ROOSEVELT IN THE KANSAS CITY STAR (continued 3)

Our loyalty is due entirely to the United States. It is due to the President only and exactly to the degree in which he efficiently serves the United States. It is our duty to support him when he serves the United States well. It is our duty to oppose him when he serves it badly. This is true about Mr. Wilson now and it has been true about all our presidents in the past. It is our duty at all times to tell the truth about the President and about every one else, save in the cases where to tell the truth at the moment would benefit the public enemy. Since this war began, the suppression of the truth by and about the Administration has been habitual. In rare cases this has been disadvantageous to the enemy. In the vast majority of cases it has been advantageous to the enemy, detrimental to the American people, and useful to the Administration only from the political, not the patriotic, standpoint.

The Senate Judiciary Committee has just recommended the passage of a law in which, among many excellent propositions to put down disloyalty, there has been adroitly inserted a provision that any one who uses “contemptuous or slurring language about the President” shall be punished by imprisonment for a long term of years and by a fine of many thousand dollars. This proposed law is sheer treason to the United States. Under its terms Abraham Lincoln would have been sent to prison for what he repeatedly said of Presidents Polk, Pierce, and Buchanan. Under its terms President Wilson would be free to speak of Senator-elect Lenroot as he has spoken, but Senator Lenroot would not be free truthfully to answer President Wilson. It is a proposal to make Americans subjects instead of citizens. It is a proposal to put the President in the position of the Hohenzollerns and Romanoffs. Government by the people means that the people have the right to do their own thinking and to do their own speaking about their public servants. They must speak truthfully and they must not be disloyal to the country, and it is their highest duty by truthful criticism to make and keep the public servants loyal to the country.

Any truthful criticism could and would be held by partisanship to be slurring or contemptuous. The Delaware House of Representatives has just shown this. It came within one vote of passing a resolution demanding that the Department of Justice proceed against me because, in my recent speeches in Maine, I “severely criticized the conduct of our National Government.” I defy any human being to point out a statement in that speech which was not true and which was not patriotic, and yet the decent and patriotic members of the Delaware legislature were only able to secure a majority of one against the base and servile partisanship of those who upheld the resolution.

I believe the proposed law is unconstitutional. If it is passed, I shall certainly give the Government the opportunity to test its constitutionality. For whenever the need arises I shall in the future speak truthfully of the President in praise or in blame, exactly as I have done in the past. When the President in the past uttered his statements about being too proud to fight and wishing peace without victory, and considering that we had no special grievance against Germany, I spoke of him as it was my high duty to speak. Therefore, I spoke of him truthfully and severely, and I cared nothing whether or not timid and unpatriotic and short-sighted men said that I spoke slurringly or contemptuously. In as far as the President in the future endeavors to wage this war efficiently and to secure the peace of overwhelming victory, I shall heartily support him. But if he wages it inefficiently or if he should now champion a peace without victory, or say that we had no grievance against Germany, I would speak in criticism of him precisely as I have spoken in the past. I am an American and a free man. My loyalty is due to the United States, and therefore it is due to the President, the Senators, the Congressmen, and all other public servants only and to the degree in which they loyally and efficiently serve the United States.

WOMEN AND THE WAR

April 12, 1918

A Kansas woman has just written me in part as follows: “I have given my all, my two sons, gladly and proudly, as volunteers to my country, for they enlisted last August. But my heart grows sick at the confusion and blunders and apathy. I thank The Star for printing that poem of the Minnesota mother. It appeals to all of us mothers who stay at home and pray and work as we can.”

I think more continually of such mothers of soldiers as this Kansas woman, than I do even of the soldiers themselves. They have high and gallant souls. They are the spiritual heirs of the mothers and wives of Washington’s Continentals and of the mothers and wives of the soldiers of Grant and Lee. I am proud beyond measure that I am their fellow countryman. In everything that I do or say, I seek to make and to keep this land a land in which their daughters can dwell in honorable safety and to make our common citizenship such that both their sons and daughters shall hold their heads high because they are Americans.

But exactly as I revere such women, so I condemn the women whose short-sightedness or frivolous love of ease and vapid pleasure or whose timid fear of danger and labor makes them fit companions for those unworthy men whose lives represent merely the shirking of duty. The mother who, by perpetual complaint and lamentation about unavoidable hardships and risks, seeks to weaken the heart of her soldier son stands no higher than the money-getting or ease-loving man who dodges the draft. The woman who cares so little for the honor of America and the interests of civilization as now to wish a peace without victory is no better than the men in uniform who seek soft positions of safety among the slickers and slackers.

The things that are best worth having in life must be paid for whether by forethought or by toil or by downright facing of danger. This is true in peace. It is even more true in war. It is just as true of women as of men.

All wise and good women and all wise and good men abhor war. Washington and Lincoln abhorred war. But no man or woman is either wise or good unless he or she abhors some things even more than war, exactly as Washington and Lincoln abhorred them. We are none of us fit to be free men in a republic if we are not willing to fight when the Republic is wronged as Germany has wronged this country. We are none of us entitled to say that we love mankind if we are not willing to do battle against the Turk and the German in order to right such wrongs as have been perpetrated on Belgium and Armenia. And we deserve to be brayed in a mortar if we are ever again guilty of such folly as that of which we have been guilty by our foolish failure to prepare our strength in efficient fashion during the last three and a half years.

The women of this country who love their husbands and sons should realize now that only by thorough preparedness in advance can war be avoided, if possible, or successfully waged if it has to come. Recently men in high position whose own bodies are safe have stated that they are glad that we were not prepared in advance to do our duty when this war came. These men have purchased their own safety and advantage by the blood of our sons at the front. Let the women who do not wish to see their men go up against the cannon see that hereafter all our sons are well trained in advance. If America’s strength is fully prepared in advance, she will in all probability never have to go to war and will be a potent factor in preserving the peace of justice throughout the world, and the first step in securing such a peace is to devote all our energies to speeding up the war until it is ended by the complete triumph of our allies and ourselves.

TO MY FELLOW AMERICANS OF GERMAN BLOOD

April 16, 1918

Hermann Hagedorn, an American whose father and mother were born in Germany, an American of the best and bravest and most loyal type, has just written a little book called “Where Do You Stand? An Appeal to Americans of German Origin.” I wish it could be read by every individual of those to whom it is addressed, and by all other Americans also.

I am, myself, partly of German blood, and I make my appeal as an American does, to and on behalf of all other Americans who have German blood in their veins. We have room in this country only for Americans who are Americans, and nothing else. They must be loyal to only one flag; they must speak one language; they must serve only American ideals. I mean literally what I say, that every man who bears even the smallest allegiance to any other country should be sent out of this country. The native American who, during this war, directly or indirectly, assails any of our allies, notably England, but also Japan, is a traitor to America and should be promptly imprisoned. The German-American, and especially the German-American editor, guilty of such conduct or of any exaltation of any German victory should be instantly interned and then sent back to Germany. The Sinn Feiner who attacks England should be immediately interned and then sent back to Ireland. The German-American Alliance and all similar organizations should immediately be broken up by Congress and by the state legislatures. Our people would do well to remember that even when such organizations keep quiet for the moment, they are certain to revive and to work against America with the utmost malignity when peace comes. The time to crush them is now. Foreign language newspapers should be required to follow the example of the New York Herald and begin the change, which is to convert their newspapers into English, the language of the United States.

As for spies, preachers of sedition, men who practice sabotage, and all other such persons, the Government already has much power, but should be given any needed additional power to proceed against them, and this power should be used in drastic fashion, if necessary under martial law, and after a summary trial the guilty men should be shot.

So much for the men of German blood, or of any other blood, who are not good Americans; but remember that it is also our highest duty from the standpoint of Americanism to stand by the good American of German blood, just exactly as we stand by any other American. We must refuse to permit any division along the lines of blood or ancestry. We must demand whole-hearted Americanism, and if a man gives this, we must treat him exactly on his merits, like any other American. In other words, we must give every man a square deal. Shoot the spy or the traitor, whether of native American, Irish, or German blood; whether a Protestant, Catholic, or Jew. Stand by the good American of any creed, no matter where he was born or whence his parents came.

It is an outrage to discriminate against a good American in civil life because he is of German blood. It is an even worse outrage for the Government to permit such discrimination against him in the army or in any of the organizations working under government supervision. Let us insist on the immediate stopping of such discriminations, which cruelly wound good Americans and tend to drive them back into the ranks of the half-loyal. In return let good Americans of German blood band together and take the lead in organization action against all disloyal or half-loyal citizens of German blood and against all German language or English language newspapers which are not whole-heartedly loyal and against all such organizations as the German-American Alliance.

