Omaha daily bee. (Omaha [Neb.]) 187?-1922, 1919-11-19
Ware You Get Zat Stuff?
From the Chicago Tribune.

With reference to the proposed alliance with
France Tor the defense of France President
Wilson said that we are under debt to France
which can never be paid. General Pershng
ment and said: Lafayette, we are here" Al
fred Capus, editor of Figaro says that the
United States is laggard in duty.
We say: For the love of Mike" France
fought Great Britain in our revolutionary war
to deprive her hereditary enemy of her greatest
colonial possession-and did it. A Bourbon
king made war on a German who sat on the
English throne to split his empire in two and
did it.
Generous Frenchmen, liberty-oving French
men, such as Lafayette, were among the in
struments used for this. but the effective in
strument was monarchially controlled army
and navy, which did the bidding of empire for
the pay of empire.
1t does not hurt the United States any to
accept the imperial work of French king with
gratitude and not to look too closely at the
facts, but it will hurt to groTel in complete de-
NAL of the facts. So mitch for the debt to
Lafayette.
If France could have had any assurance in
1914 that she would have, as the result of the
war. what she now has she would have de-
clared war on Germany. There nearly was
war over Ageciras when Germany threatened
to block French imperial progress in North
Africa France and Germany have been in i'm
perial conflict since the year one. We seem to
forget that when the Franco-P russian war be-
gan Napoleon III was the dreaded military
despot of Europe and that Great Britain greeted
his overthrow with diplomatic popular relief
danger had been removed from Europe.
France did not want the war with Germany
in 1914 because the French feared the outcome
and hated the struggle. Germany did want it
because the Germans were confident as to the
outcome and invited the struggle. If the
French had been confident they would have
welcomed it.
They wanted Alsace back. They have it
They wanted the Germans pushed back of the
Rhine. They have them there. They wanted
to make Germany pay indemnties. The Ger
mans will pay. They wanted the Saar basin.
North Africa They have it. The Germans,
for the time being, are where Frenchmen want
them to be and where they have fought for CEN
turtles to keep them and hold them.
For these results the French would have
fought any war at any time. They are on top
they will overcome their prudent thrift enough
to raise larger families they probably will stay
on top for another century.
At the moment when these benefits were
despaired illusions the United States began the
greatest movement Of troops overseas that the
world ever knew If the hundreds Of thou
sands sent had not been enough, millions and
millions would have followed them. Germany
was licked from April f, 1917.
The United States did this for its own
safety. 1t preferred to fight a war in France
rather than fight one on the ocean or in the
United States. 1t knew it had to fight Ger
many and wisely preferred to fight with allies
rather than fight alone. 1t was bit of
American wisdom.
We got what we went after. That was pro
lection from what would have been certain
German menace. In getting what we wanted
we were directly instrumental in giving France
more than she dreamed she could get.
We supplied the men, which France did not
have France supplied equipment, which our
men did not have. The United States gave
lives. France gave Our soldiers guns.
France fills American imagination and af
fiction. We like Frenchmen much better than
we like Englishmen, but we ask nothing what
ever of France or of any other part of the
world, and we owe France nothing and owe the
world nothing.
Our most conservative statesmen now are
merely trying, to hang onto things which
America has No one is trying to get anything.
The United States is the only competent ma
ton among the victors which is merely strug-
Cling to retain what it had before it made sac
rifices.-
With profound respect and much admiration
for France, we must inquire: Ware you get
Eat stuff"