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"1683-1920": The Fourteen Points and What Became of Them—Foreign Propaganda in the Public Schools—Rewriting the History of the United States—The Espionage Act and How It Worked—"Illegal and Indefensible Blockade" of the Central Powers—1,000,000 Victims of Starvation—Our Debt to France and to Germany—The War Vote in Congress—Truth About the Belgian Atrocities—Our Treaty with Germany and How Observed—The Alien Property Custodianship—Secret Will of Cecil Rhodes—Racial Strains in American Life—Germa — John Shaqi

History

"1683-1920": The Fourteen Points and What Became of Them—Foreign Propaganda in the Public Schools—Rewriting the History of the United States—The Espionage Act and How It Worked—"Illegal and Indefensible Blockade" of the Central Powers—1,000,000 Victims of Starvation—Our Debt to France and to Germany—The War Vote in Congress—Truth About the Belgian Atrocities—Our Treaty with Germany and How Observed—The Alien Property Custodianship—Secret Will of Cecil Rhodes—Racial Strains in American Life—Germa

Schrader, Frederick Franklin

Germans -- United States; World War, 1914-1918 -- Miscellanea

=Atrocities.=--It is easily conceivable that had Germany been invaded
early in the war by the joint world powers, instead of the reverse,
there would have been a decided sentiment in favor of Germany
instead of an increasing hatred which in a short time was extended
to people of German ancestry in the United States; it held them
morally responsible for the alleged atrocities of the German armies
in Belgium. When a paper like the New York “Sun” holds that “the
Germans are not human beings in the common acceptation of the term,”
it cannot avoid the responsibility which that verdict imposes on
every person of German lineage in America. It is therefore a matter
of duty to investigate the testimony of responsible persons whether
the Belgian atrocities had any existence in the light in which they
were presented. The administration shares this responsibility in
having steadfastly ignored demands for the publication of the report
on Belgian atrocities made by the British government early in the war
and transmitted to the State Department by Ambassador Page at London.
These atrocities were alleged to consist of cutting off of hands of
Belgian children, cutting off tongues, of mutilating the breasts of
women, of outraging nuns and violating nurses, crucifying soldiers,
etc.

Now and then a conscientious voice was heard out of the universal cry
of accusation such as represented by the following self-explanatory
letter addressed to the New York “Evening Post:”

    To The Editor of the “Evening Post:”

    Sir: Every man who has had a connection with the honorable
    British journalism of the past ought to thank you for
    your just and moderate rebuke of the pretended censorship
    which has passed off such a mountain of falsehoods on the
    public of both hemispheres. I suppose I am the Doyen of
    the foreign editors of London, and well I know that under
    Gladstone and Beaconsfield it would have been impossible to
    find either writers or censors for the abominable fictions
    which have been spread in order to inflame the British
    masses against their German opponents. The tales of German
    officers filling their pockets with the severed feet and
    hands of Belgian babies, and German Catholic regiments
    deliberately destroying French Catholic Cathedrals, would
    decidedly not have been accepted by any editors of the
    “Times” or “Morning Post” in the days of Queen Victoria.

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