Wilson's reelection advances Anglo-American alliance against Germany

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THE REELECTION OF WOODROW WILSON on November 8, 1916 (results not reported in THE FATHERLAND until the Nov. 15 issue) left the American "war party" in a strong position even though the true situation was confused in the public mind. Democrat Wilson campaigned on the slogan "He kept us out of war," while the Republican candidate Charles Evans Hughes had openly anti-German Republican war-mongers (former President) Theodore Roosevelt, Elihu Root, Henry Cabot Lodge and others campaigning for him. This sentence, written by F. F. Schrader in the Nov. 29 issue (below), best sums up the true situation which was never reported in the press: 

The consensus of cabinet opinion [in the Wilson administration, prior to the last stretch of the campaign] was that not only civilization generally but the United States in particular was interested in seeing Germany crushed. This sentiment was not only approved by the President, but was made more emphatic by him in a merciless verdict of condemnation expressed in a few but bitter words which closed the session.

Any peace probes and peace attempts, which were now gaining ground from the Central Powers, were futile because 'Crush Germany' was the intention from 1914 on, just as it was in 'part two' of this War that ignited in 1939. I do not consider that this was Jewish-led either, but British-led, to which Jews took advantage where they could. Follow the facts and the persons involved. Whitewashing Whites does not help us understand where we went wrong. Remember the earlier references made to the special (secret) agreement between Great Britain and the United States of America--this will come up again. -cy

vol. 5 no.13   Nov. 1, 1916   Page 10

CALL OFF THEODORE ROOSEVELT

Editorial

THE FATHERLAND has called attention to the fact that every time Mr. Roosevelt opens his mouth Mr. Hughes loses 10,000 votes, and Mr. Roosevelt opens his mouth a good many times. Mr. McLemore in an interview with Mr. Frederic F. Schrader, the Washington correspondent of THE FATHERLAND, declared that he hopes, as a Democrat, Mr. Roosevelt will keep up his effective campaign for Mr. Wilson. Mr. Bryan recently expressed himself in the same vein. He made it clear that the votes of those who believe in fair play and the votes of those who believe in peace are being lost to Hughes through the activities of Colonel Roosevelt. THE FATHERLAND has again and again warned Mr. Hughes that Mr. Roosevelt is knifing him, and has asked him to repudiate this treacherous ally. We are pleased to see that The New York American, following the lead of THE FATHERLAND, demands that the Republican Party and Mr. Hughes should repudiate Colonel Roosevelt. This is what The New York American says:

Colonel Roosevelt is quoted as having made the following statement in a recent speech:

“The war has been creeping nearer and nearer until it stares at us from just beyond our three-mile limit. * * * But the chief point is that the war has come so close to us that our country is no longer to be excused if it endures Mr. Wilson's futility or inaction.”

Well, what does Colonel Roosevelt want?

Does he want Germany to prosecute her naval war INSIDE our three-mile limit?

Or does he mean that we should assume a hostile attitude toward Germany because Germany carries on naval warfare according to the laws of nations and the Colonel does not like those laws?

In October, 1914, Colonel Roosevelt declared, over his own signature, in the Outlook Magazine, that the United States, of course, could do nothing about the invasion of Belgium. And in this month of October, 1916, Colonel Roosevelt is loudly declaring that the United States should have taken an armed stand against the German invasion of Belgium.

Perhaps a warrior whose hindsight is so much more bellicose than his foresight can easily persuade himself that making naval war outside of the three-mile limit is more of an offense than making naval war inside the three-mile limit—provided, of course, that Germany is the offender.

In sinking enemy ships and ships carrying military supplies to her enemy in the open sea and outside our three-mile limit, Germany is exactly and absolutely complying with the settled and long practised law of nations.

Germany … in giving warning and safeguarding crews and passengers, is strictly complying with THE LAWS OF SUBMARINE WARFARE set up by our own Government.

Now, it is conceivable that these laws might be wrong, but it is not conceivable that we have any right to seek a quarrel with Germany for complying with those laws.

[…]

The fact is that Colonel Roosevelt does not so much want to provoke war with Germany in support of American rights as he wants to provoke war with Germany to gratify his individual hate of Germans—chiefly of Germans who are also American citizens and who, as he believes, administered to him at Chicago the bitter pill of defeat.

The man's disappointed ambition and wounded vanity have obsessed him with a sort of Berserker rage against Germans, which makes him incapable of anything but fury—incapable even of telling the truth about his fellow-citizens.

If the Republican Party wants to win this election, it should repudiate Roosevelt and his outbursts of rage and spite.

If Mr. Hughes wants to be elected, he should plainly state that he does not approve of Colonel Roosevelt's utterances.

