Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 253, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 October 1918 — HUN EVER ALERT WITH MANY LIES [ARTICLE]

HUN EVER ALERT WITH MANY LIES

A ■ . ’ *»-• 14 i Whistpennfl Propaganda. - T PROOF IS NEVER SUBMITTED I Centers Efforts on Religious, Racial, Agricultural, Commercial and Such Topics as Are Likely to W" Cause Friction. (Frrgj the Committee on Public Informaf tion, Washington, D. C.) By HARVEY O'HIGGINS. (This is the second of three articles by Mr. O’Higgins dealing with the propaganda of the enemy in our country.) In a previous article we have noted how the German agents in this country are using their “whispering propaganda” td set us against the French, the British and the Japanese by circulating among us all sorts of slanders and ill reports against these allies. In the campaign to promote domestic disunity tl\e pro-German rumor-monger has been even busier. He is working here exactly as he worked in Italy, upon religious prejudices. He has spread the report that the Masonic orders have protested to the government against the Knights of Columbus being permitted to build recreation huts in the camps No such protest was ever made. He has circulated stories that Catholic nuns were refused permission to do Red Cross work unless they wore Red Cross uniforms, and that Catholic soldiers —and’Jewish soldiers —were being discriminated against by Red Cross officials. All such .stories are outright inventions. At the same time he passes around every kind of rumor of Catholic disloyalty, such as tiie famous one that President Wilson’s secretary, a Cath'ollc, had been executed for treason. He has filled the malls with printed copies of an alleged “bloody oath of the Knights of Columbus,” giving it on the pretended authority of the Congressional Record. It was printed in the Record because it was read into a debate before the house- of representatives on an election protest, in order that it might be denounced as a forgery and a libel upon a Catholic candidate. A pro-German agent has been caught distributing copies of this "•‘bloody oath” in New Jersey and sent to prison for it. ' '

How the Kaiser Poses. In Spain and the Catholic countries of South America the kaiser poses as “the chafnpion of Catholic Bavaria and Catholic Austria against Protestant *■ England, infidel France, and socialistic Italy, the enemy of the-Vatican.” He does not preserve that pose in Catholic Belgium or Catholic Poland. And in America the kaiserite uses •this very claim of the kaiser to arouse enmity against the Catholics, just as in Italy the German agent used it in an unsuccessful attempt to seduce the Italian Catholics, and now in America accuses the Italian Catholics of having succumbed to the seduction. As a matter of fact, the Catholic chaplains in the Italian army were among the first to. discover this propaganda among the soldiers, reported it to the officers, and combated it diligently. Various persons and publications that made a iivlng out of sectarian animosities before the war are unconsciously doing the work of the enemy by assisting the spread of anti-Cath-olic and anti-Protestnnt slanders. They can only be stopped by an appeal to public reprobation. They are representing the trouble in Ireland as purely a religious trouble, and the opposition to conscription in Quebec as the same sort of thing. Evem Rudyard Kipling Recently fell into the trap and denounced the pope and the kaiser and the neutrals in one breath. Such denunciations overlook, the fact that Cardinal Mercier, the Catholic prelate of Belgium, has been the most effective popular opponent of the kaiser that Europe has produced. This is a war of nations, not of creeds. Prussia Is as Protestant a nation as England is,, and Belgium and Poland as Catholic as Austria. Anyone who raises the religious question in America today is acting as a German agent, whether he knows it or not,' as truly as if he were blowing up munition plants. All loyal citizens should discourage him.

Aggravating Our Race Problems. Among the negroes the German propagandist first began work in the South and failed. He has been more successful in the middle West, where the presence of a large loyal German population gives him better cover. He is promising the negroes that the kaiser will give them social equality with the whites. An agent, recently captured in New York, was offering the negroes a “Black republic” under German protection, and he was denounced to the authorities by the negroes themselves. Another was spreading reports of discriminations against negro soldiers in the camps, reporting that th* negroes were being trained as “shock troops” to be sacrificed in the front lines, andeven circulating a story that the German nfllltary authorities had ordered all negro prisoners killed. Thus far this sort bf German effort to aggravate a race problem has been an absurd failure. Its only danger Is that Jt may lead to charges of disloyalty against our colored citizens and a suspicion of them which is not justified. To allow the German intrigue to arouse a prejudice against the negro would aid the enemy as much as if he succeeded in organizing the negro in

It is not true that there has been an attempt' “to regulate the prices of gie agencies to buy food supplies in America. Their purchases of American wneat were mnncieni to control of its wheat and leave our poorer cago was agreed upon by an independent commission, appointed by President Wilson, upon which commission the farming community was represented by six members out of eleven. In some Instances the food administration has intervened, nt the request of the producers, to obtain a settlement tn a local dispute about the price of milk. , In the case bf pork products the food administration, on the recommendation of the producers, undertook'®} use the purchases of the allied governments for the purpose of maintaining a minimum price for live hogs in Chicago. Beyond this invited assistance in the case of milk and pork, and the regulation of the price of wheat, the food administration has not interfered with the price of farm products, except tn so far. as the control of sugar prices has affected the price of sugar beets. The Truth About Profiteering. Those measures of food control have been directed more against the middleman than the producer. While fixing for the farmer an arbitrated price for his wheat, they have established a system of licensing, by which millers, bakers, grocers and wholesale and retail dealers have been prevented from profiteering on the farmer’s dollar. The fuel administration has fixed the price of coal, because the miner would not Work for reasonable wages as long as the mine owner was making an unreasonable gain. Profiteering In army and navy contracts and in shipbuilding has been stopped by the power obtained from congress to fix the price at cost plus a reasonable prqfit; and the Increase, in cost has gone to the workman, riot to his employer. All profiteering has not yet been ended. ■The way to end It has not been found in any country. But the tax on excess profits and on swollen incomes confiscates the illicit harvest and pours it into the country’s war chest. The grievances that remain are not class grievances. They are chiefly the inevitable common hardships due to a war that has drawn millions of productive workers into the world’s armies and increased the cost of the necessaries of life by decreasing the available supply. In that hardship the farmers share, as we all share. Kalserites on Both Sides.

Along with this campaign to set the farmer against the government’s war measures there has been proceeding a twin fiampaign to arouse feeling against him by accusing his westerq farmers’ leagues of disloyalty. That is equally a work in aid of the enemy. The western farmers have contributed their quotas to enlistments and to the drafts as loyally, as' any citizens. They have subscribed to the Liberty loans and contributed to the war relief work with unfailing patriotism. Thtey have had their quarrels with the men whom they suspected of exploiting them, just as labor has had its quarrels with its employers,. But it is an economic quarrel, and as long as it is conducted without Interfering with the nation’s war work the charge pf disloyalty i.s itself traitorous. In all these disputes it is certain that enemy agents will be found on both sides. , They at once preach violence among the L W. W.’s, and 1 ead mobs to attack workmen accused of being I. W. W.’s. They play the same game in every quarrel with which they can hope to diride the country. Beware, Mr. Citizen, of any attempt to make you believe that any class of American citizens, as a class, are disloyal. It is a German lie.