UNITED STATES.

Taranaki Daily News, 10 December 1915, Page 5

UNITED STATES.

RUPTURE IMMINENT.. I THE CASES OF BOYEI) AND PAPEX. Times and Sydney Sun Services. Received Dec. 9, 5.55 p.m. Washington, Dee. 6. Mr. Arthur Willett writes that the sensational background given in the President's address has given a serious turn to the German-American controversies. Cabinet has decided that the complaints against Boyed and Papen arc indefinite, and cannot do further than assure that action was not taken as the consequence of evidence at the Buenz trial. Count Bernstorff has been instructed to tell Mr. Lansing that in view of the outrageous insinuations against Heir Boyed, German honor will be affronted unless matters are conveniently cleared up. The New York World says: ''Count Bernstorff may go. We are not asked to give them a safe conduct, but their friends point out that it is better to have Papen and Boyed fighting in Europe than intriguing in Latin America. The press generally brands the German reply as impertinent. TYING AMERICA'S HANDS. PLOT TO AROUSE MEXICO. Washington, Dec. 8. The United States Government is believed to possess information showing that the Germans made efforts to start a revolution in Mexico with the view of preventing the United States making ammunition for the Allies and compelling it to take over the munition factories for its own use against the Mexicans. A German named von Rinteln is known to be prominently connected with the plot. Rinteln is reported to be a special friend of the Kaiser. FORD'S ARK. PASSPORTS REFUSED. Received Dee. 9, 9.20 p.m. Washington, Dee. 9. Mr. Lansing has refused Mr. Ford's wireless request for passports to befligerent countries. AMERICAN PRESS CRITICISM. The following remarks are made by the New York "Life" concerning Mr. Ford's pacifist campaign:— "Henry Ford says lie has 10,000,000 dollars to spend if necessary to perspade this country that peace is always the best plan. . . . He thinks people have a. false idea of war that ought to be educated out of them. He imagines that they are fooled by the glory and glamor of it. . . He wants the people to be persuaded that preparedness for war creates war. "Henry does not seem to realise that several times 10,000,000 dollars is being spent every day, and has been spent every day for fourteen months, to persuade mankind that peace is the best plan, and that excess in preparation for war is just about as dangerous as no preparation at all. Our newspapers and movie shows are telling the truth about war nowadays in so far as they can get it. They represent it as a. terrible )Ob. The glory and glamor of it go for nothing, ft is all tragedy, the purge of the passions; tragedy, destruction and waste. Henry's ten millions would be a me.re scratch on the slate compared with the daily picture of the war that we have been getting this last year. "Have patience, Henry'. This is a war against war. Folks who survive it are going to be gun shy for some time. You have done a great deal to make war attractive. That is your great service to peace, because tin- pleasanter | life is the less people want to die. But war, Henry, brings a much greater lesson than that—the lesson of self-sacri-fice. Nobody is much good who has not in him some idea, some ideal, that he cares for more than he does his life, even though it is life alleviated by the Ford motor. Yon help to make life ! pleasant, but war, Henry, helps to make it noble, and if it is not noble it does not matter a damn, Henry, whether it is pleasant or not. That is the old lesson of Calvary repeated at Mons and Ypres and Liege and Namur. Whether there are more people in the world or less. whether they are fat or lean, whether there are Fords or oxen, makes no vital j difference; but .whether men shall be willing to die for what thev believe in makes all the difference 'between a pigsty and Paradise. Not by bread alone, Henry, shall men live. "As for military preparedness, it is good anil salutary; too much is militarism, and that is bad, bad, bad, as the Germans are teaching us. Thev are the great teachers of peace, and,' be sure, Henry, they shall learn that lesson themselves down to the last line. Leave peace propaganda to them; but you, if you have ten millions to spare, put into Ford ambulmx"" for Franc*."