If the Republican candidate permits the country to believe that he approves of Colonel Roosevelt's violent and unreasonable outbursts of hate and rage—a thousand times more unbecoming and indecent since Mr. Roosevelt was once President—then we suspect that the next President will not be the Republican candidate.

Thousands of American citizens who have been a good deal ashamed of Mr. Wilson's foreign policies are apt to decide that they would rather endure four years more of futility than to risk four years of an administration that might follow the advice of Colonel Roosevelt.

The country has once repudiated Colonel Roosevelt as a candidate for the Presidency, and the Republican Party has twice repudiated him in its national conventions.

Mr. Hughes and the Republican Party will be strictly in line with former party action and with the sentiment recorded at the polls by a two-thirds adverse vote of the people in 1912 if they repudiate Colonel Roosevelt again.

Page 11

HELPING THE ALLIES

Editorial

IF the United States is the means of enabling one set of belligerents to continue the war against another, is that neutrality? If the outcome of the war depends on the aid given this set of belligerents by the United States, is that neutrality?

That the United States is solely responsible for the continuance of the European slaughter is admitted by two of the leading statesmen in France and England. At a banquet given in his honor in Paris October 18, Undersecretary of Foreign Affairs Albert Thomas:

“We are dependent on the United States for steel and munitions. In the last few days several ships were torpedoed, and vessels loaded with steel were unable to leave port. If these occurrences multiply and we are prevented from getting steel from the United States in the usual quantities, what will be our position?”

This from the lips of a French statesman is closely paralleled by a statement of Reginald McKenna, the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, in the House of Commons October 19. The Associated Press reports:

“Mr. McKenna proceeded to explain that unless Great Britain was able to raise the needed money in the United States, she would have to go short of supplies from there, which were absolutely essential to the purpose of the Allies.”

This is the sort of neutrality we are asked to support with our votes and our voices.

Vol. 5 no. 14   Nov. 8, 1916   Page 11

CHAMPIONS OF UNNEUTRALITY

THE NEW REPUBLIC, a high-brow weekly publication edited with superficial cleverness by a number of very conceited young men, has come out for Mr. Wilson. The advocacy of Mr. Wilson by this publication can only injure his prospects. For The New Republic is an avowed unneutral. It opposes Hughes because Hughes has declared in his Philadelphia speech that he will maintain American rights impartially against all nations.

“The important question,” remarks that organ, “is not what Mr. Hughes had done, but what he intends to do. Every time the issue arises, Mr. Hughes declares for an indiscriminate and forcible upholding of American rights against any Power whatsoever. The only considerable American rights now being violated are those involved by the blockade and the British economic war policies. In behalf of these rights Mr. Wilson has protested, but he has not enforced his protest by military or economic action. To do so would contribute effectively to the possible victory of Germany in the war, and it certainly would make the allied Powers regard the United States as their enemy. Yet this is what, from his public utterances, the pro-Germans expect of Mr. Hughes. If they are right we should all like to know it. The American people should arise as one heckler and ask, “Mr. Hughes, would you enforce your protest against the British blockade and blacklist by measures of military or commercial coercion?”

The New Republic would look upon such a course as unfortunate. A similar position is taken by the New York Times. Life [magazine] is also supporting Wilson because it fears that Hughes will be truly neutral. Mr. Wilson has many troubles, too many to be embarrassed by such allies. The attitude of these publications establishes the eternal justice of the universe; it may console Charles Evan Hughes for the fact that he is cursed with the support of Theodore Roosevelt

Vol. 5 no. 15    Nov. 15, 1916     Page 8

Behind the Scenes at the Capital

WASHINGTON, D. C., November 7—It is said that one of the first acts of the State Department in case another U-boat appears off the American coast, either for independent action or as an escort of the Deutschland, will be to send word to Germany that this Government is not disposed to view the presence of U-boats with equanimity. Of course, this will be a radical departure from precedents, as the administration has shown no such anxiety with regard to British and French cruisers operating in American waters. So long as these vessels did not actually enter the three-mile neutral zone, they were allowed to do pretty much as they pleased. Beyond a mild protest nothing was done about it. The usual method has been to hush things up, as when a British cruiser nosed its way into Chesapeake Bay in search of the Deutschland, and when a French cruiser removed one of the crew of an American ship sailing between two American ports, or cruisers stopped vessels in American waters and searched them. Nothing has ever been allowed to reach the public about the American battleship Texas being fired on in the dark by a British warship.

Now that the election is over we may be prepared to hear of rapid developments of the administration policies in abeyance “until after the election.” The decision regarding a U-boat escort for the Deutschland rests in the hands of [Sec of State] Mr. Lansing, and it is safe to say that Mr. Lansing, who on a public occasion joined in singing the “Marseillaise,” will find authority for taking up his vigorous foreign policy (against the Central Powers) where he dropped it when the campaign began to get interesting.