AN EXTRAORDINARY ACHIEVEMENT IN HUMAN UPBUILDING

April 17, 1918

Major E. C. Simmons, of St. Louis, the manager of the Southwestern Division of the American Red Cross, has just returned from our army in France. He relates a really extraordinary achievement of the division of orthopædic surgery with the army under the direction of Surgeon-Major Joel E. Goldthwaite.

All the divisions of troops sent across, of course, contain a number of men who show physical shortcomings under the strain of actual campaigning. In General Edwards’s division these men numbered in the neighborhood of fifteen per cent, not an unusual proportion in the history of past wars. Dr. Goldthwaite got permission to try his hand on the treatment of a body composed of somewhat over five hundred of them, and instantly began vigorous but careful work to build up all their physical defects.

As his work for each man was finished, he was put in one of four classes. Class A included those to whom the training gave such vigor that they were fit to go right to the front as battle units. Class B included those who could be made fit for hard physical labor back of the front, although not for the tremendous strain of the trenches. Class C included those fitted for clerical and similar duties. Class D included those whose physical condition would not be improved and who had to be sent home.

Dr. Goldthwaite was able to place over eighty per cent of the men in Class A, and all the remainder in either Class B or Class C. Not a man had to be sent home. Remember that the physical shortcomings of these men were all present before they entered the army and were not acquired in the army. The work done for them made them not only fit to be soldiers, but fit to be citizens. Moreover, it affected them morally exactly as much as physically. They had become utterly dispirited and downcast. After Dr. Goldthwaite was through with them, they were all self-reliant, energetic Americans, vigorous, upstanding, and self-respecting, having lost all trace of either moral or physical crooked back and stooping shoulders.

When we get universal obligatory military training for all our young men, this is what will happen everywhere and the benefit to our people will be incalculable. Such training will minimize the chance of our ever having to go to war and will render it certain that hereafter we shall always be able to defend ourselves instead of trusting to our allies to defend us. Moreover, it will do us even more good as regards the tasks of peace than as regards the tasks of war, for it will turn out every young man far better able to earn his living and far better fitted to be a good citizen.

FREEDOM STANDS WITH HER BACK TO THE WALL

April 20, 1918

This is a terrible hour of trial and suffering and danger for our war-worn allies, who in France are battling for us no less than for themselves. If shame is even more dreadful than suffering, then it is a no less terrible hour for our own country. Our allies stand with their backs to the wall in the fight for freedom, and America looks on. The free nations stand at bay in the cause that is ours no less than theirs; and after over a year of war the army we have sent to their aid is smaller than that of poor heroic, ruined Belgium, is hardly more than a twentieth the size which gallant and impoverished Italy has in the field. And this great wealthy Nation of ours has not yet furnished to our own brave troops in the field any cannon or airplanes, and almost no machine guns, save those which we have obtained from hard-pressed France—and let our people remember that every gun thus made for us by hard-pressed France is a gun left unmade for hard-pressed Italy.

Our few gallant fighting men overseas have won high honor for themselves, and have made all other Americans forever their debtors; but it is a scandal and a reproach to this Nation that they are so few. If in this mighty battle our allies win, it will be due to no real aid of ours; and if they should fail, black infamy would be our portion because of the delay and the folly and the weakness and the cold, time-serving timidity of our Government, to which this failure would be primarily due. If those responsible for our failure, if those responsible for the refusal to prepare during the two and a half years in which we were vouchsafed such warning as never nation previously received, if those responsible for the sluggish feebleness with which we have acted since we helplessly drifted into the war—if these men now repented of the cruel wrong they have done this Nation and mankind, we could afford to wrap their past folly and evil-doing in the kindly mantle of oblivion. But they boast of their foolishness, they excuse and justify it, they announce that they feel pride and delight in contemplating it. Therefore, it is for us, the people, to bow our heads on this our penitential day; for we are laggards in the battle, we have let others fight in our quarrel, we have let others pay with their shattered bodies for the fire in their burning souls.

The trumpets of the Lord sounded for Armageddon; but our hearts were not swift to answer nor our feet jubilant; coldly we watched others die that we might live. Our rulers were supple and adroit, but they were not mighty of soul. They have shown that they will not lead us, and will ever stand in front only if we force them forward. Therefore, the reason is all the greater why we, the American people, must search our own hearts and with unflinching will insist that from now on not a day, not an hour, shall be wasted until our giant but soft and lazy strength is hardened, until we ourselves take the burden from the shoulders of others, until we pay whatever price our past shortcomings demand, and with heads uplifted and spirit undaunted stride forward to the great goal of the peace of victorious right.

A SQUARE DEAL FOR ALL AMERICANS

April 27, 1918

There is no room in this country for the man who tries to be both an American and something else. There can be no such thing as a fifty-fifty loyalty between America and Germany. Either a man is whole-hearted in his support of America and her allies, and in his hostility to Germany and her allies, or he is not loyal to America at all. In such case he should be at once interned or sent out of the country. But if he is whole-hearted in his loyal support of America, then no matter what his birthplace or parentage he is entitled to stand on a full and exact equality with every other American.

Therefore the obligation is twofold, and one side is just as important as the other. Every American of German birth or parentage must act as an American and nothing else, and if he does not so act he should be treated as an alien enemy. But if he acts exactly as other good Americans act, then it is a shame and a disgrace not to treat him absolutely like these other good Americans. The immense majority of Americans who are in whole or in part of German blood are as stanch Americans as are to be found in the land. They are serving in our armies precisely as other Americans serve. They are exactly as fit as any other American to fill the highest positions anywhere in our armies or in civil life. Any discrimination against them, active or passive, military or political, social or industrial, is an intolerable outrage. Moreover, such a discrimination is itself profoundly anti-American in its effects, for it not only cruelly wounds brave and upright and loyal Americans, but tends to drive them back into segregation, away from the mass of American citizenship.

America is a Nation and not a mosaic of nationalities. The various nationalities that come here are not to remain separate, but to blend into the one American nationality—the nationality of Washington and Lincoln, of Muhlenberg and Sheridan. Therefore, we must have but one language, the English language. Every immigrant who comes here should be required within five years to learn English or to leave the country, for hereafter every immigrant should be treated as a future fellow citizen and not merely as a labor unit. English should be the only language taught or used in the primary schools. We should provide by law so that after a reasonable interval every newspaper in this country should be published in English.

A square deal for all Americans means relentless attack on all men in this country who are not straight-out Americans and nothing else. It just as emphatically means to stand by every good American of German blood exactly as much as by every other good American. In every loyalty organization a special effort should be made to see that in the leadership and in the ranks the Americans of German blood come in on precisely the same basis as every one else. And the straight-out Americans, in whole or in part of German blood, should themselves insist on this, not as a favor which they request, but as a right which they demand, a right predicated on their fervid and militant Americanism. I wish we could see such an organization formed, an uncompromisingly straight-out American organization, including Americans of all our different blood strains, but with as large a proportion of Americans in whole or in part of German blood as possible, and then let this organization take the lead in aggressively loyal Americanism, in the demand to fight this war with all speed and efficiency, until it is crowned by the peace of complete victory and in the purpose to make this peace mark the glorious rebirth, the purification and the giant growth of the American spirit—the spirit of an intense and unified American nationalism.

We Americans must be loyal first to our own Nation and to our own national ideals, and we must develop to the utmost the virile hardihood of body, mind, and soul without which there can be no real greatness. And our devotion to America shall in part show itself in the unswerving effort to make this great democratic Republic both strong for self-defense and strong for wise and brotherly help to other nations, to make it both the leader and the servant of all mankind.

THE GERMAN HORROR

May 2, 1918

The Hague conferences laid down a number of rules which the signatory powers, including Germany, agreed to observe in order to mitigate the horrors of war. Germany has with equal cynicism and brutality violated every one of these rules. She has waged war as it was waged in the Dark Ages. She has shown revolting cruelty toward soldiers and especially toward non-combatants, including women and children.

At this moment a great cannon is bombarding Paris. Not a soldier has been killed by it; it has not in the smallest degree affected France’s military power, nor was it intended to do so. It was intended to terrorize the French civilian population by the destruction of churches, hospitals, and private buildings and the murder of women and children. On Good Friday one of the shells wrecked a church and killed a number of the little choir boys and a number of women who were at prayer. Among the killed were three American women whom I knew, who were abroad working for our soldiers. An American friend who saw the horror writes me:

Evidently the Germans do not worry over the fact that their shells descend on women and children kneeling in prayer on a Good Friday, before the crucifix.

