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 "The Enslavement of 
 Belgians'' 
 
 A PROTEST 
 
 3\C^^^'' land long lease of empire Won 
 Whose sons sale silent when base deeds were done. 
 
 — Lowell. 
 
 MASS MEETING 
 CARNEGIE HALL, N. Y. 
 FRIDAY EVENING, DECEMBER 15.1916 
 
 
 a 
 
The meeting was held in response to the following^^ o^ 
 advertisement in the daily press: > ^^v 
 
 A Mass Meeting 
 
 WILL BE HELD IN 
 
 CARNEGIE HALL 
 
 On Friday Evening, December 15th 
 
 AT 8.30 O'CLOCK 
 
 To Protest Against the Crimes 
 
 of the Imperial German 
 
 Government in Its Treatment 
 
 of the Belgian People 
 
 THE PROGRAMME FOR THE MEETING IS: 
 
 1. THE STAR SPANGLED 
 
 BANNER 
 
 2. ADDRESS by the CHAIRMAN 
 
 The Rev. Dr. W. T. Manning 
 
 3. ADDRESS James M. Beck 
 
 THE BELGIAN NATIONAL 
 ANTHEM "The Braban^onne" 
 ADDRESS Alton B. Parker 
 
 6. ADDRESS 
 
 Elihu Root 
 
 RESOLUTIONS 
 AMERICA 
 
 The Last Cable from the Belgian Government Reads as 
 follows : 
 
 "This slavery is being carried out in the utmost 
 barbarity and brutality and several thousand of the more 
 reluctant have been put in prison on starvation rations in 
 order to induce them to sign ' free ' contracts." 
 
 Admission by tickets which can be procured at Putnam's 
 bookstore, from Joseph Bucklin Bishop, 59 Wall Street, and 
 at the Hall. The meeting will commence at 8.30. Doors 
 will be opened at 7 o'clock. 
 
ADDRESS OF THE CHAIRMAN 
 
 Rev. William T. Manning, D. D., Rector, Trinity Church, 
 New York, Chairman. 
 
 The Chairman : This meeting has been called to express 
 openly and publicly the indignation and abhorrence which, we 
 feel as American citizens, against deeds committed in Belgium, 
 France and Poland (applause), such as were supposed to have 
 become extinct among civilized peoples (applause), and have 
 not been known in the world since the beginning of the Christian 
 era. (Applause.) 
 
 A similar meeting has already been held in Boston, and 
 we hope that others will be held in every City, great and 
 small, throughout the land. (Great applause.) 
 
 That martyred nation which, more than any other, has 
 sacrificed itself for the sake of law and right and honor 
 (applause), is appealing, in its dire distress, to all the world 
 and to the neutral nations in particular. This meeting is in 
 answer to that appeal. (Applause.) We wish to express our 
 unmeasured sympathy with the wronged and outraged people 
 of Belgium. (Applause.) 
 
 We have not come here to speak the language of hate. We 
 do not condemn indiscriminately the whole German people. 
 We know that they have been misinformed, misled and cruelly 
 betrayed by those in whom they have too blindly trusted. We 
 believe that there are many Germans who condemn these 
 infamous acts as strongly as any of us do. (Applause.) We 
 hope yet to see them free themselves from the curse of Prussian 
 Militarism (great applause) and from the power of autocratic 
 and unscrupulous leaders who have robbed Germany of her 
 high place among the nations, and led her into crimes which 
 have shocked and dismayed the world. But we are here to say 
 that as American citizens, and as true men and women, we 
 denounce, and abhor, and utterly condemn such acts as the 
 
invasion of Belgium, the sinking of the Lusitania, still unatoned 
 and unapologized for, and now this climax of atrocity, this 
 dragging into wholesale slavery of men who are defenceless 
 and unoffending non-combatants. (Great applause.) 
 
 Only recently we learned that thousands of young women 
 in Northern France had been torn from their homes, and from 
 their despairing friends, and taken no man knew whither. 
 The situation of those helpless girls, in a foreign land filled 
 with hostile soldiery is indeed terrible to think of. 
 
 Now, in defiance of all law, human and divine, the brave 
 people of a conquered country are seized by the hundreds of 
 thousands, packed like beasts into cattle cars and carried away 
 to be the slaves of their captors. 
 
 We know the excuse that is oft'ered for this unspeakable 
 crime. We are told that this is done in order to provide for 
 the unemployed and that it is "a. humanitarian measure." We 
 fling back that monstrous excuse into the teeth of those who 
 make it. (Great applause.) It is an insult to our intelligence, 
 a lie on its face, and a mockery of those who are being tortured 
 and oppressed. (Applause.) 
 
 In violation of her most solemn and binding word, Ger- 
 many has invaded the country of these people, desolated their 
 homes, robbed them of their machinery, their tools, their means 
 of subsistence, and now when they ought at least to be her 
 charges and her wards she not only refuses to provide for 
 them but drags them into exile to be her slaves. God save us 
 and the world from such "humanitarian measures" as these ! 
 (Great applause.) 
 
 That which is forced on these people is in fact worse than 
 slavery. It is slavery plus treason to their own kindred, their 
 own honour and their own land. They are compelled to give 
 their aid towards the destruction of their own people. 
 
 Shall we as a nation sit silent, or utter ourselves only 
 in words of formal disapproval, against wrong like this? 
 
 (Cries of "No, no!") 
 
 In the light of these things are we prepared to say, as a 
 people, that the causes, merits and ultimate issue of this war 
 are no concern of ours? 
 
 (Cries of "No, no! Wilson!") 
 
Is there anyone in this land calHng himself an American 
 who is so unmoral, so unchristian, so shamefully neutral between 
 good and evil that he is not concerned about these things ? 
 
 (Cries of "Wilson, Wilson!" and Great Applause.) 
 
 The man who, knowing the undisputed facts, is neutral, or 
 unmoved, with regard to Belgium, has suffered some insidious 
 weakening both of his moral sense and of his manhood. (Great 
 applause.) 
 
 We have been slow to believe that such things could be in 
 this age. We were not affected in the beginning by any 
 prejudice against Germany, — quite the reverse. But we have 
 been compelled to see that everything that we hold sacred is 
 involved in this conflict. (Applause.) We have been compelled 
 to see that the real issues at stake are Democracy, Civilization 
 and every truth for which Christianity stands! (Applause.) 
 A world dominated by the ideas for which the German Gov- 
 ernment has stood during this war would be a world unfit to 
 live in. It would be a world of brute force, of broken obliga- 
 tions, of ruthless aggression, of might utterly disregarding right. 
 (Applause.) 
 
 If these standards are to be in control we shall be living in 
 a world in which the Ten Commandments have been repealed 
 and the Christian religion has been repudiated. Judged by its 
 fruits, we now see that the doctrine of the will to power is 
 the most damnable and inhuman doctrine ever promulgated on 
 this earth. (Applause.) Does someone ask the cynical ques- 
 tion "What good will it do for us to speak?" The question 
 itself betrays a lack of the American spirit. What good will 
 it do for us to speak out, regardless of consequences, against 
 colossal injustice and unparalleled wrong? The voice of every 
 patriot and prophet, of every martyr and confessor, of every 
 founder of this Republic, brands that question as a false and 
 shameful one. (Applause.) 
 
 I point you to one who has shown us what good it will do, 
 who has shown us the sublime power of moral witness, who at 
 the risk of his own life and liberty has lifted up a voice that 
 has been heard in every land, and that has made his oppressors 
 tremble, the great Cardinal Mercier (Great and continued 
 applause, whole audience rising), whose name is an honour to 
 
Belgium, an honour to the Roman Catholic Church, an honour 
 to Christianity throughout the world, and an honour to mankind. 
 (Applause.) 
 
 We send our greeting tonight from this hall to the great 
 Cardinal, and not less to the other of the two most noble and 
 heroic figures revealed by this war, Albert, King of the Belgians. 
 (Great and long continued applause, whole audience standing.) 
 
 We are asked to speak out for the sake of Belgium. I say 
 that it is time for us to speak out for the sake of our own 
 honour, our own land, and our own souls! (Applause.) 
 
 And may the woes of Belgium, a land consecrated to peace 
 and desiring only this, rouse us to realize the inconceivable folly, 
 the wicked and criminal negligence of our present lack of any 
 adequate provision for the defence of our shores and the pro- 
 tection of our homes. (Applause.) 
 
 Our President has said recently, in words which we all 
 endorse : "So far as America is concerned and her influence 
 is involved, justice and liberty should be extended to mankind 
 everywhere." 
 
 (A Voice: "Why doesn't he do something?") 
 
 Let us act in accordance with the words. Now is the time, 
 if ever, for us to use our influence for justice and liberty. 
 
 Our Government has entered a protest against these deeds 
 in Belgium. 
 
 (A Voice: "Very mild protest, very official.") 
 
 We have said officially that they are "in contravention of all 
 precedent and of those humane principles of international prac- 
 tice which have long been accepted and followed by civilized 
 nations in their treatment of non-combatants in concjuered ter- 
 ritory". But our message does not seem to have had much 
 effect. The answer to it is a heartless and paltering evasion. 
 (Applause.) And day by day these merciless outrages upon 
 men and women are going on. 
 
 Let the American people speak now in words which no one 
 can mistake or misunderstand. (Applause.) Let us declare 
 here tonight that we Americans are not so sodden with wealth, 
 so fallen from our ideals, that we have ceased to care for things 
 like these. Let our people all up and down this land call upon 
 our Government to speak now, not in words mild and respect- 
 
fill, for such deeds deserve no respect, but with a stern indig- 
 nation, and a voice of moral condemnation which shall be heard 
 through all the world. (Great applause.) 
 
 We owe it not only to Belgium and to ourselves, we owe 
 it to Germany to tell her to her face, and unhesitatingly, how 
 these misdeeds appear to us, and to the judgment of mankind. 
 (Applause.) It may be that our voice fearlessly lifted up will 
 help to bring her to herself and to make her see the enormity 
 of these things. 
 
 Months ago our Government was forced to say ofificially to 
 Germany that unless she abandoned her methods of submarine 
 warfare "the Government of the United States would have no 
 choice but to sever diplomatic relations with the German Empire 
 altogether." Can our country, the land of justice and liberty, 
 honourably continue in friendly diplomatic relations with a 
 Government whose hands are red with deeds like these in 
 Belgium? (Continued cries of "No, nol") 
 
 We denounce this hideous wrong as brutal, unlawful, 
 uncivilized and unworthy of the men of any people! (Great 
 applause.) 
 
 We call upon our Government to take a position in this 
 matter which shall give to America her greatest and most price- 
 less privilege, the privilege of moral leadership among the 
 nations. (Applause.) 
 
 We call upon our President to speak, and we pledge to the 
 President the unqualified support of all right thinking people 
 of every party, creed, and race, if he will now demand in the 
 name of America, in the name of Humanity, and in the Name 
 of God, that these unheard of outrages against the brave people 
 of Belgium shall immediately cease, and that those who have 
 already been carried into slavery shall be set free, and allowed 
 at least the poor comfort of returning to their broken families 
 and to their devastated homes. (Great applause.) 
 
