Middlebury register. (Middlebury, Vt.) 1886-1937, 1914-08-14
HOSTILITY TO THE KAISER.

In the present crisis many German
Americans who belong to the very best
class of citizens in the republic are sub
jected to the embarrassment of feeling
in the public sentiment of their adopted
country more than a trace of hostility
to the fatherland, Governments may
maintain strict neutrality, but neutral
ity Of opinion is impossible to the people
governed. 1t is true that there is some
thing in the attitude of American jour-
nails and in the talk of every American
street-corner and barbershop that on
the surface seems like antagonism to
Germany. A deeper vision, however,
will show that this is impossible. There
is hostility here to the Kaiser, as there
is also in many staunch German heart.
However history may unravel the
causes of the greatest war, it seems too
clear for argument to the contrary that
the immediate occasion of it was the
Kaiser's warlike intention. 1t is i'm
possible to apologize for barbarous be-
her small neighbor, Servia. So cold
blooded was this action that it seemed
from the first that something bigger
must lie behind it. Whether OF not
Austria acted from the first under orders
from the Kaiser, it is at least clear that
Austria S ultimatum was seized upon by
the Emperor of Germans as an excuse
for war against Russia and France.
American people are opposed to war,
they regard the awful outbreak in
EuroDe as the greatest crime of modern
times, and they are forced by the evil
dence to regard the German Emperor as
the arch criminal.
From the American viewpoint the
Emperor and the drums and bayonets
rather the enemy of all that is most
truly and finely German. The Emperor
is Prussian and Prussia is not all Ger
many or even the leading part in mat
tiers that count. Not Prussia but the
territory that Prussia has conquered and
the States that Prussia has overborne
are the home and source of the culture,
the learning, the mechanical skill and
the inventive genious that make Ger
many great in the world today. Prussia
is the evil genius of Germany, a state
decended part fro n Germans and part
from sterner races, land of big farms
which are poorly husbanded by POM
pous aristocracy, part of Germany
prominent only because of its ability to
bully the other parts. And the whole
Prussian spirit has been personified by
the Kaiser and the militarist clique
which surround him. 1t was the spirit
of Prussia and not the spirit of broad
liberal Germany that forced the present
war.
In George the Thirds time there were
many good Engishmen in England who
regarded the war against tyranny which
the American people were waging as a
war for freedom loving Englishmen as
well as for the colonists themselves. In
this war there is ground for the opinion
that victory for the Kaiser would be
the greatest calamity that could befall
the German people. The real Germans
are already bowed, broken and humlat-
ed beneath the autocracy and oppres-
sion of government for soldiers by
soldiers. They complain of it worse
than others. They come to this country
to escape it. If they remain in the
fatherland, they are liable to insult
daily by strutting human game cocks
and are ground down by unreasonable
taxes. Even Germany cannot afford to
have the Kaiser win.-Burlington Free
Press.