Jasper County Democrat, Volume 22, Number 1, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 April 1919 — We Must Feed Germany, So That She May Pay for the Evil She Has Done [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

We Must Feed Germany, So That She May Pay for the Evil She Has Done

By ROBERT LANSING.

Seaatsry ol State

Germany has Buffered bitterly, is suffering bitterly. She has paid a fearful penalty for the crime of plunging the world into four years of and fire. Today starvation and want arc the portions of the German people. Violence and murder stalk through the streets of their great cities. Political institutions, industrial enterprise and the very structure of society are tottering. It is the price of their own evildoing, the just retribution of their crimes. Political chaos and outlawry have supplanted the highly organized government of imperial Germany.

Social order is breaking down under the difficulties of defeat and the hopelessness of the future. Like the anarchy which for years made an inferno of Russia, the fires of terrorism are ablaze in the states of Germany. It is no time to allow sentiments of vengeance and hatred to stand in the way of checking this conflagration, which will soon be at the German borders and threatening other lands. To make Germany capable of resisting anarchy and the hideous dcs]Mitisni of the red terror Germany must be allowed to purchase food, and to earn that food industrial conditions must be restored by a treaty of peace. It is not out of pity for the German people that this must be done, and done without delay, but because we, the victors in this war, will be the chief sufferers if it is not done. You* may demand reparation as much please, but unless (he German people arc furnished materials for their industries and commercial opportunities to sell the products of labor in the foreign markets, and unless the laborers have food Germany can never pay, even in part, for the evil she has done. Furthermore, if the present state of chaos continues and the political power continues to grow weaker, there will be no responsible German government with which to make, peace; there will be no government strong enough to carry out the conditions of the treaty of peace. I say to you men of France and men of America, and to you men of the allied powers that there is no time to be lost if we are to save the worhPfrom the despotism of anarchy, even as we have saved it from the despotism of autocracy. We must make peace without delay, and ships laden with food must enter the harbors of Germany. We have reached a crisis in the affairs of the world.