t, America would be lost to the Americans. Wherever Englishmen are
gathered to-day their journals, appealing possibly to only a handful
of readers, assert that the function of the British fleet is to
exclude the European States, with Germany at their head, from
South America, not because in itself that is a right and worthy
end to pursue, but because that continent is earmarked for future
exploitation and control by their "kinsmen" of the United States,
and they need the support of those "kinsmen" in their battle against
Germany.

I need quote but a single utterance from the mass of seditious libels
of this character before me to show how widespread is the propaganda
of falsehood and how sustained is the effort being made to poison
the American mind against the only people in Europe England genuinely
fears, and therefore wholeheartedly hates.

The _Natal Mercury_ for instance, a paper written for the little town
of Durban and appealing to a population of only some 30,000 whites,
in a recent issue (March, 1913), devoted a leader to the approaching
"Peace Centennial" of 1914, to be held in commemoration of the signing
of the Treaty of Ghent, which ended the second war between Great
Britain and the American people in 1814.

"After all, blood is thicker than water," quotes the Natal journal
with satisfaction, and after pointing out some latter day indications
of rapprochement between England and the United States, it goes on to
proclaim the chief function of the British navy and the claim thereby
established on the goodwill of America.

"We make mention of them because such incidents are likely to repeat
themselves more and more frequently in that competition for naval
supremacy in Europe which compels the United States to put her own
fleets into working order and to join in the work that England has
hitherto been obliged to perform _unaided_.

"It is England that polices the Seven Seas, and America has reaped no
small benefits from the _self-imposed task_, an aspect of the matter
to which every thoughtful American is alive. There is a real and
hearty recognition in the New World of the _silent barrier_ that Great
Britain has set up to what might become something more than a dream
of expansion into South America on the part of _one_ potent European
State. It is, indeed, hardly too much to say that the maintenance
of the Monroe Doctrine is at the present moment almost as fully
guaranteed by England as it is by the coun