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Show Did We Enter the War ; T ; theRight Time? pie fell before the Bully of Berlin. If we owed anythingto humanity after the sinking of the Lusltania, we certainly cer-tainly owed a dern sight more to humanity hu-manity after the Invasion of Belgium.. We cannot now urge "defense of 'American 'Am-erican travelers" as a Lusitania provocation, pro-vocation, for that's too selfish a thing for great America to do. We are In the war "for humanity's sake" now we pride ourselves upon it and if ; we are. why were we not in after Jhe Belgian Invasion? 'Belgian people like to live and breathe the same as Americans. But Roosevelt was opposed op-posed to a declaration of war then, and said so in no uncertain terms. The Lusitania was sunk May 7, 1915. Figuring a year to get ready for war we would not have been ready until 1916. If we had Jumped in when, Belgium was attacked, we would have been ''ready" nearly a year quicker than that. Thus, if the "getting In" was good in 1915, it was Far better in 1914. That's perfectly plausible argument. America's Hour ' Some Thoughts Upon Topics ; Which Are Very Much Alive In America At Present "I, John Doe, hereby pledge myself to patriotically support the United States during the world war, with my ' t whole soul, body and mind. I pledge ' ' myself to obey my superior officers, , . ' those in authority, over me, from the . greatest to the least. I will refrain . from finding fault with them, grant-" grant-" lng that they, like myself, are ftable to mistakes, and will stand behind ,y . them in all their acts against the , common nemy. If I have the feeling that I can help them better to do their duties by my advice, I pledge to go direct to them' with the suggestion, sugges-tion, and not Injure public discipline and public morale by criticising them . to others." t An oath every man should subscribe" to during the war.) There Is too much "fault finding" . In these days, and tot) little of what " we might call "helpful criticism." , . While some unreasonable folks may , . not see a difference between fault finding and helpful criticism, still . there is a, great distinction between ""7 ...... , , .the two terms. We believe Iq, helpful - ' criticism, and, if public officer John , Smith Is at fault the place for helpful : ; -criticism is in John Smith's presence. --"If he -is the average-man of, common ! y.'.-f 1 5 j. 'good Judgment he will listen careful-' ' Jr. and; give respectful hearing. We ,. v f ;,aU can learn something from every-' every-' . body, and the officer who wishes to p , . perform his . duties faithfully may sometimes, get real help from his; ,v subordinates and we are all subor-. $ dlnates to every officer. . Fault finding is another thing. An officer has no right to consider helpful, help-ful, criticism as fault finding. As we look at it the fault finder voices his ...... opinions to everybody else but the proper party. He-thus does the very r , thing that brings law and rules Into ... ' disrepute, and thereby Injures the - public morale. In this day when there is a demnpd sn1 nerd fpr tr'rt . obedience on the part of everybody, "It can only be maintained by careful ' ' ' respect for law. To find fault with : : ' the law enforcer Is to destroy confidence confi-dence In the law, and break" down th 'iJ-. ,Jw'"- -S public morale, and the morale of the ' v.-- v - PeoP1 means everything In the war . r ' now being waged. , - A year ago (Herbert Hoover, the American Food Commissioner,,., had ' an interview with the British Food ;: Commissioner. They .had before them a carefully prepared estimate of the world's supply of food, and.it . ! -.'"-.. was tfeen that unless tomething des-. des-. j j . -; perate was undertaken, the Allied' ar-' ar-' '' ' mies would have to succumb to Jhe T. -r Hun. The" British food commissioner ..'.; asked IMr. Hoover what could be done: ' , Mr. iHoover replied: "If the Amerl- . can people cut their flour and sugar consumption In half, we can supply England, France and 'Italy with tfte food they must have." The British officer threw up his hands and said: ','The Wlar Is Lost." ' . - He did not believe the American people peo-ple would do it. - This put Mr. Hoover upon his met- tie, and , he smashed the table with his fist, and said, "The American Peonle Will Do It." ' Now, as a matter of fact America should not have gone Into, the war until she did go into the war, and this is why: Italy Jumped Into the war game early In order to seize the Tren-tino Tren-tino and recover the port of Trieste. Selfish motive did you say? Bulgaria Jumped Into the war game early in ordeiv to swipe a piece of Macedonia, and lay the foundation for recovering Dobrouja. Selfish, was it? IRouma-nla IRouma-nla