Roosevelt in the Kansas City Star: War-time Editorials

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Title: Roosevelt in the Kansas City Star: War-time Editorials
Author: Roosevelt, Theodore
Language: English
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STAR ***

PUBLICATIONS OF THE
ROOSEVELT MEMORIAL ASSOCIATION

II. ROOSEVELT IN THE KANSAS CITY STAR

COMMITTEE ON PUBLICATIONS

ROOSEVELT MEMORIAL ASSOCIATION INC.

R. J. CUDDIHY
ARTHUR W. PAGE
MARK SULLIVAN
E. A. VAN VALKENBURG

[Illustration: _Theodore Roosevelt and W. R. Nelson_]

ROOSEVELT

IN THE KANSAS CITY STAR

WAR-TIME EDITORIALS

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY

RALPH STOUT
_Managing Editor of The Star_

[Illustration]

BOSTON AND NEW YORK

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

The Riverside Press Cambridge

1921

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION, BY RALPH STOUT xiii

DR. FITZSIMONS’S DEATH, SEPTEMBER 17, 1917 1

BLOOD, IRON, AND GOLD, SEPTEMBER 23, 1917 2

THE GHOST DANCE OF THE SHADOW HUNS, OCTOBER 1,
1917 5

SAM WELLER AND MR. SNODGRASS, OCTOBER 2, 1917 8

BROOMSTICK PREPAREDNESS, OCTOBER 4, 1917 10

THE BONDHOLDERS AND THE PEOPLE, OCTOBER 7, 1917 12

FACTORIES OF GOOD CITIZENSHIP, OCTOBER 10, 1917 13

PILLAR-OF-SALT CITIZENSHIP, OCTOBER 12, 1917 16

BROOMSTICK APOLOGISTS, OCTOBER 14, 1917 18

THE LIBERTY LOAN AND THE PRO-GERMANS, OCTOBER 16, 1917 20

A DIFFICULT QUESTION TO ANSWER, OCTOBER 18, 1917 23

NOW HELP THE LIBERTY LOAN, OCTOBER 20, 1917 25

A SQUARE DEAL FOR THE TRAINING CAMPS, OCTOBER 21, 1917 26

THE PASSING OF THE CRIPPLE, OCTOBER 23, 1917 28

THE PEACE OF COMPLETE VICTORY, OCTOBER 23, 1917 30

FIGHTING WORK FOR THE MAN OF FIGHTING AGE, OCTOBER
25, 1917 32

WISE WOMEN AND FOOLISH WOMEN, OCTOBER 27, 1917 34

WHY CRY OVER SPILT MILK? OCTOBER 28, 1917 36

SAVE THE FOODSTUFF, OCTOBER 30, 1917 38

ON THE FIRING LINE, OCTOBER 31, 1917 40

NINE TENTHS OF WISDOM IS BEING WISE IN TIME, NOVEMBER
1, 1917 42

WE ARE IN THIS WAR TO THE FINISH, NOVEMBER 2, 1917 43

SINISTER ALLIES, NOVEMBER 3, 1917 45

THE NEW YORK MAYORALTY ELECTION, NOVEMBER 8, 1917 47

GERMAN HATRED OF AMERICA, NOVEMBER 13, 1917 49

START THE SYSTEM OF UNIVERSAL MILITARY TRAINING
AT ONCE, NOVEMBER 17, 1917 52

A FIFTY-FIFTY WAR ATTITUDE, NOVEMBER 20, 1917 54

THE GERMANIZED SOCIALISTS AND PEACE, NOVEMBER 26, 1917 56

MOBILIZE OUR MAN POWER, DECEMBER 1, 1917 58

THE LANSDOWNE LETTER, DECEMBER 2, 1917 60

THE PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE, DECEMBER 5, 1917 62

FOUR BITES OF A CHERRY, DECEMBER 7, 1917 64

THE RED CROSS CHRISTMAS MEMBERSHIP DRIVE, DECEMBER
12, 1917 66

BEING BRAYED IN A MORTAR, DECEMBER 18, 1917 68

RENDERING A GREAT PUBLIC SERVICE, DECEMBER 20, 1917 71

A BETRAYAL OF DEMOCRACY, DECEMBER 21, 1917 73

BROOMSTICK PREPAREDNESS--A STUDY IN CAUSE AND
EFFECT, DECEMBER 27, 1917 76

OUR DUTY FOR THE NEW YEAR, JANUARY 1, 1918 78

TELL THE TRUTH AND SPEED UP THE WAR, JANUARY 4, 1918 80

THE COST OF UNPREPAREDNESS, JANUARY 6, 1918 82

COÖPERATION AND CONTROL, JANUARY 8, 1918 85

THE ARTEMUS WARD THEORY OF WAR, JANUARY 17, 1918 87

THE FRUITS OF WATCHFUL WAITING, JANUARY 18, 1918 89

TELL THE TRUTH, JANUARY 21, 1918 92

JUSTIFICATION OF CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM, JANUARY
28, 1918 93

SECRETARY BAKER’S GENERAL DENIAL, FEBRUARY 2, 1918 96

LET GEORGE SPEED UP THE WAR, FEBRUARY 3, 1918 98

LET UNCLE SAM GET INTO THE GAME, FEBRUARY 5, 1918 101

CONSERVATION IS IMPORTANT AND PRODUCTION IS MORE
IMPORTANT, FEBRUARY 15, 1918 103

THE PEOPLE’S WAR, FEBRUARY 26, 1918 105

THE FRUITS OF FIFTY-FIFTY LOYALTY, MARCH 2, 1918 109

QUIT TALKING PEACE, MARCH 5, 1918 111

THE WORST ENEMIES OF CERTAIN LOYAL AMERICANS,
MARCH 10, 1918 113

GIRD UP OUR LOINS, MARCH 16, 1918 115

BOLSHEVIKI AT HOME AND ABROAD, MARCH 19, 1918 117

THE FRUITS OF OUR DELAY, MARCH 26, 1918 120

HOW THE HUN EARNS HIS TITLE, MARCH 31, 1918 122

THANK HEAVEN! APRIL 2, 1918 128

CITIZENS OR SUBJECTS? APRIL 6, 1918 129

WOMEN AND THE WAR, APRIL 12, 1918 133

TO MY FELLOW AMERICANS OF GERMAN BLOOD, APRIL 16, 1918 135

AN EXTRAORDINARY ACHIEVEMENT IN HUMAN UPBUILDING,
APRIL 17, 1918 138

FREEDOM STANDS WITH HER BACK TO THE WALL, APRIL
20, 1918 140

A SQUARE DEAL FOR ALL AMERICANS, APRIL 27, 1918 142

THE GERMAN HORROR, MAY 2, 1918 145

SEDITION, A FREE PRESS, AND PERSONAL RULE, MAY 7, 1918 147

THE DANGERS OF A PREMATURE PEACE, MAY 12, 1918 150

THE WAR SAVINGS CAMPAIGN, MAY 27, 1918 155

ANTI-BOLSHEVISM, JUNE 5, 1918 158

GENERAL WOOD, JUNE 15, 1918 160

HELP RUSSIA NOW, JUNE 20, 1918 162

AN AMERICAN FOURTH OF JULY, JUNE 23, 1918 166

HOW NOT TO ADJOURN POLITICS, JUNE 25, 1918 167

HATS OFF TO THE INTERNATIONAL TYPOGRAPHICAL
UNION, JUNE 27, 1918 170

THE PERFORMANCE OF A GREAT PUBLIC DUTY, JULY 3, 1918 172

REPEAL THE CHARTER OF THE GERMAN-AMERICAN ALLIANCE,
JULY 11, 1918 174

EVERY MAN HAS A RIGHT TO ONE COUNTRY, JULY 15, 1918 177

MURDER, TREASON, AND PARLOR ANARCHY, JULY 18, 1918 180

BACK UP THE FIGHTING MEN AT THE FRONT, JULY 26, 1918 183

THE AMERICANS WHOM WE MOST DELIGHT TO HONOR,
AUGUST 1, 1918 186

SOUND NATIONALISM AND SOUND INTERNATIONALISM,
AUGUST 4, 1918 188

THE MAN WHO PAYS AND THE MAN WHO PROFITS, AUGUST
9, 1918 196

OUR DEBT TO THE BRITISH EMPIRE, AUGUST 16, 1918 200

THE CANDIDACY OF HENRY FORD, AUGUST 20, 1918 202

SPEED UP THE WORK FOR THE ARMY AND GIVE ALL WHO
ENTER IT FAIR PLAY, AUGUST 23, 1918 206

SENATOR LODGE’S NOBLE SPEECH, SEPTEMBER 1, 1918 209

APPLIED PATRIOTISM, SEPTEMBER 8, 1918 211

GOOD LUCK TO THE ANTI-BOLSHEVISTS OF KANSAS, SEPTEMBER
12, 1918 213

THE FOURTH LIBERTY LOAN, SEPTEMBER 17, 1918 216

FAIR PLAY AND NO POLITICS, SEPTEMBER 20, 1918 218

SPIES AND SLACKERS, SEPTEMBER 24, 1918 221

QUIT PLAYING FAVORITES, SEPTEMBER 30, 1918 224

WAR AIMS AND PEACE PROPOSALS, OCTOBER 12, 1918 226

PERMANENT PREPAREDNESS AND THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS,
OCTOBER 15, 1918 229

HIGH-SOUNDING PHRASES OF MUDDY MEANING, OCTOBER
17, 1918 231

AN AMERICAN PEACE _versus_ A RUBBER-STAMP PEACE,
OCTOBER 22, 1918 236

UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER, OCTOBER 26, 1918 239

WHAT ARE THE FOURTEEN POINTS? OCTOBER 30, 1918 241

FURTHER CONSIDERATION OF THE FOURTEEN POINTS,
OCTOBER 30, 1918 243

FOURTEEN SCRAPS OF PAPER, OCTOBER 31, 1918 248

THE TURKS SURRENDER UNCONDITIONALLY, NOVEMBER 3, 1918 251

PEACE, NOVEMBER 12, 1918 253

SACRIFICE ON COLD ALTARS, NOVEMBER 13, 1918 255

THE RED FLAG AND THE HUN PEACE DRIVE, NOVEMBER
14, 1918 258

THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS, NOVEMBER 17, 1918 261

AN AMERICAN CONGRESS, NOVEMBER 18, 1918 265

THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS AND THE ENSLAVEMENT OF
MANKIND, NOVEMBER 22, 1918 269

PRESIDENT WILSON AND THE PEACE CONFERENCE, NOVEMBER
26, 1918 272

THE LEAGUE TO ENFORCE PEACE, DECEMBER 2, 1918 277

THE MEN WHOSE LOT HAS BEEN HARDEST, DECEMBER 8, 1918 281

THE BRITISH NAVY, THE FRENCH ARMY, AND AMERICAN
COMMON SENSE, DECEMBER 17, 1918 283

LET US HAVE STRAIGHTFORWARD SPEAKING, DECEMBER
24, 1918 287

A SQUARE DEAL FOR THE MEN AT THE FRONT, DECEMBER
25, 1918 289

THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS, JANUARY 13, 1919 292

ILLUSTRATIONS

THEODORE ROOSEVELT AND W. R. NELSON

From a snapshot _Photogravure Frontispiece_

FACSIMILE OF A NOTE FROM ROOSEVELT TO W. R.
NELSON xxii

FACSIMILE OF A PAGE OF THE MANUSCRIPT OF ONE OF
ROOSEVELT’S EDITORIALS 2

INTRODUCTION

The request, repeated and urgent, has come from many sources that the
editorial articles, contributed by Colonel Theodore Roosevelt to The
Kansas City Star during our country’s participation in the World War,
be preserved for the future. It is in response to this request that
this volume is published.

Newspaper publication is ephemeral. Newspaper files are short-lived.
Anybody who has examined a newspaper of thirty years ago knows how
flimsy it is, how it breaks and disintegrates to the touch. It lacks
the enduring quality of the newspaper of sixty or seventy-five years
ago when other elements entered into the composition of news-print
paper. Newspaper publication is the thought of to-day; to-morrow, it
is gone save for the impression left on the mind of the reader. That
the recollection of Colonel Roosevelt’s articles may have something to
appeal to aside from crumbling newspaper files is the aim of this book.
And so these expressions on the events in a crisis in our national
history--from the mind of a man whose intense love of country was the
admiration of all who knew him, expressions which at the time of their
publication stirred many to greater sacrifice for country, some to
anger, even to rage--are here presented in enduring form.

Colonel Roosevelt’s contributions to The Star were his most frequent
expressions on the war; they were the outpouring of a great soul deeply
stirred by the country’s situation. There were more than one hundred
articles from his pen. They covered the vital time of our part in the
war from October, 1917, until his death January 6, 1919.

The reason he chose The Star as his medium of reaching the people,
in a period when a large section of the American people sought and
was guided by what he said, was that Colonel Roosevelt and The Star
had known and understood each other for a long, long time. Their
acquaintance dated back to the period of his service in the New York
legislature. The Star saw behind his conduct then the qualities and
the spirit which it was continually seeking to place at a premium in
offices of public trust.

Later, in 1889, when President Harrison appointed him a civil service
commissioner, The Star said:

The appointment of Theodore Roosevelt as one of the civil service
commissioners is a hopeful sign that President Harrison desires to
give civil service reform a fair representation in the government. Mr.
Roosevelt is an accomplished gentleman, with sincere aspirations for
reformed methods of administration, as shown by his career in the New
York legislature when Grover Cleveland was governor. Mr. Roosevelt is
too independent ever to serve as a party henchman, and his voice and
influence will always be in favor of what he believes to be the most
efficient and business-like administration of affairs.

Colonel Roosevelt and the founder and editor of The Star, the late
William R. Nelson, had met, but they did not really know each other
until after the war with Spain. In his canvass for the vice-presidency
in 1900 Colonel Roosevelt was entertained at the Nelson home, Oak Hall,
Kansas City. From this visit dated better acquaintance. They had much
in common and were alike in many characteristics: frank, outspoken,
impulsive, and passionately devoted to the same ideals of private life
and public service.

I recall a story of an impulsive act of Colonel Roosevelt back in his
ranchman days. A man of shady reputation had been appointed Indian
Agent with the Sioux on a Dakota reservation. He put into effect many
sharp practices with the Indians which would line his pockets with
money. Roosevelt’s ranch was not far away and ranch affairs took him to
the agency. One day he went to the agency and sought the agent.

“You are Mr. ----?” the ranchman asked.

“Yes,” was the reply.

“I have heard what you have been doing with the Indians. You are a
thief! Good-day!”

The story, as told, was that the agent, aghast at the boldness of his
visitor, turned and walked away.

The late Curtis Guild, Jr., of Boston, and Senator Beveridge, of
Indiana, were with Colonel Roosevelt on the Oak Hall visit. They found
delight in the paintings and books in Mr. Nelson’s home and Colonel
Roosevelt gave proof of his wide range of knowledge by his instant
recognition of the work of painters of long-established reputation. In
his inspection of the library he asked to see what Mr. Nelson had on
the Greek dramatists. “I always ask for them in a man’s library,” he
remarked.

During this visit I was a listener at an argument between the two men
on partisanship. Mr. Nelson had in his early days affiliated with
the Democratic Party. In 1876 he was Mr. Tilden’s personal manager
in Indiana. But with the party’s treatment of Tilden Mr. Nelson lost
partisan zeal, and never after could he be considered a party man. He
founded The Star in 1880 as an independent newspaper; it has remained
an independent newspaper.

Colonel Roosevelt’s argument was, that to accomplish anything in public
affairs a man or a newspaper had to belong to a party organization. He
probably had in mind his experience in the Blaine campaign of 1884. His
conclusion was that the American people were wedded to the two-party
system and that one who aspired to do anything for the country could
achieve only by working through a party organization.

Mr. Nelson granted what he said was true as to an individual, but
not as to a newspaper of the right sort. It was perhaps true as to
a newspaper which had as one of its aims the securing of political
honor for its owner, but the newspaper sincerely devoted to the public
interest could wield greater power by retaining its independence and
in the end could accomplish more substantial achievements, a statement
verified by his own conduct of The Star. Colonel Roosevelt saw the
force of Mr. Nelson’s contention, but stuck to his point that, with an
individual, accomplishment outside of party ranks was impossible.

It is interesting to look back over the growth of the mutual
understanding and the fondness of the two men for each other dating
from that visit in 1900. After leaving Kansas City, Colonel Roosevelt
sent back a letter expressing his delight at the day spent at Oak Hall,
closing with “How I do wish I could spend the week in your library
instead of upon this infernal campaigning trip!”

When the assassin’s bullet struck down President McKinley, Mr. Nelson
sent a telegram to Colonel Roosevelt expressing his horror at the deed
and pledging the whole-hearted support of his newspaper in aiding him
to carry the great burden which had been placed on his shoulders.

Mr. Nelson had no wish to be a distributor of federal patronage; he was
concerned in higher things. When Colonel Roosevelt turned to him for
advice on political matters, he was reluctant to give it, feeling his
own lack of real knowledge of the politics of Kansas and Missouri and
of the men who sought appointments. Late in 1901 Colonel Roosevelt,
asking about conditions in Missouri, wrote, referring to St. Louis
men, “I think they have been rather after the offices and not after
success.... I should like to have some office-holder in Missouri to
whom I could tie.”

Mr. Nelson asked the political writers of The Star to write their
estimate of the men seeking office and leadership, and these were
sent to the President with his endorsement. The President repeatedly
followed the ideas of these letters, and it is a pleasure to record
that in no instance was there subsequently cause for regret for any
selection based on the letters.

In 1908 the President’s appointment of the Farm Life Commission
received Mr. Nelson’s commendation, for he had long recognized the need
of making farm life more attractive; indeed, he would have financed
experiments along this line had he been younger. At the same time
Mr. Nelson spoke approvingly of the President’s recent comment on
the courts, adding, “Courts need such criticism the worst kind. They
steadily undermine confidence in law and legal justice.”

“I am sick at heart,” the President replied, “over the way in which
the courts have been prostituting justice in the last few years.
The greatest trouble will follow if they do not alter their present
attitude. I suppose I shall ‘pay’ myself in some way for what I have
said about the courts, but I have got to take the risk.”

In 1909, in the closing days of the Roosevelt Administration the
President issued an executive order looking to a quick settlement of a
long-pending controversy over the channel of the Kaw River at Kansas
City. It was unexpected; indeed, few in Kansas City knew that the
President was considering the subject. The order cut straight to the
heart of the controversy in true Roosevelt fashion. The same day Mr.
Nelson sent this telegram to the President:

It is quite worth while to have a real President of the United States.

The next day this reply came from the President:

It is even better worth while to have a real editor of just the right
kind of paper.

The Star supported Taft in the campaign of 1908 because it had faith
that he would carry out the Roosevelt policies. Events early in the
Taft Administration weakened that faith; the Winona speech withered
it. Mr. Nelson had had no correspondence with Colonel Roosevelt while
he was hunting in Africa. Two letters came from the ex-President,
one March 12, 1910, from the White Nile saying he expected to return
in June; another from Porto Maurizio, a month later, saying, “I know
you will understand how delicate my position is,” and asking for an
early conference with Mr. Nelson on his return to this country. Mr.
Nelson’s final, open break with President Taft was “more in sorrow than
in anger”; there was never bitterness of feeling, solely regret at a
mistake in believing Mr. Taft stood for principles which events early
in his administration showed convincingly he did not stand for.

Writing to Colonel Roosevelt, in 1910, after his return from Africa,
Mr. Nelson referred to the Winona speech and the Ballinger case,
concluding: “I have wondered whether sooner or later there would not
have to be a new party of the Square Deal.”

The succeeding two years there were frequent conferences and
interchange of letters between Colonel Roosevelt and Mr. Nelson. The
latter had absolute confidence and abiding faith in Roosevelt. Late
in 1910 the Colonel’s enemies were seeking to torment him from many
angles. Mr. Nelson wrote him:

It has occurred to me that the opposition will constantly be prodding
you and lying about you with the evident purpose of getting you angry
and so putting you to a disadvantage. That is the only hope on earth
they have of stopping you.

Your comment on Wm. Barnes was fine. It recalled to me an incident
connected with Governor Tilden, who was the wisest politician I ever
knew. As a young man I was his manager in Indiana. After the defeat of
Lucius Robinson, whom he was backing for Governor of New York, I went
East at his invitation to confer with him. He asked me to see Kelly,
Clarkson, Potter, Dorsheimer, and Sam Cox, and some of the other men
who had been fighting him, to get their views. “What shall I tell them
about your position if they ask me?” I said. “Oh, tell them,” he said,
“that I am very amiable.” In my adventures since that time I have
often had occasion to remember that as sound advice. Amiability is a
great weapon at times.

But my point is that you never need to defend yourself at all. The
people will take care of your defense. Besides, it is always a bad
policy, in my opinion, to get to talking about the past. You are a
Progressive. Your nose is to the front. The past doesn’t interest you.
So I hope you will ignore the critics, no matter how exasperating they
may be. And if you can’t ignore them, laugh at them!

To this the Colonel replied:

I guess you are right; but it does make me flame with indignation when
men who pretend to be especially the custodians of morals, and who sit
in judgment from an Olympian height of virtue on the deeds of other
men, themselves offend in a way that puts them on a level with the
most corrupt scoundrel in a city government....

But this does not alter the fact that, as you say, my business is to
pay no heed to the slanders of the past, but to keep my face steadily
turned toward the future. Here in New York the outlook is rather
dark. There are a great multitude of men, some of them nominally
respectable, but timid or misled, who do certainly, although rather
feebly, object to the domination of Barnes and his fellow bosses; but
who do sincerely, but rather feebly, prefer clean politics to corrupt
politics; but who, nevertheless, dread any interference with what they
regard as the rights of big business, any assault on what I regard as
an improperly arranged tariff, any effort to work for the betterment
of social conditions in the spirit of Abraham Lincoln; who regard all
assaults and efforts of this nature as being worse than the rule of
small bosses and the petty corruption of local politicians.

III

As the presidential campaign of 1912 developed, there were frequent
exchanges of views. In May Colonel Roosevelt wrote that he was
confident of victory in the Republican Convention in spite of all that
was being done against him by the men in control of the party. Only
those who were in the thick of the Republican Convention in Chicago
in June realize how the fighting blood of the men on the progressive
side, from the leader down, was aroused. Mr. Nelson was at Chicago
during the Republican Convention. Colonel Roosevelt sought his advice
throughout. The course which was ultimately followed had Mr. Nelson’s
full approval. In a telegram to Colonel Roosevelt after the break from
the Republican Party, Mr. Nelson said: “I am with you tooth and nail,
to the limit and to the finish.”

Following those vivid days and nights of the Republican Convention--a
period no active participant can ever erase from his memory--came
the Orchestra Hall meeting, the first definite step to organize the
Progressive Party, the National Progressive Party Convention in August,
and then the memorable three-party campaign.

In the midst of the campaign Mr. Nelson and the Colonel had the time
and inclination to carry on a correspondence on things not directly
touching the issues on which the fight was made. In a letter from
his summer home at Magnolia, Massachusetts, Mr. Nelson dropped into
a discussion of what he called his two hobbies--to drive money out
of the voting booth and out of the courthouse. His idea was that all
legitimate expenses of candidates for office should be paid by the
State, and that there should be a reform of the voting system which
would avoid the necessity of party organization to get out the vote.
Having the vote taken by letter carriers was one way that appealed to
him. He would make justice free, “not for sale as it is to-day when
the rich man gets the best lawyers.” Lawyers should be officers of the
court in fact as well as in theory, and should be compensated for their
work by the State, not by the litigants.

Replying to this letter late in July, Colonel Roosevelt said:

I am with you in principle on both the points you raise. I am with you
on the question of the State paying the election expenses right
away now. I have always stood for that course as the only one to give
the poor man a fair chance in politics.

Your other idea is new, but I have long been feeling my way to the
same conclusion. A lawyer is not like a doctor. No real good for the
community comes from the development of legalism, from the development
of that kind of ability shown by the great corporation lawyers who
lead our bar; whereas good does come from medical development. The
high-priced lawyer means, when reduced to his simplest expression,
that justice tends to go to the man with the longest purse. But the
proposal is such a radical one that I do not know how it would be
greeted, and it is something we will have to fight for later.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

[Illustration:

Tʰᵉ Outlook
287 Fourth Avenue
New York

Office of
Theodore Roosevelt

May 24, 1912

My dear Colonel Nelson:

It certainly is fine, and it looks now as though we shall be able to
win in the Convention.

Faithfully yours,

_Theodore Roosevelt
Good luck, oh staunchest of
friends!_

Colonel W. R. Nelson,
Kansas City, Mo.]

Late in September, during a campaign tour of the West, Colonel
Roosevelt spent a Sunday evening at Oak Hall. The subject of campaign
contributions came up, and the candidate became reminiscent,
recounting his first experience as governor of New York with campaign
contributions. It was an incident, he said, that might readily be
misconstrued and so he had not discussed it publicly.

Soon after he was elected governor of New York, he had discovered that
the street railways were paying almost no taxes. Accordingly he took
steps to introduce a franchise tax bill into the legislature. Mr. Odell
at once came to him and told him that he was following in the footsteps
of Bryan and “Potato” Pingree, which was the most severe condemnation
at that time. That warning having no effect, Mr. Platt came to him
and said, “Governor, you can’t do this. Don’t you know that the
Whitney-Ryan combination was one of the heaviest contributors to your
campaign fund?”

“The deuce they were,” said Roosevelt; “I supposed they made their
contributions to Tammany.”

“Of course,” Platt returned, “they contributed to Tammany, but they
gave us just half as much as they did Tammany. If they hadn’t expected
fair treatment from us they would have given it all to Tammany.”

“I told Platt they would get fair treatment from us,” Roosevelt said,
in telling the story, “but if they expected immunity from taxation they
were going to be left.”

At that time the Whitney-Ryan combination owned the New York street
railways and so were going to be hard hit by the franchise tax. Mr.
Roosevelt added that the franchise tax bill went through and created
quite a scandal in high finance at that time. “Everybody was talking
about it,” he said, “and all the big financiers knew about it. So
I never could have any sympathy with the view that Harriman or the
Standard Oil people--if they really contributed to my campaign fund--or
any other interest of that sort gave any money for campaign purposes
under a misapprehension. They knew from my deeds as well as my words
that they could not buy immunity from me, and that the best they could
expect was a square deal. I said one time to Bacon, ‘Bob, why is it
that Morgan and all his crowd are against me? Don’t they know that they
would get justice from me?’ Bacon smiled, hesitated, and then said,
‘Yes, I suppose they do.’”

In the Progressive campaign Mr. Nelson violated a personal rule of
many years’ standing which forbade his personal participation in
politics. Into this campaign he went with his whole soul. Then past
seventy years of age, he was abundantly able to direct but not to give
of his physical strength. He assumed responsibility for organizing the
party in Missouri and lent his newspaper organization to that end.
He thought day and night for the party’s candidate and the party’s
principles, and at the end of the campaign he had left undone nothing
which he could have done for the candidate who had his absolute and
unqualified confidence. After the election Colonel Roosevelt wrote Mr.
Nelson:

I can never overstate how much I appreciate all that you have done and
been throughout this fight. My dear Sir, I am very grateful and I know
that the only way I can show my gratitude is so to bear myself that
you will feel no cause for regret at having stood by me.

After the campaign of 1912, which showed the remarkable strength of
Colonel Roosevelt with the people and demonstrated that he was still
a factor in American public life to be reckoned with, the tormenting
by his political enemies continued. From many quarters darts had been
hurled at “the old lion.” In July, 1914, after a libel suit for fifty
thousand dollars had been started, Mr. Nelson telegraphed the Colonel
at Oyster Bay:

Too bad so much of the burden should fall on you. _Would gladly share
it with you._

In a few days the message brought this letter:

When a man is under constant fire and begins to feel, now and then,
as if he did not have very many friends, and as if the forces against
him were perfectly overwhelming, then, even though he is prepared to
battle alone absolutely to the end, he is profoundly appreciative of
the support of those whose support is best worth having. Your telegram
not only gave me real comfort, but touched and moved me profoundly.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

That was the end of the recorded correspondence between Colonel
Roosevelt and Mr. Nelson. The former came West on a speaking tour in
the fall of 1914 and during his stay in Kansas City was a guest again
at Oak Hall. Mr. Nelson accompanied him to a campaign meeting in a
skating rink packed with people in Kansas City, Kansas, where he spoke
in a sweltering atmosphere for more than an hour preaching with all his
old vigor and enthusiasm the doctrines of the Progressive Party.

There was the same display from great crowds of people, along the
streets around the hall and everywhere he went, of the keen interest
and personal admiration which Colonel Roosevelt’s presence in Kansas
City territory always brought out. Kansas City and its vicinity
had been Roosevelt ground since Kansas and Western Missouri became
acquainted with him; indeed, any appearance by him was sufficient to
fill Convention Hall in Kansas City to its capacity of fifteen thousand
people.

Following Mr. Nelson’s death in April, 1915, there came from Colonel
Roosevelt a sincere appreciation of his sorrow, ending, “We have lost
literally one of the foremost citizens of the United States, one of the
men whom our Republic could least afford to spare.”

In the 1916 campaign Colonel Roosevelt and The Star were of the same
mind. Deeply attached to the principles on which the battle of 1912 had
been conducted by the Progressive Party, they were conscious of the
futility of continuing the fight for those principles in a third party.
The American devotion to the two-party system had been convincingly
demonstrated again. The World War had been in progress two years, the
Lusitania had been sunk without stirring the Administration to more
than impotent words. Both thought that the Republican Party presented
the only hope of accomplishment. Colonel Roosevelt was The Star’s
choice for the nomination, but his nomination was too much to expect
after the break of 1912, and it gave its support to Mr. Hughes.

Early in June, 1917, Mr. Irwin Kirkwood, Mr. Nelson’s son-in-law, on
his way West from New York, chanced to meet Colonel Roosevelt on the
train. A visit in the Colonel’s stateroom followed. The conversation
turned to the seeming impossibility of a Roosevelt division for France,
a subject in which Mr. Kirkwood was personally interested, for he had
been assured service in France if the Colonel’s ambition were realized.
The Colonel was discouraged over his failure to get active service
and restless at the Administration’s slow preparation for war. Of the
Nation’s whole-hearted support of the war he was certain, and the high
thought with him at the time was to bring influences to bear on the
Administration to speed up.

At this time Colonel Roosevelt was contributing a monthly article for
The Metropolitan Magazine written long in advance of its publication.
Daily, momentous problems of the war were coming up. Mr. Kirkwood
felt strongly that the American people were eager to know what
Theodore Roosevelt thought on these questions. If he could reach the
public quickly, great good would result to this country’s cause.
Recalling that Mr. Nelson had said, when there was criticism of the
ex-President’s purpose to write for The Outlook, when it was first
announced, he would be mighty glad to have him write for The Star, Mr.
Kirkwood said:

“Colonel Roosevelt, wouldn’t it be fine if you could get your ideas on
the war to the people before they were twenty-four hours old? The only
way that could be done is through a newspaper.”

“By George!” said the Colonel, with emphasis, “I never thought of that:
it sounds like a good idea.”

Mr. Kirkwood said if he would consider the suggestion, The Star would
certainly welcome him.

“Such a proposition would not tempt me from many newspapers,” Colonel
Roosevelt continued. “In fact I know of no others except The Kansas
City Star and The Philadelphia North American from which I would
consider it. The Star particularly appeals to me as being printed
in the heart of the great progressive Middle Western country, and
because, too, of my love and affection for Colonel Nelson.”

Colonel Roosevelt remarked that he would like to discuss the proposal
with Mrs. Roosevelt and his daughter, Mrs. Nicholas Longworth, for he
had great confidence in the judgment of both. On Mr. Kirkwood’s return
to New York a fortnight later, Colonel Roosevelt said he was still
“filled up” with the idea and asked Mr. and Mrs. Kirkwood out to dinner
at Oyster Bay with Mrs. Roosevelt and himself. Mrs. Kirkwood was unable
to go. Mr. Kirkwood again discussed the proposal. Colonel Roosevelt’s
position was that if The Star was still unafraid, he was willing to
start. The next time the Colonel came to New York he had tea with Mr.
and Mrs. Kirkwood, and there was a further full and frank discussion.

“You, of course, know what you are doing,” Colonel Roosevelt said.
“Many people do not like my ideas and probably many of your subscribers
will be perfectly furious at The Star for printing my editorials.”

Both Mr. and Mrs. Kirkwood assured him full consideration had been
given to that phase, and while it was possible he and The Star
might not always agree, that fact would not stand in the way of the
arrangement.

So the agreement was there entered into. Colonel Roosevelt suggested
that as 1920 was a presidential year the connection be for two years or
until October, 1919, to which Mr. and Mrs. Kirkwood assented.

Colonel Roosevelt said he never pretended to be much of a business
man, but a formal contract was the usual thing; he had one with The
Metropolitan. Anyhow he would gladly sign it. He was asked if he
desired a contract and answered he did not.

“You understand and we do--” said Mr. Kirkwood.

Without waiting for the sentence to be finished, Colonel Roosevelt
said quickly, “That’s all I want to know. Let’s don’t bother with a
contract.”

And on that basis the Colonel wrote for The Star until his death.

Early in September I was delegated to go to New York, as Managing
Editor of The Star, to discuss with the Colonel the details of his work
for the paper. I met him at a hotel in Fifty-Seventh Street where he
went on the days he came in from Oyster Bay. Mrs. Roosevelt was with
him. Roosevelt was in high spirits, which was no uncommon thing. I
recall vividly my introduction to Mrs. Roosevelt.

“Edith,” he said, leading me into the room where Mrs. Roosevelt was,
“_here is my new boss_!”

I didn’t say it, but the thought came to me that I would prefer the
task of “bossing” a tornado.

The talk that followed was that The Star had no desire to guide what
he wrote; that it desired him to write whatever was in him, and it
would print it. The Colonel said that was exactly what he wanted; he
could do nothing else. We discussed the distribution over the country
of his writings, which he left entirely to The Star, with the request
that they be not offered to certain newspapers which had long shown a
spirit of personal animosity to him and of habitual hostility toward
his principles, a suggestion which was wholly agreeable to The Star.
He asked about the length and frequency of the articles he was to
write. It was agreed that an editorial of around five hundred words
was ideal, and at the start there would be two contributions a week.
Later they were more frequent. The Colonel said he would probably find
it difficult to keep down to five hundred words, but he recognized the
limitations of newspaper space and would do his best.

“Now,” he said, “if I get too highbrow, don’t hesitate to tell me. I’m
no tender flower; I can stand criticism.”

His secretary had come into the room to receive dictation from
accumulated correspondence. I arose to go. “Stay with us,” the Colonel
said, “until I finish this; you are a member of the family now.”

Short, crisp sentences came from him as he dictated, each with the
animation of a face-to-face conversation with the writers of the
letters.

It was arranged that the Colonel was to take up his duties the first
of October, and a few days after this meeting announcement was made
the country over that Theodore Roosevelt was to write for The Kansas
City Star. Immediately applications for the right to print the articles
poured in from newspapers throughout the country.

Colonel Roosevelt came West in September on a speaking tour which
included Kansas City. So he came into the office of The Star on the
morning of September 22, 1917, and went to a desk which had been
assigned him, with the remark, “The cub reporter will now begin work.”
He was fond of that designation and often in conversation referred
to himself as “The Star’s cub reporter.” With pencil he wrote out
on newspaper copy-paper, with much scratching and interlining, the
editorial, “Blood, Iron, and Gold,” which appeared the following day.
His first editorial, however, was, a short time before, written on
suggestion of Mr. Kirkwood, a brief piece on the death of Dr. W. S.
Fitzsimons, of Kansas City, who was killed by a bomb in an airplane
attack on a hospital in France--the first American officer to fall in
the war.

The same day Colonel Roosevelt wrote another editorial for later
publication. He was good nature itself that Saturday morning in the
office, joked and chatted with members of the staff, and seemed to be
enjoying the novelty of his new connection.

The following Sunday there was a luncheon of The Star family at
the home of Mr. and Mrs. Kirkwood, at which the “new cub reporter”
made himself thoroughly at home. Editors, reporters, and men of the
mechanical and circulation departments were there and had luncheon
with the Colonel. He mingled with all and took delight in chatting
with them of their work. During the afternoon he made an informal talk
to “the family” out on the lawn, in which he commended the spirit of
working together shown in the expression “The Star family.” He spoke,
too, of his long acquaintance with the aims and purposes of Mr. Nelson
which were the aims and purposes of The Star, and said, as he had said
before, that The Star was one of two daily newspapers with which he
would be proud of a connection.

The arrangement was that Colonel Roosevelt was to telegraph his
editorials to The Star from Oyster Bay or wherever he was when he
wrote them. They were put in type in The Star office and sent out from
there for simultaneous publication in a selected list of about fifty
newspapers. These included the best-known newspapers in the country
and represented every section. The service was without charge beyond
telegraph tolls, it being The Star’s wish to give the widest diffusion
possible to Colonel Roosevelt’s ideas on the conduct of the war through
the best channel in each city.

Frequently there were suggestions from The Star to the Colonel. Always
he was gracious in his treatment of those suggestions, invariably
writing along the lines indicated and often amplifying and bettering
them. On the other hand--except in two instances--the Colonel’s
editorials were printed just as they were written, and if any change
in copy were considered advisable it was made only after he had been
consulted by wire and had approved it.

From the start the country was much interested in the expressions from
the Colonel. The newspapers which received them printed them faithfully
and conspicuously. However, the service had been in operation not more
than a fortnight before there came rumbles of disapproval and doubt,
almost altogether from newspapers published south of Mason and Dixon’s
Line.

One of the early editorials, entitled “Sam Weller and Mr. Snodgrass,”
presented Uncle Sam, “eight months after Germany went to war with us,
and we severed relations with Germany as the first move in our sixty
days’ stern foremost drift into, not going to, war,” as the boastful
Mr. Snodgrass, still taking off his coat and announcing in a loud voice
what he was about to do. This drew from the mayor of Abilene, Texas,
the following letter to The Star-Telegram, of Fort Worth, Texas, which
was publishing the Roosevelt articles:

ABILENE, TEXAS, October 3, 1917. Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Fort Worth,
Tex. The Roosevelt article appearing in your paper of this date
is nothing short of the expression of the thoughts of a seditious
conspirator who should be shot dead, and, the Editor-in-Chief of your
paper should be tarred and feathered for publishing it, and your
paper should be excluded from the mails of the United States. You may
publish this if you wish, and stop my paper.

E. N. KIRBY
Mayor of Abilene

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram promptly published Mayor Kirby’s letter,
under the caption “The Retort Courteous,” adding the following:

The Editor-in-Chief presents his compliments to the Mayor of Abilene
and begs to say that should he conclude personally to conduct a tar
and feather expedition in our direction, he will experience no great
difficulty in locating the said Editor-in-Chief. Meanwhile we can
assure him that his reception will not be lacking in hospitality or
warmth.

