Evening Post. FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 2, 1917. THE CHALLENGE TO AMERICA

Evening Post, Volume XCIII, Issue 29, 2 February 1917, Page 6

Evening Post. FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 2, 1917. THE CHALLENGE TO AMERICA

I The Kaiser has not been slow to make atonement for the apparent poverty of ! bis birthday rhetoric, to which it was our painful duty to refer a few. days ago. His message to the Director of the Province of Brandenburg is in, his very best manner. The Allies having. brutally [rejected his overtures as.an Angel of Peace, he reverts to his original and more congenial role of tha All-Highefit War Lord in a way. well calculated to | make creation-tremble. "After thirty I months of ■warfare and rich sacrifices," says the Kaiser—"rich sacrifices," we may note in passing, makes a peculiarly rich opening—"the entire German people, in lioly -wrath at the rejection of my peace offer,?are inspired anew, and with redoubled strength stand as one man] with their Kaiser in order £o victoriously pass through the final bloody battle which has now become^-inevitable for home and freedom. May God, who is our good sword, help us."- It must be) admitted that the theology of the concluding invocation sounds a faltering note in comparison with the sublime assurance of the Court chaplain in' his 'birthday sermon : " God cannot permit the Germans to go down." Daring speculators have from time to time ventured to suggest limits to the powers of omnipotence. "It may be doubted," said Burke, 'in one 1 of the most famous of his perorations, "whether Omnipotence itself is competent to alter the essential constitution of right and wrong."- But Dr. Dryander can speak without peradventure of a much less baffling problem than such, a paradox as this. "God cannot," he says, "permit the Germans to go down."- For the present He does not seem willing to permit them to go up, but if Dr. Dryander's theology is sound this unfortunate tendency cannot possibly endure.

The Kaiser's message, if weaker in its theology, contains nevertheless all that one had any right to expect from a War Lord. It appeals to the holy wrath and the redoubled strength of his faithful people, and it does not shrink from invoking the aid of the Almighty as Germany's good sword in her work of devilry. It is for help in the murdering of women and children with other noncombatants, and even in the sinking of hospital ships, that this pious appeal is made. .From the day when her armies first crossed the Belgian frontier until the present hour, no' regard for the moral law ami no such thing as mercy or pity appears to have restrained Germany from any crime that she considered likely to pay. The only change indicated.by the extension of her criminal campaign to which she is now committed is that sho expects it to pay. She modestly warns neutrals off a little patch of sea about a thousand miles square, which includes the British Isles, and tells them that their'ships will be sunk at sight if" they, do Hot .comply. • A blockade on this scale is uf course entirely beyond, jjje

competence of a Power whose command of the sea is limited to the Kiel Carnal and other land-locked, or mine-locked waters. Without a blockade Germany has no right under international law to act in tlie manner proposed, but a block-, ad.c on paper is a quite good .enough cover far the .extension of her pirate campaign , which she now proposes.

Britain's direct concern, in the German announcement is not very great. Her ships will .only be treated as before. The new British, minefields in the North Sea will, let us hope, prove of more serious concern to Germany, and with the arming of British merchantmen may be expected to hold in check Germany's last and most desperate eiisay in frightful-' ■ness. But for the neutrals, and especially, for the United States, Germany's •new programme raises the gravest pos,sible dffficulties. The much heavier toll that, the pirates have recently been able to levy on neutral than on British shipping is evidence of the- value of the protective measures already adopted by the Admiralty, and the new measures adopted on ioth sides are likely to increase the disparity.. 'American stops and American lives will soon be sacrificed to Germany's indiscrinrinating barbarity, unless the banner that waves over the free and the brave is to be content to confine its waving to home waters, timidly., deserting the high seas at, the bidding- of the German pirate, or humbly limiting its use of themjn such manner as he may be pleased to dictate. Against either of these courses the President has already, as his countrymen say, "put himself on record." The strongest thing that he has done since the war began was Ms resolute stand against a. similar attempt at dictation made by Germany about a. year ago. Congress desired to compromise the matter by warning American passengers off British steamers, but President Wilson declined to accept a course which would have been fatal to the honour and independence of his' country, and Congress had to back down.

The demand that is now made'on the United States is of a much more insolent character. The pirate Power will not even sanction traffic on the regular American passenger steamers unless in conformity with. " certain stringent regulations "■ which it will be graciously pleased to prescribe. This, as the New York World says, "is in effect a, declaration of war against the United States." To comply with such a demand would be "virtually to surrender the independency ofHhe United/States among the nations of the world " in a far more abject fashion than the President indignantly declined to tolerate in February last. It is therefore not surprising to learn from Ottawa—from "an excellent official source "—that,' at last, Count Bernstorff has received his passports.