Arbeit macht frei: - Fredrick Töben

of punishing war criminals is correct, then we will see some interesting
hangings!
Austin J. App, Ph.D.
Japanese Not Savages in 1917!
Ohio State Journal
Columbus, Ohio
December 29, 1943
To the Editor:
* * *
Your attitudes and editorials generally are so large-minded and humane
that I hope you will not take it too much amiss if I single out one word for
criticism in your editorial of December 29 on the government’s or army’s
suppression and manipulation of certain forms of news.
In that editorial you speak of ‘the kind of savage we are up against in the Jap.’
I am sorry you called the Japanese savages and I hope you will not do so
again. In 1918 the Japanese were our beloved allies and our Wilsonian
government at that time encouraged everybody to call them all kinds of
charming names.
Now that Japan is on the other side there is a temptation to call them
savages. If they are savages in 1943 then they were savages in 1917. Are we
going to admit that in our ‘glorious’ battle to ‘save the world for
democracy’ under Wilson we had savages as important allies?
The Japanese are not savages. They are the most highly civilized people
with the best schools and universities and the lowest rate of illiteracy in all
of Asia. They are, I feel one can honestly say, not as civilized as yet as we
are, but they are more highly civilized and less savage than some of our
present allies.
Someday the Japanese may again be our allies and then we’ll feel very
much ashamed for having called them savages. What sickened and
shamed the human race and us most after the last world war was not the
atrocities committed by the other side, but the atrocity stories about the
other side the British and the French manufactured and we publicized and
believed. This must not happen again.
Very truly yours
Austin J. App, Ph.D.
* * *
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