The mayor of Abilene and the editor did not meet. Later, in an
editorial devoted to apologists for the delay in making war who were
saying, “Why cry over spilt milk?” Colonel Roosevelt referred to the
incident, saying:

Recently the mayor of Abilene, Texas, expressed his disapproval of my
pointing out that we, as a Nation, had wholly failed to prepare, by
saying that I was “a seditious conspirator who ought to be shot dead,”
and that the editor of the newspaper publishing the article “should
be tarred and feathered.” Although differing in method of expression,
this slight homicidal bleat of the gentle-souled (and doubtless
entirely harmless) mayor of Abilene, Texas, is exactly similar in
thought to the utterances of all these sheeplike creatures who raise
quavering or incoherent protests against every honest and patriotic
man who points out the damage done by our failure to prepare.

When the “cub reporter” came to take on his “new job,” he learned
for the first time of the conditions at Camp Funston, in Kansas, the
big national army training camp of the Middle West, to which his old
friend, Major-General Leonard Wood, had been assigned. The drafted men
were assembled there from the farms and towns of the Middle West before
adequate provision had been made for their care or their training.
They were trained with wooden cannon, and broomsticks served in place
of rifles. Colonel Roosevelt wrote an editorial entitled “Broomstick
Preparedness,” which touched mildly on the conditions at Funston. The
expression “Broomstick Preparedness” caught popular fancy as typifying
the Administration’s delay in many aspects of war preparation. It
stuck in the public mind. It was widely used by newspapers and by
speakers who thought the Government was not showing sufficient speed.
An editorial, “Broomstick Apologists,” followed, directed at people who
answered criticism of delay by making excuses for delay.

From the beginning Colonel Roosevelt had in the main devoted his
articles to speeding up the preparations for making war. The boosting
of Liberty bonds and the various war drives, the pacifists and
hyphenated enemies on our own soil, were not overlooked by any means,
but the thing that seared his soul was the lack of speed in making
ready for actual warfare. When his connection with The Star began,
we had been officially at war nearly six months, and how little the
Government had accomplished toward equipping for actual warfare was
continuously held up in his articles.

Colonel Roosevelt used the method, followed by newspaper writers who
earnestly seek to achieve results, of pounding continually on a few
things, dressing each article in different language, but keeping to
the front all the time the central idea, presenting the same thoughts
in article after article, but striving in each so to change the
presentation that the ideas would finally enter the reader’s mind and
stir him to action. Mr. Nelson used this method in the conduct of The
Star. For many years, beginning with its first publication, The Star
advocated parks and boulevards for Kansas City. It hammered away on the
subject in nearly every issue. It took almost twenty years to do it,
but at the end a splendid system of parks and boulevards stands as a
monument to The Star’s persistence.

Article after article Colonel Roosevelt devoted to the slow speed in
war-making until there was finally a response in Washington. It heard
from public opinion. War-making was speeded up, although at the best
and in the end there were many, many deficiencies in our war machine.

Colonel Roosevelt’s criticisms of the Administration were not widely
popular. The Star never had any idea they would be popular, but it
believed they were right and for the real good of the country. As he
had foreseen when the connection was made, “Many of your subscribers
will be perfectly furious at The Star for printing my editorials.”
They were. They wrote to The Star to denounce the Colonel for writing
the articles and The Star for printing them. In popular discussion in
the Middle West forms of disapproval ranged from “He should stand by
the President” to “He should be stood before a stone wall and shot.”
Generally the user of the latter phrase added “at sunrise.” That was an
expression often heard. It was used by political orators with effect.
Colonel Roosevelt knew full well of the feeling in the West and South
toward his articles. He wrote once asking what effect the storm was
having on The Star. Never a word from him to show he cared one whit
about himself. He knew he was doing the right thing for the country; he
went ahead.

The frank truth is, there was a strong and active pacifist element
in the territory in which The Star circulated. It had not been for
preparedness. It had voted for President Wilson in 1916 largely
“because he kept us out of war.” Undeniably that idea was popular.
A candidate for governor in a neighboring state, running on the
Republican ticket, had made a campaign identical with the Democratic
slogan and had carried the state, which at the same time gave its vote
to the Democratic presidential candidate. But once we were in war the
people of this section responded nobly; they went to the limit, but for
a long time after we were in war they did not approve the prodding-up
of Washington. The hostility toward the Roosevelt articles in the South
was more pronounced. At the beginning of the service ten Southern
newspapers were taking it. Their statements about discontinuance ran
from “We find further publication inadvisable in our territory” to an
apology to their readers for ever having allowed the Roosevelt articles
to enter their columns.

Colonel Roosevelt was not without defenders; many of them thought and
said he was rendering the greatest service to the country in all his
career. But in the excited state of mind in the spring of 1918, when
the Germans were driving toward Paris, it required courage to defend
the articles. Many, however, spoke out boldly; others did not. Party
lines were not followed strictly. Republicans were not so bitter as
men of the President’s party. “We must stand by the President” had a
popular appeal regardless of whether the Government was functioning
efficiently or not. The view was widely held that it was unpatriotic
to criticize the President. Frequently it was charged that Colonel
Roosevelt’s purposes were political, not patriotic. The articles were
often decried as pro-German propaganda and The Star was branded as
pro-German for publishing them.

In April, 1918, when this feeling was at its height, when the people
in Kansas City’s territory were in a highly inflamed state of feeling
toward criticism of the Government, Colonel Roosevelt sent a ringing
editorial, “Freedom Stands with her Back to the Wall,” which The Star
did not consider it advisable to publish. It had no doubt of the entire
righteousness of the criticism passed on the officials at Washington,
for the fruition of their slowness was shown in the poor showing
America was making in these critical days, but it could see no good
to come from the publication: in its opinion the article would only
further inflame Colonel Roosevelt’s enemies and irritate his friends.
Colonel Roosevelt was informed of the office opinion of this article
as he was on a later article (“How Not to Adjourn Politics,” June
25) which was not published. He acquiesced in the decision, saying
that he could readily conceive of local conditions which made their
publication ill-advised. He asked that they be telegraphed to two
other newspapers, which was done. The Star was willing to go as far as
it could go without, in its judgment, lessening the effectiveness of
the articles in accomplishing the speeding-up of the war, but it would
not go beyond this point.

In July, when criticism had caused the removal of many inefficients at
Washington and when American troops were beginning to reach France,
The Star was barred from the Public Library at Fulton, Missouri, an
intensely Democratic town in Central Missouri, “for disloyalty to the
present Administration.” The notice read:

DEAR SIR: By order from the library board of the Public Library I am
advised to have you discontinue our subscription to The Daily Star
and The Times. Disloyalty to the present Administration is the reason
given for the action taken.

Yours sincerely
FRANCES F. WATSON
Librarian

Answering this editorially, The Star said that throughout the war
it had taken the course of calling attention to the mistakes of the
Government rather than remaining silent on its mistakes; that it
did not believe in saying the country was doing finely when it was
not; that it believed in exposing inefficiency and rooting it out.
It directed attention to results already accomplished by criticism
in bringing into the war preparations men like Schwab, Goethals,
Stettinius, March, Baruch, and others, adding: “The Star is proud
to belong to the little group of constructive critics, including
preëminently Colonel Roosevelt, who worked to get wrong conditions
changed and to contribute to the present result, which to-day is the
salvation of the cause we fight for. For it to have done anything else
would have been faithlessness to its trust.”

When at last the stirring-up of the Administration had borne fruit and
American troops were in France and on the way in considerable, though
disappointing, numbers, Colonel Roosevelt slowed down his bombardment
of the Washington authorities. His campaign had produced results. He
was right in doing all he could to speed up war preparations, and
he stood his ground in the face of widespread censure in the way he
always did. Hostile newspapers had demanded that the Postmaster-General
suppress the circulation of the Roosevelt articles; indeed, a
post-office inspector had visited Kansas City with the idea of denying
The Star admission to the mails, but the Administration made no further
move in this direction.

Even when the turning of the tide had set in, Roosevelt’s demand was
for men, more men, and then more men for France. He would have in
all six or seven million men in training, and four million American
soldiers in France in the spring of 1919. In the first article he sent
after the news of Quentin’s death, he said:

Now and always afterwards 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 for this nation and for the great ideals
of humanity across the sea. 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.

Later on the good effect of Colonel Roosevelt’s criticism was widely
recognized. The Nation, one of the Colonel’s bitterest opponents,
in general a strong supporter of the Administration, said of his
editorials: “It is largely to him that we owe our ability to discuss
peace terms and to criticize at all.”

Summing up the effect of Colonel Roosevelt’s campaign to speed up our
part in the war, The Star said editorially:

There were periods of intolerance when neither Mr. Roosevelt nor The
Star was under any illusions as to the reception that would be given
frank criticism. But it was essential that such criticism be made in
order to correct evils that were really threatening the outcome of the
war....

The selective draft was the big achievement of the Administration
in 1917. But having prepared this, the Government proceeded in most
leisurely fashion, apparently not getting the slightest comprehension
of the danger to the Allied cause resulting from Russia’s collapse.

The War Department continued to be run, as it had been in the past,
by amiable old gentlemen who were wholly unfit for the task. Although
airplanes had become an essential feature of modern warfare, it was
not until weeks after war had been declared that the department sent a
commission to Europe to learn what a military airplane was. Rifles are
usually regarded as a part of the military equipment of troops. But it
was two months after the declaration of war before the War Department
decided what type of rifle to make. An army of millions of men was
certain to need uniforms, but the easy-going quartermaster-general
turned down the offer of the wool manufacturers’ association for the
entire output of the country and the result was that the soldiers
went into the winter without warm clothing or overcoats. As for
artillery, the incapacity was complete.

Meanwhile we sent a small expeditionary force to France, and in the
autumn began sending troops across in a leisurely way, at the rate of
ten thousand a week.

Then suddenly, late in March, with the German army driving straight on
Paris and the Allied defenses giving way, under the appeal of Lloyd
George we suddenly woke to the fact that we had been playing with the
war. From that time on we acted as if we had a man’s job, and we got
into the line just in time to save the situation.

All through the fall and winter of last year what Mr. Roosevelt and
the other outspoken critics were trying to do was to arouse the
country and the Administration to the magnitude of the task and to the
danger from delay. They succeeded only partly. But they did succeed
to the extent of forcing the removal of incompetent departmental
chiefs, and the substitution of efficient men who were able to handle
the emergency when the Administration finally discovered that the
emergency existed.

Looking back over the events of the last eighteen months, we believe
no fair-minded American can fail to perceive the patriotic service
done by Mr. Roosevelt and other critics, who were seeking to awaken
the Government from a lethargy that just missed proving fatal to the
Allied cause.

Colonel Roosevelt’s last visit to his desk in the editorial rooms of
The Star was early in October, 1918. It struck those who had been
associated with him that he was not quite as fit as usual. I asked
him if it were true the physicians had placed him on a diet. He
said it was, but, to be frank, he had not given much heed to their
recommendations. In a discussion at his desk with men of the editorial
force a recent article about Roosevelt by George Creel came up. “I
must admit,” said Colonel Roosevelt, laughing, “he took a rather
jaundiced view of me.”

Mr. Kirkwood was away in the army, but Mrs. Kirkwood was in Kansas
City and the Colonel stayed at their home during his visit. At this
time a subject was brought up which had been talked over along in the
summer--a visit from him to the battle front to write at first hand
of the American forces. Newspapers which were receiving the service
and others which had heard of the suggestion were eager for Roosevelt
articles from France, but from the first the Colonel had demurred and
now said a final “No.” His reason was that he could not go as a private
citizen, as he had been denied permission to go as a soldier; it would
not only be unbecoming for a former president of the United States
to go in any newspaper capacity, but how to treat him would be an
embarrassing question to France.

The tide had turned toward the Allies, and the country was certain the
defeat of the enemy was a question of a short time. Colonel Roosevelt’s
articles turned to a discussion of the kind of peace there should be
and examinations of the President’s “Fourteen Points” and his notes
to Austria. On November 11--the day the armistice was signed--it was
considered necessary for Colonel Roosevelt to go to a hospital in New
York. From his hospital room he telegraphed that day an editorial
joining in the general rejoicing over peace and appraising tersely our
part in the war.

A few days later there came an editorial prompted by a letter from a
woman friend in California. Visiting this friend was another woman
whose son had died of influenza in the navy. That mother had said she
had given her boy proudly to her country, “but if only he could have
died with a gun in his hand--a little glory for him and a thought for
me that my sacrifice had not been useless.” The California friend had
written: “There must be other mothers who feel they have laid their
sacrifices on cold altars. You have written much that will comfort the
mothers whose sons have paid with their bodies in battle. Isn’t there
something you can say to comfort these other mothers?”

The letter touched Colonel Roosevelt deeply. “I felt a real pang when
I received this letter,” he wrote, “because the thought suggested had
been in my mind and yet I had failed to express it.” The editorial,
“Sacrifices on Cold Altars,” which he wrote in response, gave
consolation from the heart. It made it clear that all who had given
their lives in the country’s service, whether in action or from
disease, stood on “an exact level of service and sacrifice and honor
and glory.” It concluded:

The mother or wife whose son or husband has died, whether in battle
or by fever or in the accident inevitable in hurriedly preparing a
modern army for war, must never feel that the sacrifice has been laid
on “a cold altar.” There is no gradation of honor among these gallant
men and no essential gradation of service. They all died that we might
live; our debt is to all of them, and we can pay it even personally
only by striving so to live as to bring a little nearer the day when
justice and mercy shall rule in our own homes and among the nations
of the world.

From his entrance to the hospital until his departure on Christmas
day, the editorials were less frequent. The Peace Conference, the
Congressional elections, and the League of Nations were uppermost
in public thought, and on these subjects the Colonel wrote several
editorials. Both Colonel Roosevelt and The Star were anxious to
find some means to lessen the chance of war through international
organization. Both feared, from President Wilson’s addresses, that he
had in view some grandiose plan that would be impractical. In December
a member of The Star’s staff visited the Colonel in Roosevelt Hospital,
New York. At that time he had written one or two editorials discussing
the subject in a tentative way. He was asked if he did not think he
could say something more positive.

“I doubt it,” he said. “I feel there is so little that really can
be done by any form of treaty to prevent war that it would be
disappointing for me to point it out. Any treaty adopted under the
influence of war emotions would be like the good resolutions adopted
at a mass meeting. We have an anti-vice crusade. Everybody is aroused.
The movement culminates in a big meeting and we adopt resolutions
abolishing vice. But vice isn’t abolished that way.”

Correspondence on the subject followed, and December 28, 1918, he wrote
this letter to the member of the staff who had been talking with him:

In substance, or, as our friends the diplomats say, in principle, I
am in hearty accord with you. But do you really think we ought to
guarantee to stand with France and Italy in all future continental
wars? It’s a pretty big guarantee and I don’t know whether it would be
made good. Indeed, I don’t know whether it ought to be made good. I am
most heartily with France and England now, but I certainly would not
have been with France fifty years ago or with England sixty years ago,
and our clear duty to antagonize Germany has slowly become apparent
during the last thirty or forty years. Remember that you are freer to
write unsigned editorials than I am when I use my signature. If you
propose a little more than can be carried out, no harm comes, but if I
do so it may hamper me for years. However, I will do my best to write
you such an article as you suggest: and then probably one on what I
regard as infinitely more important, namely, our business to prepare
for our own self-defense.

As for Wilson having with him the bulk of the people who are taken in
by this name [The League of Nations], I attach less importance to this
than you do. He is a conscienceless rhetorician and he will always
get the well-meaning, foolish creatures who are misled by names. At
present anything he says about the World League is in the domain of
empty and windy eloquence. The important point will be reached when he
has to make definite the thing for which he stands.

The article written in response to the promise in this letter was
Colonel Roosevelt’s last contribution to The Star. It was dictated at
his home at Oyster Bay, January 3, which was Friday. His secretary
expected to take it to him for correction the following Monday. Instead
an early call on the telephone that morning told of his passing away in
his sleep.

RALPH STOUT

ROOSEVELT IN THE KANSAS CITY STAR

[Illustration]

DR. FITZSIMONS’S DEATH[1]

SEPTEMBER 17, 1917

The first name on the casualty list of the American army in France is
that of Dr. William T. Fitzsimons, of Kansas City, killed in a German
air raid on our hospitals. Dr. Fitzsimons had already served for some
time in a French hospital. As soon as this Nation went to war he
volunteered for service abroad.

There is sometimes a symbolic significance in the first death in a war.
It is so in this case. To the mother he leaves, the personal grief
must in some degree be relieved by the pride in the fine and gallant
life which has been crowned by the great sacrifice. We, his fellow
countrymen, share this pride and sympathize with this sorrow. But
his death should cause us more than pride or sorrow; for in striking
fashion it illustrates the two lessons this war should especially teach
us--German brutality and American unpreparedness.

The first lesson is the horror of Germany’s calculated brutality. As
part of her deliberate policy of frightfulness she has carried on a
systematic campaign of murder against hospitals and hospital ships.
The first American in our army to die was killed in one of these
typical raids. We should feel stern indignation against Germany for the
brutality of which this was merely one among innumerable instances.
But we should feel even sterner indignation towards--and fathomless
contempt for--the base or unthinking folly of those Americans who aid
and abet the authors of such foul wickedness; and these include all men
and women who in any way apologize for or uphold Germany, who assail
any of our allies, who oppose our taking active part in the war, or who
desire an inconclusive peace.

The second lesson is our unpreparedness. We are in the eighth month
since Germany went to war against us; and we are still only at the
receiving end of the game. We have not in France a single man on the
fighting line. The first American killed was a doctor. No German
soldier is yet in jeopardy from anything we have done.

The military work we are now doing is work of preparation. It should
have been done just three years ago. Nine tenths of wisdom is being
wise in time.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Although Colonel Roosevelt did not begin his regular contributions
to The Star until October 1, the death of Dr. W. T. Fitzsimons, of
Kansas City, moved him to send this article.

BLOOD, IRON, AND GOLD

SEPTEMBER 23, 1917

Bismarck announced that his policy for Germany was one of blood and
iron. The men who now guide, and for some decades have guided,
German international policy have added gold as the third weapon in
Germany’s armory.

[Illustration: A PAGE OF THE MANUSCRIPT OF ONE OF ROOSEVELT’S
EDITORIALS]

To a policy based on callous disregard of death and suffering, and
the brutal use of force, they have added the habitual and extensive
employment of corruption as a means for weakening their foes and
bending other nations to their service.

The Administration at Washington recently made public the proof that
Ambassador Bernstorff, on behalf of the German Government, was, up to
the very last moment of his stay, engaged in efforts to bribe with
German money American organizations or individuals who could be used to
further Germany’s purpose by protesting against war, demanding peace
at any price, opposing the measures necessary for war, denouncing
the Allied nations, praising unpreparedness, or by some other of the
methods habitual with pro-German Senators, Congressmen, editors, heads
of peace societies and the like.

No well-informed man was surprised at the revelation. Every reasonably
well-informed man, who has known about matters at Washington, has
known that for nearly three years German money and governmental power
has been used for the corruption of American newspapers and pacifist
organizations and for the pay of German, and the bribery of native,
scoundrels to wreck our industries with dynamite and in all ways
debauch our political life. The Government, from the highest official
down, knew all these facts over two years ago. The New York World
published the names of some of the editors and other individuals who
had received money, and the amounts received. The Austrian Ambassador,
Dumba, and two of the German attachés, Boy-Ed and Von Papen, were
dismissed for inspiring and countenancing the intrigues. It was
absolutely impossible that what they did was not ordered and supervised
by Bernstorff, under the direction of the Berlin Government. It was
deeply to our discredit that we did not then show the courage and
manliness to break at once with Germany, instead of hiding our heads in
the sand so as to avoid seeing the guilt of the German Government, and
punishing the minor instruments of wrongdoing who, under no conceivable
circumstances, would or could have acted save as their superiors bade
them act. Germany has hitherto been able to do but little against us
with blood and iron; gold has been her weapon, and her agents have been
the foes of our own household.

Every man in this country who is now playing the pro-German game
should be made to feel that he must overcome a presumption of guilty
motive. There are misguided pro-Germans who are uninfluenced by corrupt
motives, just as there were in the Civil War copperheads who were
merely misguided and not conscious wrongdoers. But these men are in
mighty unpleasant company!

The pacifist, the man who wishes a peace without victory, the supporter
of Senator La Follette or Senator Stone, the man who in any way now
aids Germany, may be honest; but he stands cheek by jowl with hired
traitors, and he is serving the cause of the malignant and unscrupulous
enemies of his country.

THE GHOST DANCE OF THE SHADOW HUNS

OCTOBER 1, 1917

Ten days ago a ghost dance was held in St. Paul under the auspices
of the Non-Partisan League, with Senator La Follette as the star
performer. We have the authority of the German Kaiser for the use of
the word Hun in a descriptive sense, as representing the ideal to which
he wished his soldiers in their actions to approximate. It is therefore
fair to use the word descriptively as a substitute for the German
in this war. It is also fair to use it descriptively of the German
sympathizer in this country, of the man who aids and abets Germany by
condoning the German offenses against us, by seeking to raise class
division in this country, with, of course, the attendant benefit to
Germany; by screaming against the war, or in favor of an inconclusive
peace; or by belittling or sneering at or declaring inopportune the
effort to arouse the spirit of Americanism. The Americans who thus
serve Germany deserve the title of Shadow Huns.

It was to me a matter of sincere regret to have the Non-Partisan League
play the part it did at St. Paul in connection with the meeting
which Senator La Follette addressed. They held what was in effect a
disloyalty day festival. When the Non-Partisan League movement was
first started, I was inclined to hail it, because I am exceedingly
anxious to do everything in my power to grapple with and remedy every
injustice or wrong or mere failure to give ample opportunity to the
farmer. With most of the avowed objects and with some of the methods of
the Non-Partisan League I was in entire sympathy, although there were
certain things it did which I felt should be condemned, and certain
ways of achieving its objects which I believed to be mischievous. But
when the League, on the disloyalty day in question, ranged itself on
the side of the allies of Germany and the enemies of this country,
it became necessary for every loyal American severely to condemn it.
Morally, although doubtless not legally, it thereby came perilously
near ranging itself beside the I.W.W., the German-American Alliance,
and the German Socialist party machine in America.

When I spoke in Minneapolis three men spoke from the same platform
with me. One was that fine and loyal American, Governor Burnquist,
of Swedish ancestry. One was a blacksmith, born in Sweden, a former
member of the Socialist party, who left the party within the last six
months when he became convinced that it was the tool or ally of German
autocracy. The third was another working-man, of German birth.

At the meeting in Wisconsin I was on the platform with the Mayor of
Racine, an American citizen of German birth. My companions throughout
the trip were Judge Harry Olson, of Swedish parentage, and Mr.
Otto Butz, of German parentage, both of whom represent that kind
of Americanism to which we all must subscribe if we are to be good
Americans.

The Americanism of all these men is the Americanism I profess, and it
is the exact antithesis of the attitude of the Shadow Huns, who, under
the lead of native-born Americans like Messrs. La Follette and Townley,
by their utterances, stir dissensions among our own people and weaken
us in the prosecution of the war.

The two working-men of whom I speak, the man born in Sweden and the man
born in Germany, spoke with rugged emphasis of their devotion to this
country, and of their sense of the duty of every man fit to be called
an American in this crisis. They emphasized the fact that Germany’s
social system was based upon the duty of the average man to cringe
before the insolence of his superiors and his right himself to behave
with insolence to his inferiors. It is for this system of cringing
abasement before the powerful, and of brutal insolence to the weak
for which the Shadow Huns in this country stand when they directly or
indirectly talk against our Government for going to war or talk against
any step which it takes for the efficient waging of the war; and, above
all, when they directly or indirectly apologize for or champion Germany.

It is the duty of every American citizen fearlessly, but truthfully,
to criticize not only his Government but his people, for wrongdoing,
or for failure to do what is right. It is his duty to obey the
injunction of President Wilson by insisting upon pitiless publicity of
inefficiency, of subordination of public to private considerations,
or of any other form of governmental failure to perform duty. Such
criticism is absolutely indispensable if we are to do our duty in this
war, and if we are to adopt a permanent policy of preparedness which
will make this Nation safe. But the men who oppose the war; who fail
to support the Government in every measure which really tends to the
efficient prosecution of the war; and above all who in any shape or way
champion the cause and the actions of Germany, show themselves to be
the Huns within our own gates and the allies of the men whom our sons
and brothers are crossing the ocean to fight.

I do not admire these Shadow Huns. But least of all do I admire those
among them, whether Senators, Congressmen, or public officials of any
other kind who, although on Uncle Sam’s pay-roll, nevertheless seek to
stab Uncle Sam in the back.

SAM WELLER AND MR. SNODGRASS

OCTOBER 2, 1917

Readers of “Pickwick,” if such there still be, will recall the time
when Mr. Pickwick was arrested and some of his followers resisted
arrest. Sam Weller made no boasts; but he spoiled the looks of various
opponents. Mr. Snodgrass began ostentatiously to take off his coat,
announcing in a loud voice that he was going to begin. But he gave no
further trouble.

Over eight months have elapsed since Germany went to war with us,
and we severed relations with Germany as the first move in our sixty
days’ stern foremost drift into, not going to, war, but admitting
that we were already at war. During those eight months we have paid
the penalty for our criminally complete failure to prepare during the
previous three years by not having yet to our credit one single piece
of completed achievement. The Administration has unwisely striven to
cover this past failure to prepare, and present failure to achieve, by
occasional grandiloquent pronunciamentos as to the wonderful things
we are going to do in the future; and usually the language used is
designed to convince ignorant people that these things have already
been done.

One day it is announced that we have discovered an infallible remedy
against submarine attacks; and the next day it is announced that the
toll by submarines is heavier than during any previous month. We read
that the British drive is successful, but stubbornly resisted; that
some thousands of prisoners have been taken; and that the losses have
been terribly heavy. We read at the same time that we are going to have
an immense army of aircraft--some time next spring. And actually there
is less boasting over the former statement than over the latter! We
read of the valor and suffering of the French in some heroic assault;
and the Administration proudly announces that, after eight months, the
drafted men are beginning to assemble in their camps--and omits to
mention that they have neither guns nor uniforms, are short of blankets
and sweaters.

So far the Sam Wellers who have done things are our allies. Uncle
Sam is still complacently engaged in taking off his coat, like Mr.
Snodgrass. Under such circumstances it is unwise for him to announce
overloudly what he is going to do when at last he begins. Let him wait
until he has done it; and meanwhile bend all his energies to doing it,
and doing it soon. Brag is a good dog. But Holdfast is a better.

BROOMSTICK PREPAREDNESS

OCTOBER 4, 1917

At present we Americans have two prime duties.

The first is to make the best of actual conditions; to prepare our
army, navy, merchant marine, air service, munition plants, agriculture,
food conservation, and everything else as speedily as possible, so as
to fight this war to a completely victorious conclusion.

The second is not to fool ourselves, but to face the fact of our
complete and lamentable unpreparedness. And to inaugurate a policy of
permanent preparedness which will prevent our ever again being caught
in such a humiliating condition.

The men of the national guard and of the drafted army are of admirable
type. I do not believe that any other great nation can produce quite
their equals on such a scale as we can; the zeal, energy, and adaptable
intelligence with which they are doing all they can in the various
camps must be a matter of pride for all Americans. There is all the
more reason why such first-class material should be given a first-class
chance for speedy and efficient action. It has not been given that
chance. The steps we as a nation are now taking ought to have been
taken three years ago. Failure to take them then has meant broomstick
preparedness now. Failure to take them as a permanent policy now means
broomstick preparedness in some future vital crisis when we may not
have allies willing and able to protect us while we slowly prepare to
meet the enemy.

The Ordnance Bureau of the War Department admits that we have not
rifles for our national army, but attempts to excuse matters by saying
that it is of no consequence because we shall have rifles a few months
hence when our men are ready to go abroad. The admission is correct.
The excuse is not. Even for training, it is better to arm infantrymen
each with the weapon he is to use rather than to give each man a
broomstick or to give every four men an antiquated rifle which cannot
be used in service, and most of our artillery regiments at present
either have no guns or wooden guns or, in rather rare cases, old-style
guns which cannot be matched against any present-day artillery.
Moreover, and this is the vital point, we now have the time to prepare
only because the English and French fleets and armies protect us. Eight
months have passed since Germany openly went to war with us. As yet
we have not rifles for our infantry. As yet we have not guns for our
artillery. It will be at least a year after we were dragged into the
war before our army will have received the weapons with which we are to
wage the war.

This is broomstick preparedness, and there is not the slightest use in
trying to justify or excuse broomstick preparedness.

THE BONDHOLDERS AND THE PEOPLE

OCTOBER 7, 1917

Not many years ago one of the favorite cries of those who wished to
exploit for their own advantage the often justifiable popular unrest
and discontent was that “the people were oppressed in the interest
of the bondholders.” The more ardent souls of this type wished to
repudiate the national debt, to “wipe it out as with a sponge,” in order
to remove the “oppression.” The bondholders were always held up as
greedy creatures who had obtained an unfair advantage of the people as
a whole.

Well, the Liberty Loan now offers the chance to make the people and the
bondholders interchangeable terms. The bonds are issued in such a way
that the farmer and the wage-worker have exactly the same chance as the
banker to purchase and hold as many or as few as they wish. No matter
how small a man’s means, he can get some part of a bond if he wishes.
The Government and the big financiers are doing all they can to make
the sale as widely distributed as possible. Some bankers are serving
without pay in the effort to put all the facts before the people as a
whole, and so make the loan in very truth a people’s loan. It rests
with the people themselves to decide whether it shall be such.

The Government must have the money. It is a patriotic duty to purchase
the bonds. And they offer an absolutely safe investment. The money
invested is invested on the best security in the world--that of the
United States; of the American Nation itself. The money cannot be lost
unless the United States is destroyed, and in that case we would all
of us be smashed anyhow, so that it would not make any difference.
The people can, if they choose, now make themselves the bondholders.
If they do not so choose, and if they force Wall Street to become the
largest purchaser of the bonds, which must be bought somehow, then they
will have no right in the future to grumble about the bondholders as a
special class. We can now, all of us, join that class if we wish.

FACTORIES OF GOOD CITIZENSHIP

OCTOBER 10, 1917

The training camps for the drafted men of the national army are huge
factories for turning out first-class American citizens. Not only are
they fitting our people for war; they are fitting them for the work
of peace. They are making patriotism, love of country, devotion to the
flag, and a sense of duty to others living facts, instead of unreal
phrases. The public schools are laboratories of Americanism for our
children; the training camps are laboratories of Americanism for our
young men.

I have just seen a party of drafted men from the East Side of New
York City start for Camp Upton with a band playing, an American flag
flying. And two of their number in front, one dressed as Uncle Sam,
and the other as the Kaiser, dragged along in manacles. There is no
fifty-fifty Americanism in men with such spirit. A captain at this
camp, a Plattsburg man, told me that his company of East Side New
Yorkers showed all the intelligence and the zealous desire to learn
which the fine young college graduates at Plattsburg have shown.
Another captain told me that one of his men, a young Jew, had come
to him and said that at first the East Siders had hated coming, not
knowing what was ahead of them, but that now they felt that they were
in a University of American Citizenship. A surgeon in the camp told me
that men also, proved physically lacking after a week’s trial, were
in most cases bitterly chagrined at being sent away. A colonel from
a Southern camp has reported that already his country boys from the
remote farms are straightening and broadening morally, mentally, and
physically, and that the improvement is really incalculable. From every
camp we hear of the eagerness with which the men are doing their duty,
of their resourcefulness and of the real patriotism which is being
rapidly learned. All this means not merely good soldiers in war, but
good citizens in peace; it means an immense growth in the spirit of
Americanism.

The young men are learning to be efficient, alert, self-respectful and
respectful of others; they are learning to scorn laziness, slackness,
and cowardice. All are serving on a precise equality of privilege
and of duty and are judged each only on his merits. The sons of the
foreign-born learn that they are exactly as good Americans as any one
else, and when they return to their home their families will learn it,
too.

Let all good Americans insist that now, without delay, we make this
state of affairs our permanent national policy by law. We have
built the camp, we have encountered the failures to provide army
uniforms and blankets and all the other exasperating delays which are
inevitable when a nation like ours has foolishly trusted to broomstick
preparedness. We shall avoid all these things for the future if we
continue these camps, as permanent features of the life of all our
young men, and change the selective draft unto a system of universal
obligatory military training for all our young men of nineteen and
twenty, it being understood that they are not to go to war until they
are twenty-one. We are now suffering, and the whole world is now
suffering, from the effects of our broomstick preparedness. Let us do
away with broomstick preparedness for the future and substitute real
preparedness.

PILLAR-OF-SALT CITIZENSHIP

OCTOBER 12, 1917

When Lot’s wife was journeying to safety, she could not resist looking
back to the land she had left and was thereupon turned to a pillar of
salt. The men from the Old World who, instead of adopting an attitude
of hearty and exclusive loyalty to their land, try also to look
backward to their old countries, become pillars-of-salt citizens, who
are not merely useless, but mischievous members of our commonwealth.

The dispatches of the German Government, just published by the State
Department, give us an illuminating glimpse, not only of German methods
and of German conduct towards this country, but also of certain phases
of our own citizenship. The German Government proposed to use this
country as a basis of operations for wrecking the Canadian railway. It
also proposed to use and pay its agents and certain of our citizens for
“sabotage in every kind of American factory for supplying munitions of
war,” and for “a vigorous campaign to secure a majority in both houses
favorable to Germany.” The German staff, in issuing these directions
and in naming certain American citizens as tools for the treacherous
work, insisted that the embassy should not be compromised and that
“similar precautions must be taken in regard to Irish pro-German
propaganda.”

Good citizens who have been misled by false counsel must now clearly
see that the campaign of dynamite against our industries, with the
attendant wreckage and murder, was a deliberate act of secret war by
the German Government; that the attempt by Americans to secure an
embargo on sending munitions to the Allies was an effort to aid Germany
in thus making war on the United States; that the Irish pro-German
movement in this country was financed and guided from Germany, and that
our citizens, whether of foreign or native birth, whether of native
American or German or Irish origin, who took part in pushing these
movements, were doing substantially the same kind of work that Benedict
Arnold once tried to do.

Some of them were doubtless paid, others were doubtless not paid,
but the paid and the unpaid alike were serving Germany against the
United States. These matters are now all of public record. The excuse
of ignorance can no longer avail any one. Henceforth the citizens of
German or Irish birth who take part in such activities as those of most
of the German-American alliances and the like, are at best standing in
the position of pillar-of-salt citizenship; at worst they, and above
all their native American associates, who now indulge in pacifist
movements or demand a peace without overwhelming victory or ask for
a referendum on the war, or in any other way serve the brutal and
conscienceless ambition of Germany, stand unpleasantly near the lonely
eminence occupied by Benedict Arnold.

BROOMSTICK APOLOGISTS

OCTOBER 14, 1917

The chief of the Ordnance Bureau of the army, in commenting on the
shortage of rifles, has said that it is of no consequence, because
“every soldier will be supplied a rifle when he starts for France.”

Of course he will, otherwise he cannot start. One of the leading papers
of New York backs up the statement by saying that the “drilling in the
camps without rifles is ended now” and that “General Crozier delayed
the work so as to get rifles with the same ammunition our allies are
using.”

Neither statement is correct. The last is the reverse of truth. On
October 2 in one camp there were still only one hundred rifles for
twenty thousand men and other camps were scarcely better off, and the
delay in getting rifles during the last eight months has been due
primarily to the refusal of the Ordnance Department to get rifles using
the ammunition of our allies.

If during the two years preceding our entry into the war the Government
factories had been run full speed, we would have had over two million
of Springfield rifles instead of under one million. Our shortage was
due solely to our policy of dawdle. Our factories produced a mere
dribble of rifles and no big field guns until the inevitable happened.

War came. Having no rifles of our own for the new army, the War
Department decided to adopt the English rifle, the Enfield, which was
being built in this country at the rate of nearly nine thousand a day
in private plants, and by speeding them up the number could have been
immediately increased to fourteen thousand a day. But the authorities
insisted that the Enfields should be changed to take our ammunition,
and that certain parts should be standardized and made interchangeable.
As regards this excuse, it is sufficient to point out that in the
first place it was a very grave error, while making the parts of our
Enfields interchangeable, at the same time to make their ammunition not
interchangeable with that of the British Enfields, for the number of
Springfields on hand was negligible compared to the millions of rifles
we would ultimately need, and in the second place the delay even for
this purpose was wholly inexcusable. The German submarine note came on
January 31. An alert War Department would have had its rifle programme
minutely mapped out within two weeks. The delay in furnishing final
specifications to the factories was such that they could not begin on
the complete rifle until the latter part of August. Six months is a
“perfectly endurable delay” only if we are content to accept the speed
standards in war of Tiglath-Pileser and Pharaoh Necho. The United
States must learn to adopt the war speed standards of the Twentieth
Century, A.D., instead of those of the Seventh Century, B.C.

If in April we had been ready to proceed with the Enfield rifle, we
would now have about two million of the new rifles instead of about
one-fiftieth of that number. General Crozier says that we have only had
to wait “two or three months--a perfectly endurable delay.” Surely if
there is anything this war teaches it is the vital importance of time.
Two or three months’ waiting in order to get a rifle which does not
carry the ammunition of our allies represents not merely an undesirable
delay but grave unwisdom.

General Crowder handled the draft to perfection because he appreciated
that the difference between sending a telegram at 5 or at 4:45 might
be of momentous consequence. General Crozier has bungled the rifle
situation because of the attitude which makes him regard two or three
months as “a perfectly endurable delay.”

For two years and a half before entering the war we relied upon
broomstick preparedness. For the first eight months of the war we have
followed the same policy as regards the vital matter of rifles for our
troops.

THE LIBERTY LOAN AND THE PRO-GERMANS

OCTOBER 16, 1917

Mr. Victor Berger, the Socialist leader of Milwaukee, is reported in
the press as sneering at the Liberty bonds, berating the Administration
for, as he says, appointing thirty-three wealthy capitalists on the
National Council of Defense, and in effect seeming to persuade his
hearers that they ought, at this crisis of foreign war, to be hostile
to those of their countrymen who are “capitalists” instead of the
Kaiser.

This is natural. The Socialist party machine in this country is run by
Germans. Socialists, who were sincerely desirous of social betterment
and who were sincere in this hatred of tyranny and wrongdoing, have
left the Socialist party. Those who remain in it have turned it into a
mere tool of the brutal militaristic autocracy which now threatens the
world. These men are completely dominated by the Germans, and German
Socialists in America have shown in this crisis that they are Germans
first, Socialists a long way second, and not Americans at all. In
fact, they are venomously hostile to the country in which they dwell
and claim citizenship, and are eagerly ready to sacrifice Socialism
itself to the interests of the Germany of the Hohenzollerns. They stand
well to the front among the Shadow Huns who, within our gates, are the
allies of the Huns without our gates.

While in Wisconsin I was told that the German-American Alliance, in its
efforts to persuade American citizens to betray their citizenship in
the interests of Germany, had relatively as many adherents among the
Socialists as among the two great parties.

