Good morning,
Whitewater’s forecast calls for a slight chance of showers and a high temperature of seventy-two degrees.
Wisconsin’s primary election today offers a chance to pick candidates and an end to some (defeated) candidates’ mediocre commercials.
There will be a school board meeting today at 4 p.m. to consider a “Resolution Cancelling Revenue Limit Referendum.” (Odd thing about the school district’s website: it’s design makes linking to documents, notices, agenda items difficult. It’s a website whose design defies the easy use of hypertext links.)
There’s a 6 p.m. PTA meeting at Lakeview School. At Lincoln School, proud home of the Leopards, there’s a Book Fair today, and then a 5-6 p.m. informational PTO meeting for parents. Washington School has its PATT meeting tonight at 6:30 p.m.
The Wisconsin Historical Society recalls a sad day in our state’s history, an incident in 1918 involving the Krueger family:
1918 – Lynched for Resisting WWI
On this day an armed mob estimated at 200 people surrounded the Clark Co. home of Mrs. Caroline Krueger and her sons, who had refused to serve in the First World War. “They said that if the war was in this country they would be among the first to volunteer,” reported a neighbor. “They declared however that it was not right to send American soldiers to France and that they never would go.” The family was known for its religious and pacifist views, but that didn’t matter to a mob of patriotic citizens. When the boys refused to respond to a draft notice, a crowd from nearby Owen, Wis., surrounded their home. A shootout followed, one of the mob was killed, one of the Kruegers shot through both legs, and their barn was burned down to smoke out the other sons. Two of the sons were convicted of murder and served 13 years before being transferred to a psychiatric institution, driven insane by their ordeal according to the press. The third son, Ennis, was believed killed when a youth matching his description was shot trying to escape authorities a few days later. This was, however, merely the final injustice in the sequence of events, as Ennis Krueger surfaced in 1933. When officials entered the farmhouse after the shootout, they found an American flag mounted above the family hearth. [Source: Wis. Local history & Biography Articles]
The Kruegers were mistaken about the war — Imperial Germany and her allies were a threat to the rest of Europe, and merited resistance, including armed resistance. Still, legitimate conscientious objectors should not be required to serve, and if found illegitimate (willing to fight in some places rather than others), they should have been found so only through due process. The account omits whether the Kruegers might have been sympathetic to Imperial Germany, but even so, they deserved better than a mob.