The Birmingham age-herald., 1918-02-22
MEN, WOMEN
 AND THINGS

The other morning riding downtown with Dr. Gross Harrison he said: "Dr. Barnett, think Walter Blackman is doing some of the greatest work being done by any cartoonist in the country"
  He then took up the one in Tuesdays s Age-Herald February 19), headed "The Birth of a Nation," showing a young Belgian mother, with bowed head and streaming eyes, holding in her arms her babe of shame whose innocent little hand was ciutching at her bosom.
 The picture, to my mind, in conception was as bold, yet as terrible true, as any ever drawn by Raemaker, whose inspired pen first awoke the world to the ruth lessness of the Hun and even brought down upon himself the anger of the Kali had to flee from Holland and is now in America
 If the picture of the broken hearted girl caused a tightness in the throat of every red-blooded American who saw it; how his anger must have risen and his blood boiled at the condemnatory words up in the right-hand corner: By Order of the Kaiser, Gott Nit Uns.'"
 Now, the picture and the cruel words do not misrepresent the blond beast who sits upon a throne which was built on the dead bodies of thousands of men who gave their lives to try and save their homes, their women and their lands from the tread of the conauering armies which poured out of Berlin filled with the lust of territorial conquest.
 The words do not misrepresent the blasphemies which unctuously drip from the perjured lips of the hypocritical Ho- henzollern, who plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven as makes the angels weep as he piously prates of ruling by divine right and being an in- strument in the hands of God to wreak vengeance.
 Let it sink deep into your inner con- sciousness, let it grip the vitals of your heart, let it burn itself into the recesses of your soul; that the rape of Belgium was no accident of battle, when men mad with the fury of fighting lost their thin coating of civilization and reverted to savagery drunk with blood. To think this way is but to excuse the Attila of tho north.
 The neutral historians of the future will not be able to forget, or German ones to hide, the indisputable fact that it was but part of cold-blooded pro- gramme. Do you doubt it? Listen, the author in "Grossdeutschland" does not fail to set it down with Teutonc pride Prussian devitry.
 Here is what he commits to the printed page to be read by all mankind: Tt is, Germany's task today to pass from the position of European power to that of a world power. " A policy of sentiment is folly. Enthusiasm for humanity is idocy. Right and wrong are notions needed in civil life only. The German people are always right"
 The Emperor of Germany the ego maniac and his militarist crew of moral perverts, have run amuck in Christian Civilization" and not merely torn up sacred treaties, but mocked at the golden rule, made a by-word of neighborly rights among nations, flouted the teach put their bloody heels through the Ten Commandments.
 And in so doing they have the unmiti- gated German insolence to boast that in outraging everything which the world holds dear, it's their high and holy. mis- sion to spread new brand of ''kultur" bearing the imperial imprimatur of the mighty house of Hohenzollern-"M in Germany
 for in all history there is no more heroic instance of moral and physical courage than was displayed by a little David of a nation to overcome a towering Go- Hath whose ruthless tread was stamp ing upon the rights of friendly people. Unhappiy the stone hurled out or Bel gium's sling did not kill the German giant, but thank the Lord it made him groggy until France and England and Russia had time to come to it's assist ance
 America has gone into this war to con- vince Emperor William that a policy of sentiment is not folly but the latest thing in international righteousness. That humanity is not "idocy.'' but the newest thing is statecraft. That right and wrong are notions not needed alone for military life, but have been adopted by up-to-date political economists as the laws of commerce. That for once in her life Germany is going to find that in- stead of always being right" she is wrong and bankrupt in a military, polti- cal and moral sense.
 Sure America is fighting to safeguard democracy. I believe in the high ideals which sent us into the conflict, but with the word picture of Charles Edward Rus sell, which inspired the pen of Walter Blackman to put it on paper where it could be seen in all of it's infamy, great wave of indignation takes hold of me and I want to grip the throat of Hun and choke and choke until down on his