Expauil llirou£hoiil Lai in America 157 



Alleged German Effort to Buy Peace at our Expense," 

 that : " Not very lont,' before the peace suggestion of last 

 month came to Washington from Berlin, Germany oflered 

 to end the War upon the terms of the Allies, with one 

 condition : Germany was to he given a free hand in 

 Central and South America. The offer is still open. The 

 Allies rejected it ; but the Wilhelmstrasse considers this 

 chapter of diplomatic history still incomplete. . . . The 

 records of the Department of State show," adds the 

 London Spectator, " that Germany has long wished to have 

 a 'free hand ' in Central and South America. It has not 

 been convenient to the United States Government to make 

 any public protest about it, that is ail. During the 

 acquisition of the Panama Canal zone and the subsequent 

 construction of the Canal, to follow the account in the 

 English periodical, Germany tried in every possible way to 

 induce the United States to agree to her being allowed to 

 exercise an influence in South America as the price of her 

 acquiescence in these changes. Our Department of State 

 refused to recotjnize Germany's right to claim a quid pro quo 

 because America was acting in the Caribbean or in 

 Central America." 



Truly our New York contemporary is wise to suggest 

 that Germany, in asking for a free hand in Latin America, 

 is striving to buy peace from Europe, whom she has out- 

 raged and wronged, at the expense of the United States. 

 At the expense also, we would add, of everything that 

 makes life bearable, much less happy, to the Latin 

 American, which people, had the Allies agreed to 

 Germany's terms, would have been as much at Germany's 

 mercy to-day as the Alsatians and Lorrainers, the Poles, 

 the Wends, and other nations have been in the past, and 

 still are at the present moment. 



Meanwhile, let no one forget. Northern and Southern 

 America, or allied nationalities over here, that the disease 

 has got a firm grip on the two Americas, and is running 

 through their veins as a fever or cancer does in a patient. 

 To what extent they are attacked, however, no man can 

 tell until trouble comes, say between America and another 

 nation, and the patient wants all her strength and 

 energies with which to fight — wants them, only to find 

 that they are missing, owing to the virulence and taint of 

 Teutonic blood running throughout her system from Canada 

 to Cape Horn. 