Another American friend, a Red Cross woman, writes:

One shell burst in a maternity hospital, killing a nurse, a young mother, and a little baby. Several other mothers and new-born babies were injured.

The Zeppelins and airplanes are continually bombarding undefended English and French cities and have killed women and children by the hundreds. The submarines have waged war with callous mercilessness. Their crews have continually practiced torture on the prisoners they have taken. They leave women and children to drown. They shoot into the lifeboats. At this moment Americans are dying from the poison gas which the Germans, in contemptuous defiance of The Hague rules, have made an ordinary weapon of war. I have just been talking with an American soldier absolutely trustworthy, who himself saw the body of a Canadian whom the Germans had just crucified.

Every violation of the laws of war has been practiced by Germany. By her outrages on humanity she has made herself an outlaw among nations, and unless she pays heavily for her crimes, the whole world will be in danger. It is Germany, and only Germany, who is responsible for the hideous atrocities that have marked this war, atrocities which all civilized men outside of Germany believed to have been eliminated forever from civilized warfare. Germany has habitually and as a matter of policy practiced the torture of men, the rape of women, and the killing of children.

It was deeply to our discredit that during the shameful years of our neutrality we refused to protest against these hideous atrocities. Now at last this Nation has awakened and has gone to war against the enemy of America and of mankind. Let our people now keep steadily in mind just what kind of a foe we are fighting and just what kind of infamy that foe is habitually practicing. Then let us resolve that, come what may, we will fight this war through to a finish until the authors of this hideous infamy have paid in full and have been punished as they deserve. For in no other way can a peace worth having be obtained.

SEDITION, A FREE PRESS, AND PERSONAL RULE

May 7, 1918

The legislation now being enacted by Congress should deal drastically with sedition. It should also guarantee the right of the press and people to speak the truth freely of all their public servants, including the President, and to criticize them in the severest terms of truth whenever they come short in their public duty. Finally, Congress should grant the Executive the amplest powers to act as an executive and should hold him to stern accountability for failure so to act, but it should itself do the actual lawmaking and should clearly define the lines and limits of action and should retain and use the fullest powers of investigation into and supervision over such action. Sedition is a form of treason. It is an offense against the country, not against the President. At this time to oppose the draft or sending our armies to Europe, to uphold Germany, to attack our allies, to oppose raising the money necessary to carry on the war are at least forms of sedition, while to act as a German spy or to encourage German spies to use money or intrigue in the corrupt service of Germany, to tamper with our war manufactures and to encourage our soldiers to desert or to fail in their duty, and all similar actions are forms of undoubtedly illegal sedition. For some of these offenses death should be summarily inflicted. For all the punishment should be severe.

The Administration has been gravely remiss in dealing with such acts.

Free speech, exercised both individually and through a free press, is a necessity in any country where the people are themselves free. Our Government is the servant of the people, whereas in Germany it is the master of the people. This is because the American people are free and the German are not free. The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else.

During the last year the Administration has shown itself anxious to punish the newspapers which uphold the war, but which told the truth about the Administration’s failure to conduct the war efficiently, whereas it has failed to proceed against various powerful newspapers which opposed the war or attacked our allies or directly or indirectly aided Germany against this country, as these papers upheld the Administration and defended the inefficiency. Therefore, no additional power should be given the Administration to deal with papers for criticizing the Administration. And, moreover, Congress should closely scrutinize the way the Postmaster-General and Attorney-General have already exercised discrimination between the papers they prosecuted and the papers they failed to prosecute.

Congress should give the President full power for efficient executive action. It should not abrogate its own power. It should define how he is to reorganize the Administration. It should say how large an army we are to have and not leave the decision to the amiable Secretary of War, who has for two years shown such inefficiency. It should declare for an army of five million men and inform the Secretary that it would give him more the minute he asks for more.

THE DANGERS OF A PREMATURE PEACE

May 12, 1918

As now seems likely, if the great German drive fails, it is at least possible that, directly or indirectly, the Germans will then start a peace drive. In such case they will probably endeavor to make such seeming concessions as to put a premium upon pacifist agitation for peace in the free countries of the West against which they are fighting. To yield to such peace proposals would be fraught with the greatest danger to the Allies, and especially to our own country in the future.

Let us never forget that no promise Germany makes can be trusted. The kultur developed under the Hohenzollerns rests upon shameless treachery and duplicity no less than upon ruthless violence and barbarity.

For example, there are strong indications that Germany may be prepared, if she now fails on the western front, to abandon all that for which she has fought on her western front, provided that in Middle Europe and in the East there is no interference with her. In other words, she would be prepared to give back Alsace and Lorraine to France, to give Italian Austria to Italy, to give Luxemburg to Belgium, and to let the Allies keep the colonies they have conquered, on condition that her dominance in Russia and in the Balkans, her dominance of the subject peoples of Austria through the Austrian Hapsburgs, and her dominance of Western Asia through her vassal state, Turkey, should be left undisturbed. To the average American, and probably to the average Englishman and Frenchman, there is much that is alluring in such a programme. It might be urged as a method of stopping the frightful slaughter of war, while securing every purpose for which the free peoples who still fight are fighting. Yet it would be infinitely better that this war were carried on to the point of exhaustion than that we yield to such terms.

Such terms would mean the definite establishment of Germany’s military ascendancy on a scale never hitherto approached in the civilized world. It would mean that perhaps within a dozen years, certainly within the lifetime of the very men now fighting this war, this country and the other free countries would have to choose between bowing their necks to the German yoke or else going into another war under conditions far more disadvantageous to them.

A premature and inconclusive peace now would spell ruin for the world, just as in 1864 a premature and inconclusive peace would have spelled ruin to the United States, and in the present instance the United States would share the ruin of the rest of the free peoples of mankind.

On the face of it Germany would not become a giant empire. Just exactly as on the face of it at present Germany, Austria, Turkey, and Bulgaria call themselves simply four allied nations, standing on equal terms. But in reality those four powers are merely Germany and her three vassal states, whose military and economic and political powers are all disposed of by the Hohenzollerns. A peace such as that above outlined would leave these as really one huge empire. The population of these four countries, plus the populations of Russian regions recently annexed by Germany, is over two hundred millions. This population would be directed and dominated by the able, powerful, and utterly brutal and unscrupulous German governing class, which the very fact of the peace would put in the saddle, and the huge empire thus dominated and directed would become a greater menace to the free peoples than anything known for the last thousand years.

Short-sighted people will say that this power would only menace Asia, and therefore that we need feel no concern about it. There could be no error greater or more lamentable. Twenty years hence by mere mass and growth Germany would dominate the Western European powers that have now fought her. This would mean that the United States would be left as her victim.

In the first place, she would at once trample the Monroe Doctrine under foot, and treat tropical and south temperate America as her fields for exploitation, domination, and conquest. In the next place, she would surely trample this country under foot and bleed us white, doing to us on a gigantic scale what she has done to Belgium. If such a peace as is above described were at this time made, the United States could by no possibility escape the fate of Belgium and of the Russian territories taken by Germany unless we ourselves became a powerful militarist state with every democratic principle subordinated to the one necessity of turning this Nation into a huge armed camp—I do not mean an armed nation, as Switzerland is armed, and as I believe this country ought to be armed. I mean a nation whose sons, every one of them, would have to serve from three to five years in the army, and whose whole activities, external and internal, would be conditioned by the one fact of the necessity of making head, single-handed, against Germany.

I very strongly believe that never again should we be caught unprepared as we have been caught unprepared this time. I believe that all our young men should be trained to arms as the Swiss are trained. But I would regard it as an unspeakable calamity for this Nation to have to turn its whole energies into the kind of exaggerated militarism which under such circumstances would alone avail for self-defense.

The military power of Germany must be brought low. The subject nations of Austria, the Balkans, and Western Asia must be freed. We ought not to refrain an hour longer from going to war with Turkey and Bulgaria. They are part of Germany’s military strength. They represent some of the most cruel tyrannies over subject peoples for which Germany stands. It is idle for us to pretend sympathy with the Armenians unless we war on Turkey, which, with Germany’s assent, has well-nigh crushed the Armenians out of existence.

When President Wilson stated that this war was waged to make democracy safe throughout the world, he properly and definitely committed the American people to the principles above enunciated, and for the American people to accept less than their President has thus announced that he would insist upon would be unworthy. The President has also said that “there is therefore but one response possible for us. Force—force to the utmost—force without stint or limit—the righteous and triumphant force which shall make right the law of the world and cast every selfish dominion down in the dust.”

