the right to insist that the interests of neutral nations,
of whom, with our South American cousins, (for the better intercourse
with whom we have just spent several hundred millions upon the
construction of the Panama Canal,) we form so large a percentage, shall
before long be given some consideration by the nations whose great
quarrel is harming us incalculably?

Americans Should Speak Out.

The interruption of our economic development already has become marked
and the war's baneful influence upon moral conditions in our midst shows
itself through constantly increasing unemployment and, as a logical
consequence of that, the rapid filling of our eleemosynary and penal
institutions. May we not reasonably demand that this shall speedily be
brought to an end?

It probably is true that under the rules of the game the President of
the United States cannot offer his good offices again to the
belligerents without first being invited by one or the other side to do
this, but the people of the United States have a voice even more
powerful than his; if that of the people of South America should be
joined with it, and if the combined sound should be made unquestionably
apparent to the warring nations, it could not pass unheeded.

Public opinion in the United States should firmly seek to impress upon
the warring nations the conviction that nothing can secure a lasting
peace except assurance of conditions under which not mighty armies
and tremendous navies are held to be the factors through which
trade expansion and the conquest of the markets of the world are
to be obtained, but that this can be accomplished better and more
lastingly through rigid adherence to the qualities and methods which
generally make for success in commercial or any other peaceful
competition--fairness, thorough efficiency, and hard work.

The concentrated power of the American press and people would be
tremendous. I am sure that, in this instance, it is possible to
concentrate it for righteousness and the future good of all humanity.

Prof. Mather on Mr. Schiff

Professor of Art at Princeton University; editorial writer for
The New York Evening Post and Assistant Editor of The Nation,
1901-06.

_To the Editor of The New York Times:_

It seems to me that the Belgian previous question ought to be moved with
all candid pro-Germans. Mr. Schiff is plainly candid, so I have framed
an open letter to elicit his opinion:

[_An O