New Britain herald., 1917-06-14

COLONEL RIPS UP
 COWARDS OF PEACE

Men Who Kept Us Unprepared CALLS THEM TRAITORS Our Duty Now, He Declares, Is to
 Train Our Giant and Send Him
 Over to Smash Prussianized Ger
 many of the Hohenzollerna.
 Lincoln. Neb.. June 1l.-Colonel Theodore Roosevelt, in a speech which he delivered here today at the celebration of the semi-centennial of the Statehood of Nebraska, criticised the national policy of the United States for failure to protest promptly against German ruthlessness and bru- tality. deplored national failure to prepare for the war, pleaded for un- divided loyalty to the American haG. denounced the pacifists, and asked for generous support and for the use of the Red Cross in caring for American troops on European battleflelds.
 We permitted our national policy" he said, ito be swayed by the national devotions and national antiquities of men who exercised the rights of American citizens but showed them- selves traitors to America by the way in which they prostituted our citizen- ship to the interests of Germasy or to their hatred of England,
 -''It would be impossible to over state the damage done to the morale fibre of our country by the profes- sional pacifists propaganda, the peace at-any-price propaganda. The profess and a half years of the war, have occupied precisely the position of the copperheads during the time of Abraham Lincoln.
 Overlooked Germany's Faults.
 The fact that sheer cowardice was more potent than the love of peace was proved by the fact that the lead- ing paciflsts dared not condemn single specific act of wrong-doing when such act was committed by tho powerful and brutal foe they most feared-Germany. They clamored for neutrality between Germany and Bell gium. They denounced war in lan-
 
 the fathers who were defending their wives and daughters from outrage as upon the aggrensors who systematic ally practiced rape and torture. By their failure to protest against tho in- human torture of the poison gas they made it necessary hereafter to accept this as an ordinary instrument of warfare: just as. by our failure to take immediate action in connection with the murder of innocent non- combatants by submarines, we com mitted an offense against humanity the effects of which cannot be com pletely eradicated by any subsequent action on our part
 "All this meanness and abandon ment of duty was championed by the professional pacif1sts on tho plea. that thereby we should be kept out of war And by their political pressure, they prevented us from preparing, and kept us utterly unprepared on the ground that preparedness invited war: their motto was safety first' not duty first They cared nothing for right eousness. They cared nothing for hu- manity. They cared nothing for our national honor or interest. All they asked was a peace that would permit us to get all four feet in the trough while we strove to distract attention from the squalid baseness of our ma terialism by the shrill clamor of . sham rr-sentinentality.
 And nevertheless we have not been kept out of war. Our avoidance of duty simply invited such cumulative repetition of insult and injury that finally WAT was forced on us: It merely resulted in our drifting into war stern foremost. in condition of such complete unreadiness that we owe an ignoble safety exclusively to the protection of the exhausted na- tions to whose help we have an- nounced that we intend to come.
 Demands Undivided 4Americanism
 From this time on let us insist on an absolute and undivided American ism in this land, untempered by any self-allegiance to the countries from which our ancestors may severally have sprung, and untainted by any unworthy national animosity towards any other country. Let us prepare ourselves spiritually. economically. and in all military and naval matters including as a permanent policy the policy of universal military training and service-so that never again shall we be utterly unready, as we now are. to meet 0 great crisis. Finally. in the present war, a war for liberty and democracy against the ruthless mili- taristic tyranny of the Prussianized Germany of the Hohenzollerns, let us as speedily as possible train our giant, but our soft and unready, strength. so that we may use our hardened might to bring the slaughter to a real and final end in the only way honor ably possible by securing for ourselves and our Allies the peace of justice based on overwhelming victory"