Newspaper Page Text
PAGE FOUR
Issued Every Thursday.
Office of Publication: THOMSON, GA.
Entered as second-class matter, Dec. 8, 191?,
at the post office at Thomson, Georgia,
under the Act of March 3, 1879.
Subscription Price $1.50 Per Year.
Advertising Furnished on Application.
tl,e al>ove appears on
ie a^ 0,1 your paper it
~~ - queans that your subscrip
tion expires this month. Subscriptions are dis
continued promptly on date of expiration.
RENEW NOW.
THOMSON, GA,, DECEMBER 21, 1916.
The Last Jeffersonian for This
Year.
pOLLOWING custom, there will be no
paper next week.
Don t forget us during the Holidays. Give
us part of one day, at least, and push our
Five Dollar proposition.
It won t take much of your time, and it
means a great deal to The Jeffersonian.
i he enormous advance in the price of print
paper has hit us hard, and the proposed in
crease in postage will hit even harder.
('ongress is asked to authorize the P. O.
Department to charge six cents a pound, on
papers and magazines going more than 1800
miles. The present charge is one cent a pound.
This will not seriously hurt daily papers,
because their circulation is local, but it will be
ruinous to national papers that carry no con
siderable quantity of advertising.
Magazines that are made up of advertise
ments. slightly diluted with love stories, can
stand the increase, but such magazines as
Liberty, Light, Watson’s, The New Age, Etc.,
will suffer.
What secret and sinister influence is at
work, to turn the P. 0. Department into an
enemy of Protestant literature 1 ?
A Mos* Important Special Elec
tion in Georgia For Congress.
A LL of us deplore the sudden death of Hon.
z K Sam Tribble, stricken down in the prime
of life, and in the growth of his usefulness.
But he has been called away, and his vacant
place is to be filled by special election on
January 11, 1917.
In fact, two places are to be fdled on that
date, the unexpired term ending March 4,
1917, and the long term beginning at the end
of the other.
The impression prevails that the short term
is not. important, but this is erroneous, for the
Congress now sitting is expected to revolu
tionize our Postal system by increasing post
age 1 , from one cent a pound on papers and
magazines to 2 cents, 3 cents, 4 cents, 5 cents,
and 6 cents, according to distance.
Such a radical change would ruin The Jef
fersonian, The Menace, The Yellow Jacket,
The American Citizen, The Appeal to Rea
son. and other anti-Catholic papers.
she Hon. Tinsley AV. Rucker stands with
us in opposition to this increase of postage on
our national papers, and in opposition to
political Romanism.
Mr. Hugh Rowe was a Leo Frank man, a
John Slaton man, and is endorsed by the
Roman Catholics of Athens.
Let them elect him over Rucker, if they
can.
But I hope that none of my friends will
help the Catholics in this fight.
THE JEFFERSONIAN
IS Happened in the Year 1916.
(continued from page one.)
Italy, Germany, and England—and the sense
of the proposition was this:
“JIT will hold Russia back from jumping
on Austria, if you will restrain Austria from
jumping on poor little Servia.”
That was a fair proposition, but it was re-
j ected—w by ?
Because Germany thought her “Prepared
ness” was so perfect, that she could crush
France before England could get ready to
fight-
Great Britain had not been making mimic
war for 30 years, as Germany had done, and
she had no large standing army. Yet, see
how Preparedness deceives its worshippers!
England has checked and beaten back the vet
erans whom Germany trained for many
years, and has done it with men who, two years
ago, were raw clerks, mill-hands, farmer boys
etc.
Some ten or fifteen million human beings
have been killed or disabled, and now Ger
many asks peace, on terms that would leave
her where she was at the time William llo
henzollem rejected England's offer for a con
ference. Think of that !
When you ponder on German losses, Aus
trian losses, Russian losses, French losses and
Turkish losses, and remember that all this
Armageddon is a negation of Christianity,
and a relapse into Brute Force and the Rule
of Might, you can at least understand why
we old-line Jeffersonian Democrats abhor the
policies adopted, by the present Administra
tion.
On account of our long sea coast and Philip
pine White Elephant, we need a strong Navy,
but not a large Army.
