The comet. (Johnson City, Tenn.) 1884-1916, 1915-09-16
BLUNDER Of
Mr.. DUMBA IN
DIPLOMACY
HAS WIDENED UNTIL
IT INCLUDES OTHERS
sHREE MEN ARE INVOLVED
Captain Papen, Military Attaehe OF
German Embassy; Won Pereked,
Consul at New York, and Ed
itOr of Hungarian Paper.

The diplomatic blunder" of the
Austrian minister, if that is the pre-
ferred term, although it deserves
something more strenuous in descrip-
tive analysis-has widened until it in
cludes others beside the chief actor.
1t would hardly have been possible
for DR.. Dumba alone TO have worked
out the details of the attempted in
reference with the work of one OF
our big manufacturing plants. Nee
essarily he had to have assistance,
and this seems to have been given
him by Capt. Papen. military attache
of the German embassy; Won Pere-
ked consul at the port of New York,
and the editor of the leading Hunga-
rian newspaper published in the
same city. These three seem to have
gathered and tabulated the informa-
ton as to the Austro-Hungarians
employed in the factories where mu-
nitions of war we're being made to
fill orders from the allies.
Dumba claims that he was merely
trying to warn his countrymen that,
through an Austrian law, they were
laying themselves liable to punish
ment of a severe nature in their
home country for helping to make
shells to be used against their coun-
tiymen.
But to the people over here the
warning" took on the color of direct
interference on the part of foreign
ambassador with the control and the
management of American factories.
Such interference could be nothing
short of gross usurpation of authority
which one nation could not tolerate
from the representative of another
nation.
For several weeks the New York.
World has been claiming that foreign
representatives in this country were
surreptitiously interfering with those
persons engaged in the manufacture
of ammunition. The capture of Jas.
Archibald, American newspaper cor
respondent, and the finding in his
possession of letters from Dumba to
his home government, located the
persons so engaged. The whole mat
ter came as a shock to this govern
ment, and the request that Dumba
be recalled to Vienna was a natural
result.
Ambassador Dumba acknowledged
that he had subsidized several for
eign-written newspapers of this
country, and that he had brought
pressure to bear on Austro-Hungar-
ian workmen to force the mout OF
the steel and munition works.
These men are the majority of the
labor employed in these plants, and
to call them out was to instigate
strike that would tie up operations
in the mills.
The American government does not
allow rival firms within it's own bor-
ders to stir up strikes in other indi-
vidual's establishments; how much
less would it tolerate such high
handed impertinence from outsiders.
The government had an opportuni'
ty of declaring forcibly doctrine
that should have needed no empha-
sis-that American factories belong
to Americans, and no foreign power
can meddle in their management.
The Dunaba affair represents
unique phase of diplomacy, but there
is never but one way to deal with
such things, and that is to hit out
hard from the diplomatic shoulder.
That is what the administration at
Washington has done, and the nation
will accept the result.