The Barre daily times. (Barre, Vt.) 1897-1959, 1918-09-12
WHAT ARE WE GOING TO Dop

BY E. E. Hartman of The Vigilantes
This war will end some day. Some
folks are already planning what they
win do after it is over Are we?
read the other day that the German
and Austrian prisoners now in Russia
had resolved, almost to man, that they
would not go back to their former homes
when the war ended, but would emigrate
to the United States and Canada. What
will our twin countries say TO them?
Come right along, brother! Make
yourself at home. Take this chair, il
has a higher back and thicker cushion.
Have glass of ice cold beer with me
III tell the wife and she will cook up q
mess of sausage and make some biscuits
and open her best canned fruit for you
Let me adjust this stool under your
trench shoes and offer a cigar to while
away the time, till the dinner is ready
Will we talk like that2 Oh, will we {?
If we do ! shall start out on hike
into the frozen north and begin to live
on whale steaks and seal blubber.
Isn't it about time for us to begin 10
plan? Should we 90 on with our job Of
licking the Hun and never look ahead
TO the time when he is going to become
an economic question: Should we let
things slide till he is on the sea, coming
over in any old bottom that he can rake
up, prepared to grab off lot of new
world coin and land and help us make
our laws nice and easy for the Hun at
home2
Or will we tell the Hun in Europe to
get inside the Hunnish lines and stay
there, while he works out his own saliva
ton Shall we say to the Hun who,
being in America and enjoying its ad.
vantages, has elected to go back to Hun
land and join in the frightfulness that
has been the backbone of Kaiser Bills
plan, that it was no more than should
be expected and he is welcome TO come
home to us
Shall we open our internment camps
and let them spew out upon our land the
rotten messes they now holdf Having a
clean dish and wholesome food, shall we
defle it with propagandists and spies
and enemy agents? Having made our
bed with clean sheets and pillowslips and
blankets, shall we turn the covers back
and let the wsllowing swine from the
roadside mudhole creep Within
There is only one line of conduct that
we can follow with honor and common
sense, and that is the line that win keep
our bed and food and home clean, The
line that will maintain the purity that
we have attained through the refining
fire We must say to the Hun in En-
rope, in America, in Asia, anywhere he
may be found
Get TO work within the confines Of
your own country! Build up and purify
your land. Purge it of the filth that
clogs its spirit. Wash il clean of the
evil it has chung to so long. Refine it
with years of sacrifice and earnest work
for the right. Then, after the leaven
has worked and passing decades have
carried away the last grain of the old
deyilish doctrines and beliefs, then it is
possible that the nations may grant you
amnesty and let you 90 out through
the world at large once more. II is up
to you. Go to work on yourself"
Letting the Hun wander at will after
this war is over will be like leaving the
line Of fuse burning and merely cutting
of the dead end after the spark had
erawled inward toward the magazine.
Allowing him to have the same old
freedom TO come to our shores would be
as foolish, and as disastrous in the end,
as it would be to smother a fire with
cotton loosely piled
President Wilson and his advisers have
a great many matters to handle and
many questions to decide. Let US not
leave them to do all the thinking or all
the talking on this question. The Amer
lean people are concerned to such a de-
gree in this matter that they should
not delegate to any man or body of men
the task OF thinking for them, They
should do their own thinking and WHEN
they have had time to formulate plan
that looks feasible and thoroughgoing
they should say to their servants at
Washington. from the president down:
Here You put this through along
the line we have laid down Ii is no
time for fooling or for doing party pol.
itics. Put up the bars and spike them
fast, so no one can slip them. We have
a stomachful and we must have time to
digest il before we swallow any more I"
Then get busy with the American of
foreign birth and Americanize him or
throw him over the bars, to the soil that
bore him. We have no room in America
for the man who shouts, "Hurrah for
America and follows ii with wills.
per Of "Gott sci dank, Ich bin Deutsch-
er,