The Ozark spectator., 1917-06-23
WAR FOR FREEDOM
President Wilson Tells of Aims of
 United States.
FORGED TO TAKE UP ARMS
Nation Acting In Defense of Our Rights as a Free People and of Our Honor as a Sovereign
 Government, Is Statement.

Government, Is Statement.
 Washington, June h. - President 1 Wilson's Flag day address, delivered in | this city, was substantially as follows: My Fellow Citizens: We meet to celebrate Flag Day because this flag which we honor and under which we serve is the emblem of our unity. our power, our thought and purpose as nation. It has no other character than that which we give it from generation to generation. The choices are ours. It floats in majestic silence above the hosts that execute those choices whether in peace or in war. And yet. though silent, it speaks to us-SpeakS to us of the past, of the men and wom- en who went before us and of the rec ords they wrote upon if. We celebrate the day of its birth; and from it's birth until now it has witnessed great his tory, has floated on high the symbol of great events, of a great plan of life worked out by a great people. We are about to carry 1t into battle, to lift it where it will draw the fire of our en. emes. We are about to bid thousands, hundreds of thousands, 1t may be mil lions of our men, the young, the strong, the capable men of the nation, to go forth and die beneath it on fields of blood far away-for what? For some unaccustomed thing? For something for which it has never sought the fire before? American armies were never before sent across the seas. Why are they sent now? For some new pur- pose, for which this great flag has nev- CT been carried before, or for some old, familiar heroic purpose for which it has seen men, its own men, die on ev- cry battlefield upon which Americans have borne arms since the Revolution?
 These are questions which must be answered. We are Americans. We in our turn serve America, and can serve her with no private purpose. We must use her flag as she has always used it, We are accountable at the bar of his, tory and must plead in utter frankness what purpose it is we seek to serve. Forced to Take Up Arms.
 It is plain enough how we were forced into the war. The eXtraordi- nary insults and aggreSSionS of the i'm perial German government left us no self-reSpecting choice but to take up arms in defense of our rights as free people and of our honor as q sovereign government. The military masters of Germany denied us the right to be neu- tral. They filled our unsuspccting com munities with vicious spies and con spirators and sought to corrupt the opinion of our people in their own be- half. When they found that they could not do that, their agents diligently spread sedltion amongst us and sought to draw our own citizens from their allegiance, and some of those agents were men connected with the official embassy of the German government it. self here in our own capital. They sought by violence to destroy our in- dustries and arrest our commerce. They tried to incite Mexico to take up arms against us and to draw Japan in- to a hostile alliance with her-and that. not by indirection, but by direct suggestion from the foreign office in Berlin. They impudently denied us the use of the high seas and repeated ly executed their threat that they would send to their death any of our people who ventured to approach the coasts of Europe. And many of our own people were corrupted. Men be- gan to look upon their own neighborS with suspicion and to wonder in their hot resentment and surprise whether there was any community in which hostile intrigue did not turk. What great nation in such circumstances would not have taken up arms? Much as we had desired peace, it was denied Us. and not of our own choice. This flag under which we serve would have been diShonored had We withheld oul hand.
 German People Not Enemies.
 But that is only part of the story. We know now as clearly as we knew before we were ourselves engaged that we are not enemies of the German peo- pie and that they are not our enemies They did not originate or desire this hideous war or wish that we should be drawn into 1t; and we are vaguely con scious that we are fighting their cause, as they will some day see it, as well as our own. They are themselves in the grip of the same sinister power that has now at last stretched its ugly tal- ons out and drawn blood from us The whole world is In the grip of that pow CT and Is trying out the great battle which shall determine whether 1t is to be brought under its mastery or fling itself free.
 The war was begun by the military masters of Germany, who proved to be also the masters of Austria Hungary.