The use of this text or audio material is subject to the TR American Patriot user agreement located at: TR American Patriot.com 

DEDICATION
This book is dedicated to the memory of 
Julia Ward Howe
Because in the vital matters fundamentally affecting the life of the Republic, she was as good a citizen of the Republic as Washington and Lincoln themselves. She was in the highest sense a good wife and a good mother; and therefore she fulfilled the primary law of our being. She brought up with devoted care and wisdom her sons and her daughters. At the same time she fulfilled her full duty to the commonwealth from the public standpoint. She preached righteousness and she practised righteousness. She sought the peace that comes as the handmaiden of well doing. She preached that stern and lofty courage of soul which shrinks neither from war nor from any other form of suffering and hardship and danger if it is only thereby that justice can be served. She embodied that trait more essential than any other in the make-up of the men and women of this Republic—the valor of righteousness.

BATTLE HYMN  OP  THE  REPUBLIC
JULIA   WARD   HOWE
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord;
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the -fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword,
His truth is marching on.
I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred
circling camps; 
They have builded Him an altar in the evening
dews and damps; 
I can read His righteous sentence by the dim amd
flaring lamps,
 His day is marching on.
I have read a fiery gospel, writ in burnished rows
of steel: 
"As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my
grace shall deal; 
Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent
with His heel, 
Since God is marching on."
He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgMent-seatt;
Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet,
Our God is marching on.
In the beauty of the lilies, Christ was born across
the sea, 
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you
and me; 
As he died to make men holy, let us die to make
men free, 
While God is marching on.

TO THE PEOPLE OF AMERICA
Over two months have gone by since this book was published and during those two months affairs have moved rapidly, and at every point the march of events has shown the need of reducing to practice every principle herein laid down.

The monotonous succession of outrages upon our people by the Mexicans was broken by a spectacular raid of Villa into American territory, which resulted in the death of half a dozen American soldiers and an equal number of civilians. We accordingly asked Carranza to permit us to assist him in hunting down Villa and Carranza grudgingly gave the permission. We failed to get Villa; we had to fight the Villistas and at one moment also the Carranzistas; we lost valuable lives, and at this time of writing the expedition is halted and it is announced at Washington that it is being considered whether or not it shall be withdrawn. We have not been able to scrape together the troops and equipment necessary to punish a single bandit. The professional pacificists and professional antipreparedness advocates are invited to consider these facts. We are told we have kept the peace in Mexico. As a matter of fact we have twice been at war in Mexico within the last two years. Our failure to prepare, our failure to take action of a proper sort on the Mexican border has not averted bloodshed; it has invited bloodshed. It has cost the loss of more lives than were lost in the Spanish War. Our Mexican failure is merely the natural fruit of the policies of pacificism and anti-preparedness.

Since the first edition of this book was published, President Wilson has notified Germany and has informed Congress that if Germany continues submarine warfare against merchant and passenger steamers as she has carried it on for the last year America will take action. Apparently the first step is to be the sundering of diplomatic relations. Such sunderance would, of course, mean nothing if the submarine war was continued. Merely to recall our Ambassador if men, women and children are being continually killed on the high seas and to take no further action would be about as effective as the conduct of a private individual who, when another man slapped his wife's face, retaliated by not bowing to the man. Therefore, either Germany will have to surrender on the point at issue, or this protest of ours will prove to have meant nothing, or else there must be a war. Fourteen months have elapsed since we sent our "strict accountability" note to Germany demanding that there be no submarine warfare that should endanger the lives of American citizens. She did not believe that we meant what we said and the warfare has gone on. If she now stops, it will be proof positive that she would have stopped at the very outset had we made it evident that we meant what we said. In such case the loss of thousand^-of lives of men, women and children will be at our doors for having failed to make it evident that we meant what we said. If she does not stop, then we shall have to go to war or back down; and in that case it must be remembered that during these fourteen months—and during the preceding seven months—we have not prepared in naval, military or industrial matters in the smallest degree. The peace-at-any-price men, the professional pacificists shrieked loudly that to prepare would be to invite war. The Administration accepted their view and has not prepared. The result is that we are near to war. The blindest can now see that had we, in August 1914 when the great war began, ourselves begun actively to prepare, we would now be in a position such that every one knew our words would be made good by our deeds. In such case no nation would dream of interfering with us or of refusing our demands; and each of the warring nations would vie with the others to keep us out of the war. Immediate preparedness at the outset of the war would have meant that there would never have been the necessity for sending the "strict accountability" note. It would have meant that there never would have been the murder of the thousands of men, women and children on the high seas. It would have meant that we would now be sure of peace for ourselves. It would have meant that we would now be ready to act the part of peacemaker for others.
theodore Roosevelt. Sagamore Hill, April 24th, 1916.
This book is based primarily upon, and mainly consists of, matter contained in articles I have written in the Metropolitan Magazine during the past fourteen months. It also contains or is based upon an article contributed to the Wheeler Syndicate, a paper submitted to the American Sociological Congress, and one or two speeches and public statements. In addition there is much new matter, including most of the first chapter. In part the old matter has been rearranged. For the most part, I have left it unchanged. In the few instances where what I spoke was in the nature of prophecy as to what might or would happen during the last year, the prophecy has been fulfilled, and I have changed the tense but not the purport of the statements. I have preferred to run the risk of occasional repetition rather than to attempt rewriting certain of the chapters, because whatever of value these chapters have had lay in the fact that in them I was applying eternal principles of right to concrete cases which were of vital importance at the moment, instead of merely treating these eternal principles as having their place forever in the realm of abstract thought and never to be reduced to action. I was speaking to and for the living present about the immediate needs of the present.
The principles set forth in this book are simply the principles of true Americanism within and without our own borders, the principles which, according to my abilities, I have preached and, according to my abilities, I have practised for the thirty-five years since, as a very young man, I first began to take an active interest in American history and in American political life.
theodore roosevelt.
Sagamore Hill, February 3, 1916.

FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART
CHAPTER I
GOD  AND  TAK3  YOUR  OWN   PART
READERS of Borrow will recognize in the heading of this chapter, which I have also chosen for the title of the book, a phrase used by the heroine of Lavengro.

