Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 256, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 October 1918 — Two Kinds of Allies [ARTICLE]

Two Kinds of Allies

By GEORGE BARR McCUTCHEON

of Tho Vigilantsj

An Italian widow living in New York city had five sons. Four of them were born in the United States, the other in Italy. He was one year old when his parents came to New York to live. When Italy entered the war against her domineering, eiacting ally three of these boys—‘-all American subjects—lost no time. In doing what thousands of other American boys already had done. Where the other thousands -had cast their lot with the Canadians, the French and the British, as free-born Americans had the right to do, these three young men set sail for the land of their father, and took up the arms of their forefathers against the foe. They entered the Italian army. They were volunteers, not conscripts. Two of them had never even seen the land from which came their father and mother. Then came the decision of the United States to engage in the conflict on the side of civilization and humanity. This old Italian mother gave her two remaining Americans to the army of the United States. They were her youngest—one of them barely eighteen—and they were as eager to fight as their brothers had been. They did not want to be drafted. They enlisted as common soldiers, and went away with the troops to France. The old mother did not give up her boys to the armies of Italy and France. She gave them to the armies that were fighting for the things dear to them as Americans. They went as Americans, not as Italians. No matter what their father may have been when he was a boy, these boys were Americans. They loved the land in which they were born, oven as their father loved the land In which he was "born. They believed ip the land of their birth and in its ideals, as their father and mother had taught them to believe. They did not, go forth as adventurers, but as soldiers with a principle behind them. Difference in Mothers. A German mother in a Connecticut city also had five sons of the fighting age when the war broke out. They were all born in the United States and they were American citizens, as their father deliberately had made himself by the processes of naturalization perhaps before any one of them came into the world. Two of these sons succeeded in reaching Germany, and. like the sons of the Italian mother, took up the arms of their father’s native land. No one will gainsay them the

right to Join the kaiser’s army. They were free-born American citizens, aa much so as the boys who went out to fight, with the Italian, the French and the Canadian forces, and It wrts their.individual right to fight wheresoever and with whomsoever they elected. But when the United States went into the war, did the three remaining sons offer their services to the country in which they were Jjorn,. the country which had enriched their father, the country which honored them by calling them citizens? They did not. They were not Americans. They were Germans. - The mother of the three young men openly declared that , she would rather see them dead by her own hand -than to have them take up arms against their kaiser!

The Fortunes of War. But the fortunes of war produce strange conditions. The fortunes of war demanded that three Americans should go forth and shoot two Germans. There can be- no going behind the fact that the Instant the United States entered the conflict these three boys automatically became the enemies of their brothers. Their brothers had gone out voluntarily to fight with the German armies. That was their right, their privilege. They did so at the time when their native land was not lined up against the kaiser. They elected to face the bullets that were aimed at Germany, just as those other boys elected to face the shells fired at Italy. But the two Germans went out to fight for Germany because they were Germans, because they were not allowed to be anything but Germans. Their mother sent them out to die for Germany. Was she. willing to send the other three out to die for the United States? NO! She preferred to kill them with her own hands. The Italian mother did not send her two • ren malnlng boys to fight in Italy but in France. They went as American soldiers. They would have gone with the American armies to fight against Italy If the call had been from that direction. She would not have preferred to kill them with her own hands. In the great Civil war that threatened the existence of the United States of America back, in 1861-65 brother fought against brother. Thousands of young men came up from the Southland and put on the uniform of blue. Their brothers, their cousins, even their fathers, were wearing the gray. The Instances in which North- 11 ern-born men went to fight with the Confederate armies are notably rare. These men who came north loved their Southland,with a devotion that cannot be questioned, and yet they loved their country more. They did not fight with the North because they were Northerners but because they believed in a United States of America. Blood may be thicker than water, but it is neither blood nor water that counts in the making of an honest man. It is his heart that counts.