The American people must support President Wilson unflinchingly in the stand to which he is thus committed and must resolutely refuse to accept any other position. We must guard against any slackening of effort. We must refuse to accept any premature peace or any peace other than the peace of overwhelming victory.

We must secure such complete freedom for the peoples of Central Europe and Western Asia as will shatter forever the threat of German world domination. Our honorable obligations to our allies, our loyalty to our own national principles, the need to protect our American neighbors, the need to defend our own land and people, and our hopes for the peace and happiness of our children’s children all forbid us to accept an ignoble and inconclusive peace.

THE WAR SAVINGS CAMPAIGN

May 27, 1918

Of course the primary factor in deciding this war is and will be the army. But there can be no great army in war to-day unless a great nation stands back of it. The most important of all our needs is immensely to strengthen the fighting line at the front. But it cannot be permanently strengthened unless the whole Nation is organized back of the front. We need increased production by all. We need thrift and the avoidance of extravagance and of waste of money upon non-essentials by all. We need the investment of our money in government securities by all of us.

The Government, through the War Savings campaign, offers the opportunity to every individual in the Nation to join in a great national movement to secure these ends. The Treasury Department proposes as a means to achieve these ends that all our people form themselves into Thrift clubs or War Savings societies. This is the people’s war. The responsibility for the Government rests on the people as a whole. The army is the people’s army. It can be supported only if the people invest in the securities of the Government. And this investment by the people should be as nearly universal as possible. All the men and the women and half the children of the land should be active members of Uncle Sam’s team. The War Savings campaign offers them the chance to be active members. This campaign means the encouragement of thrift and production. But it means much more than this. It also means to make our people realize their solidarity and mutual interdependence and to make them understand that the Government is really theirs. Therefore it is a movement for genuine Americanization of all our people. It is a movement to fuse all our different race stocks into one great unified nationality. It is emphatically a movement for nationalism and patriotism.

Between thirty and forty millions of our people to-day own Liberty bonds or War Savings Stamps. All of us who come in this class have an increased sense of loyalty and responsibility to the Government. The Treasury Department has offered through the War Savings plan a great opportunity for the entire Nation to group itself into War Savings societies or Thrift clubs and thus be of immediate and direct service to the Government. Neither through government programme and traditions nor through the habits of the people were we in any way prepared for this struggle. We were a spendthrift Nation. One of the roads to national unity and national force in this war is through thrift, using the word to include both increased production in every field and also the conservation of those things which are so desperately needed for the winning of the war. The conscientious thrifty man to-day will conserve food as requested by the Food Administration. He will conserve fuel as requested by the Fuel Administration. And he will conserve to the best of his ability the labor and materials which the Government needs by not using his money for purchasing any of the non-essentials and thereby using up materials and labor needed by the Government. He will, by purchasing government securities, entrust the spending of his money to the Government in order to speed up the war and to secure the peace of overwhelming victory.

Let all of us join in this movement. The success of the War Savings campaign means an immense addition to our war strength. It also means the first step in economic preparedness for what is to come after the war. We must never return to our haphazard spendthrift ways. Thrift should be made a national habit as part of our social and industrial readjustment.

We are just finishing our Red Cross campaign. Now let us put through the War Savings campaign.

ANTI-BOLSHEVISM

June 5, 1918

On the whole the worst fate that can befall any country is to fall into the hands of the Bolsheviki. Therefore, we should visit with heavy condemnation the Romanoffs of politics and industry who, by Bourbon-like inability to see or refusal to face the future, make ready the way for Bolshevism. Utter ruin will befall this country if it falls into the hands of Haywoods and Townleys and of the politicians who truckle to them, but the surest way to secure their temporary and disastrous triumph is to refuse to make every effort, in sane, good-tempered, resolute fashion, to deal with the problems which affect unfavorably the welfare of the farmer and the working-man.

Mere stolid inaction, mere refusal to acknowledge the existence of trouble and duty to remedy it amounts to playing into the hands of the worst and most evil agitators. Such an attitude on the part of our political leaders is almost as bad as the failure to act with instant readiness and full strength against disorder or as the time-serving cowardice which bows to and flatters the leaders of disorder. What is needed is unhesitating and thoroughgoing condemnation of, and action against, the anarchists and inciters to sedition and to class envy and hatred, and at the same time genuine and radical effort to secure for the farmer and the working-man and for every one else the square deal in actual fact. Neither attitude is enough by itself; the two must go together if results of lasting worth are to be secured.

The leaders in such movements as the I.W.W. include a large proportion of men whose activities are criminal, and who, as regards civilization and all that makes life worth living for decent, hard-working men and women, stand merely as human beasts of prey. But very many of these fellows are not bad men at all, but merely unfortunates who turn to an evil organization because no good organization offers them relief or concerns itself with their welfare. I am not speaking of theory; I am speaking of fact. I know of cases in connection with the forest service where government officials, by acting on behalf of maltreated crews of lumber companies and by seeing that they got justice and fair treatment, turned them into zealous, right-feeling, public-spirited citizens, who, for instance, worked hard and disinterestedly in putting out forest fires.

It is idle to say that no governmental action is needed on behalf of farmers and wage-workers. Unquestionably such action will merely do harm unless at the same time the interests and permanent welfare of the business men of the country, great and small, are considered. But the action itself is necessary. It should be based on the theory that so far as possible the work of betterment, alike as regards farmers, working-men, and business men, take the form of coöperation among themselves, with the maximum amount of individual and collective private effort, and the minimum necessary amount of governmental control and encouragement. It is not possible to state empirically in advance just how far this governmental control and encouragement shall go. This must be determined by actual experience in settling what is necessary in each individual set of cases. The best result will always come where the organization of private citizens is not limited to any one class, but include farmers, working-men, business men; just as is true of one such great organization in the State of Iowa; just as is true of a smaller but successful organization in and around the city of Springfield, Massachusetts; just as is preëminently true of many of the state councils of defense. There must be sincere purpose to push forward and remedy wrong; but there must likewise be firm refusal to submit to the leadership of either the criminal fringe or the lunatic fringe. Class hatred is a mighty poor substitute for American brotherhood. If we are wise we will proceed by evolution and not revolution. But Bourbon refusal to move forward at all merely invites revolution.

GENERAL WOOD

June 15, 1918

Senator Hiram Johnson has rendered many notable services to the public, and among them is his recent speech concerning the cruel injustice with which Major-General Leonard Wood has been treated and the very grave damage thereby done the army and the Allied cause at this critical moment of the war.

General Wood’s entire offense consists in his having, before the war, continually advocated our doing things which now every one in his senses admits ought to have been done. Nine tenths of wisdom consists of being wise in time. General Wood was wise in time. Moreover, by twenty years of hard, practical work, he fitted himself to do peculiarly well in this very crisis. He was our senior general in rank, he was recognized by the best French and English military authorities as by experience trained to play an immediate and important part in the difficult and perilous joint work of the war. He had testified at length and with exhaustive professional knowledge before the congressional military committees, one year and two years prior to our entry into the war, pointing out all the military lacks, which experience has since shown to exist and which the War Department then denied existed. He is to be credited with the only piece of serious military preparedness in advance which is to our credit. In the service of 1915, in the teeth of indifference and hostility from his superiors, he created the Plattsburg officers’ reserve training camp, starting the system of training camps which has enabled us to officer our draft army.

He is in splendid physical condition. Recently when in France he was severely wounded by a shell burst, and the surgeons reported his recovery as being more rapid than would have been the case with the average young man of robust bodily health and vigor. He has done excellent work in training his men at Camp Funston. He has been unwearied in looking after the health and welfare of his men. He has been rewarded by their loyal devotion; they have been profoundly grieved and moved by having him suddenly taken from them. The refusal to use his great ability and energy means a distinct subtraction from the sum total of our military efficiency, a distinct addition to the risk from disease and discomfort which some of our men at the front will have to incur, and a distinct benefit to the cause of Germany.

No explanation has been given the American people for the action concerning him. Nothing has been made public which warrants our belief that this action was due either to professional or to patriotic considerations.

HELP RUSSIA NOW

June 20, 1918

Russia has been thrown under the iron tyranny of German militarism and capitalism by the Bolshevists of the Lenine type. The Russian people are slowly awakening to this bitter truth. The far-sighted, the Russians of genuine patriotism, have long been awake, but the peasants, who are at heart good, but who are ignorant and misled, are now awakening also. Plenty of them, especially among the Cossacks, are well aware that submission to Germany now means death for Russia. Plenty of them are eager to fight and know well that only by successful war on a grand scale can Russia now be saved and regenerated, but they must have help and the help must be given immediately or it may be too late, and America can best give the help.