LETTERS AND TELEGRAMS 
 
 The Chairman : We are now to hear some letters and 
 telegrams which have been sent expressing sympathy with the 
 aims and purposes of this meeting. These will be read to us 
 by one whom we are especially glad to have on this platform 
 because of the honor in which he is held everywhere, because 
 he has again and again spoken out like a man upon these ques- 
 tions, and because he conspicuously represents the sentiment 
 and the feeling of the Southern people of our country, — Bishop 
 Gailor of Tennessee! (Applause.) 
 
 Bishop Gailor: I was not asked to make an address, but 
 I consider it a most high honor to be permitted to read these 
 letters and telegrams, to testify by my presence on this occasion 
 my sympathy with this movement and to say, as I have been 
 asked to say, just one or two words as a preface to what I 
 have to read. 
 
 The enlightened conscience of Europe in the thirteenth 
 century, six hundred years ago, expressing itself in the poetry 
 of Dante, put the cruel and the murderers into the seventh 
 circle of the Inferno, but the cruel and murderers who had 
 also broken their plighted word, it put into the pit of Hell. 
 (Applause.) 
 
 The fundamental difference between the naked savage and 
 the man we call civilized is that the civilized man has respect 
 for law, and the supreme law of human civilization is the obliga- 
 tion of humaneness, sympathy and compassion. 
 
 We are assembled, therefore, tonight to appeal to Almighty 
 God, who is not the God of any nation, or of any race, but 
 the God of the spirits of all flesh, Who hath made of one blood 
 all nations of men who dwell on the face of the whole earth, 
 and to appeal to all men and all women in all lands who respect 
 this supreme law of human civilization to protest in the name 
 of religion, in the name of liberty, of justice, of humanity, 
 
against the tragic, the horrible, the unexampled cruelties inflicted 
 upon the Belgian people. (Applause.) 
 
 (Bishop Gailor then read the following letters and tele- 
 grams) : 
 
 From Theodore Roosevelt 
 
 "Sagamore Hili,, Dec. 5th, 1916. 
 Dear Mr. Whitridge: 
 
 I earnestly wish you all success in your meeting; and all 
 Americans who are proud of the good name of their country 
 and also have in them the capacity for general indignation on 
 behalf of a foully wronged people, must join in hearty thanks 
 to you and your associates. 
 
 Germany's campaign of methodically organized atrocities 
 against the unhappy Belgian people has culminated in the trans- 
 planting of over a hundred thousand Belgian men into a con- 
 dition of state-slavery in Germany where their labor is to be 
 used to aid in the conquest of their fellow-countrymen. Similar 
 transplantings of civilian non-combatants, both men and women, 
 into slavery in Germany have already occurred in Northern 
 France. 
 
 This action is paralleled by the action of the Assyrian 
 conquerors of Syria and Palestine; but until the present war 
 broke out it was supposed that such hideous infamies were 
 efifectively checked by the system of international law which has 
 grown up under modern Christian civilization. But Germany 
 has trampled under foot every device of international law for 
 securing the protection of the weak and the unoffending. She 
 has shown an utter disregard of all considerations of pity, mercy, 
 humanity and international morality. She has counted upon the 
 terror inspired by her ruthless brutality to protect her from 
 retaliation or interference. 
 
 The outrages committed on our own people have been such 
 as the United States has never before been forced to endure, 
 and have included the repeated killing of our men, women and 
 children. The sinking of the Marina and the Cheming the 
 other day, with the attendant murder of six Americans, was 
 but the most recent in an unbroken chain of injuries and insults, 
 which by comparison make mere wrong to our property interests 
 
 "c into absolute insignificance. 
 
 .As long as neutrals keep silent, or speak apologetically, or 
 
 e refuge in the futilities of the professional pacificists, there 
 
 1 be no cessation in these brutalities. But surely this last 
 J crowning brutality, which amounts to the imposition of a 
 
cruel form of state-slavery on a helpless and unoffending 
 conquered nation, must make our people realize that they peril 
 their own souls, that they degrade their own manhood, if they 
 do not bear emphatic testimony against the perpetration of such 
 iniquity. 
 
 I am glad to be one among the Americans who thus bear 
 testimony. 
 
 Yours very truly, 
 
 Theodore Roosevelt." 
 (Great applause.) 
 
 From Joseph H. Choate 
 
 "8 East Sixty-Third Street, 
 
 12 December, 1916. 
 My Dear Dr. Manning: 
 
 I am very sorry that I am unavoidably prevented from 
 taking an active part in the meeting on Friday night, to protest 
 against one of the most cruel and barbarous atrocities known 
 to history, and to support the great effort which our President 
 has been making to put a stop to it, in which he is entitled to 
 the assistance of all the citizens of the United States of all 
 parties. 
 
 The Secretary of State states that the United States Gov- 
 ernment has exhausted its means of diplomacy, and, therefore, 
 lays the case before American public opinion, from which it 
 will expect to draw guidance for the next steps, if any be 
 taken. I do not agree to that view, although I accept it for 
 the time being in deference to the high authority of the Presi- 
 dent. I do not believe that we are bound to continue diplomatic 
 relations with a nation that shall persist in such brutal outrages, 
 against the universal protest of the neutral world. (Great 
 applause.) 
 
 Chancellor von Bethman-HoUweg told Secretary Grew that 
 the deportations are regarded as justified "on the grounds of 
 social necessity." 
 
 (Cry of "It's a lie!") 
 
 But the same Chancellor declared to the world on the Fourth 
 of August, 1914, that the invasion of Belgium was justified 
 on the same plea of necessity, although he admitted that it was 
 all wrong and was in violation of international law and would 
 be fully paid for, as it will be by and by. (Great applause.) 
 
 I have read that the Vice-Chancellor of Germany said the 
 
 . other day that these deportations were in entire accordance 
 
 with international law, and were authorized by the Convention 
 
 8 
 
with respect to the Laws and Customs of War on Land, adopted 
 by the first Hague Conference in 1899, which was adopted by 
 all the belHgerent nations, and particularly by the Forty-third 
 Article of the Convention. But this is a still more frivolous 
 and unfounded plea, which, I am not surprised to see, the 
 Chancellor himself in his conversation with Secretary Grew 
 took no notice of and did not adopt. 
 
 Article Forty-three says nothing on the subject, but simply 
 requires the occupant of territory under military authority 'to 
 take all steps in his power to re-establish and insure, as far 
 as possible, public order and safety'. Surely, that does not 
 require him to tear the inhabitants of that territory by force 
 from their homes and their families, to exile them to a foreign 
 country, and there reduce them to slavery and compel them to 
 take the places of laborers who will recruit his own hostile 
 army. And the next Article, Forty-four, expressly declares 
 that 'Any compulsion of the population of occupied territory 
 to take part in military operations against its own country is 
 prohibited.' 
 
 But the Vice-Chancellor has forgotten the whole spirit of 
 the Conference of 1899, which declares in its preamble that 
 'animated by the desire to serve the interests of humanity and 
 the ever-increasing requirements of civilization', and 'thinking 
 it important, with this object, to revise the laws and general 
 customs of war, either with the view of defining them more 
 precisely, or of laying down certain limits for the purpose of 
 moderating their severity as far as possible', the Conference 
 'has in this spirit adopted a great number of provisions, the 
 object of which is to define and govern the usages of war on 
 land.' The Conference, however, recognized that 'it has not 
 been possible to agree forthwith on provisions embracing all 
 the circumstances which occur in practice', and declares that 
 'cases not provided for should not, for want of a written pro- 
 vision, be left to the arbitrary judgment of the military Com- 
 manders'. And it declares further that 'in cases not included 
 in the regulations adopted by it, populations and belligerents 
 remain under the protection and empire of the principles of 
 international law, as they result from the usages established 
 between civilised nations, from the lazvs of humanity, and the 
 requirements of the public conscience/ 
 
 Now, certainly, neither international law, nor the usages of 
 civilized nations, nor the laws of humanity, nor the require- 
 ments of the public conscience justify these horrible proceed- 
 ings, and Germany by its ratification of the Final Act of the 
 Conference of 1899 bound itself in the conduct of war on land 
 to be governed by these lofty and noble standards. 
 
I trust that your meeting will be a great success, and will 
 follow by other meetings throughout the land in the same spirit, 
 so as to guide the President, as he requests, in the further con- 
 duct of this awful business. For as Lord Bryce very justly 
 says 'nothing could be more shocking than this wholesale carry- 
 mg away of men from Belgium into virtual slavery.' They are 
 being deported in hundreds of thousands, in order to compel 
 them to engage in work for the benefit of the German army 
 and against their own country, and the method of doing it is 
 as barbarous and brutal as the purpose of it. 
 
 Very truly yours, 
 
 Joseph H. Choate. 
 The Rt. Rev. William T. Manning." 
 
 (Great applause.) 
 
 From Bishop O'Gorman 
 
 "Sioux Falls, S. D., Dec. 13, 1916. 
 
 To Thomas F. Ryan, New York : 
 
 I am glad of the opportunity to join with my fellow citizens 
 in protest against deportation of Belgian civilians, a measure 
 inhuman, unchristian, contrary to civilized warfare. 
 
 (Signed) Bishop Thomas O'Gorman." 
 
 From Archbishop Ireland 
 
 "St. Paul, Minn., Dec. 14, 1916. 
 
 To Thomas F. Ryan, N. Y. : 
 
 The meeting in New York in protest of deportation of 
 Belgians receives a cordial and sympathetic re-echo from 
 Americans elsewhere on the Continent. The meeting speaks 
 in the name of primary duties, of justice, and humanity. Those 
 to whom that protest is addressed will not, I believe, turn 
 a deaf ear to your entreaties, and will, on calmer thought, desist 
 from the dreadful rigors into which for the moment, war 
 passion has led them. The peace-abiding civilized population 
 of the country have an inviolable right to live on their own 
 soil. Forced labor on that of their foes finds nowhere justificar 
 tion. Cardinal Mercier tells the details of Belgian deportation. 
 
 10 
 
The truth of his statements cannot be doubted. The facts as 
 lold by him challenge contradiction. They a fright the hearer. 
 No explanation, no excuse, diminishes the awful cruelty implied 
 in them. For its own sake, for the sake of the honorable 
 record it covets in the history of the nations, Germany will, as 
 we hope, quickly reverse its present position, and leave Belgians 
 to live and suffer on their own Belgian soil. 
 
 (Signed) Archbishop Ireland." . 
 
 From Samuel Harden Church 
 
 "Pittsburgh, Pa., Dec. 15, 1916. 
 
 To the Hon. James M. Beck, 
 
 Belgian Meeting, Carnegie Hall, N. Y. 
 
 The whole world joins in your protest against the continued 
 outrages in Belgium. Germany today stands gloating over the 
 ruined countries of her peaceful neighbors, holding the dripping 
 sword of murder in her hand, while all around her lie human 
 forms, dead, dying, maimed, broken-hearted, and the distant 
 roads chocked with thousands of creatures whom she has de- 
 ported into slavery. Like a medieval barbarian she calls this 
 unprovoked desolation a proud victory; let us have no peace 
 until she is forced to pay the bill in full. 
 
 (Signed) Samuel Harden Church. 
 
