We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
194 ROAMIN' IN THE GLOAMIN'
whose leanings were all on the side of the Black Eagle. Blood is always thicker than water and I could not blame them. But I knew that Britain's hands were clean, that we had taken up the sword on behalf of what we deemed a righteous cause and that we were draining our manhood in support of an ideal. All this I told my audiences whenever I had the chance. Sometimes my remarks were well received; sometimes they were not. Occasionally Will Morris was a bit dubious of the wisdom of my almost fanatical speeches on behalf of my country, not, let me say at once, because he was not with me heart and soul but because he was frightened that I might get a bad break somewhere. Still I carried on. At a great meeting in San Francisco in December '15, I said, "You have got to come in and help us. America is part and parcel of Britain in this fight. Your institutions and your ideals march with ours. Your aspirations, your democracy, your outlook on life are the twins of our own — you cannot much longer stand aloof and see Europe plunged into hell because a gang of junkers have pulled out their sabres and sung a war-song proclaiming their determination to ride rough-shod over all the nations of the earth!" Of course I received many threatening letters and was repeatedly told that I should stick to my legitimate business of the stage without mixing it up with British propaganda offensive to many citizens of the country in which I was touring as a paid entertainer. At Pittsburgh one evening I was billed to speak in one of the largest halls. After a most enthusiastic meeting some friends — real Americans — and I were passing by the newspaper offices where the war bulletins were being shown in a dozen different languages. They were being eagerly devoured by a motley crowd the vast proportion of which could not speak English and whose sole idea of America was that it was a country which had treated them better than the lands they had been glad to leave. "What do these people know about the rights or wrongs of the war?"