Five Mile Beach weekly journal., 1915-12-10
WILSON MESSAGE
Continued from page 3

world which we all believe to have
been providentially assigned to it. l
have had in my mind no thought of
any immediate or particular danger
arising out of u relations with other
nations. We are at peace with all
b nations of the world, and there is
reason to hope that no question in
controversy between this and other
governments will lead to any serious
breach of amicable relations, grave as
some differences of attitude and policy
have been and may yet turn out to be.
I am sorry to say hat the gravest
threats against our national peace and
safety have been uttered within our
W borders. There are citizens Of
the United States, l blush to admit,
born under other flags but welcomed
under our generous naturalization
laws to the full freedom and oppor-
tunity of America, who have poured
the poison of disloyalty into the very
arteries of our national life; who have
sought to bring the authority and
good name of our government into
contempt, to destroy our industries
wherever they thought 1t effective for
their vindictive purposes to strike at
them, and to debase our politics to
the uses of foreign intrigue. Their
number is not great as compared with
the whole number of those sturdy
hosts by which our nation has been
enriched In recent generations out
of virile foreign stocks; but 1t is great
enough to have brought deep disgrace
upon us and to have made it neces-
sary that we should promptly make
use of processes of law by which we
may be purged of their corrupt dis
tempers. America never witnessed
anything like this before. 1t never
dreamed it possible hat men sworn
into its OWE citizenship, men drawn
out of great free stocks such as sup
piled some of the best and strongest
elements of that little, but how heroic,
nation that in a high day of old staked
its very life to free itself from every
ENHANCEMENT that had darkened the
fortunes of the older nations and set
up a new standard here-that men
of such origins and such free choices
Of allegiance would ever turn in
malign reaction against the govern
ment and people who had welcomed
and nurtured them and seek to make
this proud country once more a hot
bed OF European passion. A little
while ago such a thing would have
seemed Incredible. Because II was
incredible we made no preparation
for it. We would have been almost
ashamed to prepare for it, as II we
suspicious of ourselves, our
comrades and neighbors! But the
ugly and incredible thing has actual
ly come about and we are without
adequate federal laws to deal with 1t.
/ urge you to enact such laws at the
earliest possible moment and feel that
in doing SO l am urging you to do
nothing less than save the honor and
self-respect of the nation. Such crea-
lures of passion, disloyalty, and an
archy must be crushed out. They are
not many, but they are infinitely
and the hand of our power
should close over them at once. They
have formed plots to destroy property,
they have entered into conspiracies
the neutrality of the govern
ment, they have sought to pry into
every confidential transaction of the
government in order to serve interests
to our own. It is possible to
deal with these things very effectually.
need not suggest the terms in which
NAV be dealt with.
Are Disgrace to the Nation.
l wish that it could be said that
only a few men, misled by mistaken
sentiments Of allegiance to the govern
under which they were born,
had been guilty of disturbing the self
possession and misrepresenting the
and principles of the country
during these days Of terrible war,
when 1t would seem that every man
who was truly an American would
instinctively make it his duty and his
pride to keep the scales of Judgment
even and prove himself a partisan OF
nation but his own. But 1t cannot.
are some men among us, and
many resident abroad who, though
DOrn anu DTeu III luo Oullou OIaIOS
and calling themselves Americans,
have so forgotten themselves and
their honor as citizens as to put their
passionate sympathy with n or he
other side in the great European con-
above their regard for the peace
and dignity of the United States. They
also preach and practice disloyalty.
No laws, I suppose, can reach cor
ruptions of the mind and heart; but I
should not speak of others without
also speaking Of these and expressing
the even deeper humiliation and scorn
which every self-possessed and
patriotic American must
feel when he thinks of them and of
the discredit they are daily bringing
upon is.
While we speak of the preparation