AMERICA AND PACIFISTS.

Taranaki Daily News, 19 March 1918, Page 7

AMERICA AND PACIFISTS.

FAITH IN BRITAIN,

WORK DONE AND DOING,

(By Fullerton L. Waldo, Associate Edi tor of the Public Ledger, Philadelphia)

Philadelphia, Dec. ii> America is mindful of the menace of the peace offensive." She. is aware of t.ie mischief wrought upon weak and immature minds by rumors set in motion ny a secret caljal of mischief which, however foolish the tales it starts, can secure an audience of the gullible in any part of the world. Those who are toiling in the one great cause with "their fouls in the work of their hands" are too busy to hearken to the evil whisper of the serpent that says, "You ar«, used as cat's-paws to pull chestnuts out ■if the fires of the European blastfurnace ' or others." The answer to that crude prevarication, had we time to utter it. would be something like this: "<Our nght is for ourselves. It is our own liberty that is endangered. Should the uermans break through the wall of the .nritisli Fleet and tho British Army they would be_ upon ua. We owe to them the security we enjoy." ' A second grotesque lie—to choose from many—is that losses are concealed and successes magnified. But we have beheld again and again the "facts" of Berlin contradicted by the actual occurrence: and nothing in the war have we admired more than the careful and guarded reticence of British leaders in '"he hour of victory, surpassing even their self-control in time of defeat. They Shine as conquerors or as conquer"d. though loathing flattery and deprecative! prnise. That is an ideal of sportsmanship that we share and understand. The loud-mouthed, like the poor, we have ever with us. But we have marked down those who strut and bluster as merely tho windy men who retard our arrival at the goal.

"PRODUCING RESULTS." It is significant that Rear-Admiral David W. Taylor's report of SOO ships Miilt and building covers but a page. Some of these ships were timed for late in 1918: they are serving in European waters now. Tn mentioning the fact that all feasible measures are employed to drive tho naval programme full speed i'.hcad, the Admiral laconically says. "These measures aro producing results." Tn the vicinity of New York 103 vessels are to be built. On the western '•oa.it 183 vessels are to bo built, and the shipyards of the south-teastern coast t.ave contracts for 124 more. Philadelphia was about to build a bridge across the Delaware to effect a closer commercial and social union with its suburb of Camden. This bridsre would have cost 10,000,000 dollars (£2,000.000). It is about decided that the money, the steel. and the laborers were better devoted to "winning the war." We have before us, again, the example of England, calling a halt in her large public works as of lesser moment than tho "Teat business whose objective is victory.

Men of the "silent worker" type who head our big steel concerns have the Government and told it that it will have all the steel it wants for its ships. These men, in conference with Daniel Willard. chairman of the War Industries Board. are E. H. Garry and .Tames A. Farrell, of the United States Steel Corporation: Charles M. Schwab and Eugene G. Grace, of the Steel Corporation; John A. Topping, of the Republic Iron and Steel Company ;.Jl. A. •S. Clarke, of the Lackawanna Steel Company: Alvah C. Dinkey, of tho Midvale Steel and Ordnance Company. Note in passing that tho United State's Steel Company has more than 11,000 of its men in military and naval service: the Bell Telephone Company has over 7000. Mr. Willard gives the important assurance that there will be skilled labor enough to keep the steel mills going.

.SENATOR BUKNKD IN EFFTGY. Austrians in the United Statcß will be kept at work. Only such as are "at large to the danger of the public peace or safety" will be taken into custody, according to the terms of the President's prescription. The ra.ilrondfi will I<b brought together bv the President's unbounded influence to serve the country better. Academicians have a good dea 1 ! to say in magazine or lecture of the dangers of flitting so much power in one man's hands: but the fact is that the power is there, and that the public is satisfied that it is not being abused, and that the tiublic is increasingly disposed to let the President go as far as •le nlenses. The loneliest of Tsmaelites is Senator La Follette, because he represents the extremists in oppotf tion..!Nobody wants to sit near him, and the students of his own universitv, where his son studies, turned out the other day in a pelting snowstorm to burn him in effigy. Naturally, the railroad officials are anj.'ions, for thev do not know what the Government will do to them. Fairfax Harrison, president of the .Southern Railway, is one of the ablest of their number. He says the railroads "do not ask 1.000,000,000 f £-200,000,000) from the Government or anybody else at the moment. They could not invest it in plant and equipment if they bad it, because of the difficulties of getting materials and labor." AVhat they do want, aside from a rate-increase, new rolling stock, and men to operate the lines, is "the immediate appointment of a traffic officer to represent all important Government Departments in transportation matters, with whom the railroads can .leal to secure active Government cooperation, the prompt and orderly transportation of Government traffic, and avoid the excessive use of preference orders, which congest traffic instead of facilitating it." This officer they will probably secure.