Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1918-10-02
THE HUN PREACHER
JUDGE breaches PREACHER A
SERMON AND CHASTISES AM
ERICAN PEOPLE FOR NEG
LECT OF DUTY.

Recently one Rev. j. Fontana, pas
tor of the German Evangelical church
at New Salem, S. d., was convicted
in the federal court at Bismarck, Of
using seditious language and sem
fenced to three years in prison. In
passing sentence Judge Amidon
preached the Hun preacher a sermon
which he cannot soon forget. But he
did more He blamed the American
people for neglecting their duty to
the foreigners who come to make this
country their home, and this part of
the sermon should especially be taken
to heart by every true American
Judge Amidon said:
you received your final papers as
citizen in 1898 BY the oath which
you then took you renounced and alb
jured all allegiance to 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 Am
erican soul and put away your Ger
man soul. That is what your oath of
allegiance meant.
Have you done that? | do not
everything German and stifled every
thing American. You have preached
German, prayed German, read Ger
man, 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
America, but your life has been in
Germany. If you were set down in
Ho
mony with your environment. 1t
would fit you just as the flower fits
the leaf and stem of the plant on
which it grows.
You have influenced others who
have been under your ministry to 10
the same thing. You said you would
cease to cherish your German soul
and that you would begin to build up
inside of you an American soul. That
meant that you would begin the study
OF American life and history; that
you would open your mind and heart
to all of its influences, that you would
try to understand it's ideals and pur-
poses, and love them; that you would
try to build up inside of yourself a
whole group of feelings for the United
States, the same as you felt towards
many
"Nade in Germany"
There have been a good many Ger
mans before me in the last month.
They have lived in this country, like
yourself, 10, 20, 80, 40 years, and they
had to give their evidence through an
interpreter. 1t has been an impress
sive part of the trial. AS l looked at
them and tried, as best l could to /
understand them, there was written
all over every one of them, Made in
Germany American life had not
dinlmed that mark in the least. 1t
stood there as bright and fresh as
the inscription on new coin.
Il do not blame you and these men
alone. | blame myself. / blame my
country. We urged you to come; we
welcomed you; we gave you oppor-
tun1ty; we gave you land; we con-
TERED upon you the diadem of Amer
lean citizenship-and then we left
you. We paid no attention to what
you have been doing.
And now the world war has thrown
searchlight upon your national life
and what have we discovered? We
find all over these United States. in
1lIJIo
groups, little Germanys, little Italvs,
little Russias. These foreign people
have thrown circle about themselves
and instead of keeping the oath they
took that they would try to grow Am
erican souls inside of them, they
have studiously striven to exclude ev-
erything American, and to cherish ev-
erything foreign.
How We Deceive Ourselves.
"A clever gentleman wrote ro-
nance called America, the Melting
Pot 1t appealed to our vanity, and
through all these years we have been
seeing romance instead of fact. That
is the awful truth. The figure of my
country stands beside you today. 1t
says to me-. DO not blame this man
alone. | am partly to blame. Punish
him for his offense, but let him know
that / see things in a new light: that
new era has come here Punish him
to teach him and the like of him, and
all those who have been misled by