Omaha daily bee. (Omaha [Neb.]) 187?-1922, 1917-04-03
the last of neutrality in such circum-


the last of neutrality in such circum-
stances.
1--WE are at the beginning Of an age
in which it will be insited that the
same standards of conduct and of
responsibility for wrong done shall
be observed among nations and their
governments that are observed among
the individual citizens OF civilized
states.
"We have no quarrel with the Ger
man people. We have no feeling to-
ward them, but of sympathy and
friendship. 1t has not on their i'm
pulse that their government acted in
entering this war. 1t was not with
thei r previous knowledge or APP
proval.
Pawns and Tools.
"The war was determined upon as
wars used to be determined in the old
unhappy days, when peoples were not
consulted by their rulers and wars
were provoked in the interest of
dynasties or little groups OF ambi-
tious men who were accustomed to
use their fellow men as pawns and
tools.
"Self-governed nations do not fill
the neighbor states with spies or set
courses of intrigue to bring about
some critical posture of affairs, which
will give them a chance to strike and
make conquest.
Such designs can be only worked
under cover and when no one has the
right to ask questions.
"Cunningly contrived plans of ag-
erosion carried, it may be, from gen.
Grafton to generation, can be worked
out and kept from the light only with
in the privacy of courts or behind the
carefully guarded confidence Of mar
row and privileged class. They are
happily impossible where public opin-
ion commands and insists upon full in
formation concerning all the nations
affairs.
League Of Free States.
"A steadfast concer. for peace can
never be maintained except by a
partnership of democratic nations.
No autocratic government could be
trusted to keep faith within it or OBJ
serve its covenants. 1t must be a
league of honor, a partnership of
opinion. Intrigue would eat its vitals
away; the plottings of inner circles
whoc ould plan what they would and
render 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 COM
mon end and prefer the interest 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 it best to have been always in
fact democratic at heart, in all the
vital habits of its thought, in all the
intimate relationship of its people
that spoke their natural instinct, their
habitual attitude towards life.
"The autocracy that crowned the
summit of its political structure, long
as it had stood and terrible as was the
reality of the power was not in fact
Russian, and now it 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 Prusian auto
cracy was not and could never be
our friend is that from the veryoutset
of the present war, it has filled our
unsuspecting communities and even
our Offices of government with spies
and set criminal intrigues everywhere
afoot against Our national unity OF
council, our peace within and without,
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 con-
lecture, but fact proved in our
courts of justice that the intrigues
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 gov
eminent accredited to the government
of the United States.
Even in checking these things and
trying to extirpate them we have
sought to put the most generous in
terpretations possible upon them, be-
cause we knew that their source lay