the Danish West Indies. There is, from an European point of view, nothing very wrong in either case, hut both arc disi tinctly opposed to the Monroe DocI trine according to Wilson. While he has repeatedly and specifically disclaimed any aggressive attitude in j seeking t j secure additional territory jhy conquest, the Phillipinos have been

annexed by conquest, and the Danish West Indies by purchase. There seems to be a good deal of elasticity in that much-vaimied dogma known as the Monroe Doctrine. Taking expositions and definitions of it by three great Americans, Mr. Roosevelt, Mr. Taft, and Mr. Wilson, we find it very difilcult indeed to get thorn to agree, and to do so there must be a deal of give and take.

and some instances create the necessity for eliminating either one exponent or the other. What America objects to in the actions of Japan, she, heedless of everybody, pursues in China. America is establishing herself in China, alongside Japan, her traders pushing right into and setting up trade institutions in the land of the | Japanese, while at the same Time there is threatening talk about Japanese designs in Mexico. President Wilson became frantic when persistent rumours arose that Japan was purchasing a coaling station in Mexico, forgetting or venally disregarding America’s purchase of Danish territory on the east coast. . America scents danger in Japan purchasing interests in Mexico, but there is nothing opposed to the Monroe Doctrine in America securing additional territory by conquest, purchase, and by extension of trading spheres. President Wilson may do ail these things without troubling European nations, but he is not consistent, and when he -officiously seeks to fool Europe with his indiarubber nonsense he makes himself ridiculous. Wilson is urging Americans nervously to play the game of peace, but he is at the same time increasing the strength of the American army and navy. Despite Mr. Wilson's desire to extend his pliable Monroe Doctrine to the whole world; despite his urging that there must be no recognising or implying of differences between nations, America is nervously and feverishly building a huge navy and largely adding to her land forces. If Mr. Wilson presumes to be the mentor of the world he must remove all inconsistencies in the application of his methods. America interprets her Monroe Doctrine as suits her interests, the peace that will come in Europe will neither be without victory,

or terms being imposed on the van quished.