The Morgan City daily review. (Morgan City, La.) 1916-1920, 1918-02-18
Cernlany's Favorite Lie
By Ralph Henry Barbour
Of The Vigilantes

If this war could have been won by
living. the Allies would now be beaten
to their knees and America in chains. If
the German General Staff used arms and
men half as successfully as it uses its
secret agents, the Avenue de lOpera,
Paris, would today be Hindenbugstrasse
The German shells cannot reach across
the Atlantic, but the German lies can
and do, and ever since the war began
German propaganda has been making
breaches in our defense. The enemy
suits the lie to the occasion.
We have endured all sorts. Some few
have been captured and shot at sunrise,
but most are still al large , working ms
chief in their own subtle, secret ways,
They vary in Importance, those lies. They
run the gamut from our old friend The
United States Has-No Quarrel With
Germany down to the little sneaking Our
Bows Starving III Cantonments. And
every lie has It's day. There 5 d regular
mode as to German propaganda, and,
looking back when the war is done, we
shall discern that each season of the
struggle was represented by It's own
particular stvle in lies. But there is one
lie, the great grandfather Of them all,
that has never, since its first appearance,
been off duty. 1t is, think the General
Staff s favorite.
| refer to that SCARED but still in
domitable old veteran, n Wall Street
War. 1t is, perhaps, the most puerlle
of Germany s first line lies, but certainly
the hardest worked. 1t has never had a
day off since it marched to the front, and
Just now, it is especially prominent. Its
duty is, of course, to divide public
opinion in this country and to foster dis
sension between capital and labor, be-
tween employer and employed. And its
every success no matter how slight, de-
lays the prosecution of the war.
It never had leg to stand on, but in
some miraculous way still endures. A
schoolboy could effectually dispose OF it
without any trouble, but, perhaps merely
because it is beneath contempt, it has
been allowed to 60 on its silly, sneaking
way. A Wall Street War! Yes, if Wall
Street arranged the sinking Of the Lusi.
tania, caused the rape of Belgium and
wrote the Zimmerman letter. A war be-
gun by Capital! Certainly if you will
credit Capital with being so unselfish as
to renounce the rich profits it was garner.
ing.
Germany propagandists weep croco.
die tears for the laboring man. But the
taboring man himself is far too busy to do
any shifting. Since the war began he
has been enthroned a practical dictator.
He receives wages that, in spite of in
creased cost of living, effecting rich and
poor alike, place him in position of
prosperity he scarcely dreamed Of be-
fore. He sees many Of his most utopian
visions, government ownership of rail
roads, government control of public uti
| lities and the like, made concrete as by
| the wave of a magic wand. He know:
that the influence of the war, on thu
future of this and all other countries will
be all in his favor.
| This war is neither a rich man s wa
nor por man 8 war, neither a war o.
| CAPITAL nor a war of Labor. It is a wa
of the American people for libety AM
all things they hold dear. And it is
war that is being fought by rich and poo,
capitalist and laborer side by side, an
that will continue to be so fought unit
it is ended in the only way it can be a
lowed to end; and this in spite of Gel
man arms and German propaganda
And in spite too, of the old and battered
but still active, A-Wall-Street War Ii,
A jokes joke, but really someone ough
to put that out of its misery!