"HATE AND HUMOR."

Taranaki Daily News, 8 January 1916, Page 11

"HATE AND HUMOR."

AMERICA AND EUROPE. "Existing treaties speak of 'the nisst favored nation,'" says the New York Evening .Post. "Sew ones will soon be using the phrase 'the most-hated nation.' At least, one might think so if he were to believe all that he hears about the United States being entitled to that distinction. Many Americans are saying that their country is now the most hated on earth. Some of them add that it will continue to be so after the war is over. The latter, of course, link the thing up with their warnings that we. must arm to the teeth in preparation for attack. We are so hated that several of the nations in Europe will hasten to turn their weapons against us, as soon as they have done killing each other off. The ! exaggeration in this is obvious. But what is tile substratum of fact in it? How intense is European hatred of the United States? What are its causes? How long is it likely to last, and what are its effects likely to be? "Let us begin with reports from abroad. The feeling about Americans, to which Americans themselves testify from Berlin, Paris, London, ia no doubt frequently one of bitterness. But its manifestations are self-contradictory, and it is due to reason; which are clearly temporary. The Germans hate us because we have done so much for the Allies. The Allies hate us because we have done nothing for them. Both cannot be right. And in time both will come to a sounder view of our role. Germans assert indignantly that they would have won had not America furnished the French and English with munitions of war. But their own military historians will presently be telling them that their armies received a fatal check at the Marne before a pound of powder or a single shell from the United States had reached France. And if the result of the war has been to start a great flow of capital to America, and make our financial strength commanding, that can scarcely be our fault. We did not make the war. If anybody is to be hated for its awful vonsequences, it ought to be the men who, in the language of Kaiser Frederick, sat around a green table and signed the orders which desolated Europe."