Life — November 4, 1915 — page 25: what you’re looking at

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

Le very thing. No one can accuse him to advantage of wanting to get us into war, for he has hugged peace right along, not so tight as he gets credit for, but, certainly, tight enough. If he calls for large military and naval appropriations nobody can raise a scare of militarism at his expense, for if he has a fault in that direction it is that he has delayed his call overlong. If the pacifists in Congress attempt to talk an army bill to death or to pieces, as they probably will, we shall see how many pacifists there are in Congress and whom they represent, and we shall also see who is for the pork-barrel and who for the United States. There 1s a prospect that within the next four months we shall learn a great deal about the temper and sentiments of the American people, and to persons who believe that our nation is sound at heart it is a cheering prospect. WE shall want to hear what George McClellan, apologist for Ger- many in Belgium, has to say in justi- V5 THE FIRST THANKSGIVING fication of the execution of Miss Ca- vell, the English nurse. Disapproba- tion of the German conduct in shoot- ing her because she had helped Belgian and English fugitives to escape from Brussels has been very emphatic. Col. McClellan may point out that she broke the German rules and that her life was forfeit under German mili- tary law. He may feel that, though she was not in the ordinary sense a spy, she deserved or had lawfully in- curred what she got. It is possible to go a point farther and hold that, considering what hands she was in, Miss Cavell got off easy. She was shot; that was all; an honor- able death. Scores of Belgian women have been shot; hundreds of women, both in Belgium and France, have suf- fered far worse than that, and as for the Armenian women, we all know what the Kaiser's allies have done to them, not merely by the hundred or the score, but by the hundred thou- sand. To shoot an Englishwoman for breaking German wwar-rules is the worst that Germans lare at present to do openly in Brussels, What they do in secret Heaven knows, but their public military conduct, as General Joffre has pointed out, is much im- proved since the battle of the Marne warned them that they might have to make an accounting for their actions. W are all ready now to have Gen- eral Carranza disappoint expec- tations and demonstrate capacity to bring order out of the chaos in Mex- ico. He has got his chance; the best Washington could give him. He is having the assistance of our govern- ment at present, in the hope that he will succeed. If he does succeed, all right. If not, then perhaps Mexico will receive our assistance. Things are not as they were. Bryan is out of the State Department and fooling scems to be about over. Of capacity in any quarter to bring order out of the chaos of Europe there is as yet no sign. It is still “bubble, bubble, care and trouble” with that great chaldron. The news we get suffices amply for the usual crop of daily head-lines, but since the Balkans became the important news- source news is more unreliable than ever. But nobody is beaten yet, not even Servia. comicbooks.com