The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, November 11, 1918, Page 8

s Saa Imperialists Would Modify War Aims Widespread Propaganda, Under and Above Board, to Force President’s Hand — Patriotic Democrats Never Had More Serious Reasons f__or Support POWERFUL effort is being imade to set aside the demo- cratic purposes for which we entered the war. After hint- ing around and camouflaging: attacks for months our own " junker class is out in the open. Now Roosevelt, the acknowl- edged spokesman of the re- actionaries and third-term aspirant with their sup- port, is openly talking against our 14 war aims as announced by President Wilson on January 8, 1918, and standpat congressmen and the kept press are taking a similar position. Sometimes the attempt is to'poke fun at the president’s note writing; again it is a demand for bitter-end fighting or no nego- tiated peace, or the complete annihilation of Ger- many as a participator in world trade. How does this campaign to set aside our war aims, on which the American people were able to unite in the struggle, differ from opposing the war itself? Are not the aims equally sacred, and this opposition merely a form of high-class sedition, which is not punishable because the’ perpetrators I . HOW COWARDLY MOBOCRATS PULL THEIR DIRTY WORK I Above is printed a facsimile photographic reproduction of a fake anonymous letter, The envelope in which it was contained showed that i Iowa, 75 miles from Durant, at 4:30 o’clock on the morning of July 6. It is sign It is a pure, unadulterated fake for the p county so that they would be afraid to organize. It did not -accomplish Durant, Cedar county, Iowa.- Sioux City, over 300 miles from Durant. peace with Germany and in favor of a peace based on the unconditional surrender of Germany. “I also declare against the adoption in their entirety of the 14 points of the president’s address of last January as offering a basis for a peace sat- +isfactory to the United States. “Let us dictate peace by the hammering guns and not chat about peace to the accompaniment of the clicking of typewriters. “The language of the points and the subsequent statements explaining or qualifying them is neither straightforward nor plain, but if construed in its probable sense many, and posgibly most, of these 14 points are thoroughly mischievous and if made the basis of a peace, such peace would represent, not the unconditional surrender of Germany, but the unconditional surrender of the United States. “Naturally they are entirely satisfactory to Ger- many and equally naturally they are in this coun- try satisfactory to every pro-German and pacifist and Socialist and anti-American so-called inter- nationalist.” Note the subterfuge so frequently used of late of being against a negotiated peace, as if any peace its purpose, farmers is one way of attacking the president, for they are loyally supporting him. are too powerful to be brought to book? ' An anti- war Socialist, for instance, gets 20 years for de- . claring that the war is a capitalistic struggle; yet our imperialists' carry on a propaganda to tirn it to their international advantage, probably to con- tinue it beyond what is necessary for the purposes of democracy, and they get only favorable write-ups in the big press. Where, however, to the plain, honest mind is the distinction between the two? Or if there is any greater relative danger in one than - in the other, is it not in the imperialists with the tremendous financial ‘power they can rally back of them? ; ROOSEVELT LEADS £ IMPERIALISTIC ATTACK - .Here, for instance, are the opening paragraphs of a telegram recently sent by Roosevelt, nominally to Senators Lodge, Poindexter and Johnson, but in fact to the general press: S : ' “As an American citizen I most earnestly hope that the senate of the United States, which is part of the treaty-making power of the United States, - will take affirmative. action against a .x’xe’gpt,ihtgd ¥ - entirely a‘cjo}:tab‘_le;ifi ‘Germany” is not ‘the truth;’ whatever, even with the most thoroughly vanquish- ed enemy, did not have to be negotiated, unless in truth the whole territory of the enemy were to be taken over as a conquered province. By the talk against a negotiated peace and by pretending’ to want to push the war until a millennium is brought about, the imperialists really mean, not that they hate negotiation or that they are captivated by a promised Utopia on earth, but that they want the. war to’continue at the expense of our sacrifice of lives and means until they; like skulking camp fol- lowers, can jump on the beaten nations to devour them in the capitalistic sense. President Wilson, on the other hand, has re- peatedly expressed the thought that we have no quarrel with the German people and that so soon as they are free from autocratic control the object . of our war has been achieved. We are standing +for democracy and are big enough to include Ger- mans as well as Czecho-Slovaks, Poles and Jugo- Slavs in the scheme. ' We know that thus only can wars like the present be avoided. Roosevelt’s statement that “Naturally they (the 14 terms) are: 'PAGE 'EIGHT sent to farmers living in the vicinity of t was mailed at Marion, in Linn courty, ed by an alleged farmers’ organization at urpose of terrorizing the farmers of Cedar The terrorizing of * the support of the war? ing that was caused by the they are acceptable there only to the plain people who know what they are. The minute they do be- come acceptable that minute our good reasons for war are at an end, and any war beyond that point becomes in truth what the most extreme radicals have accused our present struggle of being, a struggle for capitalistic advantage. Sh, SENATE EXPRESSES THE , TWO POINTS OF VIEW The difference between the view of our impe- rialists and what the people of America would stand for unanimously if they were tiot hoodwinked by a lying press is also admirably brought out in a senate debate on - October 14.-.0n that occasion Senator Cummins demanded:” “Germany must pay, pay to the last farthing of her capacity to pay, pay until the generations yet to come will remember and curse the insane am- bition which well-nigh destroyed civilization itself, and so she will repair in some small measure the destruction she has wrought. 7 ! “We entered the war with our eyes open to the consequences which "would follow as inexorably as the passage of time, for from the moment of our entrance into the struggle it was sure that either the United States or Germany must die as a first-class power. MY PRO- POSAL IS CAPITAL PUN- ®*ISHMENT FOR A NATION, and I am' keenly conscious that many innocent German people will suffer, buts why shrink from the inevitable?” Senator Myers of Montana said there was no distinction between the German govern- ment and the German people; they were all' alike cruel, lustful, insolent, treacherous. They should all be punished alike. = On_the other hand, Sena- . tor Williams of Mississippi said: “I agree. with everything the senator from Missouri has said, except one thing,” he began, referring to a pre- vious bitter-end speaker. “I do not want to see a ‘ruined Germany.” God knows there is ruin enough in the world now. I want to see a broken German army; I want to see a ruined Prussian and Aus- trian autocracy; I want to see the fiat of 'the civilized world go forth that ‘the Hapsburgs and Hohenzol- lerns have ceased to reign’; I want to see the people of Austria-Hungary and of Ger- many take the government of their land into their. own hands; but it would give my heart no gratification to burn % { a single German village or to retaliate for the death of Belgian women by kill- ing German women.” e 15 ke Which of these is the voice of real democracy ? Wh.igh will serve the sooner to.accomplish our legitimate aims and end the frightful convulsion of civilization? Which will lay the foundations of a lasting peace? < ' DEMOCRATIC AIMS A POWERFUL WAR AID The 14 war aims which the president has an- nounced have-made many friends among the com- mon people in Germany, and so brought the end of the war nearer, perhaps being as effective a weapon In undermining the power of the German -kaiser and junker class as the military operations. -But suppose the president is forced to'set these aside and accept the views of Roosevelt, Cummins and other imperialist advocates. Will not ‘every Ger- man, even the most radical, have to rally again to And’if they finally lose and accept a peace such as ‘our imperialists would ' dictate, will there not rémain the itter feel-