The Butler weekly times. (Butler, Mo.) 1881-1918, 1917-06-21


Berlin. They impudently denied US
the use of the high seas and repeated
" executed their threat and that
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 began to look upon their own
neighbors with suspicion and to won
der in their hot resentment and sur
prise whether there was any commun-
fity in which hostile intrigue did not
Turk. What great nation in such cir
cumstances 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 our hand.
"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 the enemies of the
German people and that they are not
our enemies. They did not originate
or desire 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 we'll as our own. They
are themselves in the grip OF the
same sinister power that has now at
last stretched 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 trying out the great battle which
shall determine whether it is to be
brought under its mastery or fling
herself free.
/ The war was begun by the mill
tary masters of Germany, who proved
to be also the masters OF Austria
Hungary These men have never re-
garded nations as peoples, men, wo-
men and children Of like blood and
frame as themselves, for whom gov
ernments existed and in whom gov
crnments had their life. They have
regarded them merely as serviceable
organizations, which they could by
force or intrigue bend or corrupt to
their own purposes. They have re-
garded the smaller states, in particu-
lar, and the peoples who could be
overwhelmed by force as their natur-
al tools and instruments OF domino
ton Their purpose has long been
avowed. The statesmen of other ma
tons, to whom that purpose was in
credible. paid little attention, regard
ed what German professors expound-
ed 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 prac-
teal 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 we'll advanced
intrigue lay back of what the protes
sors and the writers were saying, ane
were glad to go forward unmolested
filling the thrones of Balkan states
with German princes, putting German
officers at the service of Turkey to
drill her armies and make interest
with her government, developing
plans of sedtion and rebellion III
India and Egypt, setting their fires
in Persia The demands made by
Austria upon Serbia were mere
single step in a plan which COM
passed Europe and Asia from Berlin
to Bagdad q.
They hoped those demands might
not arouse Europe, but they meant to
press them whether they did or not
for they thought themselves ready
for the final issue of arms.
Their plan was to throw broad
!. belt of German military power and
practical control across the very cen
ter of Europe and beyond the Medit.
erranean into the heart of Asia; and
. Austria Hungary was to be as much
their tool and pawn as Servia or Bull
: garia or Turkey or the ponderou'
states of the east Austria-Hungary
indeed, was to become part OF the
!. central German empire, absorbed and
. dominated by the same forces and in.
fluences that had originally cementee
. the German states themselves. Int
, dream had its heart at Berlin. II
. could have had heart nowhere else
1t rejected the idea of solidarity Of
race entirely. The choice of peoples
played no part in it at all. 1t con.
templated binding together racial and
political units which could be kept to-
gether only by force-Czechs, Mag
vars, Croats, Serbs. Rumanians
Turks, Armenians-the proud states
. of Bohemia and Hungary, the stout
little commonwealth of the Balkans
. the indomitable Turks, the subtle
peoples of the East. These peoples
: did not wish to be united. The,
ardently desire to direct their own at
. fairs, would be satisfied only by un.
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