Part 14

Minister of the Interior and President of the Italian Ministry

_(Photo from Bain)_]

We have seen in the preceding article that the dependence of the nations goes back a good deal further than we are apt to think; that long before the period of fully developed intercommunication, all nations owed their civilization to foreigners. It was to their traffic with Gaul and the visits of the Phoenician traders that the early inhabitants of the British Isles learned their first steps in arts and crafts and the development of a civilized society, and even in what we know as the Dark Ages we find Charlemagne borrowing scholars from York to assist him in civilizing the Continent.

The civilization which our forefathers brought with them to America was the result of centuries of exchange in ideas between Britain and the Continent, and though in the course of time it had become something characteristically Anglo-Saxon, its origins were Greek and Arabic and Roman and Jewish. But the interdependence of nations today is of an infinitely more vital and insistent kind, and despite superficial setbacks becomes more vital every day. As late as the first quarter of the nineteenth century, for instance, Britain was still practically self-sufficing; her very large foreign trade was a trade in luxuries. She could still produce her own food, her population could still live on her own soil.

But if today by some sort of magic Britain could kill off all foreigners the means of livelihood for quite an appreciable portion of her population would have disappeared. Millions would be threatened by actual starvation. For Britain's overseas trade, on which so large a proportion of the population actually lives, is mainly with the outside world and not with her own empire. We have seen what isolation merely from two countries has meant for Great Britain. Britain is still maintaining her contacts with the world as a whole, but the cessation of relationship with two countries has precipitated the gravest financial crisis known in all her history, has kept her Stock Exchanges closed for months, has sent her Consols to a lower point than any known since the worst period of the Napoleonic wars, and has compelled the Government ruthlessly to pledge its credit for the support of banking institutions and all the various trades that have been most seriously hit.

Nor is Germany's isolation altogether complete. She manages through neutral countries and otherwise to maintain a considerable current of relationship with the outside world, but how deeply and disastrously the partial severance of contact has affected Germany we shall not at present, probably at no time, in full measure know.

All this gives a mere hint of what the organized isolation by the entire world would mean to any one nation. Imagine the position of a civilized country whose ports no ship from another country would enter, whose bills no banker would discount, a country unable to receive a telegram or a letter from the outside world or send one thereto, whose citizens could neither travel in other countries or maintain communications therewith. It would have an effect in the modern world somewhat equivalent to that of the dreadful edicts of excommunication and interdict which the papal power was able to issue in the mediaeval world.

I am aware, of course, that such a measure would fall very hardly upon certain individuals in the countries inflicting this punishment, but it is quite within the power of the Governments of those countries to do what the British Government has done in the case of persons like acceptors of German bills who found themselves threatened with bankruptcy and who threatened in consequence to create great disturbance around them because of the impossibility of securing payment from the German indorsers. The British Government came to the rescue of those acceptors, used the whole national credit to sustain them. It is expensive, if you will, but infinitely less expensive than a war, and, finally, most of the cost of it will probably be recovered.

Now if that were done, how could a country so dealt with retaliate? She could not attack all the world at once. Upon those neighbors more immediately interested could be thrown the burden of taking such defensive military measures as the circumstances might dictate. You might have a group of powers probably taking such defensive measures and all the powers of Christendom co-operating economically by this suggested non-intercourse. It is possible even that the powers as a whole might contribute to a general fund indemnifying individuals in those States particularly hit by the fact of non-intercourse. I am thinking, for instance, of shipping interests in a port like Amsterdam if the decree of non-intercourse were proclaimed against a power like Germany.

We have little conception of the terror which such a policy might constitute to a nation. It has never been tried, of course, because even in war complete non-intercourse is not achieved. At the present time Germany is buying and selling and trading with the outside world, cables from Berlin are being sent almost as freely to New York as cables from London and German merchants are making contracts, maintaining connections of very considerable complexity. But if this machinery of non-intercourse were organized as it might be, there would be virtually no neutrals, and its effect in our world today would be positively terrifying.

It is true that the American administration did try something resembling a policy of non-intercourse in dealing with Mexico. But, the thing was a fiction. While the Department of State talked of non-intercourse the Department of the Treasury was busy clearing ships for Mexico, facilitating the dispatch of mails, &c. And, of course, Mexico's communication with Europe remained unimpaired; at the exact moment when the President of the United States was threatening Huerta with all sorts of dire penalties Huerta's Government was arranging in London for the issue of large loans and the advertisements of these Mexican loans were appearing in The London Times. So that the one thing that might have moved Huerta's Government the United States Government was unable to enforce. In order to enforce it, it needed the co-operation of other countries.

