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Show i 4 i THE CITIZEN way the party will move along1 in the sleepy, stupid, unprogressive and aimless fashion of the recent unlucky years. This is a time that would delight the great Roosevelt were he alive to take advantage of it. It is not a time for those who plot meanly; it is a time for live men to be at work on a high plane of patriotic effort. There is a way out of this difficulty and it is simple. It does not, in the first instance, require any machinery at all. It requires merely an effort of the will. Let the Republicans acquire the will to victory. Let each one of them decide to put life into the party, to do something for the party, to attend meetings, to organize, to contribute both money, time and energy, and to lend a willing hand wherever and whenever he or she sees a chance to help. It is the decision to help that counts most. The means are at hand as soon as the decision is made. There are in Salt Lake City and throughout the state clubs and other organizations eager to welcome new members who have made up their minds to devote some of their time and efforts to the great campaign for the victory of an Americanism that shall maintain the United States as first and best among the nations and that shall fight to the last ditch to prevent our country from becoming the vassal of foreign sovereignties. THE PUNJAB MASSACRE who desire that the United States should guarantee British under Article X of the League of Nations covenant listen to this story of how General Dyer killed 500 natives of the Punjab and wounded 1,500. He gave no warning that his men were about to shoot and he would not take care of the wounded. He found 5,000 natives presumably men and women meeting in a public park and, after he had encircled the enclosure with his soldiers, he ordered them to shoot indiscriminately into the crowd. The wounded were left to die in the places where they fell. That There were hospitals. was not my job, General Dyer explained. But there is no record that he permitted the wounded to be removed to the hospitals and the probability is that after the natives had dispersed none of them dared to return to that frightful Gethsemane in which THOSE the slaughter had taken place. this can be hidden. For weeks the dispatches have been telling us about General Dyers rule in the Punjab and about events at Amritsar, where the massacre occurred, but the facts of the massacre were withheld for months while the correspondents talked about how General Dyer had ordered rebels flogged. Now the Literary Digest has got hold of the appalling facts and presents them through the medium of General Dyers own testimony. It also presents the hypocritical excuses of the English newspapers. Reading these comments one is reminded that they are the very arguments the Germans used in extenuation of their atroci- It is wonderful how long events like ties in Belgium. When we read that the natives were slaughtered without warning we are reminded of the Lusitania atrocity. The difference is that the Lusitania was sunk during a war, whereas the natives were shot to death in a public park without even having committed an overt act and these natives were not enemies they were rebels only in words at that particular time. The massacre occurred on April 13, 1919, the day that General Dyer and his 300 armed men arrived at Amritsar. He took the word of the civil authorities that they could do no more to quell the rebel agitation and, without proclaiming martial law, marched to the public meeting and opened fire immediately. Here is the story of the testimony as given by the Digest : He led the Gurkhas In. There were very few exits, probably one large and two or three small ones. He had never seen the place before. When he got to the place he opened fire. At once? asked Lord Hunter, evidently surprised. Witness said, 'Yes. He had thought about the matter. He explained it did not take him more than thirty seconds. In the center of the crowd a man was standing, his demeanor showing that he was making an address. He ran away to the right and managed to climb over the wall and got away. A great mass was on the farther side. So far as witness knew there was nothing going on, but his addressing the meeting. Witness estimated the crowd roughly at 5,000. He was told afterward many more were there. It was possible that many of them could not have heard the proclamation prohibiting meetings to be held It did not occur to him to warn. He merely felt his orders were disobeyed and martial law defied. So he felt it his duty to fire. Only a few of them ran away. When he began to fire the big mass began to run away. Although martial law had not been proclaimed he did not think it necessary to consult the Deputy Commissioner (the civil officer in that town). Besides, there was no Deputy Comlssloner. Witness looked at it from the military point of view. If he did not fire he thought he was failing in his duty. When he left Rambagh (the park where his troops were encamped) he had thought of firing. It did not occur to him to have civil authority with him. There were two police officers, but he did not consult them. Witness made r his mind as he came along that if they did not obey, he would fire. As soon as firing was opened, the crowd began dispersing. Still he continued firing, because he thought a little firing was bad. The firing lasted about ten minutes or less. He thought less from the number of rounds fired. He could not say if the crowd had sticks. He assumed they had sticks. He knew they would be arriving with sticks. It was possible the crowd would disperse at the sight of the troops. But they would all be coming back again and only making a fool of him. His view was that the situation was serious. He thought they wanted to isolate him, and the movement was not confined to Amritsar, but was widespread. He looked on the crowd as rebels and enemies of the crown. They wanted to isolate him. So he fired and fired well. No other consideration weighed with him. After firing he returned to Rambagh and counted the number of rounds. He did not ascertain the casualties. He guessed, from the number of rounds fired, about three hundred must have been killed. He had since seen the figures in the papers. Instead of dividing the rounds by six, if he had divided by five,. it would have worked out very nearly to the published figures. It was individual and not volley firing, and the crowd was dense in the center. If the fire was directed on the center there was no chance of missing. It was quite possible that the deaths numbered four or five hundred. He did not render aid to the wounded. He should have done if they had asked there. It was not his job. It was a medical question. The next day he issued an order regarding the disposal of the dead. . It is notable that General Dyer testified that he merely felt that But his own his orders had been disobeyed and martial law defied. testimony shows that he did not declare martial law and gave no order except the order to fire. He simply shot the natives to death without warning because he thought they were agitating against British rule. The world thought, when the armistice was signed, that atrocities by highly civilized nations had ceased for a long time. But not only does the world find Hunnish atrocities committed but Hunnish arguments put forward in their defense. All humane men deplore such a loss of life as occurred at Armit-sa- r, remarks The Morning Post of London, but all men of sense agree that it is a mere trifle compared with the loss of life which must certainly have occurred if these heroic men had not done as they did. Think of calling men heroic who, armed to the teeth, shot down the Hun. unarmed men without warning. That The only excuse with any semblance of honesty is that of necessity. But if it is necessary to British rule in India to massacre the natives it is wise for Americans not to guarantee that rule by agreeing to preserve the territorial integrity of the British empire. The Germans found that their plea of necessity was folly. The atrocities were followed by the greatest war in history. In that war more men fell than in all the wars of a thousand years. Only the other day another of those shadowy English reports percolated through from northern India, in which the Punjab is situated. It told of a battle in which the British lost more in killed and wounded than did the rebels. Quite obviously it was a British defeat a defeat following those canting excuses of The Morning Post to the effect that a massacre is a mercy if it prevents further slaughter. No doubt many will wonder whether it can be possible that the English people approve the Amritsar massacre. They will ask themselves whether it is true that the English are a special kind of human'!' and brutal that they can delight in the slaughbeings so out-Hu- ns cold-heart- ed ter of innocents. The answer is obvious. The English people would not excuse or condone such an atrocity were they not the victims of a system, just as the German people were the victims of a system for more than forty years. The British system may be expressed in three words tory-isimperialism and militarism. Great Britain is the worlds greatest military and naval power and must maintain its empire by the rule of might. General Dyer. becomes a hero and patriot under such a system, just as the Hun tyrants in Belgium became heroes and patriots to the German people. The obliquity of mind is produced by the system. We saw that same obliquity in the reasoning of the Germans during the war and we came to look on them as madmen. We would think in just the same fashion if we allowed ourselves to become the victims of tory-isimperialism and militarism. m, m, |