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- &IOTHEGA 1

EM.1 Foreword.

GBOKG [AB

HlS/nandbook embodies the first attempt to supply thoughtful mericans with a convenient manual of historic, political and sociological information in regard to that element of our population which is descended from the German im­migrants who contributed so largely to the upbuilding of the United States by their industry, character and loyalty since the settlement of Germantown in 1682. This element makes up nearly 27 per cent, of the American people, and is exceeded only to the extent of 3 per cent, by the so-called Anglo-American element.

Since the outbreak of the European war, early in August, 1914, Amer­icans of German descent and birth have had to bear calumny and per­secution. With a press which from the outbreak of hostilities has endeav­ored to precipitate the United States into the great conflict as an ally of England, France, Russia and Japan, it has been impossible to obtain a fair hearing for the other side with which so many of us are connected by direct ties of blood. This inimical and unneutral point of view has been instilled into the minds of thousands of our neighbors and has led to attempts at the suppression of the constitutional right of petition, of free speech and a free presfs. It reached the stage of assassination in at least one case — that of Rev. Edmund Kayser, pastor of St. James's Evangelical Lutheran Church at Gary, Ind., August 24, 1915.

Those of us who stood with Theodore Roosevelt in his declaration of American principles down to October, 1914, found ourselves deserted and denounced by him as "hyphens," who deserved being shot in the back, when he became an active candidate for a third term, aiïer that date.

When a campaign of calumny and persecution is thus launched against a component element of our great country, and this campaign is supported by influences and motives that are open to suspicion of being inspired by ignoble purposes, and the greater part of the public press is in the hands of persons believed to be in league with Wall Street and the agents of foreign powers interested in suppressing the untrammled discussion of the issues raised by the war, while the administration dismisses from the public service men who indiscreetly criticise the policies of those temporarily in power, and threatens to resort to sumptuary measures to suspend the foreign language newspapers on the wholly untenable plea that they are un-American, a handbook such as this seems timely and necessary — a handbook intended to combat fabrications with facts, ignorance with light, calumny with truth, malevolence with logic and wrong with right.

It is hoped that it will arouse the German American element, which has so long hidden its light under a bushel, to a better sense of its importance as well as duty, and spur it on to a more active participation in our public life than heretofore, not as a racial unit, but as a strong coordinate factor in the political affairs of our common country. The work is offered the public in no spirit of antagonism to any other racial part of our great composite country, and with no desire to emphasize any racial cleavage, but rather to efface the lines of divergence by presenting such statistics and facts of history — showing the vast influence of the Teuton race — as