by Richard van Pelt, WWI Correspondent

Today’s reports are from the Daily Oregon Statesman.

RETIREMENT OF GERMAN RIGHT IS PRONOUNCED
Prince of Wurtemburg Alone of Teutons Continues on Offensive
MANY PRISONERS TAKEN
British and French Capture Artillery and Portion of Transport

COMMENDATION VOICED BY THE FRENCH PUBLIC
British Win Praise for Gallant Attacks on Invading Armies
ONSLAUGHTS REPULSED
Germans Driven Back Forty-five Miles in Places

FOOD IS SCARCE
German Forces Suffer From Lack of Supplies
Ghent Unable to Furnish Provisions Demanded for Column of 40,000 Troops Passing Through City

GERMAN HORSE IS DESTROYED: TRAINS TAKEN
Berlin Wireless Says, “Badly in Need of Horses and Supplies”
GREAT COUP IS FAILURE
Danger of Paris Siege Is Past Believe French Correspondents
DISASTER IS ADMITTED

The editor commented on the coming war tax:

So we must endure a war tax. Many citizens question the wisdom of this method of forestalling a deficit in the national treasury. Man would prefer to saddle the burden upon future, normal years, through a bond issue, rather than add to the financial pressures of the present. Many, too, will criticize the choice of articles for taxation.

But regarding the basic principle of the thing, the necessity of preserving our national credit at whatever cost, there can be no difference of opinion. As the president said:

“We must accept the inevitable with calm judgment and unruffled spirits, like men accustomed to deal with the unexpected, habituated to take care of themselves, master of their own affairs and their own fortunes. We shall pay the bill, though we did not deliberately incur it.”

And he might have added, “We should thank God that the tax is the no greater, and that we are able to pay it.”

After all, $100,000,000 is but $1 apiece. In comparison with the grievous levies imposed on every nation in Europe, whether combatant or neutral, it is trivial. And it becomes still more tolerable if we look upon it as a sort of compensation for our enjoyment of peace and security.

In another editorial, the paper comments on “The Judgment of the World:”

America would be hypocritical and cowardly if, throughout the present war or any other war, she did not exert her moral influence in behalf of peace and mercy.

It is no breach of neutrality for any citizen or any spokesman of public opinion to seek to lessen the inhumanity of a conflict that has already passed the bounds of “civilized warfare.” It is a sacred duty.

We are the most powerful of disinterested nations. Our opinion counts more than that of any other country. Our citizenship represents all countries. Our verdict is the verdict of the world. We speak for civilization.

Let us have no more of the “judge not, that ye be not judged” nonsense. Our own record gives us the right to say what constitutes fair and honorable warfare.

When we seized Vera Cruz, snipers shot our marines from private houses. For days the stealthy assassination went on. And did we destroy Vera Cruz? Did we drive the population forth as cattle, burn homes, raze churches and schools and shoot priests, women and children?

We executed the snipers – no more. Then we cleaned up the city, restored order and fed the poor. In a few days the people were going about their affairs in content. Our record in Cuba and the Philippines is likewise clear.

As the leading neutral nation of the world, committed to the standards of the highest civilization of any time in all history, our people have a right to demand in the present war an observance of the rules of civilized warfare – and God knows they are liberal enough, and really outgrown by the enlightened sentiment of the best people of all the earth, including those in the countries at war with one another.

It is a duty as well as a right that this nation should exercise and perform, in demanding that a there should be no harking back to the kind of warfare that prevailed in the darker past.