Salt Lake Tribune | 1915-11-09 | Page 6 | Hair-Splitting

HAIR-SPLITTING. The Austro Hungarian government, undaunted by Secretary Lansing 's able reply to a former communication, has sent another communication to our" government gov-ernment on the subject of war munitions. muni-tions. Tt employs arguments of the hair-splitting variety to show that while a neutral country has a right to supply ammunition to a belligerent it has no right to supply au 1 ' excessive ' ' quantity. quan-tity. Taking up our government's contention conten-tion that in the Boer war one of the belligerents was cut off from the trade of the world at large just as Germany and Austria are today, Baron Buriau declares that Austro-Hungary 's shipments ship-ments of munitions to the other aide Great Britain did not pass the bounds of ''permissibility,'' whatever that may mean. The whole argument seems to be based upon the ' ' exeessivoness ' ' of American shipments to the allies. Baroo Burian, seeking to define what he means by excessive supplies, declares de-clares that his country did not object to such supplies as came from factories! already existing in the United States j at the begin ni ng of the war. The ob- j joctiou is that America's ''working ' power'' is now chiefly directed toward ; furnishing ammunition to the allies ; and that as a result our economic life , has become i ' militarized. ' ' ! The weakness of this argumen t lies i ji the fact that whereas the United States had few ammunition factories at the time the war began Germany and Austria had many. At the time of the Boer war either Austria or Germany probably could have supplied more ammunition am-munition to the belligerents' from already al-ready existing factories than the United States can now supply with all of its increased facilities. If the Austrian, contention is sound, the country which maintained vast ammunition factories would always have a big advantage, for then it could contend that neutral countries coun-tries must not build new factories after a war had begun. This would limit the supply from neutral countries and the non-military nations could easily be conquered con-quered by the military nations, and would have no opportunity to prepare after the war began. The Uuited States would be one of the most seriously handicapped among the nations. Being uou-military and with few ammunition and gun factories in normal times, the United States would bo unable to prevent attacks and invasions unless it became a military power like Austria-Hungary, maintaining maintain-ing immense ammunition and gun factories fac-tories at all times.