AMERICANS ARE ASHAMED ALREADY.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE " SPEOTATOR."]
Sne,—Your comments on the latest Note from the State Department to the Foreign Office, the larger portion of which has been sent to this country by cable, arouse in us feelings Of shame but not of resentment. You say that "when history comes to be written Americans of the future will feel anything but pride when they remember the official action of America during the Great War." Americans of the present are as deeply humiliated as their worst enemy could wish them to be. They realize that their President has stained the national honour by his policy of weak submission to German insolence, of spineless acceptance of "intolerable injuries." Six months have gone by since the Lusitania ' was sunk, and all he has to show for his rhetorical denunciations is a " pledge " from the German Ambassador that no more " liners " would suffer the same fate—a, pledge already broken. And in return for this grudging concession, if I may call it that, he has consented to harry England, at the very crisis of her fate, with subtle technicalities over the holding up of a few beef cargoes obviously destined for German consumption.
The net of the Secret Service has gathered in some of the German conspirators on our own soil. There is at last a prospect that the actual incendiaries, the fomenters of strikes, the destroyers of ships, the forgers of passports, may suffer for their misdeeds. But what of those who directed them ? What of the Embassy officials, the Consular Agents, who disbursed the funds supplied by Berlin and Vienna ? There was no occasion to wait for the law to dispose of them. Count Bernstorff and all his subordinates might have followed Dr. Dumba weeks ago. There can be no doubt of their guilt. Yet the President, swallowing all the just grievances we have against them, haggles over a few dollars with that nation which has been our best friend. Was there ever a more pitiful exhibition ? No; we eannot deny the truth of your strictures. But no criticism from you can be half so severe as that which fills the columns of our own newspapers day after day Believe me, Sir, we Americans understand perfectly the depth of national disgrace to which we have fallen. We are far more bitter against the man respon- sible than any Englishman could be.—I am, Sir, &c., , Philadelphia, November 22nd. EDWARD FULLER.
[We are glad to publish a letter from a publicist so distinguished, so disinterested, and so patriotic as Mr. Fuller, and we arc sure that he speaks for millions of his countrymen. It is a pleasure to note that as regards the Naval and Military Attach& of Germany action has already been taken by Mr. Wilson, and that their dismissal can now only be an affair of a few days.—En. Spectator.]
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