SEES FREEDOM OF OCEAN
IN LUSITANIA.S SINKING
* _
By SAMUEL W. PENNYPACKER.
Ex-Governor of Pennsylvania.
It is very doubtful whether the real
significance and the most important
aspect of the sinking of the Lusitania
have yet been considered by the Amer
ican people. There has been mucli
expression of sympathy for the unfor
tunate people who were drowned and
of Indignation against the belligerent
which caused the boat to be torpedoed,
but these are emotions which spring
readily to the surface and may be
aroused over Incidents upon each side
of every war. They have been awak
ened by the Russian treatment of the
Jews, by the Japanese treatment of
the Coreans, by the Rritish treatment
of the Boers, and as in those cases, they
are evanescent and will be forgotten
with the first shifting of the scenes.
The event ought to appeal to the judg
ment and not to the emotions.
Nations, like individuals, often act
with supreme unwisdom, and since the
laws of nature are inexorable and ir
revocable, the injurious consequences
always follow. Carthage sealed her fate
at the time she neglected to send sup
port to Hannibal while in Italy. Mr.
Cleveland tried to throw away the
Sandwich Islands, the key to the Pa
cific Ocean. The failure to retain Cuba
only emphasized by the retention of
Porto Rico by Mr. McKinley; the turn
ing of American sympathy by John
Hay against Russia and in favor of
Japan in the war between those coun
tries. Japan which is even now creep
ing across the Pacific toward our west
ern coast; the surrender of our sov
ereignity over the Panama Canal under
British pressure and Elihu Root's ad
vice only a year ago by Mr. Wilson
are familiar instances in American
history of governmental mistakes, sure
to bring results of grave moment in
the future of the nation.
Any American who wants to fore
cast what that future is to be needs
only to recognize that the territory we
occupy', with a population soon to be
100,000.000, has an ocean coast on the
east with the harbors of Boston. New
York, the Delaware, the Chesapeak,
Charleston, Savannah, Mobile and Gal
veston and an ocean coast on the west
with the harbors of San Francisco, Ta.
coma and Seattle. Nothing can be
more certain than that sooner or late!
we shall make a struggle for the pos
session of the seas.
Our concern is not with the occu
pation of the land on the continent
of Europe, but with that of the waters
which surround tis. Our interests are
necessarily antagonistic to those of the
nation which seeks to control these
seas. Instinctively England perceiv***
that our progress foreboded a rival,
and every step in advance which
America has ever made was secured
over her opposition. Her efforts to
prevent the growth of the colonies are
set forth in the Declaration of Inde
pendence. Her purpose to tax colonial
property and deny colonial representa
tion led to the Revolutionary war.'
When Anthony Wayne won the middle
West he found British forts supplying
the Indians with rifles and scalping
knives, and the massacre at Wyoming
told the same story.
In 1814 she burned our Capitol and
archives. We threatened to fight for
the boundary line of 54 degrees 40
minutes north, but we did not fight,
and she took the land. President Polk
in his journal tells that she tried to
prevent Texas from coming into the
Union and urged the Mexicans into war
with us.
In 1861, while we were in the midst
of a struggle for existence, she con
structed the Alabama and Flordia and
took advantage of the situation to
drive our commerce off the oceans.
Even within the last decade an Ameri
can, Shuster, was successfully or
ganizing the financial system of Per
sia, Mr. Wilson was promising! the
American people that they should be
permitted to send their own boats
through their own canal free of tolls,
and both were thwarted by tho influ
ence of England. All of these occur
rences happened not because of any
special hostility, not because of a fail
ure to recognize that both were people.'
of the same blood, but because of the
fear that presently there would be r
nation on the earth strong enough tc
make urner uin the supremacy of tht
British Etnt ire.
In the present orgy of war the mpsi
wicked event which has occurred is no
the assassination of the Grand Duke of
Austria or his wife, or the overrunning
of Belgium, or the injury to cathedrals,
or the dropping of explosive bombs
| upon quiet towns. But the fact that
England, In the hope to suppress a
1-vni, has turned in i«e the Mongol, wt*h
all that this fact means in the future
of the world. The hrur.t of the evil
consequences will fal] not on Germany
hut on .America. A no >he next most
vicked event was the agreement Eng
li-nd made with Japan that she would
not eease to fight until Japan should
he satisfied.
This war is a horrible struggle for
existence, for the opportunity for the
heart to heat and the lungs to breathe
the air, and we may well sympathize
with all of the peoples engaged in it.
hut we should first have eoneern for
otir own welfare.
It is entirely plain what the course
if America ought to have been In this
gigantic struggle. The duty Imposed
upon her by the fact that she was the
most influential of the non-combatant
countries was to assert the rights of
neutrals with such firmness as to com
mand respect and to give proof that
she was not pretending to he evenly
poised between the belligerents while
really helping one of them. Here was
her opportunity to give reasonable ex
tension to those rights.
She ought to have told Germany that
we had absolute legal justification for
selling arms and ammunition to whom
soever we pleased, and If we refrained
it would be because of those humani
tarian sentiments which Mr Wilson so
unctuously upholds in his recent letter.
