The Brattleboro daily reformer. (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1913-1955, 1916-01-18
Peace Diplomacy's Failure; Yes But
Boston Hprald1

Peace Diplomacy's Failure; Yes But
Boston Herald.)
Seventeen Americans have lost
their lives in Mexico. They were in
that foreign country in the pursuit OF
legitimate gain, but in regions of
known hazard where their government
had repeatedly warned them not to
60. We regret their fate exceedingly |
We hope no effort will be spared to
prevent recurrence of the outrage.
This outrage is being widely pro
claimed as a 'failure' of the peace
diplomacy, as an example of the fruit
lessness of notes, of the fatuousness
of trusting to a typewriter, of the
folly of negotiation at time when
we might just as well be killing Mex
lean poems and swelling our own pen
sion roll. All persons of youthful-mind-
edness, whether in the halls of legisla
ton or among the headline writer's of
our newspapers, are foaming with rage
over this failure of the Wilson ad-
ministration s diplomacy. And the
sleek old concessionnaire in the back
ground is chuckling at the storm of
indignation that sweeps over the young
men of the country, as they view an
act that increases the risk of CONNER
cial exploitation of more primitive
lands and weaker peoples.
But we ought to save our sense of
proportion in this world. There are
other failures besides those of
President Wilson in excepting US out
of war Our neighbors across the sea
in Great Britain, in the summer of
! 1914 were confronted with the neces-
sity of deciding on course of action
/ They decided-and we are not now
! blaming them-to 60 to war. There
| has been just a trace of Failure >
| here. As against the seventeen Ameri-
cans killed in Mexico, Great Britain
has already laid down 100000 of the
| flower of her youth in killed, wounded
and missing, and she may lose as M ny
more before the war is over. Young
artisans in England have been sent
out to meet young artisans in Ger
many, with whom they had no griev-
ance, and the fortunes the two groups
/ have inflicted on each other at their
meeting have rivalled the ingenuity of
a demon. They have been disembow-
elled, their eyes gouged out, their
| hearing destroyed their reason blasted;
! they have been condemned to drag
their way through life, for the rest
of their days, bereft of their faculties
and perhaps of their reason. Their
faces have been screwed into fearsome
shape by the agonies of the gas bomb,
or they have persisted in its torturing
pain Parents and friends at home
4 have seen one boy and then another
4 fall in death, while they are carrying
up and down stairs third hopelessly
crushed by battle s wounds.
1t must be such scenes at these
that our blatant jingoes have IN mind
when they unctuously remark: - am
ashamed of my country. There was a
time when / was proud to call myself
an American. l do not feel that way
any more. I dread to pick up the news
papers in the morning TO read what
new surrender of the administrat on
to expediency, what new humiliation
Wilson consents to stand This talk
is decidedly in the air. MAN. excellent
| people are undeniably ashamed of their
country, because it has allowed seven
teen men to be murdered in Mex 60
and several times that number to lose
their lives by travelling on the ships
of belligerent powers. We share GER
tain of these sentiments.
But there are other things which
might make one ashamed Of one s
= country, or one s age or one s civil
5 zation. To our mind the scenes of hor-
ror constantly enacted in Serbia AMI
Montenegro and In the trenches or
Flanders; the short rations of the
peasantry and starving babies of Ger
? many, and the undeniable distress in
Great Britain, might occasion some
shame that the children of men had
found no better way of composing
= their differences. AS between the two
/ sets of things to be ashamed about, we
, have no hesitation in expressing cur
preference for the things that we have
to be ashamed of in America. We are
+ less ashamed that seventeen men have
s been killed there than that 100000
Americans no unreasonable estimate
should die in Mexico of tropical dis
! eases and wounds of battle III the sub
+ iugation of that country.
d One Fuller, an essavist Of the old
o time, in speaking of history, said that
a knowledge of it gave one "the wis
5 dom of years without its gray hairs
:, and the experiences of age without
) its infrmitics. Can we not as a PEG
= pie view these present-day problems
> with a little of the wisdom of year;
5 and a little of the experiences of age
= Why Does Coal Cost More?