Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1915-07-23
SEES FREEDOM OF OCEANS
IN LUSITANIA'S SINKING
Samuel w. Pennypacker Finds Deep Significance tc
America in Possible End of Englands Rule

TT is very doubtful whether the real
significance and the most impor-
tant aspects of the sinking of the
Lusitania have yet been consid-
cred by the American people. There
has been much expression of sympathy
for the unfortunate people who were
drowned and of indignation against
the belligerent which caused the boat
TO be torpedoed, but these are emo
tions which spring readily to the sur
face and may be aroused over Incl
dents upon each side of every war.
They have been awakened by the Rus
sian treatment of the Jews, by the
Japanese treatment of the Koreans, by
the British treatment of the Beers, 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 judgment and not to
the emotions.
Nations, like individuals, often act
with supreme unwisdom and since the
laws of nature are ineXorable and ir-
lrevocable, the injurious consequences
always follow. Carthage sealed her
fate at the time she neglected to send
support to Hannibal while in Italy.
Mr. Cleveland tried to throw away
the Sandwich Islands, the key to the
Pacific Ocean. The failure to retain
Cuba, only emphasized by the reten-
ton of Porto Rico by Mr.. Mckinley;
the turning of American sympathy by
| John Hay against Russia and in favor
of Japan in the war between those
countries, Japan which is even now
creeping across the Pacific toward our
western coast; the surrender of our
sovereignty over the Panama Canal
under British pressure and Elihu
Roots advice only year ago by Mr..
| 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
| 500, O,00O,O has an ocean coast on the
east with the harbors of Boston, New
! York. the Delaware, the Chesapeake,
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 later
we shall make 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 perceived
! 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-
ton led to the Revolutionary war
When Anthony Wayne won the middle
| west he found British forts supply
ing the Indians with rifles and scalping
knives, and the massacre at Wyoming
| told the same story.
In 1914 she burned our Capitol and
archives. We threatened to fight for
I 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
Even within the last decade an Amer
lean, Shuster, was successfully or
ganizing the financial system of Per-
sia, Mr.. Wilson was promising the
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 influ-
ence of England. All of these occur
rences happened not because of fall
ure to recognize that both were peo-
pies of the same blood, but because OF
the fear that presently there would be
a nation on the earth strong enough
to make uncertain the supremacy o1
the British Empire.
In the present orgy of war the most
wicked event which has occurred is
not the assassination of the Grand
Duke of Austria and his wife, or the
overrunning of Belgium, or the injury
to cathedrals, or the dropping of ex-
plosive bombs upon quiet towns, but
the fact that England, in the hope to
suppress a rival, has turned loose the
Mongol, with all that this fact means
in the future of the world. The brunt
of the evil consequences will fall moi
on Germany but on America. And
the next most wicked event was the
agreement England made with Japan
that she would not cease to fight until
japan should be satisfied.
This war is a horrible struggle fol
existence, for the opportunity for the
heart to beat and the lungs to breathe
the air, and we may well sympathiz:
with all of the peoples engaged in 1t
our own welfare.
1t is entirely plain what the course
lof America ought to have been In TINS