Fear God ; and take your own part ! Fear God, in the true sense of the word, means love God, respect God, honor God; and all of this can only be done by loving our neighbor, treating him justly and mercifully, and in all ways endeavoring to protect him from injustice and cruelty; thus obeying, as far as our human frailty will permit, the great and immutable law of righteousness.

We fear God when we do justice to and demand justice for the men within our own borders. We are false to the teachings of righteousness if we do not do such justice and demand such justice. We must do it to the weak, and we must do it to the strong. We do not fear God if we show mean envy and hatred of those who are better off than we are; and still less do we fear God if we show a base arrogance towards and selfish lack of consideration for those who are less well off. We must apply the same standard of conduct alike to man and to woman, to rich man and to poor man, to employer and employee. We must organize our social and industrial life so as to secure a reasonable equality of opportunity for all men to show the stuff that is in them, and a reasonable division among those engaged in industrial work of the reward for that industrial work, a division which shall take into account all the qualities that contribute to the necessary success. We must demand honesty, justice, mercy, truthfulness, in our dealings with one another within our own borders. Outside of our own borders we must treat other nations as we would wish to be treated in return, ' judging each in any given crisis as we ourselves ought to be judged—that is, by our conduct in that crisis. If they do ill, we show that we fear God when we sternly bear testimony against them and oppose them in any way and to whatever extent the needs require. If they do well, we must not wrong them ourselves. Finally, if we are really devoted to a lofty ideal we must in so far as our strength permits aid them if they are wronged by others. When we sit idly by while Belgium is being overwhelmed, and rolling up our eyes prattle with unctuous self-righteousness about "the duty of neutrality," we show that we do not really fear God; on the contrary, we show an odious fear of the devil, and a mean readiness to serve him.

But in addition to fearing God, it is necessary that we should be able and ready to take our own part. The man who cannot take his own part is a nuisance in the community, a source of weakness, an encouragement to wrongdoers and an added burden to the men who wish to do what is right. If he cannot take his own part, then somebody else has to take it for him; and this means that his weakness and cowardice and inefficiency place an added burden on some other man and make that other man's strength by just so much of less avail to the community as a whole. No man can take the part of any one else unless he is able to take his own part. This is just as true of nations as of men. A nation that cannot take its own part is at times almost as fertile a source of mischief in the world at large as is a nation which does wrong to others, for its very existence puts a premium on such wrongdoing. Therefore, a nation must fit itself to defend its honor and interest against outside aggression; and this necessarily means that in a free democracy every man fit for citizenship must be trained so that he can do his full duty to the nation in war no less than in peace.

Unless we are thorough-going Americans and unless our patriotism is part of the very fiber of our being, we can neither serve God nor take our own part. Whatever may be the case in an infinitely remote future, at present no people can render any service to humanity unless as a people they feel an intense sense of national cohesion and solidarity. The man who loves other nations as much as he does his own, stands on a par with the man who loves other women as much as he does his own wife. The United States can accomplish little for mankind, save in so far as within its borders it develops an intense spirit of Americanism. A flabby cosmopolitanism, especially if it expresses itself through a flabby pacifism, is not only silly, but degrading. It represents national emasculation. The professors of every form of hyphenated Americanism are as truly the foes of this country as if they dwelled outside its borders and made active war against it. This is not a figure of speech, or a hyperbolic statement. The leaders of the hyphenated-American movement in this country (who during the last eighteen months have been the professional German-Americans and Austro-Americans) are also leaders in the movement against preparedness. I have before me a little pamphlet, circulated by a "German-American" organization, consisting of articles written by a German-American for a paper which claims to be the leading German paper in Illinois. This pamphlet is a bitter attack upon the policy of preparedness for the United States, and a slanderous assault on those advocating this American policy. It is, therefore, an effort in the interest of Germany to turn the United States into a larger Belgium— an easy prey for Germany whenever Germany desires to seize it. These professional German-Americans and Pro-Germans are Anti-American to the core. They play the part of traitors, pure and simple. Once it was true that this country could not endure half free and half slave. Today it is true that it can not endure half American and half foreign. The hyphen is incompatible with patriotism.

Patriotism should be an integral part of our every feeling at all times, for it is merely another name for those qualities of soul which make a man in peace or in war, by day or by night, think of his duty to his fellows, and of his duty to the nation through which their and his loftiest aspirations must find their fitting expression. After the Lusitania was sunk, Mr. Wilson stated in effect that such a time was not the right time to stir up patriotism. This statement is entirely incompatible with having a feeling of deep patriotism at any time. It might just as appropriately have been made by George Washington immediately after his defeat at the Brandywine, or by Abraham Lincoln immediately after the surrender of Fort Sumter; and if in either of these crises our leaders had acted on any such principle we would not now have any country at all. Patriotism is as much a duty in time of war as in time of peace, and it is most of all a duty in any and every great crisis. To commit folly or do evil, to act inconsiderately and hastily or wantonly and viciously, in the name of patriotism, represents not patriotism at all, but a use of the name to cloak an attack upon the thing. Such baseness or folly is wrong, at every time and on every occasion. But patriotism itself is not only in place on every occasion and at every time, but is peculiarly the feeling which should be stirred to its deepest depths at every serious crisis. The duty of a leader is to lead; and it is a dreadful thing that any man chosen to lead his fellow-countrymen should himself show, not merely so profound a lack of patriotism, but such misunderstanding of patriotism, as to be willing to say in a great crisis what President Wilson thus said at the time of the sinking of the Lusitania. This statement, coupled with his statement made about the same time as to being "too proud to fight," furnishes the clue to the Administration's policy both before and since. This policy made our great democratic commonwealth false to its duties and its ideals in a tremendous world crisis, at the very time when, if properly led, it could have rendered an inestimable service to all mankind, and could have placed itself on a higher pinnacle of worthy achievement than ever before. Patriotism, so far from being incompatible with performance of duty to other nations, is an indispensable prerequisite to doing one's duty toward other nations. Fear God; and take your own part! If this nation had feared God it would have stood up for the Belgians and Armenians; if it had been able and willing to take its own part there would have been no murderous assault on the Lusitania, no outrages on our men and women in Mexico. True patriotism carries with it not hostility to other nations but a quickened sense of responsible good-will towards other nations, a good-will of acts and not merely of words. I stand for a nationalism of duty, to oneself and to others; and, therefore, for a nationalism which is a means to internationalism. World peace must rest on the willingness of nations with courage, cool foresight, and readiness for self-sacrifice to defend the fabric of international law. No nation can help in securing an organized, peaceful and justice-doing world community until it is willing to run risks and make efforts in order to secure and maintain such a community.

