USA > Connecticut > Windham County > Thompson > The war and its results : an address delivered at a Grange Meeting and Patriotic Rally held at Thompson, Windham County, Connecticut, August 9, 1918 > Part 1
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THE WAR AND ITS RESULTS
An Address Delivered at a Grange Meeting and Patriotic Rally held at Thompson, Windham County, Connecticut, August 9, 1918
BY ISAAC N. MILLS, LL. D. Associate Justice of the Appellate Division (Second Department) of the New York Supreme Court
FOREWORD
The within address was prepared to be delivered at a Grange Meeting and Patriotic Rally at Thompson, Windham County, Connecticut, on August 9, 1918. The meeting was quite numerously attended by people from the neighboring parts of Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island, and leading officials,-the Governor or Lieutenant Governor,- of each of those States were present. It was held in the open air, upon the spacious grounds at the residence of the Honor- able Randolph H. Chandler, chief promoter of the affair. When the delivery of this address had proceeded about ten minutes, a severe rain storm began to fall and the people were compelled to seek shelter as best they might. As many as possible crowded into the adjacent Grange Hall, where the delivery of the address was shortly resumed. The people in the hall were very much crowded and the heat great, so that out of consideration for their comfort the speaker abridged the balance of the speech. This fact has led him to make this publication of the address entire, as he had designed to deliver it, and constitutes his apology for doing so if any such be needed or appropriate.
(PROSPECTUS AS PUBLISHED) GRANGE FIELD MEETING AND PATRIOTIC RALLY THREE STATES
Worcester Southwest Pomona, Providence County Pomona, and Quinebaug Pomona Granges will meet at the home of Hon. Randolph H. Chandler, Thomp- son, Conn., on Friday, August 9, 1918. The combined effort of three large Pomonas has secured a program of great practical value to farmers and of un- surpassed inspiration to patriots. All patrons and their friends will be welcome and a cordial invitation is extended to all people.
PROGRAM
In the open if clear, in the church if rainy.
10 A. M .- Selection THE BAND
Welcome Song MRS. ELIZABETH J. BROWN, Pomfret, Conn.
Address. . PRESIDENT CHARLES L. BEACH, Connecticut Agricultural College Demonstration of Poultry Selection. . CONNECTICUT EXTENSION SERVICE Address. .LESLIE R. SMITH, Master Massachusetts State Grange Demonstration-Newest Dairy Utensils,
PROF. O. A. JAMISON, Massachusetts Agricultural College
Address. DR. HOWARD EDWARDS, President R. I. Agricultural College One of Our Whistling Girls. . MRS. KENDALL A. MOWRY Five Minutes Talk with the Pomona Master of Rhode Island. . GEORGE A. HENRY Recitation MRS. CARRIE S. BEAUREGARD, R. I. Pomona Lecturer
Address SAYLES B. STEERE, Master R. I. State Grange
Canning Exhibition. RHODE ISLAND EXTENSION SERVICE Exhibition of Browning Machine Guns
12 Noon .- Luncheon-Basket picnic plan. All persons are requested to bring their own lunch as both hotels will be filled to capacity by invited guests and their attendants.
1 P. M .- Parade: Order-Band, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut Patrons wear sashes and badges; National Fife and Drum Corps, Governors and Distinguished Guests lead each state.
Patriotic Singing led by. ARTHUR ROBERTS, Pomfret, Conn. 1.30 P. M .- "A Trip to France,"
THE BAND Selection. J. LIVINGSTON BEECKMAN, Governor of Rhode Island
Address-"The War and Its Results,"
Selection ISAAC N. MILLS, Justice of the Supreme Court of the State of New York THE BAND Address MARCUS H. HOLCOMB, Governor of Connecticut Address. LIEUT. GOVERNOR CALVIN A. COOLIDGE of Massachusetts . HON. HENRY P. BALDWIN Five Minute Talk.
Selection Chairman of Board of Parole, of the State of Rhode Island . THE BAND Address. . CALVIN D. PAIGE, Congressman for Massachusetts Address. LIEUT. GOVERNOR CLIFFORD B. WILSON, of Connecticut Selection. THE BAND
Worcester Southwest Pomona Providence County Pomona
Edmund S. Joslin, Master George A. Henry, Master Mrs. Carrie S. Beauregard, Lecturer Woonsocket, R. I.
