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

CHAPTER 4
AMERICA FIRST—A  PHRASE OR A FACT? 
THE present Administration, with its inveterate fondness for Ephraim's diet, and its conviction that phrase-making is an efficient substitute for action, has plumed itself on the sentence, "America First." In practice it has acted on the theory of "America Last," both at home and abroad, both in Mexico and on the high seas. One of the first and most elementary duties of any nation worth calling either civilized or self-respecting is to protect its citizens from murder and outrage. For five years in Mexico, and for a year and a half on the high seas in connection with the great European war, the United States Government has signally and basely failed in the performance of this duty. The number of cases in which American men, women and children have been murdered on the high seas, first by German, and now by Austrian, submarines, and the number of cases in which American men have been murdered and American women raped in Mexico and in which American soldiers of the United States, wearing the United States uniform, have been killed or wounded, and civilians, men, women and children, killed or wounded on American territory by Mexican soldiers, taken in the aggregate mount far up into the hundreds. The murders of Americans that have taken place within the last thirty days have been of peculiarly cold-blooded character. They have represented a contemptuous disbelief in President Wilson's willingness to do anything except write notes. The deaths of these men and women are primarily due to President Wilson's policy of timidity and weakness.

Not one effective step has been taken to put an end to these atrocities. Moreover, for five years the outrages on the persons and property of other foreigners in Mexico have been numerous; and innocent Mexicans have been butchered by scores of thousands; and in many thousands of cases Mexican girls and women have been submitted to the last extremity of infamy and outrage by the brutal bandits masquerading as military or civil leaders of the Mexican people. Our government has let these people procure ammunition with which to murder our own soldiers and their own peaceful citizens; and the President has actually proclaimed that they ought not to be interfered with in "spilling blood."

During the last year and a half unoffending, peaceful and law-abiding neutral nations like Belgium, unoffending, industrious and law-abiding peoples like the Armenians, have been subjected to wrongs far greater than any that have been committed since the close of the Napoleonic Wars; and many of them are such as recall the days of the Thirty Years' War in Europe, and, indeed, in the case of the Armenians, the wars of Genghis Khan and Tamerlane in Asia. Yet this government has not raised its hand to do anything to help the people who were wronged or to antagonize the oppressors.

It is not an accident, it betokens a certain sequence of cause and effect, that this course of national infamy on our part began when the last Administration surrendered to the peace-at-any-price people, and started the negotiation of its foolish and wicked all-inclusive arbitration treaties. Individuals and nations who preach the doctrine of milk and water invariably have in them a softness of fiber which means that they fear to antagonize those who preach and practise the doctrine of blood and iron. It is true of our people, as once it was true of the fellow-countrymen of Ruskin when he said: "We have been passive where we should not have been passive, for fear. The principle of non-intervention, as now practised among us, is as selfish and cruel as the worst frenzy of conquest, and differs from it only by being not only malignant, but dastardly."

Professional pacifists of the stamp of Messrs. Bryan, Jordan and Ford, who in the name of peace preach doctrines that would entail not merely utter infamy but utter disaster to their own country, never in practice venture to denounce concrete wrong by dangerous wrongdoers. Professional pacifists attack evil only when it can be done with entire safety to themselves. In the present great crisis, the professional pacifists have confined themselves to trying to prevent the United States from protecting its honor and interest and the lives of its citizens abroad; and in their loud denunciations of war they have been careful to use language which would apply equally to terribly wronged peoples defending all that was dear to them against cynical and ruthless oppression, and to the men who were responsible for this cynical and ruthless oppression. They dare not speak for righteousness in the concrete. They dare not speak against the most infamous wrong in the concrete. They work hand in glove with these exponents of hyphenated Americanism who are seeking to turn this country into an ally and tool of alien militarism.