The nation that in actual practice fears God is the nation which does not wrong its neighbors, which does so far as possible help its neighbors, and which never promises what it cannot or will not or ought not to perform. The professional pacifists in and out of office who at peace congresses pass silly resolutions which cannot be, and ought not to be, lived up to, and enter into silly treaties which ought not to be, and cannot be, kept, are not serving God, but Baal. They are not doing anything for anybody.1 If in addition these people, when the concrete case arises, as in Belgium or Armenia, fear concretely to denounce and antagonize the wrongdoer, they become not merely passive, but active agents of the devil. The professional pacifists who applauded universal arbitration treaties and disarmament proposals prior to the war, since the war have held meetings and parades in this country on behalf of peace, and have gone on silly missions to Europe on behalf of peace—and the peace they sought to impose on heroes who were battling against infamy was a peace conceived in the interest of the authors of the infamy. They did not dare to say that they stood only for a peace that should right the wrongs of Belgium. They did not dare to denounce the war of aggression by Germany against Belgium. Their souls were too small, their timidity too great. They were even afraid to applaud the war waged by Belgium in its own defence. These pacifists have served morality, have shown that they feared God, exactly as the Pharisees did, when they made broad their philacteries and uttered long prayers in public, but did not lift a finger to lighten the load of the oppressed. When Mr. Wilson and Mr. Bryan made this nation shirk its duty towards Belgium, they made us false to all our high ideals; for they acted and caused this government to act in that spirit of commercial opportunism which refuses to do duty to others unless there is in it pecuniary profit for oneself. This combination of mean timidity and mean commercial opportunism is peculiarly odious because those practising it have sought to hide it by profuse outbursts of wordy sentimentality and loud professions of attachment to impossible and undesirable ideals. One of the besetting sins of many of our public servants (and of not a few of our professional moralists, lay and clerical) is to cloak weakness or baseness of action behind insincere oratory on behalf of impractical ideals. The true servant of the people is the man who preaches realizable ideals; and who then practises what he has preached.

(footnote) See the excellent little book called "Is War Diminishing?" by Woods and Baltzly. The authors deal, as they necessarily must if truthful deal, with the mischievous activities of those professional pacifists among whom Mr. Andrew Carnegie has attained an unhappy prominence: activities which in this country for the last five years have worked nothing but evil, and very serious evil, to our nation and to humanity at large, and to all genuine movements for the promotion of the peace of righteousness. The writers instance Mr. Nicholas Murray Butler as presenting in typical manner the shams and perversions of fact upon which the professional pacifists rely for their propaganda, and remark that these pacifists, "who pride themselves on having the superior moral point of view, openly disregard the truth," and ask "these professors of ethics, law and justice, these presidents of colleges, these moral educators, if morality is not necessarily bound up with truth." The pacifist movement in this country has not only been one of extreme folly and immorality, but has been bolstered by consistent and unwearied falsification of the facts, laudation of shallow and unprincipled demagogues, and condemnation of the upright public servants who fearlessly tell the truth. ( end footnote)

Moreover, even as regards the pacifists who genuinely desire that this nation should fear God, it is to be remembered that if the nation cannot take its own part, the fact that it fears God will be of no practical consequence to any one. Nobody cares whether or not the feeling of the Chinese people is against international wrongdoing; for, as China is helplessly unable to take her own part, she is in practise even more helpless to take the part of any one else and to secure justice and mercy for any one else. The pacifists who are seeking to Chinafy the United States are not only seeking to bring the United States to ruin, but are also seeking to render it absolutely impotent to help upright and well-behaved nations which are oppressed by the military power  of  unscrupulous   neighbors  of  greater strength.

The professional pacifists, the leaders in the pacifist movement in the United States, do particular harm by giving well-meaning but uninformed people who do not think deeply what seems to them a convincing excuse for failure to show courage and resolution. Those who preach sloth and cowardice under the high-sounding name of "peace" give people a word with which to cloak, even to themselves, their failure to perform unpleasant duty. For a man to stand up for his own rights, or especially for the rights of somebody else, means that he must have virile qualities: courage, foresight, willingness to face risk and undergo effort. It is much easier to be timid and lazy. The average man does not like to face death and endure hardship and labor. He can be roused to do so if a leader of the right type, a Washington or Lincoln, appeals to the higher qualities, including the stern qualities, of his soul. But a leader, or at least a man who holds a leader's place, earns praise and profit unworthily if he uses his gift of words to lull well-meaning men to sleep, if he assures them that it is their duty to do the easy and selfish thing, and furnishes them high-sounding phrases with which to cover ignoble failure to perform hard and disagreeable duties.
Peace is not the end. Righteousness is the end. When the Saviour saw the money-changers in the Temple he broke the peace by driving them out. At that moment peace could have been obtained readily enough by the simple process of keeping quiet in the presence of wrong. But instead of preserving peace at the expense of righteousness, the Saviour armed himself with a scourge of cords and drove the moneychangers from the Temple. Righteousness is the end, and peace a means to the end, and sometimes it is not peace, but war which is the proper means to achieve the end. Righteousness should breed valor and strength. When it does breed them, it is triumphant; and when triumphant, it necessarily brings peace. But peace does not necessarily bring righteousness.

As for neutrality, it is well to remember that it is never moral, and may be a particularly mean and hideous form of immorality. It is in itself merely unmoral; that is, neither moral nor immoral; and at times it may be wise and expedient. But it is never anything of which to be proud; and it may be something of which to be heartily ashamed. It is a wicked thing to be neutral between right and wrong. Impartiality does not mean neutrality. Impartial justice consists not in being neutral between right and wrong, but in finding out the right and upholding it, wherever found, against the wrong. Moreover, submission to an initial wrong means that all protests against subsequent and lesser wrongs are hypocritical and ineffective. Had we protested, in such fashion that our protest was effective, against what was done in Belgium by Germany, and against the sinking of the Lusi-tania by Germany, we could have (and in such case we ought to have) protested against all subsequent and minor infractions of international law and morals, including those which interfered with our commerce or with any other neutral rights. But failure to protest against the first and worst offences of the strongest wrongdoer made it contemptible, and an act of bad faith, to protest against subsequent and smaller misdeeds; and failure to act (not merely speak or write notes) when our women and children were murdered made protests against interference with American business profits both offensive and ludicrous.

