can attack defenseless noncombatants, systematically destroy towns and villages, and put to death captured men, women, and children without falling in their moral nature before the brutes.  That he obeyed orders will not save from moral ruin the soldier or sailor who does such deeds.  He should have refused to obey such orders and taken the consequences.  This is true even of the privates, but more emphatically of the officers.  The white race has often been proud of the way in which its soldiers and sailors have fought in many causes—­good, bad, and indifferent; because they fought bravely took defeat resolutely, and showed humanity after victory.  The German method of conducting war omits chivalry, mercy, and humanity, and thereby degrades the German Nation and any other nation which sympathizes with it or supports its methods.  It is no answer to the world’s objection to the sinking of the Lusitania that Great Britain uses its navy to cut off from Germany food and needed supplies for its industries, for that is a recognized and effective method of warfare; whereas the sinking of an occasional merchant ship with its passengers and crew is a method of warfare nowhere effective, and almost universally condemned.  If war, with its inevitable stratagems, ambuscades, and lies must continue to be the arbiter in international disputes, it is certainly desirable that such magnanimity in war as the conventions of the last century made possible should not be lost because of Germany’s behavior in the present European convulsion.  It is also desirable to reaffirm with all possible emphasis that fidelity to international agreements is the taproot of human progress.

On the supposition that the people of the United States have learned the lesson of the Lusitania, so far as an understanding of the issues at stake in this gigantic war is concerned, can they also get from it any guidance in regard to their own relation to the fateful struggle?  Apparently, not yet.  With practical unanimity the American people will henceforth heartily desire the success of the Allies, and the decisive defeat of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey.  With practical unanimity they will support whatever action the Administration at Washington shall decide to take in the immediate emergency; but at present they do not feel that they know whether they can best promote the defeat of the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey by remaining neutral or by taking active part in the conflict.  Unless a dismemberment of Austria-Hungary is brought about by Italy and Rumania or some other Balkan State entering the war on the side of the Allies, it now seems as if neither party would acknowledge defeat until exhausted or brought to a sudden moral collapse.  Exhaustion in war can best be prevented by maintaining in activity the domestic industries and general productiveness of the nation involved in war and those of the neutral nations which are in position to feed it, and manufacture