Mrs. George S. Ladd, Lecturer Sturbridge, Mass.
Quinebaug Pomona Charles A. Wheeler, Master Mrs. Mary Ross Munyan, Lecturer Putnam, Conn.
ADDRESS
Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen:
It is a very great pleasure to me to attend this meeting and to find myself, after practically fifty years absence, sum- moned back to my childhood and boyhood home to make what might be termed the "long talk" upon this occasion. Never I am sure, in the 254 years of her existence, as a settled com- munity, has this historic hilltop known so numerous a gather- ing. Two hundred and fifty-four years ago this coming September, on a Sabbath morning, all the people (red and white) living within miles of this spot assembled here to meet the expected visitation of the American apostle, John Elliott, to the band of praying Indians settled here. Weighed down with the burden of his eighty years, Elliott progressed through the wilderness no further than Woodstock, where he paused physically exhausted and that morning sent by his disciple David his message to the people here assembled, as Paul sent his to the Ephesians. Many assemblages of men have been held here since that Sabbath morning, but none more notable in point of numbers than this.
I took great pride and pleasure in marching with the Connecticut contingent through these streets in the parade just ended. Whenever my feet are planted upon the soil of Old Thompson I feel that the line of the national anthem, "Land where my fathers died," has for me a special significance. Four successive generations of my ancestors lived on or about these hills and now sleep in the cemetery which nestles in the valley at their western base. I might with propriety have marched in either of the other two contingents, the Massa- chusetts or the Rhode Island. Massachusetts is the primal American mother of most of us, as nearly every old Thompson family was descended from the original settlers of the Old Bay Colony; and Rhode Island is the State of my mother's lineage.
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I am under the greatest obligation to the Honorable Randolph H. Chandler, the promoter of this meeting, for his special kindness in permitting me to choose at will the subject of my address. In that respect he treated me as well as the father of Daniel Webster treated him according to a story current hereabouts in my childhood days, when the people of this locality still revered the memory of New England's great- est statesman. I note today his portrait here upon the walls of the Grange Hall within, showing perhaps that the name of Webster is still not without respect in these parts.
When Daniel was upon his junior vacation from Dart- mouth, he undertook to help his father with the haying upon his New Hampshire farm, the surface of which was at least half rock. He was attempting to mow with the old fashioned snath and scythe. Somehow or other the scythe did not hang right. Those of us who, like myself in my boyhood, have mowed over these hills know how, if the scythe is not hung to the snath just right, its point will strike into every hummock and stop the stroke. Several times during the morning the old gentleman re-hung Daniel's scythe at his request, but at last when Daniel came around again and asked him to re-hang it, he became indignant and bellowed out: "Hang it,-I've hung that scythe for you a dozen times already. I'll be hang- ed if I'll hang it again. Go hang it to suit yourself !" "Father," said Daniel, "do you really mean it, that I shall hang this scythe to suit myself?" "Yes," roared the old man, "did you ever know me to say anything I didn't mean?"-a saying quite significant, as old Captain Webster was well known as a stern man even with his own family. "Well," said Daniel, "I will do so," and he walked at once to a big apple tree stand- ing in the middle of the field and hung the scythe over one of its lower limbs and then marched away into the house, and that ended Daniel's haying for that season.
Being thus graciously permitted to select my own subject for this address, I chose, as has been announced, "The War and Its Results." I made that choice because, aside from the necessity of performing my judicial work so as to earn my daily bread, I have no heart, no soul, no mind for anything except for the prosecution of this war to a successful finish.
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In that respect I am like Theodore Roosevelt. In York State, -that is what the people hereabouts fifty years ago used to call it,-a few weeks since the political party to which Colonel Roosevelt belongs when he is fully in his own right mind, held an informal convention. There were several prospective candi- dates for the nomination of Governor at the coming primaries, but all of them, either openly or secretly, offered to withdraw in the Colonel's favor, and a paper numerously signed by the leaders was sent to him asking him to take the nomination. After a few days he replied to the effect that while he would esteem it a great honor to be again Governor of the Empire State, yet he felt that he could not at this time bring himself to undertake the duties of the position,-that the truth was that he had no heart, no soul and no mind for anything except the prosecution of this war to victory clear and undoubted. That was a splendid thing for the Old Hero to say and to think when he had just received full confirmation of the news of the killing of his youngest son, the Benjamin of his flock, in battle "Over There," and when two of his other sons lay in the French hospitals languishing from wounds received in that fighting. God bless and save the Old Hero! The Republic may need him yet again, and that too greatly. What does it matter if he is blind in one eye? He can see further and more keenly along the line of the vigorous prosecution of the war than some men I know can with both eyes. What matters it that he carries embedded in his breast a bullet fired by an assassin of German birth? He is "a man for all that," a red blooded American man ready to fight for country at any time and at any place at the drop of the hat, and that is the sort of men we need just now.
