Jasper County Democrat, Volume 20, Number 95, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 February 1918 — THE GERMAN BOGEY [ARTICLE]

THE GERMAN BOGEY

The report from General Pershing’s boys on the firing line .in France is thrilling the hearts of Americans and is such as to cause a feeling of the, most intense satisfaction throughout the country. Our boys are proving themselves fully equal to the task before them and have already taken file measure of their foes and are going after them. They are also dissipating the hitherto world-wide dread of the German bogey, and proving him to be by no means the superman he would have us think him. They are demonstrating that German defenses can be shattered and German troops routed and German discipline thoroughly disorganized. And what, alter all, is this dread German bogey? Nothing but iron discipline working with thoroughly plastic material. Given unscrupulous leaders.fired with the lust of conquest, and a docile and tractable army, the result must inevitably be a dangerous machine —a machine without scruple and without conscience. But on the other hand it is largely a machine devoid of intelligence and without initiative, save in its leaders. And it is this latter quality or rather lack of quality that will meet its Waterloo at the han“fts of the American army. The American soldier is not merely a cog in a fighting machine. He is also a Bentinent, pulsing, dynamic human machine in himself, quick to think and trained to act upon his conclusions. Men of this class are to be trusted with the most dangerous and delicate missions. They are not only reliable in the mass, but are thoroughly to be depend-

ed upon as separate human units. It is the German contempt for, all things not German that has' helped largely in impressing the nations with a false estimate of German prowess. This contempt is 1 fast being unmasked and made to stand out in its true light—ignorance. Pershing is teaching us that it is by no means the result of superior knowledge, but rather of arrogance inspired by the belief that German knowledge is of a superior order. Nothing but bullets and shrapnel will shake this arrogance, but these are being manufactured in this country and sent to our boys over there, and they can be trusted to place them where they will do the most good. Germany has stigmatized us as' a nation of dollar chasers. Well, we have chased the dollar successfully, and we will show her that we can turn those dollars into bullets for her undoing. Her contempt is the best possible spur to our troops. It is nerving them to show to the . world that the great German bogey is but a man after all, and a man who can and will be whipped and whipped well before we are through with him.