Ottumwa tri-weekly courier. [volume] (Ottumwa, Iowa) 1903-1916, 1912-09-24
ENGLAND AND THE CANAL.

contributes an article to the London
Daily Mail In which, while voicing the
prevailing English view that the Pan
ANA canal free toll decision is treaty
violation and an affront to England, he
declares that England will not con-
slider the question of going to war to
settle the matter. He gives his rea-
sons for this conviction as follows:
THE reason why we shall not go
to war is because war would be in.
effective; we could not impose our
will by war. America Is not only i'm.
pregnable in so far as military force
is concerned, but what is perhaps
more important In this connection she
lis quite obviously impregnable. We
could, it is true, destroy her navy,
lombard her ports, blockade her
coasts-and by SO doing create posi-
ton far more onerous for US than for
her. She would be embarrassed. we
should starve-Lancashire from lack
of cotton, other parts Of our popula-
ton from high prices Of food; our
finances would be chaotic from the
havoc which this state of war would
make with the British millions sunk
In American Investments; while Amer
be much less seriously hit. She does
not depend upon foreign food; the for
eign money she has already secured;
her foreign trade Is but drop in q
bucket compared to her internal trade;
she can far better afford to be locked
In than we can afford to be locked out.
Her navy serves no earthly PURPOSE
connected with any vital function Of
her national life; by bombarding her
coast towns we could do some damage
(not much, as all bombardments
prove) to property which is mainly
ours, and which in the end our insur
ance companies would have to pay for.
But beyond that-nothing.
There we should stick. If we landed
armies they would be swallowed up In
the very spaces of the continent. Do
little sum in arithmetic: II it took
three years and nearly a half million
Of men to reduce population of about
hundred thousand, inhabiting ter.
ritory which could not support them,
and having no means Of manufacture
ing arms and ammunition, how long
would 1t take to reduce population Of
q hundred millions (something like
ing territory perfectly able to sup
port them, possessing perfected means
of manufacturing the best arms and
ammunition in the world-a popula.
ton, moreover, which possesses large
elements of just those frontier quail
tiles which were such source of
strength to the Boers--and which has
already beaten US in war, not when
they were numerically superior as
they are now, but when we outnumber
ed them as a nation five to one? Il
am leaving out for the moment the lit
tie element of German hostility, which
alone would prevent the simple naval
seizure Of the canal, even If the other
factors did not render that step I'M
polite, creating more trouble than 1t
would remedy, which they do.
Certain military truths, which be-
cause they were not quite so obvious
(and which, indeed, were not SO true)
as they are today had to be learned
by experience in the case of ourselves
in North America, Spain in South
America, Napoleon in Russia (and
elsewhere), France in Mexico, Eng
land in the Transvaal, Russia In Ko-
rea, Italy in Tripoli. are now, In GER
tain cases, altogether too obvious to
be ignored as they have been in the
past ignored to the greater prosperity
Of the war system
Mr.. Angel says the real lesson Of
this incident is the failure of war, the
war system and all that it implies.
When a great power takes an attitude
calculated to hamper our movements
and commerce with half the universe
we submit, because warm the pre-
paration for which the nations have
piled up ornaments to the skies and
given an amount of collective effort
In excess Of that given to any other
object whatsoever-is utterly ineffec