Hokitika Guardian & Evening Star MONDAY, DECEMBER 10th, 1917. WHY AMERICA IS IN THE WAR.

Hokitika Guardian, 10 December 1917, Page 2

Hokitika Guardian & Evening Star MONDAY, DECEMBER 10th, 1917. WHY AMERICA IS IN THE WAR.

rUSX why America is in the war, after the first, line of conduct taken up by President Wilson, i s inexplainable be•nusp of the clearer vision the President obtained of the facts from inside ' Hirers. Probably he had no more reliable informant of the internal situation than from the United States Ambassador to Berlin, Mr. James W. Gerard Air, Gerard is now out of office, lie severing of relations robbing him of hi s post. He lias filled in his spare time by writing a hook under the title if “Alv hour Years in Germany.” This is now on the market, and its inges are idled with war happenings. I here are many interesting revelations, mil it can bo understood that the publication ol the story excited great interest in America. It is a book of 80,000 words, and this long story was telegraphed to an enterprising London hiilv which published the book in stiial form. Other journals throughout the Empire are printing Mr. Ge-ard’s experience “by arrangement,” and no doubt the hook will be translated into many foreign languages. Air. Gerard in the concluding chapter of hi s book i s careful to lay it down that “an ambassador does not determine the policy of his own country. One of bis principal duties, (he says) is to keep his own country informed,” and he thinks he managed to give the State Department in America advance information ol the moves of the rulers of Germany. TTe sent the Secretary of State in the United States a confidential letter every week, so that herein we may find the clue to the first hand information which converted America to the side, of the Allies, and resulted in the “all in” entry of the, Great United States in this world-wide war. Just how Mr. Gerard felt after being relieved of liis responsible- post and exacting duties in the whirl of the enemy capital, is best told by himself in an extract from the closing account of his historic, stay in Germany, and we cannot do better j than reprint these impressions which j throw a lurid light on the situation of i the war as regards alike the past, present and future operations towards the final victory of an Allied peace. “When I returned to America; after living for two and one-half years in the centre of this world calamity, everything seemed petty and small. I was , surprised that people could still seek little advantages, still be actuated by little jealousies and revenges. Freed from the round of daily work. 1 felt for the first time the utter horror and uselessness of all the misery these Prussian military autocrats bad brought upon the world, and what a reckoning there will lie in Germany some day when the plain people realise the trulli ; when they learn whn'i base motive actuated their rulers in condemning a whole, generation of the earth to war and death! Ts it not a shame that i the world should have been so disturbed : that peaceful men are compelled to lie out in the mud and filth in the depth of winter, shot at and Rtormed at | and shelled, waiting for a chance to

murder some other inoffensive fcllow-

creaturo? Why must the people in Old Poland dio of hunger, not finding dogs enough to eat in the streets of Lemberg? The long lines ol broken peasants in Serbia and in Roumania; the population of Belgium and Northern France torn from their homes to work a 8 slaves for the Germans; the poor prisoners of war starving in their huts or work-

ing in factories and mines; the cries of the old and the children wounded by bombs from Zeppelins; the wail s of the mothers for their sons; the very rustling of the air a s the souls of the ten million dead sweep to another world—why must all these horrors come upon a fair green earth where we believed that love and help and friendship, genius and science and commerce, and religion and civilisation once ruled? The very bodies of those ten million killed, if placed end to end in two linos, would reach from New York to San Francisco. Think of travelling this distance between a double line of staring corpses. It is because in the dark, cold northern plains of Germany there exists an autocracy, deceiving a great people, poisoning their minds from one'generation to another, and preaching the virtue and necessity of war. And until that autocracy is either wiped out or made power les s there can be no peace on earth. The golden dream of conquest was almost accomplished. A lit tle more advance, a few more wagon-loads of ammunition, and there would have 'been no battle of the Marne, no Jofl'ro—a modern Martel to hammer lan k the invading hordes of barbarism. 1 have always stated that Germany is possessed yet of immense military power, and in order to win the nations opposed to Germany must learn to think in a military way. The mere entrance even of a' great nation like our own into the war means nothing in a military way unless hacked by a military power. And there must he no German peace. The old regime left in control of Germany, of Bulgaria, of Turkey, would only seek a’ favourable moment to renew the war. to strive again for the mastery of the world. Fortunately America bars the way—America led by a fighting President, who will allow no compromise with brutal autocracy.”