Rockingham post-dispatch. [volume] (Rockingham, N.C.) 1917-1965, 1917-12-20

OsASA oupOAuICly uuJuSIludDAO, huSO-
lutely contrary to the principles we
have professed to live by and to hold
most sacred throughout our life as
nation
The people of Germany are being
told by the men whom they now per-
init to deceive them and to act as
their masters that they are fighting
for the very life and existence of
their empire, war of desperate self
defense against deliberate aggression
Nothing could be more grossly or
wantonly false, and we must seek by
the utmost openness and candour as
to our real aims to convince them of
its falseness. We are, in fact, fight
ing for their emancipation from fear,
along with our own--from the fear
as well as from the fact of unjust at
tack by neighbors or rivals or schem-
ers after world empire. No one is
threatening the existence or the In
dependence or the peaceful enterprise
of the German empire
The worst that can happen to the
detriment of the German people is
this, that If tkey should still, after
the war is over, continue to be oblig-
ed to live xnder ambitious and in
triguing masters interested to dis.
turb the peace Of the world, men or
classes Of men whom the other peo-
PIES 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 a
mere partnership Of governments. 1t
might be impossible, also, in such
untoward circumstances, to admit
Germany to the free economic inter-
course which must inevitably spring
out of the other partnerships of
real peace. But there would be no
aggression in that; and such a situa-
ton, inevitable because of distrust,
would in the very nature of things
sooner or later cure itself by pro-
cesses which would assuredly set in.
TIE wrongs, the very deep wrongs,
committed in this war will have to be
righted. That, Of course But they
can not and must not be righted by the
commission of similar wrongs against
Germany and her allies. The world will
not permit the commission of similar
wrongs as means Of reparation and
settlement. Statesmen must by this
time have learned that the opinion OF
the world is everywhere wide awake
and fully comprehends the issues in
volved. No representative of any self
governed nation will dare disregard it
by attempting 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 throughout the world,
the people who enjoy no privilege and
have very simple and unsophisticated
standards Of right and wrong, is the
air all governments must henceforth
breathe If they would live. 1t is in the
full disclosing 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 peace of the world
only because the German people 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 rule Of conduct
for those who exercised authority over
them. = But the congress that con-
oludes this war will feel the full
strength of the tides that run now In
the hearts and consciences Of free men
everywhere. Its conclusions will run
with those tides. ,
All these things have been true from
the very beginning of this stupen.
dous war; and cannot help thinking
that If they had been made plain at
the very outset the sympathy and en-
thusiasm of the Russian people might
have been once for all enlisted on the
side of the allies, suspicion and dis
trust swept away, and real and last
ing union Of purpose effected. Had
they believed these things at the
very moment of their revolution and
had they been confirmed to that belief
since, the sad reverses which have re-
Gently marked the progress of their
affairs towards an ordered and stable
government of free men might have
been avoided. The Russian people
have been poisoned by the very same
falsehoods that have kept the German
people in the dark and the poison has
been administered by the very same
hands. The only possible antidote is
the truth. It cannot be uttered too
plainly or too often.
From every point Of view, therefore,
1t has seemed to be my duty to speak
these declarations Of purpose, to add
these specific interpretations to what
took the liberty or saying to the
senate in January. Our entrance into
the war has not altered our attitude
towards the settlement that must come |
when It is over. When said In Janu- |
nv that tho natinna nf tho world unro