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limited war, for the delimitation of the Canadian frontier, and was continued by Pitt as an unlimited war, for the destruction of the national power of France. The present war belongs to the unlimited category, for its object is not the acquisition of a piece of territory, or the rectification of a frontier, but the destruction of the military power of Germany, and the redemption of the world.

A million American citizens, having drilled and equipped themselves as soldiers, have left their homes and business, and sailed across some three thousand miles of ocean, sown with mines and punctured by submarines, to redeem the world! And this is no idle boast, or flourish of rhetoric; for, disagreeable as it may be for Britons and Frenchmen and Italians to admit the fact, had it not been for these million Americans the war would have been lost, as the deserved punishment for forty years of democratic claptrap and party politics. To redeem the world from lust, and lying, and cruelty, from the breach of treaties, from pillage and devastation, from the murderers of Nurse Cavell, the sinkers of hospital ships, and the torturers of helpless prisoners innumerable, a million Americans arrive! Let us never again ask President Wilson for a definition of his war aims: he has said it, with a ring of Puritan simplicity that will echo round the globe, and he will never say it again quite as well. The quickwitted Finns and the excitable Poles and Czechs may hear his word, and it will come to them as tidings of great

The Saturday Review

joy. The dreamy democrats of Russia will hear it, and they may tell the moujik, who cannot read or write, as he grubs the soil to stay the pangs of starvation, that a great army has come out of the West to redeem the world. But they who will certainly read and weigh every word of the American Secretary's report and the President's reply are the Kaiser and his son, and the glittering crowd of marshals and generals, who plotted this war, and the dingier ring of politicians and journalists, who aided and abetted them. abetted them. How will they feel about it, they who began by laughing at American intervention, and then denied the possibility of transporting an army across the Atlantic? What does Baron Kühlmann think now of a Thirty Years' War? And exAdmiral von Tirpitz and Ludendorff, what do they think of the redemption of the world? They may now begin to realize the truth of the saying of another great American-You cannot fool all the people all the time.' Mr. Gerard has pictured for us, in his second book, the wave of exultation that swept over the German nation when the news of the sinking of the Lusitania was published. Only one Cabinet Minister and one high financier expressed to the American. Ambassador their regret and their perception of the blunder that had been committed. Surely the German people must be stung by some divine or diabolical oestrus when they rejoice over the fact that the most populous, the richest, and the most intelligent democracy in the world has joined the ranks of their enemies.

SEA JUSTICE

M. RIVELLI, Secretary of the French Sailors' Federation, an equivalent to the powerful Trade Union of the British sailors and firemen of which Mr. Havelock Wilson is president, has announced that the French merchant seamen now join with their British comrades in the ostracism of Germany after the war. Broadly speaking, French and British sailors have declared that they will not work with Germans, sail with Germans, or carry any goods to German ports. The rule is to be observed for a term of years, which is steadily increasing in proportion as German crimes at sea continue. What we anticipated would happen when Germany began submarine piracy is now occurring. The French look forward to a combination of the seamen of all the free nations' making an international brotherhood of the sea, from which Germany is quite definitely to be excluded for a period of years. Whether or not that period will be extended depends upon the conduct of Germany. The sailors' plan is something as new in international relations as are the German atrocities. The Barbary pirates and the corsairs of Algiers were examples of organized piracy; with the deeds of the pirates of the Spanish Main most people are acquainted; but that a great European Power and a sovereign state should deliberately adopt the methods of the black flag as a rule of war was reserved for the apostles of Kultur. The fact that Germany is a sovereign state, and that piracy is practised under the flag of the Imperial German Navy, has put the international jurist in a difficulty.

He is confronted, as usual, with a case for which his elaborate arrangements did not provide. The crime of the pirate and the crime of the German naval officers and men are one and the same. But because the Germans are acting under the orders of their sovereign, they are not to be punished.

