They are six million strong. They are
among the most honored and esteemed folk in American life. Their
achievements are beyond all praise. The Germans have built Milwaukee and
have done much for St. Louis. The Germans have been great forces in
Cincinnati and Chicago and New York. What wealth among their bankers!
What prosperity among German manufacturers! What solidity of manhood in
these German Lutherans! Was there ever a finer body of farming folk than
the German landowners of the Middle West? The republic owes the
German-American a great debt as to liberty through men like Carl Schurz.
Take Martin Luther and German liberty of thought out of the republic and
this land would suffer an immeasurable loss. Many of these
German-Americans own great estates and have investments in the
Fatherland. Today these six million German-Americans have the centre of
the world's stage. This war is a conflagration that will probably burn
itself out. But if the six million German-Americans organize themselves
and hold great meetings of protest in New York and Brooklyn and Chicago
and Milwaukee, in St. Louis and Cincinnati; if German-American editors
and bankers and business men united their voice, they would be heard.
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