I have spoken of the economic world State--of all those complex international arrangements concerning Post Offices, shipping, banking, codes, sanctions of law, criminal research, and the rest, on which so much of our civilized life depends. This world State is unorganized, incoherent. It has neither a centre nor a capital, nor a meeting place. The shipowners gather in Paris, the world's bankers in Madrid or Berne, and what is in effect some vital piece of world regulation is devised in the smoking room of some Brussels hotel. The world State has not so much as an office or an address, The United States should give it one. Out of its vast resources it should endow civilization with a Central Bureau of Organization--a Clearing House of its international activities as it were, with the funds needed for its staff and upkeep.

If undertaken with largeness of spirit, it would become the capital of the world. And the Old World looks to America to do this service, because it is the one which it cannot do for itself. Its old historic jealousies and squabbles, from which America is so happily detached, prevent any one power taking up and putting through this work of organization, but America could do it, and do it so effectively that from it might well flow this organization of that common action of all the nations against any recalcitrant member of which I have spoken as a means of enforcing non-militarily a common decision.

It is this world State which it should be the business of America during the next decade or two to co-ordinate, to organize. Its organization will not come into being as the result of a week-end talk between Ambassadors. There will be difficulties, material as well as moral, jealousies to overcome, suspicions to surmount. But this war places America in a more favorable position than any one European power. The older powers would be less suspicious of her than of any one among their number. America has infinitely greater material resources, she has a greater gift for improvised organization, she is less hidebound by old traditions, more disposed to make an attempt along new lines.

That is the most terrifying thing about the proposal which I make--it has never been tried. But the very difficulties constitute for America also an immense opportunity. We have had nations give their lives and the blood of their children for a position of supremacy and superiority. But we are in a position of superiority and supremacy which for the most part would be welcomed by the world as a whole and which would not demand of America the blood of one of her children. It would demand some enthusiasm, some moral courage, some sustained effort, faith, patience, and persistence. It would establish new standards in, and let us hope a new kind of, international rivalry.

One word as to a starting point and a possible line of progress. The first move toward the ending of this present war may come from America. The President of the United States will probably act as mediator. The terms of peace will probably be settled in Washington. Part of the terms of peace to be exacted by the Allies will probably be, as I have already hinted, some sort of assurance against future danger from German militarist aggression.

The German, rightly or wrongly, does not believe that he has been the aggressor--it is not a question at all of whether he is right or wrong; it is a question of what he believes. And he believes quite honestly and sincerely that he is merely defending himself. So what he will be mainly concerned about in the future is his security from the victorious Allies.

Around this point much of the discussion at the conclusion of this present war will range. If it is to be a real peace and not a truce an attempt will have to be made to give to each party security from the other, and the question will then arise whether America will come into that combination or not. I have already indicated that I think she should not come in, certainly I do not think she will come in, with the offer of military aid. But if she stays out of it altogether she will have withdrawn from this world congress that must sit at the end of the war a mediating influence which may go far to render it nugatory.

And when, after it may be somewhat weary preliminaries, an international council of conciliation is established to frame the general basis of the new alliance between the civilized powers for mutual protection along the lines indicated, America, if she is to play her part in securing the peace of the world, must be ready to throw at least her moral and economic weight into the common stock, the common moral and economic forces which will act against the common enemy, whoever he may happen to be.

That does not involve taking sides, as I showed in my last article. The policeman does not decide which of two quarrelers is right; he merely decides that the stronger shall not use his power against the weaker. He goes to the aid of the weaker, and then later the community deals with the one who is the real aggressor. One may admit, if you will, that at present there is no international law, and that it may not be possible to create one. But we can at least exact that there shall be an inquiry, a stay; and more often than not that alone would suffice to solve the difficulty without the application of definite law.

It is just up to that point that the United States should at this stage be ready to commit herself in the general council of conciliation, namely, to say this: "We shall throw our weight against any power that refuses to give civilization an opportunity at least of examining and finding out what the facts of the dispute are. After due examination we may reserve the right to withdraw from any further interference between such power and its antagonist. But, at least, we pledge ourselves to secure that by throwing the weight of such non-military influence as we may have on to the side of the weaker." That is the point at which a new society of nations would begin, as it is the point at which a society of individuals has begun. And it is for the purpose of giving effect to her undertaking in that one regard that America should become the centre of a definite organization of that world State which has already cut athwart all frontiers and traversed all seas.

