The menace. [volume] (Aurora, Mo.) 1911-1920, 1918-03-16
No Right to Levy Tax

There is no question but that they have no legal
right to impose tax upon the people of that county
for this purpose just though they duly elected
county officials whose purpose it was to raise money
to run the business of the county. And when It
comes to question of democracy nothing could be
in violation Of the spirit Of democracy than is
this proposed autocratic action.
You will note that the committee has made
shrewd suggestion that the machinery Of government
is at its disposal in promoting this campaign Now
II that were fact it would amount to a un.on of
church and state This would be true in general
sense with the Y M. c. A., for tho Y M. c. A., in
its strict analysis, is movement of federated
churches. It is true in specific sense in connection
with the Knights of Columbus, for to use the ma
chinery of the government to raise money for this
Roman Catholic fund is confning the union of state
to one particular church But to go further is a
single reader of this paper able to cite an instance
In the whole history of bureaucratic Russia more
typical of the evils of auocratc and bureaucratic
aggression than is this effort to the people into
fear of what the government may do if those who
are presumably in its favor should report them as
unfrendly?
Such condition destroys all liberty and while
every American who is truly such is desrous of u.s.
ing his dollars using them till it hurts, in support
Of the nation and its soldiers, few of them care to
surrender the privileges they have long enjoyed
under the American flag. The American has already
shown that he will not be less generous with his dol
lars than with the blood of his sons, but the sons
fight for principle and it is poor father that will
surrender rights instead of properly informing these
misguided "SuperPatriots" whose zeal carries them
into the methods of German Kultur"
The government is back of no such moves and
fully realizes that such proposed actions can only re-
act to its injury The fact that assessment Of this
kind may not amount to one half-penny per citizen
has no bearing on the case at ALL 1t is matter of
principle, and principle only. The law calls the man
thief who steals chicken, just as it applies the
same term, to the who steals horse and by the
same token autocracy is the same wherever you find
It. 1t is time that Secretary Baker, or someone in
authority with power to do So squelch these auto
cratic movements before they endanger the nation
and organizations necessary to the military machine
This whole plot looks like the deceptive under
hand, jesuitical work Of the Knights of Columbus,
evidently designed to fill the Golfers of their own
private proselyting machine at the expense of the
. Red Cross and the Y M. c. A., both of which are
organizations to which every patriot is anxious to
contribute, while that Of the knights is not so popu-
lar among patriots who are well informed 1t is an
attempt to do by stealth and trckery that which
could not be done open and above board by an appeal
to the intelligence of the people II is something that
the administration at Washington would not recon-
mend and something that the good people Of Wood
/ county, Wisconsin, should repudiate without hes
fancy.