A Russian peasant woman who can hardly write her name is here to ask that the help be given immediately and that it be given in Siberia. She is a remarkable character in her strength, her simplicity, her direct straightforwardness, and her intense earnestness and entire disinterestedness. She was a major in the Russian army until the Russian army was betrayed and dissolved. Her peasant husband was killed in the ranks. She served in the ranks of a regiment of men. She commanded in a regiment of women. She has been wounded four times. She was born in Tomsk, Siberia. She is a peasant of the best class, in habits of thought and belief and life and sympathy. But she has a wide outlook. She knows that America will keep her word about Siberia, just as America kept her word about Cuba. She asks that for our own sake, just as much as for Russia’s sake, we now send an army to Siberia, entering through Vladivostok or Harbin, or through both. She asks us to announce that after the war is over we guarantee to return to Russia her country with the right for her people to decide for themselves how they are to be governed, and that in the war we fight with and for all the Russians who will fight against Germany for Russia, and that we fight to the death against the Germans and against all Russians who side with the Germans.

Siberia is in chaos. Eastern Siberia has plenty of food and contains large elements of the population, especially Cossacks, who would promptly join with an Allied force which they believed would, in good faith, aid in the reconquest of Russia for the purpose of giving it back to the Russians themselves. West of Lake Baikal is a region dominated by a German army, some twenty thousand strong, composed of former German prisoners of war, who are organized under the name of the German Red Guards and who are the permanent adherents of German autocracy, but who help the cause of Russian anarchy in order to conquer Russia for the German autocracy. West of these again a stretch of country, which includes the passes of the Ural Mountains, is held by the splendid Czechs, who, by the way, must at the end of this war be rewarded by seeing an independent Czech-Slovak commonwealth established, just as there must also be a great Jugo-Slav commonwealth.

At once there should be in East Siberia an American army of say thirty thousand men with a Japanese army of the same size and a British imperial army of as nearly the same size as possible. If there was difficulty as to the command of the Allied forces, borrow some man of great reputation, Joffre, for instance, from France. Let the woman major above spoken of and other Russian friends of the peasants and of a Russian republic go in advance to make clear that the Allied army comes only to restore Russia to the Russians. Let all Russians who join be paid by the United States on the same scale as our own troops, and if necessary let the United States guarantee the payment of the Japanese. Move against the German Red Guards as quickly as possible and then push instantly to join the heroic Czechs in the Urals. Let the railroads be organized back of the army by our best railroad men and let them carry immediately behind the army immense quantities of clothing, boots, and farm machinery. Siberia has food and it will furnish hundreds of thousands of soldiers who will rally around such an Allied army as a nucleus. Before this army reached the Urals, the Germans would have to prepare to meet it and their pressure on the Western front would thereby be relieved.

Russia is at this moment lost, so that no change in Russia can make things worse for the Allies than they now are. We ought to have acted with energy and intelligence on her behalf a year ago. Let us at least act now, for no possible action can be worse than our inaction. She does not need talk and envoys to study the situation. She needs an army to serve as a nucleus around which she can create her own immense armies. The above plan is better than none. If our Government can devise a better, let them do so, but let us act at once.

AN AMERICAN FOURTH OF JULY

June 23, 1918

It is announced that on the Fourth of July the celebration is to be by race groups—that is, by Scandinavians, Slavs, Germans, Italians, and so forth. In sport organizations it may be necessary to have such a kind of divided celebration in some places, but I most emphatically protest against such a type of celebration being general, and I doubt whether it is advisable to have it anywhere. On the contrary, I believe that we should make the Fourth of July a genuine Americanization day, and should use it to teach the prime lesson of Americanism, which is that there is no room in the country for the perpetuation of separate race groups or racial divisions; that we must all be Americans and nothing but Americans, and that therefore on the Fourth of July we should all get together simply as Americans and celebrate the day as such without regard to our several racial origins.

At two thirds of the places where I have made speeches on Americanism (and these speeches have at least been free from any pussy-footing on Americanism), I have been introduced by straight Americans who were in whole or in part of German blood. At Milwaukee, for example, I was introduced by August Vogel, who has three sons already in the army and a fourth who will enter this summer. At Martinsville, Indiana, I was introduced by the mayor, George F. Schmidt, who has two sons in the army. One of the sons, Wayne Schmidt, was the catcher of the University of Indiana baseball nine. He was in the same regiment with my two sons, Ted and Archie, and like Archie has been severely wounded. Mayor Schmidt writes me:

We are proud of Wayne and hope that his wounds will soon heal and that he may get back to his regiment and continue to serve his country. There is nothing fifty-fifty in this boy’s blood or any of his kin. His greatest ambition is to lead a company up the streets of Berlin.

This speaks the true American!

I also have German blood in my veins. We Vogels and Schmidts and Roosevelts intend to celebrate the Fourth of July with all our fellow Americans, without regard to whether they are of German, English or Irish, French, Scandinavian, Spanish, or Italian blood. Unless they are Americans and nothing else, they are out of place at a Fourth of July celebration, and if they are straight Americans, absolutely loyal to America, and resolutely bent on putting this war through until it is crowned by the peace of complete victory, then we are their brothers, their fellow Americans, and we decline to permit any lines of separation between us and them.

HOW NOT TO ADJOURN POLITICS

June 25, 1918

In the current North American Review and its supplemental War Weekly there are two strong and deeply patriotic articles on the President’s recent announcement that politics is to be adjourned. When contrasted with the injection of politics by the President into the senatorial contests in Wisconsin and Michigan, never before in any great crisis in this country has there been such complete subordination of patriotism to politics as by this Administration during this war. Witness the activities of the organization under Messrs. Burleson and Creel and the working alliance between the Administration and the Hearst newspapers, while Vice-President Marshall and Secretary McAdoo give the signal for frank partisanship of an extreme type in their public speeches. The various activities are, of course, co-related and directed toward the same end.

In Wisconsin the President interfered by a personal appeal for the Democratic senatorial candidate against the Republican. He based his appeal on certain alleged positions taken by the Republican candidate, Mr. Lenroot, during the two years and a half preceding our entry into the war, which positions, he asserted, did not meet the “acid test” of patriotism. The President made the conduct of our public men during the two years and a half prior to the war the test by which they are to be judged, and where he himself applies this test to others he must himself be judged by it.

His supporters make the plea that to call attention to the President’s record during these two and a half years is to cry over spilt milk. But the President’s attack on Lenroot was a square repudiation of this plea when it applied to anybody except himself. In reality the “acid test” of patriotism during these two and a half years is to be found in the use of phrases like “too proud to fight” and “peace without victory” and the refusal to act instead of merely talking after the sinking of the Lusitania; in the fatuous refusal to prepare and in the insistence on preserving an ignoble neutrality between right and wrong between those who were fighting to make the world safe for democracy and liberty and those who were fighting to overthrow both. Tried by the test of past conduct which the President applied to Mr. Lenroot, he is himself found wanting. Mr. Lenroot spilled a teaspoonful of milk, but Mr. Wilson spilled a bucketful and he must not call attention to the teaspoon and expect to escape having attention called to the bucket.

The President has now personally requested Mr. Henry Ford to come forward as his personal candidate for the Senate in Michigan. This action cannot be reconciled either with the President’s statement that politics must be adjourned or with the reasons he alleged for opposing Mr. Lenroot. No man was a more intense pacifist, no man struggled harder against preparedness, no man was more eagerly hailed as an ally by the pro-Germans than Mr. Ford during the two and a half years before we did our duty and entered the war. He is not a Republican; he is not a Democrat. He supported Mr. Wilson on the “he kept us out of war” issue. Mr. Wilson can only desire his election on grounds of personal politics, as Mr. Wilson wishes as associates not strong men, but servants, and from the servants he demands servility even more than service. I have not the slightest political feeling when politics comes into hostile contact with patriotism and Americanism. There is no public servant whom during the past year I have supported more heartily than the Democratic Senator, Chamberlain. I oppose Mr. Ford, because in the great crisis I feel that his election would be a calamity from the standpoint of far-sighted and patriotic Americanism. I would oppose him if he had been nominated by the Republican Party. I oppose him in precisely the same spirit now that he has been nominated on personal grounds by Mr. Wilson.

