The Meridian times. (Meridian, Idaho) 1909-1938, 1917-06-22
PRESIDENT WILSON
EXPOSES GERMANY
In Flag Day Address Chief Executive
Says Germany Has Effected Greater
Part of Her Conquest Plan.


have been dishonored had we with
held our hand.
But this Is only part of the story.
We know now as clearly as we knew
before we were ourselves engaged that
we are not the enemies of the Ger
man people and that they are not our
enemies. They did not originate or de-
sire this hideous war or wish that we
should be drawn into it; and we are
vaguely conscious 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 sin
lister power that has now at last
its ugly talons out and
drawn blood from us. The whole world
is at war because the whole world is
in the grip of that power and is try
ing out the great battle which shall
determine whether it is to be brought
under it's 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
These men have never regarded ma
tons as peoples, men, women and chill
dren of like blood and frame as them
selves, from whom governments had
their life. They have regarded them
merely as seryiceable organizations,
which they could by force or intrigue
bend or corrupt to their own purpose.
They have regarded the smaller states.
in particular, and the peoples who
{ ,uld be overwhelmed by force, as their
natural tools and instruments of DOM
nation. Their purpose has long been
avowed. The statesmen of other ma
lions, to whom that purpose was in
credible, paid little attention regarded
what German professors expounded in
their classrooms and German writer's
set forth to the world as the goal of
German policy as rather the dream of
minds detached from practical affairs
as preposterous private conceptions of
German destiny, than as the actual
plans of responsible rulers, but the
rulers of Germany themselves knew all
the while what concrete plans, what
well advanced intrigues lay back of
what the professors and the writer's
were saying, and were glad to go for
ward unmolested, filling the thrones OF
the Balkans with German princes, put.
| ting German officers at the service OF
| Turkey to drill her armies and make
| interest with her government, develop
| ing plans of sedition and rebellion il
India and Egypt, setting their fires il
| Persia. The demands made by Aus
| tria upon Serbia were a mere single
step in a plan which compassed Eu
rope and Asia, from Berlin to Bagdad
They hoped those demands might moi
arouse Europe, but they meant to press
them whether they did or not, for they
thought themselves ready for the final
issue of arms.
into Asia.
"Their plan was to throw a broad
belt of German military power and DO
litical control across the very center
of Europe and beyond the Mediterra-
mean into the heart of Asia; and Aus
tria-Hungary was to be as much their
tool and pawn as Serbia or Bulgaria
or Turkey or the ponderous states of
the east. Austria-Hungary. indeed,
was to become part of the central Ger
man empire, absorbed and dominated
by the same forces and influences that
had originally cemented the German
states themselves. The dream had its
heart at Berlin. 1t could have had a
heart nowhere else 1t rejected the
idea of solidarity of race entirely. The
choice of peoples played no part in it
at all. 1t contemplated binding to-
gether racial and political units which
could be kept together only by force
Czechs, Magyars, Croats, Serbs, Rou-
manians, Turks, Armenians-the proud
states of Bohemia and Hungary, the
stout little commonwealth of the Bal
kans, the indomitable Turks, the sub
tie peoples of the east. These peoples
did not wish to be united. They ard
emily desired to direct their own af-
fairs, would be satisfied only by undis-
puted independence. They could be
kept quiet only by the presence of the
constant threat of armed men. They
would live under common power only
by sheer compulsion and await the day
of revolution. But the German mill
tary statesmen had reckoned with all
that and were ready to deal with it
in their own way.
"And they have actually carried the
greater part of that amazing plan into
execution Look how things stand.
Austria is at their mercy. 1t has act
ed, not upon its own initiative or upon
the choice, of its own people, but at
Berlin's dictation ever since the war
began. Its people now desire peace,
but can not have it until leave is
granted from Berlin. The so-called
central powers are, in fact, but a sin
gle power. Servia is at its mercy,
should its hands be but for moment
freed. Bulgaria has consented to its
will. and Roumania is overrun. The
Turkish armies, which Germans
trained, are serving Germany. certain
ly not themselves, and the guns of Ger
man warships lying in the harbor at
Constantinople remind Turkish states
men every day that they have no
choice but to take their orders from
Berlin. From Hamburg to the Persian
gulf, the net is spread.
'tIs it not easy to understand the
eagerness for peace that has been man
Tested from Berlin ever since the
snare was set and sprung? Peace,
peace, peace, has been the talk of her
foreign office for now a year and
more: not peace upon her own initia-