"ONE WORD-BELGIUM"

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2356, 12 January 1915, Page 9

"ONE WORD-BELGIUM"

AMERICAN VIEW OF GERMANY. Following is an extract from the, "Providence Journal," Rhode Island, D.S.A. :-

"The Muntsterbergs, the Bernstorffs. the Ridders, and all the subsidised' agents of the German Government, are persisting in their frantic appeals to tho journal, and to many other newspapers, in the attempt to curb the honest and heartfelt indignation of the American people. These representatives of German 'culture,' together with the Kuhri Loebs of the commercial world, in' their fatuous 'patriotism' or blindness, believe that the newspapers are responsible for the most spontaneous and universal protest/that the American-people has ever made in its history. "If German money, or the specious .arguments of German professors, could change the course of every newspaper in the United States to-morrow, the sentiment of the country would still remain the same. For the German Kaiser and his Government have been convicted, not by the false reasoning of the American Press, not by lies orspecial pleading, but out of their own mouths. America needs only a' single justification for her attitude. She finds "it in the one word—Belgium. "William of Germany and liis people have an account to square with God that no sophistry can wipe out. For they have wilfully, and in their mad passion for conquest, turned a fair land into a shambles, taken a peaceable little naiion by the throat, torn it, into bleeding fragments, and crushed its very heart beneath their iron tread. Tho stories of individual German atrocities may not all be true, though there is proof that many of them are. But, whatever is true, and whatever is falso, this one thing stands out, so overshadowing in its monstrous cruelty and barbarism tliat it forces the hoarse cry of 'Guilt)' from every man and woman* in the world whose being throbs with a spark of human lovo or the spirit of justice.

"The preservation of Germany's national power, her boasted military machine, her position in art, and the sciences and commerce, _ are no longer dependent for preservation on her victories in the field. They are destroyed already, and she will toil on towards the light through many generations of bitter years before.she rises from her knees again. Not because great armaments will have beaten her down—not becauso she has been hurried back in her crusade of butchery and invasion. No. but becauso, purporting to be a Rre.it civilised race, worthy of 'a place in the sun,' she has proclaimed to the world that a treaty is only a scrap of paper, and, by tho hand of a parauoaic, who poses as the chosen of God Himself, has deluged with the blood of murdered thousands a land wliose peace she has sworn to protect and hold inviolate. All the tramping of Germany's legions, all tho thunder of her bombs and batteries, cannot drown out the cry of one little Belgian child."