Arizona republican., 1905-09-23
In Foreign Prisons.

The arrest and imprisonment or an American citizen in a foreign land lS always an unpleasant incident. ln- deed. it is unpleasant for one to be locked up here But it is much worse abroad because there are always sus- picions that he may not be justly tried, and also fears that he ma- be iU-treated in prison. The codes and practices of other lands are different from ours In France a prisoner IS assumed to be guilty until he proves his innocence. In Germany a man may be arrested and punished for lese maieste. Tn Russia he may, or might recently have been. condemned to the knout Down in Central America con ditions of Imprisonment and trial are not always the most admirable. There are grewsome stories of the deposed president of one of the states-not Nicaragua, which is at present under nsfderation-being chained to post in an open compound by his cousin and successor. and kept there in all weather for many weeks; also, or prominent men being imprisoned Tn
  vaults until large ransOms were paid for them. There is no thought that any such fate has befaIlen or will be- fall the two Americans who are now under arrest in Nicaragua Neverthe- less. it will be reassuring on other grounds for our government to watch proceedings in their case just as we should be glad to have any foreign government observe our administra- tion of justice to any of it's citizens who had infrfnged our laws
 On the other hand, it is well to bear in mind that there is always a possi- biIitv that an American arrested abroad is cuIpable and deserving of arrest. This nation is not 50 scruPu- Io,1slv Iaw-abiding at home that it's citizens are to be regarded as incap- able of transgresssng laws abroad. On the contrary. there is here a great deal of precisely the kind of disregard for law that is most likely to get man into trouble if practiced in some other lands. A scandalOus license is often en- loved here by snapshot" photogra- phers. but when one tries to make pictures of the fiortifications in some foreign city he is properly locked up, and is deserving of no sympathy.
 One of the hardest lessons for na- tions to learn is to see themselves as others see them, and also to see Oth- CTS as those others see themselves. IL is an axiom of international law that all states are equal in point of ov- ereignty, yet that is one of the last things a people practically recognizes. The dominant note of yOx populi is, We are the people" It was. we be- Iieve, an Englishman who described the characteristic attitude of his na- tion toward all others as one of you be-damned-ness. The description is equally applicable to other nations, perhaps to all of them, or, if there is a difference. it is that the Engnshman is more outspoken, using the objurga- tion in the direct second person, while others less frankly put it into the in definite third. So far as our Latin American neighbOrs are concerned, it will be we'll for them to understand
  that men from the United States are not all filibusters. and are not all try ing to ride roughshod over them, and it will be we'll for us to remember that they down there are as truly entitled to have their sovereignty respected l and their laws and customs observed | as We ourselves. On both sides, more | over, it cannot be too carefully re- membered that a man visiting a for elgn land is under cOmpulsion to ac- quaint himself with it's laws in order not to transgress them, and that if there are any of its laws which he is i not willing or able to obey he always l has the alternative of staying out of 1 that country.