The Wanganui Herald. (Published Daily.) SATURDAY, MARCH 31, 1917. GERMANY AND AMERICA.

Wanganui Herald, Volume LI, Issue 15183, 31 March 1917, Page 4

The Wanganui Herald. (Published Daily.) SATURDAY, MARCH 31, 1917. GERMANY AND AMERICA.

That tool of Kaiserism, Coflnt von Bethmann-rHoliweg, has been talking to the Reichstag again, and with that transparently obvious sophistry, ' so thorough German, and so completely childish, he seeks to place on the United States the responsibility for any war that may ensue between the latter country and Germany, No one, of course, is taken in by the Hollwegian :speciousnesa, indeed it is probably Abe case that even the Germans themselves see through the Chancellor’s rubbishy talk as easily ae other people do. Certain it is that his latest attempt to fasten responsibility on the United States will be no - more successful than ■ similar attempts to make England responsible for German unrestricted submarining, and for the diabolical torpedoing of hospital ships. Least of all are the Americans likely to be taken in by it. For whether they want peace or war, their business instincts, • aroused by the danger to their trade, will make them able to perceive the true situation, even though the plight of Belgium and numberless other gross outrages were unable to rons© their humanitarian feelings sufficiently to call forth even a protest. "

That American opinion is at long last ageing Germany in her true* colours is evident from a recent editorial in: the New York Times, which is: equally, applicable to Hollweg’s latest speech, in the Reichstag as it was to the situation when written six weeks ago. “Germany,” says, the New York Times, “has put down her last stake; already it is lost. She did not expect England to enter the war. At its beginning she felt that our sympathies were with her, she sought to win them by her propaganda, If we may accept at their face value the words of her recent official communications, she believed that the Government of the United States would understand and accept her reasons for assumption of submarine warfare in violation, of law. Germany is ‘surprised’ that we do not welcome measures promising an early end of the war, which she supposed to be our chief desire. All her greater calculations have gone wrong, conspicuously the greatest of them all, that which prefigured for her a speedy victory over the Allies. Now in throwing upon the table what the German Chancellor calls her last stake, she has again grievously miscalculated. Instead of meekly consenting to her invasion of their rights, the neutral nations of the world rise against her. The greatest of thenj all, the -United States, has dismissed her Ambassador and recalled her own representative at Berlin.”