These demonstrated policies and purposes of the German Empire raise the fundamental question—­how is the civilization of the white race to be carried forward?  How are the real welfare of that race and the happiness of the individuals that compose it to be hereafter furthered?  Since the revolutions in England, America, and France, it has been supposed that civilization was to be advanced by international agreements or treaties, by the co-operation of the civilized nations in the gradual improvement of these agreements, and by the increasing practical effect given to them by nations acting in co-operation; but now comes the German Empire with its military force, immense in numbers and efficient beyond all former experience through the intelligent use for destructive purposes of the new powers attained by applied science, saying not only in words, but in terrible acts:  “We shall not abide by any international contracts or agreements into which we may have previously entered, if at the passing moment they interfere or conflict with the most advantageous immediate use of our military and naval force.”  If this doctrine shall now prevail in Europe, the foundations of modern civilization and of all friendly and beneficial commerce the world over will be undermined.

The sinking of the Lusitania, therefore, makes perfectly clear the nature of the problem with which the three Allies in Europe are now struggling.  They are resisting with all the weapons of war a nation which declares that its promises are good only till it is, in its own judgment, under the military necessity of breaking them.

The neutral nations are looking on at this tremendous conflict between good-faith nations and no-faith nations with intense anxiety and sorrow, but no longer in any doubt as to the nature of the issue.  The sinking of the Lusitania has removed every doubt; because that was a deliberate act in full sight of the world, and of a nature not to be obscured or confused by conflicting testimonies or questions about possible exaggeration of outrages or about official responsibility for them.  The sinking of the Lusitania was an act which outraged not only the existing conventions of the civilized world in regard to naval warfare, but the moral feelings of present civilized society.

The neutral nations and some of the belligerent nations feel another strong objection to the present German way of conducting war on land and sea, namely that it brutalizes the soldier and the sailor to an unprecedented degree.  English French, and Russian soldiers on the one side can contend with German, Austrian and Turkish soldiers on the other with the utmost fierceness from trenches or in the open, use new and old weapons of destruction, and kill and wound each other with equal ardor and resolution, and yet not be brutalized or degraded in their moral nature, if they fight from love of country or with self-sacrificing loyalty to its spiritual ideals; but neither soldiers nor sailors