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Show GERMAN SPIES, STRIKES AND SOCIALISM WHILE there are millions of loyal German-Americans in our country, coun-try, the spy peril is not an abstract matter, mat-ter, but a concrete every day fact. The headquarters of the German spy system at present is in Mexico. But German spies are not always Germans, or natives of the other central powers, but frequently are subjects of neutral countries. The first line of defense against spies is the police force, the letter let-ter carriers and constabulary of city, county and state. . German spies are not all busy reporting report-ing war information to their government, govern-ment, but many carry on a trouble-making trouble-making propaganda in this country. Spreading industrial strife and the poison of discontent and socialism is a favorite occupation of German spies and near-spies. The Saturday Evening Post says: "What Germany wants is to prevent labor from keeping on good terms with capital, to cause endless strikes and industrial in-dustrial disputes, to spread germs of discontent among ship employes, to carry back and forth tales of alleged profits and inspire demands for higher wages, foment mutaul antagonisms, cause food panics and food riots, destroy de-stroy munition plants and factories in short, to do everything that will prevent pre-vent America from getting to the allies the ships, food, munitions and supplies they need to insure victory. "To call a labor leader pro-German or any enemy agent is in nine cases out of ten absolutely wrong. But to trace the subtle manner in which enemy agents have through devious ways influenced in-fluenced a labor leader to call a strike just as frequently leads back to German Ger-man agents or sympathizers. "With hundreds and thousands of agents no one can be occupied in anything any-thing that is too trivial some day to cause trouble. Enemies are quietly slipped into the laboring communities to talk against the employer, to argue against the war, to call it a rich man's affair and to deplore the hardships of the working man. "Capital and labor are hard things to reconcile in times of peace. Not all industrial in-dustrial discontent is due to the war. But true patriotism demands that both employers and employes shall be the more careful not to lend themselves consciously or unconsciously to enemy plots. "Socialism is the best vehicle the Germans have found. The trend of the age is socialistic. It is so during all wars. Many of the socialist leaders are not aware that they are mere puppets for German agents. T don't know a single German. I never would listen to one,' remarks an indignant socialist. T have believed in socialism for twenty years.' But Mr. Jones, who has been a socialisst in time of peace and is exultant exult-ant over the growth of the movement today, does not realize how enemy agents have filled the homes of American Ameri-can citizens with fallible arguments about the war and have resorted even to the districting" of communities wherein slowly but gradually the seeds of disloyalty have been sown by Americans Ameri-cans who believed themselves right in their views because no dissent or dispute dis-pute rose from any near-by quarter." r . . |