by Richard van Pelt, WWI Correspondent

The news and headlines from The Daily Capital Journal:

CRUISER EMDEN IS BURNED BY SYDNEY AFTER HOT BATTLE
German Warship That Has Destroyed 24 Merchant Ships Is Done
CRUISER KONIGSBERG CHASED INTO HARBOR
Emden Had Caused Loss of $10,000,000 Besides Immense Injury to Trade

RUSSIAN ADVANCE STILL UNCHECKED; IS NEARING CRACOW
Claim the Last German Has Been Driven From Russian Territory
ARMY OF 600,000 GOES TO MEET TURK
Kaiser Withdraws 35,000 From Belgium to Send Against Russians

GERMANS REPULSED WITH HEAVY LOSS IN TODAY’S FIGHT
Reverse Said to Be the Most Pronounced the Kaiser Has Received
SAY THE FIGHTING WAS BLOODIEST OF THE WAR
Persistent and Terrific Attacks of Germans Fail to Change the Lines

The paper reported that the warring parties lost a total of 120 warships during the first three months of the war. Of the large warships, Germany was reported to have lost 12 cruisers, Austria three battleships and four cruisers, Great Britain one battleship and 13 cruisers, and Russia one battleship and three cruisers.

The Oregon Statesman reported on the effects of the war on the cost of living. “Since the European war began,” the paper reported, “the cost of living in San Francisco is estimated to have advanced about 12 1/2 percent. Figures complied today show that fresh meats are nine percent higher and that flour has gone up 14 percent.”

An article by D. N. McInturff in the Capital Journal considers the impact Japan will have in world affairs, and illustrates the manner and degree of prejudice of the time:

The Oregonian and other papers tell us today that the allies have asked the Japanese to aid them in the mighty battles in Europe, and offer that it they will they may have a free hand in China. When I lived in Tokio, near the drill grounds of the Japanese soldiers, as I watched them drill, and drill, and drill and never seem to get tired, I used to wonder what such hard work by the little men would mean to the world. It has meant very much. They have startled the world. They are a most wonderful people. I admire them greatly in their hustle with all their might for supremacy along all lines – yes, world supremacy.

The allies do not know what this combination means to the rest of the world. If the Japanese shall come to have a free hand in China, they will train, dominate and push China to the front. They will multiply each Japanese by four hundred million to draw upon. The only hope of the rest of the world is to let China continue to sleep. Woe be to the rest of us if she should wake up in the hands of Japan. Japan can well afford to enter the combine in Europe if she may be allowed to take over China, for then she can turn around and with China trained and imbued with the warlike spirit of Japan, whip these same allies and the rest of the world. No one can contemplate the scene without a shudder.

With the churches in Japan, each pressing creed more than Christ, and denominationalism more than love, the Japanese have been slowly coming to look upon the worship of idols as a disgrace and yet have been so confused as to the teachings of the missionaries, each holding tenaciously to his peculiar creed, that he has in his heart and mind been forced to turn from the whole thing, and today Japan has no God, no religion. Japan is a renegade planet turned loose in the moral universe and traveling at an awful speed. What and where it will hit no one knows. This new problem just now about to enter the awful war calculations is worse, to my mind, than any that has gone before. The other contingencies might come to a peaceful end, this never. The others might be settled and our civilization preserved, but this would unbalance the world, and make only consternation and utter ruin. I sincerely pray to God that it may never happen.