The Birmingham age-herald., 1917-03-29

1 and humanity the less, but money more 1 When the war broke out our grea- | President warned us that 1t would oe | un-neutral in spirit to lend money 70 | either -belligerent and he was righ, 1 then, because no one can invest money ! anywhere without his sympathies, best l wishes and prayers going with the in- vestment That warning was both neu- | tral and impartial. But when England l wanted to borrow. a cool billion the | warning was unheeded and hushed. and our neutrality acquired slant. It ! has since passed several stages, lead- l ing away from the starting point Of l impartiality. The next stage was be- l nevolent neutrality; that is, friendly i to the allies There we stopped for l sometime and nothing could move us l from that mooring. We have suffered | indfgnities; we have been defied; our
 American coastwise ships have been
 taken to England as prizes for no other
 reason than that some of the stock | holders bore German names. "even as | you and l." The freedom of the seas
 has been denied us; the channel and | the busiest part of the North sea has
 been mined, and if we go where Eng
 land says we shall not go our ships | are sunk and American lives lost, with
 no one to blame but blind, deaf and dumb mine and ourselves for not heed | ing Ehgland's warning.
 | We have been told that we must not ! trade with the enemies of England; | that hospital supplies are aband, | and that we may sell to other neutrals | only that which England allows them I to have, and not an ounce more than
 she permits. Our mails, even to neu- trals, are examined by the British, | who have admitted that information,
 interesting to British firms, has been | turned over to them. Old Glory has been abused and firms of our own | America, unwilling to be subservient
 to Great Britain. have been boycotted. We have protested to Great Britain without avail. while our loans and 1 credits extended to the allies have grown to the enormous sum of over $2,OOO,000,000. President Wilson has called the blockade of Germany illegal and fndefensible, while in the matter or our coastwise ships taken to Eng land we have been told that @ per emptory demand for the return of our property would mean war with Eng land We have not insisted on our rights on the open sea or anywhere ! else, where the mother country Eng land, who has always acted as a cruel
 step mother to us. has denied them Amerlcanism. which have admired from the time when I learned to read
 and to think. has also, like our neu- trality, been subject to sinister in- fluences and is fast disappearing Would George Washington, Thomas Jefferson. Andrew Jackson have insist ed on doing right and getting our rights! By the eternal. they would ONE WORD, EMBARGO"
 In this present war we have not suffered nearly as much as the neu- tral nations of Europe and we could have compelled fair treatment with out war by simply whispering into the ear or our stepmother country one lit tie word: Embargo The President
 had the power to speak this word. He has not spoken it and in consequence we have been wronged, and we now pay almost famine prices for all we eat, while England, whom we help to proVlde, pays about 50 per cent for the same things. The neutral nations or Europe have invited us to join with
 them to urge England to abandon law
 iessness. We found it to our interes.
 not to join them. but when Germany In retaliation, compelled by necessity
 and lighting with her allies for all she
 achleved; nay, for her very existence.
 against l2 enemies, steps outside of
 the law and uses all her means to win
 the war and gain the freedom of the
 sea Tor all the world. then we break
 relations with her and ask the same neutrals. whom we refused to join be- lore, to join us in such unfriendly ac- tion
 Our neutrality has developed into un- friendly neutrality (to Germany) and now lnto armed neutrality. If Lansing was
 rlght when he said in 1916 that armed
 nerchantmen were warships then we are
 making war by arming our ships to resist
 Warshlps. If we were right in 1916, then
 our minority congressman and senators
 We're right now in not wishing to a,-
 thoflze measures which would surely
 cnange our precarious neutrality into war
 and push us off the brink into the mael- strom. l want to say right here that T duihlfe the courage of our plucky con- gressman, George Huddleston, whom I am proud to call friend. He will stand py the people and the constitution, and do that which he considers right. re- gardless of the clamor of war shouters. aud regardless of his own chances. If IS his Americanism which I admire
 am not condoning the conduct of Ger many Tn this war: she has hurt us griev- ously, but she has only done so when We d1sregarded her warning and inter iefed with her object to win If we could Just strain ourselves to the extent of imagining for one moment our beloved Amerlca Tn the same position in which Germany finds herself and ask ourselves ! what We would have done under the cir cumstances, then we would excuse a good
 many things, and we might even be fair enough to blame ourselves for some things. Before the ill-fated Laconia left Halifax 25 English women and children were compelled to leave the ship, while Amer1can passengers were not even warned.
 We have taken orders from England and obeyed them or taken the conse- quences, but we will not take them from upstart Germany or have our rights. to go where we list, abridged by her. We are not afraid of any nation, am proud 10 say, and why should we fear men, II We fear God, who has so greatly blessed us, and who will surely take care or the righteous? But there is such a tnlng, our President says as being too proud to fight. We are too proud now 10 nght England because Lord Kitchener
 has said before he went to his reward that England and her allies could not win without America, and we are in terested to the extent of over 5000 coo, 900 Tn England's success. wish we were also too proud to fight Germany, whose thir- teenth enemy we will be. There is luck In odd numbers says Roary OMoore We need not fear Germany: She has her hands so full and she has shown that she does not wish to fight against us IT we must fight then she would rather nave others fight us, she being engaged III very urgent operations. Our gravest danger will not be Germany but our status m this war, our allies "in spe."
 WILL WISH TO WIN
 If We go to war we will not have peace without victory, but we will wish to win no matter how much Germany may feel humilitated by having to succumb to her thirteenth enemy, while she knows that she is right and that envy greed and