I do not blame you and these men alone. I blame myself. I blame my country. We urged you to come; we welcomed you; we gave you opportunity; we gave you land; we conferred upon you the diadem of American citizenship—and then we left you.
When we get through with this war, and civil liberty is made safe once more upon this earth, there is going to be a day of judgment in these United States. Foreign-born citizens and the institutions which have cherished foreigners are going to be brought to the judgment of this Republic. That day of judgment looks more to me to-day like the great Day of Judgment than anything that I have thought of for many years. There is going to be a separation on that day of the sheep from the goats. Every institution that has been engaged in this business of making foreigners perpetual in the United States will have to change—or cease. That is going to cut deep, but it is coming.
It must be pointed out that in spite of this charge of the judge, and in spite of the sentence of this minister of the gospel, his flock remained loyal to him and invited him back to preach when he got out of jail!
It has always been charged against the Germans in America that they were the most clannish of all the foreigners coming to settle in this country. They, longer than any other people, retain their own institutions, their own language, their own customs. In parts of the country there are schools which teach the German language more than they do the English—a practice which, in all likelihood, will be discontinued when the troops come back from France and Germany. Without any doubt or question, pro-German school teachers were German propagandists, usually of the indiscreet and hotheaded sort.
From Terre Haute, Indiana, comes a complaint regarding Miss Lena Neubern—that is what we will call her—a hot socialist and worse, who was a school teacher. Miss Neubern had two brothers in that city who refused to allow an American flag to be placed in front of their store, or to allow their clerks to attend the parade of the Third Liberty Loan. A committee of citizens called on them and told them “in strong term what was expected of them.” Miss Neubern taught her school children, Americans, that the “Kaiser was just as good a man as President Wilson; that the United States was in this war, not for democracy, but for commercial supremacy; that the United States was as greedy as Germany; that we were controlled by England, always the enemy of the United States.” Miss Neubern refused to allow the Star Spangled Banner to be sung in her room, and did all she could to hinder the sale of Thrift Stamps among the children, though in other schools large numbers of stamps had been sold. This active and intelligent young woman pleaded guilty of this charge and was dismissed by the school board. One wonders whether the German Government would have stopped at the dismissal in a similar instance!
Another form of German propagandist might have been found higher up in educational circles. The faculties of our great universities have always been made up in part of a class of men who are of the belief that intellect and scholarship are best shown by eccentricity and radicalism. More than that, we had a number of actual Germans in our university faculties in America. Since it is the proposition here to deal in concrete facts and not in mere general assertions, let us print something which came in, embodied in the report from Champaign, Illinois.
Champaign, Illinois, is the home of the University of Illinois, and for some reason university towns seem to act as chutes for all sorts of independent thought. There are two strong German settlements in Champaign County, and a very strong German settlement in the city, where many residents have shown very pro-German tendencies. These German settlements have their own German schools, taught by their German Lutheran ministers under the pretense of teaching religion. Sentiment became so intense that the local A. P. L. Chief was requested by the Government to close these schools if possible. Some of them have reopened since the armistice. In such localities the Germans have been very independent and often quite outspoken, so that it was necessary in many cases for the A. P. L. to use influence to prevent violence to them. There were only one or two cases where the citizens got out of control, although many citizens of German descent refused to buy bonds and made disparaging remarks regarding the war.
The A. P. L. Chief says: “We were confronted with the problem of ousting five alien enemies at the University of Illinois, two of them regarded as dangerous. We also had to handle a cook at the aviation barracks, an alien enemy who was deliberately wasting food. We convicted the wife of a German minister in the Federal Court for making disloyal remarks. We had some difficulty with Russellites, Mennonites, and radical Socialists, but all have been kept in hand. Our organization consists of seventy-five members, but about twenty-five of us have done most of the active work.” A good and worthy twenty-five.
The reference to Russellites and Mennonites covers two regions of great A. P. L. activity. Pastor Russell, as he was known, passed away from this scene some time ago, but he left behind him seeds of discord. He was perhaps not so much disloyal as he was eccentric and fanatical in his mental habit. His book, “The Finished Mystery,” was so open a plea against war that it was proscribed by the United States Government. A. P. L. operatives ran down a great deal of so-called pro-German talk which originated in the Russellites. An instance of this comes from Coloma, Michigan, which reports: “Radical socialists became active during August, 1917. Acting under instructions from the Department of Justice, we put all of these meetings out of business in the territory of our jurisdiction. No more socialist meetings of any kind here. We got information which resulted in my calling upon certain Russellites. Collected five books of ‘The Finished Mystery,’ and some copies of the ‘Kingdom News.’ Russellites were watched, and they promised to discontinue activities until after the war. They have done so.”
It is not to be denied that the following of the radical banner among all nations of the world is an increasing one and one which will demand great care on the part of the governments on both sides of the Atlantic. Bolshevism is the great threat of the day, and we shall have to meet it in America as it must be met in Germany and Russia before there can be any lasting peace.