HATS OFF TO THE INTERNATIONAL TYPOGRAPHICAL UNION

June 27, 1918

The published reports of the International Typographical Union, issued from Indianapolis, make a very remarkable showing and put that organization high on the honor roll of America for the Great War.

Forty-one hundred journeymen members of the union and seven hundred apprentices are in the military and naval forces of the United States and Canada. Seventy-five members have already paid with their lives for their devotion to their country. The union has paid $22,000 mortuary benefits to the widows, orphans, and mothers of these men. The union, through its executive council, has invested $90,000 in the Liberty loans, and subordinate local unions and individual members have invested $3,000,000 in the Liberty loans.

These are war-time activities. During the same period the International Typographical Union has continued all its ordinary benefit works. It has paid over $350,000 to fifteen hundred old-age pensioners, over $300,000 in mortuary benefits, and $170,000 to the Union Printers’ Home at Colorado Springs. Every dollar has been paid by members of the organization in the form of regular dues and assessments. The union neither solicits nor accepts contributions to its benefit funds.

During the same period the union has expended only $1200 for strike expenses. The union acts in thoroughgoing patriotic fashion on the conviction that there should be no strikes or lockouts during the war. Its officers regard themselves as volunteers in the army for the preservation of industrial peace, at least for the duration of the war, and I hope for long after the war. Such conduct offers a striking contrast to the action of certain corporations which during this war have refused to permit their employees to organize. Labor has as much right as capital to organize. It is tyranny to forbid the exercise of this right, just as it is tyranny to misuse the power acquired by organization. The people of the United States do not believe in tyranny and do believe in coöperation.

The International Typographical Union has offered an admirable example of Americanism and patriotism. Its attitude is typical of the attitude of organized labor generally. Hats off to the International Typographical Union! And hats off to the working-men and working-women of the United States!

THE PERFORMANCE OF A GREAT PUBLIC DUTY

July 3, 1918

It is announced from Washington that the President has been converted to the need of universal military training of our young men, as a permanent policy. This is excellent. If this policy is forthwith incorporated into our laws, it will represent an immense national advance. In the first place, it will guarantee us against a repetition of the humiliating experiences of the last four years, when our helpless refusal to prepare invited Germany’s attack upon us and then forced us to rely entirely upon our allies to protect us from that attack while for over a year we slowly made ready to defend ourselves. In the next place, it will immeasurably increase the moral and physical efficiency of the young men who are trained and fit them both to do better for themselves and to perform in better fashion the tasks of American citizenship. Finally it is essential that the policy should be adopted now while we are at war and therefore while our people are awake to the needs of the situation. As soon as peace comes, there will be a revival of the sinister agitation of the pro-German or other anti-American leaders and of the silly clamor of the pacifists, all of whom will with brazen folly again reiterate that preparedness ends with war, and that, anyhow, all war can be averted by signing scraps of paper. The adoption at once of the policy of obligatory universal military training will be the performance of a great public duty.

For three years the foremost advocates of this policy have pointed out that it can advantageously be combined with a certain amount of industrial training. It is earnestly to be hoped that this element of industrial training will be incorporated in the law. Of course, in such case the length of service with the colors in the field, aside from preliminary training in the higher school grades, ought to be a year, so as to avoid superficiality. Credit should be given the graduates of certain scholastic institutions or to individuals who speedily attain a high degree of proficiency, and for them the time of service could be shortened. All officers or other candidates for officers’ training schools would be chosen from among the best of the men who had gone through the training, without regard to anything except their fitness. This would represent the embodiment in our army of the democratic principle which insists upon an equal chance for all, equal justice for all, and the need for leadership, and therefore for special rewards for leadership. The industrial training could be so shaped as to emphasize the need that hard workers who are efficient should become in a real sense partners in industry, and that insistence upon efficiency should be accompanied by a fair division of the rewards of efficiency, and by insistence that the work should be made healthful and interesting, so that its faithful performance would be a matter of pride and pleasure.

At this moment our training camps are huge universities, huge laboratories of fine American citizenship. Let us make them permanent institutions. They develop both power of initiative and power of obedience. They inculcate self-reliance and self-respect. They also inculcate respect for others and readiness for discipline, which means readiness to use our collective power in such shape as to make us threefold more efficient than we have been. To make these camps permanent training schools for all our young men would mean the greatest boon this Nation could receive.

REPEAL THE CHARTER OF THE GERMAN-AMERICAN ALLIANCE

July 11, 1918

The United States Senate has struck an effective blow against the Hun within our gates by unanimously voting to repeal the charter of the German-American Alliance. It is earnestly to be hoped that the House will at once follow suit with like unanimity. The Alliance has been thoroughly mischievous in its activities. It has acted in the interest of Germany and against the interest of America. It has tried to perpetuate Germanism as a separate nationality with a separate language in the United States; it has attacked our allies; it has encouraged disloyalty; it was decorated by the Kaiser for its services to Germany. It has endeavored to prostitute our politics to German needs. I have personally had the honor of being specially singled out by it for attack. It received money from the Brewers’ Association for the campaign against prohibition.

At this time, when the campaign of German frightfulness is in full blast, when the Prussianized Germany of the Hohenzollerns is steadily adding to its list of literally unforgivable offenses against civilization, there is no room in this country for any organization, great or small, which either defends Germany or is lukewarm in the great crusade against her in which America will henceforth play a leading part. Germany has recently scored another victory for frightfulness by sinking a Canadian hospital ship without warning and drowning two hundred persons, including women nurses. The ship was a mercy vessel, not a warship, and was so distinctly marked that it was impossible to mistake it. The attack upon it was sheer murder. Yet the German people tolerate, applaud, and approve the action of the German Government in this continuous and methodically organized campaign of murder, rape, and outrage.

The most complete exposure of Germany’s infamous purpose in forcing this dreadful war upon the world is contained in the pamphlet written by the leading German steel magnate, Herr August Thyssen. This pamphlet has been translated into English, has been put into the official record by Senator Owen, of Oklahoma, has been printed in full in the San Francisco Argonaut and Baltimore Manufacturers’ Record, and circulated in pamphlet form by Mr. J. G. Butler, Jr., of Youngstown, Ohio. It is accessible to everybody. Herr Thyssen has no conception of the monstrous turpitude of the plan which he supported. His only complaint is that he and the other German financiers were fooled by the German Kaiser and the German Government, who promised them victory and failed to furnish it. He proves that German capitalism was just as responsible for the war as German militarism (which incidentally shows the peculiar infamy of the Russian Bolshevists and American Socialists and their allies in playing Germany’s game). He shows that Germany’s ruthless brutality was equaled by her sordid greed. He showed that the Hohenzollern Government, through the Emperor and the Chancellor, deliberately planned the war over a year and a half before it broke out, and at that time and on several occasions gathered the leading business men of Germany, informed them of the plans, and got their support by holding out the war as one of sheer plunder. The other nations were to be attacked simply in order to rob them naked. Herr Thyssen himself was promised thirty thousand acres in Australia. The Emperor particularly dwelt on the conquest of India, saying that the English allowed the vast Indian revenue to be used for and by the Indians themselves, but that Germany after her conquest would turn the whole “Golden Stream into the Fatherland.” There could be no finer tribute to England when compared with Germany than that which is thus furnished by the Emperor.

In point of international morality the Germany of the Hohenzollerns has become the wild beast of the nations. Whoever directly or indirectly works for her or against our allies or who is merely lukewarm in the war is an enemy of this country, and an enemy of all mankind.

EVERY MAN HAS A RIGHT TO ONE COUNTRY

July 15, 1918

Every man ought to love his country. If he does not love his country and is not eager to serve her, he is a worthless creature and should be contemptuously thrown out of the country when possible, and at any rate debarred from all rights of citizenship in the country. He is only entitled to one country. If he claims loyalty to two countries, he is necessarily a traitor to at least one country. If he claims to be loyal to both Germany and America, he is necessarily a traitor to America. No man can be a good American now unless he is an enemy of Germany and Germany’s allies and a stanch supporter of America’s allies.

But it is just as wicked and just as un-American to deny the loyal American, of whatever origin, the full benefit of his allegiance to one country as it is to permit the disloyal American to exercise a treacherous alternative allegiance to two countries. Every man has a right to one country. He has a right to love and serve that country and to feel that it is absolutely his country and that he has in it every right possessed by any one else. It is our duty to require the man of German blood who is an American citizen to give up all allegiance to Germany whole-heartedly and without on his part any mental reservation whatever. If he does this, it becomes no less our duty to give him the full rights of an American, including our loyal respect and friendship without on our part any mental reservation whatever. The duties are reciprocal, and from the standpoint of American patriotism one is as important as the other.

