Ogden Daily Standard | 1917-05-23 | Page 9 | Balfour Heard by Cotton Men

BALFOUR HEARD BY (Ml MEN English Statesman Convinced United States Will Stay in War to the End. WASHINGTON, May 22. American cotton manufacturers, gathered here today to appoint a war commission I for co-operation with the government, were addressed by Foreign Secretary Balfour, head of the British war mission, mis-sion, who told them that adhesion of the United States to the allied cause made it absolutely certain that military mili-tary autocracy would not be able to cast all nations of the earth into the same mold. Mr. Balfour, introduced by Secretary Daniels, was given an enthusiastic welcome. "None of us suspected when this great war started," he said, "that tho United States, thousands of miles away, would be drawn into it. And yet I think in looking back that tho logic of events was irresistible. From the beginning there has been but onoi choice and that choice inevitable. The j United States has not hesitated to take it and now that she has taken it she will not withdraw, I am confident, confi-dent, until the objects sought are attained. at-tained. "Germany, by her insensate policy, has forced this country of unbounded rebouices to throw all her power, all her wealth, but more than that, all her moral strength Into the issue. America seeks no vulgar ends, no ter-lltoiial ter-lltoiial aggrandizement, no mean gain. All of us -would feel defeated and dishonored dis-honored if wo do not leave the world free from the menaco that 13 hanging over it, that has been gi owing every decade, yes, every month more dangerous. Only the historian of tho far fu-turo fu-turo will be able to see all the causes and all the cross-currents of this monster mon-ster struggle. We here today cannot project our gaze sufficiently to envisage envis-age it all. "As the war began with the cynical, outrageous oppression of a little nation na-tion way down in tho Balkans and went on through tho brutal violation of another small country to the north, so it is continuing. No excuse can be offered for the cold-blooded, calculating calculat-ing aggression which has marked the course of the military autocracy which has plunged not only ?uropo but every ev-ery quarter of tho civilized globe into untold suffering and raised up for Itself It-self an undreamed of vengeance." The manufacturers, those from the south representing tho American Association As-sociation of Cotton Manufacturers and those from tho iyrth the National Association As-sociation of Cotton Manufacturers, appointed ap-pointed a committee which, co-operating through the council of defense, will undertake to see that all cotton needs of the gojernment are promptly and economically supplied. nn