The War,-its fourth year closed last Saturday. What a terrible thing it has been and still is! Lord Lansdowne a few days ago, in his communication to the British people, said that six million of human beings have already been killed by it,-about three millions upon each side,-and that six mil- lion more have indirectly been destroyed by it. While very many condemn his peace suggestions as foolish and ill timed, no one questions the accuracy of his statement of facts. Said Mr. Hoover a few days ago in London, "It is quite likely that
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more people will die in Europe this year from starvation than will have died from the effects of wounds received upon all the western battle fields." If peace were to come tomorrow, the acute hurts of this war would last half a century at least. As our Lord and Savior at Gethsemane prayed that the cup of bitterness might be removed from his lips, so may a war- worn and war-weary world pray that peace may speedily come, that this awful agony may cease; but it must not cease, it cannot cease until right and truth and justice have triumphed and this footstool of Almighty God has become once more fit for human habitation, as it never will be so long as it remains under threat of domination by the Prussian sword.
When I spoke at the War Meeting held in the Old Church here about a month after our declaration of war, I said, in effect, that I did not know who was responsible for the war, and I attempted to demonstrate only that our entry into it was upon an entirely adequate and righteous cause. Now I feel that I do know who was so responsible. The revelations re- cently made by the then German Ambassador at London have demonstrated beyond any cavil that the Kaiser, egged on by the German military class, was solely responsible for the war. How can a man feel who knows that he is responsible for the killing of six million of his fellow human beings? Such a conviction would make me a madman in a single night. Per- haps the most beautiful sentence in all New England oratory (one might as well say all American), at least according to my taste, is that one in Rufus Choate's oration on Marie Antoinette, in which he referred to the historic incident that during the first night of her solitary imprisonment, shortly before she was guillotined, her beautiful tresses turned entirely white; "And the beauty of Austria fell from her brow like a veil in a single night." So at least would the conviction that one was responsible for the death of so many of his fellow beings affect most men. The Kaiser, however, seems utterly insensible in the matter, utterly without remorse or even re- gret. Some think even that he is already a madman and has been such all along. Sane or insane, as he may be, we Ameri- cans intend to plant in his breast at least the sentiment of re- gret before we are through with him.
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Last month we completed the sixteenth month of our national participation in the war, and the time and this occasion are meet for us to consider our situation therein.
First and foremost we may solace ourselves with the re- flection that our entry into the war was upon a fully righteous and adequate cause. That cause and that purpose were no less than to protect the lives of our nationals, traveling upon the high seas on their lawful concerns and within their lawful rights, from wilful, deliberate, cold-blooded murder by the piracy of German submarine warfare upon merchant ships. By the provisions of international law a belligerent has the right to capture upon the high seas a merchant ship of its enemy,-even that of a neutral carrying contraband goods, but it must do so at the peril of saving the lives of the persons on board such a ship. As President Wilson pointed out in his communication to Germany after the sinking of the Lusi- tania, it is impossible for a submarine in destroying a ship at a distance from shore to comply with that law. That was proven by the Lusitania massacre, where 1198 people, includ- 124 Americans, were drowned, and quite recently as well by the incident of the Porto Rico passenger steamer Carolina sunk about the first of last June off the Delaware coast. That night a heavy storm arose before the boats could reach land and some of them were swamped and sixteen people, non- combatants, were drowned. We declared war upon that simple issue.
