It is certain that Senator Sumner has made his motion to appoint a committee for the investigation of the arms deal transacted by Remington not out of love for Germany; because he was during the war a zealous friend of France and went, though still chairman of the Senate Committee for Foreign Affairs, on a speaking tour agitating for France and against Germany. The true motive of Sumner for his motion seems to be the revelation of a gross swindle of some American government officials. It is said in Washington that certain officials made in this deal $3,000,000 for their own pockets. The French government too was badly swindled by its agents also by its chief agent Remington.

What concerns the guilt of the United States Government against Germany was more moral legal, as long as the United States sold arms only to private individuals who then resold them to France. The whole affair would appear much graver if the United States actually had produced cartridges during the war in one of its arsenal for France.

The gravity of this would even then not be diminished if it was true what is now being asserted in Washington, namely, that large quantities of arms had been sold directly to Germany. But, it is not true, because the German troops were provided during the whole war with German arms and Baron Gevalt was instructed by Prince Bismarck not to bid for American arms that were offered.

While the main motive of Senator Sumner may be his desire to kick the administration. Yet his motion must be highly welcome to every German.

But would it not have been far more beautiful if Mr. Schurz had made this motion for an investigation? His boast to have quietly stopped last January the sale of arms through his intervention with Secretary of State Fish and others. But he never could bring himself to start a discussion of the unclean deal in Congress. Perhaps he feared to be suspected of championing in the Senate of the United States specifically German interests.

But in so far the observation of an honorable neutrality of the United States is primarily an American interest, Mr. Schurz could have risked the suspicion fearlessly. And especially now, when it is no longer the question of an injustice done to Germany, but of an American swindle, Mr. Schurz would not have needed to leave the initiative for proceding against the shady arms deal to his friend, the Francophil Sumner.