"When I say, Down with Wilson! you all cheer!"
AT THE HOLLAND FRONTIER
Whether the war be long or short, the quickest road to peace is the road straight ahead of us, with no division among the American people.
William Jennings Bryan.
RESTITUTION AND REPARATION
The Prussian theory of right and justice is this: "What is mine is mine. What is yours is also mine if I want it."
This idea is deep buried beneath the thick bone of the Prussian head. He holds it with stolid stupidity and deep, prehistoric crudity, like a pig or an idiot. He cannot understand that there are any rights higher than Prussian greed. "If I want it, it is mine because I want it." It is the logic of the primitive human animal, the caveman.
Cornered and accused of his thefts he clings to his loot like the pig that has stolen a carrot. When asked to disgorge he is shocked by the suggestion. "But they are mine! I wanted them, so they are mine!" he says. Right and Justice answer, "They are not yours; you stole them." "Maybe so!" says the Prussian. "But just the same they are mine—I stole them a long time ago."
The logic of the Prussian fills ten thousand volumes. It is written in hundred-line paragraphs and six-inch words. It can be condensed into two short words—piggish greed; piggish because it knows neither right nor justice, greed because it is greed.
Ellis Parker Butler.
"SOMETHING'S WRONG. SHE DOESN'T SEEM TO INSPIRE CONFIDENCE"
It is Germany's "Kultur," her spiritual code, that is responsible for America's entrance into the war; her gruesome sacrifice to Moloch of all which distinguishes humanity from the brute and the savage. It is her philosophy which has made us her horrified but resolute foe.
The fruits of her spirit stand forth alike in her speech and acts. "Kultur is a spiritual organization of the world, which does not exclude bloody savagery. It raises the dæmoniac to sublimity. It is above morality, reason, science," so wrote a Teutonic expounder in the first year of the war. "We have become a nation of wrath; we think only of the war. We execute God Almighty's will, and the edicts of His justice we will fulfil, imbued with holy rage, in vengeance upon the ungodly. God calls us to murderous battles, even if worlds should thereby fall to ruins," so wrote one of Germany's poets. "Whoever cannot prevail upon himself to approve from the bottom of his heart the sinking of the Lusitania, whoever cannot conquer his sense of the gigantic cruelty to unnumbered perfectly innocent victims—and give himself up to honest delight at this victorious exploit of German defensive power—him we judge to be no true German," so wrote one of her pastors. And for hideous, ruthless deeds which violate every sanctity and deify falsehood we need but cite her slaughter of children and the aged, her poisoning of wells, her shooting of nurses, her sinking of hospital ships, her brutal deportations and all the revolting sinuosities of her spy system.
Robert Grant.
"WHEN I WAS A CHILD, IT WAS YOU WHO SAVED ME"
Whether it is that an invigorating climate has given our Anglo-Saxon blood a piquant Gallic flavor or because Europe sent us for ancestors only those light-hearted and adventurous souls with a spirit akin to that we admire in the French people, true it is that Americans have always had an especial liking for France and the French. They were our first allies as they are the latest. From Lafayette and Rochambeau to Joffre and Viviani, a host of Frenchmen have won the affectionate regard of Americans and are numbered with our national heroes.
With their French allies Americans can work in most cordial understanding and sympathy. That subtle spirit of unselfish dedication to country which has won for the French the admiration of the world consecrates the alliance of the peoples who are giving their sons in common sacrifice to save liberty to the world. Out of the heat and turmoil of war bonds are being forged between the Allied nations which time and circumstance can never sever. On that alliance the hope of civilization depends; from it may come, in God's good time, some great forward step in the march of progress which began at a manger in Bethlehem.
Myron T. Herrick, Cleveland, Ohio, March, 1918.
FOR MERIT
If, as the artist suggests, and the plainest reading of the facts of the fruitless Verdun assault seems to confirm, lives of men were squandered in a reckless attempt to save the princeling's face (which was, in fact, beyond saving), then does he richly deserve the grim decoration with which in the name of infamy he is here invested—the Order of Butchery, with knives. And you may view the crosses upon the pathetic mounds before Verdun as so many entries in the Recording Angel's ledger.
Joseph Thorp.