It is not easy without apparent hyperbole to write of the service which America would thus render to mankind. She would have discovered a new sanction for human justice, would have made human society a reality. She would have done something immeasurably greater, immeasurably more beneficent than any of the conquests recorded in the long story of man's mostly futile struggles. The democracy of America would have done something which the despots and the conquerors of all time, from Alexander and Caesar to Napoleon and the Kaiser, have found to be impossible. Dangerous as I believe national vanity to be, America would, I think, find in the pride of this achievement--this American leadership of the human race--a glory that would not be vain, a world victory which the world would welcome.

SIR CHRISTOPHER CRADOCK.

By JOHN E. DOLSON.

Through the fog of the fight we could dimly see, As ever the flame from the big guns flashed, That Cradock was doomed, yet his men and he, With their plates shot to junk, and their turrets smashed, Their ship heeled over, her funnels gone, Were fearlessly, doggedly fighting on.

Out-speeded, out-metaled, out-ranged, out-shot By heavier guns, they were not out-fought. Those men--with the age-old British phlegm, That has conquered and held the seas for them, And the courage that causes the death-struck man To rise on his mangled stumps and try, With one last shot from his heated gun, To score a hit ere his spirit fly, Then sink in the welter of red, and die With the sighting squint fixed on his dead, glazed eye-- Accepted death as part of the plan.

So the guns belched flame till the fight had run Into night; and now, in the distance dim, We could see, by the flashes, the dull, dark loom Of their hull, as it bore toward the Port of Doom, Away on the water's misty rim-- Cradock and his few hundred men, Never, in time, to be seen again.

While into the darkness their great shells streamed, Little the valiant Germans dreamed That Cradock was teaching them how to go When the fate their daring, itself, had sealed, Waiting, as yet, o'er the ocean's verge, To their eyes undaunted would stand revealed; And, snared by a swifter, stronger foe, Out-classed, out-metaled, out-ranged, out-shot By heavier guns, but not out-fought, They, too, would sink in the sheltering surge.

Battle of the Suez Canal

A First-Hand Account of the Unsuccessful Turkish Invasion

[From The London Times, Feb. 19, 1915.]

ISMAILIA, Feb. 10.

Though skirmishing had taken place between the enemy's reconnoitring parties and our outposts during the latter part of January, the main attack was not developed until Feb. 2, when the enemy began to move toward the Ismailia Ferry. They met a reconnoitring party of Indian troops of all arms, and a desultory engagement ensued, to which a violent sand storm put a sudden end about 3 o'clock in the afternoon. The main attacking force pushed forward toward its destination after nightfall. From twenty-five to thirty galvanized iron pontoon boats, seven and a half meters in length, which had been dragged in carts across the desert, were hauled by hand toward the water, with one or two rafts made of kerosene tins in a wooden frame. All was ready for the attack.

The first warning of the enemy's approach was given by a sentry of a mountain battery, who heard, to him, an unknown tongue across the water. The noise soon increased. It would seem that Mudjah Ideen ("Holy Warriors")--said to be mostly old Tripoli fighters--accompanied the pontoon section and regulars of the Seventy-fifth Regiment, for loud exhortations often in Arabic of "Brothers die for the faith; we can die but once," betrayed the enthusiastic irregular.

The Egyptians waited till the Turks were pushing their boats into the water; then the Maxims attached to the battery suddenly spoke and the guns opened with case at point-blank range at the men and boats crowded under the steep bank opposite them.

Immediately, a violent fire broke out on both sides of the canal, the enemy replying to the rifles and machine gun fire and the battery on our bank. Around the guns it was impossible to stand up, but the gunners stuck to the work, inflicting terrible punishment.

A little torpedo boat with a crew of thirteen patrolling the canal dashed up and landed a party of four officers and men to the south of Tussum, who climbed up the eastern bank and found themselves in a Turkish trench, and escaped by a miracle with the news. Promptly the midget dashed in between the fires and enfiladed the eastern bank amid a hail of bullets, and destroyed several pontoon boats lying unlaunched on the bank. It continued to harass the enemy, though two officers and two men were wounded.

As the dark, cloudy night lightened toward dawn fresh forces came into action. The Turks, who occupied the outer, or day, line of the Tussum post, advanced, covered by artillery, against the Indian troops holding the inner, or night, position, while an Arab regiment advanced against the Indian troops at the Serapeum post.