These professional pacifists, through President Wilson, have forced this country into a path of shame and dishonor during the past eighteen months. Thanks to President Wilson, the most powerful of democratic nations has refused to recognize the binding moral force of international public law. Our country has shirked its clear duty. One outspoken and straightforward •declaration by this government against the dreadful iniquities perpetrated in Belgium, Armenia and Servia would have been worth to humanity a thousand times as much as all that the professional pacifists have done in the past fifty years. The effect of our inaction in Mexico has been unspeakably dreadful. It has on the whole been surpassed in dishonor by the action of our government in reference to the great European War —remembering in both cases that supine inaction may under many conditions prove the very worst form of action. Fine phrases become sickening when they represent nothing whatever but adroitness in phrase-making, with no intention of putting deeds behind the phrases. For three years the United States Government has been engaged in sending notes and diplomatic protests and inquiries and warnings and ultimatums and pen-ultimatums to Germany, to Mexico, to Austria; and not one of these notes really meant or achieved anything. These notes of Mr. Wilson resemble the "notes" of Mr. Micawber. The Micawber notes and the Wilson notes were of different kinds. But in value they were plainly on a par. The Micawber notes always went to protest; and Mr. Micawber always fondly believed that one could be sufficiently met by issuing another. Mr. Wilson has suffered from the same fond delusion.

During this period the Administration has failed to protect its naturalized citizens in their rights when they have behaved themselves; and yet when they have not behaved themselves has failed to insist on their performing their duties to the country to which they have sworn allegiance. It has permitted the representatives of the German and Austrian peoples and the German-Americans and Austro-Americans whose allegiance is to Germany or Austria and not to the United States to carry on within our border a propaganda of which one of the results has been the partial or entire destruction by fire or dynamite of factory after factory. Summary action of a drastic type would have put a stop to this warfare waged against our people in time of peace; but the Administration has not ventured to act. There has been a great alien conspiracy carried on against America on American soil, and it has been encouraged by the Administration's passivity.

The Austrian Ambassador, Dr. Dumba, wrote to the Austrian Minister of Foreign Affairs: "We can disorganize and hold up, if not entirety prevent, the manufacture of munitions in Bethlehem and the Middle West, which is of great importance, and amply outweighs the expenditure of money involved." Three months after this was written, the threat was made good as regards Bethlehem, and the Germania Herald in Milwaukee expressed joy over the deed, saying on November I2th: "We rejoice from the depths of our heart over the destruction of these murderous machines." Ten days later a so-called "German-American" mass meeting took place in Milwaukee, and the same paper next day remarked with exultation: "Germany last night spoke to her children on a foreign shore loudly and distinctly." So she did. The president of the meeting said that their purpose was "to spread German ideals" throughout the country (we have seen above how they were spread, with the bomb and the torch) and that he and his fellows "considered the hyphen an honor." The next speaker was quite as frank, saying: "We are all German brothers together, no matter in what country we may live." The men who make and applaud such utterances are the enemies of this country. Their insolence is rendered possible because this Administration is too afraid of the political consequences to dare to uphold the honor of the American flag or protect the lives of American citizens.
Before recurring to the dreadful dereliction of duty to our own citizens I wish to speak another word as to the failure on our part to perform our duty toward neutral nations. On August 23rd, 1915, the New York World, recognized by common consent as President Wilson's special organ, published in detail certain secret papers obtained from the German Embassy as to the negotiations between the Embassy and President Wilson and as to the steps taken by the German representatives to engineer a pro-German campaign in the United States. I would not pay any heed to these statements if they had been from an anti-Administration paper; but they come, as I say, from the special organ of the Administration. Among other things this correspondence shows that an individual designated by the initials M. P., purporting to convey a special message from the President to the German Embassy, reported:
"i. The note to England will go in any event, whether Germany answers satisfactorily or not [the question of attacks by German submarines].
"2. Should it be possible to settle satisfactorily the Lusitania case, the President will bind himself to carry the protest against England through to the uttermost.
"3. The continuance of the difference with Germany over the Lusitania case is 'embarrassing' for the President in carrying out the protest against England.
"4. The President intimated his willingness to discuss the note to Germany [the note of July 2ist which remains unanswered] with M. P., and eventually so to influence it that there will be an agreement for its reception and also to be ready to influence the press 'through a wink.'

