The Glasgow courier. [volume] (Glasgow, Mont.) 1913-current, 1919-04-25
THE WATCH ON THE RHINE.

IlcAC oCpIcIlUCI.
THE WATCH ON THE RHINE.
(By Brigade sergeant-Major Allen c.
Ranking
Glad to get back? Oh, boy, am 1?
There's no place in all the world like
these little old United States, and
heaven won't look any better than
Hoboken does from the deck of a
homeward bound transport. Never
again do ! want to see the face Of the
Liberty Lady in the harbor unless l
go out to wash it. War will be- no
thing but a memory to me all the rest
of my life unless
Unless the Victory Liberty Loan Fails.
For, if it falls, there'll come a time
when I'll be lifting my right hand
again and saying 81 do" voluntarily
and all the rest of it, and swinging
kit pack and saddlebags, and blinking
at the Jersey shore line, and facing
forward once more on the western
front. If it fails, Germany is going
to war again before I'm too old to get
back in the line. She's cowed, and
crushed, and conquered now, but
there's fire down under her ashes,
and some day it's going to blaze I'M
less we keep the fire hose right in
front Of her eyes; and that fire hose
is nothing else but her fear of the
American people.
The people of Germany r figur-
ing today that they can beat Bel
GUM and France and Italy and Eng
land, all together. They know that
they can never bully the world if the
American people stand against them,
but they are planning and scheming
and hoping to shift the American
people. In that hope they r watch
ing the Victory Liberty loan. By it's
failure or it's success the German peo-
pie will judge if we, the American
people, want to hold the victory we
have won. If the Victory Loan doesn't
go across with a whiz and a bang
that will prove that our country backs
the righteousness of the war just as
it backed us while we fought at the
front, Germany is going to take heart
Germany is going to say, ooh, yes.
the Americans came into the war, and
while they were in it, they fought to
win; but now they are sorry that they
went in, and they will not fight us
again. The time is with us when we
must pay through the nose, but the
time will come when we will have
ended the payment. And then"
Then will come another war, and its
time will not be so far off that the
crowd of US can't get in again. For
it will be the same kind Of a war all
over again, and we can't, before God
keep out Of that kind and hold our
nations honor.
How Do l Know?
Since December I've been in the
Rhine valley, in the districts that the
pacifists, ante-war and postwar, love
to call "the Germany of the Christ.
mas tree, the Germany Of Heine anc
Goethe, the Germany of Bach and Bee.
thoven, the Germany Of legend anc
folk song, the Germany of peace ane
beauty" I've been quartered in Ger
man homes. Because I'd come from
Milwaukee I understood German ane
I came to know what these Germans
thought of US and of the rest of thu
world. They weren't Prussians, thest
men and women of Neuweid and Trie7
and Coblenz and of the little Villages
along the Rhine. They are the PEG
pie whom we had half-believed to b
victims of Prussianism. But are the!
glad the kaiser had been overthrow,
and his system disestablished? The!
are not?
With somber eyes they watched us
With furtive queries they piled us
The men who'd fought in the German
army had nothing to say, but the oil
men would come sneaking around, al
ways with some trivial reason, bu
always with the questions, "What d,
your people think of a now? Ar
they not divided about it? And will
they trust more billions and billion
to your government for another loal
now that the war is ended?" "Yo,
bet they WILL" we told them. The;
went away shaking their heads.
Why do they are about whethe
or not the people of the United State
subscribed to the Victory Libert
loan? we asked ourselves. At frs
we couldn't answer. The German
themselves answered US after awhil.
From them we came to know tina
they hadn't expected, even when GU
government went into war agains
them, that the American people woul
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