THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 1915. MR. ROOSEVELT'S CENSURE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LII, Issue 16033, 27 September 1915, Page 4

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 1915. MR. ROOSEVELT'S CENSURE.

The refreshing candour of Mr. Theodore Roosevelt brings to British people periodical reminders that the attitude of the United States to the war is not wholly expressed in Mr. Wilson's scholarly Notes on international law. There is no doubt that the President has many sincere admirers, but it is equally beyond question that Mr. Roosevelt speaks for a large body of Americana when he suggests that the United States has neglected her duty, and has ignobly crushed the instincts of humanity beneath a doubtful and pedantic neutrality. In his latest pronouncement Mr. Roosevelt condemns professional pacificists, hyphenated Americans, beef and cotton Americans, and all who represent American greed for playing the game of a brutal militarism against Belgium and their own country. However sincere Mr. Wilson may be it cannot be denied that his policy has played into the hands of all the classes enumerated in Mr. Roosevelt's indictment. The hyphenated Americans have recently been disturbed by the tone at" official Notes, but there is still no evidence that the fear of committing an " unfriendly act" has greatly upset Germany's submarine plans. The supply of munitions and the favourable reception of the Allied loan proposals have been even more disturbing, but these things only prove that American commerce and American finance have had as little difficulty as Mr. Roosevelt in shaking themselves free from the influence of German opinion. The German-Americans have not been able to control American thought and action as they would wish, but they have been none the less indebted to the professional pacificists and to the beef and cotton Americans for assistance in the campaign that Germany is -waging against civilisation.

Though Mr. Roosevelt is sweeping in his condemnation he would be the last man to assert that all American pacificists are consciously helping the Germans. But when this has been said it leaves them with the unfortunate alternative that by their actions and influence they are unconsciously injuring their own cause. Xo pacificists would car© to deny that the whole fabric of the peace ideal is built upon international good faith and the keeping of agreements between nation and nation. When treaties are regarded as '"scraps of paper," when one powerful State throws good faith to the winds, the foundations of international peace are

undermined and the -whole structure must collapse like a pack of cards. Under such conditions war can only be avoided by the peaceful submitting to the yoke of the aggressor. Mr. Bryan was prepared to go this length, but Mr. Wilson has made it clear in his recent Notes to Germany that the United States still claims to assert the . rights of her own citizens and is not prepared to accept any grotesque interpretation of international law that Germany may choose to set forth. Unwilling as he is to lead the Americans to war the President is not so short-sighted as the pacificists who urge that the United States could end the war by stopping the export of munitions. Nor is he so lacking in imagination as to believe that a German victory in the present war would bring the world nearer to the pacificist ideal or even ensure a continuance of the internal peace which the United States is so concerned to maintain. On this phase of the controversy, at all events, Mr. Wilson has made a clear cleavage between himself and the extreme pacificists, who are industriously assisting Germany against Belgium and their own country.

Reviewing the attitude of official America in the past year it will bo seen that the influence of the hyphenated Americans and of the professional pacificists is at least losing weight. But this cannot bo said of the "beef and cotton Americans." Mr. Wilson is as staunch to-day in his defence of America's commercial claim to trade with Germany as when he first spoke on behalf of the Copper Kings. Wo have heard little of the recent diplomatic correspondence between Great Britain and the United States because on the whole Mr. Wilson's verbal duel with Berlin has been more dramatic and more interesting. In this correspondence the United States Government is still maintaining the legal fiction that while the British Navy is entitled to prevent cargoes coming from Hamburg to New York it is bound to permit the passage of goods from Rotterdam to American ports, even though such goods may have come originally from German territory. The case of the American ship Neches, which admittedly carried goods from Belgian territory in German occupation was made the subject of a recent specific protest under this head. Needless to say the British Government is not content to thus permit American greed to play into the hands of Germany. The British Navy settled the copper difficulty in accordance with the American doctrine of " continuous voyage," but without American consent. It is still working effectively in the same way to prevent the beef and cotton Americans from trading with Germany through neutral ports. Fortunately for the United States and for the Allies American opinion is not wholly controlled by the professional pacificists, the hyphenated Americans and the beef and cotton Americans. When these have done their worst there remains in the United States a great majority strongly in sympathy with the Allies and with Mr. Roosevelt in opposition to every American action that may help Germany to impose its brutal militarism upon an unwilling world.