The Birmingham age-herald., 1914-08-26
WAR ECHOES

supposed to have resulted from desire to take advantage of every possible mo- 1 ment to strengthen Tsingtau and prepare for the expected Japanese assault. cooles have been kept at work day and night digging trenches and piling up earthworks, stores have been gathered, war vessels have been concentrated. and every pos sible precaution within the narrow range of the local commanders powers has been 1 taken. Therefore. 1t may be expected that Tsingtau will put up stubborn defense against the overwhelming force of Japa- nese.
 That Tsingtau ~ill fall, although strongly fortified place, is a foregone, con clusion. A Japanese, army Is moving to invest the place on the land side, and the Japanese fleet will soon be hammering at the forts. Japanese persistence Is on a par with German resistance, and fortune will favor the biggest battalions. Not much information has been given out con- corning the food supplies of Tsingtau but presumably the place is we'll stocked It is not the German habit to be caught nap ping in military matters.
 Whether the Japanese operations will
 
 upon the caprice of war, and not upon the intentions of Japan. German sea vic tories would soon change the aspect of affairs in the far east. A German fleet en route to engage the Japanese fleet Is one of the possibilities. Such fleet would have a treaty right to pass through the Suez canal without hindrance, but it may be safely predicted that Great Brit ain, the master of the Suez canal, would never permit an enemy's fleet to pass through the canal, notwithstanding the pact of neutrality.
 The seizure by Japan of German pos | sessions in the Pacific is to be looked for. This action may be forced upon Japan as a military necessity, in spite of a declaration that no such plan is enter tained. German war vessels will use these islands as places of refuge, and 1t is pos sible that Japan will not be able to clear the Pacific of German vessels without oc- cupyng the German possessions.
 The keenest interest in the far eastern operations will be manifested at Washing ton. Developments in that quarter might quickly affect the interests of the United States. Doubtless Japan will act as cir cumspectly as possible in avoiding any act that would encroach upon the rights of this country, but in the hurly- y-burly of war nice distinctions in regard to the rights of neutrals are sometimes impos- 1 sible of observance.
 | The United States must look after itself | and it's own rights, just as every other nation in the world is doing
 l Springfield Republican, A little light is 1 thrown on that puzzling claim that Eng land was responsible for the war, by the brief summaries sent from Berlin of the correspondence of the Emperor with King George of England. Berlin newspapers are said to be unanimous in declaring this correspondence to show that Ger many to the last moment was seeking peace; at this distance it seems rather to show that Germany was striving to '1o- calize" the war, phrase which in those days cut much larger figure than peace 1 in the reports from Berlin.
 | That strenuous efforts were made in
 Berlin to localize the war by keeping England out of it, we know from the Eng
 fish state papers; that similar efforts were
 made to localize the war by keeping
 France out of it is the gst of tho royal ] correspondence published in Berlin What l France was offered is not stated; a Ger man newspaper in New York asserts that I restitution of Alsace-Lorraine was offered France if she would desert her ally, and there is no other adequate inducement
 that Germany had to offer.
 l I,fe f,.t1 many's aim was to "localize" the war by l inducir France and England to hold
 aloof while Austria conquered Servia Under those conditions it was no doubt
 hoped that Russia would not fight if she did, Germany and Austria would defeat 1 her. and the war would still be local I ized." But the triple entente refused to
 let one of its members be isolated and ] crushed. England declined to help per-
 suade France to be neutral, and thus in
 place of a comfortable localized war, Germany found itself facing Armagcddon. and puts the blame on England
 If the effort spent on ''localizing' the
 war had been spent on preventing it, if the diplomacy wasted in trying To per- | suade France to desert Russia had been spent in persuading Austria not to attack Servia there would have been a very dif- ferent story to tell.
 | Philadelphia Public Ledger: "The oues- ton as to which particular monarch pre- cipitated the conflict is of small conse- I quence for all the conditions were ripe for the conflagration; the spirit of war fare was afiame; the hysteria of exces- sivea&rmament the feverish spirit of mil
 itarism. the thinly yelled threats of the
 two alliances, the tension of merciless
 rivalry in trade and land aggrandizement
 all combined to make Europe a powder
 magazine for 10 years past it merely
 needed a spark to produce the explosion
 Every government now engaged in the
 death grapple is equally culpable.
 The more important question is the out
 come of the titanic struggle. Germany is sore ,beset on three sides; if she
 emerges victorious it will be the most ex.
 traordinary triumph in the history of the world.
 If she succeeds. it will mean the expan.
 sion of her colonial empire and a realiza.
 tion of the dream of pan-Germanism
 The Balkan states, with Turkey, woult form a new alliance with Germany arc
 Austria. and her entrance into Persis
 and the Indian empire would be assured
 England's oversea dominions would b,