"ONE WORD—BELGIUM"

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 18, 13 January 1915, Page 7

"ONE WORD—BELGIUM"

AMERICAN YILCW lII' GERMANY. Following is an extract l'l'om tin- "l'lovidence Journal," lthodc Island, U.-S.A.: "The MunsterlKTgs, the Bcrustorffs, tin' Kiddlcrs, and all the subsidised agents of the German Government, arc persisting in tlieir frantic appeals to this journal, and to many other newspapers, in the attempt to curb the honest and heartfelt indignation of the American people. Those representatives of German 'culture,' together with the Kulm Locbs of the commercial world, in their fatuous 'patriotism' or blindness, be, lieve that tlic 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 ar-j guments of Herman professors, could' change the course of every newspaper in the United States to-morrow. 11*' sentiment of the country would still remain the same. For the Herman Kaiser and his Government have been convicted not by the false, reasoning ol the American Press, not by lies or special pleading, but out of their own mouths. America needs only a single justification for her i attitude. .She finds it in the one word—J Belgium. "William of Germany and his 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 nation by the throat, torn it into bleeding fragments. and crushed its very heart beneath their iron tread. The stories of individual German atrocities way not ail be true, though there is proof that mmy of them are. B(it, whatever is tree, and whatever is false, this one tiling 1 stands out, so overshadowing in its monstrous cruelty and barbarism that it forces the hoarse cry of 'Guilty' from' every man and woman in the world whose being throbs with a spark of human love or the spirit of justice. 'The preservation of Germany's national power, lier boasted military machine, her position in art, and the scien vs and commerce are 110 longer dependent for preservation 011 her victories in the field. They are destroyed already, and she will toil on towasds the I'ght through many generations ...f bitte • year:; before she rises from her knees again. Not because great armaments will have beaten her down —not because she has bcrn hurried back in hf-r crusade of , butchery and invasion. No, because, purporting to be a great civilised race, ' worthy of 'a place in the sun.' she ha? proclaimed to the world that .1 treaty 1 is only a scrap of paper, and, by tin hand of a paranonie. who poses as the chosen of Ood Himself, lias deluged with the blood of murdered thousands a land whose peace she has sworn to protect and hold inviolate. All the tramping ol Germany's legions, all the thunder of hei bombs and batteries, cannot drown out the cry of one little Belgian child."