Mexico Missouri message., 1917-10-04
A THRUST AT KNOCKERS,
TRAITORS AND COPPERHEADS

The editorial below was handed
us by a good German friend residing
at Rush Hin, with the request that
we publish. 1t is taken from Belle
vile (IllD paper. 1t breathes the
proper spirit of loyalty to this coun-
try and gives the line along which
our very best citizens are thinking.
The article in toto is as follows:
Hon. Fred Kern, editor of the
Belleville News-D Democrat, in an ed
itorial in his issue of August 81
made a stand for patriotism and 10y
atty os so self-evident that itdeserves
publicity in every paper in the Unit
ed States.
Fred ]. Kern is a full-blooded,
natural born German. He publishes
a paper in Belleville, a community
with a large percentage of German
American population. Here are
few of the things he has to say:
We meet men who were born and
raised in this country every day who
talk seriously and repeat the thread
bare pro-German arguments which
they derive either directly or indi-
rectly from the German language
press published in this country.
The editors of these same newspa-
pers are not loyal to this country.
Most of them are not even natural
lied citizens of the United States.
Some are spies who ought to be shot.
Others are alien knockers who ought
to be deported. Still others are trail
tors or copperheads.
They were not for this country be-
fore the war ever started. We have
sat in saloons with them and talked
with them for hours. They try to
belittle every institution and other
things that exist in the United States.
From the government and the flag
and the laws and the American peO-
pelto the city and the rabbits and the
birds and the grapes and the peaches
and the prunes and the food and the
amusements and the drinks and the
institutions. Nothing in this country
is good enough for them.
When you hear these cOnceited
braggarts talk everything is finer
and bigger and better in Germany
than it is in the United States.
They talk as if it were a punish
ment for them to remain in the Unit
ed States, sort of banishment; still
they stick with the tenacity of ticks.
They never go back. But they bite
the hand that feeds them, like the
cur in the story, to borrow the words
of the now famous popular song.
These fellows talk socialism and
even anarchism, but when they amt
kissing the dust at the feet of the
Kaiser they are carrying cobs not
only for the toadies and the fiunkies
of royalty who write the "Von" be-
tween their first and last names.
We never saw a Herr Won" vet
who wasn't downright deadbeat.
They are lazy lot of loafers and
vagabonds. Our parents who we're
both born in Germany taught
us from our earliest boyhood years
to keep our hand on our pocketbook
when one of these Adelege Herren.
or sprouts of the stuck-up, arrogant,
brow-beating German nobility was
around the neighborhood anywhere,
and to avoid and shun him like a rat
tier.
America is our country. Here is
where we were born and where our
wife and children were born.
This country has been mighty good
to us. 1t threw open the doors of op-
portunity and bade us enter. It gave
us liberty.
Under the protecting wings of the
American eagle we enjoyed security
and peace, until the German warlord
and overload and autocrat and aristo-
crat and despot, whose progenitors
drove our parents out of Germany
and away from their homes, lifted
the lid off of hell" and commenced
the sanguinary saturnalia and orgy
OF fendishness and bestiality which
destroyed the tranquility of the
world, and drenched France and Rus
STA and the Balkan States of Europe
in blood and converted Belgium into
the worst human slaughterhouse of
which history makes any record.
Wilhelm Hohenzollern dragged the
United States into the war.
- Wa stawnd nnt Of tlnn mo-. ~. Io..-