The Cordova daily times., 1919-02-17
HUNS AS LYNCHERS.

During their days of arrogance,
when victory seemed certain and
when they could visualize a whole
world under their dominion, the Ger
mans Sfeigned to scorn American opin-
ion, sighted our pleas, and II we
ventured to remind them of their
atrocities promptly tainted us with
our lynchings. Every hour of the war
the Huns were committing outrages
against humanity that made our &C.
casional lynchings, even the burning
of negroes at the stake, dwindle into
triviality. If they were not murder
ing Edith Cavelle and Captain Fry
ats they were helping the Turks to
massacre a million Armenians. And
yet they evidenced no sense of shame
Often they boosted of their misdeeds.
The other day a lynching occurred
in Germany and the Germans, recall
ing their hollow excuses, became al
most hysterical in their expressions
of shame and remorse. If they had
been victorious they would not have
been so thin skinned, for had they
not declared that might made NOR
atty? Had they triumphed the world
would have seen a new morality
everywhere. The old commandments
would have fallen into disrepute. New
.cannons of public and private con-
duct would have been set up by the
followers . of Nietschke, Trietschke,
Won Bernhard and William Hohen-
zollern. The moral law would have
been simply the will of the strong.
Having suffered defeat the Huns
must conform to the old standards.
They must cry with the poet, Thou
hast conquered, o pale Galilean!"
The law that was born in Galilee and
has spread over the world, they would
have overthrown, but now it has over
thrown them
Conservative German newspapers
are wearing sackcloth and ashes be-
cause Liebknecht and Rosa Luxem-
bourg were lynched, but deep in their
souls they rejoice that the firebrands
of revolution were thus summariIy
eliminated
The assassination of Liebknecht
and the Emma Goldman Of Germany
was quite in accord with the military
precepts followed by the Pan.Germans
in their war upon the world The
Pan-German was always ready to-
murder first and to argue afterwards.
Whether he was defending murders
by U-boats or by military judges in
Belgium he never was at a loss to-
invent excuses or extenuatfng circum-
stances American lynchings were
seized upon by the Hun apoIogist, not
because the Hun conscience was
shocked by them, but merely because
they served as controversial material
And today the German evidences OF
shame and remorse are mere mockery.
Sooner or later, perhaps, Lfebknecht
would have fallen in the fight, by fair
means or foul His whole life of radi-
calism had been a challenge to the
powers that be. If he had not been
murdered he would have hurled him
self again and again into peril He
had the courage of his red convictions
While other radicals were snivelling
at the feet to the kaiser during the
war and playing the Hohenzonern
game, Liebknecht refused to bow his
neck under the imperial yoke and sui
fered wounds and prison for his I'M
compromising holiness.
We would be among the last to de-
fend the Bolshevism of Ltebknecht.
but every sincere man deserves at
least a tribute to his honesty of soul,
even though we may account his
political doctrines, as the very stuff
of hades. At least he deserves to be
differentiated from such hirelings as
Lenine and Trotxky.
The registration book OF the town
of Cordova will be open at my office,