When the Socialists under such leadership oppose or sneer at the
Liberty Loan, it is proof positive that all patriotic citizens should
buy Liberty bonds up to the limit of their ability. The Socialists
attack the Liberty Loan in order to hurt America and help Germany.
The domination of “American capitalism” is a mere blind to obscure the
service they are trying to render to the capitalists and militarists of
Germany.

For the composition of the National Council of Defense, I am sorry
that more labor men and farmers are not on it, but I wish they could
be put on in addition to, not as substitutes for, the men of means who
are on it, for these men of means, taken as a whole, have at much cost
to themselves rendered devoted and invaluable service to the Nation.
Their absence would be a general calamity to America and a great aid
to Germany, and all true lovers of America should recognize this
fact. I know some of these men personally, and those whom I know have
sacrificed time, effort, and money in order to be of help to the Nation
at this juncture. In fact, I have never known more devoted public
service than that they rendered at this crisis.

It is unpatriotic at this time to attack good Americans because they
have capital and are trying to make this capital of service in the
war. Capital is necessary to business and industry, and in this war
industrial efficiency is almost as necessary as military skill. The
factories at home are almost as important as the armies in the field.
Wise war taxation of capital and profits is eminently necessary, but it
must not go to an extent that will interfere with production and the
forward movement of business, or widespread calamity would result.

We are a great Nation, engaged in a stupendous war. Let us use dollars
as we use the loaded shells, and each can do its best work only under
the leadership of the ablest man: the business man in one case, the
military man in the other. By all means let the people be masters of
the capital of the country at the present time. The surest way to do
this is for the people themselves to buy the Liberty bonds and not
leave them to Wall Street. They are the one absolutely safe investment,
both for men of small means and men of large means.

A DIFFICULT QUESTION TO ANSWER

OCTOBER 18, 1917

A correspondent in Pueblo, Colorado, writes me as follows:

By what logic are we “at peace” with Austria, when she is furnishing
troops or artillery to Germany to fight and kill our soldiers on the
western front? The same question might apply to Turkey. Remember, too,
that we are furnishing money and supplies to Italy, our ally, in her
struggle with Austria. The Western folks are looking to you to answer
hard questions of this sort for us which we don’t understand.

Neither I nor any one else can satisfactorily answer the question.
A limited liability war in which we fight Germany ourselves and pay
money to Italy and Russia to enable them to fight Austria and Turkey,
with whom we are at peace, savors of sharp practice and not of
statesmanship. It is a good rule either to stay out of war or to go
into it, but not to try to do both things at once.

Moreover, this matter squarely tests our sincerity when we announced
that we went to war to make the world safe for democracy. The phrase
must have been used in a somewhat oratorical fashion, anyhow, because
we have ourselves within the last year or two made the world entirely
unsafe for democracy in the two small and weak republics of Haiti and
San Domingo. Therefore, the phrase must have meant that we intended to
make the world safe for well-behaved nations, great or small, to enjoy
their liberty and govern themselves as they wished. If it did not mean
this, the phrase was much worse than an empty flourish, for it was
deliberately deceitful. If it did mean this, then we are recreant to
our promise unless we at once go to war with Austria and Turkey.

Both these nations are racial conglomerates, in which one or two
nationalities tyrannize over other subject nationalities. The world
will not and cannot be safe for democracy until the Armenians, the
Syrian Christians, and the Arabs are freed from Turkish tyranny, and
until the Poles, Bohemians, and Southern Slavs, now under the Austrian
yoke, are made into separate, independent nations, and until the
Italians of Southwest Austria are restored to Italy and the Rumanians
of Eastern Hungary to Rumania.

Unless we propose in good faith to carry out this programme, we have
been guilty of a rhetorical sham when we pledged ourselves to make
the world safe for democracy. The United States must not make promises
which it has no intention of performing. We are breaking this promise
and incidentally are acting absurdly every day that we continue at
nominal peace with Germany’s fellow tyrants and subject allies, Austria
and Turkey.

NOW HELP THE LIBERTY LOAN

OCTOBER 20, 1917

The concrete services to the United States which every decent American
not fortunate enough to be a soldier can now render, is to buy as many
Liberty bonds as he can afford.

The Treasury Department has set forth in the public press the facts
about the campaign which the pro-Germans in the United States are
waging against the Liberty Loan. The campaign is being waged by trying
to prevent banks from handling the Liberty Loan, and by the publication
in certain newspapers of articles tending to discourage people from
investing in the bonds. Senator La Follette’s speeches, which are to
the same effect, are also being circulated with a view to check popular
subscriptions. Senator La Follette, by the way, represents exactly
the type which tries to prevent the people from owning the bonds and,
nevertheless, will in the future probably rail at the purchasers of the
bonds as having, somehow or other, obtained an improper and excessive
profit.

Inasmuch as the enemies of the Liberty Loan are of this type, all
patriotic Americans should strain every nerve to make the sale a
success. Moreover, this happens to be one of those rare cases where the
performance of a patriotic duty is a first-class financial investment.
The patriot is rendering a great service to the Nation while he is also
making a capital investment for himself. If the people do not take the
bonds, they will be taken by the big capitalists. The people have the
first call, and while it is desirable in the interest of everybody to
make this a people’s loan, it is more desirable from the standpoint of
the people themselves. The investment is absolutely safe. The men and
women who fail to take advantage of it are not standing by the country
and they are not standing by their own interests. Every man, from the
day laborer to the bank president, should, according to his means,
invest in the Liberty bonds.

A SQUARE DEAL FOR THE TRAINING CAMPS

OCTOBER 21, 1917

The Playgrounds and Recreation Association of America has undertaken a
capital work in pushing the War Camp Community Committee, of which Mr.
John N. Willys, of Toledo, is chairman. The War Camp Committee work
for Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, and Colorado has made
Mr. I. R. Kirkwood chairman, and has begun an active drive to get the
three-quarter of a million dollars allotted to this district out of the
total of four million to be raised in the country.

The movement should receive the heartiest backing. It represents much
more even than the very important work of providing amusements for the
hundreds of thousands of enlisted men in the various camps, for it
also has to deal with the moral and sanitary surroundings, not only
in camps, but in the neighboring towns and cities. In former wars the
number of men incapacitated by diseases contracted in the camps often
surpassed the number incapacitated by the sickness due to the hardships
and exposure at the front. This was because of lax supervision of the
neighborhood moral and sanitary conditions, and also from failure to
instruct the soldiers that it is a shameful and unsoldierly thing to
expose themselves to disease due to indulgence in vice.

The committee is working not only in the interests of national morality
and decency. It is also working in the interest of military efficiency,
for it will save scores of thousands of soldiers from being shamefully
incapacitated before reaching the front, and the gain to the Nation
from the economical as well as the moral standpoint, after the war,
will be very great.

The work of the committee will be carried on outside the camps in the
adjacent communities acting in coöperation with churches, clubs, and
organizations of public-spirited men and women. It will be wholly
different from the work inside the camps, which is done by the
Y.M.C.A., the Knights of Columbus, the Y.M.H.A., and similar bodies.
In many places the local authorities already have done much work along
the lines sketched by the national committee, and wherever this is the
case, the national committee will surely aid the local bodies.

All good and patriotic men and women should heartily back this work to
keep Uncle Sam’s soldiers clean, decent, and self-respecting; to make
them better citizens and more formidable fighting men.

THE PASSING OF THE CRIPPLE

OCTOBER 23, 1917

If men are alert, resolute, and energetic, they can usually secure some
compensation from any calamity. This dreadful war, attended by the
killing and crippling of men on a scale hitherto unknown, has brought
as a compensation a determined move to do away with the cripple; that
is, to cease the mere effort to keep a crippled man alive and, instead,
to endeavor by reconstructive surgery to restore him to himself and to
the community as an economic asset.

Surgeon-General Gorgas and his associates have worked out, and are
ready practically to test, an organized system under which any
seemingly crippled man is to be kept under the guidance of the medical
branch of the army until either the usefulness of the damaged part
has been restored or else until he has been trained in other ways so
as to enable him measurably to overcome the handicap. In almost every
case something will be done to make the cripple less of a burden
to himself and others, and in most cases, the army medical service
confidently believes, the cripple will once more become a useful and
therefore a happy citizen. In all our special hospitals that are now
being planned, the curative workshop is part of the plant. The effort
is to be not only for the physical development and physical reëducation
of the wounded part, but also for any intellectual training necessary
to produce new forms of effective ability which will offset any loss
in physical ability. The aim is not merely to save the life of, and
then turn loose, a crippled pensioner who can be little but a burden
on the community; it is to take care of the wounded man until the very
best of which he is capable has been developed, so that when once more
in the outside world he will be a real asset to the Nation. This is a
fine thing for the Nation, and is of incalculable consequence from the
standpoint of the self-respect and happiness of the man.

This represents the complete reversal of the old point of view, which
was that the cripple was turned loose with a pension for less than what
if sound in body he would have earned, and a burden on the community.
The purpose of Surgeon-General Gorgas and his associates is that the
Government shall stand behind the man and invest money in him so as to
develop all his latent resources, fitting him to make good as a citizen
and expecting him thus to make good. There will be, where necessary, a
money compensation for the injury, but the great compensation will be
the return to useful life of the man himself.

The far-reaching effect of such a policy is evident. The purpose is
to insist that every man, no matter how maimed, shall be made of
further use in the world. If once the army acts on this theory, the
great industries will follow suit. The cripple, in the sense of being
a helpless or useless cripple, will largely be eliminated, and out
of this war will have come another step in the slow march of mankind
towards a better and more just life.

THE PEACE OF COMPLETE VICTORY

OCTOBER 23, 1917

It is stated in a press report from Washington that the Allies wish the
United States to stop sending men abroad and use its ships for food and
munitions instead, but that the Administration will not agree to the
plan, and furthermore that the Administration is determined that there
shall be no peace until Germany is completely beaten. If the report is
correct, the Administration is absolutely right on both points.

As to the first point, we can well understand, in view of the steady
U-boat campaign, how greatly the Allies desire food and munitions, and
we regret with bitter shame the folly of our Government in dawdling
and delaying for six vital months after the German note of January 31
last before seriously beginning the work of building big, swift cargo
boats. But this cannot alter the fact that for the sake of our honor
and our future world usefulness we must ourselves fight and not merely
hire others to fight for us. If we do not follow this course, our
children’s heads will be bowed with humiliation. With proper energy we
could already have had some hundreds of thousands of men in the firing
line, and we should send our troops over as rapidly as possible, with
the purpose to put at least two million men against the German lines
next year, an entirely possible programme if the Government will lend
its energies with a single mind to the task.

As regards the second point, every decent citizen should make the
pacifist and the home Hun realize that agitation for a premature
peace, for a peace without victory, is seditious. Shame on every man,
and above all on every public servant and every leader of public
opinion, who endeavors to weaken the determination of America to see
the war through and at all costs secure an overwhelming triumph for
the principles for which we contend. If Germany is left unbeaten,
the Western Hemisphere will stand in cowering dread of an assault by
Germany’s ruthless and barbarous autocracy. The liberties of the free
peoples of the world are at stake.

We must now fight with all our might on European soil beside our allies
or else fear the day when we will have to fight without allies beside
our burning homes. While this war lasts, the cause of our allies is
our cause, their defeat would be our defeat, and whoever assails them
or defends Germany is a traitor to the United States. There must be
no negotiated peace. Belgium is entitled to an enormous indemnity and
France to annexation of Alsace and Lorraine. By her marine murders and
her shore raids and her utter treachery and abominable cruelty, Germany
has made herself the outlaw among nations, and with her we should
negotiate only through the mouths of our cannon. All who now advocate
a negotiated peace with her are seeking to betray civilization in the
interest of brute force and international outrage. The United States
owes her entrance into this war almost as much to the American pacifist
as to the German militarist, and now the former is meanly eager once
more to serve the latter by securing an unjust peace. Let every brave
and patriotic American spurn the base counsels of the pro-Germans
and pacifists, and insist that this country, at whatever cost, fight
steadfastly until the war closes with Germany’s complete overthrow.

FIGHTING WORK FOR THE MAN OF FIGHTING AGE

OCTOBER 25, 1917

The Y.M.C.A. is one of the most powerful agencies for good in our
military camps here at home and with our armies abroad. It would be
a veritable calamity not to have it do this work. The women and the
elderly men who have gone abroad under present conditions are rendering
a patriotic service of high value, but every young man of fighting age
who has gone abroad for the Y.M.C.A. at this time is a positive damage
to the work and should be instantly sent home. It is an ignoble thing
for an able-bodied man to be in such a position of bodily safety where
his example must naturally excite contempt and resentment among the men
who, unlike him, are risking their lives and have left their families
for the sake of a great ideal. Of course, no man of draft age should
be sent over, but this is not enough. The draft represents merely the
minimum performance of duty. No man of age to permit his entering the
army abroad or at home should be sent over. If any such man is not
in the army, it should be either because he has been turned down by
the army authorities for physical reasons or because his work at home
either for his family or for the Government imperatively demands his
presence here. If he is able to go abroad at all, he should go abroad
in the army. The fact that he is abroad for the Y.M.C.A. is proof
positive that he has no business to be there.

An officer in high command in France recently wrote home a letter,
which I have seen, describing the experiences of the junior
officers of his command with some of the young able-bodied Y.M.C.A.
representatives. He began by an emphatic testimony to the admirable
work the Y.M.C.A. had done and to its great importance, and by an
emphatic statement that it had a thoroughly bad effect on the enlisted
men to see a young man of their own age engaged in such work. He then
illustrated its effect on the young officers with whom these Y.M.C.A.
men messed, writing:

Two young Y.M.C.A. men have been at two of the battalion messes. They
are of the age whose presence here is an annoyance to the army because
they seem to have been exempted from the draft. They have obtained
bullet-proof jobs and their presence here is a bad example to all
the young men in the army. Last night at one mess the officers were
so disgusted with the Y.M.C.A., who was actually wearing a uniform
with an officer’s belt on, that they began to chaff him, telling him
that they were married men and were entitled to play safety first
themselves and thought they would apply for jobs in the Salvation
Army. The Y.M.C.A. had to stand for this because he was the only
unmarried man there, and it is said that his mother persuaded him that
he owed her a duty not to go in a dangerous place. He evidently feels
his duty keenly. The other young fellow from the Y.M.C.A. was a real
man and he left the soft job and has enlisted as a private.

The Y.M.C.A. is so very useful an organization that it is profoundly to
be regretted that it should in any way damage its usefulness. Its work
with the armies abroad should be done exclusively by women and elderly
men. No able-bodied man under forty-five should represent the Y.M.C.A.
in the war zone or with the army camps.

WISE WOMEN AND FOOLISH WOMEN

OCTOBER 27, 1917

There are wise and foolish women just as there are wise and foolish
men, and in any great crisis the welfare of this country depends
upon the extent to which the wise and patriotic men and the wise and
patriotic women can offset or overcome the folly of the foolish.

The woman who bravely and cheerfully sends her men to battle when the
country calls takes her place high on the national honor roll. She
stands beside the mothers and wives of the men of ’76 and of the men
who wore the blue and the gray in the Civil War. Where would this
country now be if Washington’s mother had not raised her boy to be a
soldier for the right?

But the women who do not raise their boys to be soldiers when the
country needs them are unfit to live in this republic. The women who at
this time try to dissuade their husbands or sons who are of military
age from entering the army or navy are thoroughly unworthy citizens.
The kind of affection which shows itself by refusing to allow the boy
to face hard work when it is his duty to do so, the mother who brings
up her boy to be a worthless idler, because she is too fond of him to
see him suffer the discomfort of hard work, and the mother who desires
her boy to play the coward or the shirk, in time of war, are not merely
foolish; they are poor citizens. They are the real enemies of their
sons, for there can be no more dangerous enemy than the human being,
man or woman, who teaches another human being to lose his soul in order
to save his body. The wise mother is the best of all good citizens
and the foolish mother stands almost at the other end of the scale.
I wish every mother in the land could read Theodosia Garrison’s poem,
recently sent out by that stirring body of patriots, the Vigilantes. It
describes the youth of twenty years, eager to play a manly part while
his mother seeks to hold him from the post of danger and duty, and two
of the verses run:

Mother of his twenty years, who holds against his will
The eager heart, the quick blood, and bids them to be still,
What of the young untrammeled soul you seek to blunt and kill?

You would save the body stainless and complete,
Fetters on the hands of it, shackles on the feet;
And in the crippling of them make soul and body meet.

WHY CRY OVER SPILT MILK?

OCTOBER 28, 1917

Nice, short-sighted persons, when the evil effects of our folly in
failing to prepare are pointed out, sometimes ask, “Why cry over spilt
milk?” The answer is that we wish to be sure that we do not spill it
again, and, unfortunately, the nice persons who bleat against any one
who points out our shortcomings in preparedness or who excuse and
champion those responsible for this unpreparedness, are doing all they
can to invite future disaster for the Nation.

The bleat assumes different expressions in different localities.
Recently the Mayor of Abilene, Texas, expressed his disapproval of my
pointing out that we, as a Nation, had wholly failed to prepare, by
saying that I was “a seditious conspirator who ought to be shot dead,”
and that the editor of the newspaper publishing the article “should be
tarred and feathered.” Although differing in method of expression, this
slightly homicidal bleat of the gentle-souled (and doubtless entirely
harmless) Mayor of Abilene, Texas, is exactly similar in thought to
the utterances of all these sheeplike creatures who raise quavering or
incoherent protests against every honest and patriotic man who points
out the damage done by our failure to prepare.

These persons cannot deny one fact I state. Nine months have passed
since, on January 31, Germany sent us a note which was practically a
declaration of war. We have only just put troops in the trenches; many
of the troops of our draft army training at home have until recently
only had broomsticks, and now only have one old Spanish War rifle for
every eight soldiers; most of the artillery regiments in these camps
either have no guns or wooden guns. After nine months we are still
wholly unable to defend ourselves or to render efficient military aid
to our allies, and we owe safety from invasion only to the protection
of the fleets and armies of the war-worn and weary nations to whose
help we nominally came. No man can truthfully deny these statements,
no man can seriously regard this situation as satisfactory. To try
to cover up the truth by bluster and brag and downright falsehoods
may possibly deceive ourselves, but will deceive no one else, whether
friend or foe. Is such foolish deceit worth while?

Nine tenths of wisdom is being wise in time. We were not wise in time.
Let us learn from our past folly future wisdom. Our first duty is to
win this war, and therefore the Shadow Hun within our gates is our
worst internal foe. Our next and equally important duty is to prepare
against disaster in the future, and therefore our next worst internal
foe is the sheeplike creature who invites national disaster for the
future by bleating against the telling of the truth in the present.

SAVE THE FOODSTUFF

OCTOBER 30, 1917

Mr. Hoover has been appointed as the man to lead us of this Nation in
the vitally important matter of producing and saving as much food as
we possibly can in order that we can send abroad the largest possible
amount for the use of our suffering allies and for the use of our own
gallant soldiers. Mr. Hoover’s preëminent services in Belgium pointed
him out as of all the men in this country the man most fit for the
very position to which he has been appointed. Let us give him our most
hearty and loyal support.

In this great and terrible war the slaughter, starvation, and
exhaustion are on a scale never before known. They are nation-wide.
Therefore every individual of every nation engaged must do his full
part or else must be held to have failed in his duty. The man of
fighting age must fight. The man with especial business capacity or
mechanical skill must produce arms or equipment or ammunition. And
every man, woman, or child must help produce food if possible, and in
any event must help economize it.

Mr. Hoover has asked us during this week to devote ourselves to getting
all our people voluntarily to pledge themselves to certain forms of
food economy,--which are of great consequence from the standpoint of
sending abroad the foodstuffs needed by our Allies and by our own
troops. There are certain foods which are easily transported which are
nourishing and which are peculiarly suited for the use both of our
allies and of our troops in the field. Mr. Hoover’s plan is that we
shall all of us voluntarily limit along strict lines our consumption
of these food products and replace them by other foods which are not
suitable for sending abroad, and that we shall rigidly avoid waste.
Full particulars are given in the pamphlets sent out by Mr. Hoover from
his Washington Bureau of Food Conservation.

What Mr. Hoover asks entails not the slightest real hardship on any of
us. It merely requires each of us to exercise a little self-control and
perhaps to make some trivial sacrifice of personal preference in what
we eat. Surely this is a very, very small service to be rendered by us
stay-at-homes in support of our sons and brothers who have gone or are
going to risk their lives in battle for us and mankind.

ON THE FIRING LINE

OCTOBER 31, 1917

Our men are now actually on the firing line, and while, of course, they
are as yet there primarily for purposes of instruction, nevertheless,
they are there. They are at times under fire. They are at any moment
liable to death in upholding the honor of their country, of your
country, my reader, and of mine.

General Pershing’s original division under his direction and
the direction of his lieutenants, such as Major-General Sibert,
Brigadier-General Duncan, and their associates, has evidently been
trained to a high point of efficiency. The accounts show that the
infantry effected their entrance to the trenches with the precision
of veterans. Evidently the artillery is being handled with similar
efficiency. Apparently, from the account, our artillerymen are using
French guns.

All Americans must feel a glow of pride as he reads of the soldierly
manner in which our American troops have made their entry into the
fire zone. But we must not confine ourselves merely to feeling pride
in our fellow countrymen who are at the front risking their lives
in doing their duty on behalf of all of us. We must back them up.
We must support the Government in every movement taken efficiently
to put the strength of this Nation behind our soldiers, and we must
vigilantly insist upon the efficiency including the speed absolutely
indispensable. We must support the Liberty Loans, conserve food,
cheerfully pay taxes, and tolerate neither improper profit-making out
of the war by capitalists or strikers,--nor slackness and malingering
which interferes with our military efficiency by laboring men. Every
American civilian should now do his work with the same sense of duty as
is shown by the soldiers in the field.

And now let good patriots keep in mind that the Huns within our gates
from this time on are the allies of the Huns who are actually doing
battle against our soldiers at the front. The men who directly or
indirectly advise people not to take Liberty bonds, the men who clamor
for an early peace, an inconclusive or negotiated peace, the men who
condone the offenses of Germany directly or indirectly, the men who say
we have not ample cause for war against Germany, the men who attack our
allies or seek to breed dissension between them and us, are each and
every one to a greater or less degree acting as friends of Germany and
therefore as enemies of the United States. Every patriotic American
should now clearly understand what is really implied in the attitude
taken during the last nine months by the Stones and La Follettes,
the Hearsts and Hillquits. These men are out of place in America.
It is sincerely to be regretted that they cannot be put where they
belong--under the Hohenzollerns.

NINE TENTHS OF WISDOM IS BEING WISE IN TIME

NOVEMBER 1, 1917

A few days ago I expressed in The Star the regret and uneasiness
felt by all men with knowledge of international matters at the
failure of this country to declare war on Austria and Turkey. Various
Administration, and, of course, the leading pro-German, newspapers took
exception to this statement and announced that the procedure advocated
would be unwise or improper. Since then the great defeat of the Italian
army by the Germans and Austrians has occurred, and among the Italians
there has been much bitter criticism of our failure to help them,
although we have now for many months been at war, at least in theory,
with Germany.

A leading Administration newspaper of high standing, the Brooklyn
Eagle, accurately states the case as follows:

Italy’s defeat is shocking and alarming. Only its unexpectedness
excuses the failure of Italy’s allies, including ourselves, to meet
it. This Government cannot evade responsibility if Italy is lost, for
we have been up to the present, quite as indifferent as the rest of
the Entente to Italy’s fate. Italy suffers and is endangered by our
own negative attitude. We have loaned her money, but we are not at
war with Austria, and we have failed to give Italy such whole-hearted
support as her critical position demands. No time should be lost in
reversing this policy. Italy is fighting our battles as well as her
own. She is a valuable ally; her cause is just. No effort should be
spared to save her. There is no time to compromise or equivocate. Our
own soldiers in Europe will have to pay in blood for every hour’s
delay in throwing all possible help to Italy.

This is the exact truth. I call attention to the fact that it is from
a strong supporter of the Administration and that it takes the view
I have for months been taking, and which various well-meaning but
sheeplike creatures have bleated against on the ground that it implies
criticism of the Administration. I was merely advocating before the
event the course, which, after the event, all will agree ought to have
been followed. It is in this matter precisely as it was in regard to
our building ships to meet the terrible U-boat menace. We should, with
the utmost energy and speed, have begun to build them within a week,
within a day, of the German note of January 31. Instead of this we
dawdled and wrangled for six months before seriously beginning. In
the one case as in the other foolish creatures did immense harm by
protesting against pointing out our blunders on the ground that we must
not speak of spilt milk, whereas, of course, we can only stop future
spilling by showing where it has been spilt in the past.

Nine tenths of wisdom is being wise in time, is the lesson as taught
afresh by the Italian disaster and the shortage of cargo ships. Let us
at last profit by it.

WE ARE IN THIS WAR TO THE FINISH

NOVEMBER 2, 1917

The disaster to our Italian ally should make every American worth
calling such awake to the real needs of the hour and should arouse in
him the inflexible purpose to see that this war is fought through to a
victorious conclusion, no matter how long it takes, no matter what the
expense and loss may be.

Our first troops are now actually in the trenches; American infantry
and American artillerymen are under fire; blood has been shed. Our sons
and brothers have begun the trench life of wearing fatigue, of cold, of
inconceivable hardship and exposure and of cruel danger. A few women
at home suffer as much. Otherwise, no civilians outside the regions
conquered by the Germans can begin to realize the terrible strain to
which constantly increasing numbers of our soldiers will be exposed as
additional divisions are trained for and put into the actual fighting.

We who stay at home must back up those men in every way. We must stand
by and energetically support every effort of the Government to add to
their efficiency and to back them up, including the sending over of
constantly increasing numbers of soldiers to the aid of the men already
there. We must back up the loans and taxes necessary in order to supply
them with arms, munitions, equipment, food, hospitals. We must hold
to the strictest accountability before the bar of public opinion any
Government official responsible for needless delay, or for shortage in
shipping, clothing, or material, or for deficient ammunition, or faulty
gas-masks, or for any other shortage which exposes our men at the
front to needless danger and hardship. We must make their effort and
their suffering avail by highly resolving that the whole power of this
Nation, and all its resources in men and in wealth, shall be used to
bring the peace of complete and overwhelming triumph over Germany and
over Germany’s subject allies, Austria and Turkey.

Finally, every brave and patriotic American owes it to the men at the
front to make the lash of scorn felt by the Hearsts and La Follettes
and by all others like them. These men have given or now give aid
and comfort to Germany, and therefore show themselves enemies to the
soldiers in the American uniform by opposing the war, or by asking for
an inconclusive peace, or by assailing the allies of the United States,
or by condoning or keeping silent concerning the hideous atrocities
which have made the Prussianized empire of the Hohenzollerns the arch
enemy of every liberty-loving and self-respecting civilized nation on
the face of the globe.

SINISTER ALLIES

NOVEMBER 3, 1917

There are well-meaning, but not overwise, persons who bleat against
any sincere and truthful effort to make us more efficient in this war
by protesting against grave shortcomings. These worthy persons should
realize that they are acting against the interest of the United States
and in the interest of Germany. If they doubt this, they have only to
ponder the fact that in their attitude they stand beside such sinister
allies as German papers like the New York Staats Zeitung and Illinois
Staats Zeitung and the various papers of Mr. Hearst.

These papers have opposed our going to war, or have assailed our
allies, or have condoned or passed over in silence the brutal infamy
of Germany. They have opposed the Government in its actions against
Germany. In so doing they have been the enemies of America. And they
have been no less the enemies of America when they have eagerly
defended the Government from criticism for shortcomings which impair
our efficiency and therefore tell in favor of Germany. Exactly as they
once opposed preparedness, or excused the murderous sinking of the
Lusitania, or protested against our going to war, so they now zealously
exhibit a sham loyalty of the most hurtful kind by denouncing honest
and truthful men because they tell the truth.

In order really to serve this country, it is necessary to point out
the dreadful damage done by our failure to prepare; of the evil effect
of trying to train our troops with broomsticks and wooden guns; the
worse than folly of failing to declare war on Austria and Turkey, and
the harm done by the delays, including the dawdling for six months
before we began the vitally necessary work of shipbuilding. To cover
up such shortcomings deceives no one but ourselves. Germany knows all
about them. We help her to find out by our failure to treat her spies
with drastic severity. And the men who suffer know all about them;
the artillerymen with only a wooden cannon, or the sentry in a cotton
uniform on a cold night stands in no need of enlightenment on the
subject. When these pro-German papers with loud professions of loyalty
protest against telling our people the truth about such matters, they
are merely serving Germany against the United States.

Loyalty to the Nation demands that we subscribe to the Liberty Loans;
that we practice food conservation; that we ardently support sending
our soldiers abroad until we have millions of men on the firing
line; that we stand for universal obligatory military training and
service; that we heartily uphold our allies and condemn as traitors
to America all who attack them; that we insist on prosecuting the war
to complete victory and condemn as false to this country all who seek
an inconclusive peace. Loyalty to the Nation no less demands that we
make our people understand the lasting harm done by our failure to
prepare during the two and a half years before the war broke out and
the grave damage now caused by needless delay, by irresolution, by the
appointment or retention of inefficient men, and by any and all types
of half-heartedness in waging the war.

THE NEW YORK MAYORALTY ELECTION

NOVEMBER 8, 1917

The triumph of Tammany in New York City and the large Socialist vote
have in some quarters been hailed as showing that New York City is for
peace at any price and that it is against the Administration. Neither
statement is warranted by the facts.

The Socialist vote was about one-fifth of the total vote. It included
most of those who wished the war stopped at once, this number being
made up of professional pacifists, of red flag Anarchists, and of poor,
ignorant people who pathetically believed that a Socialist mayor would
somehow bring peace at once. But it also included its professional
Socialists and poor, ignorant people who did not think of the war, but
who pathetically believed that a Socialist mayor would somehow give
them five-cent milk. The voters in New York City who wish immediate
peace without any regard to national honor, or to what future horrors
such a peace would bring, are certainly less than a fifth of the whole.

The vote was not anti-Administration. A far larger proportion of the
supporters of the Administration voted for Mr. Hylan than for Mr.
Mitchel, and officially the Administration was neutral between the two.
A goodly number of pro-Germans supported Mr. Hylan, but he was also
supported by a large number of entirely loyal men, and he himself,
unlike the Socialist candidate, Mr. Hillquit, was avowedly for America
against Germany, and for the prosecution of the war. The election in
actual fact turned directly on local issues. New York occasionally
witnesses an occasional insurrection of virtue, but the city has
never in fifty years given a good administration a second term. The
insurrection of virtue at one election is followed by a Tammany
revival at the next.

The result of the election in New York City was not heartening
to patriotic persons, but right next door, in the Connecticut
congressional district which includes Bridgeport, a contest for a
vacant congressional seat resulted in a way that speaks well for the
Republic. The Republican candidate, Schuyler Merritt, a man of high
probity and capacity, with a forward look in international affairs,
came out in bold and straightforward fashion, saying he would support
the President in all measures for the efficient prosecution of the
war until victory came, that he would do all he could to prevent our
again falling into the condition of shameful unpreparedness we had for
three years occupied, and that he was for universal obligatory military
training for our young men. He won by a majority much greater than that
which his predecessor received at the time of the presidential election
last year.

GERMAN HATRED OF AMERICA

NOVEMBER 13, 1917

There have recently been published various books by Americans who,
during the Great War, have officially represented this country in
Germany and in Belgium, when the Germans conquered it. Ambassador
Gerard is one writer. Mr. Gibson, secretary of our legation at
Brussels, is another. Mr. Curtis Roth, until recently vice-consul at
Plauen, Saxony, is a third. Their testimony is of profound significance
because of their official position and personal standing.

Two facts leap to the eye from their writings. The first is that the
German people have stood practically united behind their Government
in upholding and insisting upon the systematic infliction of hideous
brutality upon their foes. With deliberate purpose the German
Government has carried on a war of horror, a war of obscene cruelty, of
wholesale slaughter, of foul treachery and bestiality, a war in which
civilians, including women, children, nurses, doctors, and priests,
as well as wounded soldiers, have been murdered wholesale. The German
people have enthusiastically supported and approved their acts. Our
war is as much with the German people as with their Government, and we
should regard with loathing all Americans, whether men or women, who
any way attempt to justify or defend Germany’s action. The Americans
who so act are traitors to their country and to humanity at large.

The second fact is the extreme malevolence of hatred with which Germany
regards America, a hatred which blossomed into full growth before we
went to war, and which was immensely aggravated because of the contempt
inspired by our tame submission to outrage for over two years. Mr.
Roth’s testimony is peculiarly interesting. He shows that the Berlin
Government actively stimulated the campaign of hatred and revenge
against America, that the German people eagerly accepted the view
that Americans were cowardly, avaricious, and effeminate, and that in
Germany it was constantly announced that, sooner or later, there would
be a day of reckoning when America would have to pay a huge indemnity
or suffer the fate of Belgium.

Mr. Roth shows that the German people think exactly as their leaders
think. They now hate and despise us Americans as they hate others of
their foes. Says Mr. Roth:

They are resolved to make our country drink to the dregs out of the
bitter cup of humiliation. Nothing do they find more despicable
than our talk about peace, which they attribute to cowardice and
flabbiness. They look on the American pacifist as a weakling, as a
God-given tool in the hands of German interest.... The Germans, if
possible, feel more bitterly towards Americans of German extraction
than towards Americans of other lines of descent.

Germany has definitely decided on America’s ruin. She has definitely
decided that there must be an intense anti-American spirit in both
Government and people. She may bide her time, and she will doubtless
try to separate us from our allies, but her purpose towards us is both
relentless and ruthless.

If we are true to ourselves, if we prepare our armed strength and keep
it prepared, if we show farsightedness and valor of soul, we can be
sternly indifferent to this foul and evil hatred. But we must keep
steadily in mind that Germany respects nothing whatever except courage
and prepared strength and that the pacifists and pro-Germans, the Huns
within our gates, the Hearsts and the La Follettes, are playing the
game of our German foes, and if they have their way will bring shame
and disaster to our land.

START THE SYSTEM OF UNIVERSAL MILITARY TRAINING AT ONCE

NOVEMBER 17, 1917

Lieutenant-General S. B. M. Young, U.S.A., retired, gave long,
faithful, and efficient service to this country, from the beginning of
the Civil War, for nearly half a century. But he never has rendered
greater service than by his steady insistence upon the immediate
introduction by law in this country of the system of obligatory
universal military training as our permanent policy. This should be
done at once; and all the young men from nineteen to twenty-one should
be called out as soon as there are means of training them. They need
not fight until they are twenty-one. But they are least needed as
economic assets; they are most needed as military assets; and it is
cruelty to them not to train them in advance.

The selective draft was far better than nothing. But let us never
forget that it represented doing imperfectly after the event that which
ought to have been done thoroughly long before the event. We have
been at war three quarters of a year, and the drafted men, admirable
material though they are, are only just beginning to be trained and
as yet are not even armed and properly clothed. We are trying to train
our soldiers to perform the duties of soldiers after the war has begun;
and we can attempt the experiment at all only because the English and
French protect us from our enemies while we make it. Hereafter let us
train the man to perform the tasks of a soldier before he is called to
be a soldier in war. Only thus can we be just both to him and to the
country.

The present economic disturbance in the Nation was inevitable, in view
of our failure at the outset of the Great War to introduce the system
of universal, obligatory military training; and this failure is also
responsible for the fact that our national army, nine months after our
entry into the war, has only begun training, instead of being already
trained. Let us now at least provide for the future. The amendment
to the law above outlined, as advocated by the National Association
for Universal Military Training, of which General Young is president,
would add nearly two million men to our army, would cause the minimum
of interference with our economic life, and would not necessitate any
additional expense for training quarters.

The men thus trained will be immensely benefited from the standpoint of
their success in civil life; for universal training would be of immense
economic benefit to the Nation. As Cardinal Gibbons has well said, “The
legislation proposed will benefit youths from nineteen to twenty-one
years, morally as well as physically, and help to prepare them for
their work in peace as well as for the sterner needs of war.”

This is the only democratic system. General Young himself rose from
being an enlisted man in the ranks to being the lieutenant-general
of the army of the United States. Under universal training let all
candidates for West Point and all other candidates for commissions be
chosen with absolute fairness from among the men who have served a year
in the field with the colors. And in the navy let all candidates for
Annapolis be chosen from enlisted men of the navy who have served at
least a year as such and who are still serving.

A FIFTY-FIFTY WAR ATTITUDE

NOVEMBER 20, 1917

The attitude of the United States at this moment toward Germany’s three
vassal allies, Austria, Turkey, and Bulgaria, is a fifty-fifty attitude
between peace and war. It is not honest war, neither is it honest
neutrality. It is the attitude of the backwoodsman, who, seeing a black
animal in his pasture at dusk and not knowing whether it was a bear or
a calf, fired so as to hit it if it was a bear and miss it if it was a
calf. Such marksmanship is never happy.

Bulgaria is now simply the tool of Germany and Turkey. I was formerly
a stanch champion of Bulgaria, and would be again if she returned to
her senses. But she now serves the devil, and shame be upon us if we do
not treat her accordingly. No one can doubt that the Bulgarian Legation
is an agency for German spies in this country. The Administration
has published reports showing that for over a year, previous to our
entry into the war, the German Embassy was the center of the spies and
dynamiters with whom Germany was already waging war against us. These
papers show that Germany’s allies are her mere tools and that Germany
is withheld by no scruple from the commission of every conceivable
treacherous intrigue and brutal outrage against us. Under these
conditions it is a grave offense against our allies not to declare war
on all of Germany’s allies.

Turkey has been and is the tool of Germany, but Germany has permitted
her on her own account to perpetrate massacres on the Armenian and
Syrian Christians which renders it little short of an infamy now to
remain at peace with her. It is hypocritical to express sympathy with
the Armenians and appoint messages to be read in the churches about
them and yet refuse to do the only thing that will permanently help
them which is to declare war on Turkey.

With Austria our present relations are less definable than our
relations with any other power. No one can truthfully say exactly
whether our attitude is one of peace or war. We have not declared war
on Austria and yet we are furnishing money, coal, and munitions to
Italy in order to enable her to fight Austria. If we really are at
peace with Austria, we are flagrantly violating our duty as a neutral
and we ought to be condemned in any international court. But if we are
really at war, then we are committing the cardinal crime of hitting
soft. If we had gone to war with Austria when we broke with Germany and
had acted with proper energy, the disaster to Cadorna would probably
not have occurred.

We are now taking part in the general council of our allies. The only
way in which to make our part in the war thoroughly effective and our
leadership felt to the utmost is whole-heartedly to throw ourself into
the war on the side of all our allies and against all their and our
enemies.

