Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 201, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 September 1918 — Political Opportunism in These Days of Our Country’s Stress Is Sedition [ARTICLE]

Political Opportunism in These Days of Our Country’s Stress Is Sedition

By GEORGE W. CABLE

of the Vigilante*

There is one fact that I do not think we Americans are stating often enough or clearly enough or sternly enough: That political opportunism, in these days of our country’s stress, is but a soft name for sedition. I have received a communication, evidently a circular and probably ■sent far and wide, from a gentleman, to me a stranger, of Grand Rapids, Mich., asking for contributions to “The Great Adventure” single-tax movement of California and elsewhere. This person, “to show that he is no dreamer,” describes himself as a successful business man retired on his fortune. His letter, just short of one thousand words, is given entirely to the advocacy of the single-tax proposition, and contains but two allusions—momentary and remote —to the world’s war for democracy, freedom and civilization against the mightiest and most ruthless enemy of these—and of the single-tax propaganda—that has ever cursed the earth. One of these allusions lurks in the name of the movement: “The Great Adventure,” Charles Frohman’s word as he sank with the Lusitania. The other is this question and answer —the italics are mine: “Do we ■want single tax ? If so, then this is our chance to get it.” My reply is that whether we want single tax or not I am not—nor is any American I know—base enough to seek it by taking advantage of a world’s unutterable agonies into which it has been thrown initially by the arch-enemies of all political and economical liberty —and now a second time by a school of doctrinaires who in martyred Russia have put their own great people to ahame and torture and the world’s redemption to new and frightful hazard. ~ 1 have not one cent to give to a cause that remembers the worlds great cause only or chiefly as a political opportunity. There are no strings attached to the loyalty that prompts men and women to shell out cash for war stamps and liberty bonds. It is but natural that the bolsheviki should attract the Germans; ' men of the fox breed are always attracted by fools.