REMARKABLE APPEAL TO AMERICANS

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 2985, 24 January 1917, Page 5

REMARKABLE APPEAL TO AMERICANS

(FAMOUS NOVELIST POINTS TO BELGIUM FIERY DENUNCIATION OP ? SLAVE RAIDERS [The famous American novelist, .Robert W. Chambers, has published a, xemarkablo appeal to the 'American nation to rouse itself in. activo protest against the inhuman slave raids by the Huns in Belgium and North France. It is. a burning indictment of the Kaiser —murderer.] Of all/the abominable deviltry praej $ised. inJtliis most hellish, war, tho con''demnatioii to slavery of the Belgian | . nation is tho most damnable. Is this '.nation going to say nothing? Do jiothing?' ■' This nation which fought i one war to -preservo itself from human i slavery, and which fought another to i abolish, from the land a human slavery no less vile! Is this nation going to remain seated comfortably in the • grandstand, in strictly neutral obser- ' vation, experiencing agreeably moral shudders while in tho bloody arena i below Prussian Slavers drive Belgian | Slaves —forty thousand of them so far —toward tho tragic Calvary wliero already the last act is staged—the crucifixion, en masso of - an entire .people? ' Three hundred thousand' aro . to be --.■driven into slavery. •That is the ■estimate for the first batch —white peo- '• plo very greatly resembling ourselves, people who aro - as familiar types to any one of ns as our own next-door ' neighbours, as our own relatives, our oral immediate families. _ Think just for a if thinking be an -unusual .effort,, make that effort for one moment! Picture to yourself a file of, armed foreign .soldiers-—down- .. stairs in your hall or sittingroom, at .your apartment door,.in the vestibule of your boardinghouse, on your farmhouse porch—a company of heavy, silent, sullen men under iron discipline, obeying iron ordere. Your father, your brother, husband, your mother, ' sisters, daughters—yours—go with this 'filo of foreign soldiers without time to dress properly, to eat, to snatch up a 'cloak l'or warmth. ; . The White Slavers. ' They do not know> their destination, aior do you. Perhaps the file of solfliers do not know, nor even, possibly, the officer in command. Only Prussian ■ Militarism knows, only the overseers of the Supremo War Lord —the Great ■ iWhito Slavers, William and Son, Drivers of Slaves, the German Empire, dealers in and exploiters of human be-j ' ings. They may be herded into cattle , cars without food, without clothing, to keep them warm, without even a cup of wator to 'quench their thirst. This already has happened to thousands: They may be sent to work in iron mines, coal mines; they may be driven into the " 'Bteel plants. Thousands already have ibeen so driven—forced to work for their Prussian conquerors, forced to aid in making war munitions to be used •against their own kin, their own people, their own native land. For it is either that or the disciplinary resentment of Hohenzollern and Co., White Slavers—either tho Belgian slaves submit and go and accept _ the wages whioh permit them to exist a •Jwhile longer on earth, or they refuse land are lashed into service _ without tho pitiable stipend which might keep ' Jthe remnant of their families from star.iVation. This is .no exaggeration, no fantastic dream of hell on earth; this :5s what is happening to-day to people . like you and yours; what is going on . while, you read your paper over your •morning coffee or drowse over it after dinner, soothed by your cigar' and a satisfied American conscience. You can read this and then go to the movies if you are that kind. You . can read in your paper of the dreadful sccnes enacted every hour of yesterday and to-day, and ' 1 to-morrow; : scenes in the crippled, devastated, outraged land of Belgium, where a bravo -' and honourable and guiltless people are being driven into human slavery. Then go to your cafe or theatre or cabaret if you can and smugly discharge your conscience of further responsibility. Go to your concert or lecture; if you are built that way go to your church or your prayer meeting or to your confessor, if it's in you to do so without one more thought, without one effort in behalf oE these dying ones who tire being mado ready for a crucifixion en masse. Is there not in tin's quiet land I 'that' 'dreams itself prosperous and secure on© voice to.be raised against the perpetration of this infamy of all the ages— against the Great White Slavery business of Hohenzollern and Co.? Is there'no man" in authority to mobiliso us as a nation against tho monstrous ■ business now being transacted by. the Prussian Slavers of Men, Slavers of Mankind! Before you go to your movies, your theatres, your restau- • rants, your concerts, lectures, dances, clubs, before you tako your many million paths to pleasure, before even you go to your cnurcli or your synagogue or to any temple wherein. you are accustomed to recognise, worsliip, adore tho Most High, whom you pretend to servo, sit down, writo your protest to your Congressmen, to the Senator who represents your State, to the President of tho United States, and place upon eternal record your just anger, your horror, your contempt for • the Slavers who deal to-day "in the flesli and Wood of whito men , and women who wero born as free as you and I. America's Official Silence. This peaceful land has looked on in official silence while Belgium burned to cinders before our eyes. Under our eyes have passed tho , dreary, Tiorrible sanies of massacro, of/outrage, of -brutal cruelties unspeakable, : of littlo Belgian children bayoneted and mutilated, .women outraged in public market places, womon slashed, crippled, disembowelled, fleeing into burning houses; of good priests oxecuted, burgomasters and citizens herded in hundreds before tho filing squads; of bravo imrsfe tried and sentenced at midnight amid all the lurid horror of the Roign of Terror, condemned, executed in flame-shot darkness. We witnessed tho unprovoked invasion, of a peaceful, prosperous, upright, God-fearing nation; wo saw its ancient beauties battered to oust, the very soil oP its land blown into annihilation, so that where sholls fell no crops can grow for a century. Wo saw its citizens imprisoned, outraged, robbed, lined, disciplined, murdered. 'And now, still seated comfortably on the grandstand, we see tho crowning tragedy—three liuiidred thousand ' human slaves, the first batch horded by bayonets across tho arena, that filthy wallow of tho Prussian swine Hohenzollern and Co., White Slavers of Europe. . Ten minutes to voice your protest to your President in Washington—a twocent stamp—then go to your theatre or to your place of ; worship; but until you do this much, now, you are fit for neither theatre nor the church of a God who is watching you closer than you think He is. This is no time for politics, for national or international jealousies, for the pottior personal or local disputes and differences. What is being done, uow, while you read this, is not German, not even Prus- ■ sian, although done b.v Prussians in Prussia's name. It is Hohenzollern sad hellish; it is the work of the decadent human brain, gone rotten to tbe edge of madness.. If is the .monstrous fcmelty ofi a oiipjJa intelleciy a horror

against liaturo, an insanity 'that capert, and mouths and gibbers and spits in tho face of the civilisation, of tbo entire world. . It is doomed. But, in God's namo, heforo it' murders tho souls as well as tho minds awl bodies of a whole nation. writo a dozen words to your President in Washington, and tell him to stop it now. And the White Slavers of Prusslo will surely halt if tho warning cry rises from this land of freedom, entire, undivided, and of a single wind.