The singing of this conference has

The singing of this conference has seemed to me to be particularly appropriate. I have seen new meaning in many of the old songs which have been sung. To begin with we sang : ¶

Hail to the brightness of Zion's glad morning, ¶

Joy to the lands that in darkness ¶

have lain! Hushed be the accents of sorrow and ¶

mourning, Zion in triumph begins her glad ¶

reign. ¶

i ¶

Hark! from all lands, from the isles of the ocean, Praise to Jehovah ascending on high; ¶

Fallen are engines of war and commotion, ¶

Shouts of salvation are rending the sky. ¶

The next to the last line is prophetic for the future ; but it is certainly appropriate for us to exclaim today, "Joy to the lands that in darkness have lain." ¶

We sang also the song composed by Brother Parley P. Pratt: ¶

"The morning breaks, the shadows flee; • ¶

Lo! Zion's standard is unfurled The dawning of a brighter day Majestic rises on the world. ¶

The clouds of error disappear Before the rays of truth divine; ¶

The glory, bursting from afar. ¶

Wide o'er the nations soon will shine." ¶

And others of the songs were particularly appropriate and striking at this time. If we understand the word "Zion" in the larger meaning of referring to North and South America, the land of Joseph, there is an added meaning to these words which I have read. In order to understand what this glad news means to countries like Belgium and France and other nations that soon shall be liberated, we must visualize some of their sufferings. I think this people should be able to sympathize very fully with these oppressed peoples, because there have been some things in our history which should help us to be very sympathetic. We, whose ancestors had the experiences of migrating from New York and Ohio to Missouri and from thence to Illinois, and who witnessed the slaying of the prophet and the patriarch while under official protection, and the wanderings of the people from thence to the Rocky Mountains, and being separated, husband from wife and child from parent, in connection with the call of the Mormon Battalion, we appreciate the joy and the peace that we have here in these mountain valleys, and yet we have learned so well the lesson taught in the parable of the Good Samaritan, that we know who our neighbor is ; and so with the sufferings of our brethren and sisters across the great waters, we are able to sympathize, and our contemplation of peace here is only of short duration, because our minds go to our suffering brethren and sisters abroad. ¶

What joy must come to the hearts of the Belgians today as they realize that their deliverance is not far off, those who suffered the pangs connected with the abuse of the doctrine of hostages. Lieutenant Eberlein confesses how he clubbed with the butt of the gun, hostages, in order to have them take perilous positions so that their own countrymen in seeking to defend themselves would slay these hostages. That is almost like "seething the kid in its ¶

mother's milk," or like the incident of which Byron writes, of the eagle wounded with the arrow, and yet the keener pain was when he realized that it was a pinion of its own which had sped the shaft which then festered in its vitals. ¶

Notwithstanding article 50 of the agreement at the second Hague convention, to which the German Empire was a party, there were many abuses of the doctrine of penalties. First, five hundred million francs were levied upon Belgium, that stripped nation, then the subject of charity from other lands ; then a monthly levy of at first forty million francs, then increased to fifty and afterwards to sixty million francs that those people, with much of their machinery shipped to Germany, their raw material either cut off or taken from them, besides the individual penalizing of various towns and cities. ¶

But one of the most deplorable incidents in the occupation by Germany of Belgium, was their system of deportations. Contrary to article 52 of the same agreement which had been entered into, some of those deported were required, so Minister Gerard told us, to manufacture ammunition to be used against their countrymen. Ninety minutes notice was given to men and women to prepare for the deportation. Tens of thousands were deported for labor in Germany under that order. Many of the orders issued against the Belgians were expressly required to be carried out without mercy. That was the expression frequently used in those messages, that they were to be carried out without mercy. ¶

One of the correspondents, Will Irwin, in the Saturday Evening Post of October 6, 1917, said : ¶

Some ten or a dozen American correspondents, of whom I was one, witnessed the first German drive through Belgium. Most of us were so appalled and horrified by what we saw as to become anti-German for life. ¶

Mr. Whitlock, our Minister to Belgium, reporting on the situation, said : ¶

They have dealt a mortal blow to any prospect they may ever have had of being tolerated by the population of Flanders; in tearing away from nearly every humble home in the land a husband, a father or a son and brother, they have lighted a fire of hatred that will never go out; they have brought home to every heart in the land, in a way that will impress its horrors indelibly on the memory of three generations, a realization of what German methods mean, not as with the early atrocities in the heat of passion and the first lust of war, but by one of those deeds that make one despair of the future of the human race, a deed coldly planned, studiously matured, and deliberately and systematically executed, a deed so cruel that German soldiers are said to have wept in its execution, and so monstrous that even German officers are now said to be ashamed. ¶

This is from an official report of our Minister to Belgium, a reliable and conservative man. ¶

Some of the Belgian petitions and appeals read very much like some of the many petitions that were offered in behalf of the Latter-day Saints, while they were passing through some of the tribulations to which I have referred. Here is one : ¶

