The Marietta journal and courier., 1918-06-21
THE WAR, THE FARM
Continued from page one.
NAMED cut off from the seas.

Take the case of Australia, for ms
tance. There threecrops have remain
ed unsold on the farms. There were
no ships which could be spared to
make the long voyage to Australia,
and so in spite of the efforts of the
Governm ent to save the farmers from
ruin, grain has retted in the open
because there has been no place to
store it, and millions of tons have
been spoiled by mice and other ro-
dents.
Such conditions spell irretrievable
disaster, in spite of all any Govern
ment can do. Such conditions would
have prevailed in this country, from
| the outbreak of the war until now,
gradually growing worse and worse,
and deepening in disaster, from hard
times to universal stagnation, and
widespread famine, if our Govern
ment had not first resisted with every
diplomatic weapon the encroach-
ments of the German Government,
and finally, when it's cruel and pir-
atical, and ruthless policy moved on
from illegal restrictions to open and
ruthless murder, if our Government
had not drawn the sword.
Why did we draw the sword? Was
it to keep up the price of wheat and
cotton, and to protect trade only?
If someone should order youto re-
main on your farm, and not to use
the public highway, would your re-
sistance be based on fear of loss
in property, the profits from failure
to market your crops, the inconven-
ience in not being able to buy your
supplies in town? By no means. You
would fight to the last gasp, not to
make money, but to be free.
When a man is enslaved all he
loses in money is his wages; but the
white man has never been able to
accept slavery for that reason. The
white man has never yet been sue
cessfully enslaved. There rises up
in him against servitude resentment
so terrible at the loss of his owner
ship of himself that death has always
been preferable to slavery.
What the Imperial German Gov
ernment offered the farmers of
America in it's ruthless submarine
warfare was not the loss of profits
| but slavery to the saber rattler Of
Potsdam. He purposed to make US
slaves by numbering the people who
take our products to market. BY all
| the laws of civilized warfare. com
merce under a neutral flag was free
from any hindrance except the legal
interferences justified by war; but
the Germans not only stopped mer-
chants vessels, but sunk them. They
not only sunk them, but they sunk
them without warning. They not
only sunk them without warning, but
they sunk them without trace-the
most devilish thing war has been
since the savages scaiped our ances-
tors and threw screaming babies into
the flames~of burning cabins; for the
German plan Of sinking merchant YES
sells without trace is based on the
murderer|sm that dead men tell
no tales; and it was executed by the
massacre of men, women, and child
ren, who having committed them
selves to the awful dangers of small
boats in the open sea after their ships
were torpetoed were then mercilessly
raked with gunfire, and exterminated
to the last poor unprotected unpitied
wretch!
These are the murders that stain
the hands of the Kaiser and his advis-
ers and minions. These outrages
were perpetrated on neutral vessels
when all that civilized warfare gave
the Germans right to do even with
the merchant vessel under a hostile
flag, was to stop it at sea and under
proper circumstances make it prize
of war; but to kill the civilians on
board, even under hostile flag was
nothing but stark, plain, unmtigated
murder.
And these murders were committed
in order that we might be enslaved !!
Having the right, according to the
laws of war, to,take the sea with his
ships, and fight it out, gun to gun
but being afraid to do so for fear that
he might lose his fleet, being afraid
or unable to stop the sale of our prod
ucts to his enemies, or to open his
own ports to us by fair means, he de-
clared that he would do it by the foul
est methods ever resorted to in war.
He declared the sea closed, and that
he would keep it closed, not by war,
but by murder.
To have submitted would have