AMERICA AND THE WAR.
[TO TDB EDITOR OF TIIR " SPECTATOR:1 t Sm,—We who, though loyal Americans, have found in the Spectator a fuller and more fair expression of our sentiments and deeper feelings concerning the present war than we have discovered in most of the American newspapers which we were wont to follow in opinion prior to August, 1914, have been irked not a little by the fact that, in playing the passive part to which America has been condemned during the war, we have been suspected on all sides of a gross materialism, profiting at once by the peace policy successfully maintained by the Administration at Washington, and, as individuals at least, by the American output of munitions of war for those not "too proud to fight."
In America, one of President Wilson's minor embarrassments has been the continued agitation in favour of an embargo upon arms and munitions—an agitation fathered by the German agents who teem in America, and wax exceeding fat. Petitions have been circulated against this so-called inhuman traffic, . this traffic in " murder tools." Besides being signed by Germans resident in America, and German-Americans, and German sympathizers of other stocks, these petitions have met with favour from well-meaning persons who have been horrified at the idea of the destructive nature of modern warfare, and have felt that American individuals (for the Government itself is not directly concerned in this traffic) ought not to share even in preparations for the carnage that is devastating Europe. One day last month an American Senator, Mr. Kenyon, representing Iowa, a State which contains a very large number of persons of German extraction, actually presented in our Senate a petition, described by the Press as signed by some million names, begging the Congress to place an embargo upon this traffic in munitions. The correspondent of one Now York newspaper, after an examination of some of the many rolls of paper which made up the petition, announced, to be sure, that many of the names were of German nationality, and that some of them were inscribed in German script, and others quite illegible ; while many were written in the same handwriting— indicating that they were either gross forgeries, or inscribed by an agent acting for an entire family or an entire community, with or without authorization. This petition was referred to the Senate Committee upon Foreign Affairs (not to the Committee on Commerce, as the petitioners had hoped) ; and since then nothing has been reported from Washington on the subject.
There are several points in this connexion which I think
are likely to interest the Spectator, and the readers of your frequent articles upon "America and the War." One of these is the fact that the petitioners, who form a mysterious group, known as the " Organization of American Women for Strict Neutrality," make bold to state in their petition that " Germany did not permit her citizens to sell arms or munitions of war to Spain during our war with that nation." Another point is the reception that has been given to the petition by the more impor- tant organs of American opinion. The first point is the question of the German action during the American War with Spain. It has repeatedly been asserted by German propagandists in America that, during the Spanish war, Mr. Andrew D. White, American Ambassador at Berlin, requested that shipments of arms to Spain and to the Spaniards in Cuba be discontinued, and that Germany complied with the request. This has been raised as an argument in favour of the establishment of an 'embargo upon war supplies front America. The issuance of the petition of tho " Organization of American Women for Strict Neutrality,"-and its presentation in-the Senate, proved the last straw. An American publicist, Mr. Warren Barton Blake, wrote for the New York Times Of January 29th an article
'definitely nailing that particular lie—showing, by the production of letters from the Secretary of State and from Mr. White, formerly Ambassador to Germany, that- the United States never requested Germany to discontinue the supply of munitions to Spain, and that the Germans sold war supplies to both
• belligerents throughout that war, without remonstrance °neither side. Mr. Blake's contribution to the controversy over the munition traffic put a quietus upon a particularly noisy and particularly mendacious propaganda.
One point further. Americans whose interest in the present conflict is neither that of the pacificist nor yet't'he trafficker in arms have deeply regretted that American defences of the current • sales of munitions to the Entente should have taken account
only of the nice points of international law—i.e., of mere prece- dent. It is curiously ironical that in so many particulars we
Americans, who in general care so little for precedents, should seem to be standing upon points of law, for the letter rather than the spirit—and this in other matters than the munitions trade. Well, one great organ of American opinion has at last spoken out. Collier's Weekly, which is the most widely circulated of those popular publications dealing with opinion as well as with the trivialities of fiction and humour, prints in its current issue an editorial upon this same topic of the American trade in munitions. After pointing out that " the sale Of munitions to the Allies by private individuals and corporations in the United States has for precedent the sales of munitions by Germany to Spain, the United States, the Balkan States, Russia during the Russo-Japanese War, and Great Britain during the Boer War," Collier's adds that
" The United States need not depend solely upon precedent in justifying the sale of war supplies by American citizens. The fact that the sympathies of the great mass of the A merican people go out to the Entente Powers, the fact that the future well-being of the United States depends upon Germany coming out of this war chastened if not chastised ; these facts arc the holiest, the realest, defence of our position—if it needs defence." '
That a periodical which reachol several million readers in America, and is supposed to be owned and edited by Irish- Americans, adopts this tone in discussing ono of the minor, yet essential, aspects of America's foreign relations is, I think you will agree, a matter of some consequence.—I am, Sir, &c., Chappaqua, Westchester, New York.
WALDO BROWNING.
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