The Washington times., 1915-07-25
THE REIGN OF ANARCHY

The REIGN OF ANARCHY
Is there any place in the United
States that may be- regarded as even
reasonably secure against the trea-
sonable activities of people" deter
mined to inflict industrial ANARCHY
upon this country, to destroy its
naval property, to terrorize its peo-
pie?
That becomes daily a more mo-
mentous question.
Preparedness to defend ourselves
against foreign enemy is no long
er the paramount issue. Can we de-
fend ourselves against domestic
treason and alien spies that have
scattered themselves throughout the
land?
The battleship Oklahoma, it de-
velops, was much more seriously in
jured by the incendiary fire started
aboard her; and this announcement
is followed by the announcement
that the destroyer Ericsson, lying in
the Camden shipbuilding yard, was
almost sunk as the result of the
opening of her seacock at night.
Only the most vigorous effort of the
shipbuilding company officers saved
the vessel. She was in sinking
condition when her plight was dis
covered.
There is ample familiarity with
the tale, which Admiral Evans once
wrote into a magazine article, about
the cabin boy who had served aboard
his vessel. The boy was bright
and capable Japanese. Some years
later, going aboard Japanese war
ship to pay call Of ceremony, the
American admiral was received in
all state by that cabin boy-the COM
mander of the Japanese vessel!
How many cabin boys and others
who give their first loyalty to a pos
sibly hostile power, are in the navy,
the army, the munitions factories,
the powder mills, the shipyards, of
this country? 1t is time that we
knew more. facts.
1t is time to end all uncertainty.
From the beginning of the
reign of incendiarism, terrorism,
bomb-throwing, attempts against
merchant ships, firings of naval ves-
sells, theft of important documents,
forging of state papers, buying of
labor disturbances, there has been
no serious, at least no effective, eff
fort to end this state of affairs. 1t
has developed into a nationwide
menace. The country could not pre-
pare for war, much less make it,
while enemies with the most hor-
ribly criminal instincts were scat
tered everywhere, even in confiden-
tial posts of intimacy and touch with
most delicate affairs and important
property.
Men begin to look in each others
faces and ask whether this is a ma
ton, inspired by a common interest,
patriotism, and loyalty, or a fear
fully combustible mass of racial
fragments, liable to be set on fire
by internal friction. We have been
wont to think of Austria Hungary
as an empire of jumbled, unsympa-
thetic and jarring elements; but we
have seen that empire, under pres
sure from without and under the
leadership of an imperialistic sys-
f, tenn within, pull itself together and
astonish the world by it's display, of
vigor and capability in the last year
Can the United States feel sure that,
after all, Austria is the real hodge
podge nation? Can it be certain
that the great republic is not itself
the least nationalized of nations? So
long as every day brings new testi-
monies to the decentralization, the
disintegration, the hopeless lack OF
cohesion, among our own population
elements, it will be we'll to consider
the beam in our eye and to waste
no attention on notes that we have
suspected of lodgment in our neigh,