Deutscher herold. [volume] (Sioux Falls, SuÌˆd-Dakota) 1907-1918, 1916-11-02
BY Frederick Franklin Schrader,
Author of
1.-THE German American Handbook. -

epoch IN American history kit95), When
our people were as radically divided on
the government foreign policies as
they are today.
We had an English party and a
French, and English machination was so
strong that it provoked the opposition
to acts which actually menaced the
government, and President Washington
declared that 'he would rather be in
his grave than in his present position. -
Yet Washington had issued his famous
proclamation of neutrality and unlike
Wilson, had lived rigidly up to it. Wash
ington wanted France and England
treated alike. Mr. Wilson has revealed
himself a partisan Of the Allies. He
issued high sounding proclamation of
neutrality, and from that day to this
has failed ignominiously to observe it,
My opinion is that at first he meant
to be neutral. AS soon as he discovered
that his economic policy was about to
bring hard times upon the country, he
aw a chance of filing the national treas
ury by allowing loans to be raised for
the Allies and American factories to be
turned into munition shops for Great
Britain, France and Russia.
tried to buy arms and ammunition in
our markets it found them closed, unless
Roumania could give assurance that she
would take the side Of the Allies. Our
chief industries were compelled to sign
agreements with the British embassy
that nothing they might sell would go
to Germany. American firms were placed
on the blacklist. A five-masted schooner
is lying in Norfolk waters idle, J. read
today, because it carried coal to some
destination in South America not ap-
proved by the British authorities, and
this despite the shortage of tonnage.
The German wireless stations were plae-
ed under censorship by executive orders
shortly after the outbreak of the war,
but no restriction was placed ON British
and French cables, and the wireless
station of the New York Herald was
permitted to communicate with British
ships Ess late as October 12s 1910. ard.
messages were flashed from this station
warning belligerent ships of the pres
ence in American waters of U-53.
Mr.. Wilson's secretary of labor is
sued instructions to immigration boards
that thereafter the boards will not
question the American citizenship of an
applicant because of the fact that he
took the oath of allegiance Ito the
British king) and enlisted in the Ca
madam forces. Mr.. Wilson'S seere-
tary of war issued orders to discharge
foreign-bo citizens Gall scandinav-
lans) employed on government ships on
the Pacific coast and directed that they
be supplanted by native-born. 1t was
obviously feared that the Scandinav-
ians favored the Central Powers and
not the Allies.
When Speaker Champ Clark announc-
ed that the sentiment of the lower
House of Congress favored an embargo
on arms by three to one, the admin
gave it out that the President
would veto an embargo act and cracked
the party whip over the back of Con
gress to make it vote against the Nc
Lemore resolution.
There is much more of this sort of
pro-Ally work in the record, but all
pales into insignifcance in comparison
with the covert and open threats
against all Americans of German blood
who, though they loved their country,
refused to see the country of their an
cestors and of their brothers and cou-
sins destroyed by policy of misre-
presentation and perfdious neutrali-
ty; who refused to see the whole
United States reduced to the status of
a British colony and made the hot-be
of brutal conspiracy to aid the Allies
in turning central Europe into vast
empire of widows, orphans and cripples.
They were the true champions of hum.
anity and of American dignity and
honor, but they were being threatened
with concentration camps, with being
Gh in nd tp he
nearest lamp-post to be hanged by a
mob.
Obsolete laws were thumbed over by
Mr.. Wilson g Department of Justice to
find warrant for suppressing news
papers which had justified the sinking
of the Lusitania; conspiracy charges
were trumped up against innocent men
and vigorously prosecuted by a willing
tool of the administration in NewYork,
of whom Congressional report says
that he is unfit to hold his Office as
prosecuting attorney, and the President
himself wrote into the Democratic
platform clause which, in the light of
all tflat is known, is standing insult
and indictment against every man with
German blood in his veins.
Have the German Americans forgot
ten can they ever forget7 the
state of terror in which they were kept
for months through the insidious feed
ing Of the allied press by the White
Hnnsa and the State Danarkmanf with