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    Transcriber's Note:

    Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as
    possible, including non-standard spelling and a misquotation of
    John McCrae's "In Flanders Fields".

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    "Advertisements" is a correction for "Advertisments".

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                               THE CLOUD

                                   BY
                            SARTELL PRENTICE

                "_Behold there ariseth a little cloud
                 out of the sea, like a man's hand_"

                           [Publisher's mark]

                                NEW YORK
                         E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
                            681 FIFTH AVENUE




                             Copyright 1918
                       By E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY

                         _All Rights Reserved_

             _Printed in the United States of America_




TO MY WIFE




A Cloud Like a Man's Hand


Up on the crest of Carmel a man stood watching. Before him lay the blue
waters of the Mediterranean Sea, to the North the curving Bay of Acre,
while to the south the white surf was breaking on the reefs of
Philistia.

At the other end of the long Carmel ridge another man stood waiting.
Before his eyes the great Plain of Esdraelon lay extended with the hills
of Galilee to the North and the great bulk of Mt. Gilboa, faint in the
summer haze, bounding the vision to the East.

Seven times the Watcher had climbed to the Western crest of Carmel; six
times he had returned to report that there was nothing to be seen, and
seven times he had been bidden, "Go up again; look towards the sea." Now
at last he knew that his vigil was ended; something had risen above the
horizon that told him his watch was past. It was a very little thing;
yet it sent him speeding back along the mountain's ridge until he came
again to the man who was waiting. "Behold," he said, "There ariseth a
little cloud out of the sea like a man's hand." And the man who waited
sent word to a King of Israel, saying, "Prepare thy chariot."

A man's hand is a very little thing, frail and weak, but we have seen a
cloud like a man's hand, a man's hand clad in armor, rising up beyond
the sea. The shadow of that cloud fell on Poland, and Poland died. It
fell on Russia, and a great Empire went down in darkness and eclipse. It
fell on Serbia, and blotted her out, on Roumania, and Roumania passed
into bondage. It fell on Belgium, and Belgium cried out a little and
then grew still. That shadow fell on France and even the trees withered
and died. It stretched out over the sea and touched the Lusitania, and
she crumpled and went down, carrying with her 120 American dead. And now
that shadow falls upon our own shores and darkens the streets and homes
of our towns and cities. So to-day the summons has gone forth to every
American, "Prepare thy chariot!" Each one of us has his own--not to all
of us is the same kind given. To some of us it is the Red Cross, to
others it is the voice or the pen, to every one of us it is the buying
of Liberty Bonds, to some of us it is the Training Camp, the Trench, and
the Battlefield. But to every man, woman, and child of us the hour has
come to "Prepare our chariots." For America has willed with all her
might, her soul, her strength, that the shadow of that "Cloud like a
man's hand" shall forever pass away; that it shall no longer rest on
Poland, Russia, Serbia, Roumania, Belgium, France or on our own America,
but that Liberty, Justice, and Democracy shall shine in an unclouded sky
and that no shadow of a man's mailed fist shall darken either the homes
or the hearts of men.

In 1204 Philip Augustus laid siege to the Chateau Gaillard, which
Richard Coeur de Lion had built to defend his lands of Normandy. In
the course of that siege, the little town of Les Andelys was destroyed,
and the peasants, some 1400 in number, fled to the Chateau for refuge.
But Sir Roger de Lacy, defending for England, was already facing
starvation, England was far away, John Lackland was slow, and provisions
were failing. He did not dare admit these 1400 "bouches inutiles," for
that would mean the almost immediate surrender of his trust. Therefore
he kept the gates of the castle closed. But the besiegers would not
allow the refugees to pass through their lines, their Commandant
believing that the compassion of the English would sooner or later
compel them to receive these fugitives if they saw them starving before
their eyes. So they held them between the lines until they starved to
death, so the story goes.

It is a long way from 1204 to the present time, but last year General
von Bissing, the German Governor of Belgium, said to F. C. Wolcott, the
representative of the Rockefeller Foundation, "Starvation is a great
weapon. We mean to use it to force thousands of Belgian skilled workmen
into German factories, thousands of Belgian farmers into the fields of
Mesopotamia. The rest--the ineffectives, the very old and the very
young, the weak and the useless--we mean to place in front of the firing
line, put firing squads behind them, and drive them through the French
and English lines, that France and England may take care of them." That
is what Germany has been doing ever since the war broke out. Wherever
her armies have gone, from Armenia to Serbia, Poland, Belgium, and
France, she has been driving women, children, and men through our lines
for us to care for. Nay, it is more than this; it is not men, women and
children, but it is the very essence and principle of manhood,
womanhood, and childhood that she has been forcing through our lines and
that we have called upon to care for.

