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THE FOES OF OUR OWN HOUSEHOLD
By
Theodore Roosevelt
COPYRIGHT,   1917, BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
TO
OUR SONS AND DAUGHTERS
THEIR   MOTHER  AND   I DEDICATE THIS BOOK
Sagamore Hill, September ist
In an age of fops and toys,
Wanting wisdom, void of right,
Who shall nerve heroic boys
To hazard all in Freedom's fight,—
Break sharply off their jolly games,
Forsake their comrades gay,
And quit proud homes and youthful dames
For famine, toil and fray?
Yet on the nimble air benign
Speed nimbler messages,
That waft the breath of grace divine
To hearts in sloth and ease.
So nigh is grandeur to our dust,
So near is God to man,
When Duty whispers low, Thou must,
The youth replies, I can.
—emerson

FOREWORD
The man who still asks "why we are at war," or apologizes in any way for Germany, should look to his own soul; he is neither a patriot nor a true American, nor a lover of mankind; and the foes of his own household are the folly and the cowardice and the cold selfishness of his own heart.

We should hold Germany in horror for what she has done. But we should regard with contempt and loathing the Americans who directly or indirectly give her aid and comfort; whether they do so by downright attack on our own country, by upholding Germany, by assailing any of our allies, by trying to discourage our people from vigorous, resolute, unyielding prosecution of the war, or by crying on behalf of peace, peace, when there ought not to be peace.

In the long run we have less to fear from foes without than from foes within; for the former will be formidable only as the latter break our strength. The men who oppose preparedness in our military and our industrial life ; the business or political corruptionist or reactionary and the reckless demagogue who is his nominal opponent; the man of wealth and greed who cares for nothing but profits, and the sinister creature who plays upon and inflames the passions of envy and violence; the hard materialist, the self-indulgent lover of ease and pleasure, and the silly sentimentalist—all these are the permanent foes of our own household. From their ranks are drawn our immediate foes; the faint-hearted who fear Germany, the puzzle-headed who refuse to understand her, and the men of foul soul who do her evil bidding. The Hun within our gates masquerades in many disguises; he is our dangerous enemy; and he should be hunted down without mercy. High-minded men and women should brace their souls against the Menace of Peace without Victory for the Right. It is worse than idle to talk of a League to Enforce Peace for the Future, unless we, who are now partners in the League to Smite Down Wrong in the Present with iron will carry the war through to overwhelming triumph.

CHAPTER 1
THE   INSTANT  NEED;  AND   THE  ULTIMATE   NEED
THE world is at this moment passing through one of those terrible periods of convulsion when the souls of men and of nations are tried as by fire. Woe to the man or to the nation that at such a time stands as once Laodicea stood; as the people of ancient Meroz stood, when they dared not come to the help of the Lord against the mighty! In such a crisis the moral weakling is the enemy of the right; and the pacifist is as surely a traitor to his country and to humanity as is the most brutal wrong-doer.

At the outbreak of the war our people were stunned, blinded, terrified by the extent of the world disaster. Those among our leaders who were greedy, those who were selfish and ease-loving, those who were timid, and those who were merely short-sighted, all joined to blindfold the eyes and dull the conscience of the people so that it might neither see iniquity nor gird its loins for the inevitable struggle. The moral sense of our people was drugged into stupor by the men in high places who taught us that we had no concern with the causes of this war, that all the combatants were fighting for the same things, that it was our duty to be neutral between right and wrong, that we should look with tepid indifference on the murder of our unarmed men, women and children, that we ought to be too proud to fight for our just rights, that our proper aim should be to secure peace without victory for the right. But at last we stand with our faces to the light. At last we have faced our duty. Now it behooves us .to do this duty with masterful efficiency.

We are in the war. But we are not yet awake. We are passing through, in exaggerated form, the phase through which England passed during the first year of the war. A very large number of Englishmen fooled themselves with the idea that they lived on an island and were safe anyhow, that the war would soon be over, and that if they went on with their business as usual, and waved flags and applauded patriotic speeches, somebody else would do the fighting for them. England has seen the error of her ways; she has paid in blood and agony for her short-sightedness; she is now doing her duty with stern resolution. We are repeating her early errors on a larger scale; and assuredly we shall pay heavily if we do not in time wake from our short-sighted apathy and foolish, self-sufficient optimism.

