Life — February 25, 1915 — page 21: what you’re looking at

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

THE GERMAN ADVANCE right, so that it can make a safe and kindly progress towards real prosperity. 'HAT seems a great deal to ask of the war. But it is not all, Some of the English radicals ask from it a lot of cure for England; democratiza- tion; the restoration of the land to the tillers of it; the re-creation of the English people largely at the expense of the English aristocracy. Then there cannot but be many who feel that the hands of the clock are passing the hour when England alone, or any other single nation, can rule the seas. And one is told, on the one hand, that Eng- land can hardly get all the improve- ments that she needs unless she is whipped, and is assured, on the other hand, that nothing but a thorough drubbing will do the job for Germany. It is mighty difficult and expensive doctoring these sick countries. To persuade Germany. or England, that she must be beaten for her highest good is imaginable. But how persuade both of them? And, then, the industrial apparatus of Belgium and Northern France is destroyed, or badly damaged, while as yet the whole industrial apparatus of Germany stands unharmed. What cure for that inequity if the war stops soon, so that Belgium and France can get their markets back before Germany grabs them? A good deal more than office work remains to be done, apparently, before this war is settled. 'HE shipping bill has had a hard time. Perhaps if Son-in-law Mc- Adoo had been against it instead of for it, it would have found better go- ing. Secretary McAdoo is a hard- working man and one of the best hands known to get a thing done. But he is not quite so good at convincing all observers that what he works to get done is the thing to do. He worked hard here in New York to get tubes 325 under the Hudson River, and he got them under, very much to the con- venience of the population here. But we have understood that the people who put money into the tubes have not been able to get it out again. Possibly it was that for one thing that recommended him for the place he now holds, since the New Freedom was a plan for improving distribution, and many sincere and vociferous Democrats hold firmly with the idea that the way to do it is to get investors, and especially New York bankers, into holes, and teach them not to expect the return of their money. However that may be, there seems to be quite a company that, though convinced of Mr. McAdoo’s energy, are doubtful as to his abilities in calculating the out- come of business enterprises. When the flush of patriotic endeavor mantles his cheek such persons intimate that it is only a four flush, which is mean, and, we believe, quite unwarranted, but it does not help the shipping bill. The fortunes of that measure are too complicated and changeful to be treated successfully beforehand in a paper that comes out only once a week, but, at this writing, the President still desires government-owned ships and is firm for a bill, and it looks as if, possibly, to avert a special session, a denatured bill might be passed in spite of Mr. McAdoo’s support of it and of the opposition of the Republi- cans, some rebel Democrats and a Progressive or two who want a ship- purchase bill, but want other legista- tion more. A conservative, emergency ship- purchase bill, with the scares taken out of it, might be a good thing, but the effort to rush through a bill that the leading Republicans were afraid of and which the country in general had no feeling about has been a hard rub for the administration. No doubt if a German submarine sunk an Amer- ican ship in the English Channel, the opposition to any kind of a ship- purchase bill, with or without scares, would loosen up very perceptibly. Meanwhile some private adventurers seem to have an idea that ships may be good property, for one reads that every shipyard on our Atlantic sea- hoard is full of orders and working overtime. comichooks.