Evening Post. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 18, 1915. THE REPLY OF AUSTRIA

Evening Post, Volume XC, Issue 147, 18 December 1915, Page 4

Evening Post. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 18, 1915. THE REPLY OF AUSTRIA

The Washington correspondent of the Daily Telegraph says that the Austrian reply to the protest of the United States concerning the torpedoing of the An-cona is regarded as "wholly" unsatisfactory, disappointing, and unacceptable.." The condemnation is fairly sweeping, but there is tautology in the epithets, and they are neither so crisp nor so characteristic as they surely would have been if both the source and the channel had been purely American. A description of the Note as quibbling, evasive, hypocritical, and insulting would have come nearer to its essential characteristics. Though a much tamer piece of writing than the German Note of Bth July on the Lusitania business, the Austrian document is in all the respects we have mentioned fully worthy to rank with that literary masterpiece of diplomacy. We miss the full-blooded rhetoric of tie German Note, but with a greater economy of effort the Austrian draftsman succeeds in producing an effect that is equally insincere, and from his studied eurtness sometimes appears to be even more insulting. The humanitarian expressions in the two Notes well illustrate this point. In reply to America's appeal to the principles of humanity, Germany, the murderer of more than a thousand non-combanta-nts, replied . with the •convincing earnestness of a Chadband: "This appeal finds a complete echo in Germany, which has always adhered to the principle that war must be waged by armed, organised forces, and the enemy's civil population spared as much as possible." Austrian humanitarianism is less profuse. It is indeed as curt as it could possibly be made, and comes in with a most artistic insolence as an afterthought in the very last sentence: "The Government fully sympathises with the victims." Essentially, however, the sympathy of both Governments is of the same quality.

','1 weep for you," the Walrus said, "I deeply sympathise" ... Holding his pocket-handkerchief ' Before his streaming eyes. But the sympathy of the walrus did not prevent him from devouring his victims, and Austria's murder of non-combatants will continue just as long as her sympathy is held to be a sufficient reparation.

Apart from this tender postscript, the Austrian Note is couched in the very best pettifogging style. No list of witnesses has been, submitted by the United States, no list of the victims has been submitted, no reasons are, given for tho .demands made, and there is actually a .Jt'eCftrsjiss jo_sc.nt\eviQ.Us_outrag^_of _the

same kind lor which the Austrian Government was not responsible, of which it knows absolutely nothing, and which, anyway, does not count. This is with-, out exaggeration the pith and substance of Austria's reply to President Wilson's protest. The explanation of this insolent procedure is to be found in another remark made by the Daily Telegraph's Washington correspondent. Though the Austrian Note opens with a, reference to "the sharpness of America's censure and the firmness of her demands," the. writer was not taking the censure and the firmness of the United States Government at their face value. "Not one in a hundred people," says the Daily Telegraph's correspondent, referring either to the people of Washington or to the whole American nation, "believes that a rupture with Austria will occur on America's initiative," and he' adds that both Austria and Germany fully understand the position. Diplomacy without force behind it is as effective in such a case as moral suasion upon an ordinary murderer who knows that there is no policeman to back it. The supposed triumph' of American diplomacy in its dealings with Germany was probably due in the main to the growing efficiency of Britain's anti-submarine tactics. But, whatever the cause and whatever the effect in the other case, Austria professes herself entirely innocent and even ignorant of it. "Austria has no knowledge of such correspondence, and in any case the two affairs are different." Probably the most important difference is that the game of the submarine is not so obviously played out in the Mediterranean as it was in British waters when President Wilson's long correspondence with Germany over the Lusitania case was drawing to a close—if, indeed, it has yet reached a close. The President must now show his teeth as he showed them to Germany in July, and in due course support his bark with a bite, if he is not to write himself down' as worthy to row in the same galley with Mr. Henry Ford and his crew. Nobody expects war, but President Wilson must save his own face and the honour of his country by something better than a verbal protest against the quiet insolence of Austria.