U.S. Pro-Ally Rally

Hokitika Guardian, 27 May 1921, Page 4

U.S. Pro-Ally Rally

14,000 AT A DEMONSTRATION

NEW YORK, .March 10. There y\as a dramatic reaction here on Friday night to the recent efforts of Sinn Keiners and Gorman-Americans to discredit the Allies. A great mass meeting, convened by tlie American Legion (returned soldiers), was held at Madison Square-garden, where three weeks ago Ihe Germans and the Irish organised a protest meeting against alleged French “atrocities” on the Rhine.

When the meeting was at its height 500 American mothers, clad in black, each wearing a “Gold Star” in token of the loss of a soldier son, entered the hall amid deep silence. The hall was crowded by 1 1.0(H) “100 per cent" Americans, while outside a bigger crowd held open-air protests against GermanIrisli propaganda. Cries of “Remember the Lusitania!” “Remember the Argonne!” “Remember the .Marne!” punctuated the speeches of General Pershing and Mr Martin W. Littleton, a prominent lawyer, who stirred the audience with such declarations as: “We must not be asked to dwell on

•Horrors on the Rhine’ when our hearts are still heavy with the sorrow ol the Marne. \Yc must not bo asked to bury our grievances before we have finished burying our dead. We must not he asked to grasp. bloody hands so recently lifted to slay the civilisation of the world while our duty calls us to hold out uttr italic] to those who saved that civilisation. We must not lie asked to relapse into sterilised neutrality or take part in splitting the spirit of the Allies by compromising with tin* incorrigible orminalitv common among the enemy. UNPUNISHED GRIMES.

“The real difficulty is that the war never canto to an end. It was truly an armistice that occurred. Nobody was ever punished. Nobody was over made to suffer except those youths of all countries who died in their country’s name. The great criminals of the war, the great conspirators who plotted it and the great devils who executed it have been allowed to retire in quiet security to write books teeming with falsehoods concerning its causes and conduct. What we ought to have done was to have marched to Berlin, written the treaty at Potsdam instead of Versailles, and hanged the criminals who caused the war. Then we should have been spared the muddling delay and insults of these phlegmatic German statesmen who now suppose they can trifle with the destinies of mankind.”

With the exception of the Ilearst newspapers, which publish only a message paragraph about the meeting, tlie* entire Press devotes its foremost pages lo describing this great demonstration on behalf of loyalty in spirit to the objects of the war. Editorial writers are agreed that while the American nation does not wish to he shackled to the League of Nations’ formal agreements, its heart still heats in harmony with the great ideals for which its soldiers fought side by side with those of the Allies in France.