 President of Carnegie Institute." 
 
 The Chairman : I now have the great pleasure of intro- 
 ducing one who is preeminently qualified to speak to us upon this 
 matter, who is as well known abroad as he is in our own 
 land, for his fearless, able, and conclusive presentation of the 
 facts relating to this war, and whose books, "The Evidence in 
 the Case", and "The War and Humanity", ought to be read by 
 every intelligent man and woman, — the Honorable James M. 
 Beck! (Applause.) 
 
 11 
 
ADDRESS OF THE HON. JAMES M. BECK 
 
 We are met tonight to protest in the sacred cause of justice 
 and humanity against the most damnable infamy of modem 
 times. (Applause.) If the people of the United States did not 
 thus protest, the very "stones of the streets would cry out 
 against us". (Applause.) We represent citizens of all parties, 
 creeds and classes. Whatever our differences of opinion may be 
 or may have been in other matters, we are a unit tonight in 
 pledging to our Government our support in any attempt which 
 it may make to end the slow murder of a great, a noble and an 
 innocent people. 
 
 We protest against it as citizens of the United States, because 
 our country has always been in the past a noble interpreter of 
 the best ideals of humanity and a steadfast champion of the weak 
 and the oppressed. 
 
 We protest as citizens of the large commonwealth of civiliza- 
 tion, whose system of international law, the inestimable heritage 
 of the ages, has been mocked and nullified by the cruel war, 
 waged by the Prussian conquerors of Belgium against the non- 
 combatants of that stricken land. (Applause.) 
 
 We protest as children of a common God against the wicked 
 and wanton wrongs that the ruthless invader has inflicted upon 
 our brethren, the brave people of Belgium. (Applause.) 
 
 In so doing we are not playing the role of officious inter- 
 meddlers in a quarrel that is not our own. These violations of 
 international law offend humanity, affront civilization and vitally 
 concern the whole human family. They constitute a flagrant 
 negation of all that civilization has accomplished in mitigating 
 the horrors of war. 
 
 We remember that when our own country, at a time when 
 it was fighting for its very life, committed a comparatively 
 trivial violation of international law in forcibly taking the Com- 
 
 12 
 
missioners of the Confederate States from the British steamer, 
 the Trent, Prussia, while recognizing that only England was 
 "immediately concerned in the matter", took the broad and 
 righteous stand that it too had a direct interest in the vindica- 
 tion of the "rights of the neutral flag". If our act then con- 
 cerned Prussia, Prussia's act now concerns us. (Great 
 applause.) 
 
 If I do not misinterpret the sentiment of the American 
 people, then it believes that any peace, that would leave the 
 rights of Belgium without vindication and their wrongs with- 
 out reparation would be infinitely more mischievous than a con- 
 tinuation of the war. "Reparation", do I say? Can the dead 
 be restored to life? Can happiness ever be restored to those 
 who have been plunged into unending misery? Can historic 
 temples be restored, or the priceless treasures of antiquity be 
 returned ? Vengeance there may be, reparation there can never 
 be. Before peace shall come, Belgium, innocent and shamefully 
 oppressed, must not only be restored but its just cause vindicated, 
 if the reign of law is ever to be restored to a distracted civiliza- 
 tion. (Great applause.) We may well recall the solemn words 
 of Abraham Lincoln, in a similar crisis : 
 
 "Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty 
 scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills 
 that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's 
 two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, 
 and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be 
 paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thou- 
 sand years ago, so still it must be said 'the judgments of the 
 Lord are true and righteous altogether.' " (Applause.) 
 
 Prussia's crime against Belgium is deepened by circum- 
 stances of treachery and fraud which are beyond explanation 
 or condonation. Between Belgium and Germany at the out- 
 break of the war there was no quarrel or even suggested griev- 
 ance. Outwardly Germany was Belgium's friend to the very 
 moment that its mighty armies crossed the Belgian frontiers. 
 Not only had Prussia solemnly guaranteed the neutrality of 
 Belgium by the treaty of 1839, but its Chancellor had given 
 
 13 
 
to Belgium in 1870, and again in 1911 and again in the early 
 part of 1914, the most solemn assurances that in the event of 
 a war between Germany and France, the territory of Belgium 
 would be respected. Even when the clouds of the present war 
 rapidly gathered in that last fateful week of July, 1914, the 
 German Minister at Brussels again assured the Belgian Foreign 
 Minister that these repeated and most solemn assurances would 
 not be broken, and this assurance was repeated on August the 
 second, 1914, the very day that Germany made its unprovoked 
 and most treacherous assault. 
 
 Had Belgium been willing to sacrifice its honor, it could 
 not only have saved itself from infinite suffering, but it could 
 have pleaded the common extenuation that self-preservation is 
 the first law of nature, and that a nation, whose military 
 strength compared with that of Germany was as that of a child 
 to a giant, was not obliged to attempt the impossible. David 
 bravely faced Goliath and the ultimate result will yet be the 
 same. 
 
 Belgium never hesitated for a minute. Her Government 
 immediately replied to the oppressive and cruel demand in these 
 noble words : 
 
 "The Belgian Government would by accepting the proposi- 
 tions which are notified to her sacrifice the honor of the nation 
 while at the same time betraying her duties toward Europe. 
 Conscious of the part Belgium has played for more than eighty 
 years in the civilization of the world, she refuses to believe 
 that her independence can be preserved only at the expense of 
 the violation of her neutrality. If this hope were disappointed, 
 the Belgian Government has firmly resolved to repulse by every 
 means in her power any attack upon her rights." 
 
 There have been few, if any, nobler replies in all the annals 
 of statecraft. It had borne its faculties so meek, had been so 
 clear in its great office, that its virtues will plead, like angels, 
 trumpet tongued, against the deep damnation of its taking oflf. 
 In this unmerited fate no country except Belgium can wholly 
 save itself from some reproach, for the whole world should 
 have sprung to its defense against a wanton outrage. Belgium 
 
 14 
 
owed no higher duty to sacrifice itself for the welfare of civiliza- 
 tion than civilization owed to it the duty of protection. 
 
 Belgium did not sacrifice itself solely because of its high 
 regard for its solemn obligations of neutrality, but because it 
 loved its own soil, its own freedom and its own inalienable 
 rights. The spirit that animated the defense of Liege was that 
 which inspired the heroic Greeks who defended the pass at 
 Thermopylae against overwhelming numbers and the embattled 
 farmers of New England who defended the bridge at Concord. 
 Let us in this dark hour take heart by remembering that as 
 Thermopylae preceded the final triumph at Plataea, and as the 
 equally unsuccessful defense at Lexington preceded the sur- 
 render at Yorktown, so Belgium's Plataea and Yorktown will 
 come in God's good time. (Great applause.) 
 
 In the meantime Belgium has lost neither its soul nor its 
 honor. Through unending ages, men of all nations will honor 
 its young king, that Bayard sans peur et sans reproche. For 
 the honor of his coimtry and the welfare of mankind he put at 
 the hazard his crown, his throne, his life. Crownless or 
 crowned, throneless or enthroned, Albert of Belgium, will be 
 a hero until the last syllable of recorded time. There are 
 crowns not made by hand or of gold. The admiration and 
 affection of the world fashions them. Such King Albert will 
 always wear. Such the Kaiser, who stabbed him, while pro- 
 fessing friendship, will never wear, even if his iron rule shall 
 extend from Berlin to Bagdad. (Great applause.) 
 
 I need not speak of the details of the invasion. The soul 
 of any humane man revolts at their recital and the mind sickens 
 at their contemplation. The sack of Rome under Charles V. 
 and the siege of Magdeburg under Tilly — two of the blackest 
 chapters in history — involved the pillage only of a city. In the 
 full noonday of the Twentieth Century the world was to wit- 
 ness to its lasting horror the pillage of a nation. (Applause.) 
 
 Towns, villages and cities were laid in ruins, noble temples 
 of religion and learning destroyed, and countless thousands of 
 Belgian non-combatants, including old and young and women 
 and children, priests and laymen, pitilessly murdered. Before 
 
 15 
 
the work of this "Bloody Council" had ended, 6,000 Belgian 
 non-combatants had been slaughtered. When in any civilized 
 country was there in modern times such a slaughter of the 
 innocents ? 
 
 If I were asked to name the three most courageous men in 
 this great crisis of human history, I would name without hesita- 
 tion Karl Liebknecht of Germany, King Albert of Belgium and 
 Cardinal Mercier. (Great applause.) Let me read the testi- 
 mony of that noble prelate and heroic Prince of the Church. 
 
 In his Christmas pastoral letter of 1914, addressed to a 
 people who would have known the truth or falsity of his state- 
 ments. Cardinal Mercier said : 
 
 "We can neither number our dead nor compute the measure 
 of our ruins. * * * Families hitherto living at ease are 
 now in bitter want. All commerce is at an end. All careers 
 ruined. Industry at a standstill. Thousands upon thousands 
 of workmen without employment. Working women, shop girls 
 unemployed, servant girls without the means of earning their 
 bread, and poor souls forlorn in the bed of sickness and fever 
 crying, 'Oh, Lord, how long, how long.' " 
 
 Let us assume, without conceding, that Germany, having 
 committed the crime of treacherously invading a friendly 
 country, was yet compelled by military necessity to subjugate 
 an infuriated people to its will by sternly repressive measures, 
 yet when such work of subjugation was complete and nearly 
 all of Belgium was in the conqueror's hands, the obligations 
 of international law and peculiar considerations of generosity 
 and magnanimity required that Germany should not merely care 
 for the people it had abused, ruined and impoverished, but 
 should mitigate the evil consequences of her wanton attack 
 so far as possible. In his speech before the Reichstag the Ger- 
 man Chancellor, now asking peace in the name of humanity — 
 God save the mark! — promised the entire world that the 
 "wrong", which he freely admitted his country was doing to 
 Belgium would be made "good as soon as our military goal 
 has been reached"? Distrustful of the promise, more than a 
 
 16 
 
million Belgians had fled as penniless refugees to neighboring 
 countries, and the German authorities, when enforced peace in 
 Belgium was measurably restored, invited them to return upon 
 the express promise, given by Baron von der Goltz, the 
 Military Governor, to Cardinal Mercier, that their liberties 
 would be respected and that they would not be obliged to work 
 against their will, much less to serve against their country. 
 
 A deeper obligation of the highest honor rested upon Ger- 
 many. Under international law, she was obliged to support 
 the people whom she had, to serve her own ends, cruelly 
 impoverished. To her lasting shame Germany refused to ful- 
 fill an obligation resting upon the broadest considerations of 
 humanity and peculiarly incumbent upon her in view of the 
 acknowledged wrong that she had done Belgium in her 
 treacherous atack and the solemn promises of reparation that 
 she had made. She promised bread, she gave a stone. In an 
 incredibly short time, she cut off Belgium from the world and 
 ruined her by the wholesale spoliation of her resources.- 
 
 Germany then 'invited, not only her enemies, but the neutral 
 world, and especially the United States, to come to the relief of 
 a people whom she had reduced to destitution. While recog- 
 nizing that every dollar contributed for this purpose wjs an 
 indirect contribution to German resources in relieving her of a 
 manifest obligation, yet France and England, constrained by 
 gratitude and pity, contributed more than $200,000,000 to relieve 
 the impoverished population. The United States, by private 
 contributions contributed approximately $10,000,000, and no one 
 in this country who gave to this cause, from the penny of the 
 child to the larger gifts of the well-to-do, ever questioned that 
 Germany would nof either directly or indirectly deprive, the 
 Belgian people of these voluntary gifts. 
 
