AMERICA AND THE WAR.
LTO Tag EDITOR 07 TEN "SPICIATOL1
SIR,--It is long since I have written you anything, but the
enclosed clipping from a local daily newspaper offers an extended text which may justify a few words of goodwill.
So much Germanic hysteria of protest testifies abundantly to the trend of popular sympathy. The newspapers may err in detail, may be as imperfectly informed in many instances as any German doctor can declare ; but they are not manu- facturing the American verdict, rather they reflect and incidentally stimulate it. One is struck by the general
unanimity of feeling among people casually met. This in not
due, either, to an unfair bias in favour of England, for most Americans were pro-Boer in that war, and there has never been any hesitancy in censuring England for her course as to other matters. Probably our present attitude may be explained in some degree by kinship and by interest, but it is far more
attributable to an abhorrence of despotic military methods, which are represented to the ordinary mind by the figure of the War Lord—whether or not with perfect justice to him as an indi- vidual is of little moment. The point is that the German soldier has undertaken to stamp inoffensive neutral Belgium into a good road for his travel toward France, that be has shot as criminals unfortunate people who resisted robbery and arson
at his hands, and that in every way his mailed hand dashes aside all promises, all scruple, everything which belongs to con- science, compassion, fair play, or human kindliness. It seems to be just a materialization on the great scale of the monstrous Overman conceptions of recent German philosophy.
The origin of the outbreak is equally abhorrent. Servia was attacked by Austria avowedly lest she should stir die..
satisfaction among the people of her own race, held down by Austrian military oppression—simply another manifestation of the German soldier. That particular branch of the Teuton stock has indeed been the very greatest offender in sneh regards. What Austria has done of late to the people of Herzegovina she formerly did to those of Venice, and before that to those of Lombardy, and long before that to those of Switzerland. She has bullied in each instance until forced to let go her hold. On this last occasion she determined to extend the area of her despotic control. Germany could probably have prevented it; could certainly have refused to sustain an iniquitous aggression ; but, on the contrary, chose to second and champion the offender, and so brought all Europe into the bath of blood. To an outside observer it seems a conflict of the liberal opening future against a mediaeval absolutism which the world cannot abide ; also essentially a struggle for the individual rights of peoples as opposed to mere soulless and heartless power. Its awful losses may be compensated if it makes Berri& one and independent, gives back Schleswig to Denmark, and welds Alsace and Lorraine to France again ; and if the menace of the two great central Empires be removed by such restriction as this bloodthirsty frenzy makes necessary.
Americans are on terms of the most intimate and cordial goodwill with their Canadian neighbours, and certainly are not to be stirred into any kind of aggression by nearly criminal German instigators such as one of the speakers at this meeting. Farther, we realize fully the great value to general commerce, and, in particular, our own comfort and prosperity, of British dominance of the seas as compared with a prolonged wrangle between hostile cruisers scattered every- where. It is certain that nothing but the most compelling moral considerations could make us wish that dominance exchanged for that chaos, and, as written above, the moral considerations work with those of interest and kinship, not against them. As to the last, a brief review of the names of American Presidents and statesmen, and of Americans eminent in literature and most lines of human endeavour, will suffice to show where our sympathies would most naturally be.—I am, [The newspaper cutting referred to by our correspondent describes a meeting held at Anion Hall, Washington, by five hundred German-American citizens, at which the American Press was denounced for publishing reports partial to the Triple Entente, the Kaiser was extolled as the keeper of Europe's peace, and Great Britain was charged with treachery and conspiracy. The principal speaker was Mr. Barth°ldt, a Member of the House of Representatives for Missouri, whose anti-British speech was echoed at every point by Mr. Shamus O'Sheil, described as a member of the office staff of Senator O'Gorman and an influential Irish-American.—En. Spectator.]
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