She ought to have told England that
if we wanted to buy ships wp would
buy them from the Germans or from
any one else who had them to sell. We
ought to have demanded the right of
neutrals to have some part in deter
mining what shall be contraband of
war. and not to have permitted the
bpllfgerents to say that oil. copper, food
and everything else that we have to
sell were included in that class. We
ought to have told England that the
North Sea was an open sea and that
we proposed, If nepd he. to go there and
trade. /We ought to have forbidden the
use of our flag as a means of enabling
belligerent vessels to sneak safely Into
their home ports.
Tho three mile limit of Jurisdiction
along the coast was fixed in the days of
sailing vessels. Now that guns send
their halls and bombs fifteen miles, it is
an obsolete and ineffective rule. If
England does not hesitate to declare
the North Sea closed, and Germany to
declare the waters around the British
Isles a war zone, it is high time that
something of a like kind he done In
behalf of neutral interests. AVe ought
to have notified the belligerents that
none of their war vessels would he per
mitted within twenty-five miles of an
American port, and thus to have es
tablished a principle of great impor
tance adapted to existing conditions.
We ought not to have been humiliated
by asking England for permission to get
information by way of the inter-oceanic
cable, a service due to American
thought and enterprise, and by having
tl;e request refused. That commerce,
of which our cousins deprived us by
the depredations of the Alabama while
we were at war fifty years ago, might
have been regained with increase while
they are at war and it could have been
dpnc without sending our privateers to
prey on them. At least an earnest ef
fort could have been made.
It is perhaps too much to have ex
pected America to have struck the blow
necessary to overthrow tbe domination
by one nation of the ocean, three
fourths of the surface of the earth.
Thraldom is a possible state only be
cause the thrall himself concedes its
propriety. The horse has long for
gotten tho steppes of Asia over which
he roamed bidding defiance to wolf and
tiger, and he has become a patient
beast of burden. Slavery in the South
would have been an impossible institu
tion had not the negroes come to re
gard it as the natural condition foi
themselves, their wives and their chil
dren. And we have had sung to us sc
often from infancy to manhood: “Bri
tannia Rules the Waves” that wo arc
startled when we hear the propriety o:
the proposition queried. Sowltudo is
normal and mental as well as physical
It has remained for another race o
men of keen intelligence and Strom
fibre to out tho withes which bourn
Samson and to open up for us n vlst:
of the freedom of tho seas. A nntloi
which is unable to protect her militar;
I supplies on her most Important inter
| ocean liner in her own waters, with!
' sight of her. own ports, can no longe
! maintain her claim to rule the waves
[ and the fact has been proved. It wl
' not be forgotten that thereafter th
I Mauretania, a vessel of equal size, mad
| no more ocean trips. When German
; sank the Eusltania with its cargo o
military stores, perhaps covered by th
! Star* and Stripes, she did much for
; Russia, which in the Crimea w;ie pre
| vented from reaching the Mediterran
' can; for France, which has closed her
i
eyes and ears to Trafalgar and i-f
I Helena, but most of all for America,
; whose argosies of commerce will yet be
' seen steaming to Buenos Ayres and to
i far Cathay. What the North did for
j the negro Germany has done for us
He submarines have broken the shakles
which delayed our progress, as they,
halted that of Ireland and Canada.
Encircling us upon the north and
east are Canada, the Bermudas. Nassau
and Jamaica, while England's ally, Ja- i
pan, on the west approaches the Sand
wich Islands and California. Today
England is still blockading the city of
New York on this side of the ocean and
shutting off our means of communica
tion and information on the other.
We may well mourn for the lives
which were lost on the Rushania but
the great advances of humanity have j
always risen out of death. Wycllffe and i
John Hush were burned at the stake
and then came the Reformation. Joan ,
of Arc met the same fate and is now a !
saint. John Brown of Ossawatomie was |
hanged at Charlestown, but his soul j
goes marching on, an inspiration to all i
mankind. In the generations to come:
historians will point to the dramatic
and tragic end of the Rusitania as the
event which most Impressively marks
the long struggle for the right of all
peoples to make of the ocean a high
way. When that day comes It will be
known what to our limited vision has
been dark, that the men, women and
children whose dead bodies float in the
watersof the British Channel did not
die in vain, but were the sacrifices of
fered upon the altar of the freedom of
the sens.
“The Avon to the Severn runs
The Severn to the sea.
And Wycliffe’s bones shall spread j
abroad
Wide as the waters be”
Much which to contempararies seems
i to be disheartening and destructive
i tragedy, in later lime proves to have
j been Instead the dawn of beneficence
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Professional Sards
IRVING M. REED.
U. S. MINERAL SURVEYOR,
Residence Seiffert Flats.
*
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SAILINGS FOR SEASON 1915.
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August 23rd
September 20th
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SUNDAY, AUGUST 8th
September 4th
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October 28th
! Sailing dates of Freight Steamers from Seattle calling at Nome.
CORDOVA. AUGUST 25TH.
Alaska S. S. Co.
R. A. CARROLL, Agent.
S.S. Senator
Sails Aug. 30
% £
from Nome: frora Std,lle:
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AND EAST.
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| AUGUSTINE 8 He |
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STEAM AND SHOWER BATHS IN CONNECTION.
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COR. FRONT AND B STREETS. J. M. MONAHAN, Prop.
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IMPORTED WINES LIQUORS & CIGARS
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