The Goldfield news and weekly tribune. [volume] (Goldfield, Nev.) 1911-1947, 1917-04-21
The Case of William SchimmeL

W" OhOISi III OONhSiu ySSpGiudy, % Smhdi NSSOhS nav ohNouy OGh
contributed by other communities in practically every state of the
Union, and which seem not only to have been necessary but suff-
GENTLY impressive.
A man claiming to be a American citizen, having renowned al
legiance to his former sovereign, with whom this country is now at
war, had shown conclusively by his acts that his fea1ty still ran to the
country of his birth rather than to the land of his adoption. William
Schimmel, born in Germany, was punished under the laws of Nevada
for IN ofense that was not so grave in itself as the motive which in
spmed it and the spirit in which it was carried out. The maximum
penalty provided by law is six months imprisonment in jail and a fine
of $500. The penalty imposed was 80 days iii Jail and $500 fine.
There are many who believe the penalty imposed was too light;
there are others who believe it. too severe it was more severe than the
writer would probably have imposed. But these are matters OF ndr
vidual judgment, and it was not vinditive. And when we take into
account the fact that this government is spending hundreds of millions
and employing the bulk of its entire military force in guarding the
lives and the property of Americans from the menace of assault and
destruction at the hands of those who are not in sympathy with our
institutions and who carry in their hearts if not in their hands the
flag of an enemy country, then III democracy must protect itself and
leave n o room for doubt as to its ability to do so. Any future ofense
of like character should be punished with the maximum penalty or
the offender turned over to the national authorities for such disposition
as to them may seem wise.
We are hoping that the people of Germany may secure in their
own fhherland the rights and privileges that millions of their kns-
men came here to enjoy; we are hoping that this war may, not through
the triumph of Germany. but through her defeat, free the people OF
Germany from the things that millions of their kinsmen came here 70
escape. Our Young men, the flower of Americas manhood, are today
offering their lives and all they have to guard and protect what their
ancestors gave to us with their blood, and what these young mel are
preparing to carry across the sa to the country which William Schin-
mel left. And all over this land are men of German birth and the sons
of fathers of German birth who re offering their lives to carry the
rights and the privileges and the blessings of self7government to the
country which they or their fathers and William Schipmel left.
If William Schimmel preferred vassaage to citizenship, he should
not have exchanged the rule of the war lord and autocrat for the gov
ernment of a republic. If he preferred the rule of the autocrat, with
power absolute, to the rule of a government of the people by the peo-
pie, he should have remained in Germany. If he preferred a ruler
whose title and power came from an accident of birth alone, rather than
from choice of the people, he should have remained in Germany; or
having left it, he should have returned before renouncing, under oath.
the country of his birth and giving, under oath, a sacred pledge of
loyalty in return for IN equal voice and an equal part in a govern
ment where kings and princes stand on a footing with himself and
other men.
If William schimme1 preferred a government organized always
war-if he preferred that form of government to one in which the
normal occupations re the occupations of peace, he should never
have left the one for the other nor sworn to defend the latter against
all enemies, foreign and domestic"
If William Schimmel had remained in the country of his birth he
would be now, if still alive fighting for IF giving his services to the soy
ereign he renowned, and fighting against the democracies of France
and the United States; against the law of selfgovernment that he
and millions of his countrymen came here to enjoy. If he, or if any
man from America, had done in Germany what he did here, trivial
though it may seem, he would three weeks ago have faced a firing
squad. Instead of spending 30 days in jail he would be in a wooden
box spending an eternity under ground.
And all our sympathy goes out to William Schimel, for it isn't
William Schimmel who is first to blame. The blame rests first on the
king of Prussia. whose ideal of glory is the glory of war; whose
power to rule and whose power to organize for war and to make war
is perpetuated by a system of education and of training that starts
with the cradle and ends with the grave. And, not content to confne
this system to his own domain, the Prussan auocrat reaches out over
the rest of the world and plants his emissaries to spread his doctrine
and extend his power and to influence and to cripple in its home any
government that dare oppose his will.
And so it isn't the William Schimmels in America, it is the Vie
ricks, the Riders, the Kronschages, the Bopps, the Dernbergs, the
Won Tges, the Bartholdts, who would have welcomed at any time and
with open arms, and with acclaim, the triumphant march of the i'm
peral guard into Washington and the overthrow of a government for
which they have shown only contempt.
The American who might attempt in Germany a propaganda such
as these emssaies of Prussianism have been permitted to spread in
America would long ago have found himself with others who have
dared to question the divine right of kings. Lese Majestic is unknown
in America. and in its absence Prussianism has outraged every rule