Page:Roger Casement - The crime against Ireland and how the war may right it.djvu/44

 38 The Monroe Doctrine, palladium of the Anglo-Saxon World Empire, is imperilled by German ambitions and were it not for the British fleet, 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 or worthy end to pursue, but because that Continent is ear-marked 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 this 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