Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1915-07-23

gigantic struggle. The duty imposed
upon her by the fact that she was the
most influential of the noncombatant
countries was to assert the rights of
neutrals with such firmness as to COM
mand respect and to give proof that
she was not pretending to be evenly
poised between the belligerents while
really helping one of them. Here was
her opportunity to give reasonable eX-
tension to those rights.
She ought to have told Germany
that we had absolute legal justification
for selling arms and ammunition to
whomsoever we pleased, and if we
retrained it would be because of those
humanitarian sentiments which Mr..
Wilson so unctuously upholds in his
recent letter. She ought to have told
England that If we wanted to buy
ships we would buy them from the
Germans or from any one else who
had them to sell. We ought to have
demanded the right of neutrals to have
some part in determining what shall be
contraband of war, and not to have
permitted the belligerents to say that
OIL copper, cotton, food and every
thing else that we have to sell were
included in that class. We ought
to have told England that the North
Sea was an open sea and that we pro-
posed, if need be, to go there and
trade. We ought to have forbidden
the use of our flag as a means of
enabling belligerent vessels to sneak
safely into their home ports.
The three mile limit of jurisdiction
along the coast was fixed in the days
of sailing vessels. Now that guns
send their balls and bombs fifteen
miles, it is an obsolete and ineffective
rule. If England does not hesitate to
declare the North Sea closed, and
(. a nv To N1ar t1Na fnp Il
the British Isles a war zone, it is high
time that something of a like kind be
done in behalf of neutral interests.
/ We ought to have notified the bell
| ligerents that none of their war
vessels would be permitted within
twenty-five miles of an American port,
and thus to have established a prin-
! ciple of great importance adapted to
! existing conditions. We ought not to
| have been humiliated by asking Eng
! land for permission to get information
| by way of the inter-oceanic cable, a
| service due to American thought and
! enterprise and by having the request
refused. That commerce of which
! our cousins deprived us by the depre-
dations of the Alabama while we were
at war fifty years ago might have been
regained with increase while they are
! at war and it could have been done
without sending out prTvateers to prey
/ on them. AL least an earnest effort
could have been made.
| 1t is perhaps too much to have eX-
! pected America to have struck the
blow necessary to overthrow the
: domination by one nation of the
ocean, three-fourths of the surface
| of the earth Thraldom is a possible
state only because the thrall himself
comedies its propriety. The horse has
! long forgotten the steppes of Asia
over which he roamed bidding defiance
to wolf and tiger, and he has become
! patient beast of burden. Slavery in
( the South would have been an i'm
possible institution had not the negroes
come to regard it as the natural con-
| dition for themselves, their wives and
their children. And we have had sung
to us so often from infancy to man
hood: Britannia Rules the Waves"
that we are startled when we hear
| the propriety of the proposition
queried. Servitude is normal and
mental as we'll as physical.
1t has remained for another race of
men of keen intelligence and strong
fiber to cut the withes which bound
Samson and to open up for us a vista
of the freedom of the seas. A nation
which is unable to protect her military
supplies on her most important inter-
ocean liner in her own waters, within
sight of her own ports, can no longer
maintain her claim to rule the waves,
and the fact has been proven. 1t will
not be forgotten that thereafter the
: Mauretania, a vessel of equal size,
made no more ocean trips. When Ger
! many sank the Lusitania with its
cargo of military stores, perhaps
tcovered by the Stars and Stripes, she
| did much for Russia, which in the
! Crimea was prevented from reaching
the Mediterranean; for France, which
| has closed her eyes and ears to
Trafalgar and st. Helena, but most
| of all for America, whose argosies of
commerce will yet be seen steanling
/ to Buenos Ayres and to far Cathay.
What the North did for the negro
| Germany has done for us. Her sub
marines have broken the shackles
which delayed our progress, as they
| halted that of Ireland and Canada.
Encircling us upon the north and
east are Canada, the Bermudas, Mas
sau and Jamaica, while England's ally,
! Japan, on the west approaches the
Sandwich Islands and California. To-
day England is still blockading the
| city of New York on this side of the
ocean and shutting off our means of
communication and Information on the
/ other.
we may we'll mourn for the lives
which were lost on the Lusitania, but
| the great advances of humanity have
always arisen out of death. Wycliffe
and John Huss were burned at the
stake and then came the Reformation.
Joan of Arc met the same fate and