You are a father, you know that there is not in the order of humanity a right more honorable or more holy than that of the family, for every Christian the inviolability of God, who created the family, attaches to it. The German officers who have been billeted for a long time in our homes know how deep in our hearts we of the North hold family affection, and that it is the sweetest thing in life to us. Thus to dismember the family by tearing youths and girls from their homes is not war; it is for us tortures and the worst of tortures — unlimited moral torture. The violation of family rights is doubled by a violation of the sacred demands of morality. Morality is exposed to perils, the mere idea of which is revolting to every honest man, from the promiscuity which inevitably accompanies removals en masse, involving mixture of the sexes, or, at all events, of persons of very unequal moral standing. Young girls of irreproachable life, who have never committed any worse offense than that of trying to pick up some bread or a few potatoes to feed a numerous family, and who have besides paid the light penalty for such trespass, have been carried off. Their mothers, who have watched so closely over them and had no other joy than that of keeping their daughters beside them, in the absence of father and sons fighting or killed at the front — these mothers are now alone. ¶

And Mr. Herbert Hoover, giving an official report of the conditions existing in Belgium after the occupation by Germany, used very strong language : ¶

The sight of the destroyed homes and cities, the widowed and fatherless, the destitute, the physical misery of a people but partially nourished at best the deportation of men by tens of thousands to slavery in German mines and factories, the execution of men and women for paltry effusions of their loyalty to their country, the sacking of every resource through financial robbery, the battening of armies on the slender produce of the country, the denudation of the country of cattle, horses and textiles; all these things we had to witness, dumb to help other than by protest and sympathy, during this long and terrible time — and still these are not the events of battle heat, but the effects of a grinding heel of a race demanding the mastership of the world. ¶

All these things are well known to the world — but what can never be known is the dumb agony of the people, the expressionless faces of millions whose souls have passed the whole gamut of emotions. And why? Because these, a free and democratic people, dared plunge their bodies before the march of autocracy. ¶

And as we were eloquently told last night by the French officer, as to France fourteen hundred thousand of their men have perished, a like number seriously wounded ; and our English officer told us of the great numbers that England has lost. So, if the day is approaching when darkness and error shall flee away, when the lands that in darkness have lain shall receive the light, will there not be great rejoicing? We received word last night that the fourteen terms proposed by President Wilson last January 8th, that this law which had gone forth from Zion might be accepted by the Central Powers, one of which provides for the righting of the wrongs against Alsace and Lorraine. Think of the joy there to the lands which in darkness have lain to those people who are not permitted the privilege of their own language or to inscribe upon the tombstones the names and record of the departed in the native language of the people. ¶

We must not be too optimistic in reference to the prospect for immediate peace, because one of the great obstacles lies in the fact heretofore suggested by American statesmen, of the want of capacity for convenanted peace. We must not grow too enthusiastic because we hear the shout "Kamerad" even by a nation, because, if we grant an armistice we may have the experience that we had when we protested against the sinking of the Lusitania, and were given to under- ¶

stand that such warfare would cease, only to find that upon better preparation the work was renewed with greater energy ; and just as our New York boys learned last week, when the word "Kamerad" was sounded and heeded they discovered a little later it was only for an opportunity of throwing hand grenades at them. So, there are some difficulties in the way yet of securing peace. I rejoice that we are not relaxing, that in the very face of the announcement that the Central Powers are willing to discuss the fourteen terms specified by our nation, that our Church made the purchase today of a quarter of a million dollars in defense of liberty and truth. ¶

Word has been given during this conference of the abuse of the freedom of speech. Freedom of speech and of the press are glorious rights guaranteed by the Constitution, a protection against the repetition of those things that our ancestors in England had experienced when men were not free to write and speak as they cho.se ; but there are other rights that are guaranteed by the Constitution in addition to the right of speech. The freedom of the press is no higher or greater than the freedom of speech, and these guaranteed rights always had certain limitations. Under the rights of free speech or of a free press one would not have the right to utter blasphemy; neither would he have the right to publish immorality, nor sedition, as some have learned recently in this great Republic of ours under the prosecution of a Utah boy ; neither would it give the right to character assassination. While attention has been called to the fact that we have realized in a few instances that a spirit of lying is abroad and that some first class falsehoods have been put forward and industriously circulated, our Government has experienced the same thing" upon a larger scale. The French officer referred last night to some of those falsehoods uttered against his own country, that it was a decadent nation ; have you not heard that? And also that France had been bled white, — another falsehood. So our own country has listed some one hundred important falsehoods that have been circulated in this country ; and I think the lesson to us is not to repeat these idle tales because there is no more critical period of this great world conflict than we are passing through now. If we make serious mistakes now in being too anxious for an early peace, it may result these millions shall have died in vain, if we do not square a peace which shall usher in the Millennium or tend very strongly in that direction. So the duty of citizenship, as I view it, is to be careful how we pass along any of these falsehoods, either against the Church or against the state, and it is no excuse or justification to the person repeating a slander, that he has heard it from someone else ; that is no justification, so we may well stop and inquire when any strange tale comes to us, whether it is true or not. The inquiry, "Where did you get your facts," would be pertinent both as to these Church rumors and as to these rumors pertaining to the state. It is a time for care. The Deseret News, in its excellent editorial column the other night, called attention to the fact that when that magnificent parade was passing, and the flag was being carried in a formal manner, that some citizens were either too careless or too ignorant ¶

to salute the flag as it passed by; and it occurs to me in connection with this epidemic that is abroad, that care must be used, care by those who are taken with it, that they may not expose others. I have seen people sneezing and coughing in public assemblages and in the street cars, without the use of a handkerchiefs, and, if affected with infectious disease, endangering those in near radius. ¶

I have already taken more time, perhaps, than I should. May the Lord bless us, help us to be true and faithful and loyal citizens to our country and to our Church, I pray in the name of Jesus. Amen. ¶