Right Above Race

by Otto H. Kahn

That against that blockade as well as for the destruction of English commerce you are making use of your amazingly perfected submarines appears to me entirely justified, so long as in that use you keep within the limits of legitimate warfare. Nor do I deny that England, in certain respects, has arbitrarily and it seems rather fatuously interfered with the rights of neutrals; that she has employed against you some irritating measures of petty and apparently purposeless chicanery and given you cause for resentment by certain vindictive and perhaps unfair provisions and procedures enacted at the very start of the war against German firms and German interests within English jurisdiction.

It must also, I believe, be admitted that you were justified in looking upon some of the boastful edicts of Winston Churchill, with reference to the conduct of English merchant vessels, as provocations which gave you legitimate ground for retaliation within recognized limitations.

But that Germany should have used these provocations and this phrase of "starvation warfare" as a basis for reprisals which actually do constitute warfare against women and children, is a blow in the face to the world's conscience.

Against England's infringements of the strict limits of neutral rights and against the subjecting of neutrals to certain unjust, irritating and rather senseless annoyances, America has not failed to protest. She has in several cases received satisfaction and acceptable assurances. She should, and, I have no doubt, she will insist firmly on her rights in the cases still under discussion. But—and that makes the vast difference between the English and German infractions of the rights of neutrals—in no single case have such acts on the part of England involved the sacrifice of a human life.

You say that Germany is not responsible for the war. It is nevertheless a fact that it was Germany who first declared war. Perhaps it would have come even if not declared by Germany, but in that "perhaps" lies a fearful burden of responsibility.

You speak of the vast "Austro-German inferiority" in fighting men, as compared to France and Russia, which you had to counteract by rapidity and initiative of proceeding.

First, this inferiority of your 120 millions to the Franco-Russian 200 millions (the English, at that time, could not have entered into your reckoning) is not such a "vast" one, even on paper, when one considers how many millions of the Russians could not for many months be included in the reckoning, in consequence of the huge distances separating them from the scene of action.

Secondly, you had the enormous advantage of strategic railroads, which the Russians lacked.

Thirdly, you and the Austrians occupying contiguous territory and holding the inner lines were able to move your troops from East to West, and vice versa, as occasion demanded, while the Russians and French were separated and had to fight on the outer lines; and—

Fourthly, every one knows that in modern warfare far less depends on the number of men than on preparation, leadership and ammunition. And that in these respects the Russians certainly, and at the outset also the French, laboured under a "vast inferiority" is not open to question.