The pacifists have used all kinds of arguments in favor of peaceful submission to, or refusal to prepare against, international violence and wrongdoing, and among others the very ancient arguments based upon the supposed teaching of the New Testament against war. In the first place, as I have already pointed out, this argument is quite incompatible with accepting the lesson taught by the action of the Saviour in driving the money-changers from the Temple; not to mention, incidentally, that the duty of preparedness has rarely been put in stronger form than by St. Luke in the direction that "He that hath no sword, let him sell his garment and buy
one."

In the next place, the plea is merely an instance of the adroit casuistry that can twist isolated teachings of the Gospels in any required direction. As a matter of fact, the Gospels do not deal with war at all. During the period they covered there was no war in Judea, and no question arising from the need of going to war. The precepts and teachings upon which the pacifists rely apply not to war, but to questions arising from or concerning individual and mob violence and the exercise of the internal police power. In so far as sincere and logical pacifists are concerned, they recognize this fact. There are schools of pacifists who decline to profit by the exercise of the police power, who decline to protect not merely themselves, but those dearest to them, from any form of outrage and violence. The individuals of this type are at least logical in their horror even of just war. If a man deliberately takes the view that he will not resent having his wife's face slapped, that he will not by force endeavor to save his daughter from outrage, and that he disapproves of the policeman who interferes by force to save a child kidnapped by a black-hander, or a girl run off by a white-slaver, then he is logical in objecting to war. Of course, to my mind, he occupies an unspeakably base and loathsome position, and is not fit to cumber the world—in which, as a matter of fact, he exists at all only because he is protected by the maintenance by others of the very principle which he himself repudiates and declines to share.

Such a position I hold to be as profoundly immoral as it is profoundly unpatriotic. But, at least, the men holding it are trying logically to apply the principles which they profess to follow. Messrs. Bryan, Jordan, Ford, and the other professional pacifists, however, are either insincere in their denunciation of war, or else must announce that the same principle which makes them denounce a just war entered into for the sake of the welfare of the nation as a whole, also makes them denounce the man who, by force, endeavors to protect his daughter against infamy, or the woman who opposes her feeble strength to the brutality of the kidnapper of her child. Either these gentlemen, as regards their own families, approve of tame submission to kidnapping and white slavery, and disapprove of suppression of kidnapping and white slavery by the police, or else they are either thoroughly unintelligent or else thoroughly dishonest in their denunciation of national preparedness and of readiness to enter into just war on behalf either of ourselves or of others.

Let us beware of confusing names with things. The fuglemen of President Wilson have kept praising him because, forsooth, he has "kept us out of war." Every now and then one of them reverses his praise, and says that in any event President Wilson could not have gone to war, because war can only be declared by Congress. But as a matter of fact, President Wilson has gone to war, both with Hayti and with Mexico.

This is a matter of deeds, not of words. When our armed forces attack the chief seaport city of a foreign country, as we did in the case both of Mexico and of Hayti, and take it by violence, after conflicts in which scores of our own men and either scores or hundreds of our opponents are killed and wounded, the act is one of war. It may be successful war like that which Mr. Wilson nerved himself to wage with tiny Hayti— for Mr. Wilson was not afraid ijl Hayti. It may be utterly ineffective war, as in the case of Mr. Wilson's little war with Mexico. But both were wars; and each was waged without any Congressional action whatever. Mr. Wilson sent the fleet down to Vera Cruz, and took it in order to get a salute for the flag. The men wearing the United States uniform, who carried out his command, suffered a considerable loss of life and inflicted a greater loss of life. He then brought our forces away without achieving the object he had in view. His little war was an ignoble war, and he was beaten in it. But it was a war.

Some of his defenders now say that, although defeated in the avowed purpose of the war, he succeeded as regards the unavowed purpose, which was to drive out Huerta in the interests of Villa. This is, of course, a confession that their statements on behalf of Mr. Wilson are untrue, that he has not kept the country at peace, but has put it into a war, not to serve any public purpose, but to gratify his personal feelings. It is, of course, a statement absolutely incompatible with Mr. Wilson's own claim that he did not intervene in Mexico. Therefore, these admirers of Mr. Wilson come to his defence by vociferating what he asserts to be contrary to the truth.

As a matter of fact, in this case they are correct. Mr. Wilson has more than once interfered —to use his own scholarly and elegant phraseology, "butted in"—by making war in Mexico. He never did it, however, to secure justice for Americans or other foreigners. He never did it to secure the triumph of justice and peace among the Mexicans themselves. He merely did it in the interest of some bandit chief, whom at the moment he liked, in order to harm some other bandit chief whom at the moment he disliked. Under such circumstances his methods of action, and his defence of his action, are worthy of a Byzantine logothete—but not of an American statesman who is true to the traditions of Washington and Lincoln, and an heir to the valor shown by the soldiers of Grant and of Lee.

Mr. Wilson has been President when the urgent need of the nation was for action. He has met the need purely by elocution. A friend, writing to me last Christmas Eve, remarked that he had just found in Cymbeline "in anticipation of the gentleman in the White House":
"Prithee have done,
And do not play in wench-like words with that Which is so serious."
Peace is not a question of names. It is a question of facts. If murders occur in a city, and if the police force is so incompetent that no record is made of them officially, that does not interfere with the fact that murders have been committed and that life is unsafe. In just the same way, if lives are taken by violence between nations, it is not of the slightest consequence whether those responsible for the government of the nation whose citizens have lost their lives do or do not assert that the nation is at peace. During the last three years we have been technically at peace. But during those three years more of our citizens have been killed by Mexicans, Germans, Austrians • and Haytians than were killed during the entire Spanish War. It is true that the American citizens killed during the past three years have been mostly non-combatants, including women and children, although many men wearing the national uniform have also been killed, some of them on American soil. But the fact that women and children are killed instead of full-grown men in uniform surely increases rather than diminishes the horror. We have had a great many more citizens killed during this time of alleged peace, and thanks to the activities of the emissaries of foreign governments with the torch and the bomb on our own soil, we have had much more American property destroyed, than was the case during the open war with Spain; and whereas, thanks to the abject quality of Mr. Wilson's tameness, no benefit whatever, to us or to mankind at large, has come from this loss of life and destruction of property during the last three years, the short war with Spain brought incalculable benefits to Cuba, Porto Rico, the Philippines, not to speak of ourselves.

