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OCR
THE VITAL ISSUE 5
clared and is enforcing a blockade of the ports of
the latter nation. So we cannot by reason of the act
of Great Britain supply war materials to Germany
or food-stuffs or other necessities of life to her peo-
ple. In turn, and by way of retaliation, Germany
has declared a war zone covering that part. of the
coast of England and Ireland through which our
products must be carried to reach directly the Eng-
lish ports, and maintains her right to destroy mer-
chant vessels carrying contraband goods aswell as
ships of war found in the defined zone. While Eng-
land can enforce her blockade of German ports, Ger-
many is not strong enough on the ocean to maintain
such a blockade as against England. Her only
means of retaliating against her enemy’s blockade
which prevents her from receiving the war supplies
and food-stuffs and other necessities in times of
peace that are going to England and her Allies. is
to intercept and destroy ships carrying these same
things to the ports of her enemies. . .
This places our country in a position, brought
about in the first instance by the Allies, that we
may sell military supplies to them but not to Ger-
many. When we do this we in every essential par-
ticular become one of the allies and for the time be-
ing an active enemy of Germany, but claiming to
be neutral. VVe could have said to Great Britain
when by her own act she made it impossible for us
to send supplies to Germany: If you maintain this
blockade, we will furnish no war materials to you. -
We cannot furnish arms and munitions of war un-
der such circumstances to you and maintain our neu-
trality. We will supply all of the belligerents alike
or none at all. This we should have done on the
ground of neutrality; but, on the higher ground of
morality and humanity, we should have said to all
the belligerent nations: We do not believe in the
settlement of international disputes by resort to
arms. We will not aid either of you and thus main-
tain and prolong the war. Instead, we promptly and
properly declared our neutrality, and then proceeded
to give aid to one side as against the other. We were
not honest with ourselves or with the warring na-
tions. We were too anxious to make money out of
this dreadful war to make good our declaration of
neutrality. These warring nations are all our
friends. We should not discriminate between them.
Whatever may be the views of individual citizens as
a nation we should be absolutely neutral in every
sense.
Now let us stop a moment to consider to what this
false and unjustifiable attitude has brought us. A
single illustration will suffice to uncover the evil that
we have done. The Lusitania, a British-owned ship,
undertook to carry to England through the war
zone arms, ammunition and war supplies sold to that
country by American citizens. She also carried sev-
eral hundred passengers, many of‘ them citizens of
this country. The British Government knew the
ship was subject to destruction by Germany. The
passengers were warned personally and by public
advertisement of their danger in traveling on the
ship. The United States not. only allowed the ex-
portation of these war materials which should, on
moral grounds, if no other, have been prevented,
but after the warnings of danger were given the pas-
sengers, and with full notice of the deadly peril that
confronted them, allowed American citizens to take
passage on a ship that was already marked for de-
struction. She was torpedoed by a German sub-
marine and sent to the bottom of the sea. Many of
her passengers were drowned, including a number
of our own people. The sinking of the ship was a
brutal and unjustifiable thing. The American peo-
ple were justly indignant at this acrifice of Ameri-
can lives. The President was justified and should
be upheld in his vigorous and earnest protest against
this crime against our people which but for our own
greed in sending war materials and that on a pas-
senger ship would have been unanswerable. By our
own act we had made the tragedy possible and de-
stroyed the effect of our protest. For this the Am-
erican people are not answerable. The fault lies
with the men who are growing rich and richer by
their trade in the instruments and missiles of death.
Their wrong does not justify Germany, but it has
immeasurably weakened the demand of this country
on the German nation. England has provoked this
sacrifice by a deliberate attempt to starve sixty-five
millions of German people, many of them as inno-
cent as the passengers on the Lusitania, by blockad-
ing their ports. England was fighting for her very
existence as a nation and resorted to strong meas-
ures to cripple her enemy and save herself. Ger-
many was likewise fighting for her life and took like
measures to protect herself. This nation provoked
the destruction of the British ship and American
citizens by shipping, through the war zone, the sup-
plies that might mean the success of England and
the defeat of Germany. VVe were not hghting for
the life of this Republic. We had no.such excuse.
Our motive was the sordid one of commercial gain.
We protested against the murderous act of Ger-
many, but we did not do it with a good grace. We
did not come in with clean hands. We ourselves
were in a sense particeps criminis to this awful
crime. We cannot escape the consequences of our
participation in the fearful tragedy. This was the
legitimate outcome of our false position, our viola-
tion of the laws of practical as opposed to legal neu-
trality, the laws of humanity, the laws of God. We
may have our preferences, our likes and our dislikes,
our favoritism for one nation and our prejudices
against another. We may believe that for the good
of humanity it were better that one nation’rather
than the other should be successful. These consider-
ations might at least tend to justify us in declaring
war against one of the belligerents in the interest of
humanity; but it can furnish no excuse for pretend-
ing to be neutral and so aiding one of the belliger-
ents as against the. other as to make our assistance
greatenand more effective than our actual partici-
pation in the war as a belligerent would be. It is
not our war. Most of our people believe in univer-
sal peace among nations. To aid in one way or
another in carrying on or prolonging a war between
other nations with whom we are at peace is en-
tirely inconsistent with our peace pretensions.
. But even war, much as it is to be deplored, teaches
its valuable lessons and has its compensations.
Amongst other things it teaches us the value of
peace among nations. In this instance it gives a
most powerful impetus to the peace movement of the
world. Never has this movement been more active..
Many plans for the establishment of peace have
been suggested, new peace organizations sprung up
and old ones have increased in membership and in-
fluence. Peace plans, ‘unfortunately, are not always
equal to the war spirit, the savagery that so often
controls the actions of men or the. false idea of na-
tional honor and'national patriotism. As against
the insane war spirit that still controls on occasions
neither peace plans nor peace treaties avail to pre-
vent war.