The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, December 9, 1918, Page 7

. /keep our hands off. Otherwise our declaration that the chance of militarism and autocracy getting a new foothold. It matters not to us what sort of a government Germany and Austria may set up, and it is our duty to allow those countries to work out their political problems without our interference. Any other stand on our part would be a direct repudiation of our announced war aims. To keep the record straight, we reproduce below President Wilson’s various statements on this subject, and we call on all our - statesmen and all honest citizens to see that our honor and in- tegrity as a people are not besmirched by a repudiation of these promises to the world: » We have no quarrel with the German people. We have no feeling toward them but one of sympathy and friendship. It was not upon their impulse: that their government acted in entering this war.— WAR MESSAGE, APRIL 2, 1917. _We know now as clearly as we knegv before we were ourselves engaged that we are not the enemies of the German people and that they are not our enemies.—FLAG DAY ADDRESS, JUNE 14, 1917, We intend no wrong against the German empire, no interference with her internal affairs. We should deem either the one or the other absolutely unjustifiable, absolutely contrary to the principles we have professed to live by and to hold most sacred throughout our life as a nation. : We are, in fact, fighting for their emancipation from ° fear, along with our own, from the fear as well as from the fact of unjust attack by neighbors or rivals or schemers after world empire. The thought of the plain people here and everywhere throughout the world, the people who enjoy no privileges and have very simple and unsophisticated standards of right and wrong, is the air all gov- ernments must henceforth breathe if they would live—SECOND WAR MESSAGE, DECEM.BER 4, 1917, What we demand in this war is nothing peculiar for ourselves. It is that the world be made safe to live in; and particularly that it be made safe for every peace-loving nation, which, like our own, wishes to live its own life, determine its own institutions, be assured of justice and fair dealing by other peoples of the world as against force and selfish aggression, - ' Neither do we presume to suggest to her any alterations or modi- fications of her institutions.—ADDRESS OF JANUARY 8, 1918, IN WHICH HE OUTLINED A PLAN FOR A PROGRAM OF THE WORLD'’S PEACE. OUR BUSINESS IN EUROPE ; : E KNOW-—at least we are quite certain—that a recent re- ported statement by Major General Joseph D. Leitch of Camp Lewis, Wash., does not reflect the official view of the United States, and we feel also that it doesn’t even represent the majority and enlightened view of our soldiers. General Leitch had a statement in a Seattle paper under the heading, “Hundred Million of Conquered but Rebellious People to ‘Control,” according OH! STOP— * STOP | SAY. , AMERICAN P T JUHEER a to the Seattle Union Record. The statement was made to Camp Lewis soldiers and the general asserted that they are to have the task of ‘“directing the civil affairs of 100,000,000 rebellious and totally disorganized German and Austrian people.” .. The Union Record asks the question, against whom are these “rebellious people’ rebelling ? It asks if they are rebellious against us, or against kaiserism, and whether or not we incited them into - being .rebellious against the kaiser. The Record also wants to know whether the general thinks we ought to quell this rebellion against kaiserism. = The Record’s queries seem to get to the meat of the question. ' ; 55 ©. 7 We venture to assert that it is not the business of our army -to “direct the civil affairs” of the German and Austrian people. We venture to assert that since we have helped them to destroy the -arbitrary power which destroyed the peace of the world, and after we have made sure that it will be impossible for this or any other .. arbitrary power to:be set up, our business in Europe is ended. - The ' “German and Austrian peoples have a right to set up any kind of a government they desire, radical or conservative, and we must ; e object of - the war was to make democracy safe is a hollow pretense. ' WHAT IT MEANS TO THEM P ~ 2 : [ "ward to the greatest peace conference ever assembled—a s - conference that will determine whether wars are to be " ended or whether the horror we have just gone through is to be ~only a “starter”—American business men seem to be absolutely ind to the possibilities and wholly lacking in appreciation of the te of mind § ronting the : ITH the fighting at an end and with the world looking for- . . defended the locking up of war heretics solely on the they were a menace to the nation during the war, were hampering war work and undermining morale. But this justification for their . | imprisonment no longer holds good. The emergency is over. The d in givi;gi'chf we should attack the gigantic prob- the future peace and happiness of the world-which must be decided, we find some business men and their organizations busying them- selves with such matters as that recently reported in a news dis- patch from Grand Rapids, Mich. The Grand Rapids Exchange club adopted the following resolution and sent it to President Wilson | and Secretary of War Baker: . Be it resolved that in the negotiations for final peace with Ger- many, the stipulation that the victorious armies of democracy march through the streets of Berlin be not omitted. It will be remembered that the Prussians once invaded, crushed | and humiliated France. In 1871 they not only demanded (and got) the French provinces of Alsace and Lorraine, but exacted an in- demnity in size till then unheard of in war. ] isfy the Prussian military “honor.” A provision of the peace terms was that the victorious, conquering armies of Prussia should be permitted to march down the principal thoroughfares of Paris. This is frankly the precedent that the Grand Rapids business men_rely on in making their only request as to peace terms to President. Wilson. ! Our idea of the matter is this: That the Grand Rapids busi- ness men, in their recommendations, ought to incorporate MORE of the Prussian spirit. For instance, it is said that certain Prussian officers in the northern regions of France, occupied by them re- cently, required not only that French men, but French WOMEN, salute them on the street—and not only salute them, but to SMILE when they did it. » . Why should not the Grand -Rapids business men include a pro- vision along this line in their resolutions, making it incumbent for German women to salute and smile as the victorious Yanks passed by in Berlin? We would like to hear the opinion of some of the Yanks on this proposition, though we expect we couldn’t print it —it would be rather strong language, we imagine. Real soldiers, and our boys are such, leave suggestions like that from Grand Rapids to noncombatant editors and weak-minded business men. PACIFIC COAST WORKERS ACT INCE our editorial on amnesty for political prisoners was S written last week, at least one labor body in the country has council, = representing 150,000 shipyard workers, unanimously passed resolutions calling on the government “to show the mag- nanimity of our great democracy by immediate release of all who have been imprisoned for purely political reasons during the war.” Our editorial has brought us a large number of letters from readers, all save one congratulating us on the stand we took. One reader thought “aliens or traitors who have blown up factories should be made to serve out their sentences.” He misunderstood our editorial. We specifically said that all persons who accepted German gold to oppose the war or circulate anti-war propaganda, or who resorted to destruction of life or property were entitled to _no consideration. Such. persons are not “political prisoners” in our understanding of the term. We asked amnesty only for conscientious objectors, many of whom, merely because their consciences would not let them take life even in war, were sentenced to 25 and 80 years’ imprisonment, and for liberals and radicals who, in the opinion of not infallible judges and juries, went too far in criticism of the government or its war policies. This latter class is composed mostly of educated, intellectually honest men, but there is also another large class of political prisoners composed of workingmen, many of them igno- rant, who merely let their tongues slip and who need education and Americanization rather than prison terms. The necessity for the imprisonment of these men is passed. A democracy in peace should not keep its jails filled with political heretics, any more than with religious heretics. - The government C e hall make. no lgw gb??dcgng he freedorn% OfF Speech ot the Jress. PIRST AMENDMENT TO THE utmost freedom of political and economic opinion is now desirable. .. We need “the criticism, even the criticism of extremists, to test - and to put the statesmen of the world But that did not sat- | taken action in the matter. The Pacific Coast Metal Trades CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITSD STATES ~ | ground .tl}at .’ 5 g i { 1 : & q § ¥ § { i T TR AT 18