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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.’ - Price, Five Cents