 Instead of respecting this sacred obligation, Germany perpe- 
 trated a wicked and stupendous fraud upon the entire world. 
 While the rest of the world, belligerents and neutrals, were send- 
 ing a stream of gifts for the relief of the Belgian people, Ger- 
 many, in violation of every principle of international law and 
 every dictate of humanity was stripping the Belgian people of 
 
 17 
 
its resources. It did not take the food, clothing and money con- 
 tributed by the charity of the world, but it did take by force and 
 fraud the possessions of the Belgian people, and the very means 
 by which they lived and worked. No crime could be more 
 ignoble than this action of Germany. The charity of the world 
 has kept the Belgium people alive, but it has not saved them 
 from destitution. Universal poverty is now their portion, for 
 of a population of seven milHons, three millions daily wait in 
 the bread line for sufficient food to keep alive. 
 
 This has been done in pursuance of a deliberate system. 
 Twelve years before the invasion of Belgium, the General Staff 
 of the Germany Army in contravention of all the principles of 
 international law, instructed its Generals, to quote its exact 
 words, that 
 
 "a war conducted with energy cannot be directed merely 
 against the combatants of the enemy State and the posi- 
 tions they occupy, but it will and must in like manner 
 seek to destroy the total intellectual and material re- 
 sources of the latter. The argument of war permits 
 every belligerent State to have recourse to all means 
 which enable it to attain the object of the war." 
 
 The same war manual provides that it is the duty of 
 German Commanders "ruthlessly to employ the necessary means 
 of defense and intimidation". And again, that a commanding 
 officer neglects his duty unless he resorts to "the ruthless 
 employment of such severity". "Ruthless" is their own word. 
 These Prussian martinets seem to glory in it. 
 
 Pursuing this policy, the conqueror proceeded systematically 
 to despoil Belgium, while inviting not only its enemies but the 
 entire neutral world to contribute to the support of a people, 
 whom it was deliberately robbing of its means of sustenance. 
 It surrounded Belgium with a barbed wire fence, charged with 
 electricity. It forbade travel, or communication by the mails. 
 It took the raw materials from the warehouses, the specie from 
 the Banks, the securities from individuals, the copper coinage 
 from the hands of the people, the machinery from many fac- 
 tories, horses, cattle and implements from the farms, mineral 
 
 18 
 
products from the mines, products of iron, copper or steel, and 
 transported them to Germany for the use of their own people. 
 It is estimated that this "booty", another favorite term of the 
 Prussian General Staff and savoring of the Middle Ages, 
 amounted to $500,000,000. 
 
 The Rockefeller Foundation of our own country reports 
 that in the zone of war every house in some of the villages was 
 pillaged, and where it was impossible to carry away the furni- 
 ture it was ruthlessly broken into pieces. 
 
 It may be conceded that all was not taken, but enough was 
 to reduce one of the wealthiest and thriftiest peoples of the 
 world to almost universal destitution. Even the goods of the 
 merchant, the manufacturer and the farmer, which for some 
 reason were left to the Belgians, were put under German con- 
 trol and could only be sold by sufferance and permission and at 
 prices fixed by them. 
 
 As if this were not enough, the financial resources of the 
 country were then drained. Requisitions were made in money 
 amounting to $200,000,000, and these continue at the rate of 
 $8,000,000 per month. To these formal requisitions were added 
 oppressive fines upon municipalities for offenses, often trivial, 
 which drained people of the last of their pecuniary resources. 
 
 No words can tell the suffering of a proud people, who had 
 never asked any one for charity. Many would doubtless have 
 preferred death, for it was once well said that "you take my 
 life when you do take the means whereby I live". 
 
 The Conqueror, having thus, to use its own words, destroyed 
 the "intellectual and material resources" of its victims, then pro- 
 ceeded to appropriate their labor by reducing them to a state of 
 labor slavery. The German authorities obtained a list of the 
 unemployed, and reserved to itself the right of allotting work 
 to the unemployed. It provided by the ordinance of May 2, 
 1916, that if any person carried out any work by means of the 
 unemployed, without the consent of the German Military 
 Government, he would be punished with three years imprison- 
 ment and a fine of 25,000 francs. 
 
 By a subsequent order of May 13, 1916, the mihtary author- 
 ities in the various districts were directed to remove by force 
 the unemployed to places where they were required by their 
 
 19 
 
German oppressors to work. This was the beginning of the 
 slave raids, now in progress to the horror of the world. 
 
 Is there in modern history anything approaching to this 
 catalogue of horrors? The chief justification has been the fact 
 that the Belgian people in the first few weeks of the invasion 
 fought in contravention of international law. That is precisely 
 what the minute men of Lexington and Concord did when from 
 behind the stone walls of New England farms they poured hot 
 shot upon the British grenadiers returning from Concord to 
 Boston Town, but I never heard, even in the last part of the 
 Eighteenth Century, when international morality was not that 
 of the Twentieth Century, that General Gage in revenge burned 
 hundreds of villages and towns of New England, destroyed 
 public edifices, deprived the people of their resources, shot or 
 deported the leading men and reduced the rest to slavery. It 
 is also said that these steps are necessary, because of the idle- 
 ness and poverty of the unhappy people, but who caused the idle- 
 ness and poverty, if not the army of occupation? This excuse 
 reminds me of the fable of the wolf, who devoured the lamb 
 for muddying the stream, although as the lamb vainly pointed 
 out, it was standing further down the stream. 
 
 At the beginning of the present year, when the work of 
 spoliation and terrorism had been completed and peace of the 
 Warsaw variety reigned in Belgium, it was thought that Prus- 
 sia's cup of infamy was full to the very brim, and that nothing 
 could it to damnation add greater than that. The system of 
 enforced slavery began under peculiarly malignant circumstances 
 last Easter, when hundreds of women and young girls in Bel- 
 gium and northern France were ruthlessly and suddenly torn 
 from their homes and shipped to detention camps, where they 
 were obliged to work in the harvest fields under Prussian 
 bayonets. 
 
 As a distinguished American, who actually beheld in the 
 occupied territory some of the details of this new form of white 
 slavery, told me, a husband would leave his home to earn bread 
 for his wife and children, and on returning in the evening he 
 would find that his wife and daughters had been taken in his 
 absence and transported to some unknown destination and 
 
 20 
 
equally unknown fate. It is said, and is probably true, that 
 the victims of this slave raid last Easter were returned to their 
 homes after the harvest had been gathered ; but it further aggra- 
 vates the blackness of the offense against chivalry and justice, 
 that even the product of this enforced toil, as my informant 
 told me, did not at first go to the reHef of the Belgian people 
 themselves, but was transported to Germany. The brave pro- 
 test of our American Commission — the lasting honor shall be 
 the portion of that heroic American Herbert Hoover, — finally 
 succeeded in regaining for the work of the Commission a part 
 of the harvest which the women slaves of Belgium had reaped 
 by their enforced labors. 
 
 The culminating chapter of this black volume of human 
 oppression has now been reached, for while the seizure and 
 enforced labor of French and Belgian women was atrocious, 
 because of their sex, yet at least they were permitted to work 
 in their own country. Now, however, the Prussian slave raiders 
 pass from village to village and town to town, ruthlessly appre- 
 hending men of all classes, ticket them like slaves, herd them 
 like cattle in cattle cars and transport them into Germany, in 
 order to help Germany indirectly to fight its enemies, and thus 
 in part keep their own country under subjugation. 
 
 Was ever slavery more malignantly cruel than this? 
 Already 100,000 have been thus deported. 
 
 Let me again cite the evidence of that noble priest of God, 
 Cardinal Mercier, who in his protest of November 7, 1916, 
 says : 
 
 "Every day the military authorities deport from Belgium 
 into Germany thousands of inoffensive citizens to oblige them 
 there to perform enforced labor. 
 
 "At the time of our protests (of October 19) the orders of 
 the occupying power threatened only the unemployed; to-day 
 every able-bodied man is carried off, assembled in freight cars 
 and carried off to unknown parts, like a herd of slaves. The 
 enemy proceeds by regions. Vague reports had come to our 
 cars that arrests had been made in Tournau, Ghent and Alost, 
 but we were not aware of the conditions under which they had 
 been made. Between October 24 and November 2, it occurred 
 
 21 
 
in the regions of Mons, Quievrain, Saint Guislain, Jemappes, 
 in bunches of 800 to 1,200 men a day. The next and the fol- 
 lowing days it occurred in the Arrondissment of Nivelles." 
 
 Cardinal Mercier quotes in his statement the official notices 
 of the German military authorities, which show that in a given 
 community every male person over 17 years of age was obliged 
 to present himself at a certain place at eight o'clock, with small 
 hand baggage, under penalty that if he faile,d to do so, he would 
 be subjected to heavy fine and long imprisonment. He adds 
 that between the announcement and the deportation only an in- 
 terval of twenty-four hours was permitted. 
 
 Time does not permit further comment and indeed no com- 
 ment could do justice to the enormity of this offense against a 
 brave and free people, whom Germany at first treacherously 
 attacked, then impoverished and is now at least temporarily 
 enslaving. For this culminating atrocity, there can be no atone- 
 ment until the Hohenzollern dynasty is driven from its throne 
 of power into the darkness of exile. There can be no lasting 
 peace in the world until there is the Republic of Germany. 
 (Applause.) 
 
 The question is not what Germany is doing, but what the 
 rest of the world proposes to do and above all, what the United 
 States, as the greatest of the neutral powers, proposes to do. 
 
 We went to war against Spain for an offense which, by 
 comparison, was trivial, namely, the gathering of the non- 
 combatants of Cuba in the concentration camps, to facilitate the 
 operations of the Spanish Army in putting down the Cuban 
 Rebellion. Our great Civil War was fought to abolish slavery 
 and we did not regard the 400,000 lives which perished in this 
 titanic conflict as wasted to bring about that result. 
 
 If America has any mission, it is to defend liberty against 
 tyranny. Onr nation has protested against the violation of 
 international law involved in the killing of women and children 
 and other non-combatants upon the high seas. Shall it or can 
 it be deaf to the infinitely greater evil of the virtual enslave- 
 ment of a whole people? ( Cries "No". "No".) 
 
 It is in the power of the United States, without recourse 
 to arms, to bring this system of oppression to an end. All that 
 
 22 
 
is necessary is for the President of the United States to instruct 
 our representative in Berlin to notify the German Government 
 that unless it gives a prompt assurance that the forcible deporta- 
 tion of Belgians to Germany shall immediately cease, the Ger- 
 man Ambassador will be given his passports. (Tremendous 
 applause.) 
 
