The commonwealth. (Greenwood, Miss.) 1896-1923, 1916-02-11
AN AMERICAN e

The speech of John Sharpe VIII
liams of Mississippi in the Senate
Thursday brought the healthful air
of common sense into a chamber sur
charged with demagogy. Amid the
few but reverberant Senators who
would refuse to Americans the right
to sail in passenger ships of belli-
gerents; who would give up the I'M
doubted right to export munitions
of war; who are mild to murder on
the high e a and ferocious against
the slightest disturbance or restric-
ton of neutral commerce.; who
would force the United States into
commercial nonintercourse or war
with Great Britain in order to get the
votes of Acknowledgements; amid
Senators of Germany, Senators of
the Clan-na-Gael, Senators of Cot
tonia, Mr.. Williams spoke as an
American Senator.
What is all this tremendous pother
about blockade and the British
Orders in Council and the neutral
rights? Mr.. Williams recalled the
inevitable replication of war upon
n%eutrals, the Federal blockade that
squeezed the life out of the Con-
f~ederacy:
when you get people engaged in
deadly warfare, fighting as they think
for their very liberty and national in.
tegrity, for their very civilization anc
culture, respectively, they are think.
ng chiefly about themselves; secondly
about the enemy; and, thirdly, abou'
the neutrals. "You all" paid mighty
little attention to neutrals during tn
war when you were whipping us
when you ,strangled US, and wher
you starved us-and you only whip
ped us by starving US. Your Sc,
power is the way you whipped US, an,
you had a right to do it after wa
vas declared, provided your right t.
declare it was recognized"
Mr.. Williams would surrender n
neutral right. He would protes
oSoAAAoI CNS1y FAOldClOIl VI lSutld
rights. But he will not put i~njurie
to property and crimes against huma
life in the same category. He will no
swallow intolerable crime and We
foam like an epileptic over a few cot
ton bales. For the honor of tn
South, for the exculpation of tn
South, if anybody has been FOOLS
enough to believe hat the huckstel
ing spirit of Hoke Smith was repre-
sentatiev of the brave and generou
Americans of the South, Mr.. Wi
liam's words r worth reprinting:
81 do not want to see Dixie, l d
not want to see Georgia., Mississippi
and old Virginia, and the Voluntee
State of Tennessee and her sister.
Louisiana and Arkansas and the Care
linas, and all the other Souther
States, put in the attitude of seem
ing, at any rate, to care just as niue
about property as they do about life
of seeming, at any rate, to a r. MOI
about their W particular propert,
which is the cotton crop, than the
do about the ONE and children thu
went down unknelled and unshrivel
to their graves in the sea, not upo
German soil, as the nineteen Amer
cans were upon Mexican soil, but W
on the high seas, the property of n
Government and no power, and upo
] ~ q I'M 0I ~ orobo-S 1,~r~.1~ &C.,
knelled, unhonored, unsung."
No stormy sophists or oily Chae
bands of Congress and the STUN,
trying to hide their anti-America
purposes under a pretense of indign:
ton about interference with Amer
can commerce.; no panderers to tn
aliens in heart who dishonor the
American citizenship, can mislead tn
great body of the American peopl,
They have not forgotten their slaugl
tered dead upon the seas. They wi
not nov lash themselves into wrath {
the instigation Of the murderers.
BY the way, Mr.. Williams, a CO
ton planter, reminded the gigart:
cotton champion from Georgia tn;
cotton is now worth twelve and on,
eighth cents a pound in Memphi
Apparently MI. Smith intends I
make the price higher by bringin
about, through an embargo on nun
!, tions, commercial nonintercourse, {
war with the Allies, and the loss c
three-fourths of the foreign markt
, for cotton. Curious political ect
nomy.-New York Times, Jan. %.