THE GERMANIZED SOCIALISTS AND PEACE

NOVEMBER 26, 1917

The American Socialist party at the present time is a thoroughly
Germanized annex of the Prussianized militaristic and capitalistic
autocracy of the Hohenzollerns. Honest social reformers have left it.
No patriotic American ought longer to stay in it. It is purely an aid
to the capitalist and militarist Hohenzollern party of Germany. It
is a bitter enemy of the United States and a traitor to the cause of
liberty throughout the world. Its leaders are the supporters of an
alien autocracy and are seeking to secure a peace which would immensely
benefit this Prussian autocracy. They stand beside the Bolsheviki,
whose antics have made Russia at this moment a by-word, both of
derision and hope to every believer in despotism and every opponent of
liberty throughout the world.

Any man who feels that there is the slightest exaggeration in the above
statements would do well to read the articles in which the New York
Tribune has recently set forth the connection of Mr. William Bayard
Hale with the pro-German propaganda in this country, with the Hearst
papers and with the Socialist campaign in New York on behalf of Mr.
Hillquit and a peace satisfactory to Germany. These articles should
be published in permanent form and circulated as a tract among all
decent Americans who still believe that the Germanized Socialist party
in America to-day is anything except the foe of America, the foe of
democratic liberty throughout the world, and the tool and ally of the
autocrats, the capitalists, and the brutal and unscrupulous military
chiefs of the Prussianized Germany of the Hohenzollerns.

Exactly as the reactionary is in the end the worst foe of order;
exactly as the conscienceless and greedy man of wealth is in the end
the worst foe of property and of honest and duty-performing holders
of property, so the Anarchist and the wild Socialist, whose doctrines
when applied necessarily lead to Anarchy and the I.W.W., and the
crack-brained professional pacifists inevitably themselves are the
worst enemies of freedom, of true democracy, and of righteousness. It
is natural that in this terrible and melancholy world crisis these men
should have struck hands with the sordid tools of German intrigue in
this country. The masters of Germany find all these men, whatever their
nominal differences, united in the evil bond of a common subserviency
to German purposes. The German rulers, who at home trample on the
Socialists and dragoon the labor organizations and bully the leader
of democratic thought, cynically profit by aiding in other countries
the men who in the name of social reform seek to overthrow orderly
liberty and thereby show themselves the sinister allies of tyranny and
despotism.

MOBILIZE OUR MAN POWER

DECEMBER 1, 1917

It has been announced from Washington that, in view of the shortage of
labor on the farms, there will be an effort in Congress to permit the
importation for temporary use on the farms of Chinese coolies. I do not
believe the effort will be successful, and if it were successful it
would be one of the greatest calamities that could befall the American
people.

Never under any condition should this Nation look at an immigrant as
primarily a labor unit. He should always be looked at primarily as a
future citizen and the father of other citizens who are to live in
this land as fellows with our children and our children’s children. Our
immigration laws, permanent or temporary, should always be constructed
with this fact in view. No temporary advantages from the importation of
Chinese coolies would offset the far-reaching ultimate damage it would
cause.

Neither ought we to approve the plan, sometimes set forth by zealous
and high-minded men, to get the Government to open up vast tracts of
land and farm it with wage labor. This is a proposal to substitute a
wage-earning agricultural proletariat for a farming population which
owns the land it tills. It is a move in exactly the wrong direction.
We ought by law to do everything possible to put a stop to the growth
of an absentee landlord class and of huge estates worked by tenant
farmers. Methods identical with or similar to those advocated by me, in
my recent book, “The Foes of Our Own Household,” point the way to the
proper permanent solution of the question.

As a war measure, rather than adopt either of the proposals above
enumerated, let us deal boldly with the situation created by the
existence of such vast numbers of men in good physical condition, who
are not being utilized. The best war asset and labor asset in this
country is the mass of young men from eighteen to twenty-one. This
draft law explicitly and unjustifiably excepts this class, although
in the Civil War most of the soldiers entered the army when they were
under twenty-one. Let us proclaim as our policy that while this war
lasts no man shall be excused from doing the full duty which the
Nation finds it necessary to demand from him. Make all the young men
from eighteen to twenty-one immediately liable to service, permit no
exceptions for any men, no matter how wealthy, who are not already in
the army. Use as many of the men thus taken as are necessary to fill
the camps when the present drafted men of the national army leave them.
Use all the others, and use these men, too, until the camps are ready
for them, as labor which the Nation shall mobilize for farm work or any
other work which it is imperative to do, and mobilize all the alien
labor now in the country in similar fashion.

THE LANSDOWNE LETTER

DECEMBER 2, 1917

Lord Lansdowne’s proposal is for a peace of defeat for the Allies and
of victory for Germany. Such a peace would leave oppressed peoples
under the yoke of Austria, Turkey, and Bulgaria. Such a peace would
leave the liberty-loving nations of mankind at the ultimate mercy of
the triumphant militarism and capitalism of the German autocracy.

It merely makes such a peace worse to try to hide the shame of the
defeat behind the empty pretense of forging a league of nations,
including Germany, to secure future peace. Such a peace would mean
that Germany saw her unspeakable brutality and treachery crowned by
essential triumph and therefore would put a premium upon her repeating
the brutality and treachery at the earliest convenient moment. It is
mere hypocrisy to promise to put a stop to wrongdoing in the future
unless we are willing to undergo the labor and peril necessary to stop
wrongdoing in the present. In our own country nothing but harm was
done by the worthy persons who, a couple of years ago, formed a league
to enforce peace in the future, while at the same time they nervously
declared that they would have nothing to do with enforcing peace by
stopping international wrong in the present. Lord Lansdowne’s proposal
to hide the admission of present defeat behind the camouflage of
pretended international peace agreements for the future is unworthy of
his distinguished services and reputation.

Our people ought never to forget that Germany respects nothing but
strength and the readiness and ability to use it. Germany has made a
fetish of able brutality. She regards with utter derision the pacifists
and pro-Germans in this country. She will use them as her tools and pay
them when necessary, but if through this aid she was able to conquer
this country after previously separating us from our allies, she
would with utter indifference break these tools and throw them on the
scrap-heap with the rest of the American people.

There is but one safe course to follow, and that is to fight this war
through to victory at no matter what cost. This Nation should declare
war on Austria, Turkey, and Bulgaria, this week. Let us definitely
announce that our aims include restoring and indemnifying Belgium,
giving back Alsace and Lorraine to France, creating a Poland which
shall include all the Poles and a greater Bohemia and a great Jugo-Slav
commonwealth and restoring Rumanian Hungary to Rumania, and Italian
Austria to Italy, and driving the Turk from Europe and freeing Armenia
and Syria and Arabia. After victory let us join in any arrangement to
increase the likelihood of future international peace, but let us treat
this as an addition to, and never as a substitute for, the preparedness
which is the only sure guarantee against either war or measureless
disaster. Therefore let us at once introduce as our permanent national
policy the system of universal obligatory military training of all our
young men.

THE PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE

DECEMBER 5, 1917

The President has in admirable language set forth the firm resolve
of the American people that the war shall be fought through to the
end until it is crowned by the peace of complete victory. He states
unequivocally that our task is to win the war, that nothing shall turn
us aside from it until it is accomplished, and that every power and
resource we possess will be used to achieve this purpose. He states
that there shall be no peace until the war is won. He says that this
peace must deliver, not only Belgium and Northern France, but the
peoples of Austria-Hungary, of the Balkan Peninsula, and of Turkey in
Europe and Asia from “the impudent and alien dominion of the Prussian
military and commercial autocracy.” He emphatically states that we have
no purpose to wrong the German people or subject them to oppression,
but merely to prevent others from being oppressed by them. He states
that if Germany persists in adherence to her present rulers and their
policies, it will be impossible, even after the war, to treat her as
other nations are treated, but that, although we intend to right the
wrongs inflicted by Germany on other nations, we have no intention to
inflict similar wrongs on Germany in return. He says that the mind of
the Russian people has been poisoned by the rulers of Germany, exactly
as the latter have poisoned the minds of their own people.

To all of this the heart of the American people will answer a devout
amen. The message is a solemn pledge on behalf of this Nation that we
shall use every energy we possess to win the war, and that we shall
accept no peace not based on the complete overthrow of Germany. The
American people must now devote themselves with grim resolution and
whole-hearted purpose to the effective translation of this pledge into
action, for, of course, the sole value of such a promise lies in the
manner in which it is actually made good. The people must back the
Government in every step to carry into effect this pledge and must
tolerate no failure in any official charged with the duty of carrying
it into effect.

I shall shortly discuss the proposals of the President in reference to
Austria, Turkey, and Bulgaria. But in this editorial I wish merely,
as one among the countless Americans to whom the honor and welfare
and high ideals of America are dear, to say amen to the President’s
expressed purpose to wage this war through to the end with all our
strength and to accept no peace save that of complete victory.

FOUR BITES OF A CHERRY

DECEMBER 7, 1917

In his recent message to Congress President Wilson stated that in
order “to push our great war of freedom and justice to its righteous
conclusion we must clear away with a thorough hand all impediments to
success,” and added, “The very embarrassing obstacle that stands in our
way is that we are at war with Germany, but not with her allies.” He
recommended that we declare war on Austria, and added, “The same logic
would lead also to a declaration of war against Turkey and Bulgaria.”
But inferentially and for reasons not apparent he advised against such
action.

The President is entirely right in stating that our failure hitherto
to declare war on the allies of Germany has been a very embarrassing
obstacle to our success, and he is entirely right in advising a
declaration of war against Austria. Incidentally I wish to point out
that this is precisely what I insisted upon in these columns two
months ago, and what I had elsewhere advocated six months ago, and it
is worth while remembering that the Administration papers then assailed
me for urging the course which, although there has not been the
slightest change in the situation, the President now urges.

There was no justification whatever for failure to declare war
on Austria when we declared war on Germany, and there is now no
justification for failure to declare war on Bulgaria and Turkey when
we declare war on Austria. There is no use in making four bites of a
cherry. There is no use in going to war a little, but not much. The
President has sent a message pledging support to Rumania, but it is
worse than an empty form to send such a message unless we forthwith
declare war on Bulgaria. The President has appointed a Sunday for the
special expression of sympathy with Armenia, but such expression of
sympathy is utterly meaningless unless we go to war with Turkey. The
Austro-Hungarian and Turkish empires must be broken up if we intend
to make the world even moderately safe for democracy. There must
be a revived Poland, taking in all the Poles of Austria, Prussia,
and Russia; a greater Bohemia, taking in Moravia and the Slovaks;
a great Jugo-Slav commonwealth, including Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia,
and Herzegovina, while the Rumanians in Hungary should become part
of Rumania and the Italians in Austria part of Italy. The Turk must
be driven from Europe and Christian and Arab freed. Only in this
manner can we do justice to the subject peoples tyrannized over by
the Germans, Magyars, and Turks. Only in this way can we remove the
menace of German aggression, which has become a haunting nightmare
for all civilizations, especially in the case of small, well-behaved,
liberty-loving peoples.

By declaring war on Germany’s allies we do not commit ourselves to
asking anything that is not just for our own allies. But by failing to
declare war on Germany’s allies we are ourselves guilty of injustice to
our own allies.

THE RED CROSS CHRISTMAS MEMBERSHIP DRIVE

DECEMBER 12, 1917

Next week, the week before Christmas, the Red Cross wishes to add ten
million new members to the five million members it already possesses.
Last June the Red Cross War Council asked the people of the United
States to raise one hundred millions of dollars for Red Cross work, and
the people responded by raising one hundred and nineteen millions. The
purpose now is to increase threefold its membership.

This is the people’s war. All people should, so far as possible, share
the burden and the glory. The whole fighting manhood of the Nation,
without any exception save in the interest of the Nation, should be
trained to arms and made ready for the front. The Liberty Loans should
be taken by every one so that the bondholders of the Nation may be
the people of the Nation, and now this Red Cross membership campaign
is one more Nation-wide effort to bring home to all our people their
obligations to this country and to suffering humanity.

We must realize that every single individual in this country is
derelict to his duty unless according to his capacity he does his part
in helping organize for the war. Individual effort alone will not avail
and Germany’s strength has come from her keen realization of this fact.
We must have an organized Nation, both at the front and at home. There
can be no organization without discipline, and the Red Cross is one
of the great agencies through which we can make progress toward such
self-discipline.

The Red Cross does not ask for the new members primarily because of
the money they bring. The money will do great good, for the need is
pressing; but even more important than the money will be the effect if
on Christmas morning the Red Cross can flash around the world the news
that ten million more Americans have joined its ranks and thereby put
themselves unqualifiedly behind our army and navy.

The Red Cross has done an extraordinary work abroad and is doing an
extraordinary work at home. Abroad it is in every way supplementing
the army and navy medical corps in Europe and is accumulating enormous
hospital supplies for the use of our soldiers and sailors. It has sent
over a million dollars in money and stores to Italy. It is giving
both military and civilian relief in France. It is supplying over
thirty-five hundred French military hospitals and two thousand French
civil hospitals with surgical dressings, drugs, and supplies. It is
helping to care for half a million tuberculosis victims and restore
a million and a half French refugees to normal life. At home it is
helping to care for the dependent families of our soldiers and sailors.
It has organized fifty-seven army and navy base hospitals, over a dozen
of which have already been sent to France. Its useful activities in
different lines are well-nigh innumerable.

This is the work the Red Cross has done and is doing for America and
the world. Now let all Americans in their turn stand by the Red Cross
and help in its Christmas membership drive.

BEING BRAYED IN A MORTAR

DECEMBER 18, 1917

President Wilson speaks in military matters through his Secretary of
War. The sole importance of the Secretary of War’s report comes from
its being the official declaration of the President. I discuss it as
such.

According to the reports in the New York World, the Secretary of
War states that “he does not favor universal military training as a
permanent policy.” Mr. Wilson’s secretary, therefore, takes what is in
effect the position of Mr. Bryan, which was picturesquely phrased as
being that a million men can at need spring to arms overnight. The
Administration’s attitude is less picturesquely expressed, but it is
precisely as futile and as unspeakably mischievous from a standpoint
of permanent national interest. Moreover, it is taken at the very
time when the disastrous effect of the Administration’s policy of
complete unpreparedness is being shown by the admissions of General
Crozier on the first day of the congressional investigation. Mr.
Baker’s report, Mr. Bryan’s theory, and the things already shown by
the congressional investigation dovetail into one another. They stand
in the relation of cause and effect. The Administration now officially
and complacently announces that the policy which at this very moment
has proved disastrous is to be persevered in for the future, therefore
assumes complete responsibility for every blunder and delay, and for
all the misconduct, and announces that these blunders and delays and
all this misconduct have taught us nothing, and that we are to amble
onward in the same futile path until disaster overtakes. Mr. Wilson’s
Administration officially declares that we shall persist in our own
folly until we are brayed in the mortar of dreadful calamity.

If the Administration frankly and manfully acknowledged its evil errors
in the past and championed a policy which would prevent the repetition
of these errors in the future, I would think only of the future and not
of the past, but now it is necessary to emphasize the past in order to
avoid disaster in the future.

We are in the eleventh month since Germany went to war with us. We have
not yet built an aeroplane fit to match the speedy battle planes of our
foes. We have not built a heavy field gun; on the contrary, we have
had to draw on burdened friends to give us artillery. In the training
camps of the national army the artillery regiments still have about
ten wooden guns for every old field piece, and they have none of the
modern guns they are to use in the war. There are rifles only for every
third or fourth man. Until ten months had elapsed there was no target
practice save for a few specially selected units. The troops still
have only wooden machine guns and the trench mortars they themselves
improvise.

Until ten months had elapsed they lacked even the necessary warm
clothing. They have endured entirely needless suffering and hardship.
Our troops in France have received thousands of coffins, but an
insufficient number of shoes. At this moment not more than one tenth of
our soldiers, taken altogether, are fit to go to battle. Nine tenths of
our gallant and fine-spirited men are still without the training, arms,
and equipment that would permit them to meet any trained foes. After
ten months of war and the expenditure of huge sums of money, we are
still absolutely unable to defend ourselves and owe our own safety only
to the fleets and armies of our war-worn allies.

This condition is due solely and entirely to the policy of
unpreparedness to which the Administration adhered for two and one
half years when even the blind ought to have read the lesson of the
great war. The Administration now announces that we are not to alter
this policy and that we are to continue the do-nothing policy of
refusing to help. If the American people follow the lead thus given
them, they will be guilty of criminal folly.

RENDERING A GREAT PUBLIC SERVICE

DECEMBER 20, 1917

Senator Chamberlain has rendered a public service by presenting the
bill to provide universal obligatory military training for all the
young men of the Nation. Senator Wadsworth has rendered a public
service by pushing the senatorial investigation of our lamentable
military unpreparedness. Congressman Medill McCormick has rendered a
public service by showing that we have heavily burdened our war-worn
ally, France, by demanding from her the guns which it was inexcusable
in us not previously to have built.

These three services all hang together. Senator Chamberlain’s proposal
is to supplant selective conscription after war has begun by universal
service, which would probably mean the avoidance of war altogether. It
was grave misfortune that at the outset of this war we did not call for
a million volunteers and at the same time put all the young men between
nineteen and twenty-two into the training camps. There has been some
very gross favoritism in granting exemption and, moreover, the men
between twenty-two and thirty-one include a high percentage of married
men and of others who ought not to go to war at present. This unwise,
wasteful, and inefficient system should not be patched up. The Nation
sorely needs, both as a war measure and as a permanent policy, the
immediate introduction of universal military training and service for
all our young men as proposed above.

Senator Wadsworth and Representative McCormick are in straightforward
fashion showing the inevitable results of the policy of unpreparedness
which we have followed for three and a half years, and which the
Administration, through Secretary Baker, now actually advocates as
our permanent policy. Senator Wadsworth has shown, beyond possibility
of anything except willful misrepresentation, that he has no partisan
purpose whatever and that the investigation is designed solely to
rouse the Government and the public to greater efforts in speeding up
the war. The Committee on Military Affairs of the Senate is showing
no partisanship. They realize that we cannot win the war merely by
announcing programmes. They realize that we have a long road to
travel and that we have made a slow start. They wish to help the
Administration, and in order to do this it is imperative to tell the
truth.

Some of the fault for the present situation is due to the shortcomings
of individuals during the last ten months, but the major part is due to
our failure as a Nation to embark on the policy of preparedness three
and a half years ago. Nine tenths of wisdom is being wise in time.
Now our people must brace themselves to face unpleasant truths. There
is not the slightest reason for discouragement. If we choose, we can,
through our governmental representatives, quickly remedy the defects
and then exert with decisive effect our tremendous latent powers. But
we need to know the truth and then to act with instant and resolute
efficiency and with single-minded patriotism.

A BETRAYAL OF DEMOCRACY

DECEMBER 21, 1917

President Wilson has announced that we are in this war to make the
world safe for democracy. Either this declaration was worse than empty
rhetoric or we are in honor bound to make it good. Indeed, to prove
false to it now is to be guilty of peculiarly offensive hypocrisy.

The only way to make the world safe for democracy is to free the people
over whom Turkey and Austria tyrannize. Every day’s delay in declaring
war on Austria, Turkey, and Bulgaria has represented and now represents
a betrayal of democracy and of our allies. It is hypocritical to send
an encouraging message to Rumania and not to declare war on Bulgaria.
It is hypocritical to shed crocodile tears over Armenia and not to
declare war on Turkey.

When President Wilson says, “We do not wish in any way to rearrange
the Austria-Hungarian Empire; it is no affair of ours what they do,”
he is engaged in the betrayal of democracy, and if his present words
are to be taken seriously, then his declaration about making the world
safe for democracy was false and empty rhetoric. Either one statement
or the other must be unsparingly condemned by all honest men. In view
of the last statement there is small wonder that the Austrian Foreign
Minister says that “it is to our interest to nail down” the statement
in question, because it abandons the proposal, or, as the Austrian
minister phrases it, “the catch phrase,” to allow all small states
to determine their own destinies. No wonder that the leading Vienna
paper contemptuously states that President Wilson wishes to act as an
“European peace intermediary,” being one of the leaders who “apparently
consider a warlike noise the best overture to a peace conference.”

There is also no wonder that the Czech Slovaks feel with intense
bitterness about this betrayal. One of their papers in this country
describes how loyally they have supported America and the Allies, and
describes the dreadful butcheries and persecutions of their men, women,
and children in Bohemia, and then asks whether it can be true that
America now really proposes to keep them “under the merciless tyranny
of the Huns.”

This is precisely what President Wilson proposes when he says that
it is no affair of ours to rearrange the Austrian-Hungarian Empire,
or, in other words, no affair of ours to free the Czechs, Slovaks,
Jugo-Slavs, Italians, and Rumanians, who, together with the Poles, make
up the majority of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and who are ground down
by tyranny of the Germans and the Magyars.

The President’s proposal represents three separate betrayals.

It is the betrayal of the Slavs of Austria, to whose cause our allies
have pledged themselves and who form a democratic population oppressed
by a militaristic autocracy.

It is the betrayal of democracy, because we abandon the majority who
are our friends into the hands of a minority, who despise and hate us.

It is the betrayal of the free people everywhere to Germany, for
Germany is now a world menace, chiefly because Austria and Turkey are
her subject allies, and President Wilson’s proposal is to leave them
undisturbed.

A peace without a change of frontiers and without indemnification for
brutal wrongdoing, a peace which does not create an independent and
united Poland and a greater Bohemia and Jugo-Slovak commonwealth, as
well as a greater Italy and a greater Rumania, and which does not free
and indemnify Belgium, would leave every perilous problem of Europe
unsolved. It would be timid and calamitous folly to refuse to touch the
disputed questions which, if left unanswered, are absolutely certain to
invite a future war.

BROOMSTICK PREPAREDNESS--A STUDY IN CAUSE AND EFFECT

DECEMBER 27, 1917

It is earnestly to be hoped that the congressional investigation into
the fruits of our military unpreparedness will keep two objects clearly
in mind. First, the aim must be to speed up the work of efficient war
preparation by doing away with all the present practices that are
wrong. Second, the aim should be to make evident to all our people that
our present shameful shortcomings are due to failure to prepare in
advance and that never again ought we to allow our governmental leaders
to put us in such a humiliating and unworthy position.

It will be quite impossible to get at all the facts of our
unpreparedness. Most officers will be very reluctant to testify to
the whole truth. They know that they will suffer if they do so,
because they have seen the punishment inflicted by the Administration
on Major-General Wood for the sole reason that he dared to tell the
truth about our shortcomings, and dared to advocate preparedness in
advance. For this reason I am not at liberty to quote the generals,
colonels, captains, and lieutenants of the artillery, infantry, medical
corps, and quartermaster corps who have told me of their troubles with
unheated hospitals, insufficient drugs, summer underclothes in winter
weather, lack of overcoats, of shoes, of rifles, of ammunition, of
cannon. But in the camps I visited I saw some things so evident that
no harm can come to any officer from my speaking of them.

Last fall I saw thousands of men drilling with broomsticks. I have such
a broomstick now before me. Last fall I saw thousands of men drilling
with rudely whittled wooden guns. I have one such before me now. I saw
them drilling with wooden machine guns as late as the beginning of
December. I saw barrels mounted on sticks, on which zealous captains
were endeavoring to teach their men how to ride a horse. I saw in the
national army camps in Illinois and Ohio scores of wooden cannon.
Doubtless any man can see them now if he goes there.

The excellent officers in the camps are as rapidly as possible
remedying these deficiencies. I hope and believe that by spring they
will all be remedied. But let our people not forget that for one year
after Germany went to war with us we were wholly unable to defend
ourselves and owed our safety only to the English and French ships and
armies.

The cause was our refusal to prepare in advance. President Wilson’s
message of December, 1914, in which he ridiculed those who advocated
preparedness, was part of the cause. His presidential campaign on the
“He kept us out of war” issue was part of the cause. We paid the price
later with broomstick rifles, logwood cannon, soldiers without shoes,
and epidemics of pneumonia in the camps. We are paying the price now.
We pay the price in the doubled cost of necessary war supplies. We
pay the price in shortage of coal and congested transportation. The
refusal to prepare and the price we now pay because of the refusal
stand in the relation of cause and effect.

I do not dwell on these facts to blame anybody. I dwell on them in
order to wake our people to the necessity of learning the lesson they
teach. Our next and permanent duty is to introduce the policy of
universal obligatory military training for all our young men before
they are twenty-one.

OUR DUTY FOR THE NEW YEAR

JANUARY 1, 1918

In the papers there recently appeared a brief statement made by an
unnamed young American major to his troops in the trenches in France.
He said:

We have reached the top in training. If you need anything, come and
tell me and I will get it for you if I can. If I do not get it, I do
not want to hear about it again, for it means that I cannot get it. We
will have three meals a day if we can get them. If we have to miss one
meal, we will not be badly off, and if we miss two or three, it will
not be much worse. We are expected to work from midnight of one day to
midnight of the next day. If there is any chance to sleep between, all
right. It will also be all right if there is no chance. Let everybody
pitch in. While mud and water must be fought, it may be much worse.
The hopes of the Nation are fixed on each man.

The ideal of duty thus set before our soldiers, before the Americans
who at this time risk most and suffer most, is substantially the ideal
of duty toward which all of the rest of us here in America should, in
our turn, likewise strive. We must brace ourselves for effort and for
endurance through a hard and dangerous year. High of heart and with
unfaltering soul, we must do our part in the grim work of toiling and
fighting to bring a little nearer the day when there shall be orderly
liberty throughout the world and when justice and mercy and brotherly
love shall obtain between man and man and among all the nations of
mankind. We must show our faith by our works. We must prove our truth
by our endeavor. We must scorn the baseness which uses high-sounding
speech to cloak ignoble action and which seems to betray suffering
right with the Judas kiss of the treacherous peace.

During the year that is opening we at home will suffer discomfort and
privation and wearing anxiety. What of it? What we at home endure will
be as nothing compared to that which is faced by the sons and brothers,
by the husbands and fathers at the front, and what the fighting men of
to-day face and bear will be no harder than what was faced and borne by
Washington’s troops at Valley Forge and Trenton and by the soldiers of
Grant and Lee when they wrestled in the Wilderness. We inherit as free
men this fair and mighty land only because our fathers and forefathers
had iron in their blood. We can leave our heritage undiminished to
those who come after us only if we in our turn show a resolute and
rugged manliness in the dark days of trial that have come upon us.

Let us all individually and collectively do our whole duty with brave
hearts. Let us pay our taxes, subscribe to the government loans, work
at our several tasks with all our strength, support all the agencies
which take care of our troops, and accept the stinting in fuel or food
as part of the price we pay. Let our prime care be the welfare and
warlike efficiency of the men at the front and in the training camps.
Let us hold to sharp account every public servant who in any way comes
short of his duty in this respect. But let us also insist that the
soldiers at the front and in the camps treat every shortcoming merely
as an obstacle to be overcome or remedied or offset by their own energy
and courage and resourcefulness. The one absolute essential for our
people is to insist that this war be seen through at no matter what
cost until it is crowned with the peace of overwhelming victory for the
right.

TELL THE TRUTH AND SPEED UP THE WAR

JANUARY 4, 1918

Any man who at this time leaves undone anything to increase our
fighting efficiency is a foe of America and a friend of Germany. The
man who objects to fearless exposure and criticism of the governmental
shortcomings which must be exposed if they are to be corrected is a
foe to America and a friend to Germany, and in addition shows that
he possesses a thoroughly servile mind. The critic whose criticism
is not constructive, or who treats shortcomings as causes for being
disheartened about the war instead of as an incentive to strive for the
greater efficiency in waging the war and in preparing for the future,
is a foe to America and a friend to every present or future foe of
America.

When the Administration stands against universal military training and
talks with vague looseness of future paper guarantees against war,
it renders it imperatively necessary to bring home to our people the
tremendous damage done by our lamentable folly in refusing to prepare
since August, 1914. It is a betrayal of our country to protest against
telling the truth for this purpose.

This is the twelfth month since Germany in effect declared war on us
and we broke relations with Germany. We have developed our military
strength so slowly that as yet we would be wholly unable to defend
ourselves if we were not protected by the fleets and armies of our
allies. No modern armies can fight without training in modern war
methods and without modern field guns, auto rifles and airplanes. As
yet we only have either cannon borrowed from the hard-pressed French
or else wooden cannon. We have no auto rifles. Our airplanes are still
unfit to fight modern war planes.

The Patriotic Education Society of Washington has done capital
constructive work in truthfully telling our needs. It has fearlessly
shown our dreadful shortage in shipbuilding and the deceitful wording
of government announcements designed to conceal this shortage. It has
shown the vital need of our, at this late time, bending every energy to
building ships by working three eight-hour shifts a day in order to put
our soldiers and supplies at the front at the earliest possible moment.
The building of transport ships was the central feature of the problem
we faced on January 31 a year ago. It was not only a misfortune, but a
crime, to neglect it, as for nine months afterward it was neglected.
The newspapers have just printed the statement that Colonel House’s
committee reports that it is of the utmost importance to get our troops
quickly to the front. Of course it is. Every man of broad vision has
known this for a year. If there had been more fearless truth-telling
during the year there would have been much less governmental delay and
inefficiency.

Tell the truth and speed up the war. Tell the truth only for
constructive purposes and only with the unalterable determination to
exert every particle of our strength at the earliest possible moment,
so as to win peace by overwhelming victory.

THE COST OF UNPREPAREDNESS

JANUARY 6, 1918

Senator Chamberlain, in order to minimize the chance of future war and
to insure us against disaster, if in future war should unhappily come,
has introduced a bill for universal military training of our young
men under the age of twenty-one. The Administration declares against
universal training and therefore for a continuance of the policy of
unpreparedness, the fruits of which we are enjoying. Some of these
fruits are as follows:

According to the statement of Mr. Fitzgerald, the chairman of the
Committee on Appropriations of the House, Congress appropriated during
the last year $18,880,000,000 and provided authorization for which
cash must be supplied before next July of $2,510,000,000, making our
year’s war expenses a grand total of $21,390,000,000. This equals the
entire sum Great Britain expended during the first three years of the
war. It is over twenty times as great as for any previous year in our
history, except the year that saw the close of the Civil War, and it
is seventeen times as great as that. The appropriations for the year
are twenty-two times as great as the total interest-bearing debt of
the United States one year ago. They come within four billion dollars
of the total expenditures of the United States Government from 1776 to
1917. They equal the expenditure of twenty dollars a minute for every
minute since the birth of Christ.

Had we started to prepare in time, one half of this cost would
have been saved. The tremendous pressure coming suddenly caused an
immense increase in expenditures, even aside from the futile waste,
extravagance, and misdirection. Had we gone into the war when the
Lusitania was sunk, we would have saved a third of the sum, for we have
provided to loan our allies about seven billions. Our delay in going
to war and, above all, delay in preparing, have resulted in a huge
increase in the money chest and in the length of the war and in the
terrible total of avoidable human suffering.

The lack of preparedness is responsible for the sickness among our
soldiers. Take as an example the ravages of pneumonia in the training
camps. The men in the training camps are physically of exceptional type
and are in the prime of life. Their death-rate ought not normally to be
more than a small fraction of that in New York City, where the total
population includes the very young, the very old, the weak and sick,
the badly nurtured. The population of New York City is 4,800,000. The
population of the thirty camps is about six hundred thousand. In the
two weeks of last December the death-rate in the city from pneumonia
was one to every 16,500 people. In the camps it was one to 2800.
Therefore, the specially selected men of the camps suffered from a
death-rate six times as great as in the heterogeneous city population.
And of every three men attacked, one died.

Doubtless administrative blundering during the last year is largely
responsible for this showing. But the prime cause is the failure to
prepare in advance. Our first duty at the moment is to speed up the
war. Our second duty is to secure real preparedness as outlined in
Senator Chamberlain’s bill.

COÖPERATION AND CONTROL

JANUARY 8, 1918

The assumption of control by the Government over the railroads was
certainly necessary. Exactly how far it will go is not evident.
At present what has been done is merely to introduce government
supervision and control over railroads which are required to combine
their operations in flat defiance Of the Sherman Law. In other words,
the Government has wisely abandoned the effort to enforce competition
among the railroads and has introduced the principle of control over
corporative organizations.

The Attorney-General has just announced that he will, for the time
being, abandon the suits under the Sherman Law to break up the
harvester and steel corporations, because it is not wise to do so
during the war. Mr. Culbertson, the able expert on the government
tariff board, has announced that the Sherman Law is mischievous
in international trade. Mr. Francis Heney, than whom in all the
country there is no more determined and efficient enemy of wrongdoing
corporations, has stated that the Sherman Law, the so-called Anti-Trust
Law, is mischievous in our domestic business and should be repealed.
In other words, under the strain of the war the Sherman Law has
completely broken down and the Government is not merely conniving at,
but encouraging, its violation by many different corporations.

The Sherman Law, or so-called Anti-Trust Law, is just as mischievous
in peace as in war. It represents an effort to meet a great evil in
the wrong way. As long as corporations claimed complete immunity from
government control, the first necessity was to establish the right of
the Government to control them. This right and power of the Government
was established by the Northern Securities suit, which prevented all
the railroads of the country from being united under one corporation
which defied government control. The suits against the Standard Oil
and Tobacco trusts followed. The Supreme Court decreed that the trusts
had been guilty of grave misconduct and should be dissolved, but not
a particle of good followed their dissolution. It is evident that the
Sherman Law, or so-called Anti-Trust Law, in no way meets the evils of
the industrial world. To try to break up corporations because they are
big and efficient is either ineffective or mischievous. What is needed
is to exercise government control over them, so as to encourage their
efficiency and prosperity, but to insure that the efficiency is used in
the public interest and that the prosperity is properly passed around.

Merely to repeal the Sherman Law without putting anything in its place
would do harm. It should at once be amended or superseded by a law
which would in some shape permit and require the issuing of licenses
by the Federal Government to corporations doing an interstate or
international business. Corporations which did not take out such
licenses or comply with the rules of the Government’s administrative
board would be subject to the Sherman Law. The others would be under
government control and would be encouraged to coöperate and in every
way to become prosperous and efficient, the Government guaranteeing by
its supervision that the corporations’ prosperity and efficiency were
in the public interest.

THE ARTEMUS WARD THEORY OF WAR

JANUARY 17, 1918

The great American humorist, Artemus Ward, whose writings gave such
delight to Abraham Lincoln, once remarked that he was willing to
sacrifice all his wife’s relatives on the altar of the country. Mr.
Ward was not in President Lincoln’s Cabinet. Mr. Baker is in President
Wilson’s Cabinet. He takes substantially the same ground that Artemus
Ward took, although possibly with a more unconscious humor. He has just
uttered a heroic sentiment expressing his pleased acquiescence in the
sacrifice of France and England’s armies for the defense of the common
cause.

On Wednesday of last week, discussing the likelihood that the Germans,
relieved from anxiety of Russia, would make a tremendous assault on
the western front, Mr. Baker said: “The impending German offensive
will possibly be their greatest assault. The French and British armies
can be relied upon to withstand the shock.” Mr. Baker is President
Wilson’s Secretary of War. He holds at this time the most important
office in our Government. He thus announces to our allies and the world
that in the twelfth month after Germany went to war with us, America,
the richest country of the world with a population of one hundred
million people, after being at war nearly a year and after such warning
as never a nation had before, is wholly unable to send any effective
assistance to repel the greatest assault of the war, and that the only
military measure which can be taken is to express through Mr. Baker
the belief that the British and French armies can be relied upon to do
alone the duty which we ought to share with them.

This statement of Mr. Baker absolves us from all necessity of
commenting on his ingenuous defense of a system of preparedness which
leaves our small army at the front with no artillery except what we
get from the French and our army at home with batteries made out of
telegraph poles and logwood. It is not necessary to discuss the exact
amount of pride we should as a Nation take in the fact that as a Nation
after eleven months of war we are proudly emerging from the broomstick
rifle stage preparedness into the telegraph pole stage preparedness.
Mr. Baker’s statement sums up the situation exactly. We have been at
war nearly a year, and when the Germans make their greatest assault our
preparedness is only such as to warrant our expressing belief that our
allies can win without our help.

The New York Times, a supporter of the Administration, comments
truthfully on the situation:

Nine months after entering the war not only are we giving our allies
no effective military aid, but all our bustle and stir doesn’t hide
the fact that, through incompetence and lack of organization and
system, we are far behind in our preparations to supply rifles,
ammunition, machine guns, airships, uniforms, clothing for the troops
we shall some time have at the front. Our backwardness is naturally
disquieting to our allies. If one million American soldiers, or half
that number, fully equipped, had stood on the soil of France, Lloyd
George would have made no speech to British working-men restating
after a fashion the war aims of the Allies. There would have been no
occasion, nor demand for a speech telling the labor unions what the
troops of Britain are fighting for.

The pacifists and the agencies of German intrigue would not be working
for a peace in the interests of the capitalistic and militaristic
autonomy of Germany. As the Times well says, the man who now works for
such a peace while Germany is unconquered “is the most heartless of
militarists or enemy of the world’s peace and freedom.”

THE FRUITS OF WATCHFUL WAITING

JANUARY 18, 1918

We have been at war nearly one year. We have failed to do any damage to
Germany, but we have done a great deal of damage to ourselves. Recently
the President’s Secretary of War announced that the war was three
thousand miles away and so he had not prepared to meet it. Incidentally
the feats of the German submarine off Newport in the fall of 1916
showed that if it had not been for the Allied fleets and armies the war
would then have been on our own shores. But at the moment it is three
thousand miles away, and yet this Nation is suffering the kind of grave
economic derangement that we would suffer if a hostile army was on our
own shores. We have accomplished very little. We have suffered very
much. Both the failure in accomplishment and the amount of avoidable
suffering are due to the resolute refusal of our Government to prepare
in advance and to its fatuous persistence in the policy of watchful
waiting.

Doubtless part of the present trouble in connection with coal is due
to unwisdom in the price-fixing of bituminous coal. Doubtless part of
it is due to the railway congestion, which in its turn is due to the
complete lack of system and consequent chaos due to suddenly imposing
on well-meaning, stodgy government officials of average capacity the
duty of dealing in a tremendous hurry with a situation of unprecedented
size, complexity, and importance, but the temporary causes are all
secondary to the great cause of complete failure to prepare in advance.

Our economic unpreparedness is just as complete as our military
unpreparedness and is one of the chief factors therein. We are now
paying bitterly for the fact that two and three years ago it was deemed
politically wise to shape our governmental policy along the lines of
“Watchful waiting” and “He kept us out of war.”

If three years ago we had begun in good faith and earnestly to prepare,
and if, when the Lusitania was sunk, we had acted as precisely as we
did act with no more provocation in February, last, this war would now
have been over. An immense amount of bloodshed would have been spared
and the danger of German militarism would have been forever averted. In
such case we would have greatly developed the trained administrators
and the coherent system necessary to deal wisely with the economic no
less than the military features of a great war. Our refusal to prepare
in advance and our fatuous acceptance of rhetorical platitudes as a
substitute for preparations have resulted in our present military
impotence and profound and far-reaching economic derangement. The
profound business distrust, the unrest of labor, the coal famine, the
congestion of traffic, and the shutting down of industries at the
time when it is most important that production should be speeded to
the highest point, all are due primarily to the refusal to face facts
during the first two years and a half of the World War and the seething
welter of inefficiency and confusion in which the policy of watchful
waiting finally plunged us. Nine tenths of wisdom is being wise in
time. All far-sighted patriots most earnestly hope that this Nation
will learn the bitter lesson and that never again will we be caught so
shamefully unprepared, spiritually, economically, and from the military
standpoint as has been the case in the year that is now passing.

