Atlanta semi-weekly journal. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1898-1920, 1918-02-12
Every Americans Enemy.

Senator Lewis, formerly Georgian, now Of
Illinois, and one of the most interesting personal
tiles in Congress, the situation clearly when
he says that Germany has abandoned her pretense
of indifference toward the United States and
henceforth will center her ferocity upon things
American. AS once she hated England alone, she
now hates our country and with an even bitterer
venom for she realizes that it is America who
stands fatally across her path to world domination
The intensified submarine campaign to which the
Tuscania fell victim is only the beginning of this
new onset of ruthlessness and only one of its in
struments. The Huns will not rest with attempt
ing to cut line of communication with France,
though that quite naturally will be the of
their present effort. Every method of destruction
and frightfulness known to their practiced hands,
they will turn in full blast against the United
States if by any means they do so. 1t is only
the Intervention of three thousand miles that
protects US from air raids forthwith. No one
dares say that we shall go through the war with
out feeling the teeth of U-boats at ports
All the brutalities they have heaped upon Belgium
and France, the Huns burning to pour
upon people; and not until have crushed
their militarism for all, will country
again be secure.
This hatred of America which Germany now
unmasks is rooted in old hostility. Years before
the outbreak of the present war the Potsdam
Gang scheming against the United States and
looking forward to the time when they would
bark upon a transatlantic adventure. Some of
them went far to set forth in their Junker
literature detailed plans for the invasion of Amer
lea and the exact methods by which they proposed
to make the conquest complete. Long before we
entered the war, even while we we're doing our
patient utmost to keep out of it, Germany was in
triguing against and numbering Americans
women and children wen men-by scores
and hundreds on the high Her ambassador
at Washington, taking the cue from his masters
in Berlin used the privileges of his station to lay
all manner of plots and organize all manner of
attacks against this country's peace and order.
He the paymaster of hundreds of Hohenzol-
lern agents, from extraordinary spies to ordinary
thugs, who were constantly conspiring against our
interests. Since we entered the conflict these
agents, still keeping in frequent touch with home
quarters, have done what they could to initiate
here the ruthlessness of their fellows on the other
side Bombs and frebrands and poison have been
their chief instruments far. They have de-
stroyed millions of dollars worth of property
but for the extreme vigilance of the Governments
secret service would have proved an overshadow-
ing menace
Working against us covertly and with no scru-
pies whatsoever, Germany. nevertheless has pre-
tended until recently that she had particular
quarrel with the United States and that she was
Indifferent to military preparations. Indiffer-
ent she may have been to our military prepara-
ton at the outset, but from the beginning she has
hated bitterly. Her purpose in affecting 4 diff
ferent attitude was. as Senator Lewis Joints out
to win favor in this country for her peace propa-
ganda and to deceive the American people into
thinking that they had real enemies in the
Kaiser's empire. But that her peace plots
have failed and her peril from the United States
looms larger and more distinct with every passing
month, she filings pretense aside and makes ready
the most furious onslaught she has yet under
taken. If any American imagined that he
and his country had merely formal and faraway
enemy in Germany, let him now cast aside that
dangerous delusion and face the fact that we are
at with the HUNSLthe despoilers of women
the butchers, of children, the bitterest and most
brutal enemies country has ever known.