Apr. 29.
'A CORRESPONDENT has kindly sent us a copy of the ''Argonaut"' of San Francisco, which under the above heading publishes an article so pitiless in its facts, so refreshing in its cool clear sense that, although we cannot reproduce it in full, we offer our readers the largest possible extracts. There are two reasons why this article is specially welcome just now. Washington is considering the latest German scheme of evasion, and while we are told that it has declined to intervene between the Allies and Germany, it is ready to mediate with a view to reopening negotiations if Germany makes what seems to Washington a fair offer. Secondly, much of the ''opinion'' that comes from America is tainted with Germanism, Sinn Feinism, the vicious influence of Hearst and the incalculable bias of politics. The "'Argonaut'' appears to speak with the voice of America and the spirit of the hard-headed friendly people that we meet in business, sport and society all over the world. That is the voice we want to listen for to-day.
The writer begins with a little aporalization on Professor Flinders Petrie's dictum that democracy is the last and fatal disease that has destroyed every civilization the world has known. Leaving this to the reader's decision he continues If Berlin had been occupied by the Allied armies at the close of the war, the treaty would have been signed, sealed and delivered within a month. It would have been the salvation of Germany herself and of Europe. But democracy prevented. If Germany had won the war, she would have occupied Paris, London and Rome. She would have had her peace treaties in her pocket ready for delivery, she would hardly have allowed leisure for the reading of them and she would have maintained her troops in the capitals of her enemies until the last gold piece had been paid. If the Allied armies were now to occupy Berlin, as they -ought to do, it would prove the end -of a thousand evils now growing steadily more formidable, the direct progeny of hesitations, vacillations
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.