been encouraged in their revolt against the President's course in the controversy with Germany by two circumstances. One was the fact that the Secretary of State, Mr. Lansing, suggested to the Allies that they disarm their merchantmen, and said at the end of his memorandum :

My Government is impressed with the reasonableness of the argument that a merchant ship carrying an armament of any sort, in view of the character of the submarine warfare and the defensive weakness of undersea craft, should be held to be an auxiliary cruiser and so treated by a neutral as well as by a belligerent Government, and is seriously considering instructing its officials accordingly.

The other circumstance was the telegram to Mr. Bailey, of Pennsylvania, from Mr. Bryan, urging the adoption of a law forbidding Americans to travel on belligerent merchant ships.

Under this encouragement, unintentionally given by the present Secretary of State, and consciously and deliberately offered by the ex-Secretary of State, Senator Gore (whose views are typical of this anti-American, proGerman group) has declared in a published statement that "sacred sentiment should not be made a plaything in the hands of every thoughtless, reckless wayfarer who for the love of profit or adventure or pleasure may choose to dally with danger or death upon an armed belligerent vessel." In similar terms, a contemporary of George Washington and John Hancock might have said that "sacred sentiment should not be made a plaything in the hands of every thoughtless, reckless colonist who for the love of a cheap cup of tea may choose to refuse to pay the tax which the British Government has laid upon it."

Such men as Senators Gore and Stone (Democrats) and Works (Republican), and such Representatives as Mondell (Republican) and Clark and Kitchin (Democrats) have been well answered by the President in his letter addressed to Senator Stone, published on another page, and by the able Democrat, Carter Glass, of Virginia, a leader in the House of Representatives, whose statement is also printed in this issue.

ments.

One word only shall we add to these stateMr. Bryan, in his telegram to Mr. Bailey, says: "A mayor keeps the people of his city out of the danger zone during a riot. Can our Government afford to do less when the world is in riot?"

Let us suppose that Mr. Bryan were the

old home and under the shade of the old trees where I played when a boy. An eventful life finds me at last quite content with the Western Reserve of Ohio. Its record averages well. Giddings and Wade, whom it was my good fortune to know intimately and well, sleep their last sleep five miles from where I write this. Burton was raised in this village; is, by his old neighbors, criticised a bit for being a little late in getting his ear to the ground on the preparedness question; yet, if nominatedwhich he will not be-he would get a majority vote here on his own stamping-ground.

Altogether I can afford to look on and grin at the antics of politics, and am,

Sincerely and cordially yours,

W. B. MILLER.

Doubtless Mr. Miller's early observations of the results of the negative and vacillating policy of Buchanan, whose timid treatment of slavery and the secession movement from 1857 to 1861 has become a historical synonym for Presidential weakness, did much to color the trend of his whole political philosophy. Doubtless, too, it is his recollection of the positive courage of Giddings and Wade that influences him to demand of the present generation of public men something more than a leadership which merely follows behind the crowd.

When Mr. Miller's friend Giddings was born, Washington was still alive and the sands of the eighteenth century had still five years to run. A pioneer in the Western Reserve, Joshua Giddings played his part as he saw it in the wilderness of Ashtabula County, in the law courts of Ohio, and in the halls of Congress.

To Joshua Giddings and his constituents slavery was an unthinkable institution in a free republic. He did not live to see it abolished; on the contrary, he suffered the formal censure of the House of Representatives for introducing in its august assembly a resolution declaring that slaves who escaped from the United States to foreign soil violated no law of the Nation "in resuming their natural rights to personal liberty." Joshua Giddings was an able captain in the party which took its stand on the platform of Free Soil, Free Speech, Free Labor, and Free Men.

Like Giddings, Benjamin Franklin Wade, his law partner, went to the Western Reserve from another State. Farmer, drover, schoolteacher, student of medicine, laborer on the Erie Canal, and lawyer, Wade typified in his career much of that independent spirit of thought and action which marked the three

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decades of our history preceding the Civil War. Giddings in the House and Wade in the Senate were forces to be reckoned with by those who sought to extend the peculiar institution of the South into the newer regions of the North and West. Wade was a blunt, rough-spoken orator, yet more than once he turned the weapons of more polished opponents against themselves with skillful and unanswerable effectiveness.

Senator Badger, of North Carolina, arguing for the right of Southern slaveholders to carry their slaves with them into the free Territory of Kansas, said: " Why, if some Southern gentleman wishes to take the nurse who takes charge of his little baby, or the old woman who nursed him in childhood and whom he called Mammy' until he returned from college and perhaps afterward too, and whom he wishes to take with him in his old age when he is moving into one of these new Territories for the betterment of the fortunes of the whole family, why, in the name of God, should anybody prevent it?" To this argument Wade instantly replied: "The Senator entirely mistakes our position. We have not the least objection and would oppose no obstacles to the Senator's migrating to Kansas and taking his old Mammy' along with him. We only insist that he shall not be empowered to sell her after taking her there."

