The Irish standard. [volume] (Minneapolis, Minn. ;) 1886-1920, 1915-09-25

sAoAeAuS OI tnelr enemies with every
instrument of destruction and death
that human ingenuity can conceive.
IN their imagination, they cannot look
over the battlefields of death and the
ranks of their own kindred decimated
with the engines of war fashioned I'M
der the American flag without know
ing In their hearts that the declaration
OF George Washington: THAT we
should be fair and impartial between
oelligerents" is abrogated by the pri-
vate enterprise of American monopoly
that Is filling its Golfers with gold in
exchange for the instruments of
slaughter. Every German-American
knows that the country of impartiality
that he accepted for his own and that
he swore to maintain, does not exist
In Its plentitude and it's perfection.
America is undertaking to defend
that international morality that has no
defense and that has the right to place
American munitions of war by private
enterprise into the arsenals and on the
battlefields of contending European
powers.
Where is the moral right? Where is
the right under International law?
There is none, and every honest
American knows there is none. and if
the German.American protests in loud.
est tones, he is protesting to maintain
the highest ideals that can prompt to
action the conduct of civilized man.
May An American Citizen Supply Eu.
ropean eeIIigerents With Their
WARY Material?
May an American citizen and a pri.
vate American enterprise trade with
European belligerents in their mill.
tary supplies?
What Is the motive and the only
motive that prompts his conduct?
Every man in every trench and in
every army and on every battlefield in
Europe may give some excuse as to
why 1t is that he is arranged in deadly
conflict against his enemy. France
may say, Il oppose the advancing leu
ton and desire to regain lost prov
inces."
Germany may say, Eve are striving
to break the iron ring and to sweep
the seas and make them free again as
GOD created them" Austria may say
I'VE stand on mountain crests to beat
back the Slavish boards that before
our times have devastated civilization
In Its onward rush."
Russia may say, ut is our hope to
get world power and world WATERWAYS
for our limitless resources and limit
less population"
Every soldier standing under arms
may look back toward his own home
and his own family and give the ex
cuse and reason that he fights fol
them. They all may be wrong but they
all may have some reason that is in
conformity with the natural impulses
OF the human heart, but there is M
| difference in this conflict in the ones
tlon of morality or in the deadly re
suits OF this war whether the soldier
calls his shrapnel out of the arsena
OF Bordeaux, France, Manchester, Eng
land, or Bethlehem, Pennsylvania
They all supply his hand with the in
strument of death and destruction
The nations at war and the soldier.
at war all give reasons for their par
tlclpatlon in this struggle, but wha
reason can an American citizen give
All his reason is centered in the littl,
pile of gold gathered before him a.
the reward of his iniquity and tn,
price of his engines of death given t,
the men in whose cause he has n,
participation and no interest outsid,
of his own base greed.
Our own Secretary of State in a,
answer to recent note to a foreig,
power undertakes to defend 1t upol
the ground that it is in the interest O
our national defense that we may sci
abroad now, so that if the enem,
comes to our shores we may buy iron
whomsoever has to sell. If there wa
ever a proposition fraught with dis
aster more dangerous than that it ha
never come to public view, or has neve
been transcribed in American hio%or1
We must, he contends, have a RICH
to sell from our resources, SO tina
from the worlds resources we ma
have right to buy.
Did he think when he was pennin
those reasons about the question O
our ability to buy and our ability t
deliver to our own shores what W
might buy abroad?
If there were an international agree
ment that no neutral nation or citize
thereof might supply belligerent wit
any munitions Of war, then and fror
thenceforth the wars of the worl
would be carried on by the resource
alone of the nation that rose to arms
Where would Americas defense Ii
with that international law in bindin
force the world over? You may tai
OF mighty navies until they woul
weigh down the hills of the sea: 70
may talk of standing armies until tn
earth would tremble under their tread