 Germany cannot, dare not, quarrel with this country in this 
 crisis of its fortunes. It believes in its inner councils that it will 
 need this country to save it from the wrath to come. Let us 
 hope that the people of America will by their outspoken indigna- 
 tion here and elsewhere give to the President of the United 
 States the fullest assurance — if indeed any assurance is neces- 
 sary — that if he will act and act speedily to defend the Belgian 
 people from further wrong, he will have the support of the 
 American people without respect to parties, creeds or classes. 
 (Great applause.) 
 
 Liberty enlightening the world is a noble symbol. In peace- 
 ful times it is enough that Liberty should with the torch of truth 
 in her uplifted hand illumine the dark corners of the earth but 
 in this crisis of civilization, possibly the gravest in modern times, 
 let Liberty not merely give its light to illumine the darkness, 
 but let it stretch forth its hand to save the helpless. Let it at 
 least extend to the people of Belgium the hand of succor and 
 sustenance. The time may come when England and France can- 
 not longer contribute millions to the relief of the starving Bel- 
 gians. Let this be the work of the United States. Why should 
 not our Government, with the consent of the belligerents, loan 
 to Belgium, to be administered through the American Commis- 
 sion, a sufficient fund to feed the people of Belgium until the 
 end of the war ? We are rich and prosperous. Why should not 
 the United States make Belgium its ward and by direct govern- 
 mental action save the remnant of that brave people in the con- 
 quered territory from starvation ? Such a course would have this 
 quality of mercy, in that it would "bless him that gives and him 
 that takes." 
 
 That uplifted hand of Liberty should, however, do more than 
 succor the Belgians in their proud poverty. It should defend 
 them in their rights. At one strong insistent word from Amer- 
 
 23 
 
ica, the shackles of slavery will fall from their bent forms. 
 (Great applause.) 
 
 Can we, dare we, delay the word of help and defense? Bel- 
 gium has been nailed to the cross for the welfare of civilization. 
 Let us not wait until she cries, "It is finished". 
 
 "Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide 
 
 In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil side. 
 
 Some great cause, God's new Messiah, offering each the bloom or blight 
 
 Parts the goats upon the left hand, the sheep upon the right, 
 
 And the choice goes by forever 'twixt that darkness and that light. 
 
 "Hast thou chosen, O my people, on whose party thou shalt stand 
 Ere the Doom from its worn sandals shakes the dust against our land? 
 Though the cause of evil prosper, yet 'tis Truth alone is strong. 
 And, albeit she wander outcast now, I see around her throng. 
 Troops of beautiful, tall angels, to enshield her from all wrong. 
 
 "Careless seems the great Avenger; history's pages but record 
 One death grapple in the darkness 'twixt old systems and the Word. 
 Truth forever on the scaffold. Wrong forever on the throne, — 
 Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown 
 Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own." 
 
 (Great applause.) 
 
 BELGIAN NATIONAL ANTHEM 
 
 The audience arose and remained standing while the band 
 played the "Brabangonne". 
 
 The Chairman : The next speaker is one who, as a Judge 
 of the highest Court of this State, and as the chosen leader of 
 one of the great political parties has long held high place in the 
 community and in the country ; one to whom his fellow citizens 
 have learned to look, and who is here tonight to speak his strong 
 word against these deeds which are a shame to civilization, and 
 a humiliation to the world. Judge Alton B. Parker! (Applause.) 
 
 24 
 
ADDRESS OF EX- JUDGE ALTON B. PARKER 
 
 We are here to make our protest against the latest phase 
 in the war upon Belgium. We come not as partisans, favoring 
 the one side or another in the great war, but in behalf of helpless 
 humanity, outraged anew by a return to methods abandoned 
 hundreds of years ago and not revived even in the most savage 
 of the late contests in which men have been engaged. We come 
 to discuss as coolly as the circumstances themselves will permit, 
 the facts as they face us in the most pathetic case known to man- 
 kind or history. 
 
 For two thousand years Belgium, in spite of her attractive- 
 ness as a place of battle, grew slowly but surely into one of the 
 fairest spots on the earth's surface. Inhabited originally by one 
 of the most vigorous of primitive peoples, their country, small as 
 it has always been, became one of the centres of industry, 
 religion, art and a culture that made itself felt in the remotest 
 part of the world. As conditions changed, so important was this 
 small country deemed by the greater nations, that its integrity 
 was guaranteed by all those around it. But when a great struggle 
 arose it was overrun without act or procurement of its own, 
 whether innocent or overt, its people subjected to the ordinary 
 horrors of war, without even the smallest possibility on their 
 part of public or private interest or individual or general profit. 
 They were subjected to every hardship and to the most exacting 
 humiliations. Their lives were sacrificed with unsparing ruth- 
 lessness. Their industries were destroyed or turned against 
 them. Their property was seized with a mediaeval thoroughness 
 and a more than mediaeval severity, and their homes, merely 
 because they defended them, became a universal battlefield. In 
 a word, their country so full of everything that could attract or 
 benefit humanity, was turned from peaceful pursuits, from a pros- 
 perity that gave it the aspect of a beehive, and made into a sham- 
 ble, in which their men, women and children were the victims. 
 To these must now be added the systematic carrying away into 
 
 25 
 
distant slavery of many thousands of workmen — none but the 
 best is wanted — without any serious pretense that it is done for 
 any other purpose than the benefit of their enemies. No offi- 
 cial announcement is made of the number of unfortunates, of 
 how long they will be kept in bondage, or whether they will 
 ever be freed, or not. Some admiration must be confessed for 
 the fact that no apologies are made. There is no claim that the 
 policy is not opposed to the promises made or that the laws of 
 nations have not been violated. Nothing is said in justification 
 except to assert the law of necessity and its logic, "the will to 
 power, and the determination to put them both into efifect with- 
 out regard to right or convention, and apparently without regard 
 to the protests of either belligerents or neutrals." 
 
 This creates a situation different in all respects from any that 
 has hitherto appeared. It gives the protest of the people of the 
 United States a new standing, — a standing already recognized 
 by our President, who in obedience to the manifest wish of the 
 people as well as to the dictates of his own heart, and mind, 
 has lodged with the German Chancellor a protest in a friendly 
 spirit, but most solemnly, against the deportation of Belgians 
 because "In contravention of all precedent and of those humane 
 principles of international practice which have long been accepted 
 and followed by civilized nations * * *." That protest we 
 endorse from beginning to end, and further than that we pro- 
 pose to stand by the President in his effort to secure the release 
 from bondage of the deported Belgians. 
 
 Not only have our people in their government or corporate 
 capacity, by signing the Hague Conventions, participated in the 
 guarantees of Belgian independence and neutrality, but they 
 have also signified in no uncertain way from the very beginning 
 of the war, their sympathy with the small but proud people, 
 in the indignities that have been heaped upon them. Indeed, 
 the partiality of any large proportion of our people in this war 
 is due in no small measure to their sympathy with Belgium in 
 her sad plight. This sympathy is not based upon interest, or 
 politics, or desire for power, or upon either a willingness or an 
 unwillingness to be drawn into the maelstrom of European 
 complications, but upon the sufferings of a deeply wronged 
 people; and so the protests which we make here tonight repre- 
 
 ■ 26 
 
sent the known and easily ascertained sentiment of the people 
 of this country. It echoes the universal protest against in- 
 justice and tyranny; it turns, as we have done from the earliest 
 days of our history, to the warning of distress to the small 
 and the helpless. It cries to Heaven against injustice and 
 cruelty and insists that, even in war, the interests of humanity 
 and religion shall not be overlooked or entirely forgotten. 
 
 This is all the more imperative because both as a nation 
 and a people we are strong. Because our people are devoted to 
 peace, because they have done everything in their power to 
 preserve and promote it, because they hope that they may do 
 even more to insure it in the future, are reasons strong as Holy 
 Writ why we should make our protest as loud and impassioned 
 as we may against the return, in the present conflict, to forms 
 of cruelty and oppression long in abeyance. If methods and 
 conditions hateful to everything that justice, Christianity and 
 civilization hold dear, are now permitted to rule unquestioned, 
 and to become again the commonplaces of war, it is difficult 
 to foresee a time when the advance thus lost can be regained. 
 If war is to be waged, here and now, with the purpose of 
 making human slavery again a part of it, whenever power, or 
 necessity, or brutality, may dictate, it will not make much 
 difference, in the future of the world, whether provisions are 
 made for the preservation or restoration of peace, as proposed 
 or not. 
 
 We do not hope to stop this war, but unless we protest 
 with both passion and effect against its abuses, its disregard 
 of law and of the humanities it will be both impossible to 
 prevent the next one, or hinder it from degenerating into a 
 barbarity which will throw mankind back into the period of 
 Carthage. We do therefore enter our protests against this 
 enormity, this new slavery, not alone because it is abhorrent 
 to us, but also to the end that all may know that we are in 
 earnest sympathy with the position taken by our government 
 in respect to this matter. We insist that neither under the 
 pretext of necessity nor in the assertion of brute force, shall 
 patriotism be rewarded with enslavement nor the innocent pun- 
 ished by methods no more to be re-established or excused, or 
 thought of in time of war than in days of peace. We have 
 
 27 
 
joined the whole world in abolishing the slavery of men because 
 they were black and now join the whole world in protest against 
 the return to this condition of white men, long after it has 
 been abandoned for all men. We venture to hope that this 
 prote^st may become nation-wide; that the voice of America 
 and Americans may find expression in no doubtful way; that 
 for the honor of humanity the uninvited woes of the Belgian 
 people may arouse universal interest and a practical sympathy 
 not less wide. It is the one urgent world question of the day. 
 The advance or the defeat of armies is far less vital, has far 
 less influence upon the future of the world, than this one 
 problem. It affects directly one of the smallest countries 
 of the world ; indirectly it comes home with crushing force to 
 every man and woman everywhere who either thinks or feels. 
 (Applause.) God grant that their voices may be so Hfted up 
 that they shall be both heard and heeded. 
 
 As I think of liege and Antwerp and see before me Edith 
 Cavell, as I learn of the latest — but as I well know, not last — 
 brutal decree of a tyrannous Conqueror, I tremble for my coun- 
 try lest it be lulled to selfish indifference in the face of these 
 great wrongs. 
 
 Bear ever in mind that though in the end evil do not prevail, 
 yet its prevailing in part at any time is generally due to lack 
 of heed from those, who like ourselves, should not only keep 
 a vigilant outlook, but also "keep our powder dry." (Great 
 applause.) 
 
 The Chairman : It is my privilege now to present to you 
 one who holds a unique place in the esteem and admiration of 
 his fellow countrymen. There is no man to whom the American 
 people look with more confidence for wise counsel, high vision 
 and fearless statement of the truth, there is no man better en- 
 titled to speak for Belgian freedom and for American honor 
 than Elihu Root. (Great applause.) 
 
 28 
 
ADDRESS OF THE HON. ELIHU ROOT 
 
 Mr. President, Fellow Americans : I am glad to join my voice 
 tonight with my fellows in this free land in condemnation and 
 protest upon this new outrage that is visited upon poor and 
 bleeding Belgium. 
 
 I could not remain silent. I should not respect myself if 
 I remained silent, and I hope, I trust, I pray, that my country 
 will not remain silent. 
 