I am not going to tell you again what Germany has been doing to men,
women, and children; I am not going to repeat the stories of her
atrocities. A year ago I should have felt compelled to tell you what
to-day I feel I may leave unsaid, for a year ago we were not sure, we
could not, many of us, bring ourselves to believe, that men born of
women could do such things. But to-day we know. The awful tale of
helpless ships sunk so as to leave no trace, the shelling of life boats,
the sinking of hospital ships, the bombing of hospitals and ambulances,
the crucifixion of men, the outraging of women, the torturing of
children, the enslaving of entire populations, all these barbarisms are
proved not merely by the testimony of many witnesses, but from the lips
of the very soldiers and sailors of Germany herself. So I gladly pass
these things by, only bidding you remember that in this war German
ruthlessness has driven manhood, womanhood, and childhood through our
lines for us to protect.

But there is something else that has been driven into our lines and
which we are called upon to guard. We are protecting the freedom and
dignity of Labor. I wish every laboring man could be made to understand
Labor's stake in this war. The leaders of American labor, for the most
part, have understood from the beginning. Their appeals to the manhood
of the country have been stirring and stimulating, and to-day Labor is
beginning to respond. There are fewer strikes and more effectiveness.
But the individual laboring man did not grasp the issues from the first.
If he had there would not have been 3000 strikes in the first year of
our war, with a total of 6000 years of labor lost. Let me speak for a
moment of Labor's stake in this war.

Ambassador Gerard says, "The workingmen in the cities of Germany are
worked longer and get less out of life than any other workmen in the
world. The laws so much admired, insurance against unemployment,
sickness, injury, old age, etc., are in reality skillful measures which
bind the workmen to the soil as effectively as the serfs of the Middle
Ages were bound to their masters' estates.

"I have had letters from workingmen ... begging for a steerage fare to
America, saying that their insurance payments were so large that they
could not save money from their wages. Of course, after making these
payments for some years the workingman hesitates to emigrate and lose
all the premiums he has paid to the State. In peace times a skilled
mechanic receives less than two dollars a day, for which he must work
at least ten hours." He says that he visited a nobleman on his estate in
Hungary, where--as throughout the Central Empires,--the agricultural work
is largely done by women who are paid twenty cents a day. "The women in
the farming districts of Germany are worked harder than the cattle. In
summer time they are in the fields at five or six o'clock in the morning
and they work until eight o'clock or later at night. For this they are
paid as high as forty-eight cents a day in harvest time." We have a
Contract Labor Law which forbids the importation of labor. Germany every
year imports a million laborers from abroad and the employers favor both
the employment of women in farm work and the importation of labor, for
the more workers the lower the scale of wages throughout the Empire.

There is a document written by a German, Siegfried Balder, which is
printed in the Congressional Record for January 17, 1918.

The writer says that in Prussia, whose population is two thirds that of
all Germany, only one twentieth of the householders have an income equal
to $750 a year, while over fifty per cent are living on $225 a year or
less; more than 820,000 of the population of Berlin are living in single
rooms, while 49,991 of these single rooms house from five to thirteen
people each. Large numbers of the Prussian work people are doomed to
live and die in quarters narrower than a prison cell.

But if this is what Germany does to her own, to men of Teuton blood and
to the children of the Teuton God, what does she do to those who are
born in the outer darkness of other lands, to those who are not of
Teuton blood, to the laboring men of other nationalities?

You know the story of the Belgian Deportations. When the Germans overran
Belgium many thousands of the people sought refuge under the flag of
Holland. Germany then pledged her word to Holland that, if she would
exert "gentle pressure" on these refugees and force them to return to
their homes, the German Administration in Belgium would hold itself
bound by the terms of the Hague Conventions. The German authorities
"did not for a moment dream of making them prisoners, of making
requisitions, or of deporting those who are law abiding into Germany."
The German Governor of Antwerp also gave his pledge to Cardinal Mercier,
first verbally and then in writing, that "young men need not fear
deportation into Germany whether for enrollment in the army or for
employment at forced labor." This pledge was finally ratified by the
Governor General, Gen. von der Goltz, in the presence of witnesses "pour
la generalite du pays et sans limite de temps." (Les Deportations
Belges, a la Lumiere des Documents Allemands, Chapter 14.)

One year later another Proclamation appeared:

"Recently workmen have refused, without reason, in different parts of
the occupied territory, to obey the commands of the Military Commanders
relative to the performance of necessary work; they have caused great
harm to their communes and their fellow citizens. To avoid such
conditions I order as follows:

"Those who are able but refuse to work or to continue their labors in
accordance with their usual occupations, in accord with the interests of
the German Military Administration and the desire of the German Military
Commanders shall be punished by imprisonment up to one year. Also
recusants may be sent into Germany. The fact that they appeal to any
possible law of Belgium or even to International Conventions can never
justify a refusal to work. The Military Commander alone will decide on
the acceptability of the forced labor."

One year later still, in October, 1916, the deportations began. It is
not necessary that the story be told again. You know that boys and
girls, men and women were torn from their homes, packed into cattle cars
and sent on long journeys, with insufficient food and clothing, into
Germany. There they were threatened with rifles, bayonets, and machine
guns to compel them to sign statements to the effect that they were
voluntary workers in German munition factories. Do you know that girls
have been beaten with whips for failing to complete their tasks? In one
place they were promised four marks a day, but two and a half marks were
deducted for food and lodging, one mark for clothes, half a mark went
into a "reserve fund" and they were paid half a mark a day, about six
cents. But they did not really receive that for they were under a
military Governor who had the power to fine them up to fifty dollars for
the infraction of any one of a hundred petty military rules, for failure
to salute an officer, for instance, and remember, the German salutes his
officer when he is two blocks away. In other words they were subject to
a fine, without appeal, which was equal to more than two and one third
years' pay at six cents a day! We have the record of a girl, which is
interesting only because she is a type, who received 187 cents for 180
days work, about one cent a day.

