The daily morning journal and courier., 1906-03-17

treaty of Berlin, to which it was not, and cannot become a signatory, but it l does earnestly appeal to the principles contained therein, because they are the principles of international law and eternal justice.
 Because the Powers are responsible for the existence of Roumania, the cul- prit in this case" was the simple and fitting comment of the New York Trib- une in printing MT Hays letter-and it is the precise words which should be
 said of the Congo case today-"the
 Secretary of State has directed the note to them in the hope that they will bring the Roumanian Government to a sense of its duties toward civilization" | Will 1t be claimed for 8 moment that responsibility of our Government l for the Jews of Roumania was com
 natives of the Congo States, whose
 very birth and organization were through acts and sanctions in which we shared, under conditions which we helped define and impose. and which
 have been so grossly and definatIy vio- lated? Will it be said that Secretary
 Hay was thinking chiefly of burdens
 felt by us through the coming here of l these Roumanian Jews? Read that great sermon of his and see clearly that
 this burden was simply the technical pretext which he sized for preaching ing it. He was not hunting for techni-
 cal covers for inaction and irresponsi- | biiity; he was hunting for chance to let American preach external justice, l Today the oppression and atrocities
 in the Congo State, of which the appall l ing details are pouring in to us month
 after month, surpass any injustice and persecution in Hungary or Roumania
 in 1850 or 1900 as thousand to one. Hundreds of thousands of helpless and
 innocent men and women are being murdered there under. one of the most
 rapacious and ruthless regimes known
 in human history, The story staggers
 humanity; and the fifty English and
 American missionaries in the country
 whose united appeal of Jan. Il has | just reached us, are not writers of fic-
 tion, but of awful truth. The heart
 and conscience of America and Europe cry aloud. The responsibility which our Government took and shared in
 delegating at the conferences of Berlin
 and Brussels for civilized rule and the j welfare of thBe natives in the Conga
 cannot be explained away and cannot
 be shirked. The American people are ! l1,;o Nya1,r s1a hot
 ernment shall unite with the govern
 ments of Europe in a searching and i'm partial investigation; and, as is their
 right and duty, they have turned to their State Department to utter their
 protest. And from the Secretary of State comes this response: If the United States had happened to poss-
 ess in darkest Africa a territory five times as great and populous as the Philippines we, too might find good
 government difficult, and come in for
 our share of just or unjust criticism" The name of the American Secretary
 of State in 1906 is not Daniel Webster
 and it is not John Hay.
 This almost incredible word from our Secretary of State, unaccompanied as 1t
 is by any expression whatever of sym
 pathy or reproduction concerning the
 horrors which are so deeply stirring the hearts of his countrymen, compels the nation again to remember, what it
 would so gladly forget, that it was he
 who, as Secretary of War, was the
 chief representative and agent of the
 policy of hush" when the appalling