Chapter II (1)

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