The Goldfield news and weekly tribune. [volume] (Goldfield, Nev.) 1911-1947, 1917-06-30


Germans, pro-German pacifists and socialists have beer
trying to badger President Wilson by asking Why are we at
WARP" and What are our terms of peace?" In his note to Rus
STA the president set forth our terms of peace. In his Flag Day
speech he again stated why we are at war. Just as the United
States could not continue to exist half slave, half free, SO
now the world has reached the stage where it can no longer
live half autocratic and half democratic. President Wilson has
defined the issues and has drawn the lines at last, just as Presi
dent Lincoln did when he promulgated his proclamation of
emancipation in the second year of our civil war.
Prussian militarism and the Hohenzonern autOcracy must
be destroyed or democracy and freedom shall perish. If Ger
manys military masters win this war or even hold their own
and make peace on the basis of their present possession, the
rest of the world must remain an armed camp and all its peo-
piles will hereafter listen with strained nerves for the sound of
There can be no peace hereafter until one side or the other
wins a decisive victory. No true American can resist the
presidents appeal or fail to feel the thrill of his call to arms.
No other man in all the world can issue such a summons. Our
president is not only the chief executive of the nation, he is
commanderinchief of its military and naval forces, and at
their head he gives the command to charge.
Hitherto, President Wilson's tone has been judicial. Un
til now he sought to justify and convince. In his Flag Day
speech he still does so, but he goes further than before and sur
prises with his plunge into the philippe style. Foes within
as well as without he thus admonishes:
For us there is but one choice. We have made it.
Woe be for the man or group of men that seeks to stand
in our way in this day of high resolution when every
principle we hold dearest is to be indicated and mad;
secure for the salvation of the nations. We are ready to
plead at the bar of history, and our flag will wear a ne"
iustre. Once more we shall make good with our lives
and fortunes the great faith to which we were born, and
a new glory shall shine in the face of our people.
President Wilson's denunciaton of Germany's crimes and
his demands for fitting punishment and reparatiOn coincide
with Cardinal Mercier's quotation from one of the universally.
recognized fathers of the church that 1.-The will to avenge evil,
having respect to order and justice, is a virtuOus action"
We can take no backward step after enlistng in the cause
of freedom. If the efficiency of autOcracy prevails over the
initial appropriateness of democracy in this struggle we shall
be forced to abandon democracy and submit to a miitarist sys
tenn to preserve our identity as a nation that must ever stand
on guard to repel the sudden onslaught of a foe bent on the
conquest and enslavement of the world. The Roman empire
eniOVed two centuries of Dpacp after all it's foes had naSSpd n
der the yoke. We want no such peace at the price of freedom,
a peace in which Rome sank into fostering corruption of body
and soul. Rather than pass beneath the Hohenzollern yoke we
draw the sword once more in the sacred cause of freedom
New York Commercial.