President Wilson seems to have given a sympathetic hearing to the mission which laid the case of Belgium before him, both as to the violation of Belgium's neutrality and as to the cruel treatment of the non-combatant population and the wanton destruction of towns and villages and of precious historical monuments. He is understood to have promised an investigation, and it is gathered from the Independance Belge this week that this investigation has been, and is being, carried out by American Military Attaches in Belgium, and also at the London Embassy of the United States. Again, President Wilson's recent letter to the Kaiser, while confirming neutrality in precise terms, went on to intimate that there must be a "day of settlement" and that "where injustices have found a place results are sure to follow, and all those who have been found at fault will have to answer for them." If the "general settlement" does not sufficiently determine this, there is the ultimate sanction of "the opinion of mankind" which will "in such cases interfere." He would apparently reserve judgment until the end of the war, but in no way disclaims or surrenders American responsibility. Mr. Roosevelt is not tied by official responsibility, and can speak with less restraint and more freedom. In The Outlook he has substantially accepted and indorsed all that is material in the Belgian case. America should help in securing a peace which will not mean the "crushing the liberty and life of just and inoffending peoples or consecrate the rule of militarism," but which "will, by international agreement, minimize the chances of the recurrence of such worldwide disaster," and "will, in the interests of civilization, create conditions which will make such action" as the violation of Belgian treaty rights "impossible in the future." Like President Wilson, he seems to think that the time for judicial pronouncement on acts presumably guilty and wrongful will come at the conclusion of the war. At the same time he surrenders no part of America's responsibility, but reaffirms it with all the force of his trenchant style. But elsewhere, and later, he has insisted on the "helplessness"--the "humiliating impotence created by the fact that our neutrality can only be preserved by failure to help to right what is wrong." Mr. Roosevelt's Remedy. And he has gone on to adumbrate his practical remedy--"a world league" with "an amplified Hague Court," made strong by joint agreement of the powers, to secure "peace and righteousness," and to vindicate the just decisions of such a court by "a union of forces to enforce the decree." He adds that this might help to obtain a "limitation of armaments that would be real and effective." That so happy a plan may be capable of realization would be the hope of all wise men. But where I take exception with Col. Roosevelt is as to America's present "impotence"--that nothing effectual can be done by America without breaking her own neutrality.