Senator Toombs also found in Wade a redoubtable antagonist. "The Wilmot-Proviso man," said Toombs, " holds that you can cram freedom whether the people want it or not, but take care how you cram slavery." "That is it," replied Wade-and the history of the United States bears out the conclusion that Senator Wade's reply was entirely adequate.

If it be said that, during the period of reconstruction and the impeachment of Andrew Johnson, Wade showed more of the character of a bitter partisan than of a broadminded statesman, it must be remembered that the conflict between freedom and slavery produced no large number of Lincolns or Lees. To-day we can realize the full measure of the failure of the policy of Congressional reconstruction advocated by Wade. It might be well for us if we had as full an appreciation of his rugged honesty of purpose and of the necessity of applying this same spirit to the solution of our present problems.

Wade and Giddings are gone, and with them, as Mr. Miller reminds us, the heyday of steamboating on the Western rivers. Congressional appropriations for. the dredging of

dry creeks and the damming of waters destined to run unburdened by traffic to the sea seem to have only less effect in restoring the commerce of half a century ago than would a Congressional resolution to bring back to their seats in the House and Senate the ghosts of those who fought the long fight for the abolition of slavery. Yet the outlook on life which

Mr. Miller won from his experiences on those same rivers is as refreshing to-day as the waters still coursing between their banks.

We hope that Justice Miller, "full of wise saws and modern instances," and, we trust, "with good capon" too, may be long spared to fill a chair of Political Philosophy in the University of American Neighborhoods.

My Dear Senator:

February 24, 1916.

I very warmly appreciate your kind and frank letter of to-day, and feel that it calls for an equally frank reply.

You are right in assuming that I shall do everything in my power to keep the United States out of war. I think the country will feel no uneasiness about my course in that respect.

Through many anxious months I have striven for that object, amidst difficulties more manifold than can have been apparent upon the surface; and so far I have succeeded. I do not doubt that I shall continue to succeed.

The course which the central European

Powers have announced their intention of following in the future with regard to undersea warfare seems for the moment to threaten insuperable obstacles, but its apparent meaning is so manifestly inconsistent with explicit assurances recently given us by these Powers with regard to their treatment of merchant vessels on the high seas that I must believe that explanations will presently ensue which will put a different aspect upon it.

We have had no reason to question their good faith or their fidelity to their promises in the past, and I for one feel confident that we shall have none in the future.

But in any event our duty is clear. No nation, no group of nations, has the right while war is in progress to alter or disregard the principles which all nations have agreed upon in mitigation of the horrors and sufferings of war; and if the clear rights of American citizens should ever unhappily be abridged or denied by any such action, we should, it

I See editorial comment on another page.-THE EDITORS.

seems to me, have in honor no choice as to what our own course should be.

For my own part, I cannot consent to any abridgment of the rights of American citizens in any respect. The honor and selfrespect of the nation is involved. We covet peace and shall preserve it at any cost but the loss of honor.

To forbid our people to exercise their rights for fear we might be called upon to vindicate them would be a deep humiliation indeed. It would be an implicit, all but an explicit, acquiescence in the violation of the rights of mankind everywhere and of whatever nation or allegiance. It would be a deliberate abdication of our hitherto proud position as spokesman, even amid the turmoil of war, for the law and the right.

It would make everything this Government has attempted and everything it has achieved during this terrible struggle of nations meaningless and futile.

It is important to reflect that if in this instance we allowed expediency to take the place of principle the door would inevitably be opened to still further concessions.

Once accept a single abatement of right and many other humiliations would certainly follow, and the whole fine fabric of international law might crumble under our hands, piece by piece. What we are contending for in this matter is of the very essence of the things that have made America a sovereign nation. She cannot yield them without conceding her own impotency as a Nation and making virtual surrender of her independent position among the nations of the world.

I am speaking, my dear Senator, in deep solemnity, without heat, with a clear consciousness of the high responsibilities of my office, and as your sincere and devoted friend.

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we are friends, speak our minds without reservation. Faithfully yours,

WOODROW WILSON.

this American Nation as it would be reflected by such a desperate legislative usurpation is worth the ceaseless vigil and the brave fight which has characterized the efforts of President Wilson to preserve it.

