The Fayette County Union West Union, Fayette Co., Iowa 06 Jun 1918 Page 7 column three

WHY  WE  FIGHT No. 1 Because Germany for Years Has Been Making Secret, Treacherous War on Us By CLARENCE L. SPEED Secretary of the War Committee of the Union League Club of Chicago. ~ transcribed by Judith Schmitz

One of the deep, underlying reasons -- not just a diplomatic pretext -- why we are at war with Germany is that for a generation Germany has been making war on us. Germany has made this war not openly, bravely, or humanely, but secretly, treacherously and persistently. She has sought to create race discord, to corrupt and defile politicians and officeholders, and to create separate German communities within our borders. She has poisoned the minds of children in our schools in an endeavor to make Germans of them instead of have them grow up into loyal American cities. She has invaded the sacredness of the pulpit itself in an endeavor to corrupt our people through the very leaders of morality to whom they are accustomed to look for guidance. These may be startling assertions, but they are all true, as you shall see from the documents of the Germans themselves. We all knew that it was a German fleet which stripped for action when Dewey sailed into Manila bay. We all knew it was the Germans who sought to bring about a European alliance against us when we were engaged in the war with Spain. Few of us realized, however, that all these years Germany has been busy within our own borders, through editors, teachers, and preachers, seeking to break down our national unity, so that when the time came it would be easy to defeat the United States in open warfare, to set at naught our cherised Monroe doctrine, and to seize, in the Western hemisphere, anything that the land grabbing rulers of the German empire might desire. The climax of Germany's underhanded war on the United States came in 1913, more than a year before the outbreak of hostilities in Europe. This was the enactment of what is known as the Delbruck law, which provides that if an emigrant from Germany who is about to be naturalized makes application to a German consul, he may retain his German citizenship even after he has become a citizen of his adopted country. In plain words, this law, and the application of it, mean just this:  A German goes into court in this country and solemnly foreswears allegiance to the Kaiser and pledges his word -- the temptation was to say, "of honor" -- that he will become a loyal citizen of the United States. Then he slips around to the German consul and says: "You know I didn't meant that, at all. Those Americans are easy marks, and they fell for that stuff right off. But you just put me down on your list as a good, loyal German, and if the time ever comes when I can prove it, you can count on me." So the German consul puts his name down in the little card index of which the Germans are so fond, and this man, -- this creature who swears allegiance to the country which gives him an opportunity to make a real living, and to become somebody in this world, and at the same time swears secretly to be true to Germany -- is turned loose to work his will, while Americans go carelessly about their business and refuse to see the danger in the arrangement. Long before passage of the Delbruck law, there was formed the Verein fur das Deutschtum in Ausland -- the Union for Germanism in Foreign Lands. This organization, officially fostered in Germany, issued a quarterly magazine, which, in its very first issue, outlined its aims as follows: "The purpose of this union is the preservation and promotion of the Germanism of over 30,000,000 people of German blood dwelling outside the German empire." All it aims to do, you see, is to keep Germans who come to this country from becoming Americans. Away back in 1890 the Alldeutscher Verband, or the Pan-German league, was formed. It now consists of 268 chapters of which two now are -- or at least were immediately before the war -- in the United States, one in New Yorkand one in San Francisco. To quote from the Alldeutsche Blatter, its official publication, "the Pan-German league is founded for promoting German National interests, both in Germany and in foreign lands." A few thinking Americans knew all the time what was coming -- what must come. But America, as a whole, went along in that carelessness and indifference with which it treats all things unpleasant, and allowed this German war on our most sacred institutions to continue unchecked. So Germany stands today, with one foot on prostrate Belgium and the other on the neck of poor deluded Russia; with a bayonet planted in the heart of Serbia, and the point of its sword at the throat of Roumania, while it looks out over the vassal States of Bulgaria and Turkey to India and the Orient. And as it stands thus, it cries to its foes on the western front: "Kahmerad! Why go on with all this killing? Lets have a peace by negotiation?" and, under its breath, adds, "I've got all I want for the present." Can we talk of any peace until such a Germany is absolutely defeated? Shall we negotiate a peace and allow all these German preparations for world domination to go on until the time is ripe for Germany to complete its conquests?

~ transcribed and submitted by Judith Schmitz for Iowa in the Great War