An advertisement appeared recently in a Berlin paper which read as
follows: "For Exchange: Fifty Polish workpeople, twenty men, thirty
girls, for exchange for an equal number of workpeople of other
nationalities."

Wherein does this differ from slavery? God help the workers of America
if Germany wins this war. Do you realize what Germany proposes for
America? Mr. McAdoo has already told us that she proposes to take from
us an indemnity of one hundred and twenty-five billions of dollars,
one-half our total wealth. She has told us that she will take charge of
our Monroe Doctrine and "put us in right relations with Germany." Now
she tells us that she intends to dictate to us our tariff laws, to tell
us what we must admit free of duty and what we must ship without
impost. In other words, Germany proposes to bring the American workman,
who before this war was receiving an average wage of $667 a year, into
competition with the Prussian worker, who lived on $225 a year. Let
every laboring man, skilled or unskilled, understand his own vital stake
in the winning of this war.

Now look at some of the issues of this war.

You know Germany's dream of a Middle Empire; of a great new kingdom that
is to stretch from the English Channel to the Persian Gulf, from the
borders of Normandy through Mesopotamia. It is to include Northeastern
France, Belgium, Luxemburg, Denmark, Holland, Germany, Austro-Hungary,
parts of Switzerland and Italy, Serbia, Roumania, Turkey, Armenia, Asia
Minor and Mesopotamia. Into this Middle Kingdom Greece and Roumania on
the South and Norway and Sweden on the North are to be forced by
economic pressure. To this Empire we must now add Poland, Courland,
Livonia, Finland and the Ukraine, while Persia is to be "exploited" for
the benefit of Germany.

Think for a moment of the resources of this Empire.

Hungary, Roumania, Asia Minor, the Ukraine and Mesopotamia can feed the
entire world. The oil fields of Roumania, Southern Russia and
Mesopotamia can light the world. The iron fields of Mesopotamia are said
to be the richest undeveloped iron mines existing on the globe, and the
Argennis copper mines are without a rival. This Empire could provide an
army of fifteen million men in times of peace and of forty million in
times of war. Its railroads, rivers and canals afford the most complete
transportation system heart could desire. You could not starve it and
with its ports upon four oceans, you never could blockade it.
Strategically, it lies across three great divisions of the world,
Europe, Asia and Africa, in such position that it could dominate them
all.

Now it is important that you should understand the relation of iron to
this war, for iron means steel, and steel means guns, rifles, shells,
aeroplanes, ships and all the material of war. A nation that can control
the world's iron supply can dominate the world.

At the outbreak of this war Germany had an annual production of
twenty-eight millions tons of iron, of which seven million came from
Germany and twenty-one million came from Alsace-Lorraine, which Germany
stole from France in 1870. France had twenty-two million tons of iron a
year, of which fifteen came from the basin of Briey, in Northeastern
France. The first rush of Germany carried her over the coal fields of
Belgium, over Luxemburg, over the mines of the Briey Basin and put her
in possession of practically all the foundries and steel mills that
France possessed. When Germany settled down to trench warfare she had an
annual production of forty-nine million tons of iron, seven million from
Germany, twenty-one from Lorraine, six from Luxemburg and fifteen from
the occupied districts of France, while France had only seven million
left. That is why Germany was so bitter against England when England
entered the war; that is why she was so insistent that we should put an
embargo on munitions, for if England had not come in and kept the seas
open, if we had consented to forbid the shipment of munitions, France
must have swiftly fallen through the sheer starvation of her guns, for a
nation with seven million tons of iron a year cannot contend with one
possessing forty-nine million tons.

But stop for a moment to remember, since we are speaking of the shipment
of munitions, that Austria herself, the Government of Vienna, sold to
the Confederate Government some thousands of stacks of arms during our
Civil War, and refused either to forbid the shipment or to resell to the
Government in Washington. Germany sold arms to the Boers and to England
during the War in South Africa, and when the English blockade made it
impossible to continue selling to the Boers she went on selling to
England. She sold to Spain during our war with Spain. She has never
considered placing an embargo upon her own munition plants when other
nations were at war, yet she poured out the vials of her hate upon us
for doing what she herself has always done.

But now grant that Germany wins this war and that that Great Middle
Empire, which already, mark you, is a reality from Lille almost to
Bagdad, remains and endures, who is going to control and rule it?
Germany has forty-nine million tons of iron a year; Austria has very
little iron, Italy has none, neither Roumania, Bulgaria or Serbia have
any iron, Turkey has none except in Mesopotamia, which Germany will
control. Who then will be the master of that Middle Empire? It will be
only Prussia writ large. But Germany's control rests on other
foundations still; her General Staff to-day controls the military
establishments of all her allies, not a command can be given anywhere
without Germany's assent. Moreover the printing presses of Berlin have
been busy since the war broke out, stamping out paper money which has
been loaned to Austria, Bulgaria and Turkey until these countries are
hopelessly entangled in an economic net.