There has been nothing finer in this war, nothing of better augury for the future of America, than the high courage and splendid loyalty shown by the American soldiers and sailors who are of German blood. Relatively to their number they have come forward as freely into the ranks of our fighting men as the Americans of any other stock, and all alike have shown the same soldierly efficiency, the same devoted patriotism, and, when the need arose, the same heroism. The crew of the torpedo destroyer who face the submarine, and the airmen of the battle planes whose lives are in peril every hour, and the infantry stoggers and doughboys and marines who stand the killing and suffer the grueling hardship and misery of the line fighting, all alike number in their ranks relatively just as many Americans of German as of any other blood. Any one can see this who will look over the lists of casualties and the lists of men cited for deeds of high gallantry. The official reports of the German officers bear unintended testimony to the intense and patriotic Americanism of these men whom the Hohenzollern officials sneer at as “half Americans,” and who, even when taken prisoners, are admitted by the German army officers to “express without hesitation purely American sentiments.” In other words, the Pan-German propaganda on behalf of German kultur has broken down in America, and as a consequence there are no people in this country so hated in the Prussianized Germany of the Hohenzollerns as the Americans of German blood.

The very worst enemies of these Americans have been the traitors and dupes of traitors who have been during the last few years the leaders of the German-American Alliance and of the newspapers in German or English who have backed up the Alliance and similar organizations. The dissolution by law of the Alliance and the gradual change of German newspapers into newspapers published in English will be of benefit to true Americans of German blood more than any other of our citizens. But the Americans of other blood must remember that the man who in good faith and without reservations gives up another country for this must in return receive exactly the same rights, not merely legal, but social and spiritual, that other Americans proudly possess. We of the United States belong to a new and separate nationality. We are all Americans and nothing else, and each, without regard to his birthplace, creed, or national origin, is entitled to exactly the same rights as all other Americans.

MURDER, TREASON, AND PARLOR ANARCHY

July 18, 1918

One of the cheapest methods by which some well-meaning, silly people, and some sinister people who are not well-meaning, achieve a reputation for broad-minded liberality in matters relating to social reforms is to champion or excuse criminality on the ground that it is due to social conditions. The parlor anarchist or parlor Bolshevist is not an attractive person, and he may be mischievous when he joins the genuine anarchist, the “direct” man with the bomb, because selfish and unpatriotic politicians then find it advantageous to pander to both. This species of parlor anarchist appeals to emotional persons of superficial cultivation, whether writers, college men, sham economists, or sham religious and charitable workers, because it makes no demand either upon robust vigor of soul or thoroughness of mental process. At the moment it manifests itself in sympathy for the I.W.W. and for convicted dynamiters and murderers like Mooney.

There are honest and ignorant working-men who join the I.W.W. because they are misled or because in some given locality industrial conditions really are intolerable. I have heard on good authority of logging camps, for instance, where the men joined the I.W.W. and practiced sabotage because they were treated tyrannically and foolishly and where good treatment turned them into good citizens. But I know far more numerous instances in which the leaders have simply been thugs and murderous malefactors whose criminality was not in the least due to social conditions, but to their own foul natures. By all means let us remedy the social conditions that are wrong, but let us shun, as we would shun the plague, that mawkish sentimentality of downright moral and physical cowardice which fears to call murder, treason, violence, arson, and rape by their right names and treat them as crimes to be punished with relentless severity.

Actually there have been make-believe social reformers who have sought to excuse a brute who raped a little girl on the ground that social conditions made him what he was, and others who on similar grounds have protested against the condign punishment of men who burn haystacks, ruin machinery, dynamite peace parades, and, in the interest of German agents, destroy machinery in mines or munition factories. Any man who is misled in these matters can get full information by buying a pamphlet recently written by a former Socialist, Mr. Everett Harri, called “The I.W.W. an Auxiliary of the German Espionage System.” The simple truth is that the men who lead and give the tone to the I.W.W. are more dangerous criminals than an equal number of white-slavers and black-handers, and to give aid and comfort to one set of enemies of the Nation is as bad as to give aid and comfort to the others.

The ablest, most far-sighted, and most patriotic of the heads of organized labor are more opposed to the I.W.W. as it is at present handled than are any other persons in the Nation. In just the same way the farmers whose resentment of wrongdoing is keenest should repudiate the Non-Partisan League just as long as it submits to such leadership as that of most of the men who are at present at its head, and just so long as it stands for covert disloyalty, as it has recently done on so many different occasions in so many different places. I am well aware that great numbers of honest and loyal farmers of high character have joined the League, because they rightly think that many of the economic conditions now affecting the farmer imperatively call for remedy. There are any number of men like myself who will join with the farmers in any sane and patriotic movement to remedy these conditions, no matter how radical such a movement may be. But we will join with no movement whose leaders are tainted with disloyalty, or who refuse to give to others the same square deal they demand for themselves, or who fail to insist that here in America the one organization to which we all of us owe a loyalty greater than is any other, greater than to any labor union or farmers’ league or business or professional body, is the union of the entire American people.

BACK UP THE FIGHTING MEN AT THE FRONT

July 26, 1918

There is no American worth calling such whose veins do not thrill with pride when he reads of what has been done by General Pershing and his gallant army in France. The soldiers over there who wear the American uniform have made all good Americans forever their debtors. Now and always afterward we of this country will walk with our heads high because of the men who face death and wounds, and so many of whom have given their lives fighting for this Nation and for the great ideals of humanity across the seas.

But we must not let our pride and our admiration evaporate in mere pride, in mere admiration of what others have done. We must put the whole strength of this Nation back of the fighting men at the front. We owe it to them. We owe it at least as much to the gallant Allies, who for near four years fought the great battle that was our battle, no less than theirs.

At last we have begun to come to their assistance, but let us solemnly realize that we came very late, and that it is a dreadful thing if we waste one hour that can now be saved, or weaken in the smallest degree any effort that can be made. The inability, or refusal, of Bolshevist Russia to do her part in the great war for liberty and democracy has cast a terrible added burden upon the Allies. On the eastern front this has meant the temporary Allied ruin and the freeing of the armies of the autocracy for action against the western peoples. England, France, and Belgium for four years and Italy for over three years have been fighting the battle of civilization. Their man power is terribly depleted. Thank Heaven, we have got some hundreds of thousands of soldiers across in time to be a real element in saving Paris. Our first duty, if we wish to win the war, is to save Paris. Temporarily, at least, and I hope permanently, we have done our part in this respect. But the least faltering, the least letting-up, or failure in pushing forward our preparations and our assistance, would be dangerous to the Allied cause and a wicked desertion of our allies.

From now on America should make this peculiarly America’s war. From now on we should take the burden of the war upon our shoulders. We should move forward at once with all the force that there is in us. We should not allow the war to drag for so much as a day, and above all we should not permit our people to fall under the spell of pacifist dreams or possible pacifist actions. There should not be intermission of so much as a week in sending our troops across the seas. This war won’t be won by food, or by money, or by savings, or by Thrift Stamps, or by the Red Cross, or by anything else, although all of these will help win the war. It will be won by the valor of the fighting men at the front, and this valor will fail unless our fighting men at the front are millions strong.

Every week this summer and fall we should be putting fresh troops by scores of thousands across the ocean, and now, to-day, this week, we should provide for placing a larger army in the field next spring than Germany itself, or France and England combined. We are a more populous, a richer country than Germany, we have a larger population than Great Britain and France combined. These nations have fought for four years. We have only just begun to fight. Let us at once mobilize the whole man power of this country between the ages of nineteen and fifty or sixty. The draft should take in all men of nineteen, even if they were not sent abroad until they were twenty years old. Let us act at once. Perhaps we can beat the Germans this year if we keep pouring our troops over with the utmost speed. But let us take no chances. Let us proceed upon the assumption that Germany will fight next spring, and therefore let us act instantly so that by spring we will have in France an army of fighting men, exclusive of non-combatants and exclusive of home dépôts, which shall amount to four million armed soldiers at the very least. Let us fight beside the French, the British, the Italians, and be ready to fight instantly in the Balkan Peninsula and in Asia Minor against the Germans and all her vassal states. There must be no delay, not by so much as one hour, and no letting-up for one moment in the cause of our entire strength.