 Explain it as you may, excuse it as you may, disguise it as 
 you may, the people of Belgium by the tens and hundreds of 
 thousands are being carried away into slavery, — a thing that 
 has not been done by any nation that claimed to be civilized in 
 modern history. 
 
 Poor Belgium, peaceful, industrious, God-fearing, lawabid- 
 ing Belgium, she had no quarrel with anyone ; she sought no 
 nation's territory; she coveted no neighbor's goods; she threat- 
 ened no one's security, but she stood in the way of a mightier 
 nation's purpose, — and she was stricken to the earth! Her 
 firm, her stern and noble resolve to keep the faith was her 
 only crime, and she has been punished as if her people were the 
 vilest on earth. Her towns have been burned, her noble and 
 stately monuments have been leveled to the earth; her women 
 and children and old men have been murdered ; her country has 
 been brought under the sway of a foreign invader, and she 
 has been bled white by vast exactions of money and of produce. 
 Every efifort to revive her industries has been denied, and now, 
 because she has suffered thus, her men are to be carried away 
 to forced labor as slaves. 
 
 If the civilized world of the twentieth century is willing to 
 stand silent and see these things done, in cumulative progres- 
 sion, in violation of the laws of humanity and of nations, then 
 the civilization of the twentieth century is worse than the 
 savagery of Roman times. 
 
 It seems that there is no place for the independence of 
 small, weak States, for security in self-government by peace- 
 able and unarmed peoples, or for individual freedom, or for 
 private right, in that scheme of things under which "liberty for 
 national evolution" is to justify all uses of power. 
 
 29 
 
But, what we have to do is not merely to gratify our own 
 feeHngs by expressing them regarding this treatment of the 
 Belgians. What we have to do is not merely to protest in the 
 name of Humanity, — it is to assert a right, it is to call upon 
 the world to assert a right, a right under the law of nations 
 for the protection of humanity and of civilization. This is our 
 concern. This deportation of the Belgians to involuntary servi- 
 tude is a violation of our law, of the law we helped to make, of 
 the law which in common with all civilized nations we have 
 built up generation after generation, and it has been embodied 
 in definite and certain and solemn instruments of agreement, as 
 to what humanity demands, signed by Belgium, signed by Ger- 
 many, and binding today. I see that General von Bissing justi- 
 fies the deportation of Belgian workmen and refers to the 
 Hague Convention as to the basis for his action, quoting the 
 provision that it is the duty of a belligerent power, in posses- 
 sion of conquered territory, to preserve order. The deportation, 
 he says, was to preserve order in Belgium. Let me read the 
 whole of the provision to which he refers. 
 
 "The authority of the legitimate power, having actually 
 passed into the hands of the occupant, the latter shall take all 
 steps in his power to re-establish and insure as far as possible 
 public order and safety, while respecting, unless absolutely 
 prevented, the laws in force in the country." 
 
 The most solemn of the laws of Belgium, protecting the 
 rights of her people, were violated in contravention of that 
 very provision by the man who appeals to it for his justification. 
 
 What I read was from Article 43 of the 1899 Convention. 
 The Convention proceeds : 
 
 "Family honors and rights, individual lives, and private 
 property, as well as religious convictions, and liberty, must 
 be respected." 
 
 The convention further proceeds : "Until a more complete 
 code of the laws of war is issued, the high contracting parties 
 have the right to declare that in cases not included in the regula- 
 tions adopted by them, populations and belligerents remain 
 under the protection and empire of the principles of interna- 
 tional law as they result from the usages established between 
 
 30 
 
civilized nations, the laws of humanity, and the requirements 
 of pubhc conscience." 
 
 That convention was signed and ratified by every Power 
 that is now engaged in the European War, as well as by our- 
 selves. There was a subsequent convention that was signed 
 by nearly all, which contained a provision that as to those that 
 did not sign, the convention from which I read continued in 
 force. The subsequent convention contained precisely indentical 
 provisions, so that Germany is bound in conscience and in law 
 by the existing treaty between her and us, between her and 
 Belgium, declaring what the principles of humanity require in 
 the treatment of occupied territory. Those principles of 
 humanity have been violated in accordance with the very state- 
 ment of them upon which she and we have agreed. 
 
 Now, I say this law is our law ; it is our protection. The 
 rights of man, peace and humanity, cannot be preserved upon 
 impulse alone. Law governing men in the treatment of the 
 weak and defenceless is necessary; and so for years, for cen- 
 turies, the nations have been building up a code of law, inter- 
 national law, and that law is the protection — the enforcement 
 of that law, respect for that law, obedience to that law, are 
 the protection of our peaceable people, of all weak and small 
 nations, of all those that do not wish to be armed to the teeth 
 every moment for their own protection. 
 
 We have a right to have it observed, and it is our duty to 
 our children and to our country that we shall not remain silent 
 in the face of open, flagrant, contemptuous disregard and viola- 
 tion of it. 
 
 How can it be preserved ? Not merely by armies and navies. 
 No. There is but one power on earth that can preserve the 
 law for the protection of the poor, the weak and the humble; 
 there is but one power on earth that can preserve the law for 
 the maintenance of civilization and humanity, and that is the 
 power, the mighty power, of the public opinion of mankind ! 
 
 Without it, your leagues to enforce peace, your societies for 
 a world's court, your peace conventions, your peace endow- 
 ments, are all powerless, because no force moves in this world 
 unless it ultimately has public opinion behind it. 
 
 The thing that men fear more than they do the sheriff or the 
 
 31 
 
policeman or the State's prison is the condemnation of the 
 community in which they live. 
 
 The thing that among nations is the most potent force is 
 the universal condemnation of mankind. And even during this 
 terrible struggle we have seen the nations appealing from day 
 to day, appealing by speech and by pen and by press for favor- 
 able judgment from mankind, the public opinion of the world. 
 That opinion establishes standards of conduct. In Roman 
 times, the standard of conduct permitted the carrying off of 
 slaves to the mines ; permitted the impaling of prisoners ; per- 
 mitted the sacking of towns. At the time of the Thirty Years' 
 War, outrages almost as bad as those which have been perpe- 
 trated in Belgium were in accord with the practice and acquies- 
 cence of the world, but we thought that we had been building 
 up new standards of conduct, that the world had grown more 
 compassionate, and more kindly, and it had. The public opinion 
 of the world was establishing, had established, a more humane 
 and Christian standard of conduct, both in peace and in war. 
 That standard is now beaten down, it is destroyed, it is set at 
 naught. And if we remain silent, if the great neutral peoples 
 of the world remain silent, the standard is gone forever. 
 
 And, mark this, the new standard, or rather, the return to 
 the old standard of barbarism will not stop with the poor 
 people of Belgium. It will be here ! Not perhaps for you and 
 me, but for our children it will be here. 
 
 How can we maintain the standard of civilization? Not 
 by silence regarding international wrong. If the world of well 
 meaning and kindly and good people remain silent when hideous 
 wrong is done, what difference is there to the wrongdoer be- 
 tween right and wrong? In order that the public opinion of 
 the world should be worth anything, it must condemn wrong. 
 
 And that is what we are called upon to do now. I have 
 thought it should be done before, but now there can be no 
 doubt. I say that the mightiest power that man knows, is 
 ready to be awakened and brought to bear for the prevention 
 of such crimes in the future, provided we and others like us 
 are true to our duty and speak out in condemnation of horrid 
 crimes. x'Vmerica cannot choose at will. We have made pro- 
 fessions, we have assumed an attitude, we have taken upon 
 
 32 
 
ourselves responsibility, we have declared ourselves the 
 
 champions of freedom. Ah ! Remember across the half 
 
 century, the words of Lincoln : "Four score and seven years 
 
 ago our Fathers brought forth upon this Colitinent a new 
 
 nation conceived in liberty,' and dedicated to the proposition 
 
 that all men are created equal." They came here across the 
 
 stormy seas in their little boats and braved the rigors of 
 
 winter and the perils of savage foes that they might be free. 
 
 Some of us remember how they gave their lives that the blacks 
 
 might be free. It was the spirit of freedom that took the 
 
 pioneers across the mountains and the plains and the rivers, 
 
 and gave this vast continent to the reign of law and justice and 
 
 peace. We have cherished ideals, we have had dreams, we 
 
 have had ideals of a world made better and happier and nobler 
 
 because America was a free democracy. We cannot remain 
 
 silent now while these poor Belgians, without fault, are carried 
 
 into slavery, without abjuring our past, and being false to our 
 
 country. 
 
 "Land where my fathers died, 
 Land of the Pilgrim's pride, 
 From every mountain side. 
 Let Freedom ring! 
 
 Our Father's God to Thee, 
 
 Author of Liberty, 
 
 To Thee we sing. 
 
 Long may our land be bright, 
 
 With Freedom's holy light." 
 
 One cannot be an American, with the history of America, 
 without responsibility, and that responsibility confronts the 
 people of our country today to protect the spirit of American 
 . freedom. We have grown rich beyond the dreams of avarice. 
 So prosperous, so many millions of automobiles, such palaces, 
 such comforts, such luxury ! Intellect has been trained, educa- 
 tion broadcast over the land,' peace preserved ! Ah ! Are we so 
 sunk in comfort and luxury and self-satisfaction, that we have 
 lost the old spirit of American freedom ? 
 
 If we have not, we shall not dare remain silent over this 
 latest wrong to Belgium. 
 
 Let me read the effective words of that great-hearted and 
 noble Prelate, whose figure, appealing to all that is best in 
 
 33 
 
humanity throughout the world, fearless of the mighty power 
 that seeks to constrain him, will make the name of Cardinal 
 Mercier great in history. Let me read from his pathetic appeal : 
 "We, the shepherds of these sheep who are torn from us by 
 brutal force, full of anguish at the thought of the moral and 
 religious isolation in which they are about to languish, impotent 
 witnesses of the grief and terror in the numerous homes shat- 
 tered or threatened, appeal to all souls, believers or unbelievers, 
 in allied countries, in neutral countries, and even in enemy 
 countries, who have a respect for human dignity. May Divine 
 Providence deign to inspire all who have any authority, all who 
 are masters of speech and pen, to rally round our humble Bel- 
 gian flag for the abolition of European slavery." 
 
 Thank Heaven our President has assumed the leadership of 
 the free opinion of the American democracy, and has spoken 
 for it to Germany. All honor to him for it, and it is for us to 
 say, as I for my part say, that we, will stand by him, support 
 him, approve him in maintaining the application of the free 
 principles of America in insisting upon respect and obedience 
 to the law which protects all weak and peaceable nations, and 
 in protesting, with all the power of the hundred millions of 
 America against the outrage upon humanity which has been 
 done. 
 
 We may not be, in the words of Cardinal Mercier, "masters 
 of speech and pen", but we are masters of our souls, and we are 
 part of the great self-governing people of America, and we can 
 speak, and we can speak so clear and high that the world will 
 hear it, and that all right-minded and compassionate men and 
 women will follow it and will join with us until the voice of the 
 public opinion of the world will satisfy the most hardhearted 
 tyrant of them all that wrongs such as these are punished by 
 the universal condemnation of mankind. 
 
