The Nome daily nugget., 1915-08-24
By SAMUEL w. PENNYPACkER,
 Ex-Governor of Pennsylvania.

It is very doubtful whether the real significance and the most important aspect of the sinking of the Lusitania have yet been considered by the Amer ican people. There has been much expression of sympathy for the unfor tunate people who were drowned and of indignation against the belligerent which caused the boat to be torpedoed, but these are emotions which spring readily to the surface and may be aroused over incidents upon each side of every war. They have been awak- ened by the Russian treatment of the Jews, by the Japanese treatment of the Coreans, by the British treatment of the Boers, and as in those cases, they are evanescent and will be forgotten with the first shifting of the scenes. The event ought to appeal to the judg- ment and not to the emotions
 Nations, like individuals, often act with supreme unwisdom, and since the
 
 revocable, the injurious consequences always follow. Carthage sealed her fate at the time she neglected to send sup port to Hannibal while in Italy. MT. Cleveland tried to throw away the Sandwich Islands, the key to the Pa ciic Ocean. The failure to retain Cuba only emphasized by the retention of Porto Rico by MT. Mckinley; the turn ing of American sympathy by John Hay against Russia and in favor of Japan in the war between those coun- tries, Japan which is even now creep ing across the Pacific toward our west ern coast; the surrender of our sov- ereignity over the Panama Canal under British pressure and Elihu Roots ad vice only a year ago by MT. Wilson are familiar instances in American history of governmental mistakes. sure to bring results of grave moment in the future of the nation.
 Any American who wants to fore cast what that future is to be needs only to recognize that the territory we occupy. with population soon to be 100,000000, has an ocean coast on the east with the harbors of Boston, New York, the Delaware, the Chesapeak, Charleston, Savannah, Mobile and Gal weston and an ocean coast on the west with the harbors of San Francisco Ia. coma and Seattle. Nothing can be more certain than that sooner or latet we shall make a struggle for the pos session of the seas.
 Our concern is not with the occu- patton of the land on the continent of Europe, but with that of the waters which surround us. Our interests are necessarily antagonistic to those of the nation which seeks to control these seas Instinctively England perceive" that our progress foreboded a rival, and every step in advance which America has ever made was secured over her opposition. Her efforts to prevent the growth of the colonies are set forth in the Declaration of Inde- pendence Her purpose to tax colonial property and deny colonial representa- tion led to the Revolutionary war When Anthony Wayne won the middle West he found British forts supplying the Indians with rifles and scalping knives, and the massacre at Wyoming told the same story.
 Tn 1914 she burned our Capitol and archives. We threatened to fight for the boundary line of 54 degrees 40 minutes north, but we did not fight, and she took the land President Polk in his journal tells that she tried to prevent Texas from coming into the Union and urged the Mexicans into war with us.
 In 1861, while We were in the midst of a struggle for existence, she con structed the Alabama and Florida and took advantage of the situation to drive our commerce off the oceans Even within the last decade an Amer1- can, Shuster, was successfully or ganizing the financial system of Per sia, MT Wilson was promisingf tho American people that they should be permitted to send their own boats through their own canal free of tolls and both were thwarted by the inf1u- ence of England. All of these occur rences happened not because of any special hostility, not because of fail ure to recognize that both were peoples of the same blood, but because of the fear that presently there would be { nation on the earth strong enough tt make uncer ain the supremacy of tn British Ftnl ire.
 In the present orgy of war the mos wicked event which has occurred is no