Hokitika Guardian & Evening star THURSDAY DECEMBER, 27th. 1917. AMERICA AT WAR.

Hokitika Guardian, 27 December 1917, Page 2

Hokitika Guardian & Evening star THURSDAY DECEMBER, 27th. 1917. AMERICA AT WAR.

There are high hopes and great expectations of tilings to happen when America enters the fray in real earnest. Sir Edward Morris, Premier of New Foundland for the past ten years, was visiting England at the end of October and he gave a newspaper correspondent some interesting details of the effort America i s making. Graphic as have been many of the accounts sent to England relative to American plan* in the fields of finance, food, shipping, and military 'and navajl organisation. Sir Edward Morris declares that until one has been on the spot it is impossible to grasp the magnitude of the effort the *’nited States is getting ready to make in Democracy’s cause. He describes it as heartening beyond words. President’ VI ilson is clothed with a mandate which practically lias no limits. The country demands of him only that he mobilise every resource and asset it possesses—human and physical— to attain the end on which every American patriot has now set at heart; to rid the universe for all time oi the curse of the Prussian sword. He went on to say; “I am straight from an extended sojourn in the United States, where, at Washington and New York, I enjoyed special opportunities for watching the Americans at the work of gearing up their war machine. Before dwelling on some aspects of that organisation, which in many respects i s going to be the most powerful thing of its kind the world has ever known, I would like to emphasise for the benefit of people in this country what America’s real war aims are. To begiii with they are absolutely concrete. They were made

com rete in order that the simplest mind in the country might know exactly why the nation i s lighting. The United States is only secondarily concerned with the general war aims of the Allies. She favours, of course the liberation of Belgium and Alsace-Lor-raine. She stands, as Britain stands, for the rights and liberties of small na--1 ions. She is out. a s the rest of us are, to vindicate the elementary principles of humanity and international law. But all of these aims are more or less incidental to the Americans’ real aim. That aim is to banish Kaiserism from the face of the earth for all time to come. Until it is achieved the American people will not rest content. They know that nothing short of such a result can or will, in President Wilson’s words, ‘make the world safe for Democracy.’ American mothers are sending their sons to France in order that

the yoke of Prussian militarism may not only he lifted from the neck of the German people, but also that it may be broken and crushed to pieces so effectively that it can never be reassembled and pressed down on the neck of any other people. That is America’s war aim in a nutshell. There is no diplomatic beating about the bush. The Americans are intent on ‘banning the Kaiser’ and all his works.”