 THE RESOLUTIONS 
 
 The Chairman : You are asked now to adopt a set of reso- 
 lutions. They are offered by the one who has insisted on keep- 
 ing in the background, but who himself proposed and deserves 
 all the credit for bringing about this great expression of public 
 
 34 
 
opinion, which we hope may echo far and near, Mr. Whitridge. 
 The resolutions will be read to you by the head of one of our 
 great universities, who has not hesitated to stand out for the 
 ideas expressed here tonight, and for the principles of true 
 Americanism — President Hibben of Princeton University! 
 (Applause.) 
 
 President John Grier Hibben: Mr. Chairman, Ladies and 
 Gentlemen : I am here tonight not merely in my own personal 
 capacity, but representing 150 Members of the Princeton fac- 
 ulty, who, three weeks ago, signed a petition, sent to the Presi- 
 dent of the United States, protesting against the German out- 
 rages in Belgium in carrying away these poor, miserable suffer- 
 ers into slavery. 
 
 In presenting our Princeton petition here and there, I was 
 met by only one person who hesitated to sign it, and he gave 
 as his reason that he wished to preserve the spirit of "neutrality", 
 and I said in reply, "There can never be neutrality between right 
 and wrong." (Applause.) 
 
 And it was in that spirit that the 150 members of the Prince- 
 ton faculty sent their protest to the President of the United 
 States. (Applause.) 
 
 The resolutions were drawn by Mr. Whitridge, and are as 
 follows : 
 
 "Whereas the world has been appalled by the reports from 
 Belgium of the deportation into bondage of thousands of the 
 non-combatant population ; and 
 
 "Whereas these reports are uncontradicted and the depop- 
 ulation appears to be a deliberate breach of the promises made 
 by the German authorities to induce the Belgians to return to 
 their own country ; and 
 
 "Whereas we learn from the highest authority that the 
 reports in the press of the cruelties perpetrated are not over- 
 drawn, but are really understated ; and 
 
 "Whereas although the German authorities say that the 
 deficiency of work in Belgium is due to the laziness and ill- 
 will of the Belgians, it is known that hundreds of thousands of 
 tons of provisions, machinery and supplies of all kinds have 
 
 . 35 
 
been removed to Germany, to say nothing of the millions of 
 dollars taken away by fines and indemnities from these poor 
 people, who, robbed of all their resources, are now being driven 
 off in hordes under the pretense that they are ungovernable 
 and will not work ; 
 
 "Therefore, be it 
 
 "Resolved: That we American citizens assembled in public 
 meeting at Carnegie Hall, New York, express our abhorrence of 
 these fresh outrages and violations of the laws of war, the law of 
 nations and the instincts of common humanity, deliberately per- 
 petrated by the German Government, and that we extend our 
 sympathy to the unfortunate people thus made the victims of the 
 calculated cruelty of the conquerors of an innocent nation. 
 
 "Resolved : That we request the Government of the United 
 States to protest with all its force and earnestness against these 
 outrages ; to emphasize the detestation with which the Ameri- 
 can people regard these abuses ; and to request the German 
 Government in the name of all neutrals, to cease its policy of 
 expatriation and slavery ^ and we pledge our utmost support to 
 the Administration in whatever way it may conclude to act. 
 
 "Resolved: That copies of these resolutions be sent to all 
 the representatives of the German Government who can be 
 reached in this country." (Great applause.) 
 
 The Chairman : I will now put the resolution and ask you 
 to vote upon it, expressing your vote in favor of it in the usual 
 manner, and with the understanding that there is especial em- 
 phasis on the word "act". 
 
 (Applause and cries of "Act, act!") 
 
 AMERICA 
 
 We will now join, before we leave, in singing "America", 
 and I ask you to sing it with the prayer in your hearts that this 
 meeting may have started a fire in this land which shall not be 
 extinguished until American honor is vindicated, and until 
 justice is done in Belgium. (Great applause.) 
 
 The audience arose and joined in singing "America", accom- 
 panied by the band. 
 
 36 
 
HONORARY VICE-PRESIDENTS 
 
 Lyman Abbott 
 Frederick H. Allen 
 Edmund L. Baylies 
 Robert Bacon 
 Otto Bannard 
 James M. Beck 
 S. R. Bertron 
 Cornelius N. Bliss 
 John M. Bowers 
 Robert Bridges 
 Bishop C. H. Burch 
 George W. Burleigh 
 Nicholas Murr.\y Butler 
 William Allen Butler 
 Benjamin T. Cable 
 Rev. Dr. S. Parkes Cadman 
 Robert W. Chambers 
 Joseph H. Choate 
 Frederic R. Coudert 
 Paul D. Cravath 
 R. Fulton Cutting 
 H. P. Davison 
 Robert W. DeForest 
 Chauncey M. Depew 
 Rev. Dr. Howard Duffield 
 Coleman Dupont 
 Allen W. Evarts 
 Charles S. Fairchild 
 Samuel W. Fairchild 
 W. Cameron Forbes 
 Henry C. Frick 
 Bishop D. H. Greer 
 Daniel Guggenheim 
 William D. Guthrie 
 George G. Haven 
 A. J. Hemphill 
 A. B. Hepburn 
 Dr. J. G. Hibben 
 Henry Holt 
 Wm. D. Howells 
 Charles E. Hughes 
 Adrian Iselin 
 
 A. D. Juillard 
 
 D. P. Kingsley 
 Luther Kountze 
 
 E. H. Lacombe 
 
 Rev. Dr. Walter Laidlaw 
 Ivy L. Lee 
 
 Rev. Dr. W. T. Manning 
 Pierre Mali 
 Rev. Arthur F. Mabon 
 John G. Milburn 
 W. Fellowes Morgan 
 J. Pierpont Morgan 
 Delancey Nicoll 
 Morgan J. O'Brien 
 Stephen H. Olin 
 W. H. Page 
 Alton B. Parker 
 John M. Parker 
 William Barclay Parsons 
 General Horace Porter 
 George Haven Putnam 
 Douglas Robinson 
 W. Emlen Roosevelt 
 Elihu Root 
 Thomas F. Ryan 
 Herbert L. Satterlee 
 William Jay Schieffelin 
 Charles Scribner 
 Rev. Dr. C. L. Slattery 
 Francis Lynde Stetson 
 Henry L. Stimson 
 Lewis A. Stimson 
 Rev. Dr. E. M. Stires 
 Frederick Strauss 
 WiLLARD Straight 
 Henry W. Taft 
 Cornelius Vanderbilt 
 F. A. Vanderlip 
 George T. Wilson 
 Judge Galbraith Ward 
 F. W. Whitridge 
 George W. Wickersham 
 
 Rev. Dr. J. H. Jowett 
 
 Joseph Bucklin Bishop, 
 
 Acting Secretary 
 
 37 
 
LETTER TO REPRESENTATIVES OF THE GER- 
 MAN GOVERNMENT IN THE UNITED STATES 
 
 In accordance with the resolutions, the following letter, with 
 enclosures, was sent to each of the persons named below : 
 
 New York, December 18, 1916. 
 Sir: 
 
 At a mass meeting held in this City on Friday evening, 
 December 15th, in pursuance of the enclosed advertisement, 
 resolutions were adopted, a copy of which I have the honor, in 
 accordance with the terms thereof, to send you herewith. 
 
 Yours very truly, 
 
 Joseph Bucklin Bishop, 
 
 Acting Secretary. 
 
 Count J. H. 
 VON Bernstorff, 
 
 Robert DuMont, 
 Franz Bopp, 
 P. W. Weidner, 
 Kurt Ziegler, 
 Gerhard Rolfs, 
 WiLHELM Mueller, 
 Ernst Eichhorn, 
 Alfred Geissler, 
 Paul Roh, 
 Carl A. Luderitz, 
 Oswald Kunhardt, 
 Johannes Grunow, 
 
 WiLHELM BrEITLING, 
 
 Erich Hossenfeldf.r, 
 Johann Giescher, 
 Oscar Mezger, 
 Fritz Kirch h off, 
 George Stobbe, 
 Arthur Mudra, 
 Emil Jahnz, 
 Henry J. Rungl, 
 Emil Carl Vietor, 
 Erich Zoepffel, 
 Otto Richter, 
 Paul Falcke, 
 Karl Kramer, 
 L. M. von Schilling, 
 Herr Duddenhausen, 
 
 Consul General, 
 German Consul, 
 
 Ambassador Extraorcii- 
 nary and Plenipoten- 
 tiary, Imperial German 
 Embassy, Washington, D. C. 
 
 German Consul, Mobile, Ala. 
 
 Consul General, San Francisco, Cal. 
 
 German Consul, Los Angeles, Cal. 
 
 " Denver, Colo. 
 
 " Pensacola, Fla. 
 
 " Atlanta, Ga. 
 
 Savannah, Ga. 
 Chicago, 111. 
 New Orleans, La. 
 " Baltimore, Md. 
 
 " Boston, Mass. 
 
 " St. Paul, Minn. 
 
 " St. Louis, Mo. 
 
 " Wilmington, N. C. 
 
 " Cincinnati, Ohio 
 
 " Portland, Oregon 
 
 " Philadelphia, Pa. 
 
 « (< <( 
 
 " Charleston, S. C. 
 
 " Galveston, Texas 
 
 " Richmond, Va. 
 
 Seattle, Wash. 
 German Vice-Consul, Tacoma, Wash. 
 German Consul General, New York, N. Y. 
 German Vice-Consul, Port Arthur, Texas 
 " Newport News, Va. 
 
 " Port Richmond, Wash. 
 
 38 
 
CARDINAL MERCIER'S APPEAL 
 
 Malines, Nov. 7, 1916. 
 
 Every day the military authorities deport from Belgium 
 into Germany thousands of inoffensive citizens to oblige them 
 there to perform forced labor. 
 
 As early as Oct. 19 we sent to the Governor General a pro- 
 test, a copy of which was handed to the representatives of the 
 Holy See, of Spain, the United States, and Holland, in Brus- 
 sels, but the Governor General replied to it that nothing could 
 be done. 
 
 At the time of our protestation the orders of the occupying 
 power threatened only the unemployed ; today every ablebodied 
 man is carried oft", pellmell, assembled in freight cars, and 
 carried off to unknown parts, like a herd of slaves. The enemy 
 proceeds by regions. Vague rumors had come to our ears 
 that arrests had been made in Tournau, Ghent, and Alost, but 
 we were not aware of the conditions under which they had been 
 made. Between Oct. 24 and Nov. 2 it occurred in the region 
 of Mons, Quievrain, Saint Guislain, Jemappes, in bunches of 
 800 to 1,200 men a day. The next and the following days it 
 occurred in the Arrondissment of Nivelles. Here is a specimen 
 of the announcement concerning the proceedings : 
 
 "By order of the Kreischef every male person over 17 years 
 old shall present himself, Place Saint Paul, in Nivelles, on 
 Nov. 8, 1916, at 8 o'clock, (Belgian time,) 9 o'clock, (Central 
 time,) bringing with him his identification card and eventually 
 his card from the Meldeamt. 
 
 "Only small hand baggage is permitted. 
 
 "Those not presenting themselves will be forcibly deported 
 into Germany, and will besides be liable to a heavy fine and to 
 long imprisonment. 
 