The penalty for piracy, by universal consent and universal practice, is death. But as the German is not legally declared to be a pirate, when he is captured he is treated as a prisoner of war. And from the legal point of view, no doubt, the system is very right and proper. Moreover, were the German treated as he deserves, there would, of course, be reprisals, and the sufferings of our unhappy prisoners would be increased. That is the situation. But the doctrines of international jurists do not interest practical seamen. They own scant respect for a body of academic rules which are largely formulated by tedious foreign professors, and whose observance cannot be enforced. The iniquity of the German, in the sailors' view, is not that he has infringed the law of nations or broken Hague Conventions, most of which were devised by Germans to the injury of England, but that he has violated the unwritten laws of the brotherhood of the sea, and outraged the immemorial and humane sea tradition. That is the unforgivable sin which Germany must expiate. She has sunk merchant ships without warning, set their crews adrift in open boats hundreds of miles from land, fired on sailors after they had surrendered, drowned women and children, and (on one occasion at

least) taken men on board a submarine, grouped them on deck, and then submerged the vessel. Let it not be supposed, as it is argued by the feeble-hearted, that the German people are ignorant of these things. They rejoice in them. They gloat over them. They struck a medal to celebrate the sinking of the Lusitania. And they are cast out from the brotherhood of the sea.

The seamen have not taken over the administration of the law. The law is helpless. All that the state can do, at present, is to declare war, and that was done by this country before the submarine campaign began, and since by the United States. What the seamen have done is to assert their personal rights. There is no law compelling a man to work with or sail with a German. No man can be forced to sign on for a voyage to a German port. Nor can any government prevent the Germans from receiving the punishment decreed by the sailors of

The London Post

free nations; and any government would be well advised to refrain from such an attempt. There are some things honest men will not stand; and the German at sea is one of them. Not for a generation, and very likely more than one, will the German put to sea without some peril to himself. When he struck at the brotherhood of the sea he struck at a power as wide as the sea, as strong and as pitiless. Seamen have long memories, and minds untainted by money, for money does not come their way. They cannot be bribed to trade with the German. Were it no more than a matter of self-defense, the seaman would still be constrained to teach the German his lesson. There are people who argue that the prospect of receiving a part of their dues after the war encourages the poor misguided Germans to go on fighting. But whether they go on or not, they cannot undo the past. reap as they have sown.

They will

A GERMAN PEACE

Ir any of our pacifists contemplate the possibility of making reasonable terms with the Boche, they should first study the plight of Rumania, and should then reflect what the peace terms imposed by an undefeated Germany would be like. Annexations masquerade as 'rectifications of frontier,' indemnities are levied in some specious fashion by a number of socalled agreements, and economic subjection is carefully concealed. The cry of 'No annexations and no indemnities,' the idea of no 'economic

war after the war' have been flouted by the Central Powers with all the cynicism and contempt which they would display towards a pliant and credulous peace conference.

Despite the cry of 'No annexations,' our ally (and Rumania is still our ally) has lost the Dobrudja, and has lost it in part to her most deadly enemy, the Bulgar, though it is nominally ceded to the Central Powers. True, it is a province where races are inextricably mingled: Rumanians and Russians, Germans and

Greeks, Turks and Tartars, Jews and gypsies compose its variegated and cosmopolitan population. During the past half-century some few thousand Bulgars have settled there and prospered, but they form less than oneseventh of the whole population, and the Rumanian settlers have in the same period increased in far greater proportion, and provide more than half of the inhabitants. They have developed the agriculture, fisheries, roads, and railways; and they constructed the Tcernavoda bridge as the connecting link between the Dobrudja and the mother country.

In losing a province to which they had established every claim the Rumanians lost their most considerable port. Costanza forms the natural centre for the railroads and waterways which converge from the Danubian plains to the Black Sea. The town is of modern growth, and is built entirely with Rumanian capital and labor; the harbor is well constructed, and the quays are equipped with warehouses for the storage of grain and petroleum. Within easy reach of the port, provision is made for the amenities of social life: large hotels and a casino have been prepared for the pleasure-seekers from Bucharest or Jassy. And now this prosperous town is in other hands, though the kindly annexationists. undertake to provide the maintenance of a trade route for Rumania, through Costanza, to the Black Sea.'

