THE: AMERICAN NOTE, T HE. American. Note causes us: little concern
as Englishmen. its harsh and unsympathetic tone will not make us relax in the slightest degree the grip en the threat of Germany which sea power gives. us. We shall answer the Note politely, and we trust, in a. much more human spirit than that which inspiren its words, but. we shall answer it firmly. That we must do in any case, whatever the consequences. But there will be na con- sequences of a serious character. The American Govern- ment, even if they wished to stab us in the back, which' they most certainly do not; know well enough that the American people would not tolerate such action. If the American Government were to move from protests to acts, from. Notes to deeds,. they would call' into activity forces in their own country which, are now happily latent, and which, we hope, will remain lalent. We have no desire whatever to see a pro-British. party formed in the United States. We have always felt that the American citizens of British birth or recent British origin were quite right in amalgamating absolutely and =conditionally with the mass of the American population, and making no attempt to prolong a hyphenated existence. Timid. pessimists here may say, perhaps, that we are much too confident, that if we do not take care. the Americans will stop supplying us with munitions of war, and that we bad better trim our sails as to contra- band. We had better not, and of course shall not, do anything of the kind. We must run whatever risk there may be in regard to the supply of munitions, but, in fact, we do not believe that that risk is great. We do not believe that the Washington Executive will mix up the problem of munitions with the problem of contraband. President Wilson has always in the most clear and unmistakable terms insisted on the right of the United States manufacturers to sell munitions of war to any of the belligerents physically capable of receiving them and carrying them across the ocean, and he is not going to cancel that right merely in order to bring diplomatic pressure to bear upon us.. Great trade interests have during the past year grown up in response to. President Wilson's assertion of policy, and it is most unlikely that he will destroy those interests with a stroke of the, pen merely because the State Department at Washington may hsve an animate& diplomatic dispute with the United Kingdom and the rest of the Allies. Because the provision and cotton trades are prevented by our blockade from doing a large trade with our enemies, and therefore have undeniably suffered heavy losses and been caused much annoyance, it would be exceedingly foolish to cap those losses and that annoyance by dealing a fatal blow at the munitions trade. In a word, two losses do. not make a gain, or, rather, you cannot cut one loss by making another. Nor is this all. The destruction of the munitions trade could hardly be accomplished without America in effect declaring a non- intercourse Act with the Allies, which would, mean the abolition of all European commerce. The blockade would have closed one half of the world, and she would have closed the other by her own act. That is not conceivable.
But though we are. not. in the least alarmed by the American Note when looked at from the British point of view, and are convinced that all it is going to. lead to, or that it can lead to; in existing circumstances, is a war of words, which no doubt will. be kept up during the present war and for many months afterwards, we, as friends of the American people, cannot look at it only from the British point of view. We must look at it also from the American, for we have always refused, and we trust always shall refuse, to. regard America as a purely foreign country, about whose actions we can simply shrug our shoulders and say : "That is their affair, not ours." We make no sort of apology for feeling ourselves deeply concerned, with the. action of the other half of the English- speaking race. We sympathize with what thousands or Americans, and,. those, the best and most patriotic in their country, are feeling in regard to the Note. It is a document unworthy of the best traditions of American statesmanship. What many Americans feel about it may be illustrated by a fable. John Bull, bleeding from a dozen wounds, is engaged in a death-struggle with a cruel and malicious enemy who has taken that foolish and self-complacent old gentleman unawares. Bull's position would be desperate. but for one thing. He has a firm grip on the throat of his antagonist,. and he does not know how to let ge At the moment when the struggle is at its fiercest. John Bull's cousin sends him "a lawyer's letter" containing a message of this kind : ".TaLlt about, death-struggles or life-blood is nothing to me. You have get to settle, that for yourself. All I am troubling about is the. fact that your opponent's necktie and collar are my property, lent to the. aforesaid opponent by me. I therefore hereby give you notice to desist at once from tearing„ rumpling,. or otherwise injuring the. said tin and caller. If you refuse, I shall hold you responsible for any injury done thereto. Further, I. claim the right to make you desist from committing the injuries aforesaid by cutting; off your hand or fingers at present illegally, wrongfully,, and arbitrarily placed. upon ney private property." We do. not believe that that is the. kind of attitude which the depositaries of the best traditions of the great. Republic care to see assumed by the United States in the crisis of the world's history. They feel instinctively that it. is a position unworthy of the American peoples At present they are perplexed and confused in mind. because of the moral weakness shown by their Executive, but when history comes to be written, the Americans of future generations will feel anything but pride when they remember the official action of America during the Great War. They will note how, first, it consisted in main- taining a rigid neutrality on a moral issue—i:e., the brutalizing, as Colonel Roosevelt called it, of Belgium. Further, the. Washington Government bore the outrages committed on American. subjects in such incidents as the sinking of the 'Lusitania.' by submarine action, without any attempt to rescue the innocent crew and passengers of the vessel, until the efficiency of the British Navy had abated the under-water menace. Again, when in the supremo moment of England's agony they found, or thought they had found, certain technical infringe- ments of their rights, they vehemently pushed their paper case, and declared that we must only save 04107 lives and our honour and free the world from the inhuman tyranny of Germany if we could manage to do. so without treading on America's grass-plot or scraping a, little paint, oft her garden fence.. That, we say again, is not an attitude which the most' thoughtful and the most American of Americans can look upon with a quiet mind. They may be perplexed, but they want something better than that from their Government. To borrow Chatham's formula, they feel that, though there may have been folly, Iris= management„ or even want of proper appreciation of American rights: an our part, " nothing shall persuade them that. it is not the cause of liberty on the one side and of tyranny on the other."
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