New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1916-09-07
Repriisal.

reprisal directed at the Entente Powers
1t regrets the action because it believes
that American interests, American prln-
ciples and American ideals are being
served by the nations who are fighting
Germany, and it believes that German de-
feat is as essential to America as to
Europe.
But. having said this, The Tribune can
not express any surprise at the action IN
Washington. 1t has been inevitable from
the start, unless British and French states
men were sufficiently wise to avoid I'M
necessary dispute and forego unessentlal
activities. Time and again this news
paper has warned its British and French
friends that it was complete and fatal
mistake to rely upon a fancied sympathy
on the part of the majority of American
citizens with Allied purposes, when Allied
purposes either interfered or seemed to
interfere with American rights.
To-day Congress is putting into Mr..
Wilson's hands, at the critical moment of
a political canvass, a weapon which 1t is
manifest can be used with great and
dangerous effect. Perhaps Mr.. Wilson
will not use it. But to reckon on such
abstention is not the part of wisdom.
Henceforth he will be under all sorts of
pressure to use it, and the exigencies Of
his political fortunes may bring him to
the point of using it to its fullest extent.
A oil will bo I ODdOO
and Paris if it is assumed that the power
that is to be conferred upon the President
will not be used. The Tribune believes it
will.
Nor is it less patent that if it should
be used there will be sufficient popular
approval to give force to the Presidents
action. The American people as a mass
resent the interference with our mails and
our news dispatches. They are thoroughly
impatient at the policy of the blacklist,
and they will be entirely reconciled to a
course of action which carries with 1t a
reprisal for what millions of Americans
believe TO be unwarranted interference
with American rights. This was what
Americans friendly to the Allies tried to
make clear when the blacklist incident
first arose. They failed because the Brit
ISL and French governments accepted the
reports of journalists in this country that
the agitation at that moment was purely
political.
Doubtless there were Englishmen who
regretted that the British Government in
sisted upon its rights in the Trent Affair.
in the first days of the Civil War. In
the same way there will be Americans who
will frankly regret a similar insistence
upon American rights now, when the in
sistence does harm to England and may
work benefit to Germany. But, in the same
way, millions Of Americans in 1861 felt
that Great Britain should waive technical
rights because the cause that the North
was fighting for seemed to the North the
cause Of liberty and civilization.
English sentiment at that time, in the
main, supported its government. Ameri-
can sentiment now will support Mr..
Wilson if he employs the club placed in
his hands. It is neither wise nor tactful
for British representatives or citizens in
this country to suggest, as some of them
did suggest in The Tribune news columns
Yesterday, that the insistence upon Amer
lean rights in the matter Of mails and
blacklist makes a strange and unhappy
contrast TO quescence in the matter of
the German assassnations at the time of
the Lusitania and subsequently, This may
be true, but il has nothing whatever to
do with the fact, which is that Congress
is determined TO give the President a
power which the mass Of the American
people are either willing or anxious that
he should use.
There is a very general feeling in this
country that Mr.. Wilson has been unduly
complaisant in the face of British sea
power. This view extends to those who
have no word save scorn for his German
policy. There is a very considerable and
carefully fostered sentiment that it is the
duty Of the President 10 curb an alleged
British desire % steal our trade secrets,
interfere with our industrial expansion
in markets hitherto exclusively British
and to deal arrogantly with the United
States. It is needless to say that The
Tribune does not share this view. 1t does
not believe any such policy is being pur-
sued in England, but it does recognize
that the fashion in which British relations
with the United States in the last difficult
wears have been conducted has contributed
much 20 confirming the suspicion and to
contributing % the aid Of those who, ser
wing German purposes, joyfully seized upon
all possible material 70 support these ideas.
Nor il IL very wise for British repre-
sentatives or friends Of Britain 70 talK
about the possibility Of counter-reprisals
n the President uses his great power as