Now, in the Spring of 1918, we are about to receive the impact of a new
peace drive from Germany. But what may we expect Germany to propose? The
most liberal terms that have been suggested are a return to the _status
quo ante_, peace without indemnities or annexations.

But remember that Germany has collected her indemnities as she has gone
along. She took four hundred and eighty million francs from Brabant
alone in one seizure; she has been taking sixty million francs a month,
720 million francs a year from Belgium since she violated her frontiers.
She has looted every safe, national, civic or in private dwellings, she
has taken the locomotives and the rolling stock from all railroads, the
ploughs, harrows and live stock from all farms, the machinery from all
factories, she has taken the art treasures from all museums, churches,
palaces and homes; she has taken the mercury from the backs of mirrors,
the wool from the mattresses, the linen from the shelves, she has taken
name-plates, door knobs, knockers, curtain rods, carpet rods, kitchen
utensils and the bells from the churches. She has drawn her net so fine
that she has taken the francs and centimes from her prisoners and she
has picked the pockets of the dead!

Advertisements appear in the Berlin papers wherein contractors offer to
transport the loot from any conquered territory on most reasonable
terms, while at number 35 Schoenberger Strasse there is a great
warehouse where you might buy linens, laces, furniture, statuary,
bric-a-brac, cradles, anything you like for almost anything you care to
offer, for official Germany is selling the loot and plunder she has
gathered in in violation of those Hague Regulations which Germany signed
and swore to observe; "Family honor and rights, individual life and
private property as well as religious convictions and worship must be
respected." Article 46.

"Pillage is expressly forbidden," Article 47.

Austria staggers beneath her load of debt; Bulgaria and Turkey are
hopelessly impoverished, England and France march on towards bankruptcy,
Germany also is drawing very near financial ruin, but even at that she
has gathered in such a harvest of wealth as no war has ever brought to
any people, and now she asks for a "peace without indemnities"!

And she wants "Peace without annexations."

Belgium has been stripped to the bone. Her recovery will require
centuries. Never again will Belgium be able to block Germany's pathway,
never again shall there be an epic of Liege. So Germany will give back
Belgium.

She will give back Serbia, but she cannot give back the Serbians. Those
that have survived the battlefield, the famine, plague and pestilence
are being, or have been, massacred. Her farms are tenantless, her cities
empty, the grass is growing in her streets. Never again shall Serbia
bar Germany's drive to the east. Her abandoned leaseholds invite true
Germans to move in and take possession. So Germany will give back
Serbia. But England must give back Mesopotamia and let Germany come down
to the Persian Gulf! England must give back Syria and let Germany come
down to the Suez Canal! England must give back the colonies in Africa
that her own colonists have won and suffer anew Germany's let and
hindrance to the Cape to Cairo railroad!

What wonder Germany desires a "Peace without indemnities or
annexations"? But we have not yet exhausted Germany's profits in this
war. Without counting her recent advances into Finland, Roumania and
the Ukraine, without counting her last conquest in Russia, Germany has
seized 500,000 square kilometers of conquered soil occupied by a
population of forty-two millions; from these millions Germany has been
drawing that forced labor which she has been paying at the biblical wage
of a penny a day. I am often asked to admire the great fight Germany has
put up against the entire world. But I know that that fight has been
made possible only because, against all the instincts and laws of
civilization, Germany has been enslaving huge populations, setting them
to forbidden tasks in order to release every German for her armies.
Without that slavery Germany could not have raised such armies or
endured so long. Not to Germany, but to England and to France,
which--while enslaving no nation, have given twenty per cent of their
entire population to this war, is honor and reverence due! And this
Germany wants peace because she is already dreaming of another war.
Frederick Nauman, member of the Reichstag, tells us that she will build
barns and granaries to hold a supply of food sufficient for her entire
population for ten years; that she will build concrete entrenchments,
impregnable lines of defence, along all her frontiers. Germany has
already enforced a dreadful kind of concubinage, to avoid a worse term,
upon the women of the occupied territories, and now we have evidence
that she is enforcing that same dreadful system upon the women of her
own land in utter disregard of all ethics, religion and the dignity of
womanhood. At any expense Germany means to have boys that, twenty years
from now, when France is still exhausted from this struggle and before
England shall have regathered her strength, Germany shall have a new
army to send over the Rhine, through spent Belgium and unrecuperated
France. Then there shall be no halt before the walls of Paris, no battle
of the Marne, no failure at Calais!

