Iditarod pioneer., 1914-09-26

other combatants than the one we are fight
 ing to redress.
 Prussian militarism has bullied us for
 forty years and months ago neither Ger many nor France believed that we would
 fight when it came to the point. That IS
 why there was such a wild explosion of
 delighted surprise when the French cham
 Der learned that We were game after all.
 That is why the kaiser, though reckless
 of every other interest concerned, offered us
 the best excuse he could invent tor our neu-
 trality, believing we were only too willing
 to snatch at it. And that IS also why we
 lIad to take off ou4 coat and sall Tn. We had to show that when 1t comes to bal ance Cf power we are no mere dummy weights in the scal"
 Our immediate business, therefore, is to fight as hard as we can, for our weight when the settlement comes will depend on the part we shall have played in the con- fict
 Meanwhile the political influences of or
 ganied labor at home must not be waved in idle and exasperating platitudes about the wickedness Of war and the extravaganza of big armaments and the simplicity of non intervention and all other splintered blanks of the old peace retrenchment and reform Flatfcrm.
 The difference between the foreign pol icy of the Socialist and the foreign policy of capitol is simple Capital sends the flag at tie heels of commercial speculation fer profit; socialism would keep tte flag at the
 head cf civilization. Capital, badly wanted
 at home, is sent abroad after cheap labor.
 Financiers use the control of the army and
 the fleet, which they obtain through par
 lament, solely to guard their unpatriotic
 investments That is the root of the pres
 ent mischief
 France, instead of using her surplus in
 come in abclishing French slums and build ing up French children into strong men and women, has tent it to Russia to strengthen the most tyranNlcal government in Europe, and, to secure her interest on her loan she has entered into an unnatural alliance with Russia against her more civi ized neighbOrs. We have no right to throw stones at
 France on this account, for we made an
 agreemenut with Russia of q still more sor- didly commercial character for the eXpl0ita- ton of Persia with capital that should have fed our starving children; and now mark the consequences. Germany, with hostile
 France on one side and hostile Russia on
 the other, is in position so dangerous that
 we here in our island can form no concep- ton of its intolerable tension. By our blindness we have brought about the war. We have deliberately added to the strain by making military and naval anti German alliance with France without at the same time balancing its effect by assuring Ger
 many that if she kept peace with France we wovld not help Russia against her, nor, i in the last recourse, allow Russia to ad- vsnce her frontier westward.
 Is it to be wondered that Potsdam mill
 tarism with a chronic panic and with mill ta!isn raise,I to desperation by the menace ! If Russia, France and England-has made wild attempt to cut its way out after a | desparing appeal to let it fight one to two instead Cf one to three?
 Let us be just to Potsdam. It may serve Potsdam right that she frightened us all so
 much that we became incapable of realiz- ing that our terror was nothing to hers. i But if we had been true to civilization
 and kept our capital at home and our honor
 untarnished by squalid commercial ventures
 in the East, we should have controlled the
 situation and kept the European peace ! History will not excuse us because, after
 making the war inevitable, we ran around at the last moment begging everybody not
 to make a disturbance