CURRENT TOPICS

Southland Times, Issue 17485, 28 July 1915, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS

Ain-:i:ii'Ax opixjox ox the war. An i nt on's t i n tr survey nf Ameriran public sentiment upon the Great War. its causes and it! tcrua t tonal issues, is. provided ;n a volume* entitled •‘Sixty American Opinions on the War." AmoiiKsl tl'.o public men whose opinions are quoted are Joseph It. Choate (formerly Ambassador to England). Theodor* ; Roosevelt and William Howard Taft (exi presidents), Richard Harding Davis,, i William Dean Howells and Henry James, jail three well-known American literary linen; Professor David Starr Jordan, of the Califorman University; Professor | Morton P-ruse, the eminent authority | on psychology; Professor James Erander I Matthews, Mr George Haven Putnam, and many other Americans of “light and leading.” That the vast majority of decent and well-educated .Americans support, almost unreservedly, the cause | of the Allies, is made clear by a perusal j of the opinions quoted in the hook. In l not a few of the extracts one perceives |a nine of rerret Insi a policy'of com- | morcialisin should prevent the United, j States from u>-t;ng in strict accordance i with the tenets of international honour, j for instance. Professor George McLean I Harper, of Princeton, writing to the Xew j Vork Times, says:---“We have far more I cause for intervention in behalf of the | Allies than we had for the war of I*l-. j or the Mexican War, or the Spanish Ware ■ But apart from intervention there is much that xve cun do to shorten this agony. We urn he patient when friction j occurs between our Government and that j of Croat Britain over maritime difficulties. We can, as individuals, abstain, from trading directly indirectly with. ! Germany. It is absurd lo suppose that anybody who is not a cold-blooded egoist lean really he neutral, official neutrality’ “may be maintained, hut the soul is free, and surely the soul of America is not so recreant to the ancient principles of liberty and justice, as to withhold at least moral support from those who, in the British Isles and lr> France, are giving up all they possess to defend that right?” A CHASTUXUD BFP.XHAm >l, A new and chastened Bernhardi ap* pears in a little volume entitled “The B«*rnhardp Hie latest Views of Hr- V.'a.f (>*. AUtvru -■ Pearson, Ltd). It consists mah-f-.r of certain articles written by General ven Bernhardi while he has been engaged oj active service and contributed by him to the Xew York American, together with the crushing replies which the articles elicited in an official statement issued by the French £xoveynnv»nt and from the London Times. The Bernhardi articles, taken as a whole, are writ ten in a very different tone from that ynic'.i secured for the author s earlier notoriety. They reflect, it is true, n bitter, almost jnnlismnnt hatred., of fingland, but the whining, apologetic ntannes in which lie attempts to explain nvway the Uliauvinistic Truculence of his earlier work exhibits him in a verv pitiful light. As to his new predictions of wonderful German successes now that be has been on active service he liM

1 <i' ■■ " - Dnbddjr recognised that the France of e inf' Is not the France of 1870. From ' being ' cocksure, he has how become cautious. As hla Times' critic says: The General, of course, professes confidence in the victory of Germany, but how different is his* tone from that common on : German lips a few months ago! Then ■we used to hear of dates fixed by “All Highest Command” for the occupation ■of Paris, to say nothing of Ypres and Calais. Now, the fight has “assumed a stationary character," and “it is impossible to foresee “bow, and by what means,' the final decision will be brought about.”