And let America keep in mind the fact that this Germany has expressed
the greatest hostility for America. "Let America look out when this war
is finished," and "I will stand no nonsense from America after this
war," said the Kaiser to Ambassador Gerard. In 1898 Count von Goetzen
said, in substance, "About fifteen years from now my country will begin
a great war; in a few weeks we shall have taken Paris; in three months
we shall occupy London; then we will turn to America. We will take some
billions of dollars from America in indemnities; we will put you in your
right relation with Germany and we will take charge of the Monroe
Doctrine for ourselves." "We are keeping books on you Americans," said
Major Liebster. "It is a long account, and we have not missed a detail.
We are keeping the account in black and white; rest assured that it will
be presented to you some day for settlement." In 1901 Freiherr von
Edelsheim of the German General Staff wrote a book on sea power, in
which he briefly outlined a German plan for the conquest of America and
said: "Germany is the only power in a position to conquer America." If
once we and our allies let go our grip, if we grow soft, if we falter
and fail, be very sure we and our children shall pay to the full the
penalty.

I heard Major Murphy say that the Captain of the Arabic, who had gone
down with his torpedoed ship and had been rescued from the sea, told him
that as long as he stayed on the bridge of that sinking vessel, every
time he rang a bell to the engine room he got the answering signal. I
know no story of heroism in all this war that moves me more than this.
Have you ever been in the engine room of a great liner where the sides
come close together and you can put your fingers on the steel plates
and know that just a fraction of an inch beyond, the deep green waters
of the sea are running? Then take your stand with these thirty or forty
stokers and engineers; the ship is sinking, you know that the life boats
are putting off, rafts are being launched and men are leaping into the
sea. Now turn and look up that narrow and twisting iron stairway and
watch for the first green gleam of foam-flecked waters to come cascading
down, and then every time the bell rings give back the answering signal.

Our Ship of State has pushed out into a stormy sea; the officers are on
the bridge, the lookout at the prow; the fortunate men are at the gun.
To us, far in the interior, there comes the humbler task of keeping the
fires burning on which depends the vital element of speed, but wherever
you stand, whatever your work, see to it that when your call comes you
can give back the answering signal.

And there is so much that we can do.

In the first place this war has been made possible only by the ghastly
education which Germany has been giving her children through the past
forty years. Dr. Van <DW18> said that there was an American professor, I
think of Columbia University, who had written a life of Goethe. When he
was in Germany the Minister of Education sent for him and asked
permission to translate that Life into German for use in German
schools. Permission having been readily given he said: "But there is
one chapter that must come out before we can put that book into the
hands of German children. You have a chapter on Goethe as a lover of
liberty; we would like that omitted from our text book." To the credit
of America let it be said the book never was translated nor has it yet
appeared in German schools; but it is significant that German children
must not be taught that a great German could be a lover of liberty.
Professor Kusian, of Hollins College, Virginia, said that in his day
William Tell could not be read in German schools. There is a song that
German school children are singing to-day that was written by a school
master and this is the translation: "Over there in the cowardly
trenches lie the enemy, and no one but a dog will say that mercy should
be given to-day. Shoot down everything that cries for mercy; kill
everything like dogs; more enemies, more enemies, be your prayer in this
day of retribution."

Can you imagine teaching children lessons like that?

There is a juvenile paper published in Germany that recently contained
an article whose substance follows: "War is divine, it is glorious. When
the soldier falls upon the battlefield, his spirit goes directly to the
gates of Paradise, where all good soldiers go, but none of those old
women in petticoats who say that war is brutal; there a Prussian Lance
Corporal throws wide the door." (It is worth noting that St. Peter has
lost his job, that a Prussian Lance Corporal now bears the key and
determines who shall be and who shall not be allowed to enter.) "While
old Fritz leaps from his golden throne to welcome each home-coming
Prussian soldier." It sounds blasphemous, but it appears that Prussian
militancy has dethroned even the Lord God Omnipotent, and has placed the
Thief of Silesia on the Golden Throne. I wonder how he ever entered in.
We are told that "Nothing that worketh abomination or maketh a lie can
ever enter in," and it was old Fritz who once said "If it pays us to be
honest; let us be honest. But if it is necessary to lie, let us be
cheats."

There is, then, this that we can do. We can see to it that every child
in our schools, in our churches, in our homes, nay, that every man and
woman, too, in all America shall be brought up to love and reverence
every star in our flag, to such a consecration of life to all for which
that flag stands as shall produce a devotion and loyalty that shall
outmatch the best that Germany can do.


Our Flag!

    "We who in the old days, the easy days of pleasuring,
    Loitered in the distant lands, we know the thrill that came
    When, in far foreign places, above the stranger faces,
    The sight of it, the might of it, would wake us like a flame.
    Our own flag, the one flag, it stirred our blood to claim.

    "We who in these new days, these days of all confusion,
    Look upon it with the eyes of one long blind who sees,
    We know at last its beauty, its magnitude of duty,
    Dear God! If thus it seems to us, what will it mean to these
    Who wait for it, who pray for it, our kindred over seas?

    "These who face the red days, the white nights of fury,
    Where Death, like some mad reaper, hacks down the living grain,
    They shall see our flag arise like a glory in the skies,
    The Stars of it, the Bars of it, that prove it once again
    The new Flag, the true Flag, that does not come in vain."

                                                   (THEODOSIA GARRISON.)

It is for every one of us, if it costs all that we have and all that we
are, to see to it that that Flag comes swiftly, with the maximum of
power, and that it "does not come in vain."

