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Show , o . I AFRAID OF IT. No higher compliment could be paid to President Wil- ji son's address than the fact that it is not published in full in Germany, except in the Berlin Tageblatt. Why Mr. Wolff was allowed to print it cannot be explained until ; j we learn why he has been unmolested in many other as- I sertion of his independence. The reason why the more . I complaisant German publications did not print the speech v j was because of its destructiveness as a weapon. It is f dangerous to let such a devastating document get abroad j in Germany, and yet it will get abroad and will do its dam aging work. Parts of the speech were printed in a way i to give the German reader the impression that it was the ; full text, and when we examine the parts that were print- i cd and those that were omitted we can see why the rulers were afraid of it. f It was the first part of the speech that was printed, f the part reciting the German submarine warfare and its crimes. That could be published, because Germany is fairly well inured to the' world's opinion on that subject. j . But no German paper, except the one already mentioned, let its readers know that the President prpposed financial Lacking for the Allies. Germany's only hope is. to starve and bankrupt the Allies; the news that the starving and bankrupting of the Allies have now become impossible would wreck that last hope. Germany did not dare let its people know what the President said about Russia; he put too clearly the fact that the Russian revolution and the American declaration of war had completed the issue as one of democracy against autocracy. As for the President's Pres-ident's own definition of that issue, Germany could not ' and did not let her people read that. She could not and ' did not let her people know of the President's account of the German plots within and against the United States, for that would have destroyed the pretense that the Zim- i. mermann Merican intrigue stood alone and was merely .i a natural and innocent precaution against eventualities, i She could not and did not let the people, who are being (i i told that ours will be only a half-hearted and limited war, ' read this announcement: ii' We are now about to accept the gage of battle t, with this neutral foe to liberty, and shall, if neces- f sary, spend the whole force of the nation to check ) and nullify its pretensions and its power. She could not and did not let them read the President's 'declaration that we enter the war for the liberation of . the world's peopled, "the German peoples included," and the revolutionary unrest that is being reported from Hamburg Ham-burg and other places shows why she could not. She could not and did not let them read his declaration that "we seek no indemnities for ourselves, "no material compensation com-pensation for the sacrifices we shall freely make," for it would have led to questioning about the accuracy of the picture so carefully painted of the "gold-sated Yankees" entering the war for money. She could not and she did not let them read his denunciation of "the selfish designs "of a government that did what it pleased and told its "people nothing," or the words that followed it: We are accepting this challenge of hostile pur-' pur-' pose because we know that in such a government, following such methods, we can never have a friend; and that in the presence of its organized power, always lying in wait to accomplish we know not what purpose, there can be no assured security for the democratic governments of the world. The President's speech was excluded from publication because it was not a speech but a deadly weapon. New York Times. |