On February i2th it will be a year since the time when we notified Germany that in case any of our citizens were killed, we would hold her to a strict accountability; and during these eleven months the passenger ships sunk by German or Austrian submarines in defiance of our warning have included among others the Falaba, Lusi-tania, Arabic, Hesperian, Ancona, Yasaka, Ville de la Ciotat and Persia. They were British, Italian, Japanese and French. Many hundreds of Americans were among the passengers and a couple of hundred of these, including many women and children, were killed. The total deaths on these ships since March last amount to between 2,000 and 2,100. The campaign against them has been a campaign of sheer murder, on a vaster scale than any indulged in by any of the old-time pirates of the Indian Ocean and the Spanish Main. Now, the total number of lives of non-combatants, including many hundreds of women and children, thus taken exceeds many times over the aggregate in all the sea-fights of the War of 1812, both on the American and on the British side. It is over double the number of lives lost by the British navy in Nelson's three great victories, the Battle of Trafalgar, the Battle of the Nile and the Battle of the Baltic, combined. It much exceeds the total number of lives lost in the Union navy—and indeed in the Union and Confederate navies combined—during the Civil War. That is, this nation has been "peaceful" during the past year, while peaceful ships on which its citizens were sailing lost a larger number of lives than we lost at sea in the entire War of 1812 and than we inflicted at sea in the War of 1812, a much greater loss than Farragut's fleet suffered in the aggregate in all its victories, a greater loss than Nelson's fleets suffered in his three great victories. If any individual finds satisfaction in saying that nevertheless this was "peace" and not "war," it is hardly worth while arguing with him; for he dwells in a land of sham and of make-believe. Of course, incidentally, we have earned contempt and derision by our conduct in connection with the hundreds of Americans thus killed in time of peace without action on our part. The United States Senator, or Governor of a State, or other public representative, who takes the position that our citizens should not, in accordance with their lawful rights, travel on such ships, and that we need not take action about their deaths, occupies a position precisely and exactly as base and as cowardly (and I use those words with scientific precision) as if his wife's face were slapped on the public streets and the only action he took was to tell her to stay in the house.

Our course toward foreign nations has combined unworthy submission to wrongs against ourselves, with selfish refusal to keep our word and do right by others. Under the sixth article of the Constitution treaties are "the Supreme law of the land." The Hague Conventions were treaties of this kind. They included a guaranty from Germany that she would not violate the territory of neutral nations (including the territory of Belgium) and a guaranty by Belgium that if an attempt was made to violate her territory she would fight to prevent the violation. Germany broke her solemn promise to us, and offended against the Supreme law of our land. Belgium kept her solemn promise made by her to us, to Germany, to France, Russia and England. We shirked our duty by failing to take any action, even by protest, against the wrongdoer and on behalf of the wronged, by permitting this violation of our law, of the law which we guaranteed, of the "supreme law of the land," and by announcing through our President that we would be "neutral in thought as well as in deed" between the oppressor and the oppressed. We have been equally signal in our remiss-ness to prepare for our own defence. It is our highest duty thus to prepare, and in manful fashion to pay the cost of preparation. Seven years ago we were relatively to the rest of the world far better prepared than ever before in our history. Our navy was in combined size and efficiency the second in the world. The Philippines had been pacified, Mexico was orderly and peaceful, and the Hague Conventions, if actively enforced and treated as binding by peaceful and law-abiding nations, would have regulated the conduct of war, circumscribed its limits, and minimized the chance of its occurrence. Under such conditions our regular army was of sufficient size (provided the work of improving its efficiency was steadily continued, as had been the case during the preceding seven years)—for the navy was our first and principal line of defence. Although as President I had called the attention of Congress and of the people to the Swiss system of universal service as a model for us as well as other democracies, there did not at that time seem any sufficient justification for military alarm. But what has happened during the last year and a half has forced all reasonably far-sighted men to understand that we are living in a new world. We have let our navy deteriorate to a degree both shameful and alarming. We have shown by our own conduct when the Hague Conventions were violated that all such treaties are utterly worthless, as offering even the smallest safeguard against aggression. Above all, the immense efficiency, the utter ruthlessness, and the gigantic scale of the present military operations show that we need military preparedness on a scale never hitherto even dreamed of by any American statesman.

Eighteen months have gone by since the great war broke out. It needed no prescience, no remarkable statesmanship or gift of forecasting the future, to see that, when such mighty forces were unloosed and when it had been shown that all treaties and other methods hitherto relied upon for national protection and for mitigating the horrors and circumscribing the area of war were literally "scraps of paper," it had become a vital necessity that we should instantly and on a great and adequate scale prepare for our own defence. Our men, women and children— not in isolated cases, but in scores and hundreds of cases—have been murdered by Germany and Mexico; and we have tamely submitted to wrongs from Germany and Mexico of a kind to which no nation can submit without impairing its own self-respect and incurring the contempt of the rest of mankind. Yet during these eighteen months not one thing has been done. The President in his Message to Congress four months after the beginning of the war actually took ground against such preparedness. At this moment we are no stronger by one soldier or one sailor, by one cannon or by one ship, because of anything that has been done during these eighteen months in view of the frightful world calamity that has befallen. At last the popular feeling has grown to be such that the President has paid to it the tribute of advocating an inefficient and belated half-measure of preparedness. But even so, not one thing has yet been done. Everything is still in the future, and there is not the slightest sign that the urgency of the case has been recognized. Nine-tenths of wisdom is being wise in time. Never in the country's history has there been a more stupendous instance of folly than this crowning folly of waiting eighteen months after the elemental crash of nations took place before even making a start in an effort—and an utterly inefficient and insufficient effort—for some kind of preparation to ward off disaster in the future.

