Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 128, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 June 1917 — GERMANY FORCED WAR ON US [ARTICLE]

GERMANY FORCED WAR ON US

By Insults and Denied Us Right to Remain Neutral, President Says On Flag Day. Washington, June 14.—America’s reasons for sending her flag against the fire of the enemy across the sea •and the purpose she seeks to serve, were stated anew by President Wilson today in a Flag day addrss beneath the Washington monument. “Germany’s* military masters <jenied the United States the right to be neutral,” the president said, ‘ and by extraordinary insults and aggressions left us no self-respecting choice but to take up arms in defense of our rights as a free people and of our honor as a sovereign government.” He recalled how the imperial German government had forbade Americans the use of the high seas and time and again executed its threat to send them to their death; how it filled this unsuspecting country with spies and conspirators and sought by violence to destroy industries and arrest commerce, and finally how the Berlin foreign office tried to incite Mexico and Japan a hostile alliance. “What great nation?” he asked, “in such circumstances would not have taken up arms?” “Now that America has been forced to war, she bids her young men go forth to fight on fields of blood far away for the same old, familiar, heroic purpose for which it has seen its men die on every battlefield upon which Americans have borne arms since the revolution. A sinister power which has'the German people themselves in its grip, now at last has stretched forth its ugly talons and drawn blood for us. “he whole world is at war, because the whole world is in the grip of that power and is trying sout the great battle which shall determine whether it is to be brought under its mastery or fling itself free.” In giving warning that the Germans actually have carried into execution their plan to throw a broad belt of military power across the center of Europe and into the heart of Asia, rejecting the idea of the solidarity of the races and the choices of people, Mr. Wilson spoke of the new intrigue for peace now appearing in many guises at the behest of the Berlin government. "It cannot go further; it dare not go back,” he said. “It wishes to close its bargain before it is too late and it has little left to offer for the pound of -flesh it will demand.”