For my part, I do not believe Congress is in anything like such a mood or that it can be precipitated into any such action. But there should be no doubt about it either in this country or abroad. Infinite harm is said to have ensued from the Teutonic misconception of this Nation's attitude in the initial stages of the Lusitania negotiations, and it is not difficult to perceive that even graver consequences might result from the supposition that Congress has a gripping anxiety to repudiate Woodrow Wilson and embrace von Tirpitz.

This is not a party question. It is an American question. But if there is real foundation for the well-nigh incredible assertion that the Democratic side of the House is impatient to antagonize the President in his firm stand for American rights as against threatened maritime murder, then there are many of us who want to go on record to the contrary-who would covet the distinction of refusing to follow any such leadership.

I do not believe the Democratic side is headed in any such direction. If it is, I am going the other way as fast and as far as I can; nor do I apprehend that I will be in any wise ashamed of my company.

all reflected in the following statement from the Chicago" Illinois Staats-Zeitung:"

Wilson demanded of Germany that she brand herself as a murderer; he demanded that Germany of her own accord give up the use of her strongest arm; that she, and again of her own accord, surrender the unrestricted control of the seas to Great Britain; and that, finally, the father-soldiers fighting in defense of millions of mothers and children of the Empire should

Another Illinois paper, the Peoria "Transcript" (Rep.), remarks:

War is war. Why should not either of the belligerents sink without notice hostile merchantmen loaded with munitions cargoes? Does not the presence of Americans on board these merchantmen, whether armed or unarmed, make this Government the de facto ally of the carrying nation as against the submarine nation seeking to prevent delivery?

And then follows this remarkable statement: This country has no grievance against either belligerent. These are times when the casus belli must be vital and substantial.

Milwaukee is supposed to be mostly proGerman. In the Milwaukee " Leader," a Socialist paper, we read:

Mr. Wilson has been given warning from Congress that he must consult with the representatives of the people before placing the United States in a position where it may be involved in the world's war.

It has now become plain that it is the sentiment of Congress, as we believe it is of the American people, that war should not be invited by any doctrinaire insistence upon the technical rights of neutrals to travel on belligerent ships.

In justice to American citizens who may be obliged to travel upon the high seas, they should be made aware of the danger which they invite when they take passage upon belligerent ships. . . .

It would be a crime for the United States to enter the war for any reason save that its people should be convinced that its intervention alone could preserve civilization.

goaded or stampeded away from sane, sensible, and prudential courses by gentlemen whose emotional displays about the European war have been kept in cold storage until the approach of National convention time. . . .

Senator Gore will introduce a resolution "prohibiting Americans from traveling on any armed merchant vessel of any belligerent nationality." And the prospect is that such a resolution would be generally favored by Congress, which is perfectly well aware that 999 out of every 1,000 of sane and pro-America Americans are distinctly opposed to any madhouse policy of plunging this country into a distinctively European and unprecedentedly irrational and unjustifiable war for any legal punctilio whatsoever.

The Sacramento "Bee" (Ind.) gives this long-distance view from California:

Congress wishes to warn Americans against traveling on armed passenger ships of belligerent nations. . . . That plan has aroused President Wilson to violent opposition. The principle, however, from this distance seems sound.

A Democratic paper, the New York American," reflects as follows:

It looks very much as if Mr. Wilson had determined to play politics at the expense of peace, as if he had determined to precipitate the Nation into war in the hope of insuring his reelection.

If Mr. Wilson believes what he says to Germany about the sanctity of American rights, then he cannot excuse his actions towards Mexico. If he believes that his conduct of non-interference with Mexican outrages upon Americans is right, then his high words to Germany are inexplicable.

Finally, a Mormon paper, the "Deseret Evening News," at Salt Lake City, thus presents the pacific side:

Suppose two neighbors were engaged in a quarrel over the location of a fence between their properties. One might put up his fence where he contended it should be, only to have it torn down by the other. They go to law to settle the matter. In the meantime do they continue to put up the fence, tear it down, put it up again and tear it down again in a continual round of

Speaker Clark says the resolutions to exclude Americans from armed ships would surely carry in the House by 2 to 1, and perhaps even 3 to 1. In that proportion the common-sense view prevails in the popular and representative House; and we think is a fair register of public opinion, as ascertainable by referendum.

action is pending a court order stops the row until the matter is adjudicated, whereupon the fence goes up where the Court says it should go up. The same procedure may properly be taken in this big question. In the matter of the right of Americans to travel on these armed merchantmen, we in this country very naturally think our position is exactly right. Germany, on the other hand, thinks that she is right. It is a quarrel with two sides to it. In the usual run of affairs of this sort there are three ways to settle the issues-the timid party yields to the