TELL THE TRUTH

JANUARY 21, 1918

Nearly a year has passed since, on February 3, by formally breaking
relations with Germany, we reluctantly admitted that she had gone to
war with us. During that year it has been incessantly insisted that it
was unpatriotic under any consideration to tell an unpleasant truth or
to point out a governmental shortcoming. The result has not been happy.

The famous war correspondent, Mr. Caspar Whitney, has returned from the
front so that he might avoid our fatuous and sinister censorship, and
tell our people the truth about our army in France. He shows that this
army, which, Secretary Baker had just assured our people, was admirably
equipped, in reality had no cannon or machine guns except those it had
borrowed from the hard-pressed French; that there was a lamentable
shortage of shoes; that the motor cars were poor; that we had no
airplanes. From another source it appeared that many thousand coffins
had been sent over. Our troops had no shoes, but they had plenty of
coffins. Their ammunition was defective, and they had neither cannon
nor auto rifles; but they had plenty of coffins.

At the same time the death of gallant Major Gardner from pneumonia
called sharp attention to the evil health conditions in most of our
home training camps, and the Senate investigating committee showed a
really appalling slackness and inefficiency in the management of the
War Department under Mr. Baker. There is no particular reason to blame
Mr. Baker; he did not appoint himself; he did not seek the office.
Logwood cannon and wooden auto rifles are mostly incidental features of
the inevitable outcome.

All this was done in the face of repeated and explicit warnings from
the best authority. Major-General Leonard Wood told the military
committee of the Senate and of the House in detail about our
shortcomings two years ago, and again one year ago. The Administration
not only refused to remedy these shortcomings, but has spitefully
punished General Wood ever since.

Criticism should be both truthful and constructive. I have told not the
whole truth, but the minimum truth absolutely necessary in order that
we may, before it is too late, speed up the war, and in order that we
may insist on the passage of the Chamberlain Bill, so that never again
may we be caught utterly and shamefully unprepared. Let us insist that
the truth be told. The truth only harms weaklings. The American people
wish the truth, and can stand the truth.

JUSTIFICATION OF CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM

JANUARY 28, 1918

Senator Chamberlain and his excellent committee have already seen the
justification of their investigation. They have forced the appointment
of Mr. Stettinius, a trained and capable expert, as head of the war
supplies purchasing department. The fact that the appointment is made
in order to obviate the need of following Senator Chamberlain’s more
thoroughgoing programme does not alter the fact that it represents
a certain advance and that this advance is primarily due to the
investigation by Senator Chamberlain’s committee. It is a striking
tribute to the necessity for and the good results of that investigation.

The investigation has been wholly non-partisan. It has been conducted
with an eye single to the needs of the army and of our country. Senator
Chamberlain is a Democrat, just as Secretary Baker is a Democrat. The
committee has fearlessly exposed very grave abuses and shortcomings
and has taken constructive action to remedy them. Secretary Baker’s
testimony shows that, to use the language of Senator Chamberlain, the
President has been misled as to the facts. His statements as to the
satisfactory condition of things in the camps are not in accord with
the facts. It is, of course, exceedingly difficult to get testimony
from army officers because they have vividly before their eyes the
signal punishment inflicted by the Administration on General Wood
for fearlessly telling the truth, and those of us who have examined
conditions and know how bad they are cannot give our authorities in
many cases because we will not expose good officers to punishment in
order to save ourselves from contradiction.

But certain vitally important facts are easily attainable. At the very
time that Secretary Baker was testifying that the army had enough
rifles, the governor of Mississippi in the public press on January 17
stated that he had been helpless to prevent the burning alive of a
negro because the home guards had no rifles and because “there are over
five hundred national guardsmen at Camp Jackson, but they are equally
helpless because they have no rifles.” Many deficiencies can be covered
up or their existence denied, but some cannot thus be concealed. Any
one can see the wooden cannon and wooden machine guns in the training
camps, every one knows that our army at the front has French cannon
and French machine guns. Will not Secretary Baker state frankly when
our own cannon and machine guns will be ready? After one year of war
we have none. Must we wait another year before getting them? Caspar
Whitney, a responsible man, has stated lamentable shortcomings of our
army at the front. Will not the Secretary advise us what steps he has
taken to investigate this statement and remedy the shortcomings?

The appointment of Mr. Stettinius is a good thing, but it does
not represent even a half step toward bringing order out of the
administrative chaos at Washington. Drastic action is needed to secure
a plan providing for coördination, responsibility and efficiency, and
above all, for securing the right men to administer the plan.

SECRETARY BAKER’S GENERAL DENIAL

FEBRUARY 2, 1918

Secretary Baker’s denial of any serious shortcomings in the
administration of the War Department comes under several heads. Part
of it is prophecy, which we all hope will turn out to be justified.
Part of it is explanation or denials of facts, as to which it is easy
to get first-hand information. With this part I shall deal in my next
editorial. Part of it relates to allegations as to which it is almost
impossible to get first-hand information except from officers whose
names cannot be quoted, because this would probably entail punishment
upon them. It is with this part that I now deal.

General Wood two years ago, before the congressional committee, and
again one year ago, before the congressional committee, set forth in
detail our unpreparedness. Every fact he stated has proved to be true
and to be but a small part of the truth. Yet he has been singled out
for punishment because of thus having told Congress the truth, and this
although we and our allies are now paying dearly for our failure to act
on the truth which he thus told. Under such conditions it is impossible
to make public the names of the officers and enlisted men through
whom we occasionally learn of abuses. Nevertheless, it is imperative
to try to correct the abuses. If the Administration had not punished
General Wood for telling the truth, the complaints would be at once
laid before the department and the wrongs remedied. Under existing
conditions it is imperative to call public attention to them.

A major-general informed me in October that he had one hundred rifles
for twenty thousand men, and most strongly felt that these men should
not have been brought to the camp until the hospitals, barracks,
heating arrangements, clothes, and arms were ready for them. Another
major-general told me, in explanation of the shortage of supplies
abroad, that one shipload of big coast defense guns had to be returned
because when they reached France it was discovered that there were
no carriages for them. Hundreds of officers and non-commissioned
officers have told me of lack of overcoats, of winter under-clothing,
of heavy socks. One quartermaster, being unable otherwise to get
woolen gloves for the men in cold weather, finally got them from the
Red Cross and was officially reprimanded for so doing. Two officers
informed me that when in France there was a shortage of shoes. They
were told it was due to a shipment of coffins, one being told that
they were not regular coffins, but boxes containing grave-clothes.
The newspaper correspondents repeatedly have told of the shortage of
shoes, one recent statement being that a shipment of clay pigeons,
not coffins, was sent over, while Mr. Caspar Whitney recites that the
surplusage was a large shipment of hospital cots. At any rate, the
shortage of shoes is unquestioned, whether their places were taken by
coffins, clay pigeons, or hospital cots. A leading New York business
man has just written me of the complete lack of hospital and medical
facilities in one camp. The superintendent of a Bible teachers’
training school writes that his son volunteered, leaving a wife and two
little children; that his pay was over a month in arrears, and that at
Christmas time he wrote as follows:

We have not yet received our November pay. At this time of the year
the boys don’t want it for themselves; they want to send some little
thing home to their mothers or wives or sweethearts, and in lots of
cases to their children, to whom just a little something from daddy
means so much. Yet even that little pleasure is denied us. Can you
not bring this to the attention of the people who are supporting this
Government?

I have received many hundreds such appeals. To give the names of
the writers would insure their punishment. To pay no heed to their
appeals means that the abuses go unremedied. Doubtless an occasional
informant is in error in his statement. But Senator Chamberlain’s
speech and the testimony taken before his committee prove that the
important statements I have made during the last few months as to the
shortcomings in our army have been more than warranted by the facts.

LET GEORGE SPEED UP THE WAR

FEBRUARY 3, 1918

In my last editorial I spoke of the things of which Secretary Baker
explicitly or implicitly denies the existence, in justifying the
Administration for the military delay and shortcomings that have
marked our entry into war. But as to the major facts there is no room
for denial. As to these Secretary Baker falls back on the comfortable
doctrine that all our shortcomings are of no consequence because
they are made good anyhow by the efforts of our allies--who, by the
way, with preposterous silliness, are in official circles merely
termed our associates. Secretary Baker explains that, although our
forces in France have no field artillery or auto rifles, this is of
no consequence because the French love to give us artillery and auto
rifles. He explains that the greatest German offensive movement of the
war is about to take place, an offensive movement which, if successful,
means that we have lost the war, and he adds that we can trust England
and France to repel this offensive. This is a naked statement that we
are to let George do it. We are to announce that after being at war
just a year our delays have been so great that we are almost negligible
in the military sense and that we must trust to our allies to speed up
the war.

This verifies the prediction of von Hindenburg and von Tirpitz that
it would take us eighteen months to become a real factor in the war.
Americans laughed at this statement, but the ruthless and brutal and
intelligent Germans were right and our own soft sentimentalities were
their efficient allies. We are in the position of letting George speed
up the war. Are the citizens of a proud and high-spirited Nation to be
content with such a position?

Our major shortcomings can neither be concealed nor denied. In October
I personally saw thousands of infantrymen drilling with sticks. In
December, I still saw artillerymen with sticks instead of rifles.
A month ago most of the cannon in the national army camps, which I
saw, were made of logs or of sections of telegraph poles and all the
machine guns I saw were wooden dummies. The daily press has repeatedly
published photos of these wooden rifles, cannon, and machine guns.
Secretary Baker cannot deny this nor can he deny that in modern war
an army without artillery is helpless. We are now getting a small
number of machine guns. We are turning some heavy coast guns into field
artillery, but as yet gallant General Pershing and his gallant men in
France have to trust to the French for artillery and machine guns and
war planes, and, thanks to our dawdling and indecision, we have an
utterly insufficient number of cargo ships.

We have been at war for a year. In April Congress stated that Germany
had already committed repeated acts of war against us and that our
own declaration of war was formal. It was then too late to undo the
criminal mischief caused by our refusal to prepare during the preceding
two and a half years, but we aggravated the damage immensely by our
delays and follies. If we had exercised reasonable energy we would in
six months have achieved more than we have actually achieved in a year.
The least we can do now is to speed up the war ourselves. Let us insist
that this be the end toward which with all our energy we now strive.

LET UNCLE SAM GET INTO THE GAME

FEBRUARY 5, 1918

No one can tell how long this war will last. It may last three years
more, and we should prepare accordingly. But it may close this year,
and it is unpardonable of us not to act with such speed as to make our
help available in substantial form at once. Uncle Sam must not be put
in the position of the sub, who only gets into the game just before the
whistle blows. Above all, he must not so act as to rouse suspicion that
this attitude is due to deliberate shirking on his part.

The prime aid in getting Uncle Sam into the game has come from the men
who, in order to achieve this object, have truthfully set forth the
unpleasant facts about our delay, military inefficiency, and total
unpreparedness. The critics of these men have been either unwise or
insincere. The most fatuous form of objection to such truth-telling is
the assertion that it tends to prolong the war. It is the only thing
that will shorten the war. Suppression of the truth as the habitual
governmental policy has been successful in preventing our people from
realizing our mistakes and even more successful in preventing their
remedy.

An excellent example of this policy of falsehood is furnished in a
letter from a news agency offering to various newspapers cartoons
assailing me because I had “criticized our unpreparedness and urged
an immediate movement toward universal obligatory military training,”
the cartoonist saying that I had said that I had seen artillerymen
drilling with “wooden guns made from pieces of telegraph poles.” The
writer admitted this, but stated that “these wooden imitations were as
efficient for the purposes of learning as the real guns.” I suppose
that this particular Champion of military inefficiency would believe
that a rifle team could train for a championship match with dummy
rifles of wood.

Every important criticism made of our military unpreparedness and
inefficiency during the past six months, and indeed during the
preceding three years, has been proved true and in no case has there
been correction of the abuse until it was exposed. General Pershing has
just written home a scathing indictment of the military shortcomings of
our higher officers abroad. This is after we have been at war a year,
and it is directly due to the character of both the civilian and the
military control that has been exercised from the swivel chairs of the
War Department during this year.

Our duty is solely to the country and to every official high or low
precisely to the extent to which he loyally, disinterestedly, and
efficiently serves the country. Let us get behind the United States.
Let us think only of our patriotic duty. I care not a rap for politics
at such a time as this. I supported Senator Chamberlain, my political
and to some extent my personal opponent in the past, because on the
great issue now up he served the country. I supported General Crowder,
of whose politics I know nothing and care less, because he served the
country. Stand behind America.

CONSERVATION IS IMPORTANT AND PRODUCTION IS MORE IMPORTANT

FEBRUARY 15, 1918

It is very important that we should conserve many things, but
especially food. It is, however, very much more important that we shall
produce the food in order to conserve it. The governmental attitude
toward production during the past year has been, at points, very
unwise. There has not only been failure to encourage producing the one
thing vitally necessary to this Nation at this time, but there has been
at times, by unwise price-fixing, a direct discouragement of producing.

We have suffered severely during this winter because of this attitude
in the matter of coal production. One of the factors in producing the
misery and discomfort, especially among people of limited means during
the severe weather of the last few months, was the improperly low price
rate established last summer, and the uncertain and contradictory
attitude of the Government on the question of coal production.

But important though all production is, the production of food, the
production which we owe to the farmer, is the most important of all.
This country needs more food. Its allies need more food. Only the
farmer can give the food. It is nonsense to expect him to produce
it unless he can make his livelihood by so doing. The farmer is
thoroughly patriotic; he stands ready now as he has stood ready in
every crisis of the Nation, pledged to do his full duty, and a little
more than his duty. But he makes his livelihood by producing what is
essential to the livelihood of the rest of us. He cannot produce unless
he makes his livelihood. Not a step should be taken that interferes
with his welfare, save after such wise and cautious inquiry as to make
us certain that the step is necessary.

We should do whatever is necessary to help the farmer produce the
maximum of food at this time. Moreover, every step we take should be
conditioned upon securing the farmer’s permanent well-being. The city
man is often utterly ignorant of the work and of the needs of the man
who lives in the open country. The working-man and the business man who
growl about one another are a little apt to join in growling about the
farmer. The city Socialist is more utterly ignorant of the farmer than
any other human being. Last fall the Socialist campaign in New York
had for one of its battle cries the announcement that they intended to
make the farmer give them five-cent milk. Apparently the detail that
the farmer had to feed the cows and take care of them struck them as
unworthy of notice.

The farmer must have labor. But there must be no importation of Chinese
or any other cheap labor, whether permanent or temporary. The emergency
need of farm labor for planting and harvesting can be met at this time
just as the need for the national army was met. The farmer must have
first-class prices for his products. No price-fixing at his expense
must be gone into without the clearest necessity being shown, and above
all there must be no repetition of the folly that marked the dealing
with the fuel situation last summer. The farmer must have what capital
he needs at a rate of interest not excessive, in order to plant and
reap his crop this year. The aid can be given to groups of farmers who
underwrite one another, so to speak, and, of course, if he can be given
it by private means, so much the better. If that is impossible, then
the Government should act. We should profit by the admirable California
example to see that the help is given only to the man who is a real
farmer and can really make use of it, but that it is extended in such a
way as to be of genuine and material benefit.

This is the immediate need, and let us treat meeting this need as the
opening wedge of a policy designed to prevent the growth of tenant
farms at the expense of the farm owner who tills his own soil, and
designed also to put a premium upon the permanent prosperity of the
small farmer as compared with the big landowner.

THE PEOPLE’S WAR

FEBRUARY 26, 1918

It is not agreeable to keep insisting on the need of doing better
than we have done. It is not agreeable to keep pointing out our
shortcomings, but to do so is the only way of remedying them and of
securing better action in the future.

The people, some of them well-meaning, some of them anything but
well-meaning, who denounce criticism and who object to telling the
minimum of truth necessary to correct our faults, are the efficient
allies of Germany and the foes of the United States. Actual events
have shown that fatuous complacency on the part of our officials has
resulted in inefficiency and delay which would have meant overwhelming
disaster to this Nation if we had not been protected by the fleets and
armies of England and France.

For the first eleven months of this war the inefficiency at vital
points in our Government, notably in the matter of shipping and in
the management of the War Department, was worse than anything Russia
herself has ever seen. Nearly thirteen months have now passed since
Germany went to war with us and we broke relations with Germany and
afterwards timidly and helplessly drifted stern foremost into what we
styled a “formal” state of war. The Russo-Japanese War likewise began
before there was any formal declaration of war. It only lasted sixteen
months. We have been accustomed to hold out Russia’s action during that
sixteen months as a miracle of inefficiency, but she showed herself
far less inefficient than we have shown ourselves during the thirteen
months that have just passed, and, of course, there was nothing in her
conduct quite as bad as our criminal folly in utterly failing in any
shape or way to prepare during the two and a half previous years.
There is just one difference between the two cases. Russia did not
have England and France to protect her from the effects of her folly.
That we have been at liberty to indulge in our folly with impunity is
due only to the fact that England and France have protected us with
the blood of their bravest, while we have refused to prepare and then
delayed and blundered and fatuously boasted after the war came on.
Every pro-German, of course, heartily applauds these blunders and
delays and bitterly objects to their being pointed out, but every
American with a particle of patriotism in him, every American proud
of his country, should learn the bitter lesson and should resolve
that never again will we permit our great Nation to be put in such an
ignoble position.

Our worst failure, of course, has been our failure to grapple with
the shipping problem. But there have been many such failures. One was
the failure to equip Pershing’s army. I do not believe a more gallant
little army than Pershing’s was ever sent abroad, but without abundant
artillery, machine guns, and airplanes a modern army is as helpless as
if its men were armed only with stone-headed axes. Pershing’s army has
only the field artillery, machine guns, and airplanes that the French
have given it, and this, although since our troops landed last June,
a longer time has elapsed than covered the whole Franco-Prussian War.
As regards the field artillery, the fault is due to the blind refusal
of the Government to prepare in advance to build the guns. As regards
the machine guns and auto rifles, the fault is due to our Government’s
refusal during the last thirteen months to utilize the Lewis gun.

Steps have been taken to remedy some of the worst of these evils in the
War Department. They have been taken only and purely because of public
criticism of them and because of the fearless exposure of inefficiency
of Senator Chamberlain and his colleagues of the Senate investigating
committee. Until this committee began its labor, the War Department
had striven to conceal and had refused to remedy its inefficiency,
blundering, and delay. There has been some improvement, and this
improvement is due solely to the Senate committee.

This is the people’s war. It is not the President’s war any more than
it is Congress’s war. It is America’s war. We are in honor bound in
conducting it to stand by every official who does well and against
every official who fails to do well. Any other attitude is a servile
attitude. Congress on the whole has done well. Until Congress finally
asserted itself the executive branch of the Government did very badly.
If Congress follows the lead outlined in the Chamberlain Bill, it
will continue to do well; if it follows the lead outlined in Senator
Overman’s Bill, it will condone the inefficiency of the past and put a
premium upon inefficiency in the future. Congress must not shirk its
duty to the people. Let the machinery of the Government be modernized
and above all let this machinery be manned by men of distinguished and
demonstrated ability who will make the governmental conduct efficient
instead of grossly inefficient, as it was during the first year of the
war.

Let us quit being content with feeble mediocrity. Let us demand really
first-class efficiency in both preparation and performance. That is the
only way to do what we must do and see this war through to a triumphant
conclusion.

THE FRUITS OF FIFTY-FIFTY LOYALTY

MARCH 2, 1918

A captain in the regular army of the United States has just been justly
sentenced to twenty-five years’ imprisonment for trying to combine
loyalty to this country with loyalty to Germany. He was born here of
German parents. In Germany, for such an offense, he would have been
instantly shot or hung. And in Germany organizations and newspapers
responsible for causing such action would be instantly suppressed and
their organizers and editors heavily punished.

The unfortunate army officer in question is paying the penalty for
heeding such organizations as the German-American Alliance. Mr.
Gustavus Ohlinger has put before Congress facts concerning the past
actions and activities of this organization which warrant and require
its instant suppression. Its leaders have sometimes been men who
practiced a fifty-fifty loyalty between this country and Germany and
sometimes men all of whose loyalty was for Germany and all whose enmity
was for the nationality, ideals, and language of the American people.
It is an outrage that such an organization should be permitted longer
to exist. Congress should act against it at once and the Department
of Justice should abandon its slack attitude toward German spies and
should so act as to convince our enemies that Uncle Sam is not a timid
and soft-headed fool, and that hereafter German spies, dynamiters, and
murderers who ply their trade here will do so at the risk of their
necks.

Teaching German in the public schools should be prohibited. German
language newspapers should have a time limit act, after which it
should not be lawful to publish them save in English. A few of their
newspapers have a most honorable past and are doing excellent work in
the present. A number of English language newspapers have preached
moral treason to the American people, often covering it by zeal in
denouncing all honest and truthful men who point out the delays and
inefficiencies in government, actions which make those responsible for
them enemies of the American people and aids to Germany; but moral
treason in English is at least open, whereas in a foreign language
it is hidden. Moral treason is not necessarily legal treason, but it
may be as dangerous, and from senators to school teachers, all public
servants who deal in it should promptly be removed from office.

The organizations, newspapers, and public servants who thus betray
the honor of America in the interest of Germany wrong all their fellow
citizens. But above all they cruelly wrong those loyal Americans,
the great majority of our citizens who are in whole or in part of
German blood. The loyal majority should lend their utmost energies to
securing the condign and summary punishment of the disloyal minority
of Americans of German blood who are a disgrace and a menace to this
country. Gustavus Ohlinger is an admirable example of the Americans in
whole or in part of German blood who is an American and nothing else.
All good Americans, and especially all good Americans of German blood,
should actively and heartily back him. There is no room in this country
for fifty-fifty Americanism.

QUIT TALKING PEACE

MARCH 5, 1918

The experience of Trotzky, Lenine, and the other Bolshevist leaders
in their peace negotiations with Germany ought to be illuminating to
our own people. Germany encouraged them to enter peace negotiations,
spoke fairly to them, got them committed to the abandonment of their
allies, used them to demoralize Russia and make it impossible for her
to organize effective resistance, and then threw them over, instantly
invaded their land, and now holds a part of Russia.

Let our people take warning and insist that all peace talk cease
forthwith. Germany is the enemy of humanity generally and in a special
sense is the enemy of the United States. She has introduced into
warfare horrors which not another civilized nation would have dreamed
of using. Her conduct toward Belgium stands out on the high peak of
infamy. She has murdered innocent women and children wholesale on the
high seas and hundreds of Americans have thus been slain. She has
organized murder, rape, robbery, and devastation on a gigantic scale in
every conquered territory. Our own sons and brothers are at this moment
facing death by the awful torture of the poison gas because Germany has
invented methods of warfare more cruel than those of the Dark Ages.
Peace on equal terms with such a foe would mean black shame in the
present and the certainty of renewed and wholesale war in the future.

To talk peace means to puzzle the ignorant and to weaken the will of
even the stout-hearted. It is hailed with evil joy by all the men in
this country who have opposed war and have wished us to submit tamely
to German brutality. When there comes from Washington an announcement
about peace terms which the pacifists and pro-Germans are able to
interpret as favorable to their views, the Hearst papers gleefully
champion it as undoing the effect of previous declarations that we
are in this war to the end, and Mr. Hillquit, the New York mayoralty
candidate of the Germanized Socialists and the pacifists, expresses
his hearty approval and says that the President has now taken his (Mr.
Hillquit’s) position.

Let us quit talking peace with a foe who, if we entered into peace
negotiations, would, according to his ability, trick us as he has
already tricked the Bolsheviki of Russia. Let us not put ourselves on
the moral and intellectual level of Trotzky and Lenine. Every peace
utterance pleases the Germans, renders our allies uneasy, strengthens
the pacifists, the pro-Germans, and the various seditious elements in
our own country, and bewilders, disheartens, and weakens our honest
citizens.

The time when words about peace were useful passed a very long time
ago. Let us now merely announce that we are in this war to fight until
Germany is beaten to her knees. Then let us bend our entire energy
to building ships and more ships at the greatest possible speed and
putting a couple of million men on the firing line at the earliest
possible moment. That is the effective way to bring a just and lasting
peace.

THE WORST ENEMIES OF CERTAIN LOYAL AMERICANS

MARCH 10, 1918

The army and navy of the United States in the training camps, on
the high seas, and at the battle front, are at this moment proving
themselves the most potent agencies of Americanism that our country
contains. All good Americans should feel a peculiar pride in the fine
and gallant loyalty with which the great majority of the Americans of
German descent have come forward to do their part to win this war
against the brutal and merciless tyranny of the Prussianized Germany
of the Hohenzollerns. As regards able-bodied men, this service must be
rendered in the army, for in war-time no other form of activity can be
accepted as a substitute for the fighting work of the fighting man.

I continually meet officers from the front. A captain recently out of
the trenches called on me the other day. His father and mother were
born in Germany. He himself, after going through a small American
college, had spent three years at Heidelberg. He mentioned that
one of his lieutenants was born in Norway, and that another was
of Irish parentage, and then continued by saying that already his
brief experience of the war had given him a horror of the Germany of
to-day, had convinced him that our only safety lay in the complete
Americanization of all our people and therefore in the insistence
that English should be the only language of this country and the only
language taught in any primary school, and that he regarded such
organizations as the German-American Alliance as guilty of moral
treason to America as the worst and most dangerous foes of good
Americans of German blood, and as richly deserving to be promptly
suppressed and punished.

An officer from our destroyer squadron across the seas informed me that
our destroyers had accounted for nearly a score of submarines; that
about a quarter of their crews were, as indicated by their names, of
German descent, but straight-out Americans and nothing else; that his
own best gun-pointer was named Fritz Heinz; and that their keenest
indignation was reserved for the German officials in Germany and the
German-American Alliance in America whose actions tended to make a wall
between them and their fellow Americans and who inflicted the most
cruel wrong possible upon them by exciting among other Americans an
indiscriminate distrust and anger toward all men of German origin.

These men were absolutely right. We speak in the name of all good
Americans and on behalf of Fritz and Adolph and Gustav exactly as
on behalf of Bill and Harry and Edward, when we demand the prompt
suppression of the German-American Alliance and of all similar
organizations. The German blood is exactly as good as any other blood,
but exactly as, under the corroding influence of slavery, masses of
Americans of the best blood once became the enemies of the Union
and of humanity, so under the debasing and brutalizing influence of
the _kultur_ of the last fifty years, Germany has become the cruel
and treacherous enemy of the United States and of all the other
liberty-loving nations of mankind.

GIRD UP OUR LOINS

MARCH 16, 1918

The Bible warns us to gird up our loins if we wish to win a race. Most
certainly we cannot expect to do well in the present struggle unless
we bend every energy to the task and exercise all our forethought in
instant preparation.

Russia’s betrayal of the Allied cause under the foolish and iniquitous
lead of the Bolsheviki has been a betrayal of the United States and of
the cause of liberty and democracy and justice throughout the world.
Above all, it has been a betrayal of Russia herself, and it has, of
course, absolved us of every obligation to her. Our duty is to stand
by England and France and Belgium and Serbia, who have stood by us.
Russia has ruined herself in Germany’s interest, and has immensely
increased the peril for the rest of us. This simply means that we
ought to re-double our effort. We should be building the cargo ships
in three eight-hour shift days and should treat work on them as being
equivalent to work in the army. We should speed to the utmost the work
on the cannon and flying machines so that our army may cease having to
rely on the French for artillery and airplanes. The army should copy
the wisdom of the navy in regard to the Lewis auto rifle and should use
this weapon to the utmost limit now, even although it prove wise later
to supersede it with the Browning weapon.

We ought at once to introduce obligatory universal military training
for our young men between nineteen and twenty-one. They would not
be sent to war until they were twenty-one. This would be the most
effective step in preparing to get ready an army of five million men.
Such an army would be relatively no larger than the four hundred
thousand men which gallant Canada, to her eternal honor, has already
raised. Let us begin now to prepare ourselves for a three years’ war.

If we had prepared as we ought to have done during the two and a half
years before we at last reluctantly faced our duty and went to war, we
would have put a couple of million of fighting men into Europe last
June. Russia would never have broken, and in all probability the war
would have ended at once with almost no fighting. There is no use in
crying over the enormous quantities of milk we have already spilled,
unless it becomes necessary in order to prevent us from continuing
to spill it in the present and future. Failure to prepare as above
outlined may cause us as much trouble in the future as our past failure
to prepare has already caused us. General Pershing’s gallant little
army has already made the entire United States its debtor. But it is
not as yet as important a military factor as the army of Belgium or of
Portugal or of Serbia. Let us back it up and equip it and reënforce it
to the utmost of our strength. Let us quit talking peace and bend all
our energies to winning the war, and thereby winning the only kind of
peace that will be safe, honorable, and lasting.

BOLSHEVIKI AT HOME AND ABROAD

MARCH 19, 1918

The answer of the Bolsheviki to the President’s message was an example
of mean and studied impertinence. There was no gratitude, no apology
for their betrayal of America and of the cause of liberty, and no
expression of hostility to their German masters, but there was a
gratuitous and insulting expression for a class war in America against
what the Bolsheviki with ignorant folly speak of as capitalism.
A couple of days afterward the Bolshevist authorities definitely
concluded with Germany their peace of ignominy and treachery.

There is now no possible reason for our Government to draw the sharp
distinction they have drawn between the Bolsheviki abroad and the
Bolsheviki at home. The Government is prosecuting Victor Berger and
has suppressed the paper of Max Eastman. But Berger and Eastman are
essentially the same as Lenine and Trotzky. All four have played
Germany’s game; all four have been the enemies of the cause of the
United States and of liberty. The utter ruin which the Bolsheviki have
brought on Russia offers an illuminating example of the destruction
which would befall the United States if it ever submitted to the
leadership of men like Messrs. Hillquit, Townley, Haywood, and Berger.

We have had many evil capitalists in the United States, but on the
whole the worst capitalists could not do the permanent damage to the
farmers and working-men in America which these foreign and native
Bolsheviki would do if they had the power. Our people should keep
steadily in mind that the Russian Bolsheviki have not attacked the
big Russian capitalists who were in alliance with the autocracy of
the Romanoffs and they have been the tools, paid or unpaid, of the
German militarists and capitalists. They have spent their energies
in attacking the revolutionists who overthrew the Romanoffs and
in persecuting the peasants who have become small farmers and the
working-men who are skilled mechanics and the small shopkeepers. They
hate and envy those thrifty and self-respecting workers who in this
country make up the great majority of our people and who are our most
typical and characteristic Americans.

The Bolsheviki have concluded a peace with Germany which includes
handing back to the Turks, or, in other words, plunging back into
brutal savagery, a district in Asia in which there are multitudes of
Armenians and other Christians. Our Government has been derelict in
its duty to the Armenians, to the Christians of Syria and to the Jews
of Palestine, by its failure to declare war on Turkey. It is a grave
error to coddle the Bolsheviki and support them in any way against our
allies unless we are also willing fearlessly to condemn their betrayal
of us and of the Allied cause, and unless we are ready to war to the
end against both Germany and Turkey in order to rescue from tyranny and
to give independence to the unfortunate people whom the Bolsheviki have
abandoned to a cruel fate.

THE FRUITS OF OUR DELAY

MARCH 26, 1918

The shameful betrayal of the Allies’ cause by the Russian Bolshevists
and the delay and incompetence of the American Government have given
the Germans a free hand for their drive against the British army.
England is at this moment fighting our battles just as much as she
is fighting her own, yet, although three years have passed since the
Lusitania was sunk and a year since Congress declared that we had
“formally” entered the war, America is still merely an onlooker.

We owe this ignoble position to the folly and the procrastination of
our Government and its inveterate tendency to substitute rhetoric for
action. We have a gallant little army across the ocean, but it is
smaller than the Belgian army. We are not holding a greater extent of
the battle front than the army of little Portugal. We have at the front
no airplanes or field artillery and very few machine guns except those
we have gotten from the French. Even the clothes of our troops are
mainly obtained from the English. Yet we are the richest nation and one
of the most populous nations on the earth.

Our Government is responsible for our dreadful shortcomings, but
the responsibility is shared by all the foolish creatures who have
willfully blinded themselves to these shortcomings and have clamored
against the faithful public servants, like Senator Chamberlain, who
laid bare the shortcomings for the purpose of remedying them. The truly
patriotic men in this crisis have been the men who have fearlessly told
the truth in order to speed up the war. The other men who have decried
the truth-telling as “crying over spilt milk” have been profoundly
unpatriotic. It was the failure to point out how much milk had been
spilt which was primarily responsible for the failure to stop further
spilling of milk.

In the face of the terrible battle which our English allies are now
waging, and in view of the fact that for three years and a half we have
owed our safety to the British fleet and to the French spirit typified
by Premier Clemenceau, let the American people now demand that the
Government recognize the need of instant and efficient action. Let
our Government quit flirting with the Bolshevists at home and abroad.
Let it declare war on Turkey at once. Let it acknowledge its dreadful
failures and delays and henceforth act with all possible speed. Let it
manfully endeavor to make our weight felt in the war this year. Let it
stop boasting about the future and begin to act in the present.

Let the Government use common sense. It has talked magnificently about
having twenty thousand airplanes ready in June, but it has not one
American war plane at the front to-day. Let it quit boasting and act.
Let it push the shipping programme by night and day. Let it give France
and England the men they so sorely need.

Our Government has delayed until the Allies have been brought to the
brink of destruction. Let it act at once lest the chance for action
pass completely by.

HOW THE HUN EARNS HIS TITLE

MARCH 31, 1918

THE CURSE OF THE SYSTEM

BY D. THOMAS CURTIN

A scene in Schabatz, when the Austro-Hungarians attempted to flank
Belgrade in early August, 1914, has seared itself into my memory. I
was in the shambles of an overgrown village. The blood of both armies
flowed in the streets and the wine from broken casks and bottles flowed
in the cellars, soldiers walking in it up to their knees.

The street was deserted save for an _Unteroffizier_ who was passing.
An old woman, bent and shriveled, her white locks escaping the yellow
sash around her head, tottered from a whitewashed mixture of mud and
thatch, saw the enemy soldier, started back, thought better of it, and
sank to her knees while she extended her bony arms for mercy. He drew
his saber--still a relic of war. “A little despicable stage play and
magnanimous pardon,” I thought. I was mistaken. The saber whistled and
slashed the outstretched arms, the woman’s shriek cut me like saws and
knives, and I turned away bewildered.

I came face to face with the man a few minutes later. He was not drunk.
Nor did he look like a wild man from the hills. He was a Viennese, the
kind of man I had seen on scores of occasions lolling in a café, mild
and gentle as a kitten. He looked mild and gentle now.

“Why did you do it?” I had to ask.

“She was a pig-dog Serb, an enemy of my country. I did my duty.” And he
said it in a manner which showed him satisfied in his conscience that
he had done what was right.

I realize now that I had had my first war-time example of the German
system of education. The code is that anything done in the name of the
Fatherland is correct. A man can be educated in such a manner that he
will wipe out “crawling verminous pests of his country” with as little
compunction as a farmer would rid his field of potato bugs.

On Thanksgiving Day, 1914, I visited the American Hospital in Munich,
a military hospital supported by contributions from the United States.
While talking with three men in one room I was actually saying to
myself that such as these could not be guilty of atrocities, when one
of them told me a story which forced me to change my mind.

“I was a member of a relief company marching in the Vosges,” he said.
“As we were about to halt for lunch, we came upon a French priest in a
wood who was judged quickly to be a spy by our officers. These turned
him over to us and we had great amusement after we had finished eating.
I laugh still whenever I think of it. We tied a rope around his neck
and threw it over a limb of a tree. Some comrades pulled and up went
the priest while the rest of us stood around and jabbed him with our
bayonets. ‘Higher, higher!’ we shouted. And then we had a jumping
contest to see which could thrust his bayonet highest.”

The man told me the story because he thought it funny and his eyes
danced with happy recollections as he told it.

NO GUNS

_General Pétain, commander, French army, said: “Send guns; so that
some of us may be alive to fight by your side, when at last America is
ready.”_

What! in France and no guns!
Have I sent forth my sons
With proud boasts of great deeds--
And fallen down at plain needs?
Who proclaimed to the world
With my banners unfurled
The dread foe will succumb,
I, America, come!

In France, and no guns!
And I’ve sent forth my sons
With those wolves of the Huns at their throats,
While the Kaiser and Hindenburg gloat,
And France, stricken France,
Fills the breach, while my lance
I sent flaming with pride
Hangs behind, not beside!

In France! and no guns,
Empty hands, and my sons
Who would tear out their hearts for my fame,
Are held up to derision and shame,
Because statesmen so small
Hew out roads to a wall
While the fire bells of death
Crash souls out, and breath!

In France, and no guns!
Why, you’re worse than the Huns,
You men who are shaming my honor
When the stress of the Nation’s upon her.
With your quibbles and greed
Can the trampled be freed?
Oh, my heart’s sick with scorn,
I, America, suborned.

In France, and no guns!
Let’s forever be done
With our boasts and our brags, and succumb
To the scorning before which we’re dumb.
When at last France is free
And her glory acclaimed
Let none look at me,
At America, shamed.

Henrietta Keith, Minneapolis

We live such sheltered lives here, three thousand miles away from the
war, that most of us don’t even yet realize what Germany has done
and has stood for in this war and what a terrible menace she is to
us and to all civilization. The other day I met a very able writer
and observer who at the outbreak of the Great War spent many months
with the German and Austrian armies and then lived in Germany until
it became impossible for a self-respecting American longer to stay
there. He is Mr. D. Thomas Curtin. His father was born in Ireland.
He is himself a Catholic. I mention these facts merely because they
refute the cheap and vicious falsehoods so often promulgated by the
pro-Germans to the effect that the accounts of the German atrocities
are due to English propaganda.

I ask all good Americans, whatever their creed, and I especially ask
American women, to read these two straightforward statements by Mr.
Curtin, the account of the killing by torture of the priest who fell
into the hands of the German soldiers and the account of the fearful
brutality of an Austrian German to a poor old woman. These were not
isolated cases of brutality. They were both part of the policy of
deliberate horror, which Mr. Curtin speaks of as “the system.” All
in America who have played the game of Germany, from Hearst and the
Germanized Socialists and the German-American Alliance at one end of
the line to foolish pacifist preachers at the other end of the line,
have been, according to their power, working to bring about the day
when we here in this country would see our own women and helpless
non-combatant men and our own children exposed to such hideous wrongs
and torture as is described by Mr. Curtin. I very seriously ask our
people to read what Mr. Curtin says and to ponder the full meaning of
the facts he sets forth.

