PLAIN WORDS BY A PLAIN CITIZEN.1

By HANS RUSSAU, Pipestone, Minn.

Real war has come to our very doors at last. It was denied us to stay out of it. It was not of our seeking, although our foe proclaims that such is the case. He assures us of his friendship and his good will, and at the same time commits acts of war and intrigue against our country in the most flagrant manner. When we protested he made us promises only to be broken again almost as soon as made.

We were goaded into this war in spite of ourselves. How could we stay out of it and save our honor in the face of the rest of the world, that looks up to us as the standard bearer of humanity and justice? Protestation proved useless. Our pleadings for humanity's and civilization's sake were answered with this: "Our acts are necessitated by war. We can not recognize any rules laid down to fight by. We are fighting for our existence. We want a place in the sun."

It is immaterial as to the spark that ignited the funeral pyre of the best nations of the earth, but it is important to apprehend the party or parties that deliberately touched off this conflagration that threatens to devour and destroy everything that is good in men; everything that men have died for; that cost rivers of blood to attain, namely, humanity and self-government.

The desperate wail of Germany that it is fighting for existence is true in part. But it is true only of those that are wailing. The autocracy and its military ramifications that dominate the German people's destiny are doomed. They are battling for their existence. The common German people have nothing to fear from any source. They have their place in the sun. They are respected and admired everywhere, and justly so, for they are a great people. They have

1 From Pipestone (Minn.) Leader, May 10, 1917.

in the past contributed a large share in the achievements of science, of learning, and in every endeavor of mankind for the enlightenment and betterment of conditions of humanity in general. This they have done not because of their autocratic form of government but in spite of it. No matter what opinions may be at the present, in the heat of this strife, judgments are apt to be warped, and criticism unjust. What ever may be the result of this struggle, even should the German nation be wiped out of existence, no power on earth can rob them of their past achievements; the work of her scientists, her poets, her artists, her singers, her philosophers, her educators, will live forever, and so will the German people. No one thinks of destroying them. The remainder of the world loves and admires them too much for that. The world is not against them but for them. They want to save them from their own self-destruction from autocracy and militarism.

The last important citadel of autocracy is struggling to maintain itself, and threatens to engulf the rest of the world; to spread its balefulness over the earth; to trample liberty and self-government into the dust. To prevent the consummation of this is the principal reason that we, the people of the United States of America, have entered this war, reluctantly but determinedly. We do not underestimate our adversary. We are well aware of his strength, and we are willing to sacrifice our best in blood and treasure to remove this menace.

The present ruling class of Germany must be removed or at least be made impotent of doing any further mischief. When this is accomplished a great stride will have been made toward universal world peace. Under a new liberal, free government, the German people will expand and blossom into a still greater nation, and all the energy and brain power will be expended in the channels of peace instead of war. The world has never seen a parallel to the preparations for war that the German nation made in the present one. This could not have been brought about in a year or two. It took almost a century to accomplish it, and to make this acme of perfection of militarism a reality, and—for what? Was it for the defense of the people from outside aggression, or for defending their boundaries? Scarcely.

The acts of the German Government belie this assertion. They have been the aggressors always, in all the wars, since Napoleon was on the rampage. It has simply all been done for the aggrandizement of the rulers. Successful conclusions of all the wars they undertook, more power and control of other people's destiny made them dizzy. They began to chant and dream of world control, and to-day we have the result of this dream, and the desperate effort of this Prussian Junkerdom to consummate this dream into a reality.

The way this has been accomplished is almost incomprehensible. It is staggering our minds. A naturally peaceloving people has been developed into the most efficient fighting machine that has ever been known. The Government has not been a bad government. On the contrary, it is a model of efficiency. The people have prospered and been looked after in detail. It has been paternal in its application. Therein lies the strength of the rulers with the people.

But to what end has this been done? It is this-to train and perfect a fighting machine. A disgruntled and dissatisfied people would not be pliable for such a purpose. The people's mind and body has been trained to one purpose. That purpose was war. Nothing was left undone to assure success. The result of this training became apparent to the most unobserving the last decade. The immigrants that came to this country from Germany were of a different spirit than those of a half century ago. They seemed to be imbued with a sense of superiority and an everlasting praising of the fatherland that amounted to boasting of what they could do in a military way. We perhaps laughed at them or ridiculed them, until to-day we are awake to the fact that their boasting was not empty words. With things that have happened since this war started, we must all be aware what we are up against. It will take our most strenuous efforts to break this foe's spirit and might, if we want to save our liberty and free institutions from being wrested from us. Shot and shell alone will not do it unless we kill the last one, for they believe that they are right, and their initial successes in this war have convinced them in the belief that they can conquer the world, because they are challenging the world. We must use other weapons besides powder and shot. Such

messengers as our noble President's message will have a more wholesome effect on the people of Germany than a billion dollars worth of shells, although the two bring opposite results. The one brings hope and the other one death; both will break the spell of self-hypnotism of the deluded men in the trenches of the foe.

Let some of the aeroplanes drop love messages instead of bombs into the trenches, let them be written in their own tongues, and the cobwebs will slowly clear from their brains and the rulers will certainly lose their grip on the men. How much better this would be than to scatter their brains over mother earth that is already saturated with precious human blood.

By Judge LEO RASSIEUR.

Judge Rassieur was born in Prussia in 1844. He came to this country as a boy. During the Civil War he served in the Union Army for four years and rose from the ranks to the post of major. He has since been a judge and practicing lawyer in St. Louis. He was commander in chief of the Grand Army of the Republic, 1900–1.

I was an eyewitness to conditions in Germany from July 16 to August 3, 1914, and prior thereto, and to conditions in Austria after the assassination of the heir to the throne.

The reported enthusiasm was a myth, except in the minds of the military satraps and the secret service of the two Governments. The reports were promulgated by the secret service of these countries and a censored press, which has only been tolerated as the tool of autocratic Governments, as is well known to all who have observed what has happened to those papers which occasionally expressed independent opinions.

The German Government was so successful in debauching and misrepresenting public opinion in German that it attempted the same course in foreign countries, by printing and sending broadcast into this country for several years a number of weekly sheets, printed in English and also in German, and if there be any doubters as to this country's duty at present, they have permitted themselves to be led astray by the manufactured sentiments emanating from Berlin.

The world now knows of the powerful military machine constructed by the Hohenzollern dynasty within the last 40 years, not for self-defense alone, but for the destruction of its neighbors. When the secret history of this war, this crime against civilization, is written, after the autocrats have been removed from power, it will be clear that the press machine in Germany, and possibly in Austria, was no less powerful in misleading their people to believe that they are fighting for their fatherlands, when fighting in fact to gratify the lust for increased and unlimited power on the part of their rulers.

The right of halting neutral vessels, examining their cargo, and making prizes of them, is regulated by international law. But the German Government destroyed the vessels with all on board.