March 2, 1918
Hello, I am Henry Schmidt, and am writing in this very old journal that I found in the attic of my childhood house because my lovely wife used the last few sheets of paper we have to finish her report for the local paper. It is almost scary how much paper she has actually gone through in the past few years.
Thinking back to it, I now truly regret loosing my job at our local bakery, thus forcing my wife into her current occupation. It wasn't my fault; one day it just closed down. I really didn't know why for a wile until I made the connection between its closing and the current German Immigrant mistreatment in the States. Not only a year ago did our German Breads store close, but manny other German institutions were closed as well. A month later, I was walking down Frankfort street to find work when I noticed its name was changed to Charleston on a street sign. Perplexed I walked around a few more blocks to find multiple other streets' names had been altered; all of them used to be German names.
My wife has concluded that this quite sudden dislike of Germans is most likely due to the war, but even more so due to the war propaganda circling the U.S.. Starting in 1917, the new Comity on Public Information has been increasingly promoting the war. You can't go one day without coming across advertisements, newspaper articles, posters, or Four Minute Men giving speeches and drawing attention to the war. My wife says that there are close to 75,000 volunteers currently acting as Four Minute Men in the U.S. She also told me I should join sense I have so much free time and can't get a local job now due to my nationality, but I refuse to do so if the war is what started all this maddened sentiment towards Germans.
The problem is, no one is able to say anything against the war or government right now. After the creation of the Espionage and Sedition Acts less than a year ago, people have been jailed for openly criticizing the U.S. and the draft. I can't believe the government would restrict civil liberties so severely, especially when the U.S. is characterized by the freedoms of its citizens and the peoples' power to manage the government. My wife believes the Acts are unconstitutional and violate our freedom of speech, but I'm not sure how they were passed if that's so.
It's funny I keep paraphrasing my wife, who has not even made an entry in this journal yet. It makes me seem so inferior, which is true in knowledge of politics, but I don't think it will be the ruin of my reputation as I will never share this journal to keep the confidentiality of my anti-war views hidden. However it is late, and I am ending this entry tonight before my wife scolds me with more talk of current affairs.
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