A HARD NUT FOR MR WILSON.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 16539, 12 November 1915, Page 4

A HARD NUT FOR MR WILSON.

If the information which has been cabled respecting the sinking by an enemy submarine of the Italian ocean liner Ancona 13 at all reliable, the President of the United States is to be afforded a fresh opportunity of a -painful nature for the preparation of one of those Notes of his which, according to an admiring contributor to The World's Work, " are admitted on all side's to be models of diplomatic usage, graced with grave and serious eloquence." The case of the Ancona apparently involves, even ,to the wanton massacre of a number of American citizens, a reproduction of all tSe shocking features of the Lusitania outrage. The vessel was a merchantman pure and simple, carrying no munitions of war, and she had nearly 400 passengers aboard. The destruction of the vessel by an enemy submarine clearly involved a flagrant violation of the unassailable principle asserted by the Secretary of State of the United States, in his Note to the German Foreign Office of tho 21st July last, that " the high seas are free, that the character and cargo of a merchantman must first be ascertained before she can lawfully be seized or destroyed, and that the lives of non-com batants may in' no case be put in jeopardy unless the vessel resists or seeks to escape after being summoned to submit to examination." If it was a German submarine, masquerading under the Austrian flag, that sank the Ancona, the violation of the principle upon which the United States thus insisted was doubly flagrant because the German Ambassador at Washington conveyed to the Secretary of State on the Ist September the written assurance that liners would not be sunk by German submarines " without warning and without safety of the lives of non-com , - batants provided that the liners do iiot try to escape or offer resistance." This undertaking was equivocal since ,it still rendered it possible for Germany to dTaw some line of distinction between a liner and an ordinary merchantman, but refinements of this description are not.open to •her in the case of the Ancona, which/clearly comes within the category of vessels that are commonly known as liners. Some colour is given to the assumption that the offending submarine was German by the fact that a semi-official report of the destruction of the Ancona has been issued not from Vienna but from Berlin. If it was actually an Austrian submarine, not a Ger-" man, that sank the Ancona the foulness of the crime is slightly mitigated by the circumstance that it did not involve a studied breach of a solemn undertaking „ upon which the United States based a hope of an honourable and friendly adjustment of the differences created between Germany and herself through the xinprincipled methods of submarine warfare that had been adopted by Germany. It remains, however, a black and indefensible crin\e fulfilling all the conditions of deliberate unfriendliness that were manifested in the cases of the Lusitania and Arabic. It was marked, indeed, by circumstances of a diabolical brutality that were not associated with the sinking of these steamers. For it seems to be quite well established that the submarine officers were guilty of the hideous barbarity of shelling the rescuing craft which were attracted by the Ancona's wireless signals of distress. The feeble attempt to justify the destruction of the Ancona herself by the plea that she endeavoured To escape is completely disposed of by the fact that her engines had actually been stopped before the submarine discharged the torpedo that sank her. Whether the crime was perpetrated by Germany or by her Austrian ally, it was an outrage which should arouse in President Wilson, as the protector of the lives of citizens of the great American republic, a sense of indignation at least as strong as that which, he has manifested over the alleged loss of American property through the policing of the seas by Great Britain. The President has exhibited deep concern over the lawful detention and seizure by Great Britain of American cargoes that were intended for the use of the enemy. It remains now for him to show not for the first time whether the lives of American citizens are, in his judgment, of greater or of less value than a few shipments of exports from the United States.