"The President also openly declared that he could hardly hope for a positive statement that the submarine warfare would be discontinued."

Furthermore, the report was that the President, through M. P., "wishes to have the trend of the German note before the note is officially sent, and declares himself ready, before the answer is drafted, to discuss it with M. P. so as to secure an agreement for its reception."

Now, the action of the President since these exposures were made shows that M. P. either spoke by direction of the President or possessed the gifts of mind-reading and prophecy; for the agreement he purported to convey to the German Ambassador from the President has since been carried out to the letter. Germany has never made any atonement for the Lusitania case, but when England had destroyed its submarines around the British Isles, and when Germany was in consequence helpless to go on with this kind of warfare, it then consented to abandon it, eight months after the President had first warned them on the subject—during which eight months it had sunk ship after ship in defiance of the President's warning, treating with the contemptuous indifference they deserved the successive notes which the President continued sending as substitutes for action. As soon as the President had received this make-believe concession, he did what M. P. had assured the German Ambassador would be done. He sent a strong note to England. This note was trumpeted as showing that the President was taking the same action against Germany as against England. The statement was nonsense. Interference with commerce is in no sense whatever comparable with the hein-ousness of murder on the high seas. The controversy with Great Britain was a controversy as to commerce, as to property. The controversy with Germany was a controversy of humanity concerning the protection of innocent men, women and children from murder on the ocean. President Wilson was making good the promise which M. P. had alleged the President had forwarded through him, and it was being done at the expense of humanity and at the expense of our reputation for good faith and courage. All that remains to be seen is whether Mr. Wilson will now fulfill entirely the promise of M. P. to the German Ambassador and carry out this policy against England, on which he has embarked, "to the uttermost."

But this is not all. For a year and a quarter the President had not only kept silent over the hideous wrong inflicted on Belgium in and after the violation of its neutrality by Germany, but had publicly stated that as regards this violation of neutrality, this conflict between right and wrong, it was our duty to be "neutral not only in word, but in thought." There was no question as to what had been done. The Chancellor of the German Empire on August 3rd, 1914, stated that in invading Belgium, Germany had committed "a breach of international law" and had declined "to respect the neutrality of Belgium," and that he admitted "the wrong which we are now committing." Yet in spite of this declaration, and of our inaction, the President, through the Secretary of State, in his note to England used the following expressions: "The task of championing the integrity of neutral rights which have received the sanction of the civilized world against the lawless conduct of belligerents, the United States unhesitatingly assumes and to the accomplishment of that task it will devote its energies." It is literally astounding that any human being could have been guilty of the forget-fulness or effrontery of such a statement. As has been well said, it is odious hypocrisy to pose as the champion of neutral rights when the alleged champion ignores homicide, but is fearless about petty larceny. In his previous correspondence with Germany, President Wilson had informed Germany that if it acted as later it actually did act, he would hold it to "a strict accountability," and he showed by his subsequent conduct that in his view these words meant precisely and exactly nothing. By his previous conduct he has shown that this new announcement about "unhesitatingly championing the integrity of neutral rights" amounts to much less than nothing.

A year and a half ago I pointed out that it was the duty of the United States to "champion the integrity of the neutral rights" of Belgium (which had received the sanction of the Hague Conventions to which the United States was a signatory) against the "lawless conduct" of belligerent Germany. At that time the defenders of Mr. Wilson denounced me on the ground that I "wished neutrality violated" and wished the United States to ignore its own interests and meddle in something which was, financially speaking, not its own affair. Mr. Wilson himself publicly announced that it was not our duty to champion these neutral rights of Belgium against "the lawless conduct of belligerent" Germany, but that we should be neutral, "not only in word, but in thought." Yet now, a year later, Mr. Wilson repudiates his former position and himself expresses exactly my thought and my demand in practically exactly my language. Only—I meant what I said! Whereas Mr. Wilson's acts have shown that he did not mean what he said, so far as a nation of which he was afraid was concerned. The difference is that having caused our nation to shirk its duty to others, having caused it to shirk its duty when its own citizens were murdered, so long as the offender was a strong and ruthless nation, one with a large voting strength of its former citizens in this country, he now valiantly asserts, against a nation whose representatives have no voting strength in this country and which he believes can with impunity be defied, rights as regards cargoes of merchandise upon which he did not dare to insist when the point at issue was the slaughter of women and children; whereas I ask that we stand up for the wronged and the weak against the strength of evil triumphant, and that while we defend our property rights, we even more strongly defend the lives of our men and children, and the lives and honor of our women.

