Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1918-03-13
COUNTY LISTERS MEET.
Plumley Tclks Patriotism and Taxa
tiOG. Storm Keeps Many Away.

noon, when c. A. Piumley Of North
field, state tax commissioner, met the
listers TO talk about this years list
ing, and give instructions upon points
asked by those present.
Mr.. Plumley said in part:
A year ago you IS listers were the
first of the citizens of the state of
Vermont, on whom it devolved to
discharge patriotic duty looking to-
ward the preparation of this country
for it's entrance into a war. The
proclamation of the governor and the
duties which you performed pursuant
thereto in taking a military census
of the able-bodied male citizens of
the state brought to you a realizing
sense of the responsibility attaching
to every citizen when his liberty is at
stake and his country is at war. AS
YOU went about your work a year ago
you were confronted by signs and
slogans and by the sentiment Don't
talk war, talk business" but today in
order to make the world safe for
business our first business is to win
the war. Whatever we may have
thought or said about the necessity
for our earlier entry into the war, we
now know past all forgetting and at
the cost of the sacrifice Of our own
winning the war rests sQuarely upon
the shoulders of the American peo-
pie.
We are fighting for our lives, the
lives of every man, woman and child
here and everywhere else. We are
fighting against 18 hours a day Of
forced labor under the lash or at the
point of a bayonet, with dogs death
and a dogs burial at the end Of it.
We are fighting that men, women and
children may not be tortured. burned
and mutilated in public and we will 90
on fighting until the race which has
done these things IS in no condition
to continue or repeat it's offense. For
the surrender of civilization, liberty
and responsibility, the abject sur
render Of self respect, Of justice and
the abandonment of morality, for a
German peace or 2 so-called Peace
at any Price" we Americans will new
er stand.
This war is the most reckless and
prodiCal waster of time, of property
and life, Of. the happiness of families,
the prosperity Of states and nations
that the world has ever known. 1t
has done more to make the world one
vast GOlgotha, to unpeople earth and
to people hell than any other form of
SIN uilGI WEItIl ear III llClS ever
groaned and suffered, or over which
ANGELS wept.
But we must carry on. We must
win triumphant victory. There
is no halfway house between victory
and defeat, and if we fall short of
victory, every relation, every under
standing, every deCcncy upon which
civilization has been so anXiously
built, will 90, will be washed out, be-
cause it will have been proved unable
to endure. The whole idea and the
ideals of democracy will be dismissed
from mems minds because they will
have been shown incapable of main
tanning themselves. The Huns ideal,
the Huns root notion Of life will take
their place throughout the world. The
Germans went into this war deter
mined to impose their German kul-
ture upon the world. We had our
choice, to conquer or submit, and we
have made it.
We must learn again at tremen-
dous cost of blood and treasure thatno
great freedom can be established by
. spontaneous growth; that liberty is
not self-sustaining or protecting,
| but demands eternal vigilance and
continuous defense. No great eXpan-
sion of human opportunity has ever
come to pass by accident. Some
time, somewhere, some how, some
man has paid the price. 1t is an in
eXorable and unchanging law that the
advance of truth across the world has
been, and always will be marked by
little circles of blackened earth where
yesterday the martyr stood.
Forces have been let loose by this
war which Niagara like cannot be long
controlled or kept in check bv man or
superman. Out of it's awful horrors
a spirit of democracy has arisen,
phoeniX-like, to take possession of the
hearts and souls and very lives of
men. It's tide cannot be stemmed or
stopped; the seemingly impossible
will be made possible; we shall real
ize the fruition of our fondest hopes;
achieve the accomplishment of the
greatest end for which any war was
ever waged and shall establish for
all time a federation of the democ-
racies of the world.
The catastrophe of a defeat is awful
to contemplate, buts to win this war
we shall have to make public and
personal sacrifices that cannot now be
rroa e'rred by any standard heretofore
established.
We shall win, but at such tre-
ronndOus sacrifice Of men and money
and everything we hold dear, so stag
~erin" &c to almost paralyze even
our IMAGINATION.
Throu~h al history, from its very
Ne~irnin~. a noble armv of martvrs
has fou~ht fiercelv and fallen brave
w for their country. Through all his
torv to the end. that arnv must still
march, and fpht and fall: recruited
from the flower of mankind, cheered
onlv by their own hone of humanity,
strong only in their confidence in
their cause.
Upon tho technical points of taxa
ton Mr.. Plumlev discussed its many
phases under many sub-topics. Some
of the things of greatest intent we
quote: