The daily Gate City and constitution-Democrat. (Keokuk, Iowa) 1916-1922, 1918-02-04
THF GERMANY OF TODAY
Louis in
Policy of OF the Worship Of War.

Ruin Policy of the KAISER
/ Louis Block. past grand master OF
Masons, whose home is in Davenport.
was unable to be at the patriotic Ger
man-American association, but sent
the following letter which was read
at the first meeting of the association
in the Chamber of Commerce, Des
Moines, on February one:
Hon. Lafayette Young, Chairman
Iowa Council of National Defense,
State House, Des Moines, Iowa
| My dear Mr.. Young For the reas-
ons stated to you in my telegram of
| Monday, it will be simply impossible
for me to attend the meeting to be
held on Friday, February 1st at Des
Moines, for the purpose Of organizing
the proposed German-American Pat
riotic association
/ can assure you, however. that
keenly regret my inability to attend
because my whole heart and soul are
in the project of making all American
citizens of German birth or parentage
understand what this world war is
really about and what there is at stake
in it.
One of my German-American friends
said to ME the other day, II don't see
how you, being of German blood, can
be against the Germans in this war"
land | answered him by scsj17gg. 81 don.
see how you, being an American c1tl-
zen, can be against America il this
war"
1t seems to me that we ought to do
everything in our power to make our
German-American citizens realize that
the Germany of today is not the Ger
many of forty or even twenty-five
years ago, but is Germany that has
become far worse than the old Ger
many. II the fathers were glad to
leave it with all its aristocratic des-
potism and its hard and rigid military
rules and its heavy taxes levied to
build up vast war machinery, and come
to free America where they could
shake themselves free from the heavy
shackles of this awful military bur
den and start life with some show of
real success, they certainly ought to
be glad that they are not living in the
Germany of today For in the Ger
many of today no one but the soldier
has any opportunity at all. and even
he has very little chance unless he be-
longs to the official class.
The Germany of today his become a
nation which simply worships war,
which exalts soldering high above
every other calling in life and has thus
become constant source of awful
danger 10 the other nations of the
world-a danger loaded with disaster,
one that may suddenly destroy all hui
man happiness and blast the race of
man with untold suffering, horror, PAIN
anguish and madness. 1t is a result
of Germany's militaristic system alone
that her men have been turned from
kindly, gracious, human, beings into
snarling, ravenous beasts, who have
toppled over the beautiful and shapely.
built structures Of civilization until
now they lie in hopeless, smokeless.
maddening ruins at their feet The
Germany of today has become a fiend
at the firesides of the family of nations
and in such sulphurous atmosphere
the flower of human freedom has be-
come scorched and shriveled, and lib
erty has been utterly lost in land
ruled by the soldier
In this soldier cursed Germany, the
will of the commander-in-chiefi is now
the sole and only law and blind obed-
fence to that will has become the one
great virtue The will OF Wilhelm,
the war-lord, is now supreme in all the
walks of life. He tells the preachers
what they shall preach, the professors
what they shall present and PROFOUND,
and the papers what they shall print.
The citizen is slave of the state and
the kaiser is the state. The one and
only law is obey, obey! Don't think,
don't protest, don't kick, just obey.
The individual has no will of his own
left for he has surrendered himself
body and soul to the state. The poor
German people are in the iron clutch
Of their kaiser. He has them buffa-
loed. locoed, hypnotized, walking in
q mad dream of obedience for he sake
ancestors some forty years of constant
education in schools, churches and
colleges, controlled by him and pre-
sided over by teachers, preachers and
professors, appointed and paid by him,
to steal away their individual souls,
but he seems at last to have done it.
So that today he himself mad de-
generate in mind and body. bends the
souls OF GerInany's men to his dire
purposes. The deeds done by his men
in France and Belgium go to prove
beyond question how he has turned
them into beasts. ObeG;ent to his will
wives were violated in the sight of
their helpless husbands, babies i'm
paled on bayonets or nailed to barn
doors, women repeatedly outraged by
officers and men alike, and their bodies
horribly mutilated. The march of Ger
man soldiers through a town was q
perfect saturnalia of lust and slaugh-
ter. AS one soldier writes in his
diary, I'VE swilled and raped the en-
tire street along" The officers egged
on the men-turned them loose on the
booze. and starving wolves never
waged worse slaughter on harmless
sheep. Little children had their hands
hacked off-the helpless wounded Were
murdered in cold blood, for the order
was TO take no prisoners" Men and
IOWA PRESS COMMENT.