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Show JU "TOO PROUD TO FIGHT" WAS A MISTAKE. iue Luubi Leiiuig puiul muue against President Wilson by Theodore Roosevelt Roose-velt In his speech at Battle Creek, Michigan, today, is to be found in this paragraph: But President Wilson did not act He only spoke. And his words wero a direct incitement to the repetition of the wrong. For Immediately after the sinking of the Lusitania he utted his famous fa-mous sentence about being "too proud to fight." In all our history there has never been any other American President who has used a phrase that has done such widespread wide-spread damage to the good name of America. It is one of those dreadful phrases which, as by a lightning flash, Illumines the soul of the man using It, and remains forever fixed In the minds of mankind man-kind in connection with that man. But this Is not all. When the man Is President of the United States, It is sad, a dreadful thing that the shame is necessarily necessar-ily shared by the nation itself; and It Is completely assumed by the nation if It falls to repudiate the man who uttered the phrase. Roosevelt is right. That Is one of the most Inept expressions voiced by our President. Later Wilson explained ex-plained that the phrase meant we were too proud to fight simply to be fighting, but the bad effect could not be corrected by an explanation. The damage, of course', is not as serious as represented. No country is mislead as to American courage and temperament. All nations have keen, wideawake ambassadors and ministers In Washington and they are not less wen Informed than the brightest of our own people. Through them the world comes to correctly estimate the American people, tho power of this country and the high resolve of every true American to command respect for the Stars and Stripes. oo- |