As regards Belgium, Mr. Wilson has played the part which 1900 years ago was played by the I/evite towards the wayfarer who fell among thieves near Jericho. He now improves on the conduct of the L,evite; for he comes to an understanding with the plunderer of the wayfarer and in his interest endeavors to browbeat the nations which (however mixed their motives) did in actual fact endeavor to play the part of the Good Samaritan towards unhappy Belgium.

Mr. Wilson, a year later, has finally adopted my principle about, preparedness, although he has sought to apply it in a half-hearted and inefficient manner; a year after I denounced peace-at-any-price, he followed suit, quoting the verses of Ezekiel which for months I had been quoting; a year after I had attacked hyphenated Americanism Mr. Wilson followed suit—at least before the Colonial Dames; and now he accepts my doctrine of America's duty to neutral nations, which a year ago he stoutly opposed. But he applies it only as regards American dollars, and only in relation to nations who can be trusted not to be rude. I believe it should be applied as regards American dollars, but even more as regards American lives, and that it should first and most stoutly be asserted as regards the chief and most formidable offender.

Come back to the case of the Lusitania! When that ship was sunk scores of women and children, including American women and children, paid with their lives the penalty of a brutal and murderous attack by a warship which was acting in pursuance of the settled policy of the German Government. President Wilson sat supine and complacent, making on the following night his celebrated statement about a nation "being too proud to fight," a statement that under the circumstances could only be taken as meaning that the murder of American women and children would be accepted by American men as justifying nothing more than empty declamation. These men, women and children of the Lusitania were massacred because the German government believed that the Wilson administration did not intend to back up its words with deeds. The result showed that they were right in their belief. Eight months have gone by since then. American ships were sunk and torpedoed before and afterward; other American lives were lost; and the President wrote other notes upon the subject; but he never pressed the Lusitania case; and the only explanation must be found in his fear lest the Germans might refuse to disavow their action. Even the disavowal in the case of the Arabic came only when the last possibility of profit to Germany by killings that extended to neutrals had vanished. President Wilson had done nothing beyond uttering prettily phrased platitudes about abstract morality without any relation to action.

On July 21st last in a formal note he asked of Germany a disavowal and promise of indemnity for the Lusitania. This was the note which M. P. purported to explain in the quotation above given. If the explanation he gave to the German Ambassador did not represent President Wilson's intentions, then there is absolutely no explanation of the fact that for six months after that note was sent there was no answer from Germany and no second demand made for an answer. The subject was renewed only when Germany found that her submarine warfare had failed, and that it was worth her while to pretend to abandon it if thereby she could get the United States to play her game against England, France and Belgium. Germany believed, seemingly with reason, that in return for a pretended concession to President Wilson, the latter would play Germany's game against England. And this movement was only halted (whether temporarily or not we can not now say) by the revelations in January of the complicity of the German Embassy in the plots against our munition plants.

Apparently President Wilson has believed that the American people would permanently forget their dead and would slur over the dishonor and disgrace to the United States by that basest of all the base pleas of cowardly souls, which finds expression in the statement: "Oh, well, anyhow the President kept us out of war!" The people who make this plea assert with quavering voices that they "are behind the President." So they are; well behind him. The farther away from the position of duty and honor and hazard he has backed, the farther behind him these gentry have stood—or run. "Stand by the President"—yes, while the President is right; and stand against him when he is wrong. In '56 and '60 the only way to stand by Lincoln was to stand against Pierce and Buchanan—as Lincoln did. If after the firing on Sumter, Lincoln had immediately in a speech declared that the friends of the Union might be "too proud to fight," and had spent the next four months in exchanging "firm" diplomatic notes with Jefferson Davis, he would have received the enthusiastic support of the ardent adherents of peace—and we would now have had no country.

