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Otye, 3&i | vrsortian,
Vol. 14, No. 17
OUR FOREIGN WAR, BY ADOPTION.
Do You Want Your Son Killed in Europe in a Quarrel You Have Nothing to Do With?
VOU can give me credit for being unbiased,
because I am too old for military service,
and my son has already volunteered.
My grand-children are “babbies, and gal
babbies at that:” so, you see, I can speak
without prejudice, bias, or self-interest.
If our Government forces our sons to leave
their own country, to mix in a war that is
thousands of miles across the ocean, it will
commit a colossal mistake!
We should not take up Europe's quarrel.
We should not make Europe’s war, ours by
adoption.
. If we meddle in that bloody welter. we will
never again be able to steer clear of Europe's
entangling alliances./
What is our Cause of War?
Go over President Wilson’s paper again:
read it, with your thinking cap on.
I have done just that, and I am astounded
to see how extremely weak it is, in fact and
argument.
It’s academic beauty, I readily concede: its
transcendental elevation of theory, I admit,
“with proud punctilio.”
But I honestly believe that no Declaration
of War could be much feebler, in its facts
and its reasons.
Have you compared it, in your mind, with
other Declarations of War? Do so, now.
Compare it with those of uuir set
“A Message to All Patriotic, Liberty-Loving American Citizens”
I JNDER the above heading, P. 11. Callahan,
Chairman of the Knights of Columbus
Committee on religious prejudice, addresses
the public, using, instead of his own name,
that of his private secretary, one Robert G.
Wulf.
It was disingenuous to use Wulf’s name,
because the public could not know that Wulf
is Callahan’s hired man; and the public was
therefore left under the false impression, that
Wulf is a disinterested patriot, not connected
with the $50,000 which the K. of C. put in
Callahan’s control to finance just such pamph
lets as Wulf’s.
In his Preface, Mr. Callahan asks, ‘'Are von
a Patriot ?”
I beg to remind him that his Pope does not
even claim to be a patriot; that the Pope is
not a “'citizen*’ of any country; that the Pope
is a complete government of his own, and that
every good Catholic is a subject of the Pope,
and therefore cannot be “a patriot.”
Mr. Callahan professes that his object in
publishing the booklet is, to let you know
“the truth about the biggest religious organi
zation in the world.”
Callahan’s Wulf means the Roman church,
of course, and he makes two serious mistakes,
in that single sentence.
The Buddhists are more numerous than the
Thomson, Ga., Thursday, May 3, 1917
forth, with such sharp edges, in the Declara
tion of 1776.
Compare it with the Declaration of 1812.
President Madison went to war with Great
Bratain, because she had attacked our
merchant vessels and our battle-ships—vir
tually within our own harbors—and had en
forced her pretended right to stop and search
our navy. We couldn’t stand for that.
The Spanish War of 1898 was said to be
caused by long-continued atrocities in Cuba,
and the blowing up of our Maine battleship
in the Spanish barnor—a crime, by the way,
which is imputed to the individual act of a
notorious New York newspaper man, who is
now most eager for conscription and an
American army in Europe.
But what does President Wilson allege as
his cause of war?
Shred his beautiful Address, in your men
tal machine: strip it of its rhetorical shucks:
boil it down to its essence—and what 's it?
He says that we must make war upon Ger
many. observing all the niceties and proprie
ties of war. “with proud punctilio."
Yes, but why?
Aly punctilio is every bit as proud as Wood
row’s. but I want to know what I'm fighting
for.
Don’t you?
The proud punctilio can take care of itself,
after we clinch: but I beg to be told, first of
Roman Catholics, and so are the Confucian
ists.
Leaving out the infants and the helpless
death-bed converts —whom Catholics count
as members of their church—the Mohamme
dans are more numerous than the Roman
ists.
The Greek Catholics are numerically almost
equal to the Romanists, while the Protestant
bodies — all practically the same in the essen
tials of faith and doctrine — heavily outnum
ber the papists.
The other mistake made in the sentence is,
that the Roman church is a “religious or
ganization.”
The Buddhist organization is strictly reli
gious, and not at all political - so is the Con
fusianist: and so are all the Protestant bodies.
But the Roman church has been less reli
gious than political and commercial, ever
since the 9th century, when the Bishops of
Rome began to aspire to immense wealth and
to the Temporal sovereignty of Italy.
(See Gregororious, “Ilistorv of Rome in the
Middle Ages,” Vol. III.)
The first official utterances of the present
Pope show clearly that the Roman church
still attaches more importance to its political
ambitions than to its religious mission; and
thus it would seem that the fatal virus in
jected into the Papacy by Boniface 111.,
all, how it is that we get balled up in the
Armageddon.
I'm a good, peace-loving citizen, myself,
and my wish is to maintain amicable relations
with the Government; but how can I know
what to do, when the President talks so many
different ways?
Not so very long ago, he made a public
speech in which he said, in substance, that
the European War was none of our business.
Had you forgotten that?
Air. Wilson clearly defined his position, and
it was in line with the historic policy of our
Government, which is aloofness from for
eign COMPLICATIONS.
Then, again, President Wilson declared, in
another well-known speech, that there was
such a thing as being too proud and too right
to fight.
Nevertheless, he now tells us. with limpid
lucidity, that we must not only get into a
fight, but must cross the ocean to hunt for it!
I cannot reconcile these contradictory state
ments. Can you?
We are told that Germany has violated our
maritime rights.
Yes, she has, but when?
, The worst things she did to us. done
before President Wilson's re-election.
She sunk our merchant vessel, the William
(continued on page three )
Nicholas 1., Gregory VII., Boniface VIII.,
and Innocent 111., has never been, and will
never be, purged from its infected system.
Mr. Callahan’s Wulf adopts a method
which has become popular and effective with
American papists: he quotes Protestants who
have spoken in praise of Popery.
Next to quoting Macaulay, the American
Catholics dote on quotations from sapient
American clergymen.
Macaulay wrote a famous Essay which
makes, in favor of Romanism, the statements,
(1.) that its organization is “the very master
piece of human wisdom,” a perfection of hu
man art and craft; and (2.) that the Papacy
has existed longer than any of the European
dynasties, and may last until that much
advertised Traveller from New Zealand takes
his stand (or seat) on a broken arch of Lon
don Bridge to kodak the ruins of St. Paul's,
The enraptured Romanists never fail to
quote Macaulay, that far. They stop, right
there.
Yet, Macaulay’s Essay is a lengthy pro
duction covering 37 closely printed pages;
and in those 37 pages from which Catholics
never quote, he tells how Romanism has
blighted those countries which Nature most
lavishly favored, while Protestantism has
brought liberty, progress and prosperity to
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