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Vol. 5 no. 17    Nov. 29, 1916    Page 8

Behind the Scenes at the Capital

WASHINGTON, D. C., November 22—An almost impenetrable veil hangs over the political intentions regarding the many foreign questions which are confronting the administration. It is perfectly realized by everyone here that Mr. Wilson was re-elected on the campaign cry, “He kept us out of the war,” and sundry measures taken since November 7 have the outward aspect of a change based upon a more equitable policy toward the Central Powers.

The administration has taken pains to deny the sensational newspaper reports from Washington of another crisis approaching over the submarine question; there has been a perceptible modification of the intention attributed to the government to call Germany to account for the deportations of Belgians, and a significant sign of a more just course toward Germany conveyed by the order depriving Thomas Curtin, the American correspondent for Ambassador Page's periodical, The Worlds' Work, of his passports for acting as a spy for Lord Northcliffe while claiming the hospitality of the German government.

Whether these outward signs are justly chargeable to a radical change for the better, or whether they are merely temporary deviations from the former policy while the administration is marking time, remains to be seen. It is suggested that the President was somewhat disillusioned as to the feeling existing in England regarding him by the jubilant tone of the London press over the announcement that he had been defeated, when during the first ten hours after the close of the polls Hughes was supposed to have received the majority of the electoral vote. While the British press was loudly cheering his successor, the leading German newspapers were sounding a rather sympathetic note regarding Wilson, and this faux pas of the London journals is by many regarded as unfortunate for the Allies. The most prominent papers as late as November 15, eight days after the election, jeered Wilson on his victory and thought that Germany was to be congratulated on Hughes having been left out in the cold.

* * * *

Those who profess to have a more intimate view of the President's character don't share [the] optimistic view of the editor of THE FATHERLAND with regard to his pacific intentions, and I will here print an incident which is common talk in close circles, but has never been made public in the press. According to this statement, at the last cabinet meeting before the final dispersal of the members for their respective homes to enter the campaign, the European war situation was passed in general review. The consensus of cabinet opinion was that not only civilization generally but the United States in particular was interested in seeing Germany crushed. This sentiment was not only approved by the President, but was made more emphatic by him in a merciless verdict of condemnation expressed in a few but bitter words which closed the session.

Contrasting this, coming from a disinterested source whose reliability has never been questioned, with the moderated policies of the past few weeks, justifies the statement that the situation is veiled in extreme doubt. The President cannot possibly construe his election as anything but an expression of the desire of the American people to be kept out of the war; but on the other hand there never was a time since the war began that the agents of England and her allies were so active, if not so open, in their agitation to drag us into war as at present, and while the American Rights Committee with George Haven Putnam at its head has apparently subsided into silence, the truth is that it is conducting the most aggressive campaign it has yet undertaken to foster a war sentiment among the people by private circulars and the raising of funds to carry on the campaign. At the same time mysterious visits are observed at the White House, State and Treasury Departments, on the part of men close to Morgan, Schwab, etc., known to be interested in floating loans and extending aid in other directions to the Allies, concerning which the most profound secrecy prevails.

While Curtin is deprived of his passport by direction of the State Department, Ambassador Page, one of the owners of the World's Work which secured Curtin the privilege of entering Germany, and honorary president of the American Luncheon Club in London where Curtin was the guest of honor, is passed over in silence, and not the slightest notice is taken of the unneutral speech of the Canadian premier, Sir Robert Laird Borden, as the guest of honor of the Lawyers' Club in New York recently, a silence remarkable in view of the action taken by the administration in regard to speeches made by Dr. Dernburg (the representative of Germany who was driven from the US in 1915).

Most people in Washington now know from official utterances that there is no intention of taking any action against Great Britain under the authority to retaliate, given the President by Congress, unless possibly on the violation of the mails, on which subject some likelihood exists that another note will go forward in good time. The administration accepts the English note on the blacklist practically without demur, and at the same time it is certain now that this government will take no steps at present toward the establishment of peace through cooperation of all the neutrals.

* * * *

The most tenable cause for friction is likely to be supplied by efforts to make it appear that Germany is not respecting the American flag by sinking nominally American ships. The frantic efforts from London, almost daily repeated in one form or other, to involve us in trouble over the sinking of the Columbian gives a hint of the course to be pursued. The London agent of the “France and London Steamship Company,” which owned the Columbian, declared, “All the shipping of our company, totalling nearly a quarter of a million tons, is owned in America and is under the American registry.”

It is known here that while every word of the agent may be literally true, he does not state the main truth, that the ships are chartered by the French or their allies. The Columbian may have carried the American flag, but the damage falls on the French who chartered her. Even the so-called American line, as is well known, is operated by British capital. The Grace line, Barber line Norton Lilly line and a number of others are all flying the American flag, but are not American lines for all that. -FREDERIC F. SCHRADER