Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 206, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 September 1917 — HOME-READING COURSE FOR CITIZEN-SOLDIERS [ARTICLE]

HOME-READING COURSE FOR CITIZEN-SOLDIERS

HOME READING COURSE FOR CITIZEN SOLDIERS Why We Fight. Every American knows the causes of our war with the German government. Yet we must give a brief review of the events that finally forced us into war, when at last there remained “no other means of defending our rights.” The soldier of an autocratic Kaiser may fight best when he understands least of the true meaning of the war. To tell him the facts would be to chill his enthusiasm. JJut the citizen soldier of a democracy is entitled to know for what purposes he enters the struggle. He fights best when he sees most clearly why he fights. The resolution of congress declaring" a state of war (April 6, 1917) expresses the immediate cause in these few words:

“The Imperial German government has committed repeated acts of war against the government and the people of the United States of America.” Chief among the acts of war were attacks by German submarines on American ships and on unarmed merchant ships of other nations carrying American passengers. “Vessels of every kind,.” said the president in his address to congress on April 2, 1917, “whatever their flag, their character,, their cargo, their destination, their errand, have been ruth lessly sent to the bottom without warning and without thought of help or mercy for those on board, the vessels of friendly neutrals along with those of belligerents. Even hospital ships and ships carrying relief to the sorely bereaved and stricken people of Belgium, though the latter were provided with safe conduct through the prescribed areas by the German government itself and were distinguished by unmistakable marks of identity, have been sunk with the same reckless lack of compassion or of principle ♦ ♦ The present German submarine warfare against commerce is a~warfare against mankind.” There were other acts of hostility in addition to the submarine warfare In his Flag Day address delivered at Washington on June 14, 1917, the President summed up the events that brought on war as follows: “It is plain enough how we were forced into the war. The extraordinary insults and aggressions of the Imperial German Government 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. The military masters of Germany denied us the right to be neutral. They filled our unsuspecting communities with vicious spies and conspirators and sought to corrupt the opinion of our people in their own behalf. When they found that they could not do that, their agents diligently spread sedition amongst us and sought to draw our own citizens from their allegiance—and some of those agents were men connected with the official embassy of the German Government itself here in our Capital. They sought by violence to destroy our in-

dustries and arrest our commerce. They tried to excite Mexico to take up arms against us and to draw Japan into a hostile alliance with her and that, not by indirection, but by suggestion from the foreign offive in Berlin. They ampudently denied us the use of the high seas and repeatedly executed their threat that they would send to their death any of our people who ventured to approach the coasts of Europe. Yet even the list of “extraordinary insults and aggressions” does not tell the whole story. Our motives for war go even deeper. Not only our rights and self-respect, but our liberty and safety, are involved. Speak ing on July 29, 1917, at the officers’ training camp at Madison Barracks, N. Y., the Secretary of State said: “The evil character of the Gen man government is laid bare before the world. We know now that that government is inspired with . ambitions which menace human liberty, and that to gain its end it does not hesitate to break faith, to violate the most sacred rights, or to perpetrate intolerable acts of inhumanity. Let us understand onfee for all that this is no war to establish an abstract principle of right. It is a war in which the future of the United States is at stake. ” The record out of which grows our deep conviction that it is necessary at once to put a curb on so powerful and unscrupulous an enemy is set forth in an official publication “How the War Came to America.” “Judging the German government now in the light of our honest attempt to keep the peace, we could see the great autocracy and read her record through the war. And we found that record damnable. * * * With a fanatical faith in the destiny of German kultur as the system that must rule the world, the Imperial Government’s actions have through years of boasting, double dealing, and deceit tended toward aggression upon the rights of others. And if there still be any doubt as to which nation began this war, there can be no uhcertainty as to which one was most prepared, most exultant at the chance, and ready instantly to march upon other nations —even those who had given no offense. The wholesale depredations and hideous atrocities in Belgium and in Serbia were doubtless part and parcel with the Imperial government’s purpose to terrorize small nations into abject sumbission for generations to come. “For the evel it has effected has ranged far out of Europe—out upon the open seas, where its submarines in defiance of law and the concepts of humanity have blown up neutral vessels and covered the waves with the dead and the dying, men and women and children alike. Its agents have conspired against the peace of neutral nations everywhere, sowing the seeds of dissension, ceaselessly endeavoring by tortuous methods of deceit, of bribery, false promises, and intimidation, to stir up brother nations one against the other, in order that the liberal world might not be able to unite, in order that the autbcracy might emerge from the

war. “All this we know from our own experience with the Imperial government. As they have dealt with Europe, so have they dealt with us and with mankind. And so out of these years the conviction has grown that until the German nation is divested of such, democracy can not be safe.” One thought which you should keep always in mind is the clear distinction between our attitude toward the Imperial German Government and our attitude toward the German people. The president said in his speech of June 14, 1917: “We are not the enemies of the German people and they are not our enemies. They did not originate or desire this hideous war or wish that we should be drawn into it; and we are vaguely conscious that we are fighting their cause, as they will some day see it, as well as our own. They are themselves in the grip of the sinister power that has now at last stretched its ugly talons out and drawn blood from us.” 3 Every American soldier in this war fights for objects dearer to all of us than life itself—for freedom and democracy, for the safety of our own homes and families, for the honor of our country. “The world must be J made safe for democracy.” «