The German press, which is sometimes appallingly frank, has with refreshing simplicity given us the exact German view when, in commenting on Mr. Wilson's note to England, the Koelnische Volkszeitung recently remarked: "If America had from the first energetically taken the position against Great Britain now adopted, there would have been no submarine war, no sinking of the Lusitania or the Arabic."

Evidently this German paper is in cordial agreement with M. P., and it will be impossible to desire better proof of the deliberate purpose with which the murderous assault on the Lusitania was contrived, and of the German belief that this murderous assault has achieved its purpose in terrorizing President Wilson into his present action about England, action which Dr. Dernburg, speaking not only for Germany, but for the hyphenated American voters of our own country, eulogizes as showing that Mr. Wilson is entitled to reward. So he is—except from Americans! But Dr. Delbrueck, also speaking for Germany, warns Mr. Wilson that his note against England must be followed by action if he hopes to retain German good will. The insolence with which the German government browbeats the timid folk at Washington is matched by the extreme cynicism of its brutality. It coerces wretched Belgians to make munitions with which to kill their own countrymen and protests against Americans making munitions to rescue Belgium from the murderers. And there are Americans so base as to advocate yielding to such threats and protests; while Mr. Henry Ford takes some of his fellow pacifists on a peace-junket to Europe, in the effort to bring about a peace more degrading to humanity than the worst war—a peace which would consecrate successful wrong, and trample righteousness in the dust.

As the direct result of our failure to act in the case of the Lusitania, came another hideous misdeed, the sinking of the Ancona. Over two hundred persons, most of them women and children, were murdered as a result of this submarine attack on a helpless passenger ship. Nine of those murdered were Americans. Of course, it is a matter of absolutely no consequence whether the deed was done by an Austrian or a German submarine. Remember the Lusitania! The deaths of these poor women and children on the Ancona, and on the various other ships that were sunk under similar circumstances, were due to the cowardice of our action, of the action of the American people through its Administration, in the case of the Lusitania. If our government had acted as it ought to have acted —as all of us who believe in American honor demanded that it should act, at the time—there would be no Ancona case now, no further murders of women and children on the high seas. And yet the Administration sat eagerly, nervously waiting for some pretext, some trivial excuse which would enable it to avoid action; and it acted at all only when the Austrian Government answered with such rude insolence as to force some action; and even then, the President did not dare act about the Lusitania case. The Austrian vote in this country is small and divided, and Austria cannot menace us in military manner. Neither statement applies to Germany and the professional German-Americans; and accordingly President Wilson turns from the first and most formidable offender, the offender of whom he is afraid, and seeks to distract attention by action against Austria, of whom he is much less afraid. About the Lusitania the President wrote note after note, each filled with lofty expressions and each sterile in its utter futility, because it did not mean action, and Germany knew it did not mean action. Then came the Ancona as the direct result of this policy of shuffling timidity and delay, just as the Lusitania itself was the direct result of the policy of "watchful waiting," that is, of shuffling timidity and delay, in Mexico. And after the sinking of the Ancona came the sinking of the Persia, and after the sinking of the Persia the proofs of the activity of Germany's official representative, Von Papen, in the campaign of murder and arson against our munition factories. I blame the Administration, but I blame even more the American people, who stand supine and encourage their representatives to permit unchecked the murder of women and children and other non-combatants rather than to take a policy which might, forsooth, jeopardize the life of some strong fighting man.

