PROVIDENCE "JOURNAL" — A notorious scandal sheet, edited by John Ravelstoke Rathom, native of Australia and the hero of a sensational poisoning case in San Francisco exposed by the "The Fatherland". Through the Providence "Journal" the British Ambassador succeeded in gaining publicity for stories totally false or misleading, calculated to impugn the loyalty of German American citizens and to discredit attaches of the German and Austro-Hungarian Embassies in Washington. A representative of this newspaper was present at a meeting of Secretary Lansing and Attorney General Gregory, according to the New York "Times", at which it was decided to dismiss Capt. von Papen and Capt. Boy-Ed, military and naval attaches of the German Embassy, who were sent home. Rathom is generally discredited as the participant in notorious scandals published in the San Francisco papers and came East with a savory record that did not, however, bar him from having intimate diplomatic relations as an adviser with the Wilson administration. The Providence "Journal" is owned by Brown and Sharp, tool manufacturers, who turned their works into an extensive factory for the making of war supplies for the Allies.
PRUSSIA, TREATY WITH—When Secretary Lansing decided that the status of the British prize steamer "Appam", captured by the German "Moeve", and sent to Norfolk in charge of a German commander and crew, had to be determined by a court, thus giving the British owners special opportunity to recover the vessel in violation of the treaty of the United States with Germany, the successor of Thomas Jefferson, Hamilton Fish, James G. Blaine and Roger Q. Gresham in the office of Secretary of State undermined a treaty based upon one of the most memorable documents ever adopted by mankind. Contrast Lansing's ruling with the solemn estimate placed upon the treaty of 1799 by President John Quincy Adams in his Message to Congress, dated March 15, 1826:
"They (the three American commissioners) met and resided for that purpose about one year in Paris and the only result of their negotiations at that time was the first treaty between the United States and Prussia — memorable in the diplomatic history of the world and precious as a monument of the principles, in relation to commerce and maritime warfare with which our country entered upon her career
as a member of the great family of independent nations ____ At that
time in the infancy of their political existence, under the influence of those principles of liberty and of right so congenial to the cause in which they had just fought and triumphed, they were able to obtain the sanction of but one great and philosophical though absolute sovereign in Europe ^Frederick the Great) to their liberal and enlightened principles. They could obtain no more." Amazingly good reading in parrallel columns with Lansing's decision that the "Appam" does not come under the provision of this treaty and must be returned to its British master.
QUITMAN, JOHANN ANTON.—One of the most dashing soldiers in the Mexican war, was the son of Friedrich Anton Quitman, a Lutheran minister at Rhinebeck-on-Hudosn. Born in 1798, took part in the Texas struggle for liberty against Mexico, and in 1846 was made brigadier general ; fought with greatest distinction at Monterey; first at the head of
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