Norwich bulletin., 1917-06-15

come to me and in all sorts of guises-
 The military masters under Wrom Germany is bleeding see very clearly
 to what point fate has brought them
 If they can secure peace now with the
 immense advantages still in their
 hands which they have up to this point
 apparently gained, they will have jus tified themselves before the German people; they will have gained by force
 what they promised to gain by it.
 The president recited again the
 German aggressions which drove the
 United States to war He declared the
 purposes for which American soldiers
 now carry the Stars and Stripes to Europe for the first time in history are not new to American traditions be-
 cause realization of Gernany's war aims must eventually mean the undo Ing Of the whole world. He spoke in
 full as follows:
 Flag the Emblem of Our Unity
 My Fellow Citizens: We meet to celebrate Flag day because this flag which we honor and under which we serve is the emblem of our unity. our power, our thought and purpose as a nation. It has no other character than that which we give it from generation to generation. The choices are ours. It floats in majestic silence above the
 hosts that execute those choices, whether in peace or in war. And yet, though silent, it speaks to us-speaks
 to us Of the past, of the men and women who went before us and of the records they wrote upon it. We cele-
 brate the day of it's birth; and from its birth until now it has witnessed a great history, has f1oated on high the symbol of great events, of a great plan of life worked out by a great people.
 We are about to carry it into battle, to lift it where 1t will draw the fire of our enemies. We are about to bid thousands, hundreds of thousands, it may be millions, of our men. the hn -fT I,1a .f the nation, to go forth and die be- meath it on fields of blood far away for what? For some unac->ustomed thing? For something for which it has never sought the fire before? American armies. were never before sent across the seas. Why are they sent now? For some new purpose. for which this great flag has never been miliar, heroic purpose for which 1t has seen men, it's own men, die on every battlefield upon which Ameri- cans have borne arms since the Revo- lutfon?
 These are questions which must be arcwered. We are Americans. We in our turn serve America, and can serve her with no private purpose. We must use her flag as she has always used it. We are accounta ble at the bar of his tory and must plead in utter frankness what purpose it is we seek to serve. How We Were Forced Into the War
 Tt is plain enough how we were forced into the war. The extraordinary insults and aggressions of the impe- rial German government left us no self-respecting choice but to take up arms in defense of our rights as a free people and of our honor as a sovereign government. The military masters of Germany denied us the right to be neutral. They filled our unsuspecting comm unities with vicious spies and conspirators and sought to corrupt the opinion of our people in their own be- half. When they found that they could not do that. their agents dilf- gently spread sedition amongst us and sought to draw our own citizens from their allegiance-and some of these agents were men connected with the official embassy of the German govern ment itself here in our own capital. They sought by violence to destroy our industries and arrest our commerce. They tried to incite Mexico to take up arms against us and to draw Japan into a hostile alliance with her-and that. not by indirection. but by diryect suggestion from the foreign office in Berlin. They impudently denied us the use of the high seas and repeated ly executed their threat that they 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 be- gan to look upon their own neighbors with suspicion and to wonder in their hot resentment and surprise whether there was any community in which hostile intrigue did not turk. What great nation in such circumstances would not have taken up arrts? Much l as we had desired peace it was de- nied us and not of our own choice | This flag under which we serve would have been dishonored had we withheld our hand.
 Not Enemies of German People
 But that Is only part of the story. l We know now as clearly we knew | before we were ourselves engaged | that we are not the enemies of the | German people and that they are not |