The Administration has recently devised a campaign button with a new campaign catch phrase—"safety first." It certainly expresses their attitude in putting honor and duty in the second place, or, rather, in no place at all. Safety first! This is the motto on which in a shipwreck those men act who crowd into the lifeboats ahead of the women and children—although they do not afterward devise a button to commemorate this feat. There could be no more .ignoble motto for a high-spirited and duty-loving nation. The countrymen of Washington and Lincoln, of Jackson and Grant, of Lee and Farra-gut, ought to hang their heads in shame at seeing their representatives in Washington thinking not about the slaughtered women and children, not about the wrongs done to the helpless and the dangers to our own people, but only about the best way to escape from the situation without being required to show either courage or patriotism. It is an evil day for a people when it permits its chosen representatives to practise the gospel of cowardice and of utter and selfish abandonment of duty. Let our countrymen remember that this policy of dishonor and discredit does not even secure the safety which it seeks. The policy of the Administration has not invited respect. It has invited murder. It has not secured peace—which, by the way, probably could have been secured by a policy of self-respecting strength and firmness. Peace is now in jeopardy, because weakness and timidity invite the constant repetition of actions which will in time goad any nation into war.

Nor is this all. Germany and Austria have not only been carrying on war against us on the high seas. They have carried on war against us here in our own land. They have, through their representatives, encouraged strikes and outrages in our factories. It has been published in the press that in their consulates and in the foreign papers controlled or influenced by these consulates the Administration's ruling about "dual citizenship" has been printed as a warning to immigrant workingmen that they were still citizens of their old countries and had to obey the directions of their former governmental representatives. Dr. Joseph Goricar, formerly Austro-Hungarian consul at San Francisco, has resigned because he declined to take part in the organized movement to destroy munition plants in this country. This movement is simply war; a war of assassination instead of open battle, but war nevertheless; and it is the direct result of the Administration's supine position.

Surely one of our first needs is self-defence against the conspirators of the torch and the bomb. The men who are engaged in this work are a great deal worse than ordinary alien enemies. The newspapers that apologize for their deeds or condone them should promptly be exeluded from the mails. The men behind them, the high governmental authorities of Germany and Austria, are engaged in a much more vicious warfare in this country than if they were actually resorting to open force of arms. But President Wilson has been seeking to placate, not only these contemptuously hostile foreign nations, but also the men nominally citizens of this country, but really loyal to the foreign countries now hostile to us. He has by his actions encouraged these men to try to turn this country into a kind of polyglot boarding-house where any set of alien boarders may preach disloyalty and encourage treason and murder with impunity.

It is sickening to have to recapitulate the dreadful deeds that have been done during the last year and a quarter, while the United States sat tamely by. Miss Cavell was killed for deeds such as were committed by literally thousands of women, North and South, during the Civil War in this country; and if either Abraham Lincoln or Jefferson Davis had ever dreamed of putting any of these women to death, a deafening roar of execration would have gone up from the men of both sides. But there was no hesitation in killing Miss Cavell, and there was no disapprobation expressed by our Administration. Belgium was blotted out from the list of nations by an act which was a more flagrant instance of international wickedness than anything that has occurred since the close of the Napoleonic struggles ; but this Administration did not venture to speak about it; and all the professional pacifists, the men of the stamp of Messrs. Bryan, Jordan and Ford, while with sobbing voices they called for peace, peace, did not venture even to allude to the outrage that had been perpetrated. Remember, there is not the slightest room for honest question either as to the dreadful, the unspeakably hideous, outrages committed on the Belgians, or as to the fact that these outrages were methodically committed by the express command of the German government, in order to ter-rorize both the Belgians and among neutrals those men who are as cold and timid and selfish as our governmental leaders have shown themselves to be. Let any man who doubts read the statement of an American eye-witness of these fearful atrocities, Mr. Arthur H. Gleason, in the New York Tribune of Nov. 25, 1915. Serbia is at this moment passing under the harrow of torture and mortal anguish. Now, the Armenians have been butchered under circumstances of murder and torture and rape that would have appealed to an old-time Apache Indian. The Administration can do nothing even if it wishes; for its timid silence about Belgium, its cringing fear of acting in the interests of our own citizens when killed by Mexicans in Mexico or by Germans and Austrians on the high seas, would render any wordy protest on its part a subject-matter for derision—and every one knows that it would not venture beyond a wordy protest.

