Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1917-07-12

circumstances TO Do mentioned To-
gether. It Is perfectly proper to dis
cuss profits as a matter of business,
with q view to maintaining the integ-
rity of capital and the efficiency Of Ia
Dor in these tragical months. when the
Industry itself trembles in the bal
ance: but 1t would be absurd to dis
cuss them as a motive for helping to
serve and save our country.
Profits No Place With Patriotism.
Patriotism leaves profits out of the
question. In these days of our supreme
trial, when we are sending hundreds of
thousands of our young men across the
seas to serve a great cause, no true
them and sustain them by his labor
will ask himself what he is personally
going to make out of that labor. No
true patriot will permit himself to take
toll of their heroism In money or seek
to grow rich by the shedding of their
blood. He will give as freely and with
as unstinted self-sacriflce as they.
When they are giving their lives will
he not give at least his money?
II hear it insisted that more than a
sustain our Industries, must be paid;
that 1t Is necessary to pay very liberal
and unusual profits in order to 'stimr-
late production; that nothing but pc
rewards Will 40 u-Te"dEus
paid in money, not in the mere liberia
ton of the world. take 1t for granted
that those who argue thus do not stop
to think what that means. Do they
mean that you must be paid, must be
oribed. to make your contribution. a
contribution that costs you neither a
drop OF blood nor tear. when the
whole world is in travail and men
everywhere depend upon the call to
YOU to bring them out of bondage and
-nr11 Y,1o IN Two n
again amid peace and justice?
No Time to Exact Prices.
DO they mean that you will exact a
price. drive bargain, with the men
who are enduring the agony of this
war on the battlefield, in the trenches,
amid the lurking dangers of the sea, or
with the bereaved women and the pitt
full children. before you will come for
ward to do your duty and give some
part of your life, in easy, peaceful
fashion, for the things we are fighting
for. the things we have pledged our
fortunes. our lives, our sacred honor to
vindicate and defend-liberty and JUS
tice and fair dealing and the peace of
nations?
'Of course. you will not 1t is in
conceivable. Your patriotism is of the
same self-denying stuff as the patriot
ism of the men dead or manned on the
field of France. or else 1t is no patriot
ism at all. Let us never speak, then,
of profits and of patriotism in the same
sentence, but face facts and meet them.
Let us do sound business but not in
the midst of a mist. Many griev-
GUS burden of taxation will be laid on
this nation. in this generation and in
the next. to pay for this war; let us
see to 1t that for every dollar that is
taken from the peoples pockets 1t shall
be possible to obtain a dollars worth
OF the sound etuffs they need.
Shipping Rates War Handicap.
Let us turn for a moment to the
shipowners of the United States and
the other ocean carriers whose exam
pie they have followed and ask them
II they realize what obstacles, what
almost insuperable ostacles, they have
been putting in the way of the sue
cessful prosecution of this war by the
ocean freight rates they have been
exacting. They are doing everything
that high freight charges can DO to
make the war a failure, to make it i'm
possible. do not say that they realize
this or intend 1t. The thing has hap
pened naturally enough, because the
processes which we are
content to see operate in ordinary
times have without sufficient thought
been continued into a period where
they have no proper place. am not
motives. am merely
stating fact and stating it in order
that attention may be fixed upon IT
1.-The fact Is that those who have
fixed war freight rates have taken the
most effective means in their power to
defeat the armies engaged against Ger
many. When they realize this we NAV.
take 1t for granted, count upon them
to reconsider the whole matter 1t is