Navies do not endanger individual freedom,
except on board each vessel. Each floating
battle-ship may become a floating hell, if the
officers are hellians. But the nation at large
is not affected by the Navy, and this is clearly
shown in Great Britain, whose navy is the
largest the world ever knew, but whose gov
ernment and people have steadily become
more democratic. A man of the humblest
birth—David Lloyd George—is now the ac
tual King of England, and three Labor lead
ers are in the governing councils.
But see how different the situation is in
Germany, whose standing zlrmy was the larg
est and best trained the world ever knew.
There, democracy is dead. The Military
Clique is supreme. A member of the German
Congress (the Reichstag) makes a speech
which the Kaiser and his Clique do not like,
and the result is that the member of Cong
ress (Dr. Liebknecht) is tried by a military
court martial, AND SENTENCED TO
FIVE YEARS IN THE PENITENTIARY.
This is the same Kaiser and Clique that
sentenced Germans to prison for laughing at
a sdly poem which the Me-and-God egomaniac
had published; and these prison sentences,
some of them against German girls, aggre
gated 122 years!
Yet. the German slush funds used in this
country has flooded us with literature de
scriptive of the delights and liberties of Ger
man “Culture.”
Would we be wise, if we disregarded the in-
For the long term, several candidates have
announced, all of them fine men. The Jef
fersonian has no quarrel with any of them,
and no hard feelings against any of them, but
the platform which appeals to me is that of
Julian McCurry.
The people who know him best are those
who will say by their ballots what they think
of him. in connection with his declaration of
principles.
herent, inevitable dangers of European mili
tarism? ,
I
Are we ready to see ou? Republic turned
into an armed camp, and millions of young
men taken from peaceful vocations to be
trained into blind obedience to Authority?
Are we ready to welcome the elevation of
tliomilitary above the civil power?
In short, are we willing that our self-gov
erned Republic should become a military des
potism ?
If not, we have no time to lose in opposing
these revolutionary changes. These changes
are taking place under your eyes, and if you
voted for either Wilson or Hughes, you voted
for these changes, unknowingly of course.
It is not too late to create a public senti
ment which will check cflir President and
those who dominate his councils; and, to the
creation of that sentiment, each of us can and
should contribute his share.
COMPULSORY MILITARISM VIO
LATES THE U. S. CONSTITUTION.
Again, we have seen the President officially
approve a bill which provides for compulsory
military service.
_I do not myself see'how the Constitution
can be so stretched as to legalize this mon
strous proposition. It destroys personal lib
erty and annuli Habeas Corpus, in time of
peace.
Mr. Lincoln was harshly condemned for his
disregard of the law of Habeas Corpus, dur
ing the tremendous stress of Civil War; and
the Supreme Court of the United States de
cided that President Lincoln was wrong.
Those decisions of the highest court have never
been reversed, and they are unquestionably
sound.
How can Congress legally conscript free
men for military service, in time of peace?
It cannot be done, without trampling upon
the fundamental law of the Union. Does
President Wilson propose to do this?
Do his advisers care nothing for the su
preme Law and the Supreme Court?
Will Congress lose its head entirely, and
forget the natural and constitutional rights of
the citizen ?
Congress has no more authority to draft
your son into the Army, against his will, tha'n
it has to send him to the penitentiary without
warrant, indictment, and trial by jury.
In time of peace, Congress has no more
power over you and me than the plain letter
of the law gives it, and that law leaves you
and me in the perfect freedom of locomotion,
vocation, and pursuit of happiness, subject
only to be deprived of liberty as a punishment
for crime, and to be called to the defense of
the country in time of actual war.
The fatal mistake of this Administration is,
that it creates in its own mind, a state of 'war,
and then legislates upon the people the bur
dens of war, when there is no war.
This was illustrated, in a ghastly manner,
last Summer, when the President rushed
troops to the border.
Congress has no authority to legalize the
use of State troops out of a State, when there
is no invasion, no insurrection, and no re
sistance to the laws.-
But the President created a mental con
dition, and then ordered 100,000 militia out
of their States—for what?
Nobody yet knows.
The Prussian militarists want everything
organized at Washington, and controlled at
Washington; and the State troops are to go
prancing all over the map, at the pleasure of
Military Moguls, in the Federal Capital.
Thus, the State lines are wiped out, and the
militia federalized.
Those who are to come after us will feel
the evils of all this tremendous innovation,
and they will ask, ''How was this revolu
tionary, undemocratic change brought about,
Thursday, December 21, 1916,
