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The Commoner
VOL. 17, NO. 7
The President's Flag Day Address
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The Commoner
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TIII3 COMMONKH, LINCOLN, NED.
Somo of the cities adopted the slogan, -while
raising money for tho Red Cross, of "Give till
it hurts." This undoubtedly let off a number of
rich old codgers with $5.
' A good many persons seem to have the Idea
that they are doing their full duty as patriotic
citizens by devoting their time to telling other
people what their duties are just now.
It has perhaps been noticed that some of our
most vocLerous patiiots find a little time to
look up the list of desirable offices to be filled
by popular vote at the next election.
Colonel Hoosevelt appears to be as consistent
as ever. Tho one-half of his speeches that he
does not devote to telling the mistakes of the
president, as he views them, he consumes in
castigating those who criticise the government.
A great many people show great sensitiveness
, about the government embarking upon a price
! filing program of action. Most of them, how
1 ever, appear to bo persons who have been able
to do considerable price-fixing themselves in the
past.
( There are many mysteries that the average
, man can not solve, including that of why it is
I possible to secure a reduction in coal prices by
1 appealing to the patriotism of the producers
and dealers and not. rossible to get it by an ap
peal to the law. M
, If one were to judge from the frenzied efforts
of the liquor-makers to prevent congress from
making the nation bone dry for the period of
the war, it would be proper to say that they
seem to have forgotten that prohibition doesn't
' prohibit.
In spite of the fact that those who suggested
.a yolunteer army was not impossible in the
J United States were derided, more than 200,000
men joined the regular army of their own voli
tion in the last three months. This was during
a period when the selective draft law, which
made it certain that not moro than one in twenty
'would be called under it, was in full operation.
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! une pressure joiiik upugnt (i.o oear upon me
careless portion of the population in order that
,tKe resources of the nation may be conserved is
, fairly certain to result in an economy that -will
,last long after tho war has closed. Every now
and then something turns up to reconcile a per
son to the fact that it has been necessary for
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There is only ono reason why the men now
ATrmlnverl in the nroductlftn of lirmnr In tMa
I country should not be handed over to those In-
Qustries that aro threatening to raise tho price
' of their products because df the shortage of la-
"dot, and that the distilleries' and breweries bo
closed. That reason Is that' tho distillers and
th brewers want to Keep on Tunning.
President Wilson delivered the following ad
dress at tho Flag Day exercises in Washington,
Juno 14.
My Fellow Citizens: We meet to celebrateFlag
Day because this flag which we honor and under
which we serve is the emblem of our unity, our
power, our thought and purpose as a nation. It
has no other character than that which we give
it from generati n to generation. The choices
are ours. It floats in majestic silence abovo the
hosts that execute those choices, whether in
peace or in war. And yet, though silent, it
speaks to us speaks to us of the past, of the
men and women who went before us and of the
records they wrote upon it. We celebrate the
day of its birth; and from its birth until now
it has witnessed a great history, has floated on
high the symbol of great events, of a great plan
of life wo. ked out by a great people. We are
about to carry it into battle, to lift it where it
will draw the fire of our enemies. We are about
to bid thousands hundreds of thousands, it may
be millions, of our men, the young, the strong,
the capable men of the nation, to go forth and
die beneath it on iields of blood far away for
what? For some unaccustomed thing? For
something fcr which it has never sought the
fire before? American armies were never be
fore sent across the seas, Why are they sent
now? For some new purpose, for which this
great flag has never been carried before, or for
some old, familiar, heroic purpose for which it
has seen men, its own men, die on every battle
field upon which Americans have borne arms
since the r evolution?
ACCOUNTABLE AT BAR OF HISTORY l
These are questions which must be answered.
We are Americans. We in our turn serve
America, and can serve her with no private pur
pose. We must us her flag as she has always
used it. We are accountable at the bar of his
tory and must plead in utter frankness what
purpose it is we seek to serve.
It is plain enough how we were forced into
the war. The extraordinary insults and aggres
sions of the imperial Gorman government left
us no self-respecting cLcice but to take up arms
in defense of our lights as a free people and of
our honor as a sovereign government. The mil
itary masters of Germany denied us the right
to be neutral. They filled our unsuspecting
communities with vicious spies and conspirators
and sought to corrupt the opinion of our people
in their own behalf. When they found that they
could not do that, their agents diligently spread
sedition amongst us and sought to draw our own
citizens from their allegiance and some of
those agents were men connected with the offi
cial embassy of the German government itself
here in our own capital They sought by vio
lence to destroy our industries and arrest our
commerce. They tried to incite Mexico "to take
up arms against us and to draw Japn into a
hostile alliance with her and that, not by in
direction, but by direct suggestion from the for
eign office in Berlin. They impudently denied
us the use of the high seas and repeatedly ex
ecuted their threat that llio. would send to their
death any of our people who ventured to ap
proach the coasts v,f Europe. And many of our
own people were corrupted. Men began to look
upon their own neighbors with suspicion and to
wonder in their hot resentment and surprise
whether there was any community in which hos
tile intrigue did not lurk. What great nation
in such circumstances would not have taken up
arms? Much as we had desired peace, it was
denied us, and not of our own choice. This flag
under which we serve would have been dishon
ored had ive withheld our hand.