Very soon after the declaration we fully ascertained that we had had other entirely adequate causes in the perfidious and dastardly conduct of the German Embassy in this country while Germany and this country were at peace. The first rule of diplomacy, according to international law, is that the Ambassador of a foreign land must not communicate in any way with the people of the country to which he is accredited, except through the government of that country. As a neutral we treated Germany precisely as we did England or France. Thus we permitted the German commercial submarine Deutschland to enter our ports and remain there at will and to take on and depart with her cargo of rubber and copper and other contraband of war, although England protested
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upon the ground that the submarine was not really a merchant ship, as not being open to capture while traversing the high seas beyond the three mile limit. Moreover we suffered the German Embassy to sell here German war bonds just as we did England and France to sell theirs. These revelations subse- quent to our declaration of war have demonstrated that the German Embassy used a considerable part of the proceeds of such sales illicitly against our government. Thus while at peace with us it tried to plot with Japan and Mexico, which the Germans supposed to be potentially our enemies, to make war upon us. It endeavored to stir up the so-called Yellow Peril against our Pacific coast, where that peril is held in a terror which we cannot here appreciate. Japan refused to be bribed against us and so now deserves our full confidence. Mexico was willing in spirit, but weak in flesh. As to that the Kaiser evidently thought to create a sort of an American Alsace and Lorraine problem, perhaps to counteract the real European one. He failed to appreciate the controlling dif- ferences between the two, namely that the Mexican territory came into this Republic after its people had organized them- selves into the Republic of Texas and by their own vote and solicitation, and that if a vote were now to be taken in the three states of this Union formed from that Mexican terri- tory, not one person in one hundred would vote to go back into Mexico, whereas the contrary is true in each respect in the real Alsace and Lorraine. At any rate the matter was none of the Kaiser's business. Look at the cool impudence of the fellow. What, barter away three stars out of this flag!
"When freedom from her mountain height Unfurled her standard to the air, She tore the azure robe of night And set the stars of glory there."
And there those stars shall remain, every one of them, in spite of the Kaiser and all of his powers of air, earth and flood. Long before a single star shall have been blotted out from that azure field, the House of Hohenzollern shall have crumb- led back into forgotten dust, as God knows it ought long since
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to have done. It has utterly outlived its usefulness, if ever it had any.
Some of the proceeds of those sales the German Embassy, as we lately gained indubitable evidence of the fact, used to finance efforts to destory munition plants within our territory, to plant bombs within outgoing ships carrying supplies to the enemies of Germany, and as well to carry on her propaganda against our government, so as to control its action. That Embassy set aside a fund of fifty million dollars for the pur- chase of thirty leading newspapers throughout the United States, so as by them to carry on that infamous propaganda. Only one newspaper in all the country was found to be for sale for such a purpose, and the German Ambassador paid $1,300,000.00 for that paper, the Evening Mail. If ever a man bought a lemon, Bernstorff did then. All honor and praise to the newspaper men of the United States. No other set of them would sell their paper for German gold even in that time of nominal peace. Every other set of them showed themselves loyal and patriotic to the very core.
Moreover, as was recently declared by a member of the German House of Lords, the German plan was to make us pay an indemnity of forty-five billions of dollars. It seems to me even that Germany for that purpose deliberately de- signed to drive us into the war. I can give no other reason- able explanation of her act, in October, 1916, in sending a submarine over to our coast to sink right off our shores the Halifax passenger steamer. You will recollect that the sub- marine first appeared in Newport Harbor, that her com- mander paid his respects in due form to our Commander of the Port, and that at the end of the twenty-four hours grace allowed by a neutral to a war vessel of a belligerent, it left the harbor and a few hours later sunk that steamer almost under the guns of our war vessels. Had we been entirely consistent, those vessels would have blown that submarine out of the water, because a nation needs not to declare war against piracy, but simply suppresses it at sight, and according to our doctrine, as enunciated in the President's communications to Germany, such submarine warfare was piracy pure and simple. The time, however, was on the eve of the presidential election,
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when, as they say, nothing else can be done in the United States, and nothing was made of the incident by our govern- ment. As of old one of our statesmen said: "Millions for defence, but not one cent for tribute," so now we say: "Bil- lions upon billions for the prosecution of this most righteous war, but not one cent for tribute, let come what will."
Moreover, the American war case has been at least morally much strengthened by the atrocious manner in which Germany has conducted her warfare. Nothing so abomin- able in that direction has been known in so called civilized war- fare since the time of the American Revolution, when Lord Chatham in special reference to the Wyoming Massacre de- nounced in the English House of Lords the ministry for em- ploying against our forefathers the American Indians, "whose known rule of warfare," he declared, "spares neither age, sex nor condition."
