The Brandon news. (Brandon, Miss.) 1892-1961, 1918-05-16
PATRIOTIC ADDRESS DE-
LlaEl Ed AT FANNIN.
Continued from first page)

heart. 1 deteSt war In all or It's nlQ-
eous details. When | picture in my
mind the death agony on the face of
every one of our boys who must fall
in defense of our liberties, when
think of the suffering In sospitals. the
hopelessness of life in prison stock
ade, of the exposures and apprehen-
sions, and possibly death and inter-
ment in foreign land, 1t horrifies,
agonizes and tortures~ my SOUL But
even with clear perception of all the
real horrors of war, we can have but
little patience with the man or ele-
ment of men whose "shibboleth" Is
Peace at any price There have
been times I'm my own life when pa
thence ceased to be a virtue, and then 1T
required more real courage to keep
out of fight than to get into 1t. But
a man cannot always avoid conflict
with individuals who are selfish, brutal
and acting outside of the pale of the
law. The experience of nations is
similar to that Of individuals. For two
and one-half years our Chief Executive
had exactly that proposition to face.
we have seen shipioads of non-combat-
ans sent to the bottom OF the sea by a
nation supposed to be civilized beyond
stage OF piracy. We have seen hun
DIE of millions of dollars of Ameri-
can property and shipping destroy
ed by nation thst has not even
yet taken the Formally Of de-
claring war against us, only by
her acts. President Wilson has
availed himself of every imaginable
international legal expedient, and ey-
cry diplomatic means OF bringing us
through this crisis without resorting
TO the sword, hoping against hope for
"a deliyerance from an intolerable stu
@tion, and yet during all his exercise
OF patience 1t has been apparent to all
well Informed men that Germany's I'M
perial designs would at an early date
clash with the natural growth OF DEM
ocracy on this continent as we'll IS in
Europe. It would be impossible for it
to be otherwise. This Is no time for
harsh criticism and recrimination,
when our constituted authorities need
our sympathy, confidence and material
aid Lincoln made the statement: No
nation ever existed half slave and half
free" / would also make the state
ment that the world can no longer ex-5
list half autocratic and half free One
Institution or the other must Rer.is: til
AS institutions they are and always
must be antagonistic. Democracy has.
good reason to always fear aggression
from autocracy, and autocracy Is all
democracy within its own boundaries
and the assuming of prerogatiyes and;
power which autocrats and monarchs
consider peculiarly their own. The aus
tocrat Is a relic of past age, of q
time when intelligence and education
was limited to very few men. who
then presumed on the ignorance of
ether men to proclaim in a loud voice
that they had been ordained by divine
authority to rule over every other man,
and as long as men could not rise. to
the exigency OF disputing this argu.
ment 1t went very we'll. But this is an
age of reason and intelligence, and
when the Kaiser of Germany announces
that he is ruling by divine right, and
that it is ordained that he shall rule
the earth by divine right. am
convinced that 1t Is silly, absurd and
sacrilegious, and l. believe that God
Almighty himself would resent the
partnership referred to by the Kaiser
as ME unit Gott" f
The recompense that this war will
bring to us will be to settle for all
time the possibility of one man at,
tempting to dominate the whole earth,
and further believe that when vic
torious peace is achieved that it will
spell the doom of, autocracy for all
time. for no republic has ever gone
from a republican form of government
to an absolute monarchy. France has
been drawn into it several times to
her sorrow, through the treachery D;
her political leaders, and she is not
likely to ever repeat the experience
Hence following out my line of thought
ii this war eliminates altocracy and
the new map OF Europe is drawn more
on racial lines and less on political ex
pediency, we can then see the light
of new dawn in the destiny of men
q millennium when men will govern
only by the consent of the governed, o
coalition of responsible nations to ere
ate an international police force to
punish a nation or ruler who runs
amucA, and in general TO abolish war
liz the future by the simple process OF