got her feet wet in blood so as to get title to Transylvania, and possibly "cop off" Bessarabia. Selfish, Turkey Tur-key got in to get back Macedonia, and Russia made no bones of wanting Constantinople and the Dardenallea. France wanted Alsace (Lorraine and didn't blush a bit when she said so. Japan climbed into the. war, wagon and stuck Kiao '"Chau Into her pocket at one and 'the same time. Germany, J herself, actually, wanted all of Middle Europe, lied America . entered the war when Roosevelt said we should, the. world would have arisen to ask, 'IVViiat territory do you want?" ' Now, 'we'll admit that such a question' ques-tion' may seem grossly incompetent' but when" the case is diagnosed Its importance im-portance Is easily seen. Our many American neighbors on the south, all the way from (Arizona to Patagonia, have been grossly su&plctous of us for many years. We do not say that these suspicions are Justified, but Germany and other European countries coun-tries have "knocked on us" In order to - get southern trade. South American Ameri-can countries have been taught to believe be-lieve that Uncle Sam was only looking look-ing for a good excuse to eat them alive, bones and all. Our entrance into the war in 1915 would have been viewed, with dark suspicion, and we might have turned a number of south' ern countries to the German side "ol the scrap, which affiliation, from a naval point of view alone, would have offset our strength for a long period of time, and doubtless, would have given the Allies very little advantage for a year or so. South America was honeycombed with German spies, and German 'nfluence, and the posslbilit of dividing the western heniisphere ir war sympathy would have been high ly probable. f. The American people did it, but : . with much fault finding. We do not mean that e very bocly found fault; lar from it. Most of the American people buckled down with all. their hearts, to support Mr. Hoover in his ' pledge. Some folks, however," didn't . t like it. . They didn't like the order, ' " . nor they didn't like the order-ee. "Gen erally, with our characteristic short-I short-I ' ' slghtedness we "struck at" the fellow , nearest to us. It was human nature. We made it unpleasant for everybody In sight. We criticised the order, never thinking of the wife and chil- dren of the fellow who, In our defense poured out his blood upon the thirsty . soil of Picardy. Shame on us, and shame to the very ground that we walk upon! . Some day we'll eulogize iMr. Hoov-' Hoov-' er and his food administration. Some s n , . day we'll eulogize our boards of exemption, ex-emption, but, In the meantime, we are satisfying our greedy natures, by cursing them and all their forbears, clear back to Noah. !BUt, we sup--pose it will all come out in the wash, . and when we are eating white bread again, we'll forget all about it. But, in the meantime, we4hlnk life is Just one dern thing after another. There. are a few "helpful critics" and there are many fault finders. But, after all, we have another kind of fellow who constantly harps upon the subject of "what might have hap-' hap-' j ' ' 4 pened if the thing had only been done . some other ,way." The "I told you so" fellow is ever abroad' In the land. He finds many willing and listening ears. He has expressed himself repeatedly, re-peatedly, in fact he has done most everything but suppress himself. We have all indulged in this line of "guff" but, it occurs to us that "the mill will never grind with the waters that have ' passed." In the face of the common enemy it seems to us that now 1b the time for people to "about face." Roosevelt And The War At the New York Republican con-' con-' ventlon he 6tated that America should have gone to war when the Llmitania was sunk. If we han he says, we would have given morale to the Allies Al-lies and saved Russia from collapse. The war would now be over and we would be happy. - Roosevelt is "thirty minutes late" with his suggestion. He is likewise too far down in history. We ehould have gone to war when Belgium was invaded. Miny Americans lost their lives by reapon of that invasion, and the stranding of thousands of people from this country In Kttrope. It v.,v plain then that .Germany, jumping as nhe did upon a weak and inoffendlng nation, had full fledged plans tor the world comment and world domination Looking at the event from our "hind flpiit" it is easy to see now why we should have Rone to vvar, rinht itt ' that moment, when an Innocent poo- Thus, refraining from war in 1915.1 served a double purpose. We obtained nn agreement from Germany to sink no more neutral vessels only such, as they found, by search, containing contraband, con-traband, and then all passengers and crew be allowed to escape. Germany's breaking of