Liberty Loan Subscriptions.
Liberty Loan Subscriptions.—The German element passed heroically the test of their loyalty in the amounts subscribed to the Third Liberty Loan for the prosecution of the war, and, as usual, they far exceeded the record of other racial elements. The Central Loan Committee gave out a summary on May 3, 1918, which showed the following subscriptions:
| Germans | $18,000,000 |
| Polish | 9,500,000 |
| Bohemians | 440,000 |
| Italians | 8,500,000 |
| Swedish | 420,000 |
| South Slavs | 149,000 |
| Russians | 145,000 |
| Lithuanians | 66,500 |
| Danes | 281,000 |
| Armenians | 190,000 |
| Belgians | 700,000 |
| South Americans | 5,825,000 |
| Chinese | 31,000 |
The subscriptions of the English and French are not given. A letter addressed to the Central Committee for a more complete report, embodying the subscriptions of all foreign-born citizens, brought the reply that the figures were not available, and no comparison is therefore possible of the relative amounts given by the French and English-born.
Ideals of Liberty.
Ideals of Liberty.—When discussing the question of liberty and the ideals of political freedom, it is safer to consult the recognized authorities on ancient and modern history, famous students of constitutional affairs, than to accept the dictum of political opportunists whose judgments and pronouncements vary with the shift of the wind.
The World War over night transformed the stupid, slow-going, dull-witted German, the “Hans Breitmann” of Leland, and the familiar “Fritz and his little dog Schneider,” into a world figure of adroitness and supernatural finesse in all the arts of deception. From a sodden, beer-guzzling, sauerkraut-eating Falstaff, he was suddenly changed into a finished product of macchiavelian cleverness, or into a knight errant charging around the world to suppress other people’s liberty, and the embodiment of all that stands for autocracy.
While we were at war a good deal of this sort of figure painting was tolerable; but long before we entered the war, it was dangerous for the plain American citizen to express any view that did not describe every German as a Hun and Boche.Yet all the time our libraries were littered with the Latin classics, with Hume, Montesquieu, Guizot and other famous authors, who actually contradicted this verdict of Rudyard Kipling and his followers, and who, we presume, may now be safely taken from the shelf and opened without exposing one to the risk of being prosecuted for high treason, since they speak rather well of our late enemies.
“Liberty,” said the Roman poet Lucanus, “is the German’s birthright.” “It is a privilege,” wrote the Roman historian Florus, “which nature has granted to the Germans, and which the Greeks, with all their art, knew not how to obtain.” Hume, the great English historian, says: “If our part of the world maintain sentiments of liberty, honor, equity and valor, superior to the rest of mankind, it owes these advantages to the seed implanted by those generous barbarians.” “Liberty,” observed Montesquieu, “that lovely thing, was discovered in the wild forests of Germany.” And Guizot, the French historian and statesman, in his “History of Civilization” (Lecture II), makes this observation: