THE FRUITS OF NEUTRALITY.

Colonist, Volume LVIII, Issue 14298, 28 December 1916, Page 4

THE FRUITS OF NEUTRALITY.

The^ following extract from a recent number of "Tne Expository Times" is both interesting and instructive:— in the "International .Journal of Ethics" for July there is an article by ft "neutral." The author is a woman. Since the war .began she has travelled in Germany, and she has travelled in England. And in both these countries, she has been impressed by one thing. Men and women will not be persuaded: fa believe that which they wish not to believe. "Try to convince a German, that the Lusitania was unarmed and carried no troops, -or an Englishman, that Allied submarines have sunk without warning unarmed merchant ships carrying women ; and children in the Sea of Marmora. You will see how fiercely the closed mind' protects its own exclueiveness, attacking not only the unpleasant information, but its innocent bearer."

So this clever American woman, whose name is Gertrude Besse King, has returned home,1 satisfied that the only attitude for a philosophical mind is neutrality. - She has. returned home to.the'^i^i^^iSt^tes ok America, where she will find many who are neither proGerman^.jio.r pro-British, and to whom neutMity:is-4ihe-7only right attitude, Be'ai-ing;, no unpleasant information, the innocen't'bearer will fear no injury. And yet there are those in , the United States of America who are disturbed about neutrality.' They are disturbed because everything is known by its fruits,, and the fruits of neutrality have not been good, in the American "Expositor" for September there is an article by a citizen of the United States, the' Rev. Charles S. Macfarland, D.D., an v "The Moral Effect of the War upon America." The article has •th£ first. place .Mv • thei "Expositor." This is the first sentence of it: "Recent experiences in "Europe may have led to overemphasis, but I am "constrained to_ the feeling -that,- the moral effect of this- war Vi"upon >&merica may^ bo -worse than upon any of the nations involved." --. ' : -.

Why does Dr. Macfarland say that? Because of neutrality. "Among the belligerent, peoples," *he says, "there are compensatory influences for its awful tragedies. One witnesses examples of splendid bravery and selfsacrifice, the ■ spirit of both patriotic devotion and Christian resignation on the part1 of the widows and children, of allegiance to conscience, the willingness of the rich to share with the poor, the; deepening of the religious- sense, which in some cases has risen to a spiritual atmosphere far above the conflict, the sense of a sublime faith in the future, in some cases the discrediting or militarism, at times the spirit of intercession, and many other moral and spiritual elements which, perhaps, go far to counteract the demoralising, influenced of.':• human strife. Many or most of these elements are wanting in the moral atmosphere of our country." Of. these elements he selects one for particular attention. It is the loss of compassion. - "We have become:'used to it/ " he says, "until ;the; massacre : of; a nation has little more effect \ipori us than the isinking of the ; .Titanic with a thousand souls but four:;^hort years, ago. 5.' ,; , And' then comes; this terrible paragraph: *'For Belgium and her three million :. destitute and starving people we. have given seven cents per capita, while New Zealand, bearing its own war burdens as'p'a-rt of the British Empire, has given a dollar and a quarter per capita to Belgium relief. Eng-jandi.-staggering -under .the war load, has received and' cared for>/thousands of Belgian refugees, and given millions of pounds besides. It was. thought that the United States, the only great nation untouched' >by the: war, might furnish the food supplies for Belgium, but the Commission was obliged to ask food from the whole world to save Belgium from starvation. It must be remembered, also, that the gifts to Belgnyn from our country include the large contributions of the Rockefeller Foundation, so that the total o vf popular contributione is smaller than appears; -For Serbia,: with her five millionsof suffering peoples iand her five thousand orphans, we have given less than three hundred '■■ thousand dollars, while .the British Serbian Relief Committee three months ago had raised a million and a, half pounds ($7,500,000;, and France .two million , francs (s4OO,pop); To the more than one million Armenians, whose story. forms one of the darkest chapters in human history, we have given, covering the whole period, about one dollar for each sufferer. For the sufferers in Northern France little or nothing;-and for Poland's millions of homeless, wandering peasants, mostly women and chil-* ,dren ; 'a total of semetlrihg ;.like two hundred -thousand,dollars.''* ;

It is a terrible paragraph,) we say. We could not have written it \ye would; we would hot hgye written- it %c could. Bu.t as we read it we see tha't'neutrality vis not the bravest thing or the best,:-: '■■'■"■■ ;y: :v • '':■■'■■" ■■."•■■• • ■ ■• -