Weekly Journal Miner

THREE JOLTS FOR THE KAISER

The kaiser has had three jolts recently from the United States. The biggest was the passage of the selective draft law and the registration of approximately ten million young men for service in the armies of the nation; the second jolt to make the kaiser's teeth rattle was President Wilson's Flag day speech which was but an amplification of his note to Russia explaining why this country was forced into war with Germany and the only conditions upon which this country will consent to ending the war; the third jolt was in the subscription of billions of dollars for the prosecution of the war.

We have the men and we have the money, and the president told the world in words of flaming truth why we are at war with Germany. By compacting his note to Russia in a scant thousand words, the president attained a crystallization of thought unusual and striking in a state paper. By confining his Flag day address to a scant twenty-five hundred words, easily delivered in twenty-five minutes, the president delivered an address destined to live in history as one of the masterpieces of patriotic oratory.

The Flag day address, coupled with the note to Russia, is not only a complete answer to the high-sounding slogan, "No annexations, no indemnities," which appealed so powerfully to Russian sentimentalism and was taken up by the pro-German propaganda in the United States, but it is a chart of potent clarity.

The president not only demonstrates that the United States could not keep out of the war, but shows that the world can never go back to the status quo ante, can never tolerate the restoration of old conditions out of which the war came, can never permit that the sacrifice of blood and treasure shall have been in vain.

The status quo ante would mean practical Germany victory. It would mean confirmation to Berlin of overlordship in the "middle Europe combination she has formed, with all its tyranny over subject peoples and its menace to the world." With peace on such a basis, "the private projects of power all the way from Berlin to Bagdad and beyond," which the ruling classes of Germany have been pursuing, would be pushed on imperially.

Such a peace, in short, would be merely an armistice, a truce during which new preparations would be made to realize the Prussian dream of world domination, with Europe enslaved, America vassalized, Asia and Africa subjugated. The president illuminates the truth with blazing words, whose light will penetrate to all of the peoples of the world.

The position of the United States in this conflict involves a splendid national altruism along with enlightened selfishness. Primarily we fight to protect ourselves, our country, our institutions, our children. But we fight for no ulterior object, no expansion of territory, no exaction of tribute.

We are fighting for the liberty, the self-government and the undictated development of all peoples, and every feature of the settlement that concludes this war must be conserved and executed for that purpose. This is where the president says America stands, and will stand. "The day has come to conquer or submit."

With the enlistment of more than five million men, including those eligible to the selective draft, the national guard and the regular army, to say nothing of the forces of the navy, and the raising by taxation and loan of more than five billion dollars, the submission of America is unthinkable.