We live on a continent; we have .trusted to that fact for safety in the past; we do not understand that world conditions have changed and that the oceans and even the air have become highways for military aggression. The exploits of the German U-boat off Nantucket last summer—exploits which nothing but feebleness, considerations of political expediency and downright lack of courage on our part permitted—showed that if Germany, or any other possible opponent of ours, were free to deal with us the security that an ocean barrier once offered was annihilated. In other words, the battle front of Europe is slowly spreading over the whole world.

We are fighting this war for others. But we are also, and primarily, fighting it for ourselves. We wish to safeguard to all civilized nations which themselves do justice to others, the right to enjoy their independence, and therefore to enjoy whatever governmental system they desire. But rightly and properly our first concern is for our own country. Our own welfare is at stake. Our own interests are vitally concerned. We are fighting for the honor of America and for our permanent place among the self-governing nations of mankind. We are fighting for our homes, our freedom, our independence, our self-respect and well-being. We are fighting for our dearest rights, and to avert measureless disaster in the future from the land in which our children's children are to dwell when we are dead.

In international relations, the Prussianized Germany of to-day stands for ruthless self-aggrandizement, and contempt for the rights of other nations. She stands for the rule of might over right; of power over justice. If Germany now conquered France and England, we would be the next victim; and if the conquest took place at this moment we would be a helpless victim. France and England have been fighting the battle of this nation as certainly as they have been fighting for themselves. Every consideration of honor, of self-respect, of self-interest, and self-preservation demand that we Americans throw our full force into this war immediately, without reservation, with entire loyalty to our allies, and with the stern and steadfast determination to fight the war through to a victorious finish. Moreover, we should act at once. We have to atone for three years of folly and indecision.
We are a nation of a hundred millions of people, richer in wealth and resources than any other on the earth. Yet we were so utterly unprepared that although Germany declared war on us seven months ago we are still merely getting ready our strength, we still owe our safety exclusively to the fleets and armies of our hard-pressed and war-worn allies, to whose help we nominally came.

It is this utter unpreparedness which should convey the real lesson to us of this war. And remember that as yet we, as a people, acting through our governmental authorities, have not taken one step to avert disaster in the future by introducing a permanent policy of preparedness. By actual test the system, or rather no-system, upon which during the last three years we have been told we could rely has proved entirely worthless. The measures under which we are now acting are temporary makeshifts, announced to be such. We have been caught utterly unprepared in a terrible emergency because we did nothing until the emergency actually arose; and now our Government announces that what we are doing is purely temporary; that we shall stop doing it as soon as the emergency is over, and will then remain equally unprepared for the next emergency.

    It  is  this  blind  refusal—from  the  nation's standpoint I can only call it this criminal refusal—to provide for the future that forces every honest and far-sighted lover of America to speak. I would far rather speak words of boastful flattery; it is not pleasant to tell unpleasant truths. Probably it is personally more advantageous to utter high-sounding platitudes; but platitudes are not what this nation needs at this time. I would gladly refrain from pointing out our shortcomings of the present and the immediate past were there any indication that we intended to provide for the future. But there is no such indication. And yet now is the time to formulate our permanent policy; now, when the lessons of the war are vivid before our eyes, when for the moment the silliness of the professional pacifists has less influence than in time of peace. Flag-waving, and uttering and applauding speeches, and singing patriotic songs, are excellent in so far as they are turned into cool foresight in preparation and grim resolution to spend and be spent when once the day of trial has come; but they are merely mischievous if they are treated as substitutes for preparedness in advance and for hard, efficient work and readiness for self-sacrifice during the crisis itself.

It is not our alien enemies who are responsible for our complete unpreparedness.   It is the foes of our own household. The leaders who have led us wrong are these foes; and in so far as our own weakness and short-sightedness and love of ease and undue regard for material success have made us respond readily to such leadership, we ourselves have been our own foes.

Preparedness against war cannot be real, cannot be thoroughgoing, unless it rests on preparedness for the tasks of peace. The I. W. W. and similar organizations, including the bulk of the "scientific" party socialists, have showed themselves the enemies of this country in this crisis, and will be its permanent enemies; and exactly the same thing is true of the self-satisfied, short-sighted rich men who oppose, or are inertly indifferent to, the effort to remove the causes of that preventable misery and wrong which drive honest poor men to follow the false prophets of evil. The dishonest demagogue and the corrupt reactionary are equally the foes of social and industrial justice; and mere ignorance—simple, sheer inability to understand the facts of present-day life—may prevent good people from trying to help the farmer and the workingman to help themselves, until it is too late to give such help save at the price of social convulsion.

