tion now is, For what purposes and to what ends is this present war to be prosecuted? * It is time for us to know what are the objects and designs of our Government.

*

*

*

We are,

in my opinion, in a most unnecessary and therefore a most un

justifiable war.

Votes Against War Credits in German Reichtag During the Present War.

War Credit Bill passed

August 4, 1914, unanimous.

December 2, 1914, 1 against.

March 31, 1915, 2 against (30 Socialists left the chamber before the vote).

August 20, 1915, 1 against (29 Socialists left the chamber before the vote).

December 21, 1915, 20 against (22 Socialists left the chamber before the vote).

March 25, 1916, 18 against.

(Source: "Vorwartz. Zentralorgan der sozial demokratischen Partsi Deuthschlands.")

June 7, 1916.

October 28, 1916, 15 against.

February 23, 1916, same as last previous.

According to the New York Times of December 12, 1917, Herr Strobel, in the Prussian Diet, on December 11, 1917, said:

"Peace would soon be achieved if Prussianized Germany were so reformed that it could be regarded as belonging to the world's culture. The nation's reactionary Prussian system is the strongest support of our militarism and imperialism, which we have to thank for this hideous war.

"When Heydelbrand, the Conservative leader, asks where Prussia would be with a parliamentary system, the answer must be that a democratic, sane Prussia would never have been rushed into this frightful catastrophe of war. When Heydebrand declares that the majority parties in the Reichstag have taken advantage of the serious position of the country to demand governmental reform, he must be asked who brought the country into this seri

ous position. It was the thoughtlessness of the Government and of the parties which encouraged the Government to support that unbelievable ultimatum to Serbia.

*
*

*

"I do not demand revolution," cried Strobel," but I say it will come when conditions favorable to it show themselves. * * * Whether the war shall be carried on and how long is not a matter which can be left to Hindenburg alone. (Storm of protests from Conservatives.) It is a matter for the people and the people's representatives. The.German people certainly did not want the war, and the vast majority of the army would vote for peace by agreement and without annexations."

* * *

Lloyd George on the Boer War, July 25, 1900.

He has led us into two blunders. The first was the war. But worse than the war is the change that has been effected in the purpose for which we are prosecuting the war. We went into the war for equal rights; we are prosecuting for annexation. * * * You entered into these two republics for philanthropic purposes and remained to commit burglary. * * A war of annexation, however, against a proud people must be a war of extermination, and that is, unfortunately, what it seems we are now committing ourselves to burning homesteads and turning men and women out of their homes.

*

Lord Chatham, November 18, 1777, spoke as follows, on The American Revolution:

I would sell my shirt off my back to assist in proper measures, properly and wisely conducted, but I would not part with a single shilling to the present ministers. Their plans are founded in destruction and disgrace. It is, my lords, a ruinous and destructive war; it is full of danger; it teems with disgrace and must end in ruin. * If I were an American, as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop was landed in my country I never would lay down my arms! Never! Never! Never!

*

*

66

The Philosophy of Free Speech From Liberty," by John Stuart Mill, on the Effect of Suppression of Heretical Opinion:

*

The greatest harm done is to those who are not heretics, but whose mental development is cramped and their reason cowed by the fear of heresy. * * It is not solely or chiefly to form great thinkers that freedom of thinking is required. On the contrary, it is as much and even more indispensable to enable average human beings to attain the mental stature which they are capable of. There have been, and may be again, great individual thinkers in a general atmosphere of mental slavery. But there has never been, nor ever will be in that atmosphere an intellectually active people. Where any people has made a temporary approach to such a character, it has been because the dread of heterodox speculation was for a time suspended. Where there is a tacit convention that principles are not to be disputed; where the discussion of the greatest questions which can occupy humanity is considered to be closed, we cannot hope to find that generally high scale of mental activity which has made some periods of history so remarkable.

From the "Nemesis of Docility," by Edmond Holmes- pp.

158-160.

If, as a soldier, the German citizen is the victim of the iron discipline on which the army has always prided itself, as a civilian he is subjected to a less severe but more insidious pressure. For, whatever harm this pressure may have done to this character he is in part to blame. As I have already pointed out he has allowed the State, through its control of the various moulds and organs of opinion, to suggest to him what he is to think, to believe and to say: and to do this so effectually that he has come at last to regard those thoughts, beliefs and words as his own. In other words, he has allowed the State to take possession of his moral and spiritual springs of action and to usurp the functions of his own higher self.

Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1801: All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will, to be right

ful, must be reasonable; that the minority possesses equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression. * Let us restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection without which liberty and even life itself are but dreary things. And let us reflect that, having banished from our land that religious intolerance under which mankind so long bled and suffered, we have yet gained little if we countenance a political intolerance as despotic, as wicked, and capable of as bitter and bloody persecutions. If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.

*

*

*

Thomas Jefferson, Preamble to the Virginia Toleration Act of 1785. (Hening's Statutes at Large, Ch. 34, Vol. 12):

To suffer the civil magistrate to intrude his power into the field of opinion, or to restrain the profession or propagation of principles, on supposition of their ill tendency, is a dangerous fallacy, which at once destroys all liberty, because he, being of course judge of that tendency, will make his opinions the rule of judgment, and approve or condemn the sentiments of others only as they shall square with or differ from his own.

Daniel Webster, at Niblo's Garden, New York, March 15, 1837:

There are men in all ages who mean to exercise power usefully; but who mean to exercise it. They mean to govern well; but they mean to govern. They promise to be kind masters; but they mean to be masters. They think there need be but little restraint upon themselves. Their notion of the public interest is apt to be quite closely connected with their own exercise of authority. They may not, indeed, always understand their own motives. The love of power may sink too deep in their own hearts even for their own scrutiny, and may pass with themselves for mere patriotism and benevolence.

Blackstone's Commentaries, ed 1860, Book 4, Ch. 4, p. 60:

To deny the possibility, nay, actual existence of witchcraft and sorcery, is at once flatly to contradict the revealed will of God in various passages of both the Old and New Testaments, and the thing itself is a truth to which every nation in the world hath in its turn borne testimony, either by example seemingly well tested, or by prohibitory laws which at least supposed the possibility of commerce with evil spirits.