Page:Roosevelt in the Kansas City Star.djvu/83

Rh seeming to persuade his hearers that they ought, at this crisis of foreign war, to be hostile to those of their countrymen who are "capitalists" instead of the Kaiser.

This is natural. The Socialist party machine in this country is run by Germans. Socialists, who were sincerely desirous of social betterment and who were sincere in this hatred of tyranny and wrongdoing, have left the Socialist party. Those who remain in it have turned it into a mere tool of the brutal militaristic autocracy which now threatens the world. These men are completely dominated by the Germans, and German Socialists in America have shown in this crisis that they are Germans first, Socialists a long way second, and not Americans at all. In fact, they are venomously hostile to the country in which they dwell and claim citizenship, and are eagerly ready to sacrifice Socialism itself to the interests of the Germany of the Hohenzollerns. They stand well to the front among the Shadow Huns who, within our gates, are the allies of the Huns without our gates.

While in Wisconsin I was told that the German-American Alliance, in its efforts to persuade American citizens to betray their citizenship in the interests of Germany, had relatively as many adherents among the Socialists as among the two great parties.

When the Socialists under such leadership oppose or sneer at the Liberty Loan, it is proof positive that all patriotic citizens should buy Liberty bonds up to the limit of their ability. The Socialists attack the