The foes of our own household are our worst enemies; and we can oppose them, not only by exposing and denouncing them, but by constructive work in planning and building for reforms which shall take into account both the economic and the moral factors in human advance. We of America can win to our great destiny only by service; not by rhetoric, and above all not by insincere rhetoric, and that dreadful mental double-dealing and verbal juggling which makes promises and repudiates them, and says one thing at one time, and the 'directly opposite thing at another time. Our service must be the service of deeds, the deeds of war and the deeds of peace.

The deeds of peace are for the future. The instant need is for the deeds of war. If we wish to preserve our own self-respect we must do our own fighting; and not merely pay—or feed —others to fight for us. We must not make this a mere dollar war, or potato war. The dollars and potatoes are needed; but the great need is for armed men who are sternly ready to face death in a great cause. Pawnbroker patriotism is a poor substitute for fighting patriotism.

At present our prime duty is to fight effectively and to send constantly increasing masses—millions—-of fighting men to the front at the earliest moment. Then we must care for these men; we must till our farms, make our factories more efficient, increase our taxes and subscribe to our loans; and back up the Red Cross and similar organizations. Our governmental representatives must show both disinterestedness and common sense in dealing with business. We need maximum production; and improper restriction of profits, and, therefore, improperly low prices, will put a stop to maximum production. It is criminal to halt the work of building the Navy or fitting out our training camps because of refusal to allow a fair profit to the business men who alone can do the work speedily and effectively; and it is equally mischievous not to put a stop to the making of unearned and improper fortunes out of the war by heavy progressive taxation on the excess war profits—taxation as heavy as that which England now imposes; and as regards the proper profits that are permitted and encouraged, we should insist on a reasonably equitable division between the capitalists, the managers and the wage workers; and when the wage worker gets a first-class wage we should insist that in this crisis, as a matter of vital patriotic duty, he does first-class work for the first-class wage.

Universal suffrage should be based on universal service in peace and war; those who refuse to render the one have no title to the enjoyment of the other. We stand for the democracy of service; we are against privilege, and therefore against the privilege which would escape service in war. If a man's conscience forbids him to fight, put him to dangerous work, such as mine-sweeping or digging trenches, where, although his own life is in peril, he does not attempt to kill anyone else; and if his conscience forbids him to do this kind of work then let it be understood that our consciences forbid us to let him vote in a country whose destiny must ultimately be decided by men who are willing to fight. No human being is entitled to any "right," any privilege, that is not correlated with the obligation to perform duty.

We must continue this war with steadfast endurance until we win the peace of overwhelming victory for righteousness; and even while thus fighting we must prepare the way for the peace of industrial justice, and the justice of industrial democracy, which are to come after, and to make perfect, the war. These are the two needs; the instant need and the ultimate need; and both must be met. At the moment our chief foes are outside of our border; but they are now a danger to us only because of the folly and short-sightedness and wrong-doing of those who, wittingly or unwittingly, are our permanent foes—the foes of our own household. The passions and follies of each of us individually are such foes. And the men in whose souls these passions and follies gain the upper hand are the permanent foes of this great republic.

