Life — February 4, 1915 — page 20: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

ae FEBRUARY 4, 1915 ‘While there ts Life there's Hope"’ Published by LIFE PUBLISHING COMPANY J. A. Mitcnent, Pres’t. A. Mutter, Sec’y and Treas. 17 West Thirty-first Street, New York English Office, Rolls House, Breams Bldgs., London, E. C. R. BRYAN’S ‘letter to Senator Stone, telling what care- ful neutrals we cS are, comes timely, ft in that it defines WS 4 in detail what ought to be ex- pected of neutrals. Nobody, so far, except professional Republicans, finds much fault with the letter nor denies that the duty of neutrals as laid down in it is about right. Senator Stone comes from Missouri, a State particu- larly well stocked with citizens of German descent, who require to be shown why our country is not doing more to help the Germans win. Some of them, and the pro-German brethren generally, want our government to pro- hibit the sale of war material to the fighting nations. Mr. Bryan's letter en- lightens them on that point, disclosing that it is always the way for neutrals to accommodate belligerents with any- thing they have to sell so long as the belligerents’ credit holds out. » Fifty years ago, when a difference had to be fought out in this country, our fathers on both sides bought what they could of what they needed in Europe, espe- cially in England, and got it home the best they could and used it to blow their brethren’s heads off. Being so kindly accommodated then in our time of need, it would ill become us to decline in our turn a like accommoda- tion to Europe. Mr. Bryan explained further that under the rules of this game of selling war supplies to belligerents the buyer is expected to carry home his own parcels, and if his antagonist can gct his purchases away from him on the way home, that is all fair and nothing that a neutral is concerned about. It happens just now, while most of the German fleet is playing a home engagement in the back yard of Heligoland, that the road to Europe is much safer to parcels addressed to the Allies than to consignments for the Turks, the Austrians or the Ger- mans, But that just happens so and is no fault of ours; and so Mr. Bryan reminis Mr. Stone, who, besides being from Missouri, is chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee of the Senate. E suppose Mr. Bryan would not have had to be at all these pains and expense to publish the rudiments of neutrality if our pro-German breth- ren were not so indefatigably diligent in trying to twist us out of our proper neutrality and get us into a scrape with the Allies. To aid them in this endeavor, which surely no unhy- phenated American can approve, the German Government maiptains here among other agents Dr. Bernhard Dernberg. Dr. Dernberg’s office is to make Germans look good to us. You may read about him in Mr. Wile’s book about the Men About the Kaiser. He is a sagacious, able man, not a Ger- man by race, but a Jew, and his job has been this long time to clean up after Germans and put things to rights that they had muddled. He came to notice first as a banker who took over bankrupt German enterprises, reor- ganized them and set them on their legs again. The Kaiser, seeing how good he was at that, drafted him away from that very profitable busi- ness and put him on a small salary in charge of the German Colonial Office, which was spending a lot of money and getting very meagre re- sults. Dr. Dernberg obediently took hold of it, discharged as many incom- petent German officials as he could, and improved the colonial situation (so Mr. Wile says) very much, but made so many powerful enemies in doing it that they presently were able to get him out of office. So, when the war broke out, he was available to help the Kaiser in some new way, and was sent to New York to do what he could to disabuise the American mind of the impression, so prevalent, that Germany had gone out of her head and was out to conquer the world. have done well everything he has put his hand to, and this big job of cleaning up after Germans in the United States he has dealt with in a fashion worthy of his record. There has been some feeling that he has been almost too good and too busy with it, and has affected public sentiment here more than it was proper for public sentiment to be affected in a neutral nation. For our part, we do not sce it so. In so far as he has attracted attention to himself and his utterances and away from the Germans and their utterances, he has, of course, done well by Germany, because his utterances are skillful at least, whereas the detach- ment from fact in the most of the German utterances is so palpable that the easiest-going understanding can hardly fail to detect it. If all the Germans could have sat tight and let Dr. Dernberg say and do for them, no one can say what he might have accomplished. But the trouble has been that they have all been active and vocal at home and abroad, and whether multiplying horrors in Bel- gium or issuing learned and exceed- comichooks, ‘Com