If President Wilson had shown the disinterested patriotism, courage and foresight demanded by this stupendous crisis I would have supported him with hearty enthusiasm. But his action, or rather inaction, has been such that it has become a matter of high patriotic duty to oppose him. No man can support Mr. Wilson without being false to the ideals of national duty and international humanity. No one can support Mr. Wilson without opposing the larger Americanism, the true Americanism. No man can support Mr. Wilson and at the same time be really in favor of thoroughgoing preparedness against war. No man can support Mr. Wilson without at the same time supporting a policy of criminal inefficiency as regards the United States navy, of shortsighted inadequacy as regards the army, of abandonment of the duty owed by the United States to weak and well-behaved nations, and of failure to insist on our just rights when we are ourselves maltreated by powerful and unscrupulous nations.

It has been a matter of sincere regret to me to part company with so many German friends who believe that I have been unkind to Germany. It has also been a matter of sincere grief to me to find that my position has been misunderstood and misrepresented and resented by many upright fellow-citizens to whom in the past I have been devoted, but who have let their loyalty to Germany, the land from which they themselves or their forefathers came, blind them to their loyalty to the United States and their duty to humanity at large. I wish explicitly and emphatically to state that I do not believe that this is the attitude of any but a minority of American citizens of German birth or descent. Among my stanchest friends are many men of German blood, who are American citizens and nothing else. As I have elsewhere said, I could name an entire administration from the President down through every member of the Cabinet, every man of whom would be of German blood, but an American and nothing else; an administration which I and all those like me could follow with absolute confidence in dealing with this or any similar crisis.

The German element has contributed much to our national life, and can yet do much more in music, in literature, in art, in sound constructive citizenship. In the greatest of our national crises, the Civil War, a larger percentage of our citizens of recent German origin, than of our citizens of old revolutionary stock, proved loyal to the great ideals of union and of liberty. I am myself partly of German blood. I believe that this country has more to learn from Germany than from any other nation—and this as regards fealty to non-utilitarian ideals, no less than as regards the essentials of social and industrial efficiency, of that species of socialized governmental action which is absolutely necessary for individual protection and general well-being under the conditions of modern industrialism. But in this country we must all stand together absolutely without regard to our several lines of descent, as Americans and nothing else; and, above all, we must do this as regards moral issues. The great issues with which we must now deal are moral even more than material; and on these issues every good American should be with us, without the slightest regard to the land from which his forefathers came.

As regards the German-Americans who assail me in this contest because they are really mere transported Germans, hostile to this country and to human rights, I feel not sorrow, but stern disapproval. I am not interested in their attitude toward me; but I am greatly interested in their attitude toward this nation. I am standing for the larger Americanism, for true Americanism; and as regards my attitude in this matter, I do not ask as a favor, but challenge as a right, the support of all good American citizens, no matter where born, and no matter of what creed or national origin. I do not in the least desire any support for or approval of me personally; but I do most emphatically demand such support and approval for the doctrines of the larger Americanism which I advocate.

When some fourteen months ago I published under the title of "America and the World War," a little volume containing what I had publicly said and urged during the first months of the war, I took substantially the ground that I now take. But there is infinitely more reason for taking such ground now.

At that time Germany had sinned against civilization by her conduct toward Belgium and her method of carrying on the war, and I held it to be our duty in accordance with our solemn covenant to take whatever action was necessary in order to show that our nation stood for the right and against the wrong, even when the wrong was triumphant. But our duty is far stronger now. For many months Germany has waged war against us, the war being conducted by openly authorized agents of Germany on the high seas and within our land against our munition plants by men who have been shown to be the direct or indirect agents of Germany—and whom as matter of fact no human being in his senses denies to be such. What I say of Germany applies in less degree to Austria, which has become the instrument of Germany's ambition and her agent in wrongdoing.

(footnote)  In a recent excellent pamphlet Mr. Gustav Bissing, who, like myself, is an American of non-English blood (I believe mainly German blood), speaks of the activities of the hyphenated pro¬fessional German-Americans and Austrian-Americans in part as follows: "Are we really a nation, a people, a fused product of the melting-pot, or are we, after all, a polyglot conglomerate of unfused nationalities? . . . What we need is a leader, one who walks ahead, some one with prescience, imagination and courage. The chord which is to reverberate in American ears throughout the land must be struck by a master-musician not afraid of the foreign vote. 'Gott erhalte Franz der Kaiser' and 'Die Wacht am Rhein' are both inspirating national anthems. But just now I am longing for the simple strains of simon-pure 'Yankee Doodle.'" One of the best Americans I know—a man both of whose parents were born in Germany—writes me from South America as follows: "We of the U. S. are considered here a more or less spiritless, invertebrate sort of humanity, because of the insults we have accepted from Germany, and our inaction in Mexico. At the present time it is far safer and more pleasant for an American to remain home. No man's life is safe in the hands of a man like Wilson! If the people of the U. S. A. don't overwhelmingly drive the peace-at-any-price party out of office at the next election, they will lose practically all standing in foreign countries, and will have to face the discon¬tent and humiliation of their own most high-minded citizens. We do not need more wealth in the U. S. A. to-day; our crying need is manhood! The American people must awake to a realization of duty and put a stop to the abuses which now threaten our honor and our national integrity." ( end footnote)
I preach antipathy to no nation. I feel not merely respect but admiration for the German people. I regard their efficiency and their devoted patriotism and steady endurance as fraught with significant lessons to us. I believe that they have permitted themselves to be utterly misled, and have permitted their government to lead them in the present war into a course of conduct which, if persevered in, would make them the permanent enemy of all the free and liberty-loving nations of mankind and of civilization itself. But I believe that sooner or later they will recover their senses and make their government go right. I shall continue to cherish the friendliest feelings toward the Germans individually, and for Germany collectively as soon as Germany collectively comes to her senses. No nation is always right, and very few nations are always wrong. It is our duty to judge each nation by its conduct in the given crisis which must at the moment be faced. Since this country became a nation, there have been occasions when it has so acted as to deserve the condemnation of mankind—and as regards slavery its action was persevered in for many years. During the same period England, France, and Russia have each of them and all of them at one time or another so behaved as to merit from us condemnation and antagonism; and, at certain periods in our history, during the Napoleonic wars, for instance, and during our own Civil War, the attitude of the ruling classes in both France and England was unfriendly to our country. In 1898 Germany was hostile to us, and all the nations of Continental Europe followed suit, whereas England, and England alone, stood by us. In the Revolution France was our only real friend. During the time of the Civil War Russia was the only European nation which showed us any sympathy whatever.

