In reality, the true question for the United States goes far beyond that of German piracy in submarine warfare. That question really involves two quite distinct American interests; one of a moral, the other of a material or political nature. From the moral point of view the United States must consider the barbarity with which Germany wages war, not only on the sea, but everywhere. Not only does she constantly violate the laws of war between belligerents, but also and above all the German authorities subject to a frightful reign of terror all the civil anti-Germanic populations in the territories now occupied by Pangermany from the North Sea to Bagdad. The sufferings inflicted by the Germans on the Belgians, the Slavs of Austria-Hungary, the Serbians, and the Armenians (whom they have caused to be massacred wholesale) amount to millions of indescribable pangs, of odious crimes, of atrocious martyrdoms. The Americans have intervened in the submarine warfare in the name of humanity. Can they remain neutral in face of this “ocean of crimes” committed by the Germans, without the smallest excuse, over enormous stretches of territory? From the point of view of defending their own material interests, it is not certain that enough Americans even yet understand the magnitude of the formidable problem which the European war compels them to face and solve. It is quite natural that it should be so. In many circles of France and England it is only quite lately that people have come clearly to apprehend, as a whole, the real, the gigantic objects pursued by Germany in the war. Hence it is not surprising that the enormity of the German plot has not yet been grasped by the Americans of the United States, whose ideas about Europe at the beginning of the conflict were necessarily just as vague as the ideas of Europeans about the United States. [Illustration: DISTRIBUTION OF GERMAN-BORN GERMANS IN THE UNITED STATES.]