Page:Roosevelt in the Kansas City Star.djvu/78

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Lot's wife was journeying to safety, she could not resist looking back to the land she had left and was thereupon turned to a pillar of salt. The men from the Old World who, instead of adopting an attitude of hearty and exclusive loyalty to their land, try also to look backward to their old countries, become pillars-of-salt citizens, who are not merely useless, but mischievous members of our commonwealth.

The dispatches of the German Government, just published by the State Department, give us an illuminating glimpse, not only of German methods and of German conduct towards this country, but also of certain phases of our own citizenship. The German Government proposed to use this country as a basis of operations for wrecking the Canadian railway. It also proposed to use and pay its agents and certain of our citizens for "sabotage in every kind of American factory for supplying munitions of war," and for "a vigorous campaign to secure a majority in both houses favorable to Germany." The German staff, in issuing these directions and in naming certain American citizens as tools for the treacherous work, insisted that the embassy should not be compromised and that "similar precautions must be taken in regard to Irish pro-German propaganda."