The citizen-Republican. (Scotland, Bon Homme County, S.D.) 1???-19??, 1918-02-07

Iowa are organizing a society to be
known as the rman-American Pat
riotic association In letter to the
association, Mr.. Louis Block, of Dav-
enport, Ia, man Of German parent
age and former grand master of the
Iowa Masons, writes:
.tThe Germany Of today has become
q nation which simply worships war;
which exalts soldering high abova
every other calling in life and has
thus become constant source of aw-
full danger to the other nations of the
world "a danger loaded with disaster,
one that may suddenly destroy all
human happiness and blast the race
of man with untold suffering, horror,
pain, anguish and madness. 1t is as
a result of Germany's militaristic
system alone that her men have been
turned from kindly, gracious human
beings into rayenous beasts, who have
toppled over the beautiful and shape
ly built structures ofScivilization un-
til now they lie in hopeless smokeless
maddening ruins at their feet. The
Germany of today has become fend
at the fireside Of the family of ma
tions and in such sulphurous atmos-.
phere the flower Of human freedom
has become scorched and shriveled,
and liberty has been utterly lost in
IA land ruled by the soldier.
b - e
In this soldier cursed Germany the
will Of the comm ander in chief is now
the sole and only law, and blind obe.
dience to that will has become the
one great virtue. He tells the preach
.ers what they shall preach, the pro-
fessors what they shall present and
PROFOUND. and the papers what they
shall print. The citizen is a slave
of the state and the kaiser is the
state. The one and only law is to
obey, obey! Don't think, don't pro-
test, don't kick, just obey, obey!
The Individual has no will of his own
left, for he has surrendered himself
body and suul to the state. The poor
German people are in the iron clutch
Of their kaiser. He has them buffa-
loed, locoed, hypnotized, walking in
a mad dream of obedience for the
sake of conquest 1t took him and
his royal ancestors some forty years
OF constant education in the schools,
churches and colleges controlled by
him snd presided over by teachers.
preachers and professors appointed
and paid for by him, to steal away
their individual souls, but he seems
at last to have done it.
So that today he, himself, mad
degenerate in mind and body, bends
the souls of Germany men to his dire
purposes. The deeds done by his
men in France and Belgium go to
prove beyond question how he has
turned them into beasts. Most of
this was done deliberately and by or
der-done as part of a plan of
frightfulness-done to frighten with
its awful horror people who would
not scare, but died rather than yield.
want our German Americans to
know the truth To know that these
things were no British lies. but that
they were actually done. l want
them to know that the public think
ers of Germany, the writer's of her
books. the editors of her papers, the
preachers in her pulpits, the teachers
in her schools and colleges, the mem
bers of her Legislative bodies, all of
them writing, speaking and working
under the lash Of the kaiser and his
military gang. have filled the souls
of great majority of the German
people with an unholy lust for world
conquest and world power.
1t is because we do net want this
curse to blight America that we must
continue to fight kaiserism with a
vim and a will, with eyes that never
sleep and feet that never tire, fight
out faithfully and to the bitter end
this great war for human liberty and
happiness.
The trouble with our German peo-
pie is that they can't be brought to
believe these awful things. Th ey
don't want to believe them, they fight
against believing them. But there is
no use in our shutting our eyes to the
facts; sooner or later we shall be
forced to know and accept the truth,
and the sooner we know it and get
our lives adjusted in harmony with it.,
the better for all of US. There ought
to be no question as to the absolute
loyalty of every German-American to