23 JUNE 1917, Page 3

Therefore they endured many hardships and refrained from invoking the

aid of their Government. Yet had they invoked that aid and made an appeal to the country as a whole, the subject was so difficult and so complicated that we could hardly have expected a proud people like the Americans not to have caught fire at the suggestion that we were dictating to their traders. When the action of the American merchants and manufacturers comes to be properly understood it will be regarded as one of the finest achievements not only in this war but in history. They saw things as they really were, and backed their orinion with characteristic hardihood.