Not content with a town and a province, the Central Powers have assumed entire control over the course of the Danube: they have revoked the international agreement as to navigation, and have appointed a new commission to regulate the mouths of the river, its lighting, harbors, and navigation. Added to this, all im

provements are destined to benefit the German shipping companies, and though the improvements may in time revert to Rumania, they are to be enjoyed by the Germans in perpetuity and without any restrictions. Quite naturally, the Entente Powers have refused to recognize such an agreement.

In addition to taking charge of navigation, the Central Powers have not left Rumania with a railway which she can rightly call her own. Germany is to have her resident representatives, who will supervise the permanent ways, construct the rollingstock, regulate the use of material, and settle the railway rates in Germany's favor. No doubt AustriaHungary, Bulgaria, and Turkey will have such crumbs as fall from their ally's table.

Whether our pacifists consider that all this absorption of interests can be reconciled with the cry of 'No annexations and no indemnities' it is impossible to say. But the tale of iniquity does not end here. Rumania's commercial development has been securely bound up with the Central European system. Whatever may be her desires, she is compelled to give the mostfavored-nation treatment to her conquerors. She has been deprived of the power to make commercial treaties, and has been compelled to renew her present agreements with Germany for a further term of years. petroleum industry, from which most of her revenue is derived, has been practically commandeered, lock, stock and barrel; she cannot raise export duties on her most profitable product, although the clause is mitigated (on paper) by a few worthless concessions.

Her

Agriculture has also passed from Rumania's control, for the Central Powers have commandeered the whole of her surplus food for export. Not

only grain of every kind, but cattle, poultry, timber, and wool are in future destined for the use of those who have ravaged and destroyed the country and the crops. In addition, the German is allowed to absorb Rumanian land on favorable and lengthy leases, which will eventually lead to the absorption of the vanquished by the victor.

Not only have the Central Powers obtained dominion over the land, but they have reduced Rumania's territory under the guise of a rectification of the frontier. On the western side Rumania has always been compelled to protect her passes against the Magyar, in whose territory dwell thousands of Rumanians. It was in order to liberate her kinsfolk that she entered the war, and with misguided zeal dashed down into the plains of Hungary, where lay her ambitions and her hopes. For the time being she has lost all, and more than all. Her frontier is pushed eastwards to the foot of the Carpathians; and she is deprived of the crests and the passes. But not content with a purely strategical line, Hungary has insisted on filching considerable slices of Rumanian territory, including some of the finest woodlands in Europe. Are there 'no annexations' when the strategical frontier has enveloped some 200,000 Rumanians, and added them to the Central Empires? Not according to Count Czernin. 'The slight rectifications of frontier,' said he, 'are not annexations. Almost uninhabited regions as they are, they serve solely for military security.'

As some compensation for these drastic arrangements, Rumania is to have the fostering care of Germany. But she is first compelled to indemnify her enemies and numerous so-called neutrals for all the damage done by the German military measures. All

German civil servants are to be reinstated; and the German congregations and schools are to be reestablished. Her magnificent forests, worth some £150,000,000 are to be used, at German discretion, as 'indemnities in kind.' In order that her task-masters may not starve, compulsory cultivation is to be carried on by compulsory labor.

It is hard to say what is left to the unfortunate victim, yet the German National Liberal Party claims for the conquerors an over-abundance of generosity. According to her enemies, Rumania has been allowed to retain her original individuality: she is still a nation.

Yes, she is still a nation, though with little left but the name. However there are men who will keep the spirit of nationality alive until the day when full restitution will be made. Those who signed the treaty, said Take Jonescu, may call themselves Rumanians, but their souls have always been German. Their evil work cannot live. Rumania has still a king and queen, and thousands of loyal Rumanians are dispersed throughout Europe. To them the Allies owe a debt of honor, and that debt must be paid. The noblest war aims are those which are most simple and most imperative: the complete and unconditional restoration of Belgium, Serbia, Montenegro, and Rumania.

Before our pacifists commit themselves wholly to a 'peace by negotiation' let them study the treaty, and ponder over the triumphant speech in which Von Kühlmann announced his success to the Berlin Chamber of Commerce. There they will see how their favorite theories can be twisted into any particular form by the logic of facts; and they will perhaps come to realize the insincerity of the notorious Reichstag resolution which.

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