But in the case of the Armenians some of the professional pacifists and praisers of neutrality have ventured to form committees and speak about—not act about—the "Armenian atrocities." These individuals did not venture to say anything about the Belgian atrocities; but they are willing to speak, although of course not to act, on behalf of Armenia. The explanation is simple. They were afraid of Germany; they were afraid of the German vote. But there is no Turkish vote, and they are not afraid of Turkey.

Under circumstances such as these it is the last note of unpatriotic folly for the pacifists of this country to chatter about peace, when they neither venture to stand up for righteousness nor to fight for real preparedness, so as to enable the United States to insure justice for itself and to demand justice for others. Mr. Taft accepts the presidency of the "League to Enforce Peace," and must of course know that unless the United States had an army of two or three million men it could do nothing at all toward "enforcing peace" in a crisis like the present world war; and yet, according to the press, he states that even a standing army of a couple of hundred thousand men means "militarism" and "aggression" and is to be opposed. This country will never be able to find its own soul or to play a part of high nobility in the world until it realizes the full extent of the damage done to it, materially and morally, by the ignoble peace propaganda for which these men and the others like them, whether capitalists, labor leaders, college professors, politicians or publicists, are responsible.

The United States has not a friend in the world. Its conduct, under the leadership of its official representatives, for the last five years and, above all, for the last three years, has deprived it of the respect and has secured for it the contempt of every one of the great civilized nations of mankind. Peace treaties and windy Fourth-of-July eloquence and the base materialism which seeks profit as an incident to the abandonment of duty will not help it now. For five years our rulers at Washington have believed that all this people cared for was easy money, absence of risk and effort, and sounding platitudes which were not reduced to action. We have so acted as to convince other nations that in very truth we are too proud to fight; arid the man who is too proud to fight is in practice always treated as just proud enough to be kicked. We have held our peace when our women and children were slain. We have turned away our eyes from the sight of our brother's woe.

All of Mr. Henry Ford's companions, in the peace propaganda, led by gentlemen of the Bryan and Jordan type, could with profit study the thoughts expressed by Mr. E. S. Martin when he said:

"Nobody is much good who has not in him some idea, some ideal, that he cares more for than he does for life, even though it is life alleviated by the Ford motor.

"You help to make life pleasant, but war, Henry, helps to make it noble; and if it is not noble it does not matter a damn, Henry, whether it is pleasant or not. That is the old lesson of Calvary repeated at Mons and Ypres and Liege and Namur.
"Whether there are more people in the world or less, whether they are fat or lean, whether there are Fords or oxen, makes no vital difference ; but whether men shall be willing to die for what they believe in makes all the difference between a pigsty and Paradise. Not by bread alone, Henry, shall men live."

If the people have not vision, they shall surely perish. No man has a right to live who has not in his soul the power to die nobly for a great cause. L/et abhorrence be for those who wage wanton or wicked wars, who with ruthless violence oppress the upright and the unoffending. Pay all honor to the preachers of peace who put righteousness above peace. But shame on the creatures who would teach our people that it is anything but base to be unready and unable to defend right, even at need by the sternest of all tests, the test of righteous war, war waged by a high-couraged people with souls attuned to the demands of a lofty ideal.

Have these professional pacifists lost every quality of manhood? Are they ignorant of the' very meaning of nobility of soul? Their words are an affront to the memory of Washington, their deeds a repudiation of the life-work of Lincoln. Are they steeped in such sordid materialism that they do not feel one thrill as they read Edward Everett Kale's "The Man Without a Country"? It is strange indeed that even their cold and timid hearts should be unstirred by Lowell's homely lines:
Better that all our, ships an' all their crews Should sink to rot in ocean's dreamless ooze, Each torn flag wavin' challenge as it went, An' each dumb gun a brave man's monument,
Than seek sech peace ez only cowards crave; Give me the peace of dead men or of brave.