Note 117 — Chapter XIX

The New York World, in a leading article published March 18, writes: “No pacifist proclaims the doctrine that, although Americans had a legal right to live near the border, they should have taken themselves out of the danger zone in the interest of peace. No German-American Alliance holds meetings to proclaim the dead at Columbus as ‘Guardian angels.’ No German language newspaper has spoken of the New Mexico massacre as undertaken in a holy cause, or referred to the President as incapable of understanding either German militarism or German Kultur. Yet the Americans who were assassinated on the Lusitania and the Arabic had as much right to be where they were as the Americans who were dragged from their beds at Columbus and slaughtered. The Lusitania murder was deliberately planned and ordered by the Government in Berlin, which has assumed full responsibility therefore, and presented but one excuse, that its victims were unexpectedly numerous. The New Mexico murder was planned and executed by a savage, with no pretence that there is a Government behind him, the guilt of the outlaw of the border being not one whit less than that of the outlaw of the sea.”