There is another thing that we can do. We can remember that Loyalty to
America to-day means also Loyalty to her allies.

A great propaganda is being waged throughout this country which is
intended to arouse suspicion, distrust and antagonism towards England.
The Germanic value of that propaganda is obvious. It is dangerous to-day
to advocate sympathy for Germany, but if German agents can sow seeds of
distrust among the Allies and can divide England, France and America or
hinder their perfection of cooeperation Germany will be the gainer.

That propaganda may be found in books on the shelves of our libraries;
it appears occasionally in the pages of some of our newspapers; it is
working among the soldiers in our cantonments. It is playing on the
memories of 1776 and of 1861; it is working on all Irish loyalties and
sympathies; it is striking every note of passion and of prejudice. In
view of this propaganda, it is time for us to review the relations of
America with England and to strike a balance.

We have recently celebrated the Centennial Anniversary that commemorated
the conclusion of one hundred years of unbroken peace with England. In
view of that Centenary, we might consider the books of 1776 as
definitely closed, although still we should remember that Burke and
Chatham together with a host of English Whigs fought the battle for the
American revolutionists no less bravely and staunchly than did the
armies of the Americans themselves. We might also recall the words of
George III to Mr. Adams, the first Minister of the United States to
Great Britain: "Sir," said the King, "I wish you to believe, and that it
may be understood in America, that I have done nothing in the late
contest but what I thought myself indispensably bound to do by the duty
which I owed to my people. I will be very frank with you. I was the last
to consent to the separation; but the separation having been made I have
always said, as I say to you now, that I would be the first to meet the
friendship of the United States as an independent power." That message
of friendship surely closes the issues of the Revolution.

In 1861 and throughout the Civil War, it is admitted that the majority
of the English aristocracy, the Parliament and the Cabinet were in
sympathy with the South. But it is also true that the great mass of the
scholars, writers and almost the whole of the English middle class were
strong in their sympathies with the Government at Washington. Let me
quote passages from Prof. Willis Fletcher Johnston's "American Foreign
Relations," "The next step of the British Government was even more
marked in its friendship to the United States. This was on June 1st,
the issuance of an order forbidding the naval vessels or privateers of
either belligerent to carry prizes into any British port or territorial
waters. The Confederate Commission in London earnestly protested against
the order, but in vain, while Seward remarked that it would probably
prove a death blow to Southern privateering. The example set by England
was followed by France, Spain, Prussia, Holland, etc." "Adams reported
to Seward that he was assured on every hand that sympathy with the
Federal Government was universal." "The blockade brought to England the
greatest industrial distress the land had ever known, for which at first
the North was held responsible. Against this judgment several influences
were in time triumphant." "Punch," attacking the attitude of the
English Government wrote:

    "Though with the North we sympathise it must not be forgotten
    That with the South we've stronger ties which are composed of Cotton.
    The South enslaves their fellowmen, whom we all love so dearly
    The North keeps commerce bound again, which touches us more nearly.
    Thus a divided duty we perceive in this hard matter.
    Free Trade, or sable brothers free?
    Oh, won't we choose the latter?"


"BATTLE OF HUMANITY"

    "Bright, Forster, the Duke of Argyll and 'Tom' Hughes spoke
    effectively to convince England that the United States was fighting
    the great battle of humanity. 'The question of intervention between
    the Federal and Confederate Governments arose early in the War. It
    was practically considered only by England and France. The latter
    was far more inclined to such action; it proposed it earlier, more
    frequently and in a more extreme form.' When the purpose of the
    Emancipation Proclamation was understood, the heart of the English
    people responded to it with an impulse no power could withstand and
    which no Government could defy. A great public meeting was held in
    London on New Year's Eve which hailed the dawn of an era of
    universal freedom and of closer friendship between England and
    America. At the same time a similar gathering in Manchester,
    stricken as it was with the cotton famine, adopted similar
    resolutions addressed to the President of the United States. At
    Sheffield a vast gathering passed resolutions to the effect that it
    was the duty of England to give her sympathy and moral support to
    the Northern States. All England took up the cry within the next few
    weeks. Deputations waited upon the American Minister with addresses
    of sympathy and encouragement. At least two members of the Cabinet,
    the Duke of Argyll and Milner Gibson, spoke publicly for the Federal
    Cause. Vast meetings at Spurgeon's Tabernacle and at Exeter Hall
    applauded the name of Lincoln and cried down that of Jefferson
    Davis. In Gloucestershire any apparent complicity of England with
    the Confederacy in the equipment of warships was condemned and in
    almost every considerable city or town in England, Scotland or Wales
    such sentiments were expressed at great popular assemblies. An
    increasing number of statesmen, including such men as Lord Disraeli
    and Lord Derby, openly espoused the Federal side."

Since the Civil War, the evidences of England's friendship have been as
many as they have been valuable. We have good reason to believe,
although it never can be proved as the proposals were never reduced to
writing, that at the time of our war with Spain an effort was made by
the Powers of Continental Europe, who were all strongly pro-Spanish and
anti-American in their sympathies, to band Europe together and to
intervene unitedly between the United States and Spain, but in the
interests of Spain and to the detriment of the United States. This
scheme was only blocked by the attitude of England.


