Fulton County tribune. (Wauseon, Ohio) 1883-1925, 1917-06-22
WAR FOR FREEDOM
President Wilson Tells of Aims of
United States.
FORCED TO TAKE UP ARMS
Nation Acting in Defense of Our
Rights as a Free People and of
Our Honor as q Sovereign
Government, Is Statement.

Washington, June 10. - President
Wilson's Flag day address, delivered in
this city, was substantially as follows:
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. 1t has no other character than
that which we give IT. from generation
to generation. The choices are ours
1t 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 wOm-
en- who went before us and of the rec
the day of its birth and from its birth
until now it has witnessed a great his
tory, has fiOated on high the symbol of
great events, of a great plan of life
worked out by great people. We are
about to carry it into battle, to lift it
where it will draw the fire of our en-
emics. We are about to bid thousands,
hundreds of thousands, it may be mil
lions of our men, the young, the strong,
the capable men of the nation, to go
forth and die beneath it on fields of
blood far away-for what? For some
unaccustomed 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 pur-
pose, for which this great flag has nev-
er been carried before, or for some old,
familiar, heroic purpose for which it
has seen men, its own men, die on ev-
cry battlefield upon which Americans
have borne arms since the Revolution?
These are questions which must be
answered. 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 accountable at the bar Of his.
tory and must plead in utter frankness
what purpose it is we seek to serve
Forced to Take Up Arms.
1t is plain enough how we were
forced into the war. The extraordi.
nary insults and aggressions of the i'm
perial German government left US nc
self-respecttng 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 neu.
trail. They filed our unsuspecting com.
munities with vicious spies and con-
spirators 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 diligently
spread sedition amongst us and sought
to draw our own citizens from their
allegiance, and some Of those agents
were men connected with the official
embassy Of the German government it
self here in our own capital. They
sought by violence to destroy our in
dustries and arrest our commerce
They tried to incite Mexico to take VI
arms against US and to draw Japan in
to a hostile alliance with her-anC
that, not by indirection, but by direct
1IOIA tllC
Berlin. They impudently denied ut
the use of the high seas and repeated
ly executed their threat that they
would send to their death any of oul
people who ventured to approach the
coasts of Europe. And many of oul
own people were corrupted. Men be
gan to look upon their own neighbors
with suspicion and to wonder in theil
hot resentment and surprise whether
there was any community in which
hostile intrigue did not lurk. Wha
great nation in sEch circumstance.
would not have taken up arms? Mucl
as we had desired peace, it was denied
US, and not of our own choice. Thi!
flag under which we serve would hav,
been dishonored had we withheld ou1
hand.
German People Not Enemies.
But that is only part of the story
We know now as clearly as we knew
before we were ourselves engaged tina
we are not enemies of the German peo
pie and that they are not our enemies
They did not originate or desire thi
hideous war or wish that we should b.
drawn into it; and we are vaguely con
scious that we are fighting their cause
as they will some day see it, as well a
our own. They are themselves in tn
| grip of the same sinister power tina
has now at last stretched its ugly tai
ons out and drawn blood from us. TIL
whole world is in the grip Of that pow
er and is trying out the great battl
which shall determine whether it is t
be brought under its mastery or fin
| Itself free.
The war was begun by the militar
masters of Germany, who proved to b
also the masters of Austria-Hungary
PLANS FOR COMPLETE