THE AMERICANS WHOM WE MOST DELIGHT TO HONOR

August 1, 1918

At long intervals in the history of a nation there come great days when the picked sons of the Nation determine for generations to come that nation’s place in history. During the last few weeks our fighting men in France have rendered all the rest of us forever their debtors. They have won high honor for themselves and for their country. Our children’s children will owe them deep gratitude for what they have done. All Americans hold their heads higher because of their deeds.

Their achievement has been won at the cost of perseverance in training and of resolution in facing unbelievable hardship and fatigue. It has also cost and will cost the death, the crippling, and the wounding of many scores of thousands of our best and bravest. We who stay behind in ease and comfort, who show our patriotism by economizing on sugar or wheat or beef instead of by living in our clothes until they rot off us in the trenches, or who pay money for taxes and bonds and Thrift Stamps instead of paying with our blood, owe an incalculable debt to the men at the front and to the mothers, wives, and little children of those who are killed at the front. We must pay this debt.

The debt is due to our wonderful fighting men at the front individually, to our army collectively, and to this Nation as a whole. We must provide for the crippled men and for the widows and children of the dead. Nothing that we can do will lighten the bitter sorrow of those who have lost the men they loved; stern pride in the courage and gallant devotion of those who are dead is the only staff that will help to carry that burden for the living. But the material needs of the survivors must be met with ample generosity and yet in the only permanently effective fashion, by training those who need help to help themselves and achieve an ever-increasing self-respect and self-reliance.

We must now help the army as a whole by straining every nerve without a day’s delay immensely to increase our strength, our numbers, and our resources at the front. We should provide now, and as a matter of fact we ought to have provided six months ago, for an army of six or seven million men, so that when next spring opens we may have at least four million fighting men at the front. We are more populous than Germany, or France and Great Britain combined, and we should provide so that two years after we entered the war our army shall be as large as Germany’s or as the combined forces of our allies in France. We should speed to the limit the work of the ships, guns, and airplanes. At present our army is in France mainly because of the aid of British ships, and it is able to fight mainly because of the field cannon and even airplanes it has received from the French. The draft limit should be immensely increased and the exceptions immensely decreased.

To stand by the army is to stand by the Nation, and therefore to stand by the Allies to whom our national faith is plighted. This war will be won by the fighting men at the front. All other work is merely auxiliary and is entirely subordinate to theirs. Let us provide for the army instantly, and let us provide for the Nation’s future permanently by at once introducing the policy of universal obligatory military training for all our young men.

The fighting men at the front are the men most worthy of honor. Let every American lad hereafter be trained so that in time of need he can fill this most honorable of all positions.

SOUND NATIONALISM AND SOUND INTERNATIONALISM

August 4, 1918

The glorious victory of the Allies in the second battle of the Marne, a victory in which the hard-fighting soldiers of the American army have borne so distinguished and honorable a part, may mean the failure of the German military offensive for this year. Therefore it may mean a renewal of the German peace offensive. No man can prophesy in these matters, but the Germans may continue the war for a long time; and therefore we should prepare to have in France an army of four million fighting men for the battle front next spring. But the Germans may try to make peace instead of continuing the war, and may seek to cover their retention of some of their ill-gotten substantial gains by nominal and theoretical support of some glittering proposal about a league of nations to end all war. They will thereby hope to keep part of their booty by appealing to what is vaguely called internationalism and getting the support not only of sentimentalists who do not like to look unpleasant facts in the face, but also of the good people who are appalled and puzzled and panic-struck by the horror Germany has brought on the world, and who, instead of bracing themselves to put down this horror by their own hardened strength and iron will, clutch at any quack remedy which false prophets hold out as offering a substitute for such action.

Therefore it is well at this time for sober and resolute men and women to apply that excellent variety of wisdom colloquially known as “horse sense” to the problems of nationalism and internationalism. These problems will not be solved by rhetoric. Least of all will they be solved by competitive rhetoric. Masters of phrase-making may win immense, although evanescent, applause by outvying one another in words that glitter, but these glittering words will not have one shred of lasting effect on the outcome except in so far as they may have a very mischievous effect if they persuade people to abandon the possible real good in the fantastic effort to achieve an impossible, unreal perfection. Let honest men and women remember that this kind of phrase-mongering does not represent idealism. The only idealism worth considering in the workaday business of this world is applied idealism. This is merely another way of saying that permanent good to humanity only comes from actually trying to reduce ideals to practice, and this means that the ideals must be substantially or at least measurably realizable.

The professed internationalist usually sneers at nationalism, at patriotism, and at what we call Americanism. He bids us forswear our love of country in the name of love of the world at large. We nationalists answer that he has begun at the wrong end; we say that as the world now is, it is only the man who ardently loves his country first who in actual practice can help any other country at all. The internationalist bids us promise to abandon the idea of keeping America permanently ready to defend her rights by her strength, and to trust, instead, to scraps of paper, to written agreements by which all nations form a league, and agree to disarm and agree each to treat all other nations, big or little, on an exact equality. We nationalists answer that we are ready to join any league to enforce peace or similar organization which offers a likelihood of in some measure lessening the number and the area of future wars, but only on condition that in the first place we do not promise what will not or ought not to be performed, or be guilty of proclaiming a sham, and that in the second place we do not surrender our right and duty to prepare our own strength for our own defense instead of trusting to the above-mentioned scraps of paper. In justification we point to certain very obvious facts which ought to be patent to every man of common sense.

Any such league of nations must, of course, include the nine nations which have the greatest military strength or it will be utterly impotent. These nine nations include Germany, Austria, Turkey, and Russia. The first three have abundantly shown during the last four years that no written or other promise of the most binding kind has even the slightest effect upon their actions. The fourth, Russia, under the lead and dominion of the Bolsheviki, has just been guilty of the grossest possible betrayal of her allies and of the small kindred Slavonic peoples and of world democracy. This betrayal was in the interest of a military and despotic autocracy and included the direct violation of Russia’s plighted faith. Under such conditions it is unnecessary to say that Russia’s signature to any future league to enforce peace will not be worth the paper on which it is written. Therefore the creation of any such league for the future will simply mean a pledge by the present Allies to make their alliance perpetual and all to go to war again whenever one of them is attacked. This may become necessary, but it certainly does not imply future disarmament.

Nor is this all. The United States must come into court with clean hands. She must not pledge herself without reservation to the right of “self-determination” for each people while she has behaved toward Haiti and San Domingo as she is now behaving. It is not possible for me to say whether our action in these two cases has been right or wrong, because the Administration, with its usual horror of publicity, whether pitiless or otherwise, and its inveterate predilection for secret and furtive diplomacy, has kept most of the facts hidden. I believe that there was no possible excuse for such secret diplomacy in these cases and that the same course should have been followed as was followed in the case of the Panama revolution, where every fact was immediately laid without reservation before Congress. But even if I am wrong in my belief in the general principle of open diplomacy, and even if the Administration is right in its consistent policy of secret diplomacy as regards the mass of questions which I think ought to be made public, the fact remains that we have with armed force invaded, made war upon, and conquered the two small republics, have upset their governments, have denied them the right of self-determination, and have made democracy within their limits not merely unsafe but non-existent. As we have no published facts to go on, I cannot say whether their misconduct did or did not warrant such drastic action on our part, but on the assumption that the Administration acted properly, we are committed to the principle that some nations are not fit for self-determination, that democracy within their limits is a sham, and that their offenses against justice and right are such as to render interference by their more powerful and more civilized neighbors imperative. I do not doubt that this principle is true in some cases, whether or not it ought to be applied in these two particular cases. In any event, our continuing action in San Domingo and Haiti makes it hypocritical for us to lay down any universal rules about self-determination for all nations.

Our action also shows how utterly futile it would be to try to treat a league to enforce peace as a substitute for training our own strength for our own defense. Let China be the witness of the truth of this statement. China has actually realized the ideal of the pacifists who insist that unpreparedness for war secures peace. The ideal of the internationalists is that patriotism and sense of nationalism are detrimental to humanity, and the ideal of the Socialists is that the capitalist régime is the only cause of popular misery. China is helpless to attack others or defend herself, her people have little sense of national unity and pride, and there are in China huge districts where there are no capitalists and where the misery of the people is greater than in any country of the Occident. China’s helplessness, instead of helping toward world peace, has been a positive encouragement to war and violence among her neighbors. Her future depends primarily, not on herself, but on what her neighbors choose to do. In spite of her size and her enormous population and resources, she is helpless to do good to others because she is powerless to prevent others from doing evil to her. Her agreement to a league of nations or to a league to enforce peace would be worthless, because she is unable to put strength back of justice either for herself or for any one else. The pacifists and internationalists if they had their way would turn the United States into the China of the Occident.