Within a very short time a Labor member of Parliament, J. Ramsay Macdonald, rises in his place, able and fearless, and, on the basis of the “White Paper,” as published and put in the hands of the British public, attacks Sir Edward Grey for having so committed Great Britain in advance to both Russia and France that, in spite of the representations of the German Ambassador, he dared not discuss the question of neutrality.  This member of Parliament manifestly belongs to the powerful anti-war party of Great Britain, a party two of whose members, John Burns and Lord Morley, resigned from the Cabinet rather than condone iniquity; a party which before the outbreak of the war made itself heard and felt, and protested against the participation of Great Britain, desiring localization of the struggle.

Mr. Macdonald says that in his opinion this talk about the violation of Belgian neutrality, from the point of view of British statesmen, is absurd, because as long ago as 1870 the plans for the use of Belgium, both by France and by Germany—­in other words, the violation of its neutrality—­were in the British War Office, and that Mr. Gladstone rose in his place and said he was not one of those whose opinion was that a formal guarantee should stand so far in thwarting the natural course of events as to commit Great Britain to war; and that has been the announced and avowed policy of Great Britain all the way down since 1870, and that therefore talk about the violation of Belgian neutrality is a mere pretext.

That is another instance of this secret agreement that goes on, which so commits a man like Sir Edward Grey that in the pinch, when the German Ambassador substantially proposed to yield everything to him and asked him for his proposition, he cannot make any.

These facts are in the “White Paper.”  As far as I know, no editor in the United States who claims to have studied thoroughly that “White Paper” has ever brought this out, and they had not been published in that paper at the time when Sir Edward Grey and Mr. Asquith made their respective speeches and committed the British Nation to the war.

Another unhappy use of language which has been noted in the public press is due to the literal translation of words.  Americans simply do not know what the word Emperor means.  To most of them it connotes the later Roman Emperors, or the autocratic Czar of Russia, or the short-lived but autocratic quality of Napoleon III., so that when we use the word Emperor we are thinking of an absolutely non-existing personage, unless it be the Czar of Russia.

We like very much to make sport of phrases from languages unfamiliar to us, and we enjoy the jokes of ludicrous translations, and so we take the term “Oberster Kriegsherr” and we translate it “Supreme War Lord.”  What conception the average American forms of that is manifest.  Whereas, as a matter of fact—­and this has already been pointed out both in conversation and in public prints—­the term means nothing in the world but Commander in Chief of the German Empire, has not any different relation whatsoever in the substance of its meaning than that which Presidents of the United States have been in time of supreme danger to the country.  Mr. Lincoln was just as much an “Oberster Kriegsherr” at one period of his term as the German Emperor could ever be; in fact, rather more.