As for the spies, there is no question as to the treatment needed. They should be shot or hung. They are public enemies and this is war-time and they should no more be dealt with by the civil law than the enemy armies should be so dealt with. The German spies and secret agents and dynamiters and murderers in this country are as much a part of Germany as the soldiers of von Hindenburg. Bismarck employed thirty thousand of them to disorganize Germany’s foes fifty years ago, and now Germany is employing them by the hundred thousand. They are as formidable as the visible German army. It was these German Spies, agents, and propagandists who, in 1917, disintegrated and destroyed Russia, and inflicted a crushing disaster on Italy, and conducted the most dangerous intrigue in France, and aided and abetted the British pacifists.
In this country Senator Overman has estimated their number at four hundred thousand, and Mr. Flynn, the recently resigned chief of the secret service, has put them at a quarter of a million. Our official government reports have shown that in obedience to orders from the German Government they have carried on in all hostile and even neutral countries a systematic warfare by means of aiding pacifists’ movements, inciting strikes, fomenting disloyalty, and employing direct action dynamiters and murderers. They have received aid and coöperation, conscientiously and unconscientiously, by many evils in pacifist and Bolshevist societies and in organizations like the I.W.W. and Non-Partisan League.
The activities of the German spies, agents, and sympathizers vary from mere disloyal utterances, which the Attorney-General of the United States has stated to be the cause of most of the disorder in the country, up to seeking to corrupt our soldiers and practicing sabotage in our munitions works and factories for war materials. All offenders of the latter type, wherever committed, can, under the existing law, be tried by court-martial and executed, and this is the proper course to follow. It was the course followed under Lincoln’s administration, which is one of the reasons why Lincoln’s administration differed so markedly from Buchanan’s.
The former chief of the secret service says that there are a quarter of a million of these German spies and agents in this country. We have ample law to warrant these being punished with death by summary court-martial, under military law as military enemies. We have been at war eighteen months, but not one Spy has thus been punished. This means grave remissness in the performance of our duty.
QUIT PLAYING FAVORITES
September 30, 1918
It is announced that the young men of eighteen or nineteen included in the draft will be sent free to college by the Government and will there be given the chance to earn commissions and escape service in the ranks.
Either this represents sheer deception or it will mean gross favoritism. We now have plenty of young men who have been serving in the ranks for nearly eighteen months. Scores of thousands of these left college to go or had just finished high school when they went. All these boys, whether they have or have not been to college, are entitled to the first chance for commissions on equal terms with one another, except that preference should be given those who have been engaged in the fighting overseas. Almost all the second lieutenancies should now be filled in this manner by promotion from the ranks. To give to boys now about to enter college the preference over those who have actually served in the ranks, and especially over those who have actually faced death overseas, would be a cruel injustice.
But the injustice would be equally great among the new recruits themselves. It is wholly illusory for the Government to say it will send to college all who wish to go. The average working-man or small farmer has not had money enough to educate his son so that the boy can now enter college without further training. Yet that boy may have in him the qualities of leadership which especially fit him for command. Such a working-man or farmer ought to wish, and does wish, that his son be tested on his merits by actual service in the ranks, alongside of all other boys, no favors being shown either him or them. For the Government at this time to send some of these boys to college and thus give them a start over the bulk of their fellows represents privilege given to money and is thoroughly unfair.
For the two years before we entered the war the only important piece of preparedness was that of the men who at their own expense went to the Plattsburg training camp established by General Wood, and when Germany forced us into war it was imperatively necessary at once to establish many additional camps of this kind or we should have had no officers whatever for our army. It is still advisable to keep a few training camps for older men whose age and qualifications especially fit them for certain kinds of service. But it is not wise nor right for the Government now to put certain especially favored classes of boys of eighteen and nineteen into college with a view to giving them an advantage over their fellows. This is undemocratic. It is not fair to the other boys of their age who are not in the army. It is exceedingly unfair and unjust to the young men who are already enlisted in the army, and especially to those who have seen service overseas.