The Watertown weekly leader. [volume] (Watertown, Jefferson County, Wis.) 1912-1917, 1917-04-04

German government has swept aside
under the plea of retaliation and neces-
sity and because it had no weapons
which it could use at sea except those
which it is impossible to employ as it
is employing without throwing to the
winds all scruples of humanity or of
respect for the understandings that
were supposed to underlie the inter
course of the world. l am not now
thinking of the property involved, i'm
mense and serious as that is, but only
Of the WantOn and wholesale deStruc-
ton Of the lives of nOncOmbatants,
men, women and children, engaged in
pursuits which have always, even in
the darkest periods of modern history,
been deemed innocent and legitimate.
Property can be paid for; the lives Of
peaceful and innocent people cannot
be. The present German submarine
warefare against commerce is war
fare against mankind
War Against All Nations.
1t is war against all nations. Amer
lean ships have been sunk, American
lives taken in ways which it has stirred
us very deeply to learn of, but the
ships and people of other neutral and
friendly nations have been sunk and
overwhelmed in the waters in the same
way. There has been no discrimina
ton. The challenge is to all mankind.
Each nation must decide for itself how
it will meet it. The choice we make for
ourselves must be made with a medita
ton of counsel and q temperatures
of judgment BETTING our charac-
ter and motives as a nation. We must
put excited feeling away. Our motive
will not be revenge or the victorious
assertion of the physical might Of the
nation, but only the vindication of
right, of human right, of which we are
only a single champion.
Armed Neutrality Impracticabie.
When | addressed the congress on
the Goth of February l thought that
it would suffice to assert our neutral
rights with arms, our right to use these
as against unlawful interference with
our right to keep our people safe
against unlawful violence. But armed
neutrality, 1t now appears, is imprac-
ticable. Because submarines are in eff
man submarines have been used
against merchant shipping, it is impos-
sible to defend ships against their at
tacks, as the law of nations has as
Sumed more merchantmen would de-
fend themselves against privateers or
cruisers, visible craft giving chase upon
the open sea.
1t is common prudence in such cir
cumstances, grim necessity, indeed, to
endeayor to destroy them before they
have shown their own intention. They
must be dealt with upon sight, if dealt
with at all. The German government
denies the right of neutrals to use
arms at all within the areas of the sea
which 1t has prescribed, even In the
defense Of rights which no modern pub
licist has ever before questioned their
right TO defend. The intimation is con-
veyed that the armed guards which we
have placed upon our merchant ships
will be treated as beyond the pale of
law and subject to be dealt with as
pirates would be. Armed neutrality is
Intellectual enough at best; in such cir
cumstances and in the face of such pre-
tensions it is worse than Intellectual, it
is likely only to produce what it was
meant to prevent; it is practically GER
tain TO draw us into the war without
either the rights or the effectiveness of
belligerents. There is one choice we