The Leavenworth echo. [volume] (Leavenworth, Wash.) 1904-current, 1918-08-23
OUR DEBT TO THE BRITISH
EMPIRE

In the Kansas City Star of Au-
gust 14th, Theodore Roosevelt
makes the following reference to a
matter that ought to be more fully
understood by the people of these
United States. He says:
Judge Ben Lindsey, who has re-
Gently written two or three striking
pieces about what Great Britain has
done and is doing in this war, Incl
dentally points out how far ahead
of us she now is in certain types of
social legislation, such as that deal
ing with children; but the lesson he
inculcates, which is of the most I'M
mediate concern, is the giant part
England has played in this war and
standing up for Belgium and France
she was really defending US during
our days of folly, when we followed
the lead of our worst enemies, the
pacifsts and the pro-Germans.
The English pacifsts are, if any
thing, even more silly than our own.
They did their best to keep England
out of this war. If they had sue
ceeded the British empire would for
few years have had the broad,
smoth road of peaceful and greedy
infamy and would then have tum-
bled into the bottomless pit of utter
destruction.
Tells of British Effor,
In August, 1914, Great Britain
and the gallant overseas common
wealths which share her empire.
chose the hard path of immediate
danger, of ultimate safety and of
high heroism, whereby they saved
their own souls and the bodies of
their children, and in so doing rem
dered an inestimable service to us.
England has raised an immense
army which has fought in Europe,
Asia and Africa. If it were not for
this army even the highly trained
valor of the French could not have
averted German victory. At the
same time the British fleet has kept
the seas free for the food and coal
and munitions needed for the allied
people and armies and has furnished
| the transports necessary to enable
us to put under Pershing a force
large enough to be of real conse-
quence in the vitally important bat
ties which have been raging for the
past thirty days.
If Great Britain had not been far
sighted enough to realize what her
own welfare demanded when France
was invaded and if she had not been
stirred to noble indignation by the
Belgian horror, the whole civilized
world would now have been cover
ing under the brutal domination of
Germany. If they had not controlled
the seas not an American battalion
could have been sent to the aid of
France as she struggled to save the
soul of the world and no help could
have been given gallant Italy, or any
others of these allied nations to
whose stern fighting efficiency we
owe it that this earth is still a place
on which free men can live.
Must Stand by British
We must stand by Great Britain
precisely as we stand by our other
allies-in the first place by waging
the war with all our strength and in
the next place by seeing that the
peace is of a kind which justifes
them for all the sacrifices they have
made.
One item in waging the war ought
to be insistence that every Ameri-
can of fighting age who resides in
the British empire and every Eng
lishman of fighting age who resides
in the United States be invariably
put in either the British or the
American army.
One item of making peace ought
to be insistence that Britain keep
every colony she has conquered
from Germany, in the South seas
and in Africa. The course of Ger
many as followed in Africa has
made her a menace of evil to the
Boer and the British Africanders
and to return to her the colonies
which have been taken from her
whether in Africa, or Asia, by Aus
tralia, or Great Britain or by
France, or Japan, or Belgium would
be a crime against civilization.
Miss f. C. Wall, stenographer at