The Yale expositor. (Yale, St. Clair County, Mich.) 1894-current, 1917-04-05

seen the last of neutrality in such
circumstances.
eve are at the beginning of an age,
in which it will be insisted that the
same standards OF conduct and OF
responsibility for wring-doing shall be
observed among nations and their
governments that are observed among
the individual citizens of civilized
states.
1--WE have no quarrel with the Ger
man people. We have no feeling to-
wards them, but one of sympathy and
friendship. IL was not on their inn
pulse that their government acted in
entering this war. 1t was not with
their previous knowledge or approval
at was a war determined on as
| wars used to be determined on in tbs
old, unhappy days when peoples were
nowhere consulted by their rulers and
wars were provoked and waged in the
interest Of dynasties or OF little groups
of ambitious men who were accustom-
ed to use their fellowmen as pawns
and tools.
"Self-governed nations do not fill
their neighbor states with spies or set
the course of intrigue to bring about
some critical posture OF affairs which
will give them an opportunity to
strike and make conquest. Such de-
signs can be successfully worked only
under cover and where no one has
the right to ask questions.
Points to Russian Revolution.
"Cunningly contrived plans of de-
ception or aggression, carried, it may
be, from generation TO generation can
be worked out and kept from the light
only within the privacy Of courts or
behind the carefully.guarded confid-
ences Of a narrow and privileged
! class. They are happily impossible
where public opinion commands and
insists on full information concerning
all the nations affairs.
"a steadfast covenant for peace
can never be maintained except by a
| partnership OF democratic nations. No
autocratic government could be trust
ed to keep faith within it or observe
of honor, a partnership of opinion.
Intrigue would eat its vitals away;
the plottings of inner circles who
could plan what they would and rem
der account to no one would be a
corruption seated at its very heart.
Only free peoples can hold their pur-
pose and their honor steady to a
common end and prefer the interests
OF mankind to any narrow interest OF
their own.
Does not every American feel that
assurance has been added to our hope
/ for the future peace OF the world by
the wonderful and heartening things
that have been happening within the
last few weeks in Russia?
Russia was known by those who
knew ii best to have been always, in
fact, democratic at heart, in all the
vital habits OF her thought, in all the
intimate relationships of her people
that spoke their natural instinct, their
habitual attitude towards life.
Scores German Plots in U. S.
"The autocrary that crowned the
summit Of her political structure, long
as it had stood and terrible as was
the realty of its power, was not, in
! fact, Russian in origin, character or
! purpose, and now 1t has been shaken
off and the great, generous Russian
| people have been added in all their
naive majesty and might to the forces
that are fighting for freedom in the
world, for justice and for peace. Here
is fit partner for league OF honor.
"One OF the things that has served
to convince us that the Prussian au-
tocracy was not and could never be
our friend is that from the very out
set of the present war 1t has filled our
unsuspecting communities and even
cur offices of government with spies
and set criminal intrigues everywhere
, afoot against our national unity OF
council, our peace within and with
out, our industries and our commerce.
Indeed, it is now evident that its
spies were here even before the war
began; and it is unhappily not a mat
ter Of conjecture, but fact proved in
| our courts or justice that the intrig-
ues, which have more than once come
| perilously near to disturbing the
peace and dislocating the industries
OF the country have been carried on at
the instigation, with the support, and
even under the personal direction Of
official agents of the imperial govern.
ment accredited to the government OF
the United States.
Refers to Zimmerman Plot.
even in checking these things and
trying to eradicate them, we have
sought to put the most generous in.
depreciation possible upon them be-
cause we knew their source lay, not
in any hostile feeling or purpose Of
the German people towards us (who
were, no doubt, as ignorant of them
as we ourselves were), but only in
caIRgh. doofune - m