The daily star-mirror. (Moscow, Idaho) 1911-1939, 1918-11-12
ALIENS ARE WARNED OF NEW
ERA COMING IN AMERICA

The following is statement by
Judge Charles F. Amidon of the
United States district court at Bis
rark, N. D., in passing sentence on
the Rev. j. Fontana, pastor of the
German Evangelical church at New
Salem, N. D. The pastor had been
convicted of seditious utterances
The statement was inserted in the
congressional record by Senator Wes-
ley L. Jones, of Washington:
"You received your final papers
as a citizen in 1898. By the oath
which you then took you renowned
and adjured all allegiance to Germany
and the emperor of Germany, and
swore that you would bear true faith
and allegiance to the United States.
What did that mean? That you
would set about earnestly growing an
American soul and put away your
German soul. That is what your oath
of allegiance meant. Have you done
that? | do not think you have. You
have cherished everything German,
prayed German, read German, sung
German. Every thought of your mind
and every emotion Of your heart
through all these years has been
German. Your body has been in AM
erica, but your life has been in Ger
many.
eff you were set down in Prussia
today you would be in harmony with
just as a flower fits the leaf and stem
of the plant on which it grows. You
have influenced others who have been
under your ministry to do the same
thing. You said you would cease to
cherish VOIlr German SOl11
Should Begin Study of American
Life and History.
'That meant that you would begin
the study of American life and his
tory; that you would open your mind
and heart to all of it's influences; that
you would try to understand it's ideals
and purposes and love them; that you
would try to build up inside of your
self whole group of feelings for the
United States the same as you felt
toward the fatherland when you left
Germany. There have been a good
many Germans before me in the last
month. 1t has been an impressive
part of the trial. They have lived in
this country, like yourself, 10, 20, 80,
40 years, and they had to give their
evidence through an interpreter. And
as / looked at them and tried as
best could to understand them, there
was written all over every one of
them, Made in Germany
american life had not dimmed that
mark in the least. 1t stood there as
bright and fresh as the inscription
upon a new coin. / blame my coun-
try. We urged you to come We
welcomed you; we gave you opportu-
nifty; we gave you land; we conferred
upon you the diadem of American
citizenship, and then we left you. We
paid no attention to what you have
been doing.
"And now the world war has
thrown a searchlight upon our ma
tional life, and what have we discov-
cred? We find all over these United
States, in groups, little Germanies,
little Italics, little Austrias, little
Norways, little Russias. These for
eign people have thrown a circle
about themselves, and, instead of
keeping the oath they took that they
would try to grow American souls
inside of them, they have studiously
striven to exclude everything Ameri-
can and to cherish everything foreign.
A clever gentleman wrote a romance
called America, the Melting Pot It
appealed to our vanity, and through !