Chapter II (3)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE MAN WHO PAYS AND THE MAN WHO PROFITS

AUGUST 9, 1918

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

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

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

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

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

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

OUR DEBT TO THE BRITISH EMPIRE

AUGUST 16, 1918

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

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

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

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

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

THE CANDIDACY OF HENRY FORD

AUGUST 20, 1918

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

AUGUST 23, 1918

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

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

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

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

SENATOR LODGE’S NOBLE SPEECH

SEPTEMBER 1, 1918

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

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

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

APPLIED PATRIOTISM

SEPTEMBER 8, 1918

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

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

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

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

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

GOOD LUCK TO THE ANTI-BOLSHEVISTS OF KANSAS

SEPTEMBER 12, 1918

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE FOURTH LIBERTY LOAN

SEPTEMBER 17, 1918

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

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

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

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

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

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

FAIR PLAY AND NO POLITICS

SEPTEMBER 20, 1918

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SPIES AND SLACKERS

SEPTEMBER 24, 1918

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

QUIT PLAYING FAVORITES

SEPTEMBER 30, 1918

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

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

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

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

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

WAR AIMS AND PEACE PROPOSALS

OCTOBER 12, 1918

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

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

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

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

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

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