AT MANILA

We should do well also to remember the day in Manila Bay when the
English Fleet steamed and anchored between the German ships and Admiral
Dewey's squadron and when Admiral Chichester practically gave von
Diderich to understand that a shot fired against America would hit
England first. Just before this war broke out, Germany went to England,
unofficially, to say that that Government had it in mind to seize parts
of Argentine and of Brazil and to establish Imperial colonies there, and
wished to know the attitude of the English in such a contingency.
England replied, also unofficially, that Germany had forgotten the
Monroe Doctrine. Germany responded that she had not forgotten the Monroe
Doctrine, but that she was prepared to meet that issue with America if,
and when, America raised that issue. England then said that she could
only consider such an act by Germany as an expression of unfriendliness
and the German fleet never sailed.

Let us remember that Germany has never assented to the Monroe Doctrine.
In 1898 Count von Goetzen said "About fifteen years from now my country
will begin a great war. In two months she will be in Paris; then will
come the crushing of England. Some months after we have finished our
work in Europe we will take New York and probably Washington and hold
them for some time. We will put your country in its place with reference
to Germany. We will take a billion of dollars or more from New York and
other places. The Monroe Doctrine will be taken charge of by us, as we
will then have put you in your place and we will take charge of South
America as far as we want to."


"AN IMPERTINENCE"

"The Monroe Doctrine cannot be justified, it is only an aspiration
which we Europeans consider an impertinence. The inviolability of
American soil is invoked without there being at hand the slightest means
of warding off an attack of a respectable European Power." So said
Johannes Vollert in 1903.

I am told by men who freely admit England's friendliness and its value
to America that after all, England is not disinterested. She saw herself
confronted by the hostility of great powers abroad and needed the
support of America; hence her friendliness. Is it not asking a great
deal of any Government that we should demand that it should rest its
policies on disinterested affection for another people and not upon the
welfare of those for whose wellbeing they have been placed in office?
But, if we discount English friendship on that ground, let us be
logical and consistent. We have publicly and enthusiastically admitted
our debt to France for the help she gave us in our Revolution. But
before the year 1776 Vergennes, who was over the Foreign Office in
Paris, had written a memorial on American affairs. "In the document the
importance of maintaining a close alliance between the different
branches of the House of Bourbon and of opposing on all occasions the
interests of Great Britain was clearly demonstrated and especial stress
was laid upon the necessity of aiding the Americans in their struggle
for independence. The defeat and submission of the colonies would,
Vergennes declared, be followed by disastrous consequences for the
French and Spanish possessions in the West Indies. If, however, the
Americans won by their own exertions, they would be themselves disposed
to conquer the French and Spanish West Indies, so as to provide fresh
outlets for their productions. Hence it was of supreme importance that
France should at once lay the colonists under a debt of gratitude...."


"LET US BE JUST"

I yield to none in my admiration and affection for France, but let us be
just in the application of our standards and criterions of judgment. If
we are to condemn and repudiate our debt to England because we deny it
the element of disinterestedness, let us also, and for the same reason,
repudiate our admitted debt to France. It is admitted that we were
utterly unprepared for war even as late as 1917. Mr. George Creel
defends our unpreparedness and says that we could not logically and
consistently work for peace while we prepared for war, but even in
defending he admits the fact. While we have been so unprepared it has
been the English fleet that has been defending our Monroe Doctrine; it
is the English fleet that has kept our coasts unscarred; it is the
English fleet that has enabled our commerce and our transports to cross
the seas; it is that Imperial line of ships and guns and men that have
protected us through our uneasy slumbers, that have given us time to
wake up to the issues of this war and upon which we have depended for
the opportunity to make ready and prepare.

Again and again has England saved the world; once when the white sails
of the Armada rounded Ushant and spread out over the English Channel;
again when Louis XIV was threatening the Old World and the New; again
when Bonaparte was making and unmaking kings from Madrid to Warsaw; but
never did England give to the world a greater service than when she
offered up that little Expeditionary Army and threw herself, all
unprepared, across the pathway of victorious Germany. Not one of us can
look at the ruins of the cities of France and Belgium and remember the
threats of Germany directed towards ourselves without thinking with a
shudder at what might be the condition of our own cities and citizens
had England failed the world in that dreadful summer of 1914.


