Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 130, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 June 1919 — Appeal of France to America: “Don't Be Too Generous to German People” [ARTICLE]

Appeal of France to America: “Don't Be Too Generous to German People”

By STEPHAN LAUZANNE

French High Commission

If at this hour, when the dreadful nightmare is passing away, mutilated France could make another to America, her sister and friend, she would say to her: “Don’t be too generous. Two imperious and inexorable duties are before us: France must have reparation; France must have guaranties. France must have reparation, for seven of her departments'—equal m area and wealth to the State of New York —have been laid waste, burned down and razed. Three hundred and fifty thousand houses have been broken into, pulled down and’shattered into bits, and it has been computed that merely to rebuild them it would require an army of 100,000 men working for twenty years. Who is to furnish that army? France? No, but the destroyers and incendiaries. The mines of northern France have been scientifically and cleverly tampered with, filled with water, or destroyed. Who will supply France with the coal she so badly needs? It will be Germany, who should have left those mines alone. There is one thing France cannot do, and that is to distinguish between the German government and the German people. In 1914 it waa undoubtedly the German government that hurled itself at the throats of France and Belgium and humanity and democracy, but it was also the German people. Over the Invasion of Belgium not a cry of indignation was raised, "in 1915 it was undoubtedly the kaiser and Tirpitz who ordered the sinking of the Lusitania, but when that crime became known it was the people of Germany who howled with joy. For four years it was undoubtedly 1 the military caste of Germany and the German general staff who allowed thieving and plundering and authorized their men to remove everything they could from Belgium and France, but the robbery and plunder profited the German people. There must be reparation or it would be enough to make one despair of justice on earth. There must be punishment or it will all begirt over again. France must have guaranties and in all organized societies guaranty against the repetition of a crime is obtained by punishing the culprit, lhe German people have committed a series of crimes; the German people must pay the price. And that is why, speaking to America, for whom we have a deep and abiding affection; America, to*whom we are henceforth bound by the ties of eternal friendship; America, with whom we have twice fought side by side for the noblest of ideals, we say to her, “For God’s sake don’t be too generous.”