Connecticut western news., 1920-08-19
Cox's German Friends"
Philadelphia North American

On October 5, 1916, when Cover nor Cox was campaigning for re- election, his personal organ stopped to fiatter "Our German Friends" using as a text the Lusitania mass acre. Denouncing Roosevelt and Hughes for their criticism of the Wilson policy, it made these revolt ing appeals:-
 We do not believe that all our German friends are so disloyal to their friends and relatives who are 1 fighting for what they believe to be l right, as to give aid and comfort to the worst enemies of Germany in this countrywide rabid Roosevelt and his choice. for President. We do not believe that these sober, staid citizens, Americans as they are, but sympathizing with their loved ones across the water, will vote for the candidate of the man who says those same loved ones murdered men, women and children and ought to have been attacked by the United States. We do not believe that these German friends of ours will vote against President Wilson for having written notes to Germany in- stead of having declared war upon 1 the emperor.
 l It was again to the friends of the 'loved ones" in the Kaiser's army and his murderous submarines that Governor Cox appealed when he said that ''tens of thousands of these splendid people, still sympathizing with the fatherland, will vote for President Wilson as the best means of aiding Germany" It was these hyphemated loyalists his paper ad- dressed on December 13, 1916, when i it said that the war, ''the crime of all the ages," had accomplished nothing for either side," and prayed that "the next arm lifted to wield a sword so foolishly may be paral- yzed"-this when it was inevitable that within few weeks the arm of the United States would be lifted against the aggressor.
 It was when the deaths of 200 American victims of German piracy still cried for redress that the gov ernor's paper said, on October 16, 1916, that ''it is not our war;" and added: "We have not heard of many Americans biting their finger nails at the thought of the submarine activities. Our skirts are clear as regards the activities of the German U-boats. They have committed no crime against us. They have played the part of combatants and respect ed our borders" And it was just five days before the American de- claration of war that the paper ar gued against 'diverting our re- sources to raising an army of a couple of million men" and against sending men abroad for sentiment tai purposes"
 In the fact of this record, Cover nor Cox's protestation that he was passionately opposed to "the Ger man military oligarchy" from the beginning of the European war has hollow sound. His attitude as war governor after this country en- tered the conflict is said to have been correct and creditable; but it is a demonstrated fact that the jour- nal which expressed his opinions was until the last safe moment an advocate of the German cause, an apologist for German savagery and an instigator of that pro-German sentiment which was to endanger the very life of the nation during the struggle.
 It would be unjust to interpret these utterances, detestable as they were, as evidence of disloyalty on the part of Governor Cox or his newspaper. They were due, first, to intellectual and moral incapacity such minds as his were really insen- sible to the criminality and barbar- ity of Prussianism; they counted Belgium the cause of her own woes and decried the folly" of those ] Americans who set sail on the Lusi- : tania in defiance of the Berlin . assassins' threat
 But a more sinister aspect of the . case is that the &trocious propa- ganda of the Cox newspaper had a political motive. In 1916 he was a l candidate for governor, and the ap- = peals to tour German friends" were , in behalf not only of President Will } son, but of the journals proprietor
 and in Hamilton county, where there is an immense German vote, the 7 owner of the Dayton News" rar ahead of the presidential candidate , himself.
 , The record is of national interest } now because it links the democratic nominee inextricably with policies winch brought the country to deer