The warships on the canal and lake joined in the fray. The enemy brought some six batteries of field guns into action from the slopes west of Kataib-el-Kheil. Shells admirably fused made fine practice at all the visible targets, but failed to find the battery above mentioned, which, with some help from a detachment of infantry, beat down the fire of the riflemen on the opposite bank and inflicted heavy losses on the hostile supports advancing toward the canal. A chance salvo wounded four men of the battery, but it ran more risk from a party of about twenty of the enemy who had crossed the canal in the dark and sniped the gunners from the rear till they were finally rounded up by the Indian cavalry and compelled to surrender.

Supported by land naval artillery the Indian troops took the offensive. The Serapeum garrison, which had stopped the enemy three-quarters of a mile from the position, cleared its front, and the Tussum garrison by a brilliant counter-attack drove the enemy back. Two battalions of Anatolians of the Twenty-eighth Regiment were thrown vainly into the fight. Our artillery gave them no chance, and by 3:30 in the afternoon a third of the enemy, with the exception of a force that lay hid in bushy hollows on the east bank between the two posts, were in full retreat, leaving many dead, a large proportion of whom had been killed by shrapnel.

Meanwhile the warships on the lake had been in action. A salvo from a battleship woke up Ismailia early, and crowds of soldiers and some civilians climbed every available sandhill to see what was doing till the Turkish guns sent shells sufficiently near to convince them that it was safer to watch from cover. A husband and wife took a carriage and drove along the lake front, much peppered by shells, till near the old French hospital, when they realized the danger and suddenly whisked around and drove back full gallop to Ismailia.

But the enemy's fire did more than startle. At about 11 in the morning two six-inch shells hit the Hardinge near the southern entrance of the lake. The first damaged the funnel and the second burst inboard. Pilot Carew, a gallant old merchant seaman, refused to go below when the firing opened and lost a leg. Nine others were wounded. One or two merchantmen were hit, but no lives were lost. A British gunboat was struck.

Then came a dramatic duel between the Turkish big gun or guns and a warship. The Turks fired just over and then just short of 9,000 yards. The warship sent in a salvo of more six-inch shells than had been fired that day.

During the morning the enemy moved toward Ismailia Ferry. The infantry used the ground well, digging shelter pits as they advanced, and were covered by a well-served battery. An officer, apparently a German, exposed himself with the greatest daring, and watchers were interested to see a yellow "pie dog," which also escaped, running about the advancing line. Our artillery shot admirably and kept the enemy from coming within 1,000 yards of the Indian outposts. In the afternoon the demonstration--for it was no more--ceased but for a few shells fired as "a nightcap." During the dark night that followed some of the enemy approached the outpost line of the ferry position with a dog, but nothing happened, and day found them gone.

At the same time as the fighting ceased at the ferry it died down at El Kantara. There the Turks, after a plucky night attack, came to grief on our wire entanglements. Another attempt to advance from the southeast was forced back by an advance of the Indian troops. The attack, during which it was necessary to advance on a narrow front over ground often marshy with recent inundations against our strong position, never had a chance. Indeed, the enemy was only engaged with our outpost line.

Late in the afternoon of the 3d there was sniping from the east bank between Tussum and Serapeum and a man was killed in the tops of a British battleship. Next morning the sniping was renewed, and the Indian troops, moving out to search the ground, found several hundred of the enemy in the hollow previously mentioned. During the fighting some of the enemy, either by accident or design, held up their hands, while others fired on the Punjabis, who were advancing to take the surrender, and killed a British officer. A sharp fight with the cold steel followed, and a British officer killed a Turkish officer with a sword thrust in single combat. The body of a German officer with a white flag was afterward found here, but there is no proof that the white flag was used. Finally all the enemy were killed, captured, or put to flight.

With this the fighting ended, and the subsequent operations were confined to "rounding up" prisoners and to the capture of a considerable amount of military material left behind. The Turks who departed with their guns and baggage during the night of the 3d still seemed to be moving eastward.

So ended the battle of the Suez Canal. Our losses have been amazingly small, totaling about 111 killed and wounded.

Our opponents have probably lost nearly 3,000 men. The Indian troops bore the brunt of the fighting and were well supported by the British and French warships and by the Egyptian troops. The Turks fought bravely and their artillery shot well if unluckily, but the intentions of the higher command are still a puzzle to British officers.