When as a nation we displayed a purpose to champion international piracy in the interest of slavery we deserved to be condemned. But in the end we did well, and proved our worth by our endeavor, and when we championed orderly freedom in Cuba, the Philippines, and Panama, we deserved to be praised. In 1878 it was right to champion Russia and Bulgaria against Turkey and England. For exactly the same reasons we ought now to champion Russia and England and Servia against Turkey and Bulgaria. A century ago the sympathies of humanity ought to have been with the Germany of Koerner and Andreas Hofer against Napoleonic France; and to-day they ought to be with the Belgian and French patriots against the Germany of the Hohenzollerns. To oppose England now because in 1776 we fought England is as foolish and wicked as it would be now to oppose Germany because in that same Revolutionary War masses of German mercenaries fought against us. I have certainly never hesitated, and at this moment am not hesitating, to condemn my own country and my own countrymen when it and they are wrong. I would just as unhesitatingly condemn England^ France, or Russia if any one of them should in the future behave as Germany is now behaving. I shall stand by Germany in the future on any occasion when its conduct permits me so to do. We must not be vindictive, or prone to remember injuries; we need forgiveness, and we must be ready to grant forgiveness. When an injury is past and is atoned for, it would be wicked to hold it in mind. We must do justice as the facts at the moment demand.

Abraham Lincoln, with his far-seeing vision and his shrewd, homely common sense, set forth .the doctrine which is right both as regards individuals and as regards nations when he said: "Stand with anybody that stands right. Stand with him while he is right and part with him when he goes wrong. To desert such ground because of any company is to be less than a man, less than an American." As things actually are at this moment, it is Germany which has offended against civilization and humanity—some of the offences, of a very grave kind, being at our own expense. It is the Allies who are dedicated to the cause and are fighting for the principles set forth as fundamental in the speech of Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg. It is they who have highly resolved that their dead shall not have died in vain, and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the face of the earth. And we have stood aside and, as a nation, have not ventured even to say one word, far less to take any action, for the right or against the wrong.

To those persons who fifty years ago cried for peace without regard to justice or righteousness, for the peace of cowardice, Abraham Lincoln answered in words that apply to-day. These words appropriately answer the sinister or silly creatures—including especially the silly or sinister Americans—who now likewise demand a peace acceptable only to the fool, the weakling, and the craven—a peace that would consecrate triumphant wrong and leave right bound and helpless. Said Lincoln, "The issue before us is distinct, simple, and inflexible. It is an issue which can only be tried by war and settled by victory. The war will cease on the part of this government whenever it shall have ceased on the part of those who began it. ... We accepted war rather than let the nation perish. With malice towards none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, and to do all which may achieve a just and lasting peace among all
nations."

Surely, with the barest change of a few words, all that Lincoln said applies now to the war the Allies are waging on behalf of orderly liberty and self-government for the peoples of mankind. They have accepted war rather than let the free nations of Europe perish. They must strive on to finish the work they are in, and to achieve a just and lasting peace which shall redress wrong and secure the liberties of the nations which have been assailed.

We Americans must pay to the great truths set forth by Lincoln a loyalty of the heart and not of the lips only. In this crisis I hold that we have signally failed in our duty to Belgium and Armenia, and in our duty to ourselves. In this crisis I hold that the Allies are standing for the principles to which Abraham Lincoln said this country was dedicated; and the rulers of Germany have, in practical fashion, shown this to be the case by conducting a campaign against Americans on the ocean, which has resulted in the wholesale murder of American men, women, and children, and by conducting within our own borders a campaign of the bomb and the torch against American industries. They have carried on war against our people; for wholesale and repeated killing is war—even though the killing takes the shape of assassination of non-combatants, instead of battle against armed men.

It is a curious commentary on the folly of the professional pacifists among my fellow-countrymen that they should applaud a "peace" to be obtained by conceding triumph to these wrongdoers. It is a no less curious commentary on the attitude of the rulers of Germany that at the moment when they are forcing the Belgian people to aid in the manufacture of materials of war to be used against their own countrymen, they are also protesting against the United States manufacturing such materials for the use of those who are seeking to free Belgium from the dreadful brutality of which it has been the victim.

It is always hard to make a democracy prepare in advance against dangers which only the farsighted see to be imminent. Even in France there were well-meaning men, who but a few years ago did not realize the danger that hung over their land, and who then strove against adequate preparedness. In England, which was by no means in the same danger as France, there were far more of these men—just as there are far more of them in our own country than in England. Almost all these men, both in France and in England, are now doing everything in their power to atone for the error they formerly committed, an error for which they and their fellow countrymen have paid a bitter price of blood and tears. In our land, however, the men of this stamp have not learned these lessons, and with evil folly are endeavoring to plunge the nation into an abyss of disaster by preventing it from so preparing as to remove the chance of disaster. France has learned her lesson in the hard school of invasion and necessity; England has been slower to learn, because the war was not in her home territory; and our own politicians, and to a lamentably large degree our own people, are fatuously unable to profit by what has happened, because they lack the power to visualize either the present woe of others or the future danger to themselves.

France has shown a heroism and a loftiness of soul worthy of Joan of Arc herself. She was better prepared than either of her allies, perhaps because the danger to her was more imminent and more terrible, and therefore more readily understood; and since the first month of the war she has done everything that it was in human power to do. The unity, the quiet resolution, the spirit of self-sacrifice among her people—soldiers and civilians, men and women—are of a noble type. The soul of France, at this moment, seems purified of all dross; it burns like the clear flame of fire on a sacred tripod. Frenchmen are not only a gallant but a generous race; and France realizes that England and Russia are now both bearing their share of the burden in the same spirit that France herself has shown.

Russia's sufferings have been sore, but it is not possible to overestimate Russia's tremendous tenacity of purpose and power of endurance. Russia is mighty, and her future looms so vast that it is hardly possible to overstate it. The Russian people feel this to be their war. Russia's part in the world is great, and will be greater; it is well that she should stand valiantly and stubbornly for her own rights; and as a firm and ardent friend of the Russian people may I add that Russia will stand for her rights all the more effectively when she also stands for the rights of Finn and Pole and Jew; when she learns the lesson that we Americans must also learn—to grant every man his full rights, and to exact from each man the full performance of his duty.

