March 2, TqiCy. 
LAND AND \VA 1 !• R 
LAND & WATER 
Empire House, Kingsvvay, l.ondon, W.C. 
Tcleplionc : HaLUORN 2H28. 
THUKSDAY. MARCH 2, 1916. 
AMERICA'S CHOICE. 
THE hitter which Prt.'sidcnt Wilson has addressed 
to Senator Stone brings the United States to 
tlic brink of the great choice. Is it to be a 
sovereign nation or is it to be an amorphous 
system. miKhty in potentiahties, but lacking the central 
])nri)ose, the will to live and to preserve its rights and its 
iionour, that is (he soul of a nation? The question is in 
the balance— has been in the balance since the outbreak 
of war. That catastrophe harl vast repercussion across 
the Atlantic. Nowhere had the idea that the world of 
the futme would be wholly subject to pacific and arbitral 
methods taken so deep a root as in the United States; 
nowhere had democratic development assumed directions 
entirely contrary to the idea of the State as an organised 
military system ; nowhere did the war come -.. ■■> nuhv 
hock to the cuniiit tendencies of thought. 
I'rom the first the dominant sympathy of the country 
was with the Allies. This was due in jiart to the intimate 
nlations-speec h, trade, tradition, literature, and so on— 
between the United States and England and the spiritual 
sympathy with RepubHcan France, but still more to the 
leiocity of the (ierman invasion of Belgium, which 
revolted the moral sense of the people in an unparalleled 
d-^M-ee. There wero, however, very powerful discordant 
<1( in(!nts in the sentiment of the country, some definitely 
l)ro-German, some merely anti-English, some who, like 
the extreme pacifi-^ts of the Bryan school, were driven 
into a kind of pro-(,erman i)osition by their determination 
to resist the prevailing tendency. 
Nor were there wanting encumbrances which gave 
strength to these impulses. The operation of the blockade 
inevitably led to friction with this country. It would be 
unjust to suggest that American opinion ever seriously 
regarded that fri( lion as in the same category as the 
piratical crimes of Germany, but it seemed to check the 
strong current of feeling. It periodically diverted atten- 
lion from the grttat issues of humanity to the meaner 
;<rievances of trade, and gave a certain groimd for that 
balancing of one against the other which fitted in with 
the essential puri)ose of the. country. 
That purpos;; was to avoid being involved in the 
struggle. Broadly speaking, it is true to say that there 
is not and never has been an uncompromising pro-war 
party in the United States. The majority of those who 
sympathise most strenuously with the Allies have not 
really advocated intervention. They have not seriously 
contemplated more than a breach of diplomatic relations 
with Germany. The reasons for this are many ; the 
tradition of isolation from the Ivuropean fjuarrels, the 
lack of means of prompt intervention, the strong cross- 
currents of interest and, finally, the sellisii desire to enjoy 
the unparalleled harvest which the war has brought to 
the American merchant, farmer, trader, and financier. 
The country has never experienced such a period of 
overflowing prosperity. Indeed, no country in the 
worid's history has had such an inrush of sudden wealth. 
It is converting the United States magically into the 
great credit country of the world, and tbc continuance of 
the war promises to leave New York the financial centre 
of the nations. ,. 
But meanwhile there is a de^p undercurrent of dis- 
quiet which finds its e.xpression, strwlcntly m the fa"«! "i 
Mr. Roosevelt, gravely and anxiously in the case of Mr. 
Ivliot of Harvard. It is fell that the vast profits which the 
United States is deriving from the agonies of Euro|)e arc 
deariy bought if the moral leadership of the nation in the 
worUl is being sacrificed to obtain them. The view 
that the country has no part in the great issue that is 
l)eing fought out in Kuro|)e wears thin and false. That 
i>sue is seen to be wlK^ther demoi-racy, of which the 
United States has been th<- standard-bean r, is to survive 
on this earth or to jjerish under the heel of Prussian 
militarism. The Ututed States cannot be indifferent 
to that great issue. Behind all this there is the con- 
sciousness that in IIk; light of the war the isolation of 
America is discovered to be a fiction. There are many 
candid Americans wlio admit llial the name endorsed 
on the back of tlu^ .Monroe l^)clritie is not the name of 
the United States, b\it the name of Gn-at Britain- -that it 
is the British Navy alone that to-day gives validity to 
that Doctrine and stands between Prussia and the 
realisation ot its dream of comjuest in South America. 
It is considerations like these which are distiiri)ing 
the best minds and leading them to ask whether the 
United States is proving equal to the great challenge 
that has come upon the country in common with the 
rest of th<! worUl, whether, in short, the United States 
can finally stand aloof from the struggle without sufffiring 
a profound moral defeat. Presidi-nt Wilson througliout 
has been conscious of the challenge, but he has conceiv<d 
if to be his fimction not to force (jpiniini, but to leave it 
to mature and only act when a<;tion would give him the 
maximum of public sui)port and the; facts wotild provide 
him with an indi>i>utabie case. He has sought to give 
effect to the two main jMirnoses of America— the desire 
to keep out of the war, ayd the dettirmination to secure 
respect for the rights of the nation. Those i)urposes, 
however, cannot be reconciled without a strain. Germany, 
realising the difficulties of his position, has sought to 
(hvcrt the mind of America to the contemplation (ti \tt 
own interests, and hungry traders have not bren unwilling 
to believe that the British mastery of the seas, which 
interfered with their commerce, was an encroachment 
upon the sovereign rights of the United States. 
But the essential falsity of the balance between the 
piratical crimes of (k-rmany and the British Navy's 
interpretation of the laws of sea warfare has become too 
flagrant to be ignored, and it would be an entire mis- 
reading of President Wilson's jjolicy to assume that he has 
sought to igncjre it. He would not have a breach if it 
could be avoided because he believed that not only was 
it in Ameri(;a's interest that it should te outside the 
struggle, but also because lu; was conscious that the 
preservation of its neutrality might prove to be an im- 
portant service to the belligerents and might give the 
worid the advantage of a powerful and impartial influence 
in the hour of settlement. 
But the challenge which Germany has thrown out 
to him on the subject of armed merchantmen brings the 
President to the brink oi the. precipice. Germany has 
declared her intention to sink armed merchantmen, the 
President has refused to regard defensive armaments as 
ajnstituting a ship of war. This refusal, coupled with 
his determination not to forbid Americans to travel in 
British ships, makes the clash betwec.n the two countries 
apparently inevitable, 
The letter to Mr. Stone, in our opinion, leaves no 
doubt that the decision of the President has been taken. 
No one who has studied his can;cr can doubt the iron will 
that dwells behind this calm and peace-loving personality. 
He would go into the war with the grief that possessed 
the great souls of IJncoln and nl i>ee, but he would go 
into it with the stern resolution that was theirs also. 
" These are the times that try men's souls," said 
Thomas Paine in the first of those clarion calls which he 
wrote by Washington's camp fires in the dark nights 
when the American nation was (X)ming to birth. I'he 
soul of America bore the trial and came through it ,with 
boundless possibilities. Eighty year, later came thi; 
second great ordeal, and again the United Statc:s emerged 
purified, enlarged in outlook, united as it had never been. 
To-day it stands on the brink of yet an<;ther searching 
test. It will be the greatest test of all. It will decide 
whether the United States is only a miscellaneous aggrega- 
tion of appetites or whether it is a nation grown fo man- 
hood and shouldering its task in this world in the spirit 
of the mighty founders of its greatness. 
