Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1918-10-08

final councils for the settlement of
the war. She has committed the
| unparalleled atrocity of numbering
ten millions of men. And of the
most virile young men of the lands
she has hopelessly MANNED many
millions more. In all the territories
which she has overrun she has
sown herself an insatiate vampire of
ruin. In spirit of monstrous and
heartless frightfulness, she has ruth
lessly destroyed the most cherished
art of the world; has devastated the
most fruitful lands, has laid in ashes
homes of the innocent and the poor.
has indulged in wholesale and
beastly outrage of the most beauti-
full womanhood of the lands, and
out-neroing Nero has played in the
role of the champion assassin of
humanity. The whole civilized world
has suffered under the Thorlike
strokes of this self-iustalled, power
fully organized and sworn enemy of
mankind. For the very purposes of
self-defense against this diabolical
destroyer, the treasures of civiliza-
ton have been drawn upon to the
verge of bankruptcy, bequeathing
perforce the drain of heavy taxation
upon generations yet unborn.
And yet Germany has the infinite
gall, as though she were an aggrieV-
ed party, to ask the nations to sit
with her at a council table of peace!
She has proved herself a postmaster
in the arts of national lying and de-
ceit. She has laid the very ana
tony of her unscrupulous depravity
naked and shameless before the
world. 1t is only the mushy pa
cifist or the murky traitor who can
now have the face to make any
sympathetic plea for this arch-de-
ceiver of the nations. The Allied
world which has borne the heavy
shock of her treachery must not be
misled by any of her hypocritical
overtures. Germany, the great Grim
inal against the nations. deserves to
be whipped helplessly into the dust,
she should be made to feel unremit-
tingly the hard strokes of punish
ment until in her very hopelessness
she cries out for mercy. To make
any compromise with Germany now
would be a crime against civiliza-
tion; to do this would entail an
embargo of disgrace and misfor-
tune against the future of mankind.
A supreme need of the world to-
day is a leadership which shall be
wholly patriotic and absolutely nom
partisan. Mr.. Wilson, if his vision
shall prove equal to his opportunity,
stands very near in his own person
to sovereign arbitrament of the
world. No man in all political his
tory has ever had so great opportun-
ity as is his for rendering a su-
preme service to civilization. But our
President is greatly burdened man.
Like an Atlas he may we'll stagger
under the very weight of the
world. His recent utterances have
been superb. Their uncompromis-
ing embodiment in administrative
policies are, and will remain, su-
perlative demand in all councils
called for deciding permanent
peace for mankind. Mr.. Wilson needs
the patriotic and prayerful support
of all good citizens that his strength
may prove equal to his duties; that
his resolution may hold him always
unfiinching and enduring to the lofty
plane of his own noblest speech.
If he fails not, his name will
worthily hold historic place. among
; the greatest of Americans.
GEORGE P. MAINS.
| Harrisburg pa