In the next place, I ask them to read the poem--and it is a real poem,
not merely verse--of Mrs. Keith, a Minneapolis woman, called “No Guns.”
Well-meaning, foolish people, and some people who in ordinary relations
of life are not foolish, are fond of telling us not to point out the
defects in the army, because this encourages Germany, and because
anyhow it is a case of spilt milk, and there is no use of crying over
spilt milk. The answer is twofold. In the first place, Germany knows
all our shortcomings. Inasmuch as we have wickedly refused to go to
war with Turkey and Bulgaria, we have left open avenues by which it
is absolutely certain that Germany gets full knowledge of everything
she wishes to know about this country. It is only our own people who
are kept in ignorance. In the next place, as regards the spilt-milk
proposition, the trouble is that we have kept on spilling the milk
and that only by pointing out that it has been spilled is it possible
to solder the milk cans and stop further spilling. Until Senator
Chamberlain and his committee boldly and truthfully pointed out the
evil caused by the delays and shortcomings of the War Department, the
Administration made not the slightest effort to remedy them. Some of
the more salient of these shortcomings have been remedied, and this
fact is primarily due to the courage and patriotism of these public
servants, Senator Chamberlain and his committee.

If fourteen months ago our people had been willing to demand the truth
and to listen to those who told the truth, we would at this moment have
four times the force we now have in France; and we would have guns and
airplanes, and auto rifles of our own make with it; and we would have
had plenty of ships to carry our men across and to give them food and
munitions. The reason why our fighting army at the front in France is
no larger, and the reason why we have had to get the necessary field
guns, airplanes, and auto rifles for that army from the French, is
because we, as a people, were not willing to insist upon knowing the
truth. It is precisely because certain men are now telling the truth
that there is reason to hope that gradually the milk spilling will be
stopped; that gradually we shall get the guns, the airplanes, and auto
rifles for our men, and above all the ships that are vitally necessary.
I ask the mothers of this country whose sons are now in the army, or
may go into the army, to read and ponder this poem by a woman, and to
cast the weight of their great influence in favor of demanding that
every ounce of energy we as a Nation possess be used to speed up the
war, to relieve our allies of the burden of supplying us with weapons
of war, and to see that the American troops abroad are furnished from
this country with American-made weapons of the highest type.

The don’t-cry-over-spilt-milk appeal represents unpardonable wrong to
America and to civilization.

THANK HEAVEN!

APRIL 2, 1918

At last, thank Heaven, comes the news that our little American army
at the front has been put absolutely at the disposal of the French
and English military leaders for use of any kind in the gigantic and
terrible battle now being waged. All Americans who are proud of the
great name of America will humbly and reverently thank Heaven that at
any rate the army we have at the front is not to remain in the position
of an onlooker, but is to be put into the battle.

The wanton and cruel bombardment of Paris, undertaken for no military
reason and with its characteristic slaughter of women and children
in a church, proves that the German barbarity is as deliberate and
as infamous now as at the beginning of the war. The Allies in this
battle are fighting for humanity and civilization. They are fighting
the battle of the United States. Any man in the United States who at
this time directly or indirectly expresses approval of or sympathy with
Germany in this battle or in this war, should be arrested and either
shot, hung, or imprisoned for life, according to the gravity of his
offense.

Thank Heaven that our sons and brothers are now to stand at Armageddon.
Thank Heaven that American soldiers are now to fight in the great
battle against the bestial foe of America and of mankind. Words count
for little at this time and for nothing whatever except in so far as
they are of help to the men of deeds who are at the front.

It is these men at the front who are now making all Americans, born
and unborn, forever their debtors. They are the men who have paid with
their bodies for their soul’s desire. Let no one pity them, whatever
their fate, for they have seen the mighty days and have risen level to
the need of the mighty days. And let no one pity the wives and mothers
and fathers whose husbands and lovers and sons now face death in battle
for the mightiest of all high causes. Our hearts are wrung with sorrow
and anxiety, but our heads are held aloft with pride. It is a terrible
thing that our loved ones should face the great danger, but it would
be a far more terrible thing if, whatever the danger, they were not
treading the hard path of duty and honor.

CITIZENS OR SUBJECTS?

APRIL 6, 1918

In a self-governing country the people are called citizens. Under a
despotism or autocracy the people are called subjects. This is because
in a free country the people are themselves sovereign, while in a
despotic country the people are under a sovereign. In the United States
the people are all citizens, including its President. The rest of them
are fellow citizens of the President. In Germany the people are all
subjects of the Kaiser. They are not his fellow citizens, they are his
subjects. This is the essential difference between the United States
and Germany, but the difference would vanish if we now submitted to the
foolish or traitorous persons who endeavor to make it a crime to tell
the truth about the Administration when the Administration is guilty
of incompetence or other shortcomings. Such endeavor is itself a crime
against the Nation. Those who take such an attitude are guilty of moral
treason of a kind both abject and dangerous.

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.

Let us put our trust neither in rhetoric nor hypocrisy, whether
conscious or unconscious. Let us be honest with ourselves. Let us look
the truth in the face. Let us remember what Germany, Austria, and
Turkey have actually done. Let us remember what Russia has suffered
from Germany and the worse than folly with which she has behaved to
every one else. Let us remember what has happened to China and what we
have made happen to Haiti and San Domingo. Then let us trust for our
salvation to a sound and intense American nationalism.

The horse sense of the matter is that all agreements to further the
cause of sound internationalism must be based on recognition of the
fact that as the world is actually constituted our present prime need
is this sound and intense American nationalism. The first essential
of this sound nationalism is that the Nation shall trust to its own
fully prepared strength for its own defense. So far as possible, its
strength must also be used to secure justice for others and must
never be used to wrong others. But unless we possess and prepare the
strength, we can neither help ourselves nor others. Let us by all means
go into any wise league or covenant among nations to abolish neutrality
(for, of course, a league to enforce peace is merely another name for a
league to abolish neutrality in every possible war). But let us first
understand what we are promising, and count the cost and determine
to keep our promises. Above all, let us treat any such agreement or
covenant as a mere addition to, and never as a substitute for, the
preparation in advance of our own armed power. Next time we behave with
the ignoble folly we have shown during the last four years we may not
find allies to do what France and England and Italy have done for us.
They have protected us with their navies and armies, their blood and
their treasure, while we first refused to do anything and then slowly
and reluctantly began to harden and make ready our giant but soft and
lazy strength.

No proper scheme designed to secure peace without effort and safety
without service and sacrifice will either make this country safe or
enable it to do its international duty toward others.

An American citizen, personally unknown to me, writes me that his
three sons entered the army at the outbreak of the war, and that one
of them, an aviator, was killed in battle at the front just two weeks
before my own son was killed as he fought in the air. In his letter my
correspondent adds:

Would that my country might learn and never forget that not only
the winning of peace now, but the maintenance of peace at all times
depends not fundamentally on treaties or leagues of nations, but on
the readiness of citizens to fly to the aid of the wronged and to give
their lives if need be that justice may be secured.

There speaks the true American spirit which holds fast alike to
fearlessness and to wisdom, to gentleness and to iron resolution.
There speaks the spirit of that fervent nationalism which would forbid
America either to inflict or to endure wrong.

THE MAN WHO PAYS AND THE MAN WHO PROFITS

AUGUST 9, 1918

The men who do the fighting at the front and their mothers and
wives back here are those who in this great and terrible crisis are
paying--the blood of the men and the tears of the women, and with the
suffering of men, women, and children--for our failure to prepare
during the two and a half years before we entered the World War. For
this failure to prepare, in spite of the most vivid warning ever given
a Nation, the warning that befell the rest of the world during those
two and a half years, the professed pacifists and the politicians who
pandered to them are more responsible than any one else, except the
pro-Germans. If, when the World War broke out, or at latest when the
Lusitania was sunk, we had done our plain duty, we had then begun to
build ships, field cannon and airplanes, and to train men exactly as
we have been doing during the last year and a quarter, except that
we should have done the work on a larger scale with more efficiency
and with much less waste and extravagance. Remember that failure to
provide great numbers of cannon and airplanes means that the infantry
has to pay for it with a huge increase of slaughter. All the guns and
airplanes we left unbuilt during the first three years of the war
has meant so much more bloodshed, so many more Americans killed and
crippled, not to speak of the tremendous loss of life to our allies.
Moreover, when men in small numbers are put into battle, when only a
few hundred thousand are forced to suffer heavy loss in doing work
which two or three million men could have accomplished speedily and
thoroughly and with very little loss, the responsibility rests on those
who prevented the preparation in advance. If we had built quantities of
ships and trained large numbers of men in advance, the World War would
have ended almost as soon as we entered, and an infinite amount of
bloodshed would have been prevented.

The best roll of our army overseas is the American roll of honor. These
men have paid with their bodies for the safety of this Nation in the
present and the future. They have died, and by their death have earned
for the rest of us the right to hold our heads high with pride. But
it is no less true that their blood has been shed, but their gallant
lives have been spent because we did not prepare in advance. We did
not prepare because our people were misled. For this misleading of the
people the professional profiteers share the responsibility with the
pro-Germans, with sham sentimentalists, with the sordid, short-sighted
materialists, and with all the politicians, publicists, and private
citizens, rich or poor, whose vanity or folly or self-interest profited
thereby. We ought not to remember this in any spirit of revenge, but
most certainly, unless we are worse than foolish, we shall remember
it and other warnings to teach us how to behave in the future, and as
a very stern warning against again trusting to the leadership of the
men thus responsible for the deaths of so many fine and fearless young
Americans.

Most of the men who are misled, and some of the men who misled them,
have come frankly forward to admit their error. What is even more
important, most of them have made the real atonement of deeds. They
have, if young, themselves gone into the army, and if not young have
sent their sons or permitted them to go into the army and fight in
freedom’s belated battle. All these men are paying their share of
the joint payment in blood of the Nation. They are to be heartily
respected. They are not seeking to profit by the valor and blood of
others.

So much for the men who pay; now for the men who profit. Some of these
men profit in money. If such profit is excessive it is iniquitous.
But a proper money profit is absolutely necessary, for no business
can be permanent without profit any more than a working-man can
permanently work without wages. The unpardonable profit is that of
the man, especially the rich man, who, having preached pacifism and
unpreparedness, now, when war comes, sees brave men face a death which
pacifism and unpreparedness have made infinitely more probable while
he himself and his sons profit by these other men’s courage and sit at
home in the ease and safety secured by the fact that these others face
death. The worst profiteers in this country are the men and the sons of
the men who decline to face the death which their own actions have made
more probable for others.

Unless in exceptional cases there is no need to discuss individuals
in private life. But when a man seeks public office, it becomes a
duty to discuss his record. Mr. Henry Ford is a candidate for United
States Senator in Michigan. No man in this country strove harder in
the cause of pacifism and unpreparedness than he did during the vital
two years and a half before this country went to War. He received
the cordial applause of the peace-at-any-price people who were
themselves, of course, efficiently playing the pro-German game. He is
a multi-millionaire. If any of his kin are killed, their families are
not merely guarded against poverty, but are sure of wealth. The son of
Mr. Ford ought to feel it absolutely obligatory on him to go to the
war. There is not in this country any other man who ought to feel it
more honorably necessary to pay with his body, if necessary, to atone
with his life for the dreadful wrong done this country by the preachers
of pacifism and unpreparedness during the two years and a half that
preceded our entry into the war. Yet it is announced in the press that
Mr. Ford’s son has obtained exemption from military service and is
employed in the money-making business of his wealthy father.

Mr. Ford’s proper place is on the mourner’s bench and not at the
council board of the Nation.

OUR DEBT TO THE BRITISH EMPIRE

AUGUST 16, 1918

Judge Ben Lindsey has recently written two or three striking
pieces about what Great Britain has done and is doing in this war.
Incidentally he points out how far ahead of us she now is in certain
types of social legislation, such as that dealing with children. But
the lesson he inculcates which is of most immediate concern is the
giant part England has played in this war and the debt we owe to
her because, in standing up for Belgium and France, she was really
defending us during our days of folly when we followed the lead of our
worst enemies, the pacifists and pro-Germans.

The English pacifists are, if anything, even more silly than our own.
They did their best to make England keep out of this war. If they had
succeeded the British Empire would for a few years have trod the broad,
smooth road of peaceful and greedy infamy and would then have tumbled
into the bottomless pit of utter destruction. But in August, 1914,
Great Britain and the gallant overseas commonwealths which share her
empire chose the hard path of immediate danger, of ultimate safety, and
of high heroism. Thereby they saved their own souls and the bodies of
their children, and in so doing rendered an inestimable service to us.

England has raised an immense army which has fought in Europe, Asia,
and Africa. If it were not for this army even the highly trained valor
of the French could not have averted German victory. At the same time
the British fleet has kept the seas free for the food and coal and
munitions needed for the Allied people and armies and has furnished
the transports necessary to enable us to put under Pershing a force
large enough to be of real consequence in the vitally important battle
which has been raging for the last thirty days. If Great Britain had
not been far-sighted enough to realize what her own welfare demanded
when France was invaded, and if she had not been stirred to noble
indignation by the Belgian horror, the whole civilized world would now
have been cowering under the brutal dominion of Germany. If she had not
controlled the seas, not an American battalion could have been sent
to the aid of France as she struggled to save the soul of the world,
and no help could have been given gallant Italy or any others of these
Allied nations to whose stern fighting efficiency we owe it that this
earth is still a place on which free men can live.

We must stand by Great Britain precisely as we stand by our other
allies--in the first place, by waging the war with all our strength,
and in the next place by seeing that the peace is of a kind which
justifies them for all the sacrifices they have made.

One item in waging the war ought to be insistence that every American
of fighting age who resides in the British Empire and every Englishman
of fighting age who resides in the United States be invariably put in
either the British or the American armies. One item in making peace
ought to be insistence that Britain keep every colony she has conquered
from Germany, both in the South Seas and in Africa. Germany has behaved
abominably in Africa. The course Germany has followed in Africa has
made her a menace of evil to the Boer and British Africanders, and to
return to her the colonies which have been taken from her, whether in
Africa or Asia, by Australia or Great Britain, or by France or Japan or
Belgium, would be a crime against civilization.

THE CANDIDACY OF HENRY FORD

AUGUST 20, 1918

Every loyal American citizen in Michigan should read the last two
numbers of Mr. George Harvey’s War Weekly. In these numbers there are
quotations from Mr. Henry Ford’s speeches made two years ago and again
since we entered the war. Mr. Ford has not questioned the accuracy of
these quotations given by Mr. Harvey.

Speaking of American flags over his own factory Mr. Ford said: “I don’t
believe in the flag. When the war is over these flags shall come down
never to go up again.”

The Sedition Act, approved by President Wilson, inflicts a maximum
punishment of twenty years in the penitentiary for any man who, while
we are at war, utters “language intended to bring the flag of the
United States into contempt or disrepute.” During the last year many
poor and ignorant men have been convicted and sentenced for using
language thus forbidden by law. In my view the fact that Mr. Ford is
an enormously wealthy man ought not to give him immunity from the law
if he cannot show that he did not use the language quoted in the War
Weekly. But whether or not amenable to the law, no patriotic American
can afford to put in the Senate, perhaps to help negotiate the peace
treaty, a man who announces that as soon as peace comes he wishes to
haul down the American flag and never again to hoist it. To send such a
man to the Senate professing such sentiments under existing conditions
would give the enemy a wholly wrong idea of the pacifist sentiment in
our country. There is nothing in the world which would now help Germany
as much, or give her so much heart in her struggle for the overthrow of
liberty and democracy as the belief that men professing such sentiments
would have part in the peace negotiations on behalf of this country.

Among the further utterances of Mr. Ford (as given in the War Weekly)
is one that he does “not believe in patriotism” and that he does not
care any more for the United States “than for China or Hindustan.”
The man who does not believe in patriotism is not fit to live in this
country, still less to represent it in the Senate. If these words of
Mr. Ford mean anything, then Mr. Ford is unpatriotic and has no more
right to sit in the United States Senate than a Hindu or a Chinaman.
Unless Mr. Ford can show that he never uttered these words no man
worthy to be called an American, and least of all any religious or
patriotic man, can afford to support him for the Senate.

Mr. Ford has been given immensely valuable war contracts of the
Government. No doubt he has executed them as well as the thousands
of other contractors who now render service to the Government for
pay. But no service he can thus render the Government can offset the
frightful damage he did our people by the lavish use he made of his
enormous wealth in a gigantic and profoundly anti-American propaganda
against preparedness and against our performance of international duty
during the two and a half years before we entered the war. This crusade
against righteousness included the sending of the ridiculous “peace
ship” to Europe. This particular manifestation was too absurd even to
do harm, but so far as it had any effect at all it encouraged Germany
to believe that we were as neutral between right and wrong as Pontius,
and that as far as we were concerned she could safely proceed with
wrongdoing because we held the scales of judgment even between the
wrongdoer and his victim. The crusade also included an extraordinary
series of advertisements issued long after the Lusitania was sunk, in
which Mr. Ford violently opposed and denounced preparedness, advocated
and approved the McLemore resolutions, and announced that it was our
duty to keep out of war; and not merely himself kept silent about the
wrongdoing of Germany, but assailed those who set forth this wrongdoing
on the ground that they “had bred racial hatred by the printing of
incendiary news stories and articles.” It may well be doubted whether
this propaganda did not do more damage to the American people than the
propaganda carried on at the same time by Ambassador Bernstorff.

If we had seen our duty and had fully prepared during these two and a
half years, either we would never have had to enter the war or we would
have brought it to a close immediately after we entered it. The best
and bravest of the young men of the Nation are now paying with their
blood for our unpreparedness and therefore for the pacific propaganda
quite as much as for the pro-German propaganda carried on in this
country during the two and a half years before we entered the war. But
wealthy Mr. Ford’s son is not among these men. He is of draft age. He
applied for exemption. The local board refused his application. He
applied to the President. The President did not act for two months.
Then the revised draft regulations were promulgated, and Mr. Ford was
excepted under the deferred or exempted class which included a married
man with a child, however wealthy that man might be. He has exercised
his legal right. Very many thousands of young Americans, men of small
means who are not sons of multi-millionaires, have declined to take
advantage of this legal right. They have left their wives and babies to
go to war for a great ideal, for love of country, for love of liberty
and of civilization. But Mr. Ford’s son stays at home. These other
young Americans face death and endure unspeakable hardships and misery
and fatigue for the sake of America and have surrendered all hope of
money-getting, of comfort and of safety. But young Mr. Ford, in ease
and safety, is in the employ of his wealthy father.

In private relations I understand that Mr. Ford is an amiable man. But
I am not dealing with him in his private relations. I am discussing him
as a candidate for high office. We are bound truthfully to set forth
what we believe will be the effect of his election, and therefore we
are bound to say that it would be damaging to the United States and
would be encouraging to Germany. No patriotic American should support
Mr. Ford.

SPEED UP THE WORK FOR THE ARMY AND GIVE ALL WHO ENTER IT FAIR PLAY

AUGUST 23, 1918

Our Government must learn that needless delay is worse than a blunder.
We are sending troops to Siberia. This is good, but it would have
been ten times better to have sent them last spring when the need was
precisely as evident as it is now. The Administration is now preparing
to ask Congress to arrange for putting between three and four million
men in France by next July. Six months ago our best military advisers
and our most far-sighted civilian leaders were urging that we prepare
to put five million men in France by next March. The delay has been
absolutely needless and may be very harmful. When last spring the
demand for five million men was being incessantly urged, President
Wilson treated it as merely a case for competitive rhetoric, and asked,
with dramatic effect, why we should limit the number at all. But he
actually has limited it to a much smaller number at a much later date.
Therefore let there at least be no further delay. And above all let
us not be misled by the persons who say that Germany will make peace
before next spring. Our business is to act on the assumption that we
shall have to put forth our utmost effort next spring and not to take
any unnecessary chances.

The Government is now very properly proposing to enlarge the draft age
limits to include all the men of fighting age, all the men of the ages
which furnished the enormous majority of the soldiers of the Civil War.
The number of men in the excepted classes should be greatly reduced.
There are too many exceptions. It is earnestly to be hoped that the
plan will include the institution of universal obligatory military
training of all our young men of eighteen to twenty years old as a
permanent policy.

But we ought not to adopt the plan recently proposed for special
advantages to be given by the Government to young men who go to college
and take certain special courses with a view to becoming officers. This
would amount to giving a special privilege to persons with money enough
to send their boys to college in order to have them escape the draft
and secure commissions. This is not fair. It means giving a privilege
to money. There is no excuse for giving such a preference to young men
of eighteen or nineteen at this time when we have been at war eighteen
months. There is still need to give some of the older men a special
chance to train. But there is no such need in the case of men under
twenty-one.

There was every reason of sound public policy at the outset of the
war to take advantage of the forethought and self-denial of the young
men who at the Plattsburg and similar camps had at their own expense
prepared themselves before the war began, and when, owing to the
failure of the Government to do its duty, they were the only men who
did prepare. There has been good reason for similar camps for young men
during the last eighteen months before our general training camps began
to show their full results. But from now on every young officer should
be chosen on his merits from the men who enter the army in the ranks.
Only the men who show their fitness, by whatever tests are deemed
necessary after service in the ranks, should be sent to officers’
schools, and money should play no part whatever in the matter.

SENATOR LODGE’S NOBLE SPEECH

SEPTEMBER 1, 1918

Senator Lodge’s speech dealing with the principles for which we are
fighting and setting forth in detailed outline the kind of peace which
alone will mean the peace of victory was a really noble speech. Nothing
is easier, and from the national standpoint as distinguished from the
standpoint of personal benefit to the speaker, nothing is less useful
than a speech of such glittering generalities that almost anybody can
interpret it in almost any manner. Only a great statesman possesses the
courage, the knowledge, and the power of expression to set forth in
convincing fashion the detailed statement of the objects which must be
attained if such a war as that in which we are engaged is to be crowned
by a peace wholly worth the terrible cost of life and happiness caused
by the war. This is the service which Senator Lodge has rendered to
this Nation and to our allies.

From time to time in our history the Senate has rendered services
of exceptional magnitude to the Nation. Never in our history has it
rendered greater service than during the last nine months. The greatest
men who have ever sat in it, men such as Clay and Webster and Calhoun
and Benton, did not stand forth in leadership more clearly than a
dozen of the Senators who, during the last nine months, have fearlessly
and disinterestedly borne the burden of speeding up the war and
endeavoring to place our international relations on exactly the right
lines.

These leaders have in actual fact adjourned politics. They have
considered only their patriotic duty in all matters concerning this war
and our relations with our allies and our enemies. The most efficient
service toward speeding up the war and enabling this Nation to do its
duty that has been rendered by any civilian public servants of the
Nation is the service rendered by Senator Chamberlain and the Senators,
both Democrats and Republicans, who acted with him on the Military
Affairs Committee in the investigation of the War Department last
winter. Within the last fortnight a service of similar character has
been rendered by Senator Thomas and his associates in both parties on
the sub-committee which has at last put before the people the truth
about the breakdown of our aircraft programme. The fact that this
summer we have put masses of armed men into France is primarily due to
Senator Chamberlain and the Senators of both parties who have acted
with him. The fact that next summer we shall at last back up American
troops with American airplanes will be due primarily to Senator Thomas
and his associates.

APPLIED PATRIOTISM

SEPTEMBER 8, 1918

The official record of the Illinois branch of the United Mine Workers
of America furnishes an instructive lesson in applied patriotism.
The president of the branch is Mr. Frank Farrington. The United Mine
Workers are affiliated with the American Federation of Labor.

President Farrington’s circulars to the Illinois mine workers set
forth the need and the justice of this war and the duty of patriotic
Americans in the most straightforward and clear-cut fashion. He
states that this is the war for liberty and humanity and for American
rights, and that there rests “upon every American and upon every man
who has partaken of America’s bounty the solemn obligation of loyally
doing their part to win victory for the cause America represents.” He
promises the mine workers that their rights shall be protected and
secured, but insists that they shall lend every energy to increase the
output of coal so as to help our army at the front, which, as he finely
says, includes “sons of the rich and sons of the poor men who love life
as one, but who prefer death to life without liberty and who have made
common cause and entered the lists in answer to the Nation’s need.”

The improper practices are specifically pointed out and condemned,
such as shutting down mines in violation of agreement in order to
force some desired condition, or making improper restrictions to
curtail production. The appeal is solemnly made to, and on behalf
of, the miners’ union that there must be full service to the Nation
and no shirking of duty, and that no agreement into which the union
enters shall be treated as a scrap of paper, but shall be in good
faith fulfilled. President Farrington in his official circulars lays
constantly increasing stress upon the seriousness of the obligation
resting upon the miners to aid and sustain the Allied armies in
their fight for the freedom of humanity by hard, steady work and by
increasing the output of coal. He condemns with genuine loftiness of
feeling and expression all who fail to give the utmost help to the men
who at the front are doing so much and suffering so much.

The Illinois mine workers number about ninety thousand members. They
are divided into three hundred and twenty local unions. Of these I
have figures from only one hundred and twenty. They have sent over
four thousand men into the army and navy of the United States, have
purchased over two million dollars’ worth of Liberty bonds, $700,000 of
War Savings Stamps, and have contributed over $90,000 to the Red Cross
and over $20,000 to other war funds.

The Illinois mine workers have made a fine showing in applied
patriotism.

GOOD LUCK TO THE ANTI-BOLSHEVISTS OF KANSAS

SEPTEMBER 12, 1918

The absolute prerequisite for successful self-government in any
people is the power of self-restraint which refuses to follow either
the wild-eyed extremists of radicalism or the dull-eyed extremists
of reaction. Either set of extremists will wreck the Nation just as
certainly as the other. The Nation capable of self-government must
show the Abraham Lincoln quality of refusing to go with either. The
dreadful fall which has befallen Russia is due to the fact that when
her people cast off the tyranny of the autocracy, they did not have
sufficient self-control and common sense to avoid rushing into the gulf
of Bolshevist anarchy.

In this country there are plenty of highbrow Bolsheviki who like to
think of themselves as intellectuals, and who in parlors and at pink
teas preach Bolshevism as a fad. They are fatuously ignorant that it
may be a dangerous fad. Some of them are mere make-believe, sissy
Bolsheviki, almost or quite harmless. Others are sincere and foolish
fanatics, who mean well and who do not realize that their doctrines
tend toward moral disintegration. But there are practical Bolsheviki
in this country who are in no sense highbrows. The I.W.W. and the
Non-Partisan League, just as long and so far as its members submit
to the dominion of leaders like Mr. Townley, represent the forces
that under Lenine and Trotzky have brought ruin to Russia. If these
organizations obtained power here, they would cast this country into
the same abyss with Russia.

The I.W.W. activities may have been officially set forth by the Chicago
jury which found the I.W.W. leaders guilty of treasonable practices.
These leaders protested that they were only trying to help “the wage
slave of to-day,” and had not taken German money. But the jury found
them guilty as charged. The American people, when fully awake and
aroused, will tolerate neither treason nor anarchy. No Americans are
more patriotic than the honest American labor men, and these above all
had cause to rejoice in the verdict. Undoubtedly there are plenty of
poor ignorant men who join the I.W.W. because they feel they do not
receive justice. We should all of us actively unite in the effort to
right any wrongs from which these men suffer. But we should set our
faces like flint against such criminal leadership as that of the I.W.W.

The Non-Partisan League endeavored to ally itself with the I.W.W. since
we entered the war. When the League was started, I felt much sympathy
with its avowed purposes. I hope for and shall welcome wisely radical
action on behalf of the farmer. But only destruction to all of us can
come from the venomous class hatred preached by the present leadership
of the League. Some of its leaders have been convicted and imprisoned
for treasonable activities. Some of the League’s representatives have
been actively pro-Germans. Some are Socialists or Socialist-Anarchists.
For the first six months of the war and until it became too dangerous,
they were openly against the war, against our allies, and for Germany.
The only half-secret alliance between these leaders and certain high
Democratic politicians is deeply discreditable to the latter. The
victory of the League in its recent efforts to gain control of the
Republican Party in Minnesota and Montana would have given immense
strength to the pro-German and Bolshevist element throughout the
country and its defeat was a matter of rejoicing to all right-minded
and patriotic men.

Mr. Townley’s leadership in its moral purpose and national effect
entitles him to rank with Messrs. Lenine and Trotzky, and the
utterances of the League’s official organ, especially in its appeals to
class hatred, puts the official representatives of the League squarely
in the clan with the Bolshevist leaders who have done such evil in
Russia.

I have before me an official letter from the League written in January
last refusing to coöperate in non-political work for the benefit of the
farmers, saying, “This organization is a political one, the farmers
being organized for the purpose of controlling legislation in their
own interests.” In other words, the title, Non-Partisan, is a piece
of pure hypocrisy, and its league is really partisan in the narrowest
and worst sense. Americans should organize politically as Americans
and not as bankers, or lawyers, or farmers, or wage-workers. To
organize politically on the basis adopted by the League is thoroughly
anti-American and unpatriotic, and if copied generally by our citizens,
would mean the creation in this country of rival political parties
based on cynically brutal class selfishness.

I have no doubt that the rank and file of the members of the League
are good, honest people who have been misled. I am certain that
there has been much neglect of the rights of the farmers and that it
is a high duty for this country to begin a constructive, practical
agricultural policy. But no good American can support the League while
it is dominated by its present leadership. The Kansans who have joined
to fight the League because it represents Bolshevism are rendering a
patriotic service to America.

THE FOURTH LIBERTY LOAN

SEPTEMBER 17, 1918

The Government of the United States is asking us Americans, is asking
us, the citizens of the United States, to subscribe to the Fourth
Liberty Loan, a bigger loan than any yet issued. It is our duty to back
up the Government by floating the loan. Moreover, the performance of
this duty should be treated by us as a high privilege. It opens to us
a fine opportunity to put our shoulders with all the strength we have
into the great shove which is pushing the German barrier back across
the Rhine.

The Liberty bonds are the best of all possible investments. Their
security and their interest returns give them a peculiar position.
Moreover, every one can invest in big or little amounts, exactly as
his resources permit. All the people of this country can now become
bondholders if they wish. Therefore, all investors in the bonds will
get benefits, but what is vastly more important, they will give
benefits. They will therefore render service to the country.

We Americans are not, and must not permit ourselves to become, swayed
by question of material gain in this war. We must think primarily of
our duties. We must keep our minds fixed on what we owe to others, and
what we owe to ourselves. We owe a service to humanity. Our sons and
brothers at the front pay this service in blood. The rest of us must
pay it in money.

Commensurate with the great resources and unparalleled prosperity with
which our Nation has been blessed, we owe all the more because for
three years the debt accumulated, while other nations were bearing the
burden for us. We thank God we have begun to pay. From every village
and city of every state the best of our young men are streaming across
the Atlantic to join the victorious army under Foch and Pershing. The
men and women of America are keeping mill and shipyard and munition
factory and mine busy to the limit, so that the troops may not fail nor
the supplies on which they depend be lacking.

All this is not one whit more than we ought to do; it is what we owe
to the world and owe to ourselves. We are glad and proud to do it.
Let us, as part payment of our great debt, subscribe and oversubscribe
to the bonds of the Fourth Liberty Loan. This is a service which lies
within the ability of the poorest of us. It is the duty and privilege
of every right American. Every dollar put into Liberty loans is a
dollar working for the downfall of the system of greed and treachery,
of tyranny and callous brutality which has drenched the world in blood.

Americans are not quitters. The Kaiser’s troops cannot stop our men at
the front. Nothing must be permitted to stop the flow into the treasury
of the money with which we back up these men. Sloth and easy living
have no place in America now. We must give, give to the utmost. If
putting our money at the disposal of the Government requires us to work
harder and live more simply, we shall be the better for it. Let us buy
these Liberty bonds to the utmost of our capacity and thereby show the
men at the front that the people at home will back them to the limit.

FAIR PLAY AND NO POLITICS

SEPTEMBER 20, 1918

A Democratic member of the Senate has introduced a resolution to
investigate the primary campaign expenses of certain Republican
candidates for the Senate, including Commander Truman Newberry,
whose recent triumph over Mr. Henry Ford in the Michigan Republican
primaries was greeted with heartfelt thanks by every sincere and
far-sighted American patriot.

This Senate, which comes to an end on March 4 next, has the same, and
only the same right to investigate the election conduct of candidates
for the Senate, which comes into existence on March 4 that it has to
investigate the campaign conduct of any other candidates for office.

Moreover, any such proposed investigation undertaken on the eve of
an election is tainted with bad faith unless it is conducted with
conspicuous fairness and impartiality and is undertaken at once so that
it can be finished at least a month before the elections. Personally,
I shall be glad if the election expenses or any other conduct of any
of the candidates be investigated, provided that the investigation be
undertaken at once and finished within the next fortnight, and provided
that it be entirely impartial. Therefore, it must deal comprehensively
with all serious charges affecting the desirability of candidates as
governmental representatives of the American people at this time.

If the men backing the proposal are acting in good faith they will
investigate Mr. Ford’s record on the following points in order to
determine his fitness to represent patriotic Americans at this time.
They will find out how much money he spent on the peace ship, and
on his lavishly expensive newspaper advertising campaign against
preparedness, and against our standing up for Belgium’s rights, and
against our taking action about Germany’s sinking the Lusitania and
her other assaults on us, and in favor of the McLemore resolution. This
was part of the great pacifist campaign of which another part, as our
government investigations show, was financed by the German authorities
themselves or by their affiliated societies in this country.

The investigation should include Mr. Ford’s contributions in the last
presidential campaign and the names of the candidates he supported, for
his politics seem to have been purely personal and pacifist.

Moreover, the investigation should include a full examination of the
justification for Mr. Ford’s aiding and abetting his son Edsell in
escaping draft and staying at home when the great majority of young
Americans of his age are eagerly striving for places of honor and peril
at the front. Mr. Ford is an enormously wealthy man. Mr. Newberry is
not. Mr. Newberry himself at once entered the military service of
the United States. His two sons have wives and children, but they
immediately entered the service, striving eagerly to get to the front.
Mr. Edsell Ford waited until he was drafted, then fought hard for an
exemption, which the local board disallowed. He succeeded, however, in
escaping service and is at home.

Unless the investigation takes up these matters, it will be stamped
with the stamp of unworthy and improper partisanship. The simple truth
is that all patriotic Americans rejoice in the nomination and will
rejoice in the election at this time of such Americans as Mr. Newberry
in Michigan and Mr. Medill McCormick in Illinois.

SPIES AND SLACKERS

SEPTEMBER 24, 1918

Mercy to the German spy or pacifist slacker in America is foul
injustice to the American soldier in France and to his brother, who
is preparing to go to France. Our Government has been altogether too
weak in dealing with the pacifist slackers and so-called conscientious
objectors. It has actually issued elaborate instructions for and to
these creatures practically telling them how to escape doing the duty
which all patriotic Americans are proudly eager to perform.

There is not the slightest excuse for such weakness. No man has any
right to remain in a free country like ours if he refuses, whether
conscientiously or unconscientiously, to do the duties of peace and of
war which are necessary if it is to be kept free. The true lovers of
peace recognize their duty to fight for freedom. The Society of Friends
has furnished the same large proportion of soldiers for this war that
it did for the Civil War.

It is all wrong to permit conscientious objectors to remain in camp or
military posts or to go back to their homes. They should be treated
in one of three ways: First, demand of them military service, except
the actual use of weapons with intent to kill, and if they refuse
to render this service treat them as criminals and imprison them at
hard labor; second, put them in labor battalions and send them to
France behind the lines, where association with soldiers might have a
missionary effect on them and cause them to forget their present base
creed and rise to worthy levels in an atmosphere of self-sacrifice and
of service and struggle for great ideals; third, if both of the above
procedures are regarded as too drastic, intern them with alien enemies
and send them permanently out of the country as soon as possible.

As for the spies, there is no question as to the treatment needed. They
should be shot or hung. They are public enemies and this is war-time
and they should no more be dealt with by the civil law than the enemy
armies should be so dealt with. The German spies and secret agents
and dynamiters and murderers in this country are as much a part of
Germany as the soldiers of von Hindenburg. Bismarck employed thirty
thousand of them to disorganize Germany’s foes fifty years ago, and
now Germany is employing them by the hundred thousand. They are as
formidable as the visible German army. It was these German Spies,
agents, and propagandists who, in 1917, disintegrated and destroyed
Russia, and inflicted a crushing disaster on Italy, and conducted the
most dangerous intrigue in France, and aided and abetted the British
pacifists.

In this country Senator Overman has estimated their number at four
hundred thousand, and Mr. Flynn, the recently resigned chief of the
secret service, has put them at a quarter of a million. Our official
government reports have shown that in obedience to orders from the
German Government they have carried on in all hostile and even neutral
countries a systematic warfare by means of aiding pacifists’ movements,
inciting strikes, fomenting disloyalty, and employing direct action
dynamiters and murderers. They have received aid and coöperation,
conscientiously and unconscientiously, by many evils in pacifist
and Bolshevist societies and in organizations like the I.W.W. and
Non-Partisan League.

The activities of the German spies, agents, and sympathizers vary from
mere disloyal utterances, which the Attorney-General of the United
States has stated to be the cause of most of the disorder in the
country, up to seeking to corrupt our soldiers and practicing sabotage
in our munitions works and factories for war materials. All offenders
of the latter type, wherever committed, can, under the existing law,
be tried by court-martial and executed, and this is the proper course
to follow. It was the course followed under Lincoln’s administration,
which is one of the reasons why Lincoln’s administration differed so
markedly from Buchanan’s.

The former chief of the secret service says that there are a quarter
of a million of these German spies and agents in this country. We
have ample law to warrant these being punished with death by summary
court-martial, under military law as military enemies. We have been at
war eighteen months, but not one Spy has thus been punished. This means
grave remissness in the performance of our duty.

QUIT PLAYING FAVORITES

SEPTEMBER 30, 1918

It is announced that the young men of eighteen or nineteen included in
the draft will be sent free to college by the Government and will there
be given the chance to earn commissions and escape service in the ranks.

Either this represents sheer deception or it will mean gross
favoritism. We now have plenty of young men who have been serving in
the ranks for nearly eighteen months. Scores of thousands of these left
college to go or had just finished high school when they went. All
these boys, whether they have or have not been to college, are entitled
to the first chance for commissions on equal terms with one another,
except that preference should be given those who have been engaged in
the fighting overseas. Almost all the second lieutenancies should now
be filled in this manner by promotion from the ranks. To give to boys
now about to enter college the preference over those who have actually
served in the ranks, and especially over those who have actually faced
death overseas, would be a cruel injustice.

But the injustice would be equally great among the new recruits
themselves. It is wholly illusory for the Government to say it will
send to college all who wish to go. The average working-man or small
farmer has not had money enough to educate his son so that the boy can
now enter college without further training. Yet that boy may have in
him the qualities of leadership which especially fit him for command.
Such a working-man or farmer ought to wish, and does wish, that his
son be tested on his merits by actual service in the ranks, alongside
of all other boys, no favors being shown either him or them. For the
Government at this time to send some of these boys to college and thus
give them a start over the bulk of their fellows represents privilege
given to money and is thoroughly unfair.

