The Clio messenger. (Clio, Mich.) 1907-current, 1918-05-24
SPEECH OF FORMER AMBASSA.
DOR TO GERMANY AT DETROIT
ARENA GIVEN TREMENDOUS
APPLAUSE.
GERMANS MAKE SLAVES
OF WAR PRISONERS
The More We Prepare For a Long
War the Shorter That War
Will Be, Remarked Mr..
Gerard.

Detroit.-"We've got to enforce the
death penalty that traitors may be
LEGALLY hanged" former Ambassa-
dor James w. Gerard declared in an
imprisoned speech to $500 persons,
gathered in the Arena at the opening
mass meeting of Wayne county's
$1,000, 5000 Patriotic Fund drive.
In the turmult of applause that
greeted Gerard's straight-from-the-
shoulder utterance, the treble shouts
OF many women demonstrated be-
yond peradventure of a question that
| the time has come when the mothers
and wives, sisters and sweethearts OF
our soldiers in France rebel at len
| iency toward those who would stab
them in the back, while their breasts
are barred to the bullets of the foe.
"You in Detroit, this great manu-
featuring city, cannot afford to have
laws so weak that man who plots
to blow up war plant or who weak
ems the mechanism of an aeroplane
so that some brave American lad falls
to his death, suffers no severer penalty
than two years in prison and then,
after the war, is permitted to go back
to Germany and receive the iron cross
and the gift of enough money to keep
him in luxury for life"
THE Hohenzollerns are in this war
for conquest and for money" he be-
gan. 1.-The emperor himself you
might almost say that royal lunatic,'
wrote some years ago that five men in
history, Napoleon, Caesar, Alexander
the Great. Theodore and Frederic the
the Great-he had to include Hohen-
zollern-had chiefly influenced his life.
And the life of everyone Of these five
was actuated by dreams of world con-
quest.
"Now, there are two ways we can
help our soldiers in this war to frps-
trate the Kaiser's dream of conquest.
"The first is to create a universal,
United States unity-to get behind our
great president to man. That's the
secret of much of the success of an
autocracy in war; there's one man AZ
the head and there's no criticism.
THE second way is by giving
There's no use boarding your money,
for If the Germans come here you'll
never find place you can hide it from
them.
do you know what II will mean to
America If that thin, brave line that
is holding France should break? 1t
means seizure of the channel ports
and; when the British are bottled up,
the coming of the Germans here after
us-and after money.
THE Germans make slaves of all
they take in war. They use their pris-
oners to work in their factories. mines
and fields, and they have 100000 OF
them thus enslaved.
You don't know what German dom
ination means. I saw what ii meant
in Lille. that great manufacturing city
Of northern France. The German gen
eral posted notice in Lille asking
for volunteers to work for him in the
captured fields. Only IA men volun-
teered. All right, said the general. !
well take their women
"And that night when the men got !
home from work their wives and !
daughters were gone. Where are
they they asked, and the neighbors |
told them that files of Prussian troops /
had come and driven them away.
They took 10000 French women |
and girls from Lille, kept them for
months on distant farms, in lonely |
farmhouses with Prussian soldiers
and you know what that meant-and |
then they sent them back, or what
was left Of them.
That's what Prussian domination
means"
Mr.. Gerard described a visit to the |
German prison camr at Wittenberg, |
before the United States entered the |
war, and the privations to which the
captives were subjected.
THE general in command there"
he said. forced healthy British,
French and Belgian prisoners to-min- /
gle with a number of Russians, III
with infectious typhus, remarking TO |
them they would have to get acquaint- |
ed with their allies
This is not goingyo be a short war
or an easy war. But one things GER
tain, the more we prepare for a long
war the shorter that war will be.