Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1917-12-04

gression. Nothing could be more
grossly or wantonly false, and we
must seek by the utmost openness
and candor as to our real aims to
convince them of its falseness. We
are in fact fighting for their eman-
cipauon from fear, along with our
own, from the fear as well as from
the fact of unjust attack by neigh
bors or rivals or schemers after
world empire. No one is threaten
ing the existence or the independ-
ence or the peaceful enterprise of
the German empire.
Partnership of Peoples
The worst that can happen to the
detriment of the German people is
this, that if they should still, after
the war is over, continue to be
obliged to live under ambitious and
intriguing masters interested to dis
turb the peace of the world, men or
classes of men whom the other
peoples of the world could not trust,
it might be impossible to admit them
to the partnership of nations which
must henceforth guarantee the
worlds peace. That partnership
must be a partnership of peoples,
not mere partnership of govern
ments. 1t might be impossible also,
in such untoward circumstances to
admit Germany to the free economic
intercourse which must inevitably
spring out of the other partnerships
of real peace. But there would
be no aggression in that; and such
a situation, inevitable because or
distrust, would in the very nature
of things sooner or later cure itself,
by processes which would assuredly
set in.
Wrongs Must Be Righted
The wrongs, the very deep wrongs,
committed in this war will have to
be righted. That of course, cannot
and must not be righted by the COM
mission of similar wrongs against
Germany and her allies. The world
Will not permit the commission of
similar wrongs as means of repa-
ration and settlement. Statesmen
must by this time have learned that
the opinion of the world is every
where wide awake and fully compre-
hends the issues involved. No rep
resentative of any self governed ma
ton will dare disregard it by at
tempting any such covenants of
selfishness and compromise as were
entered into at the congress of
Vienna. The thought of the plain
people here and everywhere through
out the world, the people who enjov
no privilege and have very simple
and unsophisticated standards of
right and wrong, is the air all gov
ernments must henceforth breathe
II they would live. 1t is in the full
discloslng light of that thought that
all policies must be conceived and
executed in this midday hour of the
worlds life. German rulers have
been able to upset the people of the
world only because the German peo-
pie were not suffered under their
tutelage to share the comradeship
OF the other peoples of the world
either in thought or in purpose.
They were allowed to have NO
opinion of their own which might be
set up as a rule of conduct for those
who exercised authority over them.
But the congress that concludes this
war will feel the full strength of
the tides that run now in the hearts
and conscience of free men every
where. Its conclusions will run
with those tides.
Russia Poisoned by Falsehoods
All these things have been true
from the very beginning of this
stupendous war, and L cannot help
thinking that if they had been made
plain at the very outset the symnathv
and enthusiasm of the Russian peo.
pie might have been once for all
enlisted on the side of the allies. sus-
picion and distrust swept away and
a real and lasting union of purpose
effected. Had they believed these
things at the very moment of their
revolution and had they been con-
firmed in that belief since, the sad
reverses which have recently mark
ed the progress of their affairs to-
wards an ordered and stable govern
ment of free men might have been
avoided. The Russian people have
been poisoned by the very same
falsehoods that have kept the Ger
man people in the dark and tbe
poison had been administered by
the very same hands. The only pos
sible antitode is the truth. 1t 'can-
not be uttered too plainly or too
often.
Attitude Not Altered
From every point of view. there
fore, it has seemed to be my duty to
speak these declarations of purpose,