For the two years before we entered the war the only important piece
of preparedness was that of the men who at their own expense went to
the Plattsburg training camp established by General Wood, and when
Germany forced us into war it was imperatively necessary at once to
establish many additional camps of this kind or we should have had no
officers whatever for our army. It is still advisable to keep a few
training camps for older men whose age and qualifications especially
fit them for certain kinds of service. But it is not wise nor right for
the Government now to put certain especially favored classes of boys
of eighteen and nineteen into college with a view to giving them an
advantage over their fellows. This is undemocratic. It is not fair to
the other boys of their age who are not in the army. It is exceedingly
unfair and unjust to the young men who are already enlisted in the
army, and especially to those who have seen service overseas.

From now on no young officer should be appointed saving after service
in the ranks out of which he is chosen by fair test in comparison with
his fellows as fit to enter an officers’ training camp. Moreover,
there should be a resolute effort to give preference to the men who
have served in the front in France, the very men who are now apt to be
neglected.

WAR AIMS AND PEACE PROPOSALS

OCTOBER 12, 1918

Our war aim ought to be unconditional surrender of Germany and of her
vassal allies, Austria and Turkey. We ought not to consider any peace
proposals from Germany until this war aim has been accomplished by the
victorious arms of our allies and ourselves.

It is worthy of note that the Central Powers show a greedy eagerness to
accept the so-called “fourteen points” laid down by President Wilson. I
earnestly hope that when the time for discussing peace proposals comes,
we shall ourselves repudiate some of these fourteen points, and that we
shall insist on having all of them put into plain and straightforward
language before we assent to any of them. Let us remember that Congress
shares with the President the right to make treaties and that the
people are bound to insist that they, the people, are the ultimate
arbiters and that their will in the peace treaty is followed by both
the President and the Congress.

For example, what does that one of the fourteen points referring to the
freedom of the seas mean? If it means what Germany interprets it to
mean, then every decent American ought to be against it. The kind of
freedom of the seas upon which it is really vital to count is freedom
from murder. International law at present condemns exactly the kind
of murder which Germany practiced in the case of the Lusitania and in
hundreds of other cases, and is still practicing. We ought to make her
atone heavily for such conduct and explicitly renounce it before we
ever discuss any other kind of freedom of the seas.

Again, we ought to know just what the President means by freedom of
commercial intercourse. If he means that he proposes to allow Germany
to dump her manufactures on us without restriction, we ought to be
against it. We ought to insist on keeping in our hands the complete
right to handle our tariff as the vital interests of our own citizens,
and especially our own working-men, demand.

Again, what is meant by the league of nations? If it means that
Germany, Austria, Turkey, and Russia, as at present constituted, are to
have the say-so about America’s future destiny, we ought to be against
it. They would treat any agreement with us as a scrap of paper wherever
it suited their interests, and we ought to realize this fact. Moreover,
we already belong to a _de facto_ league of nations which is a going
concern. Let us stand by our allies before entering into a league with
our enemies. Therefore, let us at once declare war on Turkey. Any such
league is of value only if all its members are willing to make war
on the same offenders, and the culpable failure of our Government to
make war on Turkey and Bulgaria makes it absurd and hypocritical for
us to promise to enter such a league in the future until this failure
is confessed and atoned for. And let us at once send Major-General
Wood and fifty thousand men to aid the Czecho-Slovaks in Siberia and
establish our front well to the west of the Ural Mountains.

Again, the talk of merely giving autonomy to the subject races of
Austria amounts to betrayal of the Czecho-Slovaks, the Jugo-Slavs,
the Italians, and the Rumanians. The first should be given their
independence and the other three united to the nations with which they
really belong. Moreover, it is a betrayal of civilization to leave the
Turk in Europe and fail to free the Armenians and the other subject
races of Turkey.

Again, let us define what is meant by abolishing secret diplomacy. If
it means that the Administration is to renounce the system of secret
and furtive diplomacy which it now perseveres in concerning what has
happened in Mexico, Haiti, and San Domingo, I heartily agree; but I
do not see why it needs an international mandate before it tells our
people the truth in these matters. Moreover, before it undertakes a
fresh agreement, let it explain why for two years it kept secret from
our people the full knowledge it had of Germany’s conduct and attitude
toward us, including all the matters set forth in Ambassador Gerard’s
books. The American Nation has never seen such secret diplomacy
practiced by its Government as it has seen during the last five years.

It is evident, before these fourteen points are accepted as the basis
for peace discussion, they should be stated in such straightforward
language that we may understand what they mean. The prime necessities
at present are simplicity of language and the squaring of deeds with
words. The thing we do not need is adroit and supple rhetoric which can
be interpreted to mean anything or nothing.

PERMANENT PREPAREDNESS AND THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS

OCTOBER 15, 1918

The vital military need of this country as regards its future
international relations is the immediate adoption of the policy of
permanent preparedness based on universal training. This is its prime
duty from the standpoint of American nationalism and patriotism. Then,
as an addition or supplement to, but under no conditions as substitute
for, the policy of permanent preparedness, we can afford cautiously to
enter into and try out the policy of a league of nations. There is no
difficulty whatever in prattling cheerfully about such a league or in
winning applause by rhetoric concerning it prior to the effort to make
it work in practice; but there will be much difficulty in making it
work at all when any serious strain comes, and it will prove entirely
unworkable if the effort is made to unload upon it, in the name of
internationalism, duties which in the present state of the world will
be efficiently performed by the free nations only if they perform them
as national duties.

In a recent adverse, but courteous and friendly article on my attitude
in this matter which appeared in a great daily paper, the following
language was used: “The colonel is letting himself be bothered,
irritated, and sidetracked by fools. There is no way of preventing
a fool from saying that he is in favor of the league of nations.
The American people will be making up their minds about the league
of nations and about permanent preparedness. They will be told by
certain sorts of pacifists that if they accept the league they can
safely reject preparedness. They will be told that the two ideas are
opposites.”

The “certain sort of pacifist” who has made this statement to the
people of the United States is the President of the United States in
the now famous “fourteen points” which he enunciated last January. He
advocated as one part of his plan the league or association of nations,
as he has elsewhere advocated it, and he advocated as another part of
his plan “the guarantees that national armaments will be reduced to the
lowest point consistent with domestic safety.” Unless this language was
used with intent to deceive, domestic safety must mean merely freedom
from riot, and the President’s proposal is that America’s national
preparedness be limited to a police force to prevent domestic disorder.
Therefore, the President has told the American people that if they
accept the league they can safely reject preparedness.

The President may change his mind, and I sincerely hope he will do so.
Until he does so it is the duty of every sincere American patriot to
lay far more emphasis on the onerous and indispensable duty of national
preparedness than on the wholly untested scheme of a league of nations,
which the President has presented as an alternative. I heartily favor
true internationalism as an addition to, but never as substitute for, a
fervid and intensely patriotic nationalism. I will gladly back any wise
and honest effort to create a league of nations, but only on condition
that it is treated as an addition to, and not as a substitute for, the
full preparedness of our own strength for our own defense.

HIGH-SOUNDING PHRASES OF MUDDY MEANING

OCTOBER 17, 1918

A keen observer of what is now happening in the world writes me that
there is very grave danger that this country will be cheated out of the
right kind of peace if our people remain fatuously content to accept
high-sounding phrases of muddy meaning, instead of clear-cut and
truthful statements of just what we demand and just what we intend to
do.

The recent action of President Wilson in connection with Germany
has shown the imperative need of our people informing themselves of
his announced purpose and keeping track of what he does toward the
achievement of this purpose. Therefore, we should insist upon the
purpose being stated in understandable fashion and being adhered to
after it has been stated. This isn’t the President’s war. It is the
people’s war. The peace will not be a satisfactory peace unless it
is the people’s peace. As a people we have no right to permit the
President to commit us to that of which we do not approve or to that
which, after honest effort, we are unable to understand.

President Wilson’s first communication to the German Government, if
words mean anything, meant an effort to treat on the basis of his
so-called “fourteen points.” The German Government answered that it
accepted these fourteen points and approved of them. This made them
public property, and it behooves the Americans to examine them. I
believe that such an examination will show the American people that
their meaning is so muddy that we should insist upon their being
clearly defined before we in any way accept them as ours. When the
peace terms come to be reduced to action, we cannot afford to accept
empty competitive rhetoric for straightforward plain dealing.

As regards some of the points, either the meaning is so muddy as to
be wholly incomprehensible or else the proposals are very treacherous.
The fourth article, for example, proposes guarantees for the reduction
of national armaments to the lowest point consistent with domestic
safety. If this article means anything, it means that this Nation, for
instance, is only to keep whatever armed forces are necessary to police
the country in the event of domestic disturbance. Now, let our people
face what this really implies. It is a proposal that we give up our
navy, which, of course, cannot be used for such police purposes, and
that we give up all of our army that could be used against a foreign
foe. And according to point fourteen of his address to Congress of
January 8 last, and according to point three in his speech of September
27 last, this lack of armament on our part is to be supplied by mutual
guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity within
the league of nations covering the world.

Now, such guarantees are precisely and exactly the scraps of paper to
which the German Chancellor likened them when his Government tore up
those affecting Belgium. The proposal of President Wilson is that this
country shall put itself in the position of Belgium; shall trust to
guarantees precisely such as those to which Belgium trusted four and
one quarter years ago, and he also proposes, as far as his meaning can
be made out at all, that the very powers that treated these guarantees
as scraps of paper in the case of Belgium shall be among the powers to
whose guarantee we are to trust to the exclusion of all preparation
for our own self-defense. All nations are to be asked to render
themselves helpless with fatuous indifference to the obvious fact that
every weak-minded nation which accepted and acted in the proposal would
be at the mercy of every ruthless and efficient nation that chose to
treat the proposal as a scrap of paper.

I gravely doubt whether a more silly or more mischievous plan was ever
seriously proposed by the ruler of a great nation. Yet, this is exactly
the plan to which President Wilson, by his correspondence with Germany,
has sought definitely to commit the United States. If his words do not
mean exactly what is above set forth, then their meaning is so muddy
that no two disinterested outsiders would be warranted in interpreting
them the same way.

There is small cause for wonder that Germany eagerly accepted and
made her own President Wilson’s fourteen points to which he, without
any warrant whatever, seemed to commit this Nation. Incidentally I
may add that Mr. Wilson has at different times enunciated at least as
many other points, some of them contradictory to the fourteen which he
enumerated in January last. The outburst of popular indignation led by
such men as Senators Lodge, Poindexter, and Thomas, which forced him
to repudiate the negotiations which he had begun with Germany, should
be supplemented by a resolute insistence upon the duty of the American
public to inform itself as to what it wishes in the peace before the
President, without authority, commits it to any peace proposal, and
above all to peace proposals which may mean anything or nothing.

Secretary McAdoo, with fine family loyalty, announced that the
acceptance by Germany of the fourteen points would have meant Germany’s
unconditional surrender. He might as well have said that the acceptance
of disunion and the perpetuation of slavery in 1864 would have meant
a surrender by the Confederate states. Not only Germany, but every
pacifist and pro-German here at home, hailed the fourteen points as
representing what they desired. I recently spoke to a body of loyal
Americans of German descent on behalf of the Liberty Loan. A member of
their organization who was not a straight American, but a hyphenated
American, and who did not venture to do more than sign himself
as “German-American,” wrote me that in view of my repudiation of
President Wilson’s so-called fourteen points he could not, as a loyal
German-American, do otherwise than condemn me. The individual himself
is doubtless as unimportant as the anonymous letter writer usually
is, but there is a real significance in his endorsement of President
Wilson’s fourteen points in view of his calling himself so emphatically
not a straight-out American, but a German-American. Evidently his
loyalty is to Germanism and not to Americanism, and this German loyalty
of his made him back the President’s fourteen points, which Germany had
so gladly accepted.

The American people should insist that these fourteen points and any
other points are stated in clear-cut language, and that there be a full
understanding of just what is meant by them and a full knowledge of how
far the American people approve of them before any foreign power is
permitted to think that they represent America’s position at the peace
council.

AN AMERICAN PEACE _VERSUS_ A RUBBER-STAMP PEACE

OCTOBER 22, 1918

In Wallace’s Farmer, a journal devoted to the interests of the farmer,
and also to the interests of every good American citizen, but which has
no concern with partisan politics, there is a strong editorial against
our acceptance of a peace on the terms of the famous fourteen points
laid down by President Wilson in his message of January last. It reads
in part as follows:

Of course, Germany would like to make peace on the terms laid down
by President Wilson in his speech of January 8, for it would allow
Germany to escape the just penalty of her crimes and restore her to
her condition before the war.

On the other hand, the leading Socialist paper of New York
enthusiastically champions the fourteen points, especially those
demanding a league of nations, freedom of the seas according to
the German party, and the removal of all economic barriers. This
championship is natural, for the Socialists, like the I.W.W. of this
country, who have been bitterly pro-German and anti-American, and
like the worst Russian Bolsheviks, have steadily worked in Germany’s
interests; and like all its professional internationalists they hate
the liberty-loving nations so bitterly that they are eagerly working
for peace satisfactory to the German autocracy. All such persons,
so far as they are not merely silly, seek their own profit in the
destruction of civilization, and they would hail an inconclusive peace,
which would mean the triumph of militarism, rather than see the free
nations triumphant over both militarism and anarchy.

But in his last note to Austria, President Wilson himself flatly
repudiates one of his fourteen points--that relating to autonomy for
the Czecho-Slovaks and Jugo-Slavs under the Austro-Hungarian yoke. He
announces that he has changed his position because facts have changed,
but in reality the facts have not changed in even the smallest degree
between January and October so far as these two nationalities are
concerned. Many persons, including myself, had then been demanding for
over a year this complete independence. Nothing whatever has changed in
the situation except Mr. Wilson’s mind, and obviously this has changed
merely because the American people have gradually waked up and have
forced him in this matter to take a course diametrically opposed to
the one he had been advocating, precisely as a week ago an aroused and
indignant public opinion forced him to absolutely reverse the course
of negotiation on which he entered with Germany. The popular feeling
would have been inarticulate and helpless if it had not received
expression from various patriotic public servants and private citizens
and from those fearless newspapers, which, at the risk of grave
financial disaster, have ventured when the crisis was serious to defy
the sinister efforts of the Administration to do away with the freedom
of the press. Senators Lodge, Poindexter, and Thomas and Congressman
Fess are examples of the public servants, and Professor Hobbs, of the
University of Michigan, and Professor Thayer, of Harvard, are examples
of private citizens who have well served the people of the United
States in this crisis.

Of course, the entire cuckoo or rubber-stamp tribe of politicians
tumbled over themselves in the effort to assure the President that no
matter what somersault he turned they would flop with equal quickness,
and that their responsibility was solely to him and not to the people
of the United States or to the cause of right and of fearlessness
and of honorable dealing. Senator Lewis, of Illinois, introduced a
resolution stating that “the United States Senate approves whatever
course may be taken by the President in dealing with the German
Imperial Government and the Austrian Imperial Government and endorses
and approves whatever methods he may employ.” Senator Lewis is, in
private life, an amiable and kindly gentleman, but the above resolution
is a somewhat abject announcement that in public life he aspires only
to be a rubber stamp. If such position is proper, then there is no
need of Senators or Congressmen, and our people should merely send
written proxies to Washington and should otherwise copy the example
of those big private corporations which are controlled by one man
according to his own will and for his own benefit.

I do not believe that the American people will accept a view which
is both so abject and so profoundly unpatriotic. This is the war of
the American people and the peace which concludes it should be the
peace imposed by the American people. Therefore, they should send to
Washington public servants who will be self-respecting Americans and
not rubber stamps.

UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER

OCTOBER 26, 1918

When the American people speak for unconditional surrender, it means
that Germany must accept whatever terms the United States and its
allies think necessary in order to right the dreadful wrongs that have
been committed and to safeguard the world for at least a generation
to come from another attempt by Germany to secure world dominion.
Unconditional surrender is the reverse of a negotiated peace. The
interchange of notes, which has been going on between our Government
and the Governments of Germany and Austria during the last three weeks,
means, of course, if persisted in, a negotiated peace. It is the
abandonment of force and the substitution of negotiation. This fact
should be clearly and truthfully stated by our leaders, so that the
American people may decide with their eyes open which course they will
follow.

Those of us who believe in unconditional surrender regard Germany’s
behavior during the last five years as having made her the outlaw among
nations. In private life sensible men and women do not negotiate with
an outlaw or grow sentimental about him, or ask for a peace with him
on terms of equality if he will give up his booty. Still less do they
propose to make a league with him for the future, and on the strength
of this league to abolish the sheriff and take the constable. On the
contrary, they expect the law officers to take him by force and to
have him tried and punished. They do not punish him out of revenge,
but because all intelligent persons know punishment to be necessary in
order to stop certain kinds of criminals from wrongdoing and to save
the community from such wrongdoing.

We ought to treat Germany in precisely this manner. It is a sad
and dreadful thing to have to face some months or a year or so of
additional bloodshed, but it is a much worse thing to quit now and
have the children now growing up obliged to do the job all over again,
with ten times as much bloodshed and suffering, when their turn comes.
The surest way to secure a peace as lasting as that which followed the
downfall of Napoleon is to overthrow the Prussianized Germany of the
Hohenzollerns as Napoleon was overthrown. If we enter into a league
of peace with Germany and her vassal allies, we must expect them to
treat the arrangement as a scrap of paper whenever it becomes to their
interest to do so.

WHAT ARE THE FOURTEEN POINTS?

OCTOBER 30, 1918

The European nations have been told that the fourteen points enumerated
in President Wilson’s message of January last are to be the basis of
peace. It is, therefore, possible that Americans may like to know what
they are. It is even possible that they may like to guess what they
mean, although I am not certain that such guessing is permitted by the
Postmaster-General and the Attorney-General under the new theory of
making democracy safe for all kinds of peoples abroad who have never
heard of it by interpreting democracy at home as meaning that it is
unlawful for the people to express any except favorable opinions of
the way in which the public servants of the people transact the public
business.

The first point forbids “all private international understandings of
any kind,” and says there must be “open covenants of peace, openly
arrived at,” and announces that “diplomacy shall always proceed
frankly in the public view.” The President has recently waged war on
Haiti and San Domingo and rendered democracy within these two small
former republics not merely unsafe, but non-existent. He has kept
all that he has done in the matter absolutely secret. If he means
what he says, he will at once announce what open covenant of peace he
has openly arrived at with these two little republics, which he has
deprived of their right of self-determination. He will also announce
what public international understanding, if any, he now has with these
two republics, whose soil he is at present occupying with the armed
forces of the United States and hundreds of whose citizens have been
killed by these armed forces. If he has no such public understanding,
he will tell us why, and whether he has any private international
understanding, or whether he invaded and conquered them and deprived
them of the right of self-determination without any attempt to reach
any understanding, either private or public.

Moreover, he has just sent abroad on a diplomatic mission Mr. House,
of Texas. Mr. House is not in the public service of the Nation, but he
is in the private service of Mr. Wilson. He is usually called Colonel
House. In his official or semi-official biography, published in an
ardently admiring New York paper, it is explained that he was once
appointed colonel on a governor’s staff, but carried his dislike of
military ostentation to the point of giving his uniform to a negro
servant to wear on social occasions. This attitude of respect for the
uniform makes the President feel that he is peculiarly fit to negotiate
on behalf of our fighting men abroad for whom the uniform is sacred.
Associated with him is an editor of the New York World, which paper
has recently been busy in denouncing as foolish the demand made by so
many Americans for unconditional surrender by Germany.

I do not doubt that these two gentlemen possess charming social
attributes and much private worth, but as they are sent over on a
diplomatic mission, presumably vitally affecting the whole country, and
as their instructions and purposes are shrouded in profound mystery,
it seems permissible to ask President Wilson why in this particular
instance diplomacy does not “proceed frankly in the public view”?

This first one of the fourteen points offers such an illuminating
opportunity to test promise as to the future by performance in the
present that I have considered it at some length. The other thirteen
points and the subsequent points laid down as further requirements for
peace I shall briefly take up in another article.

FURTHER CONSIDERATION OF THE FOURTEEN POINTS

OCTOBER 30, 1918

The second in the fourteen points deals with freedom of the seas. It
makes no distinction between freeing the seas from murder like that
continually practiced by Germany and freeing them from blockade of
contraband merchandise, which is the practice of a right universally
enjoyed by belligerents, and at this moment practiced by the United
States. Either this proposal is meaningless or it is a mischievous
concession to Germany.

The third point promises free trade among all the nations, unless
the words are designedly used to conceal President Wilson’s true
meaning. This would deny to our country the right to make a tariff
to protect its citizens, and especially its working-men, against
Germany or China or any other country. Apparently this is desired on
the ground that the incidental domestic disaster to this country will
prevent other countries from feeling hostile to us. The supposition is
foolish. England practiced free trade and yet Germany hated England
particularly, and Turkey practiced free trade without deserving or
obtaining friendship from any one except those who desired to exploit
her.

The fourth point provides that this Nation, like every other, is to
reduce its armaments to the lowest limit consistent with domestic
safety. Either this is language deliberately used to deceive or else it
means that we are to scrap our army and navy and prevent riot by means
of a national constabulary, like the state constabulary of New York or
Pennsylvania.

Point five proposes that colonial claims shall all be treated on the
same basis. Unless the language is deliberately used to deceive,
this means that we are to restore to our brutal enemy the colonies
taken by our allies while they were defending us from this enemy. The
proposition is probably meaningless. If it is not, it is monstrous.

Point six deals with Russia. It probably means nothing, but if it means
anything, it provides that America shall share on equal terms with
other nations, including Germany, Austria, and Turkey, in giving Russia
assistance. The whole proposition would not be particularly out of
place in a college sophomore’s exercise in rhetoric.

Point seven deals with Belgium and is entirely proper and commonplace.

Point eight deals with Alsace-Lorraine and is couched in language
which betrays Mr. Wilson’s besetting sin--his inability to speak in
a straightforward manner. He may mean that Alsace and Lorraine must
be restored to France, in which case he is right. He may mean that a
plebiscite must be held, in which case he is playing Germany’s evil
game.

Point nine deals with Italy, and is right.

Point ten deals with the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and is so foolish
that even President Wilson has since abandoned it.

Point eleven proposes that we, together with other nations, including
apparently Germany, Austria, and Hungary, shall guarantee justice in
the Balkan Peninsula. As this would also guarantee our being from
time to time engaged in war over matters in which we had no interest
whatever, it is worth while inquiring whether President Wilson proposes
that we wage these wars with the national constabulary to which he
desired to reduce our armed forces.

Point twelve proposes to perpetuate the infamy of Turkish rule in
Europe, and as a sop to the conscience of humanity proposes to give the
subject races autonomy, a slippery word which in a case like this is
useful only for rhetorical purposes.

Point thirteen proposes an independent Poland, which is right; and then
proposes that we guarantee its integrity in the event of future war,
which is preposterous unless we intend to become a military nation more
fit for overseas warfare than Germany is at present.

Point fourteen proposes a general association of nations to guarantee
to great and small states alike political independence and territorial
integrity. It is dishonorable to make this proposition so long as
President Wilson continues to act as he is now acting in Haiti and
San Domingo. In its essence Mr. Wilson’s proposition for a league of
nations seems to be akin to the holy alliance of the nations of Europe
a century ago, which worked such mischief that the Monroe Doctrine was
called into being especially to combat it. If it is designed to do away
with nationalism, it will work nothing but mischief. If it is devised
in sane fashion as an addition to nationalism and as an addition to
preparing our own strength for our own defense, it may do a small
amount of good; but it will certainly accomplish nothing if more than a
moderate amount is attempted and probably the best first step would be
to make the existing league of the Allies a going concern.

As to the supplementary points or proposals, the four advanced or laid
down in February were sound moral aphorisms of no value save as they
may be defined in each particular case.

But the supplementary five proposals set forth by President Wilson
last September were, on the whole, mischievous and were capable of a
construction that would make them ruinous in their essence. They set
forth the doctrine that there must be no discrimination between our
friends and our enemies and no special economic or political alliances
among friendly nations, but uniform treatment of all the league of
nations; the said league, therefore, to include Germany, Austria,
Turkey, and Russia upon a footing of equality of our allies. Either
the words used mean nothing or they mean that we are to enter a league
in which we make-believe that our deadly enemies, stained with every
kind of brutality and treachery, are as worthy of friendship as the
Allies who have fought our battles for four years. No wonder that the
proposal is enthusiastically applauded by Germany, Austria, and Turkey
and by all our own pro-Germans and pacifists and Germanized Socialists
and anti-American internationalists. It is the kind of proposition
made by cold-blooded men who at least care nothing for the sufferings
of others. It is eagerly championed by foolish and hysterical
sentimentalists. It is accepted and used for sinister purposes by
powerful and cynical wrongdoers. When the President was making this
proposition and during the subsequent month Germany was committing
inhuman murders of the people on the Ticonderoga and Leinster at
sea, and on shore was committing every species of murder, rape,
enslavement, plunder, and outrage as her armies withdrew from France
and Belgium.

President Wilson’s announcement was a notice to the malefactors that
they would not be punished for the murders. Let us treat the league of
nations only as an addition to, and not as a substitute for, thorough
preparedness and intense nationalism on our part. Let none of the
present international criminals be admitted until a sufficient number
of years has passed to make us sure it has repented. Make conduct the
test of admission to the league. In every crisis judge each nation by
its conduct. Therefore, at the present time let us stand by our friends
and against our enemies.

FOURTEEN SCRAPS OF PAPER

OCTOBER 31, 1918

In my article yesterday I discussed Mr. Wilson’s fourteen peace points
which had been accepted by Germany. After the article was sent in, Mr.
Wilson explained one of the points by stating that it meant exactly the
opposite of what it said. A New York paper has asked for the election
of a Congress that shall see eye to eye with Mr. Wilson. But only a
Congress of whirling dervishes could see eye to eye with Mr. Wilson for
more than twenty-four hours at a time.

When Germany broke her treaty with Belgium, the German Chancellor
called it a scrap of paper. Any individual who proposes a treaty which
plainly means one thing, and then, as soon as he finds it disagreeable
to adhere to that obvious meaning, instantly interprets it as meaning
exactly the opposite, is treating it as a scrap of paper. Mr. Wilson’s
recent interpretation of what he meant in the point about economic
barriers makes all the fourteen points scraps of paper unworthy of
serious discussion by anybody, because no human being is supposed
to say what any one of them means or to do more than guess whether
to-morrow Mr. Wilson will not interpret each and all of them in a sense
exactly the opposite to their meaning.

Mr. Wilson’s language in the point in question was that he intended
the removal “of all economic barriers and the establishment of an
equality of trade conditions among all the nations.” By no honest
construction of language can this be held to mean anything except that
this Nation, for example, could have no tariff of its own, but must
live under exactly the same tariff, or no tariff, conditions with all
other nations. But Mr. Wilson now notifies a Democratic Senator that he
did not mean any “restriction upon the free determination by any nation
of its own economic policy.” If he meant this, why did he not say
it? Why did he say the exact opposite? His first statement is wholly
incompatible with the interpretation he now puts on it. If anybody in
private life entered into a contract in such manner and then sought
to repudiate it by interpreting it in such manner, there is not a
court in Christendom that would not adjudge him guilty of having used
language with deliberate intent to deceive.

Nor is this all. In his new interpretation of what he did not
originally mean, the President now says that he proposes to prevent
any nation, including the United States, from using its tariff to
discriminate in favor of friendly nations and against hostile nations.
This is what he now says and what he now means, but, of course,
to-morrow he may say that in this new interpretation he again meant
exactly the opposite of what he says. However this may be for the
future, President Wilson at this moment says, for instance, we ought
to abandon reciprocity treaties; that we ought to refuse to make such
treaties with our friends, such as Cuba and Brazil, and ought to punish
these friends by treating them on an exact equality with our embittered
and malevolent enemy, Germany. I hold this to be thoroughly mischievous
doctrine.

The great scientist, Huxley, who loved truth and abhorred falsehood,
said that “the primary condition of honest literature is to leave the
reader in no doubt as to the author’s meaning.” Evidently this primary
condition is not fulfilled by Mr. Wilson’s fourteen points. They should
now be treated as scraps of paper and put where they belong, in the
scrap-basket.

THE TURKS SURRENDER UNCONDITIONALLY

NOVEMBER 3, 1918

The British have beaten Turkey to her knees and she has surrendered
unconditionally. America has no share in the honor of what has been
done. President Wilson, although we were at war with Germany, has
refused to aid our allies against Turkey and has preserved the same
cold neutrality between the Armenians and their Turkish butchers that
he formerly did between the Belgians and their German oppressors.

Turkey had inflicted inhuman wrongs on the subject peoples and had
infringed our own treaty rights, but President Wilson refused to go to
war with her. Yet with our navy at the very outbreak of hostilities
and then with a considerable and constantly growing army, if we had
been willing we could have materially aided the British and French. In
such event Constantinople would doubtless have been taken long ago.
As it is, thanks to President Wilson, we Americans can only look on
and rejoice that others did better than our rulers let us do. We have
had no hand in the freeing of Palestine, Syria, and Armenia. Under the
great law of service and sacrifice it is the British and French alone
who have the moral right to determine the fate of Turkey. They, and
especially the British, have poured out their blood freely, and now,
after the victory has been gained, expenditure of ink on our part
is of mighty small consequence in comparison. I earnestly hope that
permanent justice will be done by expelling the Turk from Europe and
making all Armenia independent. But we have lost the right to insist on
these points.

The beginning of the end came when, two or three weeks ago, Bulgaria
was forced to surrender unconditionally. Here again, thanks to
President Wilson, America had no part in the honor and credit of the
vital triumph. Our Government was still neutral about Bulgaria, still
too proud to fight either Turkey or Bulgaria, still hoping for peace
without victory over them.

Now Turkey has surrendered and Austria has broken up. In the case of
Austria, after ten months’ unpardonable delay, we did finally go to
war, and we have a very small share in the great glory won by Italy and
the other Allies.

The greatest contest was on the western front, and here the hundreds
of thousands of American troops engaged under Foch and Pershing have
shown such extraordinary gallantry and efficiency that we are all
forever their debtors. Nearly a month ago President Wilson entered
into negotiations with Germany which, if continued along the line
he started, might have caused disaster. Fortunately there was such
an outburst of protest in the country that our allies took part and
President Wilson himself took warning. President Wilson may still
serve as a channel of communication. But General Foch will be the
real master of the situation. The men with guns and not the men with
fountain pens will dictate the terms.

PEACE

NOVEMBER 12, 1918

Four years and a quarter have passed since Germany, by the invasion
of Belgium, began the World War and made it at the same time a war of
cynical treachery and of bestiality and of inhuman wrongdoing. Almost
from the beginning our governmental authorities were well informed
of the organized brutality with which it was waged and of the fact
that the Kaiser and the leading soldiers, politicians, and commercial
magnates of Germany had deliberately plunged the world into war because
they expected to profit by conquest, while the Socialist Party aided
and abetted them in the hope of sharing some of the profit.

The rest of us ordinary Americans were successfully hoodwinked because
the facts were concealed from us. But gradually the truth leaked
through to us. First we learned that the stories of the atrocities were
true. Then, although not until much later, we found out that there was
ample proof that Germany had brought on the war to gratify her greed
for gold and her arrogant and conscienceless lust for world domination.
Finally we were permitted to learn that Germany intended to strike us
down as soon as she had made the free nations her victims. Now our
troops have played a manful part, a part not only heroic and efficient,
but also of decisive consequence in the final terrible struggle.

It is not pleasant to think that the two first crushing blows in
bringing about the end, the overthrow of Bulgaria and the overthrow of
Turkey, were due in no way to us, but solely to our allies, England
and France. We never made war on either offending nation; we remained
neutral, and this exhibition of feeble diplomacy on our part made us
onlookers instead of partakers of the triumph. But with Austria, after
much hesitation and wabbling, we did finally go to war, and, although
our part was very small, we have a modest right to share the general
satisfaction over the victory. In the case of Germany, however, we
played a really great part, and although until the very end we were
unable to put on the fighting line any tanks or field guns or battle
planes, and relatively only a small number of machine guns and bombing
and observation planes, our soldiers themselves were probably on the
average the finest troops who fought in Europe.

And now the German imperial military and capitalistic authority has
been beaten to its knees and forced to accept all the terms the Allies
have imposed upon it. The able and wicked men who thought to wade
through a sea of blood to world domination must now bow their heads
before the outside peoples whom they have so cruelly wronged and face
the sullen distrust and hostility of their own people, whom they misled
by promising them a share in the profits of successful guilt. Their
doom has come upon them.

A little over a month ago the Administration embarked upon a career
of note-writing with Germany, which, if unchecked, might have meant a
peace of practical profit to Germany. But the feeling of the American
people, especially in the West, showed itself in such direct and
straightforward fashion that this effort was soon abandoned. Moreover,
at the recent election, the American people, with the issue squarely
before them, declared that they were the masters of their public
servants and not rubber stamps, and that this was the people’s war
and not the war of any one man or any one party, and that loyalty to
ourselves and our allies stood ahead of adherence to any man. Germany
has been beaten down abroad and at home. The pro-Germans and the
pacifists and the defeatists and the Germanized Socialists, and all the
crew who stand for any form of either Bolshevism or Kaiserism, have
been warned that they shall not betray this Nation.

SACRIFICE ON COLD ALTARS

NOVEMBER 13, 1918

A friend, a California woman, writes me that there is staying with
her a widow whose only son has been in the navy and has just died of
influenza, and that the mother said:

I gave my boy proudly to my country. I never held him back, even in my
heart. But if only he had died with a gun in his hand--a little glory
for him and a thought for me that my sacrifice had not been useless.

My correspondent continues:

There must be so many mothers who feel that they have laid their
sacrifice on cold altars. You have written much that will comfort the
mothers whose sons have paid with their bodies in battle. Isn’t there
something you can say to help these other mothers?

I felt a real pang when I received this letter, because the thought
suggested had been in my mind, and yet I had failed to express it. It
had happened that my own sons and nephews and young cousins and their
close friends were where death or wounds came to them on the field of
action. For example, on the day I received this letter we also got news
that the closest school and college and army friend of my son, Quentin,
who was killed, had himself just been killed. He was a man who had been
promoted for a series of hazardous and successful battles with German
airmen. He was as gentle and clean and lovable as a girl, yet terrible
in his battle, and no more high and fearless soul ever fronted death
joyously in the high heavens. My mind had, because of facts like this,
turned toward the deaths of the men on the firing line; and I regret
that I did not make it evident as I meant to make it, and but for this
oversight would have made it, that all who have given their lives
or the lives dearest to them in this war stand on an exact level of
service and sacrifice and honor and glory.

The men who have died of pneumonia or fever in the hospitals, the men
who have been killed in accidents on the airplane training fields are
as much heroes as those who were killed at the front, and their shining
souls shall hereafter light up all to a clearer and greater view of the
duties of life. The war is over now. The time of frightful losses among
the men at the front and of heartbreaking anxiety for their mothers
and wives, their sisters and sweethearts at home has passed. No great
triumph is ever won save by the payment of the necessary cost. All of
us who have stayed at home and all the others who have returned safe
will, as long as life shall last, think of the men who died as having
purchased for us and for our children’s children, as long as this
country shall last, a heritage so precious that even their precious
blood was not too great a price to pay. Whether they fell in battle or
how they died matters not at all, and it matters not what they were
doing as long as, high of soul, they were doing their duty with all the
strength and fervor of their natures.

The mother or the wife whose son or husband has died, whether in battle
or by fever or in the accident inevitable in hurriedly preparing a
modern army for war, must never feel that the sacrifice has been laid
“on a cold altar.” There is no gradation of honor among these gallant
men and no essential gradation of service. They all died that we might
live; our debt is to all of them, and we can pay it even personally
only by striving so to live as to bring a little nearer the day when
justice and mercy shall rule in our own homes and among the nations of
the world.

THE RED FLAG AND THE HUN PEACE DRIVE

NOVEMBER 14, 1918

The war is won. A twofold duty is now incumbent on us. We must strive
to make the peace one of justice and righteousness and to throw out
such safeguards around it as will give us the greatest possible chance
of permanency. Then we must turn to setting aright the affairs of our
own household. But before we set ourselves to the performance of these
two tasks we should thoroughly enlighten our enemies at home and abroad
on one or two points.

Let all anti-Americans stand aside. Let them understand that we are not
merely against some enemies of the country--we are against all enemies
of the country. This week in New York there was a red flag of Anarchy
or Socialistic meeting which was the cause of a riot. It was perfectly
natural that it should be the cause of a riot. The red flag is as much
an enemy as the flag of the Hohenzollerns. The internationalist of the
red flag or black flag type is an enemy to this Nation just exactly
as much as Hindenburg or Ludendorff was an enemy only a week ago. He
is an even more treacherous enemy and equally brutal. Congress should
pass a law without waiting a day prohibiting the use of the red flag
or the black flag or any other flag of the kind here in America. We
have universal suffrage in America. The majority of our people can
have what they wish in the way of industrial and political change, if
they seriously desire it. There isn’t any excuse in this country for
any paltering with revolutionary movements. A riot is riot, without
reference to what the people rioting claim to be for. When a mob gets
started, it always acts the same way, no matter what the theoretical
cause of the outbreak may have been. A Bolshevist mob in New York in
all essentials resembles the anti-draft mob of 1863, although the
arguments of the parlor Bolsheviki of to-day would be totally different
from those of the constitutional copperheads of fifty-five years ago.

When the Romanoffs were overthrown the Russian people lacked
self-control and they permitted the dominion of a Bolshevist gang,
which has brought wholesale robbery, murder, and starvation in
its trail. The overthrow of the Hohenzollerns in Germany has been
accompanied by Bolshevist uprising in that country also. There is some
excuse for excesses in a revolution against a despotism, but in this
country there is no more excuse for Bolshevism in any form than there
is for despotism itself. Any foreign-born man who parades with or backs
up a red flag or black flag organization ought to be instantly deported
to the country from which he came. Appropriate punishment should be
devised for the even more guilty native-born.

Our National Government should take the most vigorous action and have
it understood that America is a bulwark of order no less than of
liberty. We must make it evident that we will stamp out Bolshevism
within our borders just as quickly as Kaiserism.

Moreover, let us realize the nonsense of the pretense that the German
people have not been behind the German Government. They were behind
their Government with hearty enthusiasm until the Government was
smashed by the military powers of General Foch. The effort now being
made by the German Government to bring dissensions between the Allies
by appealing to the United States against the Allies proper should be
spurned by our Government. The French, English, Italians, and Belgians
have been fighting side by side with our men under Foch. They have
acted as comrades under Foch, and we could not have done anything if we
had not acted as comrades like the rest. Now let’s play the game when
the effort is made to divide us by the German peace drive.

Senator Poindexter was entirely right in his proposed bill. The United
States must make absolutely common cause with the Allies. We regret
that the German and Russian people should suffer; the fault lies solely
with the past or present governments. To the very minute of the closing
of the war the hideous German brutalities continued unabated, and
apparently the Turks are still slaughtering Armenians. We will do our
best to help even our enemies now that they have been stricken down,
but we will not do so at the cost of doing injustice to our friends.
We will not permit Hun hypocrisy to succeed where Hun violence has
failed. And we are equally uncompromising foes of Bolshevism and
Kaiserism at home and abroad.

THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS

NOVEMBER 17, 1918

There are so many prior things to do and so much uncertainty as to the
form of agreement for permanently increasing the chances of peace that
it is difficult to do more than make a general statement as to what is
desirable and possibly feasible in the league of nations plan. It would
certainly be folly to discuss it overmuch until some of the existing
obstacles to peace are overcome. That such discussion may be not
futile, but mischievous, has been vividly shown in the last six weeks.
During the first week of October President Wilson and Germany agreed on
the famous fourteen points of Mr. Wilson’s as a basis for peace. But
this agreement amounted to nothing whatever except for a moment it gave
Germany the hope that she could escape disaster by a negotiated peace.
The emphatic protest of our own people caused this hope to vanish, and
just five weeks later peace came, not on Mr. Wilson’s fourteen points,
but on General Foch’s twenty-odd points, which had all the directness,
the straightforwardness, and the unequivocal clearness which the
fourteen points strikingly lacked.

Nevertheless, it is well to begin considering now the things which
we think can be done and the things that we think cannot be done in
making a league of nations. In the first place, we ought to realize
that the population of the world clearly understands that in this
war they have been involved to a degree never hitherto known. In
consequence the horror of the war is very real, and people are at
least thinking of the need of coöperation with much greater fixity of
purpose and of understanding than ever before. Of course, fundamentally
war and peace are matters of the heart rather than of organization,
and any declaration or peace league which represents the high-flown
sentimentality of pacifists and doctrinaires will be worse than
useless; but if, without in the smallest degree sacrificing our belief
in a sound and intense national aim, we all join with the people of
England, France, and Italy and with the people in smaller states who
in practice show themselves able to steer equally clear of Bolshevism
and of Kaiserism, we may be able to make a real and much-needed advance
in the international organization. The United States cannot again
completely withdraw into its shell. We need not mix in all European
quarrels nor assume all spheres of interest everywhere to be ours,
but we ought to join with the other civilized nations of the world in
some scheme that in a time of great stress would offer a likelihood of
obtaining just settlements that will avert war.

Therefore, in my judgment, the United States at the peace conference
ought to be able to coöperate effectively with the British and French
and Italian Governments to support a practical and effective plan
which won’t attempt the impossible, but which will represent a real
step forward.

Probably the first essential would be to limit the league at the outset
to the Allies, to the peoples with whom we have been operating and with
whom we are certain we can coöperate in the future. Neither Turkey nor
Austria need now be considered as regards such a league, and we should
clearly understand that Bolshevist Russia is, and that Bolshevist
Germany would be, as undesirable in such a league as the Germany and
Russia of the Hohenzollerns and Romanoffs. Bolshevism is just as much
an international menace as Kaiserism. Until Germany and Russia have
proved by a course of conduct extending over years that they are
capable of entering such a league in good faith, so that we can count
upon their fulfilling their duties in it, it would be merely foolish to
take them in.

The league, therefore, would have to be based on the combination
among the Allies of the present war--together with any peoples like
the Czecho-Slovaks, who have shown that they are fully entitled to
enter into such a league if they desire to do so. Each nation should
absolutely reserve to itself its right to establish its own tariff and
general economic policy, and absolutely ought to control such vital
questions as immigration and citizenship and the form of government it
prefers. Then it would probably be best for certain spheres of interest
to be reserved to each nation or a group of nations.

The northernmost portion of South America and Mexico and Central
America, all of them fronting on the Panama Canal, have a special
interest to the United States, more interest than they can have for
any European or Asiatic power. The general conduct of Eastern Asiatic
policy bears a most close relationship to Japan. The same thing is
true as regards other nations and certain of the peculiarly African
and European questions. Everything outside of what is thus reserved,
which affects any two members of the league or affects one member of
the league and outsiders, should be decided by some species of court,
and all the people of the league should guarantee to use their whole
strength in enforcing the decision.

This, of course, means that all the free peoples must keep reasonably
prepared for defense and for helping well-behaved nations against the
nations or hordes which represent despotism, barbarism, and anarchy.
As far as the United States is concerned, I believe we should keep our
navy to the highest possible point of efficiency and have it second in
size to that of Great Britain alone, and we should then have universal
obligatory military training for all our young men for a period of,
say, nine months during some one year between the ages of nineteen and
twenty-three inclusive. This would not represent militarism, but an
antidote against militarism. It would not represent a great expense. On
the contrary, it would mean to give to every citizen of our country an
education which would fit him to do his work as a citizen as no other
type of education could.

There are some nations with which there would not be the slightest
difficulty in going much further than this. The time has now come when
it would be perfectly safe to enter into universal arbitration treaties
with the British Empire, for example, reserving such rights only as
Australia and Canada themselves would reserve inside the British
Empire; but there are a number of outside peoples with whom it would
not be safe to go much further than above outlined. If we only made
this one kind of agreement, we could keep it, and we should make no
agreement that we would not and could not keep. More essential than
anything else is it for us to remember that in matters of this kind
an ounce of practical performance is worth a ton of windy rhetorical
promises.

AN AMERICAN CONGRESS

NOVEMBER 18, 1918

The election of a Republican Congress a fortnight ago was first and
foremost a victory for straight Americanism. To the Republican Party
it represents not so much a victory as an opportunity. To the American
people, including not only Republicans and independents, but all
patriotic Democrats who put loyalty to the Nation above servility to
a political leader, the victory was primarily won for straight-out
Americanism. A very important feature to remember is that this victory
was won in the West. On the whole, the East also showed gains, but
the greatest gains were in the West. The South, of course, and most
unfortunately, never permits its political or patriotic convictions to
alter the result at the ballot box.

Now the Westerners, the strong, masterful, self-reliant men who won
such exacting victories in Kansas, Minnesota, Colorado, Wyoming, and
South Dakota, are just as opposed to what may be called Kaiserism in
our political and industrial life as they are to Bolshevism. I firmly
believe that this is true of the rank and file of the Republican Party
everywhere. They haven’t the slightest patience with Townleyism in
agricultural districts or I.W.W.-ism in labor circles. But resolutely
they intend to shape our internal policy for the real substantial
benefit of the average man, of the ninety per cent of our people
who are farmers, working-men, small shopkeepers, doctors, and the
like. They haven’t the slightest patience with the Bolshevist desire
to establish proletariat class tyranny, which is just as odious as
aristocratic class tyranny. They haven’t the slightest patience in
persecution of, or failure generously to reward, the man who by nature
or by training is a leader in industrial matters. They want to see
farming, for instance, offer a chance to the man of ability to become a
scientific farmer on a large scale. They wish to see the young business
man whose leadership in manufactures or commerce is of incalculable
worth to everybody receive in generous fashion the big reward to which
he is entitled.

But they wish to do all this as an incident to securing not only
this right to, but a much better chance for, the average man. They
wish the tenant farmer class to be made a diminishing instead of an
increasing class so that tenant farming itself may not be a permanent
status, but a step toward farm ownership by the hired man or the
son of the small farm owner. They wish to see the working-man, and
especially the working-man in such huge businesses as those connected
with transportation, steel production, mining, and the like, become
not a mere cog in an industrial machine, but a man whose self-respect
and reasonable prosperity are guaranteed if the business succeeds,
and he is entitled through representation on the directory to have
his voice heard at the council board of the business, even although
at first and until the ability to use power is slowly developed by
the habit of using it, the control may have to do primarily with the
things of which he has special knowledge and in which he has special
interest. Moreover, there are plenty of great natural resources, such
as water power, where small ownership cannot provide capital for the
development, but where the outright ownership of the people should not
be disposed of. The happy line must be struck between the all-pervading
straight regimentation, which would be as deadening as paralysis, and
the regimentation of mere individualism. The Government must exercise
control in a spirit of justice to all concerned and with a stern
readiness to check injustice by any of those concerned.

The Republican leadership in Congress has on the whole been singularly
patriotic and singularly free from the vice of mere partisanship during
the lifetime of the present Congress. We can be certain that it will
continue to be so in the new Congress. In the future as in the past
the President can count on the hearty and ungrudging support of the
Republican Party at every point where he is endeavoring efficiently
and in good faith to serve the interests of the Nation. But he can
also rest assured that the Republican Party will judge its duty by
the standard of loyalty to the country and will scornfully refuse
to adopt that extreme baseness of attitude, worthy only of slaves,
which shrieks that we must stand by the Administration whether the
Administration is right or wrong. Moreover, the Republican Party will
certainly demand to have an accounting of some of the enormous sums of
money that have been expended and will in due time doubtless demand
to know what explanation there is of the Administration’s persistence
in hidden and secret diplomacy in so many important matters. Every
question will be approached from the standpoint of a generous desire,
without any higgling or dealing on small points, to do whatever the
Administration demands that is proper and to give it a full chance to
declare, and perhaps develop, its policy; but the Republican Congress
will understand how to show that it is not a rubber-stamp body, but an
integral and self-respecting part of the American governmental system,
wholly and solely responsible to the American people.

THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS AND THE ENSLAVEMENT OF MANKIND

NOVEMBER 22, 1918

The surest way to kill a great cause is to reduce it to a hard-and-fast
formula and insist upon the application of the formula without regard
to actual existing conditions.

It is announced in the press that the President is going to the Peace
Conference especially to insist, among other things, on that one of his
fourteen points dealing with the so-called “freedom of the seas.” The
President’s position in the matter is, of course, eagerly championed by
Germany, as it has been Germany’s special position throughout the war.
It is, of course, eagerly championed by the New York World, the Hearst
papers, and all the rubber-stamp gentry. It is antagonized by England
and France and by every anti-German in America who understands the
situation.

It is utterly impossible, in view of the immense rapidity of the change
in modern war conditions, to formulate abstract policies about such
matters as contraband and blockades. These policies must be actually
tested in order to see how they work. Both England and the United
States have reversed themselves in this matter on several different
occasions. This is interesting as a matter of history, but from no
other standpoint. If we are honorable and intelligent we will follow
the course in this matter which, under existing conditions at this
time, seems most likely to work justice in the immediate future.

Germany’s position was that England had no right to blockade her so as
to cut off her supplies from the outside world. President Wilson at
the time accepted this view and talked a good deal about the freedom
of the seas. Meanwhile Germany, through her submarines, began an
unprecedented course of wholesale murder on the seas. President Wilson
protested against this in language much more apologetic and tender than
he had used in protesting against Great Britain blockading Germany in
what was essentially the same manner in which we blockaded the South
during the Civil War. He put the dollar above the man and incidentally
above the women and the children. He protested more vigorously upon the
interference with American goods than against the taking of American
lives.

Then we finally went to war with Germany ourselves. We instantly
adopted toward Germany and toward neutrals like Holland exactly the
position which President Wilson had been denouncing England for
adopting toward Germany and toward us. Our action in this case was
quite right, whereas our protest against England’s action had been
entirely wrong.

President Wilson now proposes to accept the German view and provide a
system which, if it had been in existence in 1914, would have meant
the inevitable and rapid triumph of Germany.

If this particular one of the proposed fourteen points had been in
treaty form and had been lived up to in 1914, Germany would have had
free access to the outside world. England’s fleet would not have
enabled her to bring economic pressure to bear upon Germany and
doubtless Germany would have won an overwhelming victory within a
couple of years. Therefore Mr. Wilson’s proposal is that now, when
no human being can foretell whether Germany will feel chastened and
morally changed, we shall take steps which will mean that if the war
has to be fought over again, Germany’s triumph will have been secured
in advance so far as we are able to secure it. All such conditions, all
merely academic questions as to the attitude of America or of England
before the outbreak of the Great War, are insignificant. Whatever our
views prior to the Great War, we are fools, indeed, if we have not
learned the lessons these last four and a half terrible years have
taught. The freedom of the seas in the sense used by Germany and Mr.
Wilson would have meant the enslavement of mankind to Germany. It
would have meant that this country would at this time either be lying
prostrate under the feet of German invaders or be purchasing peace by
ransoms heavier than were paid by Belgium. No patriotic American has
the right to stand quiet and see the President of the country, without
any warrant from the country, try to bring upon us such outrageous
potentiality and disaster as would be implied in the general
international adoption of the so-called “freedom of the seas.” Such
freedom of the seas means the enslavement of mankind.

PRESIDENT WILSON AND THE PEACE CONFERENCE

NOVEMBER 26, 1918

No public end of any kind will be served by President Wilson’s going
with Mr. Creel, Mr. House, and his other personal friends to the
Peace Conference. Inasmuch as the circumstances of his going are so
extraordinary, and as there is some possibility of mischief to this
country as a result, there are certain facts which should be set forth
so clearly that there can be no possibility of misunderstanding either
by our own people, by our allies, or by our beaten enemies, or by Mr.
Wilson himself.

Ten days before election Mr. Wilson issued an appeal to the American
people in which he frankly abandoned the position of President of the
whole people; assumed the position, not merely of party leader, but
of party dictator, and appealed to the voters as such. Most of Mr.
Wilson’s utterances on public questions have been susceptible to at
least two conflicting interpretations. But on this question he made the
issue absolutely clear. He asked that the people return a Democratic
majority to both the Senate and the House of Representatives. He
stated that the Republican leaders were pro-war, but that they were
anti-Administration. His appeal was not merely against any Republican
being elected, but against any Democrat who wished to retain his
conscience in his own keeping. He declared himself explicitly
against the pro-war Republicans. He declared explicitly for all
pro-Administration Democrats, without any reference as to whether
they were pro-war or anti-war. He said that if the people approved of
his leadership and wished him to continue to be their “unembarrassed
spokesman in affairs at home and abroad, they must return a Democratic
majority to both the Senate and the House of Representatives.” He
explicitly stated that on the other side of the water the return of a
Republican majority to either House of Congress would be interpreted
as a repudiation of his leadership, and informed his fellow countrymen
that to elect a Democratic majority in Congress was the only way to
sustain him, Mr. Wilson.

The issue was perfectly, clearly drawn. The Republican Party was
pro-war and anti-Administration, the Democratic Party was officially
pro-Administration without any mind or conscience of its own and
pro-war or anti-war according to the way in which Mr. Wilson changed
his mind overnight or between dawn and sunset. The Americans refused to
sustain Mr. Wilson. They elected a heavily Republican House and to the
surprise of every one carried a majority in the Senate. On Mr. Wilson’s
own say-so they repudiated his leadership. In no other free country in
the world to-day would Mr. Wilson be in office. He would simply be a
private citizen like the rest of us.

Under these circumstances our allies and our enemies, and Mr. Wilson
himself, should all understand that Mr. Wilson has no authority
whatever to speak for the American people at this time. His leadership
has just been emphatically repudiated by them. The newly elected
Congress comes far nearer than Mr. Wilson to having a right to speak
the purposes of the American people at this moment. Mr. Wilson and
his fourteen points and his four supplementary points and his five
complementary points and all his utterances every which way have ceased
to have any shadow of right to be accepted as expressive of the will
of the American people. He is President of the United States, he is
part of the treaty-making power, but he is only part. If he acts in
good faith to the American people, he will not claim on the other
side of the water any representative capacity in himself to speak for
the American people. He will say frankly that his personal leadership
has been repudiated and that he now has merely the divided official
leadership which he shares with the Senate. If he will in good faith
act in this way all good citizens in good faith will support him, just
as they will support the Senate under similar circumstances.

But there isn’t the slightest indication that he intends so to act.
The most striking manifestation of his purpose is that he sent over
Mr. Creel and sixteen of his employees who are officially announced
as “the United States official press mission to the Peace Conference,”
and, with more self-satisfaction, the committee announces, “to
interpret the work of the Peace Conference by keeping up world-wide
propaganda to disseminate American accomplishments and American
ideals.” At the same time Mr. Burleson seized the cables after the war
is over and when there can be no possible object except to control
the news in the interest of President Wilson as Mr. Burleson and Mr.
Creel see that interest. The action of the Creel “official press” would
really seem more like an excessively bad joke if it weren’t so serious.
But during the war the Administration, often incompetent to the verge
of impudence in dealing with war problems and with the Hun within our
gates, showed itself a past-master in bullying, browbeating, deceiving,
and puzzling our own people. It is utterly impossible that the Creel
“official press” and the Burleson-owned cables can have any other real
purpose than to make the news sent out from the Peace Conference, both
to ourselves, our allies, and our enemies, what they desire to have
told from their own standpoint and nothing more.

This is a very grave offense against our own people, but it may be a
worse offense against both our allies and ourselves. America played
in the closing months of the war a gallant part, but not in any way
the leading part, and she played this part only by acting in strictest
agreement with our allies and under the joint high command. She should
take precisely the same attitude at the Peace Conference. We have lost
in this war about two hundred and thirty-six thousand men killed and
wounded. England and France have lost about seven million. Italy and
Belgium and the other Allies have doubtless lost three million more.
Of the terrible sacrifice which has enabled the Allies to win the
victory, America has contributed just about two per cent. At the end,
I personally believe that our intervention was decisive because the
combatants were so equally matched and were so weakened by the terrible
strain that our money and our enthusiasm and the million fighting
men whom we got to the front, even although armed substantially with
nothing but French field cannon, tanks, machine guns, and airplanes,
was decisive in the scale. But we could render this decisive aid only
because for four years the Allies, in keeping Germany from conquering
their own countries, had incidentally kept her from conquering ours.

It is our business to act with our allies and to show an undivided
front with them against any move of our late enemies. I am no Utopian.
I understand entirely that there can be shifting alliances, I
understand entirely that twenty years hence or thirty years hence we
don’t know what combination we may have to face, and for this reason
I wish to see us preparing our own strength in advance and trust to
nothing but our own strength for our own self-defense as our permanent
policy. But in the present war we have won only by standing shoulder
to shoulder with our allies and presenting an undivided front to the
enemy. It is our business to show the same loyalty and good faith at
the Peace Conference. Let it be clearly understood that the American
people absolutely stand behind France, England, Italy, Belgium, and the
other Allies at the Peace Conference, just as she has stood with them
during the last eighteen months of war. Let every difference of opinion
be settled among the Allies themselves and then let them impose their
common will on the nations responsible for the hideous disaster which
has almost wrecked mankind.

THE LEAGUE TO ENFORCE PEACE

DECEMBER 2, 1918

Ex-Ambassador Harry White is a capital appointee for the Peace
Commission. He is not a Republican, but an independent in politics who
has worked as closely with Mr. Cleveland and Mr. Olney as with Mr.
McKinley and Mr. Root.

It is a good thing to have him on in view of the exceedingly loose talk
about the League of Nations or League to Enforce Peace. Fortunately
Mr. Taft has set forth the proposal for such a league under existing
conditions with such wisdom in refusing to let adherence to the
principle be clouded by insistence upon improper or unimportant methods
of enforcement that we can speak of the League as a practical matter.
I think that most of our people are in favor of the establishment of
the principle of such a league under common-sense conditions which will
not attempt too much and thereby expose the movement to the absolute
certainty of ridicule and failure. There must be an honest effort
to eliminate some of the causes that may produce future wars and to
minimize the area of such wars.

Mr. Taft explicitly admits and insists that the League is to be a
supplement to, and in no sense a substitute for, the duty of our Nation
to prepare its own strength for its own defense. He also explicitly
provides that, among the various peoples who would not be admitted to
the League on an equality with the others, there shall be different
spheres of interest assumed by the different powers who have entered
into the League. For example, the affairs of hither Asia, the Balkan
Peninsula, and of North Africa are of prime concern to the powers of
Europe, and the United States should be under no covenant to go to
war about matters in which its people have no concern and probably
no intelligent interest. On the other hand, the Monroe Doctrine--at
least for all America between the equator and the southern boundary of
the United States--is a vital point of American policy, and must in
no shape or way be interfered with. We do not interfere with existing
conditions, but aside from these no European or Asiatic power is to
have any say-so in the future of Mexico, Central America, and the lands
whose coasts are washed by the Caribbean Sea. The Panama Canal must not
be internationalized. It is our canal; we built it; we fortified it,
and we will protect it, and we will not permit our enemies to use it in
war. In time of peace all nations shall use it alike, but in time of
war our interest at once becomes dominant.

Most wisely Mr. Taft’s plan reserves for each nation certain matters
of such vital national interest that they cannot be put before any
international tribunal. This country must settle its own tariff and
industrial policies, and the question of admitting immigrants to work
or to citizenship, and all similar matters, the exercise of which was
claimed as a right when in 1776 we became an independent Nation. We
will not surrender our independence to a league of nations any more
than to a single nation. Moreover, no international court must be
entrusted with the decision of what is and what is not justiciable.

In the articles of agreement the non-justiciable matters should be as
sharply defined as possible, and until some better plan can be devised,
the Nation itself must reserve to itself the right, as each case
arises, to say what these matters are.

But let us steadily remember that before dealing with schemes such as
the League of Nations, which are necessarily more or less visionary,
we must join in good faith with our allies in securing practical right
and justice at the Peace Conference. We should treat as an enemy to
this country every man who at this time seeks directly or indirectly
to stir up dissension between us and England or France, or any other
of our allies. Side by side we have fought against the hideous twin
terrors of Bolshevism and Kaiserism and we must stand undivided at the
Peace Conference. What the distant future may hold no man can say, and
this is the very reason why I insist that America must prepare its own
strength for its own defense. But our duty at the moment is clear. We
have fought the war through beside the Allies and we must stand with
them with hearty loyalty throughout the peace negotiations. There must
be no division in the face of our enemies. At the very close of the war
we played an honorable and probably decisive part, but we were enabled
to do so only because for the four preceding years England and France
and their associates in defending their own rights had also saved us
from destruction. Our sacrifice is infinitesimal compared to theirs.
We have had a quarter of a million men killed and wounded; England
has had over three million, France nearly four million, and the other
Allies during their time of warfare against the common foe suffered in
proportion. Our loss has been no more than one or two per cent of the
entire loss suffered by the Allied armies and navies.

The immediate cause of bringing the war to an end was the forcing of
unconditional surrender upon Bulgaria and Turkey, with whom we had
shamefully refused to go to war at all. The English navy protected us
exactly as it protected Britain. Under such circumstances it behooves
us to remember that while we at the very end did our duty, yet that
our comrades in arms for over four years performed incalculable feats
and suffered incalculable losses and won the right of gratitude of all
mankind. The American envoys must not sit at the peace table as umpires
between the Allies and the conquered Central Powers, but as loyal
brothers of the Allies, as loyal members of the league of free peoples,
which has brought about peace by overthrowing Turkey, Bulgaria, and
Austria, and beating Germany to her knees.

THE MEN WHOSE LOT HAS BEEN HARDEST

DECEMBER 8, 1918

There recently died of pneumonia in France Major Willard Straight, of
the American army. He was above the draft age, he was a man of large
and many interests, he had a wife and three children. There was every
excuse for him not to have gone to the front, but both he and his wife
had in their souls that touch of heroism which makes it impossible for
generous natures to see others pay with their bodies and not to wish
to do so themselves. The one regret that Major Straight felt--and he
felt it most bitterly--was that he had not been able in spite of all
his efforts to get to the actual firing front. This failure was really
a cause of great anguish of soul to him. In the same way I know of the
four sons of an ex-Cabinet officer, all of whom instantly went into
the army at the outbreak of the war. Two were at the fighting front,
one was in the navy, and the other, because of the special excellence
as an instructor, was kept here, and the gallant young fellow who
left his wife and baby to enlist really feels as if the refusal of
the War Department to permit him to go where he could be shot at had
caused a blight in his life. I know three other men who, because of
their excellence, were kept as instructors at one of our camps, whose
feelings of regret are so bitter that they can hardly bear to look at
their uniforms and the sight of wounded soldiers causes them agonies of
thwarted longing.

All this is most natural, and just what we should expect from
high-minded, gallant fellows. But it is entirely unwarranted. I utterly
abhor the swivel-chair slacker who got some safe job in order to avoid
doing his duty at the front. But for the hundreds of thousands of
young Americans in the ranks or with commissions who did everything
they could to get in the firing lines, and who through no fault of
theirs failed, I have precisely the same feeling that I have for the
men who took part in the most dangerous work. General Leonard Wood,
in his recent capital address, has taught the right lesson to these
men. He was dismissing to their homes the men whom he had trained
with his usual, extraordinary capacity to fit them for work overseas,
and he dwelt to them upon the fact that the all-important point was
that they should remember that it was not the position they achieved,
but the eager readiness to do duty in whatever position they were
given that really counted. General Wood has himself been treated
with the most cruel injustice in this war, yet he has rendered signal
service in bringing before Congress our military needs, and, above
all, in training scores of thousands of our best fighting men. When
he was denied, from the very meanest motives, the chance to fill a
distinguished position, instead of sulking he devoted all of his
energy to doing the best he could in the positions to which he was
assigned. In consequence he comes out of the war as one of those who
most materially helped to win it. What is true of him in a big place
is true of every other soldier, whether in a big or little place. The
hardest task was for the men who were denied the chance of glory, and
if they did this hard task well and served faithfully wherever they
were assigned, they have exactly the same right for pride in their
participation in the Great War as any of the gallant fellows who have
come back maimed or crippled from the front. All alike have made the
rest of us forever their debtors, and to all alike we pay the same meed
of loyal admiration and respect.

THE BRITISH NAVY, THE FRENCH ARMY, AND AMERICAN COMMON SENSE

DECEMBER 17, 1918

The first essential in an alliance is loyalty. The first effort of an
enemy to an alliance is to produce disloyalty to one another among the
Allies. To any man who knows anything of history these facts are of
bromidic triteness. But the Administration, as usual, stands in urgent
need of learning the elements of fair play and common sense.

It was announced from the peace ship that President Wilson was going
to work for the reduction of naval armaments and for a form of naval
agreement which, if it had existed four years ago, would have meant
Germany’s victory and the subjugation of not only Germany’s foes,
but of all neutrals like ourselves. At the same time over here the
representatives of the Administration are demanding a navy bigger than
that of Great Britain. The only possible interpretation of these facts
is that the Administration proposes to threaten Great Britain with
having to get in a neck-and-neck competition with America to build the
greatest navy in the world, and to do this as a bluff so as to make for
Great Britain’s adherence to Mr. Wilson’s exceedingly nebulous ideas.

Under these conditions the American people should, with common sense,
look at what their own needs are and at what the needs of their
allies are. Sooner or later any programme will have to be tested by
its results, and even if the United States started to emulate Great
Britain’s navy, the enthusiasm to do so would vanish when it appeared
that there was no earthly interest of ours to be served by the action.

In winning the present war very many instrumentalities have been
necessary. On the whole the four most important in their order have
been: (1) the French army; (2) the British navy; (3) the British army;
(4) the Italian army. Our own gallant army and navy did exceedingly
well, but came in so late that the part they played, taking the four
and a half years as a whole, does not entitle them to rank with the
instrumentalities given above.

Great Britain is an island, separated from the huge military
commonwealths of Europe by very narrow seas, and separated from her
own greatest colonies by all the greatest oceans. To her, supremacy
in the navy is a matter of life and death. America ought to have a
first-class navy, but if she did not have a ship she might yet secure
herself from any invasion. But Great Britain’s empire would not last
one week, and she could not make herself safe at home one week if her
navy lost its supremacy. Incidentally to saving herself, the British
navy has rendered incalculable service to us during the last four and
one-half years, and for the last thirty years has been a shield to
the United States. Great Britain is not a military power in the sense
that any of the nations of continental Europe, or indeed of Asia, are
military powers. She had almost as much difficulty in developing her
army in this war as we had in developing our army. Her army is no more
of a threat to other peoples than ours is. Therefore, we Americans
find ourselves, as regards the British navy, in this position, that it
is of vital consequence to Great Britain to have the greatest navy in
the world; it is emphatically not of any consequence to us to have as
big a navy as Great Britain, for we are not in the slightest danger
from Great Britain, and under all ordinary circumstances the British
navy can be counted upon as a help to the United States and never as
a menace. Under such circumstances to set ourselves to work to build
a navy in rivalry to Great Britain’s, and above all to do this as a
political bluff, is worse than silly.

Our own navy should be ample to protect our own coasts and to maintain
the Monroe Doctrine. There are in Europe and Asia several great
military commonwealths, each one of which will in all probability
always possess a far more formidable army than ours, even though, as
I earnestly hope, we adopt some development of universal military
training on the lines of the Swiss system. Therefore, it is of the
highest consequence that our navy should be second to that of Great
Britain.

The analogy with the case of the French army is complete. If the French
army had not been able to hold the German army and be the chief factor
in the German military overthrow, the British navy could not have
averted Germany’s complete victory. Great Britain is separated by the
narrow seas from the military powers of continental Europe. We are
separated from them by the width of the ocean. Under the circumstances,
it is sheer impertinence for either American or English statesmen
to tell France, or, for that matter Italy, what ought to be done in
abolishing armaments or abandoning universal service or anything of
the kind. The interest of France and Italy in the matter is vital.
The interest of England and America is partly secondary. If we have
well-thought-out arguments to put before the French, put them before
them, but treat France as having the vital interest in the matter, and
therefore the final say-so as far as we are concerned. And when France
has determined what the needs of the future demand, so far as her
military preparedness is concerned, and when Italy has made a similar
determination, and our other allies likewise, back them up. It is not
the business of America to tell Great Britain what she should do with
her navy. It is not the business of either America or England to tell
France what she should do with her army. The plain American common
sense of the situation is that we should recognize our immense debt
to the British navy and the French army, and stand by Britain in what
she decides her vital needs demand so far as her navy is concerned,
and stand by France in the position she takes as to what the situation
demands so far as her army is concerned.

LET US HAVE STRAIGHTFORWARD SPEAKING

DECEMBER 24, 1918

Senator Lodge in his admirable speech has given the reasons why at
least five of the famous fourteen points should not be considered in
the peace negotiations proper. But the special merit of Senator Lodge’s
statement lies in the fact that it is straightforward and clear. There
is no need of a key to find out what he means. The men who represent,
or assume to represent, the United States at the Peace Conference,
should be equally clear with our allies and our enemies and also with
the American people. Above all things we need some straightforward
statement as to just what is proposed and as to just why it is proposed.

Take, for example, the very extraordinary conflict between that one
of the fourteen points in which the Administration has demanded
practically complete disarmament and the action of the Administration
at the same moment demanding that we shall build the biggest navy in
the world. Either one course or the other must necessarily be improper.
In such a matter we especially need a straightforward statement of
reasons and principles.

The worst thing we could do would be to build a spite navy, a navy
built not to meet our own needs, but to spite some one else. I am
speaking purely as an American. No man in this country who is both
intelligent or informed has the slightest fear that Great Britain will
ever invade us or try to go to war with us. The British navy is not in
the slightest degree a menace to us. I can go a little further than
this. There is in Great Britain a large pacifist and defeatist party
which behaves exactly like our own pacifists, pro-Germans, Germanized
Socialists, defeatists, and Bolsheviki. If this party had its way and
Great Britain abandoned its fleet, I should feel, so far from the
United States being freed from the necessity of building up a fleet,
that it behooved us to build a much stronger one than is at present
necessary. Our need is not as great as that of the vast scattered
British Empire, for our domains are pretty much in a ring fence. We
ought not to undertake the task of policing Europe, Asia, and Northern
Africa. Neither ought we to permit any interference with the Monroe
Doctrine or any attempt by Europe or Asia to police America. Mexico is
our Balkan Peninsula. Some day we will have to deal with it. All the
coasts and islands which in any way approach the Panama Canal must be
dealt with by this Nation, and by this Nation alone, in accordance with
the Monroe Doctrine. With this object in view our navy should be second
to that of Great Britain and superior to that of any other power--and
if Great Britain chooses to abolish its navy it would mean that we
ought to build a larger navy than is now necessary.

A SQUARE DEAL FOR THE MEN AT THE FRONT

DECEMBER 25, 1918

We should show our respect for the men at the front by more than mere
adulation. They are the Americans who have done most and suffered most
for this country. It was announced in the press that in many cases they
and the families they have left behind have not for months received
their full pay. This is an outrage. All civil officials are paid. The
Secretary of War is paid, and he ought not to touch a dollar of his
salary and no high official should touch a dollar of his salary until
the enlisted men and junior officers are paid every cent that is owing
to them, and this payment should be prompt. There is literally no
excuse for even so much as three days’ delay in the payment.

Moreover, these men, at great cost to themselves in paying everything
including, in fifty or sixty thousand cases, their lives, have gone to
the front at a wage from one half to one fifth as great as that their
companions who stayed behind have received during the same period.
They enlisted to do a specific job. They made the sacrifice in order
to do that job. We on our side should see that just as soon as the job
is done the men are taken home, allowed to leave the army, and begin
earning their livelihood and take care of the wives and children that
the married ones among them have left behind.

Recently in the public press there have appeared various artless and
chatty statements from the State, War, and Navy departments that our
men might be kept in Europe to do general police work and might not be
brought back here until the summer of 1920. There are three types of
soldiers on the other side. There are the Regular Army men, who have
entered the Regular Army as a profession, and to whom it is a matter
of indifference whether they stay in Europe, come back here, go to the
Philippines, or do anything else. That is a small proportion of our
force on the other side. The bulk are divided between volunteers, who
enlisted in the National Guard or sometimes in the regular regiments
to fight this war through, and the drafted men who were put into the
army under a law designed to meet this war and this war only. Not
one in ten of the volunteers would have dreamed of volunteering to
do police work in European squabbles. Not ten Congressmen would have
voted for the Draft Law if it was to force selective men to do police
duty after the war was over. All these men went in to fight this war
through to a finish and then to come home. It is not a square deal to
follow any other course as regards them. The minute that peace comes
every American soldier on the other side should be brought home as
speedily as possible save, of course, the regulars who make the Regular
Army their life profession, and any other man who chose to volunteer
to go over, or who can with entire propriety be used for gathering up
the loose ends. The American fighting man at the front has given this
country a square deal during the war. Now let the country give him a
square deal by letting him get out of the army and go to his home as
soon as the war is finished. The Red Cross has done wonderful work in
taking care of the dependents of these men pending settlement by the
Government, but the Government should not be content to rely on any
outside organization to make up its own shortcomings.

THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS[2]

JANUARY 13, 1919

It is, of course, a serious misfortune that our people are not getting
a clear idea of what is happening on the other side. For the moment the
point as to which we are foggy is the League of Nations. We all of us
earnestly desire such a league, only we wish to be sure that it will
help and not hinder the cause of world peace and justice. There is not
a young man in this country who has fought, or an old man who has seen
those dear to him fight, who does not wish to minimize the chance of
future war. But there is not a man of sense who does not know that in
any such movement if too much is attempted the result is either failure
or worse than failure.

The trouble with Mr. Wilson’s utterances, so far as they are reported,
and the utterances of acquiescence in them by European statesmen, is
that they are still absolutely in the stage of rhetoric precisely
like the “fourteen points.” Some of the fourteen points will probably
have to be construed as having a mischievous significance, a smaller
number might be construed as being harmless, and one or two even as
beneficial, but nobody knows what Mr. Wilson really means by them,
and so all talk of adopting them as basis for a peace or a league is
nonsense and, if the talker is intelligent, it is insincere nonsense
to boot. So Mr. Wilson’s recent utterances give us absolutely no
clue as to whether he really intends that at this moment we shall
admit Germany, Russia,--with which, incidentally, we are still waging
war,--Turkey, China, and Mexico into the League on full equality with
ourselves. Mr. Taft has recently defined the purposes of the League and
the limitations under which it would act, in a way that enables most of
us to say we very heartily agree in principle with his theory and can,
without doubt, come to an agreement on specific details.

Would it not be well to begin with the League which we actually have
in existence, the League of the Allies who have fought through this
great war? Let us at the peace table see that real justice is done as
among these Allies, and that while the sternest reparation is demanded
from our foes for such horrors as those committed in Belgium, Northern
France, Armenia, and the sinking of the Lusitania, nothing should be
done in the spirit of mere vengeance. Then let us agree to extend the
privileges of the League, as rapidly as their conduct warrants it, to
other nations, doubtless discriminating between those who would have a
guiding part in the League and the weak nations who would be entitled
to the privileges of membership, but who would not be entitled to a
guiding voice in the councils. Let each nation reserve to itself and
for its own decision, and let it clearly set forth questions which
are non-justiciable. Let nothing be done that will interfere with our
preparing for our own defense by introducing a system of universal
obligatory military training modeled on the Swiss plan.

Finally make it perfectly clear that we do not intend to take a
position of international Meddlesome Matty. The American people do
not wish to go into an overseas war unless for a very great cause and
where the issue is absolutely plain. Therefore, we do not wish to
undertake the responsibility of sending our gallant young men to die
in obscure fights in the Balkans or in Central Europe, or in a war
we do not approve of. Moreover, the American people do not intend to
give up the Monroe Doctrine. Let civilized Europe and Asia introduce
some kind of police system in the weak and disorderly countries at
their thresholds. But let the United States treat Mexico as our Balkan
Peninsula and refuse to allow European or Asiatic powers to interfere
on this continent in any way that implies permanent or semi-permanent
possession. Every one of our allies will with delight grant this
request if President Wilson chooses to make it, and it will be a great
misfortune if it is not made.

I believe that such an effort made moderately and sanely, but sincerely
and with utter scorn for words that are not made good by deeds, will be
productive of real and lasting international good.

THE END

FOOTNOTES:

[2] This article on “The League of Nations” is the last contribution
that Colonel Roosevelt prepared for The Star. It was dictated at
his home in Oyster Bay, January 3, the Friday before his death. His
secretary expected to take the typed copy to him for correction Monday.
Instead she was called on the telephone early Monday morning and told
of his death. A delay of several days naturally ensued, before the
editorial reached the office of The Star.

In view of the immense moment of the issues before the Peace
Conference, The Star had asked Colonel Roosevelt to give his countrymen
the benefit of his discussion of the possibilities of a League of
Nations as a preventive of war. He consented, although, as he wrote,
he expected to follow this editorial with one “on what I regard as
infinitely more important, namely, our business to prepare for our own
self-defense.” That article, however, was never written.

This article, then, his final contribution to The Star, represents his
matured judgment based on protracted discussion and correspondence. It
is of peculiar importance as the last message of a man who, above every
other American of his generation, combined high patriotism, practical
sense, and a positive genius for international relations.

THIS LARGE-PAPER EDITION CONSISTS OF THREE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY-FIVE
NUMBERED COPIES, OF WHICH THREE HUNDRED AND FIFTY ARE FOR SALE. THIS
IS NUMBER....

The Riverside Press
CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS
U . S . A

Transcriber’s Notes

Obvious errors in punctuation have been fixed.

In the table of contents, “The Landsdowne Letter” changed to “The
Lansdowne Letter”

Page 49: “which his precedessor” changed to “which his predecessor”

Page 54: “seeking a black animal” changed to “seeing a black animal”

Page 136: “New York Herold” changed to “New York Herald”

*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Roosevelt in the Kansas City Star: War-time Editorials" ***

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