Valdez daily prospector., 1915-01-04
MONDAY, JANUARY 4, 1915.
FOR THE GERMAN PEOPLE,
 PEACE WITH FREEDOM

Times and caused sensation:
 Germany is doomed to sure defeat. Bankrupt in statesmanship, oveI- matched in arms, under the moral condemnation of the civilized world, befriended only by the Austrian and the Turk, two backward-looking and dying nations, desperately battling against the hosts or three great pow CTS to which help and reinforcement from states now neutral will certain ly come should the decision be long deferred, she pours out the blood of her heroic subjects and wastes her diminishing substance in hopeless struggle that postpones but cannot al- ter the fatal decree. Yet the doom of the German Empire may become the deliverance of the German people if they will betimes but seize and hold their own. Leipsic began and Waterloo achieved the emancipation of the French people from the bloody, selfish and sterile domination of the Corsican Ogre. St. Helena made it secure. Sedan sent the little Napo- leon sprawling and the statesmen of France instantly established and pro- claimed the republic. Will the Ger mans blindly insist on having their Waterloo, their Sedan-their St. Hel- ena, too? A million Germans have been sacrificed, million German homes are desolate. Must other mil lions die and yet other millions mourn before the people of Germany take in the court of reason and human lib- erty their appeal from the imperial and military caste that rushes them to their ruin?
 They have their full justification in the incompetence and failure of their rulers. German diplomacy and German militarism have broken down. The blundering incapacity of the kali ser's counselors and servants in statecraft at Berlin and in foreign capitals committed Germany to a war against the joined might of England, France and Russia. Bismarck would never have it so. Before he let the armies take the field, before he gave Austria the free hand" he would have had England and Russia by the ears, he would have isolated France, as he did in 1870. The old emperor, a man not above the common in ca pacity, surpassed the wisdom of his grandson in this, that he knew bet ter than to trust his own judgment and he was sagacious enough to call great men to his aid. Wilhelm T. was Wretchedly served at Vienna by an ambassador blinded by Russopho- bia, at St. Petersburg by another who advised his home government that Russia would not go to war, and at London by the muddling Lichnowsky, whose first guesses were commonly wrong and his second too late .o be serviceable. German literally forc- ed an alliance for this war between England and Russia, two powers of- ten antagonistic in the past and hay ing now no common interest save the curbing of Germany. The terrible misjudgment of the general staff hur] ed Germany headlong into the pit that incompetent diplomacy had pre- pared. The empire went to war with three great nations able to meet her with forces more than double her own.
 Then the worth of that iron mili- tary discipline and of the forty years of ceaseless preparation to which : Germany had sacrificed so much of the productive power of her people was put to the test. Again the col ossal imperial machine broke down. It was not through incompetence. The German army was magnificent in it's strength, in equipment, and in valor. It was overmatched, 1t had attempted the impossible. That was the fatal blunder. The first rush up- on Paris was intended to be irresist- ible; that was the plan of the gen. eral staff; France crushed. Russia could be sent about her business. 1t was not irresistible, it was checked, it was repulsed. When the invaders were driven back from the Marne to the Asine and the Belgian frontior Germany,s ultimate defeat was reg istered in the book of fate and her.