But that is only part of the story. We know
now as clearly as we knew before we were our
selves engaged that we are not the enemies of
the German people and that they are not our
enemies. They did not originate or desire this
hideous war or wish that we should be drawn
into it j and we are vaguely conscious that we
aro fighting their cause, as they will some day
see It, as well as our own. They are themselves
in the grip of the same sinister power that has
now at last stretched its ugly talons out and
drawn blood from us. The whole world is at
war because the whole world is in the grin of
that power and is trying out the great battl
which shall determine whether it in ,.
brought under its mastery or fling itself free
WAR BEGUN BY GERMAN MILITARISTS
The war was begun by the militarv .
of Germany, who proved to be 5solhe ml?
of Austria-Hungary. These men have nevSf ?
garded nations as peoples, men wonW ;
children of like blood and frame aTaSWiSf
for whom governments existed and in whS
governments had their life. They have relard
ed them 'merely as serviceable organSnn
which they could by force or intrigS bSa S
corrupt to their own purpose. They hav Z
garded the smaller states, in particular, and
peoples who could be overwhelmed by force 2
their natural tools and instruments of domina
tlon. Their purpose has long been avowed
DEVELOPED PLANS OF REBELLION
The statesmen of other nations, to whom that
purpose was incredible, paid little attention- re!
garded what German professors expounded in
their classrooms and German writers set forth
to the world as the goal of German policy as
rather the dream of minds detached from prac
tical affairs, as preposterous private conceptions
of German destiny, than as the actual plans of
responsible rulers; but the rulers of Germany
. themselves knew all the while what concrete
plans, whut well-advanced intrigues lay back of
what the professors and the writers were say
ing, and were glad to go forward unmolested,
filling the thrones of Balkan states with Ger
man princes, putting German officers at the ser
vice of Turkey to drill her armies end make in
terest with her government, developing plans
of sedition and rebellion in India and Egypt,
setting their fires in Persia. The demands made
by Austria upon Serbia were a mere single step
in the plan which compassed Europe and Asia,
from Berlin to Bagdad. They hoped those de
mands might not arouse Europe but they
meant to press them whethei they did or not,
for they thought themselves ready for the final
issue of arms.
Their plan was to throw a broad belt of Ger
man military power and political control across
the very center of Europe and beyond the Med
iterranean into the heart of Asia; and Austria
Hungary was to be as much their tool and pawn
as Serbia or Bulgaria or -Turkey or the ponder
ous states of the east. Austria-Hungary, in
deed, was to become part of the central Ger
man empire, absorbed and dominated by the
same forces' and influences that had originally
cemented the German states themselves. The
dream had its heart at Berlin. It could have
had a heart nowhere else! It rejected the idea
of soli:L.rity of race entirely. The choice of
peoples played no part in it at all. 71 contem
plated binding together racial and political units
which could be kept together only by force
Czechs, Maygars, Croats, Serbs, Roumanians,
Turks, Armenians the proud states of Bo
hemia and Hungary, the stout little common
wealths of the Balkans, the indomitable Turks,
the'subtle peoples of the east. These peoples
did not wish to be united. They ardently de
sired to direct their own affairs, would be sat
isfied only by undisputed independence. They
could be kept quiet only by the presence or the
constant, threat of armed men. They would live
under a common power only by sheer compul
sion and await the day of revolution. But tne
German military statesmen had reckoned wiw
all that and were ready to deal with it in tneir
own way.
AUSTRIA AT GERMANY'S MERCY
And they have actually carried the greater
part of that amazing plan into execution! ww
how things stand. Austria is at their mercy, i
has acted, not upon its own initiative or upon
the choice of its own people, but at Berlins u
tationver since the war began. Its peopw u
desire peace, but can not have it until ieav
granted from Berlin. The so-called cemn
Powers are in. fact but a single power, at &
is at its mercy, should its hands be but w
moment freed. Bulgaria has consentea i fa
will, and Roumania is overrun. in ou
armies, which Germans trained, are
Germany, certainly not themselves, ana in
of German warships lying in the harbor at w
(Continued on Page 12.)