No doubt it was a crime for Germany—and one abominable—to overrun Belgium, spreading everywhere desolation, devastation, incendiarism, murder.
But can it be said that the admirable and heroic resistance Belgium has opposed to her tyrannical invaders was a dastardly crime?
No doubt it was a crime—and one most abominable—for Germany to order the sinking of the Lusitania and hundreds of merchant ships, without the warning required by the Law of Nations, murdering by hundreds non-combatants, children, women, and old men.
But can any one be justified in asserting that, after exhausting, for the redress of such abominable wrongs, all the resources of diplomacy, the United States were committing a crime when they accepted the criminal teutonic challenge and decided to join with the British Empire, with France, Italy and their Allies, to rescue human Freedom and Civilization from the impending destruction?
It is an aberration of mind—incommensurable in depth—for a publicist, or any one else, to be so blinded by prejudices, so lost to all sense of justice, as to place on the same footing, on the same level, the assailant and he who defends his all, the murderer and the victim.
I positively affirm that I am not actuated by the least ill-will or ill-feeling against the Nationalist leader, in judging his course and his views as I do. Thank God, I know enough of the teachings of Christianity to wish good to all men. But I cannot help being deeply sorry and deploring that one of my French Canadian compatriots is buried in such mental darkness as to be unable to perceive the difference—incommensurable—there is in the present war between the hideous Teutonic guilt, and the commendable and meritorious defence by the Allied nations of the most sacred cause on earth:—outraged Justice.
And with all sincerity, I express the profound wish that during the prolonged recess the timely war measure adopted to censure and prevent all utterances detrimental to the best Canadian effort in the conflict, the Nationalist leader has the pleasure to enjoy, he will reconsider the whole situation and his opinions—too much widely circulated. Is it yet possible to hope that, at last, he will see the dawn which will lead him to the full light with which the great and noble cause of his country and of the world is shining?
It is no surprise that such opinions utterly failed to have any echo amongst the liberty loving people of the neighbouring Republic. They died their merited shameful death before crossing over the boundary line, buried deep under the heap of the profound feelings of reprobation they provoked.
The Nationalist leader even missed the mark where he felt sure his shot would strike. We can rest assured that the large majority of the United States Germans, by birth or origin, would not change the responsible President of their new country for the autocrat Kaiser from whose absolutist power so many of them fled to breathe freely in the new land of promise it was their happy lot to enter.
Mr. Bourassa met with a complete failure in his expectation to arouse the feelings of his compatriots over the frontier against the intervention of the Republic in the war.