Jasper County Democrat, Volume 22, Number 72, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 December 1919 — PICTURE SUFFERING IN EUROPE AS LESSON TO PEOPLE OF U. S. [ARTICLE]

PICTURE SUFFERING IN EUROPE AS LESSON TO PEOPLE OF U. S.

Washington, D. C., Dec. 8. —"if the men in the United States who refuse to work when they have the opportunity could only see the condition of mankind in Europe they would go to work and be thankful of the opportunity to earn a living.” This statement' was made today by John Callan O’Laughlin, former newspaper correspondent of International reputation, who is just back from Europe, where he went on a business mission- His trip took him through England, France, Italy, the new Czechoslovak republic and well over Austria. “The people of the United States have no conception of the conditions over there," said he. "When you tell them that thousands upon thousands of men, women and children are actually starving they refuse to believe it, and yet this is the fact, fn Austria, starvation stalks on every hand. I spent some days in Vienna. A meal at the hotel, consisting of a piece of fowl, a bit of bread and a little fruit, costs the equivalent of 30 American dollars. If the people of the United States who are displaying so much unrest could only get a glimpse of what Europe is going through they would certainly change their ways.” Death from cold and starvation await from 5,000,000 to 10,000,000 persons in Europe and the near east this winter and nothing but a miracle can prevent the disaster, Henry Morgenthau, former ambassador to Turkey, said in an address here last night. . "You can travel for days in eastern Europe and see only emaciated faces and gaze into eyes that are dull from lack of food,’ said Mr. Morgenthau. "Shall we stand aside, while Europe flounders In agony Into dissolution, or »-e we to rise to our opportunity and our duty and rescue the suffering people? The great impulse must come from this side of the Atlantic. Europe is today facing a dissolution not unlike that which occurred when the Roman empire fell- Emerson said that ‘America represented God’s last attempt to save mankind,’ and it looks as though the time when we were to make good the prophecy has arrived. "All the testimony is that everything In Europe waits on the treaty of peace with Germany. This means that Europe is waiting on the United States senate.”