"POISON OF HATRED"

The American citizen who is opposed to England because of the memories
of 1776, or because of the attitude of the English Government in 1861,
we can understand. We can argue with him sympathetically, for his
antagonism is based on American history imperfectly studied. But the
German-American who hates England, not because of what she has at any
time done to America, but because of what he thinks she has done or
would do to Germany and who spreads the poison of his hatred through
America, is admittedly disloyal. The Irish-American who hates England,
not because of anything she has done to America, but because of what
Cromwell did in Ireland nearly three hundred years ago or because of
what English Cabinets may not have done in more recent years may not be
disloyal in intent, but he stands upon the same basis as the
German-American in this, that he imports antagonism; he does not base it
on American soil but on a soil that is three thousand miles away. His
antagonism is not due to his Americanism, but to his affections for
another land. But exactly the same must be said of the German-American
who preaches hate for England. To-day English ships convoy our
squadrons safely through the seas made dangerous by Germany; American
destroyers are helping to guard English shores; American regiments are
merging with English regiments and are acting as reserves and
reinforcements for the English Army; our flag and the English flag are
flying side by side in Picardy. Our guns stand wheel to wheel with
English guns; our ships, our armies and our Red Cross are standing side
by side with English surgeons, nurses, soldiers and battleships. The
same spirit of unity must be maintained at home as well as abroad and we
must understand that a common cause makes a common foe, but it also
makes a common friend. Loyalty to America to-day means also loyalty to
England.

I have a friend, president of a large corporation which employs
thousands of men, who has been called to the head of a Department of a
certain war activity in Washington. He told me that they had given him
what seemed to be a very unimportant task, one that any clerk in his
employ could well discharge, "but," he said, "I am trying to make it
important by putting into it the best I have and the best that I can
do."

When that spirit grips us, every single one, we shall sweep forward to a
victory that nothing in all Germany can ever halt.

There is one other issue in this war, one other thing for which we
fight, and I have left it to the last.

Mr. La Follette tells us that we are going to war to protect our
investments, and we are. We have entered this war for just that
purpose; we have gone to war to protect our investments, but not our
stocks and bonds. Do you realize that ever since this war broke out in
1914, not a ship has sailed from any Atlantic port of America or Canada,
but that it has carried Americans, men of our flesh and blood, speaking
our language to fight this battle against the Beast. Wherever men have
fallen, these have fallen; wherever men have died, on the land, in the
air, on the sea or in German prison camps, these have died; their ashes
lie mingled with those of England's best, their bones rest in the soil
of Serbia, Italy, Belgium and France.

    "We cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this
    ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have
    consecrated it far above our power to add or detract.... It is for
    us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work
    which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced ... that
    we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain."

We all remember the vision of Constantine; that flaming cross gleaming
in the sky with the words written over it: "In hoc signo vinces." But
there is another vision of crosses that rises before our eyes. Little
crosses, white crosses, wooden crosses, that march in serried ranks
across the trench-scarred face of Europe from the North Sea to the Black
Sea--a veritable forest of crosses, low-lying, yet they throw a longer
and a darker shadow than cypress, hemlock or than pine, for beneath them
lie the great hearts of the Empire, of Belgium, France, Italy, Serbia,
and Roumania; they call to us, they wait for us.

    "Who says their day is over, while others carry on
    The little wooden crosses spell but the dead and gone?
    Not while they deck a sky line, not while they crown a view,
    Or a living soldier sees them and sets his teeth anew."

                                                        (E. W. HORNUNG.)

Now, listen:

    "In Flanders' fields the poppies grow
    Between the crosses, row on row,
    That mark our place;
    While, in the sky,
    The larks still bravely singing fly
    Unheard amid the guns.
    We are the dead; short days ago
    We lived, saw dawn, felt sunsets glow,
    Loved and were loved, and now we lie
    In Flanders' fields.

    Take up our battle with the foe;
    To you, from falling hands we throw
    The torch, be yours to bear it high.
    If ye break faith with us who die,
    We shall not sleep, though poppies blow
    In Flanders' fields."

                                                           (JOHN MCRAE.)

It was before Verdun. All day long the lines in the field-gray uniforms
had been assailing a French trench. Late in the afternoon the continual
pressure forced the French to yield the ground. Only the dead and dying
were left when the Germans filed through to take possession. Then a
wondrous thing happened. There was a pile of the dead blocking up the
trench, and that pile began to stir, a movement swept through it. Up
from that ghastly heap there came first a hand, then an arm, a face, and
a dying Frenchman looked his German conquerers in the eye. Then with a
strength gathered from God knows where, he sprang to his feet, his voice
rang out shrill, insistent, imperative, "Debout les morts,"--"To your
feet, ye Dead," and by the Living God of Israel, the Dead heard him and
up from the reek and mire of that blood-stained trench dying Frenchmen,
men as good as dead, staggered to their feet and drove the living
Germans from that trench. So again the Tricolor rose above the parapet,
the evening breeze caressed it, the last rays of the setting Sun saluted
it!

Is there more of that spirit among dead Frenchmen than there is in
living Americans? Thank God, No. Seicheprey gives us the answer. When we
see one American boy going through a barrage of fire seven times to
bring ammunition up to the front, when we hear another mortally wounded
hand over his grenades saying "I can't use these now, take them and use
them," when we see the entire line, outnumbered eight to one, give
ground slowly, exacting the maximum price for every yard and then at
last come back, driving the Germans out of the village, out of every
captured trench, until the flag once more covers every foot of ground
over which it has flown at the sunrise; we know the soul of America
still lives. But that spirit must live in us at home, as well as in the
trenches of France. The cry of that dying Frenchman calls to us,
insistent and imperative: "Debout les americains." "To your feet,
America," and let your very soul make speed!





End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Cloud, by Sartell Prentice

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