Chapter II (2)

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.