Feb. 17.
The announcement that President Wilson has formally accepted nomination in the approaching elections on behalf of the Democratic party is no more than was generally expected. To man of his studious and retiring disposition, the possibility of withdrawing from public life must have been a great temptation. Few statesmen or rulers, since the war began, have been exposed to more acrimonious criticism than he, both among his own countrymen and abroad. Few are, perhaps, more fairly entitled to feel that the world has not appreciated the difficulties of their position. Even within his own Cabinet, if New York and Washington papers are to be believed, President Wilson has failed to find unanimous support and the retirement of the Hon. Lindley M. Garrison, the strong man" of the Government, has been hailed by the Republican Press as further proof of the "milk and water' nature of the President's foreign policy Against all this, there is an old adage about not swapping horses in the middle of stream. The best authorities appear to be agreed that the American people, in spite of some quarrelling with his methods, endorse the principle of President Wilson's determined neutrality. Even Colonel Roosevelt might find considerable difficulty in giving force to the more bellicose views to which he has committed himself, were he to stand and be returned. And we believe that the best consideration of (Great Britain's true interest will be found in favour of President Wilson's re-election.
In the heat of warfare it is not easy to judge dispassionately of the conduct of a neutral country. whose path has never revealed more pitfalls than it has in the present war. To take the case of the Lusitania, we may be sure that the empty German formula most lately put forward will, if accepted, prove a most bitter pill to many Americans. What we would emphasize is that Britons have no ground here for indignation. No reparation now can undo that crime; nor is any protest from America or any other neutral nation likely to turn the Central Powers from the butchery they love. Short of actually, declaring war, there is practically nothing America can do to stop such outrages. More serious Cearset, les i Me. Lansing's ind for complaint, if report be
Note to the Allies, asking them to discontinue arming merchantmen, in return for some illusory promise (not yet obtained) from the Central Powers that they will cease torpedoing merchantmen without warning; and with the alternative that armed merchantmen will henceforth be accorded entry to American ports only on the same terms as men-of-war. That the United States Government has here completely fallen into a trap laid by the Central Powers, is shown by the immediate notification received from the latter that, after March 1, they intend to treat merchantmen as men-of-war. As denoting any actual change of policy this notification is, of course, pure farce. As putting Washington in " very ward place, it is deadlily devised.
ere remains the sorely vexed question of American trade with Germany through neutrals. But here the remedy lies in Great Britain's own hands. A neutral country is entitled to trade where, with whom and to what extent she can.
In all these questions it would not appear just to accuse President Wilson or his Government of more than attempting to cope with each problem as it has arisen, instead of laying down definite line of action. But when we recall how the whole body of international law, as it was believed to exist before the war, has been set at naught by the Central Powers, we must admit that the laying down of such a line was well nigh impossible, and that it could hardly have failed to lead by this time to war between America and Germany. Of that, no doubt, many Americans would have been glad indeed. But for Britons it is only just to ask themselves, when they are disposed to criticize President Wilson, whether the neutrality he has preserved, unequal and opportunist as it may have seemed, has
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.