TEXT
"Loyalty"
I know that it is hard for Americans to realize the
magnitude of the war in which we are involved. We have problems in
this war no other nations have. Fortunately, the great majority of
American citizens of German descent have, in this great crisis of
our history, shown themselves splendidly loyal to our flag.
Everyone had a right to sympathize with any warring nation. But now
that we are in the war there are only two sides, and the time has
come when every citizen must declare himself American -- or
traitor!
We must disappoint the Germans who have always believed
that the German-Americans here would risk their property, their
children's future, and their own neck, and take up arms for the
Kaiser. The Foreign Minister of Germany once said to me "your
country does not dare do anything against Germany, because we have
in your country 500,000 German reservists who will rise in arms
against your government if you dare to make a move against
Germany." Well, I told him that that might be so, but that we had
500,001 lamp posts in this country, and that that was where the
reservists would be hanging the day after they tried to rise. And
if there are any German-Americans here who are so ungrateful for
all the benefits they have received that they are still for the
Kaiser, there is only one thing to do with them. And that is to
hog-tie them, give them back the wooden shoes and the rags they
landed in, and ship them back to the Fatherland.
I have travelled this year over all the United States.
Through the Alleghenies, the White Mountains, and the Catskills,
the Rockies and the Bitterroot Mountains, the Cascades, the Coast
Range, and the Sierras. And in all these mountains, there is no
animal that bites and kicks and squeals and scratches, that would
bite and squeal and scratch equal to a fat German-American, if you
commenced to tie him up and told him that he was on his way back to
the Kaiser.
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