The English navy was mobilized with a rapidity and efficiency as great as that of the German army. It has driven every warship, except an occasional submarine, and every merchant-ship of Germany off the seas, and has kept the ocean as a highway of life not only for England, but for France, and largely also for Russia. In all history there has been no such gigantic and successful naval feat accomplished as that which the seamen and shipwrights of England have to their credit during the last eighteen months. It was not originally expected that England would have to do much on the continent; and although her wisest sons emphatically desired that she should be ready to do more, yet this desire represented only a recognition of the duty owed by England to herself. To her Allies she has more than kept the promise she has made. She has given Russia the financial assistance that none but she could give; her money effort has been unparalleled in all previous history. Eighteen months ago no Frenchman would have expected that in the event of war England would do more than put a couple of hundred thousand men in France. She has already put in a million, and is training and arming more than double that number. Her soldiers have done their duty fearlessly and well; they have won high honor on the fields of horror and glory; they have shown the same gallantry and stubborn valor that have been so evident in the armies of France and Russia. Her women are working with all the steadfast courage and self-sacrifice that the women of France have shown. Her men from every class have thronged into the army. Her fisher folk, and her seafarers generally, have come forward in such numbers that her fleet is nearly double as strong as it was at the outset of the war. Her mines and war factories have steadily enlarged their output, and it is now enormous, although many of the factories had literally to build from the ground up, and the very plant itself had to be created. Coal, food, guns, munitions, are being supplied with sustained energy. From across the sea the free Commonwealths of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, and the Indian Empire, have responded with splendid loyalty, and have sent their sons from the ends of the earth to do battle for liberty and civilization. Of Canada I can speak from personal knowledge. Canada has faced the time that tries men's souls, and with gallant heroism she has risen level to the time's need. Mighty days have come to her, and she has been equal to the mighty days. Greatness comes only through labor and courage, through the iron willingness to face sorrow and death, the tears of women and the blood of men, if only thereby it is possible to serve a lofty ideal. Canada has won that honorable place among the nations of the past and the present which can only come to the people whose sons are willing and able to dare and do and die at need. The spirit shown by her sister-commonwealths is the same. High of heart and undaunted of soul the men and women of the British Islands and of the whole British Empire now front the crisis that is upon them.

Having said all this, let me point out, purely for the instruction of our own people, that, excepting always as regards her navy, England has been much less effective than she should have been in the use of her strength during these first eighteen months of war. This is because she had not prepared in advance, because she had not accepted the advice of Lord Roberts. If all her sons had been trained under a system of universal service, and if it had been clearly understood that in war time neither undue profit-making by capitalists nor striking by workingmen would be tolerated—for universal service means that each man is to serve the nation, and not himself, in whatever way is necessary—there would have been no invasion of Belgium, and no long-drawn and disastrous war. Nine-tenths of wisdom consists in being wise in time! Universal training in time of peace may avert war, and if war comes will certainly avert incalculable waste and extravagance and bloodshed and possible ultimate failure. Let us of the United States learn the lesson. Let us inaugurate a system of obligatory universal military training, and instill into our sons the spirit of intense and exclusive loyalty to the United States. Let ours be true Americanism, the greater Americanism, and let us tolerate no other. Let us prepare ourselves for justice and efficiency within our own border during peace, for justice in international relations, and for efficiency in war. Only thus shall we have the peace worth having.

Let this nation fear God and take its own part. Let it scorn to do wrong to great or small. Let it exercise patience and charity toward all other peoples, and yet at whatever cost unflinchingly stand for the right when the right is menaced by the might which backs wrong. Let it furthermore remember that the only way in which successfully to oppose wrong which is backed by might is to put over against it right which is backed by might. Wanton or unjust war is an abhorrent evil. But there are even worse evils. Until, as a nation, we learn to put honor and duty above safety, and to encounter any hazard with stern joy rather than fail in our obligations to ourselves and others, it is mere folly to talk of entering into leagues for world peace or into any other movements of like character.
The only kind of peace worth having is the peace of righteousness and justice; the only nation that can serve other nations is the strong and valiant nation; and the only great international policies worth considering are those whose upholders believe in them strongly enough to fight for them. The Monroe Doctrine is as strong as the United States navy, and no stronger. A nation is utterly contemptible if it will not fight in its own defence. A nation is not wholly admirable unless in time of stress it will go to war for a great ideal wholly unconnected with its immediate material interest.

Let us prepare not merely in military matters, but in our social and industrial life. There can be no sound relationship toward other nations unless there is also sound relationship among our own citizens within our own ranks. Let us insist on the thorough Americanization of the newcomers to our shores, and let us also insist on the thorough Americanization of ourselves. Let us encourage the fullest industrial activity, and give the amplest industrial reward to those whose activities are most important for securing industrial success, and at the same time let us see that justice is done and wisdom shown in securing the welfare of every man, woman, and child within our borders. Finally, let us remember that we can do nothing to help other peoples, and nothing permanently to secure material well-being and social justice within our own borders, unless we feel with all our hearts devotion to this country, unless we are Americans and nothing else, and unless in time of peace by universal military training, by insistence upon the obligations of every man and every woman to serve the commonwealth both in peace and war, and, above all, by a high and fine preparedness of soul and spirit, we fit ourselves to hold our own against all possible aggression from without.

We are the citizens of a mighty Republic consecrated to the service of God above, through the service of man on this earth. We are the heirs of a great heritage bequeathed to us by statesmen who saw with the eyes of the seer and the prophet. We must not prove false to the memories of the nation's past. We must not prove false to the fathers from whose loins we sprang, and to their fathers, the stern men who dared greatly and risked all things that freedom should hold aloft an undimmed torch in this wide land. They held their worldly well-being as dust in the balance when weighed against their sense of high duty, their fealty to lofty ideals. Let us show ourselves worthy to be their sons. Let us care, as is right, for the things of the body; but let us show that we care even more for the things of the soul. Stout of heart, and pledged to the valor of righteousness, let us stand four-square to the winds of destiny, from whatever corner of the world they blow. Let us keep untarnished, unstained, the honor of the flag our fathers bore aloft in the teeth of the wildest storm, the flag that shall float above the solid files of a united people, a people sworn to the great cause of liberty and of justice, for themselves, and for all the sons and daughters of men.