Newspaper Page Text
0 fyeUeffersonidrt
Vol. 12, No. 13
Thoughts On the European War
* K TTf' Ikl t - - _
T* TIE JEFFERSONIAN has not considered
it necessary to keep up, from week to
week, a news-summary of the war.
In fact, there has been little that could be
said, except that it is a vast welter of human
blood, with no decisive victories for either
side, but with immense misery for the common
[people, who have to suffer and die, when kings
“go to wap.”
Os course, the Kings never go to war: they
make the war; and they bluster. around in
fine uniforms, blazing with braid and decora
tions, but never facing any tiling more danger
ous than the shot of a photographer.
The Czar of Russia says, that William
Hohenzollern, the German Kaiser, started the
war; and the Czar keeps his sacred person out
of the reach of bullets, while legions of peas
ants, from all the huge domains of Russia, are
sent to fight the troops of the Hohenzollern
autocrat.
The German gentleman, whose family came
to the throne by election, claims that the
Romanoff gentleman, who is Czar of Russia,
started the war; and the German gentleman
remains many miles behind the battle-line,
while troops from every £rerman province rush
to the deadly combat.
So insane is this war, that on the plains of
Poland, the surgeons have found Polanders
stretched on the ground, in three different uni
forms, one Russian, one Austrian, and one
.German.
These three Polish soldiers had been called
out by three Emperors, to kill one another,
in the quarrel of those three Emperors, neither
of whom ever intends to run the slightest per
sonal risk in the war.
Poland, as you remember, was divided up
between the dynastic despots of Prussia, Aus
tria and Russia a few generations ago; and
now, when the autocrat of Russia orders his
Poles to come out and slaughter the Poles who
1
Ttie 66 Unt>ri<Slecl License’ 5 of tlie Press
IN the campaign which the Knights of Col
-1 umbus have inaugurated against the free
dom of the press, they are trying to conceal
their designs by saying that their war is not
against the freedom, but against the “un
bridled license” of the press.
Those Romanist editors who are defending
Senator D. U. Fletcher’s outrageous Washing
ton tirade, take the same line.
They are not opposed to liberty of the press.
O no!
What they oppose is, the “unbridled license”
of the press.
x. Please excuse me while I cackle.
The two terms mean exactly the same thing.
Unbridled license to print, means the fullest
liberty to print.
It is so in law, and it is explained in his
tory.
During the Dark Ages, when popes were
supreme and when books were almost lost to
the European world, no book could be pub
lished without a. license.
To obtain such a license, several priests in
authority had to be satisfied.
John Milton’s glorious prose work, the
\Arcopagitica, was a plea for unbridled license,
Thomson, Ga., Thursday, oflpri! 1, 1915
have been ordered out by the autocrats of Ger
many and Austria, the poor fellows have no
option.
They have to go and shoot one another, in
a quarrel that does not concern them in the
least.
In a sense, the same thing may be said of
the other suffering countries: the people have
no concern in the war, and nothing to gain
by it.
The pretense that either Germany or Eng?
land is “fighting for existence,” is all sham.
AV as England fighting for existence when
she gobbled Egypt, and the Boer Republics,
and the Indian Empire?
Was Germany fighting for existence, when
she sprang upon little Denmark and tore away
from her the two provinces of Schleswig and
Holstein? Or, when she sprang upon France,
and ripped off the provinces of Alsace and
Lorraine ?
At the beginning, the only nation which had
the right to say that she was fighting for ex
istence, was Servia; and the fact that all the
big nations seem to have let Servia alone,
proves that Servia was merely the spark
which fired the powder-house.
The moment Servia declared she would not
yield further to the Jesuit demands of Austria
and the Italian Pope, Germany sprang on
France.
Germany has not bothered Servia. at all.
Everything that has cropped out goes to
show, that Germany had long intended to at
tack France, that she had long prepared for
it, and had not only covered France with the
completes! of spy systems, but had actually
bought up old stone quarries, and had shaped
them into perfect readiness for big guns.
(Nobody doubts that the infamous Caillaux,
who got to be Premier of the French Repub
lic, was in the pay of Germany. His wife shot
that is, for a doing away with the license sys
tem.
In Blackstone's Commentaries—as all law
yea rs know—unlicensed printing is equivalent
to free printing.
To take the bridle off. and allow authors to
publish without having to apply for a license,
was exactly what the freedom of the press
meant to our forefathers.
Turn to any large dictionary, and you will
find that liberty and license are interchange
able terms.
Turn to any book of synonyms, and you will
find that freedom to do, and the license to do,
are precisely the same thing.
In Fonby's standard English Synonyms,
you will Hud that the word. “License." has for
its equivalents in meaning, the words, “Leave;
Permission, Liberty.''’ Likewise, the words,
“freedom” and “license," are given as equiva
lents to the word “Liberty.”
Turn to the word, Freedom, and you will
find that among its equivalents are the words
“ unrestraint “independence,” and “license.”
Therefore, the Knights of Columbus will
the editor, Calmette who was exposing him;
and the war almost immediately began.)
Have the German people any cause of
hatred against the French?
None whatever. The. Frenchman is a gay,
frank, brave fellow, who does not bear malice,
and who comes nearer to living in the open
air, in the sunlight, and with Nature, than any
other European.
The German is not a quarrelsome man, nat
urally. He is placid, good natured. devoted
to his home and family, fond of his work,
and also fond of his ease, his pipe and his
pot of beer: as manly a person as the human
race affords.
What have these Germans to gain by leav
ing home to kill Frenchmen? Nothing.
In what way was France threatening the
existence of Germany?
The French Government had several times
backed down before the menaces of this
egomaniac, William Hohenzollern.
France could not always back down, with
out the loss of that which, to the honorable
man, is dearer than life.
France, really, is the big nation that is
now fighting for life.
Between Germany and England, there is a
conflict of colonial interests, of commercial in
terests, and of manufacturing interests.
Each is struggling for the mastery of the
world’s trade and dominion.
France is not in that contest, at all. France
has no ambition of that sort.
But the German Government, for many
years, has had a special hatred of France.
Why?
The German Kaiser is making a special ef
fort to destroy France. WHY ?
To understand it, you must go back to the
time when the Dutch-French bastard, who
is known to history as Napoleon 111., went
(continued on page seven.)
have to abandon the effort to draw a distinc
tion between license and freedom.
The distinction does not exist.
I he unbridled horse, means the free horse.
To put a bridle on the press, is something
which the Constitution says that Congress
shall not do.
These Romanists are making war upon the
Constitution of the United States, when they
seek io put any sort of restraint upon the lib
erty of the press.
Our laws provide punishment for those w r ho
abuse this freedom of the press, by libelling
either the living or the dead.
Those 1 laws afford the amplest protection
to every citizen and to every corporation, lay
or ecclesiastical.
IX hat the Roman Catholics are trying to do
is. to prevent the publication in this country
of the truth about the canon law of popery,
and about the horrible record it has made in
every country where it gained control of po
litical power.
The truth is what the K. of C. want to sup
press, and that’s why they dread a free, un
fettered, unbridled press.
Price, Five Gents
