the British call them. In the last few days various British ships have been sunk carrying passengers, among them the "Sussex", a trans-channel
liner. ■ ,
Proof is not in yet whether the "Sussex was sunk by a submarine and whether she was unarmed, unresisting and did not attempt to escape. If all these conditions are true we may, if we choose, go to war over the matter. Germany will probably, say that there are bound to be occasional mistakes in sinking "unarmed" British ships so long as Britain refuses America's demand to disarm them all. For a submarine to rise and approach an "unarmed" ship that turns out to be armed is to court destruction. (New York "Evening Mail").
SUTTER, CAPTAIN — Sutter, on whose farm in California, the gold was found in February, 1848, which led to the famous gold fever of that year and attracted hundreds of thousands of miners and fortune-hunters to California, was a native of Baden but became a naturalized citizen of Switzerland. In 1836 he set out with a number of trappers of the American Fur Company for Vancouver, but a series of romantic circumstances caused him to settle in the Sacramento Valley, California, where he came into possession of a fort and extensive lands, and where his name was destined to become indellibly indentified with the history of the West as the pioneer of the great gold excitement of 1848. He was practically robbed of all his holdings and died a poor man.
TAFT, WILLIAM H. — Ex-President Taft assumed a strong pro-Ally attitude during the submarine crisis, and in an address to some students in Detroit in April 1916 declared that Germany could land from 300,000 to 400,000 troops on American soil in a few weeks. These and other speeches were made at a time when the German American element was arbitrarilly placed under suspicion of disloyalty, and chimed in with Pres- ' ident Wilson's well-known views on "the hyphen", intended to sow distrust and hatred among their fellow citizens. In 1912 Taft, as President of the United States, delivered an address to German-Americans in Philadelphia, of which the following is a press report :
Philadelphia, July 1.— Facing 6,000 jolly-faced German singers at the twenty-third annual Saengerfest here to-night, President Taft paid a high compliment to the German race when, in the course of his address, he spoke of the habit characteristic of the English, and of Americans to a certain extent, of taking their pleasures sadly,
"The German people", he said, "have for centuries had an advantage over the English people in this regard, and in no way have they shown it so much as through the instrumentality of their singing societies. The spirit and motive of these societies constitute that which is difficult to translate into English — 'Gemuethlichkeit.'
"The pursuit of art by the many, with the unit of the family, under conditions in which good comradeship is made the chief incident, is a custom that we have borrowed, and this liberalizing and broadening of our family and social affairs is due to the influence of those of our citizens who constitute and maintain in this country the delightful customs of their fatherland.
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