Germany's such acts beyond the pale of international law and decent warfare constitute the crimes of:
(a) Murder, cold and deliberate, by its submarine war- fare upon passenger ships;
(b) Perjury, in the deliberate breach of the sworn treaty with Belgium;
(c) Robbery of private property in Belgium and north- ern France (It is said that even the Crown Prince soiled his own hands with this) ;
(d) Arson, in the deliberate burning of thousands of private dwellings in those localities;
(e) Rape by the wholesale ;
(f) Wanton bombing of cities and hamlets remote from the seat of war.
No more horrible thing was ever done than the bombing of the London school in broad daylight, where the bomb crushed through into the basement room where the kinder- garten class of sixty-four children of from five to seven years was assembled, killing ten of the little tots outright and mang- ling the others. Sixteen of them two days later were buried in one common grave after a common funeral.
Note how the shell from the far distant German cannon fell upon the church in Paris on Good Friday and killed the
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people therein as they knelt in prayer for the blessings of peace, five of the slain being American women. Nothing so horrible has been known before since the Black Hole of Cal- cutta in the East Indian Rebellion.
Consider the deliberate bombing of hospitals and the in- tentional sinking of eleven hospital ships, each sailing in full compliance with the terms of the Geneva Convention. Con- sider also the wanton destruction the other day, by deliberate cannon fire, in board daylight, of the most ancient and vene- rated Church of St. Remi attached to the Rheims Cathedral and dating back to the tenth century. The Catholics in the allied armies crossed themselves as they plainly saw the in- cendiary shells fall upon it. "Vengeance is mine saith the Lord, I will repay," but He repays through human agencies, and I fancy that as the battle proceeds those Catholics will strike many a strenuous blow. Puritan dissenter of the strictest sect, as by long descent I am, I sympathize keenly with their feelings.
Contrast Hindenburg and Pershing as to their treatment of the worst possible crime, as the Polish Countess at a recent meeting in Mount Vernon told of it, namely that Hindenburg said that his soldiers were "entitled to the girls." Pershing hanged the American offender, the single one out of the mil- lion and more men, who had ravished a French peasant girl.
You have indubitable evidence upon this subject of Ger- man atrocity from one of your neighbors (at least during the summer months) over here in Woodstock, Hamilton Holt, in an article published in the last issue of The Independent. In that he states that during his recent sojourn in France he took pains to visit the American detachment which had experienced the first of the substantial American fighting with the Ger- mans. He says that upon that occasion a picked force of thirty-five hundred Germans attacked the section of trenches held by that American force, which was composed largely of New England men. At first the Germans penetrated the trenches, but finally, after two days of fighting, our men suc- ceeded in expelling them, or what was left of them, from the entire position. After the Germans had so retired our men found a quantity of coffee, which apparently the German
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troops had abandoned in the haste of their retreat. Our American doctors, however, thought it prudent at least to test it, and found that it had been poisoned through and through. This terrible thing was the work not of any camp following rabble, but of those picked troops, the very flower of the Ger- man army. Some of these things we hear about German atrocities I hesitate to believe, but Hamilton Holt is no liar and no fool, and although he has, with us in New York, had something of the reputation of a reformer, he is no sissy and you can rely implicitly upon what he says of his own obser- vation and first hand hearing. That such poisoning was no rare thing is evident from the order recently issued by the American Commander to govern the conduct of our men in following up the retreating Germans, such as to avoid touch- ing wires or opening doors, etc. The last specification of that order reads: "Six. Poisoned Food. Abandoned food must be carefully inspected and investigated." I venture to say that prior to this war no commander in a century has before deem- ed it necessary to issue such an order against a civilized enemy.
Still the German conscience seems to be utterly insensible to the enormity of these crimes. Such course of atrocity appears to have been deliberately adopted with the avowed purpose of thereby terrifying the hostile peoples so that they will compel their governments to surrender to the Germans upon any terms. The effect, however, has been just the oppo- site. It has, without doubt, produced the marvelous volun- teering in England. The day following the publication of the news of the sinking of the Carolina, at the Naval Recruiting Station in Brooklyn, near the Borough Hall where the ses- sions of our court are held and where before apparently only a very few had been in attendance, a long line of young men extended from the door out along the sidewalk for nearly a block. Upon interrogation as to the cause, one of them answered simply: "The sinking of the Carolina!"
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