this agreement in February, Febru-ary, 1917, furnished unquestioned Justification Jus-tification for America to enter the , war, and we can now contemplate pleasantly the fact that every South American country, save Venezuela, has either entered the war with us, or broken relations with Germany. And the day may come in this war when we will need this 'South American Ameri-can help more than the Allies needed our help in 1915. lEven if we do not finally need it, the friendlv made as allies in the war will be of vast and inestimable benefit to' America Amer-ica In the future. Should We Have Entered Earlier The argument may be used ,that America would have lost fewer men had we gone Into the war in 1915 than we will now. Under the lew of things today this would not have been true. We would have thrown our young men against far better German armies in 1916 than we are now. We would have burned ourselves against the hottest kind of a battle line, &s Britain and France, after their sad experiences in 1916 and 1917, can easily eas-ily tell us. We could not possibly have closed the bloody struggle by our help in less than two years, or until the period when Russia went to pieces at least. We are not urging this argument as our own, but only to show that the claim being made that we might have escaped with less j punishment is not Infallible by any , means. Personally, for the great cause, we now fight for, we had as good a right to shed our blood as did Britain or France, hence we have little patience with the argument that we might have gotten of feasler if we had done gomething else. -We do not believe in this business of continually conducting "post mor-tems" mor-tems" on the war question. We are Calvlplstic enough to believe that there Is an Overruling Providence guiding the affairs of men in this great day of horror, a '.Mighty Hand that leads us as It will regardless of our puny opinions and puny plans. It avails mighty. little to talk about "what might have been" in fact such talk Is the most idle imaginable. Things aro as they are because they are, und because they aro intended to be as ty are. In the end they are going to rome out all rlslit, because be-cause an All Wise Providence is going go-ing to make them so. Weak and finite fin-ite man cannot make them otherwise if he would. Is God In This War Sniiie folks eay that God has noth ing to do with the var. If the writer believed that God's mighty hand was not moving over the troubled surface of Europe,' every moment of the- day and night, we would tremble with a desperate fear and wish -' that the mountains would fall upon us. -That He is working in what is to us a mysterious way to perform His wonders, won-ders, there is absolutely no doubt. Far be it from us to say that "God Caused the War" for that is hardly correct. With European natrons spending forty years In developing "man made power" it is not to be wondered at that God in permitting them to try out their weapons. He is proving to us that man made power means only waste and destruction, a lesson the world seems to need in a most desperate way. This being ' the fact, why spend our time in holding post mortems, and howling about what might have happened if somebody some-body had done something different? America could not go to war until sentiment crystallized in its favor, which was no, until we did go to war The All Wine Power which guides the minds and hearts of men, brought that sentiment into action at what He called the proper moment, and that is all there Is to it. We might as well forget everything else and be happy. But speaking about fault finders we want to commend one worthy and delightful de-lightful American citizen in a ipecial way. We refer to "Old Hiill" Taft, the muchly cursed Talt, one of the best men who evtr sat In the President's Presi-dent's chair. If America possesses a citizen who is entitled to a ffrouch it is Bill Taft. if there Is a single American Am-erican citizen who ha3 less ol a grouch than 'Bill Taft we have failed to find him. In all the war talk and criticism ilr.- Taft has never raised ! his voice in fault finding of President I Wilson or any American official. He ; has had his helpful suggestion, time and again, but he has refrained from any form of ragging criticism. Ho Is a man among meu, God bless his fat old soul, and we tip our hat to him. If he kicKed all the time we wouldn't j blame himfbecaune he was the victim ! of the greatest injustice ever visited ; upon any public official in America. ! and betrayed in the house of his friends. Out he does not He is a ! pood old sport, laughing away his political po-litical mishaps, and acting the real man at every stage of the game. May his shadow never grow les. may his trilw increase. Jefferson Bee. |