 "Ecclesiastics, physicians, lawyers and teachers are exempt 
 from this order. 
 
 "The Mayors will be held responsible for the proper execu- 
 tion of this order, which must be brought immediately to the 
 knowledge of the inhabitants." 
 
 39 
 
Between the announcement and the deportation there is an 
 interval of only twenty-four hours. 
 
 Under pretext of public works to be performed on Belgian 
 soil, the occupying power had attempted to obtain from the 
 communities the lists of workingmen out of work. Most of the 
 connnunities proudly refused. 
 
 Three decrees from the General Government prepared the 
 way for the execution which is in force today. 
 
 Under date of Aug. 15, 1915, a first decree imposed, under 
 penalty of imprisonment and fine, forced work on the idle, but 
 adds that the work is to be executed in Belgium, and that non- 
 compliance will be adjudged by Belgian tribunals. 
 
 A second decree, dated May 2, 1916, reserves the right of 
 the German authorities to supply work to the idle, and threatens 
 a fine of three years' imprisonment and 20,000 marks imposable 
 on anybody executing or ordering to be executed work not 
 approved of by the General Government. 
 
 Under the same decree, the right to judge infractions which 
 had remained with the Belgian tribunals passes from the Belgian 
 to the German tribunals. 
 
 A third decree, dated May 13, 1916, "authorizes the Gov- 
 ernors, the military commanders, and the chiefs of arron- 
 dissments to order that the unemployed be conducted by force 
 to the places where they must work." This was already forcible 
 working, although in Belgium. 
 
 Now it is no longer a question of forcible working in Bel- 
 gium, but in Germany, and for the benefit of the Gernlans. 
 
 To give an appearance of plausibility to these violent 
 measures, the occupying power insisted in the German press, 
 both in Germany and Belgium, on these two pretexts: the unem- 
 ployed constitute a danger to public order and a burden on 
 official benevolence. 
 
 To this we replied in a letter addressed to the Governor 
 General and to the head of the Political Department on Oct. 16, 
 as follows : 
 
 "You are well aware that public order is in no wise threat- 
 ened and that all influences, moral and civil, would support you 
 spontaneously were it in danger. The unemployed are not a 
 burden on official benevolence ; it is not from your funds that 
 thcv receive assistance." 
 
 40 
 
In his reply the Governor General no longer urges these two 
 first considerations, but he alleges that "doles to the unemployed, 
 from whatever source they may come at present, must finally be 
 a charge upon our finances, and that it is the duty of a good 
 administrator to lighten such charges"; he adds that "pro- 
 longed unemployment would cause our workmen to lose their 
 technical proficiency, and that in the time of peace to come they 
 would be useless to industry." 
 
 True, there were other ways in which our finances might 
 have been protected. We might have been spared those war 
 levies which have now reached the sum of one billion francs, and 
 are still mounting up at the rate of forty millions a month ; we 
 might have been spared those requisitions in kind, which amount 
 to several thousands of millions, and are exhausting us. 
 
 There are other ways of providing for the maintenance of 
 professional skill among our workpeople such as leaving to Bel- 
 gian industry its machinery and accessories, its raw materials, 
 and its manufactured goods, which have passed from Belgium 
 into Germany. And it is neither to the quarries nor to the lime 
 kilns to which the Germans themselves declare they will send our 
 unemployed, that our specialists will go to complete their pro- 
 fessional education. 
 
 The naked truth is that every deported workman is another 
 soldier for the German Army. He will take the place of a Ger- 
 man workman, who will be made into a soldier. Thus the sit- 
 uation which we denounce to the civilized world may be reduced 
 to these terms: Four hundred thousand workmen have been 
 thrown out of work by no fault of their own, and largely on 
 account of the regime of the occupation. Sons, husbands, and 
 fathers of families, they bear their unhappy lot without mur- 
 muring, respectful of public order; national solidarity provides 
 their most pressing wants; by dint of unselfish thrift and self- 
 denial they escape extreme destitution, and they await with 
 dignity and in a mutual affection which our national sorrows 
 have intensified, the end of our common ordeal. 
 
 Groups of soldiers introduced themselves forcibly in the 
 homes of these people, tearing the young people out of the arms 
 of their parents, the husband from his wife, the father from his 
 
 41 
 
children; at the point of the bayonet they block the entrances 
 to the homes, preventing wives and mothers from rushing out 
 to say a last farewell to them ; they align the captives in groups 
 of forty or fifty and push them forcibly into freight cars; the 
 locomotive is under pressure, and as soon as a trainload is 
 ready, an officer gives the signal and they depart. Thus another 
 thousand Belgians reduced to slavery, without previous trial, 
 condemned to the penalty which comes next in cruelty to the 
 death penalty — deportation. They don't know how long their 
 exile is going to last, neither do they know where they are 
 going. All they know is that their work will benefit the enemy. 
 Several of them have been brought to sign — by coercion or by 
 threats — an engagement which they dare to call "voluntary". 
 
 While they certainly take the unemployed, they also take a 
 large number — in the proportion of one quarter for the Arron- 
 dissement of Mons — of men who were never out of work and 
 belonging to diversified professions — butchers, bakers, tailors, 
 brewery workers, electricians, farmers ; they even take the 
 youngest men, college and university students, or young men 
 from other high schools. 
 
 This in spite of the fact that two high authorities of the 
 German Empire had formally guaranteed the liberty of our com- 
 patriots. 
 
 The day after the capitulation of Antwerp the frightened 
 populace asked itself what would become of the Belgians of 
 military age or those which would arrive at that age before 
 the end of the siege. Baron von Huene, Military Governor of 
 Antwerp, authorized me to reassure in his name the frightened 
 parents. However, as rumors were running that in Antwerp, 
 Liege, Namur, and Charleroi young men had been seized and 
 forcibly carried off to Germany, I asked Governor von Huene 
 to confirm to me in writing the verbal guarantees which he had 
 given me. He repHed that the rumors pertaining to depor- 
 tations were without foundation, and he gave me without hesi- 
 tancy the written declaration which was read on Sunday, Octo- 
 ber 1, 1914, in all the parochial churches of the Arrondissement 
 of Antwerp : "Young men need have no fear of being car- 
 ried off to Germany, either for enrollment in the army or for 
 forcible employment." 
 
 42 
 
Immediately after the arrival of Baron von der Goltz in 
 the capacity of Governor General at Brussels, I went to ask him 
 to ratify the guarantees given by Governor von Huene to the 
 Province of Antv^erp, extending them to the whole country, 
 without any time limit. The Governor General retained my 
 petition in order to consider it at his leisure. The following 
 day he was good enough to come in person to Malines to express 
 his approval and, in the presence of two aides de camp and of 
 my private secretary, to confirm the promise that the liberty 
 of the Belgian citizens would be respected. 
 
 In my letter of October 16 last to Baron von Bissing, after 
 reminding him of the undertaking given by his predecessor, I 
 concluded : "Your Excellency will understand how painful the 
 burden of responsibility I should have incurred toward families 
 would be if the confidence they placed in you through me and 
 at my earnest entreaty should be so lamentably disappointed." 
 
 The Governor General replied : "The employment of the 
 Belgian unemployed in Germany, which has only been initiated 
 after two years of war, differs essentially from the captivity of 
 men fit for military service. Moreover, the measure is not 
 related to the conduct of the war, properly speaking, but it is 
 determined by social and economic causes." 
 
 As if the word of an honest man was terminable at the end 
 of a year or two! As if the declaration confirmed in 1914 did 
 not explicitly exclude both military operations and forced labor ! 
 As if, in fine every Belgian workman who takes the place of 
 a German workman did not enable the latter to fill a gap in the 
 German Army ! 
 
 We, the shepherds of these sheep who are torn from us 
 by brutal force, full of anguish at the thought of the moral and 
 religious isolation in which they are about to languish, impotent 
 witnesses of the grief and terror in the numerous homes shat- 
 tered or threatened, appeal to all souls, believers or unbelievers, 
 in allied countries, in neutral countries, and even in enemy 
 countries, who have a respect for human dignity. 
 
 When Cardinal Lavigerie embarked on his anti-slavery cam- 
 paign, Pope Leo XIII., as he blessed his mission, remarked: 
 "Opinion is more than ever the queen of the world. It is on 
 
 43 
 
JAN 
 
 -W I'^M 
 
 this you must work. You will only conquer by means of 
 opinion." 
 
 May Divine Providence deign to inspire all who have any 
 authority, all who are masters of speech and pen, to rally around 
 our humble Belgian flag for the abolition of European slavery. 
 
 Alay human conscience triumph over all sophisms and re- 
 main steadfastly faithful to the great precept of St. Ambrose: 
 Honor above everything! Nihil praefercndum honestati! 
 
 In the name of the Belgian Bishops. 
 
 (Signed) D. J. Cardinal Mercier, 
 
 Archbishop of Malines. 
 
 ADDRESS BY THE CARDINAL IN BRUSSELS. Nov. 26. 
 
 The four or five weeks that I have just passed have been perhaps 
 the most painful of my life, the most anguishing of my episcopal career. 
 The fathers and mothers who are pressing about this pulpit will under- 
 stand me. 
 
 I have seen hundreds of my flock in peril and in tears. During 
 three days, on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday last, from morn to eve, 
 I went about the regions whence the foremost workmen and artisans 
 of my diocese were taken by force into exile. At Wavrecourt, St. 
 Etienne, Nivelles, Tubize, and Braine FAlleud I entered more than a 
 hundred half empty homes. Husbands were absent, children were 
 orphans, sisters, sad-eyed, and with inert arms, sat beside their sewing 
 machines. A gloomy silence reigned in these cottages. It was as 
 though there were a corpse in the house. But hardly had I addressed a 
 word of sympathy to the mother when there was an outburst of sobs 
 and lamentations, of angry tones, with movements of magnificent pride. 
 
 The memory of these heartbreaking scenes never leaves me. I 
 would like to hurry to Antwerp, Tirlemont, Dieste — wherever they are 
 repeated, wherever there is sorrow to assuage, tears to dry, hearts to 
 console. But I cannot. Eager to do it though I am, I have neither the 
 strength nor the time. Therefore, dear brethren, I thought I would 
 come to you, in the centre of my diocese and of our country. 
 
 I say to you, my brethren, without hate or a spirit of reprisal, that 
 I should be unworthy of this episcopal ring which the Church placed 
 upon my finger, and of this cross which she placed upon my breast if, 
 obeying a human passion, I hesitated to proclaim that law violated 
 remains none the less law and that injustice based on force is none the 
 less injustice. 
 
 But peace is only possible in order, and order reposes on justice 
 and charity. We want order, and it is for this reason that from the 
 very first day I asked that no active resistance be opposed to the power 
 of occupation and that regulations which did not violate our Christian 
 conscience or our patriotic dignity be submitted to without revolt. 
 
 However, the occupying power ought also to desire order ; that is, 
 to say, respect of our rights and of our engagements. Man in a 
 civilized country has a right to freedom of his labor. He has a right 
 to his home. He has a right to reserve his services for his fatherland. 
 
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LIBRftRY OF CONGRESS 
 
 020 914 289 2 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS ^ 
 
 020 914 289 2