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Otye, trsoitidit
Vol. 14, No. 10
THE UNITED STATES AND THE GREAT WAR!
We Democrats Are Sadly Perplexed and Disrupted
C< |JE US out war *”
Not altogether, you understand, but
partly.
Considering all the circumstances, that was
doing pretty well—considering.
We got him sworn in again, before any
actual hostilities, with those Christian allies,
W-wit: the Italian - papa, the two German
Raisers, the Bulgarian fox, and the “Infidel”
Sultan of Turkey.
ordered us to take our ships
off his Atlantic pond, and we did it.
Our vessels are hitched inside our own
harbors: we hope to be able to rent them out,
for house-boat purposes.
The Stars and Stripes nowhere float upon
the high seas.
“Get out of my oceans,” said the Kaiser,
and we got out.
In the eyes of the whole world, we have
. been made ridiculous and contemptible, for
we were frightened by an empty threat.
The Kaiser played the biggest, boldest bluff
known to history, and took the pot on a pair
of deuces.
There are not enough submarines in ex
istence to establish an actual blockade, any
w'here; and the nature of the vessel itself
renders it unable to maintain a blockade; but,
for fear the assassins might rush in from
pne side and sink a peaceable, unarmed ship,
We decided to surrender our rights to the
road.
HISTORIC RECORD OF THE ROMAN CHURCH |
Brother R. A. Dague Teaches History to Sifter Jane W., and I Teach Hislory to Him.
A METHODIST woman, signing herself
»Jane AV., writes to The Progressive
Thinker, of Chicago, Illinois, protesting
against sortie historical statements made by
R. A. Dague.
Naturally, R. A. comes flying back at the
Methodist woman, and he devotes two long
columns to the laudable purpose of reducing
her to a state of Pauline silence.
The benighted Apostle Paul would find
himself deplorably out of joint with these lat
ter days, when Suffragettes picket the White
House, compel the President to slink out by
the side gate, beseige governors, demand their
manly rights in a truly robustious manner,
and almost make the average biped feel like
putting on pantalettes.
Sister Jane W., the aforesaid Methodist
Woman, winds up her card of protest against
Brother Dague by saying-*-
Now, I don’t care how hard you hit the Roman
Catholic Church, but I protest against your in
sinuations against the Protestant churches,
especially the Methodists. Yours truly,
JANE W.
■ ’ (A Methodist Woman.),
Thomson, Get., Thursday, March 15, 1917
England actually blockaded Germany, hav
ing the vessels to do it with. That blockade
has been maintained; and when a neutral
attempts to run it, the neutral either slips
through—as often happens—or it is cap
tured, and carried to an English harbor, to be
held until an English Prize-court can decide
whether the cargo was contraband.
For instance, consider the following news
item :
k
London, March 5. —The American schooner
John G. McCullough has been captured on the
charge of attempting to run the blockade. She
was taken to Falmouth, where her cargo is being
removal for the prize court.
That’s international law. Operating under
this Law of Nations, the English have cap
tured many neutral vessels, but has not sunk
a single one, nor shed one drop of neutral
blood.
Now, compare this lawful blockade of Ger
many by England, with Germany's unlawful
blockade of England.
Germany publishes a notice that any neu
tral ship endeavoring to reach England and
her allies will be sunk without warning, and
that every soul on board will perish.
That’s not a blockade: it's piracy!
Germany flies the Jolly Roger, the black
flag, the crossed bones and the grinning skull.
The Alegerine corsairs whom our infant
navy drove off the seas, when the Republic was
Sister Jane is no lay-figure: she’s human:
she says to Dague, in effect, “Tread on the
other fellows’ toes all you want to, but mind
how you tread on mine.”
Then Brother Dague wades into Sister
Jane, and tells her, at considerable length,
that she is an ignoramus.
Consequently, I feel irresistibly tempted to
relieve Sister Jane, by proving that Brother
Dague isn’t nearly so wise as he cracks him
self up to be.
Mr. R. A. Dague quotes as his authority,
for the most vital and sweeping arraignment
of Protestantism, tw# authors, Marshall J.
Gauvin and Lydia Maria Child, to whom he
adds the newspaper writer, Frederick J. Has
kins.
These are Brother Dague’s witnesses; and
by these, that Protestant churches
enslaved women, burnt thousands of them,
and persistently robbed them of the rights
they had enjoyed under Paganism.
Who was Lydia Maria Child?
She was an Abolitionist, a good woman no
doubt, for she offered to nurse John Brown
.when he was in prison at Harper’s Ferry.
young, took exactly the same course that the
Christian Kaisers and the Italian papa now
take.
Our youthful Republic, 100 years ago,
wouldn't tolerate the Barbary Pirates, and a
Democr at ic Preside! it —Thom a s J e ffersoi i—
sent armed ships to reason with them.
No other reasoning would-do, but that had
the desired effect.
Since then, no nation has flown the pirate
flag and ordered us not to sail, except on
terms dictated to us, until William Ilohen
zollern did it.
But this Hohenzollern egomaniac gave us
orders to stay off the seas, unless we
would confine ourselves to the line he dic
tated—in which event, we were permitted to
send one ship a week to Falmouth!
Even if we knuckled to these terms, and
agreed to use a restricted German license to
sail the ocean, we were ordered to paint our
ships in accordance to a striped design pre
scribed to us by Germany!
; Did one independent nation ever .more
grossly. a ffrout another ?
Big nations have bullied little ones that
way, but no big nation ever before arrogated
that tone to another big one.
But a big nation is as impotent as a little
one, unless there be men, at the head of af
fairs.
Where are our Men ?
(continued on page three.)
But she has no standing as a historical atb
tahority.
She wrote novels that died quietly, and
books for children, which are not now in use,
so far as I know.
To quote her as an authority, is quite pre
posterous; just as it is absurd to quote Has
kins ms an authority.
Men like Haskins and Gauvin must cite
their authorities, and not expect to be taken
as original testimony to past events.
Now, let us see what it is that Brother
Dague seeks to prove by his Gauvin-Child-
Haskins combination:
Historian Gauvin says: “As a result of this
teaching, women lost the rights they had en
joyed under the pagan laws. Their power and
influence disappeared. The high respect in which
they had been held became a historic memory.
The wife, no longer regarded as the equal of her
husband, came to be looked upon as the dust
beneath his feet. The rights which pagan laws
had conferred upon pagan women were robbed
from Christian women by Christian laws. The
historian Leckey says: ‘Women under Christianity
. were placed much lower than in the pagan em
pire.’ -
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