THE 'LUSITANIA. ' AND THE GERMAN VESSELS INTERNED IN AMERICA.
[To me EDITOR OF TOT " SPECTATOR:9 SIR,—Newspapers and clubs here teem with talk of what America ought to do and must do. Only Americans or those acquainted with American conditions can, however, speak rationally on that subject and appreciate America's position at this time. This ie not a war that really concerns America or her destinies, except in so far as her own economic conditions are temporarily helped or damaged. America has bad no band in the blunders of diplomats, and the mad arming for many years on land and on sea by European Governments. America has held aloof from all that, has, if anything, gone through a process of partly disarming her Navy, while her Army, since the Civil War, and not excepting the Spanish War, has been practically nil. She can do nothing in the way of fighting at this time, unless deliberately attacked. even if her citizens should listen to the call of the Allies' Press to rush to the succour and vindicate the principles for which Russia, France, and England are fighting, and, considering her enormous German and Austrian population, she ought not to do so, for the sake of her internal peace.
She can do something, however, to show her loathing and disapproval of the kind of warfare now waged, by which women and children are sent to death without a chance of being saved. She can do a great deal to help along the ultimate cause of a stable peace, a lasting one, and she can do it in a common-sense, businesslike way. She can put her whole force and energy to the task of not only supplying the Allies with every form of arms, ammunition, and accoutre- ments needed to carry the war to a swift and certain end, but also to see that these reach Europe safely and speedily. Unfortunately she has no merchant marine of her own outside of her coast-faring vessels, thanks to the blind prejudices and short-sighted policy of England and France. Bat for that Mr. Wilson's Shipping Bill would probably have become law and the magnificent German vessels now lying idle at the docks would be ready for that service, manned by American sailors, and flying the Stars and Stripes.
Germany would have had a paltry twenty-five million, and would have spent it long ago. It is not too late yet. The ships can be bought, or, if they cannot, they can probably be seized and paid for undersome form of the doctrine of eminent domain. The money Germany would receive represents perhaps some two weeks' cost of its war operations—a drop in the bucket— while the ships themselves will outlast the war, as America both can and would protect them against submarine or any other form of attack. Her Navy is big enough for that, and now that the Hague Conventions and the London Declara- tion have become so much waste-paper, broken and discarded by everybody, and good only as pipes through which to let off some surplus steam of indignation, an excuse to convoy these ships is readily at hand. America has but to say that these ships, sold by its Government to private corporation'',
are manned and officered by American citizens, who in the pursuit of their occupation are exposed to dangers brought about through the deliberate violation and breaking of previous Conventions, and that it is her solemn duty to protect these men on their dangerous voyages among mines and submarines, and woe to any vessel that attacks them.
The Cunard Line has already begun to cancel ; others are bound to follow, in which case bottoms will be scarce, and insurance and freight rates will mount and ship- ment of necessaries will be slow. America can remedy that; and even though it may be a temporary blow to British pride, it will make victory swifter and certain. If Germany should consider the convoying a mums bell, what matters P—I am,
[Our correspondent's statement about the millings of the Cunard Company is exaggerated. The only cancelling is that of the • Mauretania' on the 29th inst.—En. Spectator.1
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