Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 104, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 May 1919 — WHAT ABOUT WILHELM? [ARTICLE]

WHAT ABOUT WILHELM?

Washington, May 3.—The Republican Publicity Association, through its President, Hon. Jonathan Bourne, Jr., today gave out the following statement from its Washington headquarters. “Is Bill the butcher to get off scot free? Is the muddle which Mr. Wilson is stirring up in Europe to screen the escape of this arch-conspirator against mankind? Is this advance, agent of Antichrist, if not the apocalyptic Beast himself, to find safe refuge beneath the academic skirts of a man whose imperialism was repudiated at the polls last November? It is beginning to look that way. “Of all the lame excuses ever submitted to a disguested world, that efthe American commission to the effect that there is no precedent in international law for the trial and conviction of the head of a state is the most spineless. If a precedent is needed, now is the time to establish it, or the fate meted out to Napoleon should suggest one. '“Did Wilhelm look for a precedent when he overran Belgium? Did he find excuse in international law when he crucified Canadian soldiers, stockaded and outraged Belgian and French women, maimed and disemboweled little children, defiled and destroyed churches, cut the throats of American prisoners, sank unarmed ships without warning, made of Belgium and Northern France a barren waste, and sent his agents by the thousands into neutral states to carry on his infernal propaganda, which continues to this day? Was there

any precedent <to be found in history for this campaign of frightfulness, other than that supplied by Attila the Hun? Napoleon was a clean fighter, at least, and they banished him. Is Wilhelm to be permitted to sojourn undistrubed in princely ease at Amerongen Castle, there to mature his plans for a second trial for world conquest? If so, Mr. Wilson should -be credited with a remarkable victory as counsel for the defense of this international criminal, to judge from reports. “The patience which the President of the United States has exhibited toward Germany, the Germans, and the Kaiser and his court, is of a quality more vicious* than virtuous. So far as is known the records fail to show a single instance of the capital punishment of an enemy spy in this country, yet we have been infested with them. Nominal confinement in comfortable hotels at Government expense, or in more flagrant cases, segregation in commodious stockades, fed to repletion, and provided with pleasant recreations, have spelled the hard lot of these villainous agents. A few months before we got into the war at least one Democratic campaign manager was hob-nobbing with those agents in German beer-halls, and the “kept us out of war” gullery was planted in those German steins. And then we had the note-writing contests between the President and the Kaiser, with the Democratic press deciding the President the winner in each “diplomatic victory”. Finally, when the American public would brook n,o further insult, we went to war and then delayed six months getting in. -a “We have no quarrel with the German people, said Mr. Wilson. Ask the •soldiers of the American Expeditionary Forces if that is true. EvI ery soldier who fought against the ' Kaiser’s hosts and who witnessed his diabolical war methods demands his I punishment, and so does every red- ! blooded American who contributed 1 to the defeat which apparently Mr. 1 Wilson seeks to minimize. If Mr. • Wilson’s intervention saves the hide of Butcher Bill, there is but one reply to make to hi? unauthorized, as- ; sertion on behalf of the American ' people, namely, ‘He had no quarrel ’ with the German Kaiser.’ ” Forty-two cars have been entered for the 500 mile Liberty sweepstakes at the Indianapolis Speedway May 31, when entries closed at midnight Wednesday. Drivers who will start include several noted foreign pilots and several American record holders.