New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1917-05-06
The Anniversary

~ me LpsiiGnid Massacre
On the anniversary Of the sinking Of the
Iusitania it is natural and fitting that
Americans should review ali that has hap
pened since wanton murder first brought
TO this side Of the Atlantic nascent reali-
zation Of the issue that was being decided
on a world battlefield.
There will be no anger and no passion
in American minds We have never asked
never desired, that the slaughter should
be avenged. No portion of the American
people or of the American press has clam
ored for vengeance; no man or political
party has demanded that there should be
German lives taken because American lives
rad been ended.
1t is not too difficult to reconsttute our
own minds as we stood in the presence of
that supreme atrocity The horror that
seized a whole nation in that moment has
no counterpart in our history. We have
known war, we have fought Great Britain
twice, we have fought Spain and Mexico;
within our own boundaries we have con-
Quoted the most desperate civil war in
human history.
But it was not the emotion provoked by
war or the acts of war which moved Amer
leans 1t was not even the emotion stirred
by the sinking Of the Maine nearly two
decades ago. 1t was certainly something
utterly remote from the feelings of our
fathers and grandfathers on the morrow of
the firing on Fort Sumter.
The Lusitania Massacre was not an act
Of war. The victims were not soldiers;
only a portion of them were men. Essen
TALLY, the thing was new phenomenon TO
the American people. 1t was at first in
comprehensive, unbelievable. Despite the
solid and inescapable evidences Of death,
mems intelligence doubted what their
senses told them.
So for days and weeks the American
people stood doubtful and puzzled. They
waited for that evidence they expected.
they believed, would come; that there had
been an accident, mistake, the blunder
of a subordinate which would be repudi-
ated by government, the crime Of a navy
which would be disavowed by a people.
But, instead, far borne across the seas, they
heard the songs of triumph of thousands
of German men and women, who hailed the
crime as victory, the eternal disgrace as
an everlasting honor.
Day by day, week by week, we Ameri-
rams have since then been learning what
Europe has known for nearly two years.
Ne have been learning that we are not in
The presence Of war between nations,
conflict between rival powers; that we are,
rot the agonized witnesses of one more
eonfagration provoked by conflicting am
bitions of hereditary enemies. We have
cen learning that what is going forward
remorselessly, steadily, is a war between
civilization and barbarism, between hu-
ranity and savagery between the light Of
modern times and the darkness Of the
ears that followed the collapse of Rome.
Time and again Americans have been
murdered, time and again our government,
bur people, have had recourse to the ordi-
bary machinery and the ordinary concep-
lions of civilized life. But each time we
ave beheld the utter collapse Of every ap-
peal based upon reason, justice, common
/ humanity. The Germans who slew our
4 somen and our children flung US back the
hallenge that they and not we possessed
/ he true civilization, and that their civili-
alton, their Kultur. was expressed in
heir works, which were altogether good
! ind right.
\ Slowly. steadily, we have been learning.
( Ne still have much 70 learn, but the pri-
harry truth is coming home to many day
+ ~ day. This German phenomenon which
ills the world is new thing and an old
hing; II is new in our generation, it is
4 lew In recent centuries; but il is as old as
hat other barbarism which, descending
F pon the Roman civilization, beat upon it
II Ind spread destruction until it was con-
. suercd ard tanned amid the ruins and the
esert il had created.
H The French, who sec things as they are,