In the present crisis the most evil of these foes of our own household are the men who wish us to accept peace without victory. In the old days on the Western plains we had a proverb, "Never draw unless you mean to shoot." The braggart, the man who uses words which he does not translate into deeds, is a source of fearful wrong and suffering in any serious crisis. Having gone into this war, we earn dishonor unless we exert our utmost strength and fight the war through, at all costs, to a successful finish; unless we fight until we win the peace of victory. When we went to war there was neither talk nor thought of "making the world safe for democracy"—if war for that purpose was necessary then it had been necessary for the preceding two years and a half. We went to war because for two years the Germans had been murdering our unarmed men, women and children, and had definitely announced their intention to continue the practice. After we had been at war a few weeks the President announced that our purpose was to make the world safe for democracy. This phrase, uttered by the President when we were already at war, solemnly pledged us to exert our whole strength, and suffer any losses, in a terrible crusade, not for our own benefit, but for the benefit of mankind as a whole. To make such a pledge lightly, or to abandon it when once made, would be infamous. Therefore we must keep it. And, therefore, we must understand what it means. There is a certain rhetorical lack of precision about Mr. Wilson's phrase. It cannot mean that we are to force our allies, Belgium, Servia, Montenegro, England, all of them monarchies, to abandon the forms of government which they find suitable, and for which they have battled with devoted courage. Neither can it mean that we are to let peoples which show themselves incapable of self-government continue permanently as centres of infection in an otherwise reasonably healthy world-polity. Mr. Wilson's action in regard to the two republics of Hayti and San Domingo shows that if in any weak country he regards democracy as unsafe for others, as a nuisance to its neighbors, he will without hesitation suppress it. Interpreting his phrase, therefore, by the course of conduct he was at the same time following, we must regard it as a solemn pledge that we will not accept peace without complete victory over Germany and her allies, Austria and Turkey; inasmuch as Germany's mere existence under her present government makes the world unsafe for democracy, and inasmuch as the continued existence of Austria and Turkey in their present form necessarily means the crushing out of democracy and liberty in the nations subject to them. We do not intend that the German, Magyar and Turk shall be oppressed. We do mean that they shall be forbidden to oppress others. First and foremost we are to make the world safe for ourselves. This is our primary interest. This is our war, America's war. If we do not win it, we shall some day have to reckon with Germany single handed. Therefore, for our own sakes let us strike down Germany—and we cannot at this time make any distinction between the German people and the German rulers, for the German people stand solidly behind their rulers, and until they separate from their rulers they earn our enmity. Belgium must be restored and indemnified. France should receive back Alsace and Lorraine. England and Japan should keep the colonies they have conquered. Austria and Turkey should be broken up. Poland should be made independent, with Galicia and Posen included, and reaching to the Baltic. The Czechs and their Moravian and Slovak kinsmen should be made into a Greater Bohemia. The Jugoslavs should be united in one state. Greater Roumania should take in Roumanian Hungary, and Italy Italian Austria. The Turks should be ousted from Europe; Constantinople can be made a free commonwealth of the Straits, or given to democratic Russia as events may determine. Arabia should be an independent Moslem state; probably Armenia should be independent; provision for the full protection of the Syrians— Christians, Druses, and Mohammedans—should be made. Northern Schleswig should go back to the Danes; and the victorious allies should themselves grant full autonomy to Lithuania and Finland; and, to Ireland, Home Rule within the Empire.

But I do not ask our fellow countrymen who fight this war to think merely of others. The future of America is at stake, and it is this for which our concern is deepest. We must for our own sakes now make our whole potential war strength as speedily effective as possible. And, if we have the smallest power to learn by experience, let us face the damage done by our lamentable failure to prepare in the past, so that we may learn the need of preparing for the future.

During the last seven months we have to our credit some things which give us just cause for pride. But the net achievement, when compared with what every other great nation in the war achieved during a similar period, is a cause for profound humility.

We have not yet so much as fired one rifle against the German armies. We have not a man in the trenches. We are now doing, so far as preparation is concerned, only those things which it was inexcusable for us not to begin doing in September, 1914. Yet the time we have thus occupied, seven months, is just the length of time Germany took in 1870-71, for the conquest of France. It is four times as long as it took for the conquest of Austria. And we are not yet ready to meet a single thoroughly equipped hostile army corps of any great military nation! We owe our safety from conquest only to the fact that, to serve their own purposes, England and France have protected us and fought our battles for us. Nor have our governmental authorities given the slightest indication of any intention to provide permanently against the continuance of the fatuous policy which has produced these results; and yet to continue this fatuous policy will ultimately mean ruin to the nation.

The men who boast over what has been accomplished by us in this war during the last seven months—during which we have actually accomplished nothing, although along many lines we have begun to prepare to begin—will do well to remember the comments by Olaf's priest Thangbrand on the boasting of the Icelanders :
Quoth Priest Thangbrand:  "What's the use Of all this bragging up and down, When three women and one goose Make a market in your town?" Three women and one goose do not make a market.     Nor  do  they  win  a  war.    And  in neither case does boasting permanently supply the deficiency.

CHAPTER 2
MUST  WE BE BRAYED IN A  MORTAR BEFORE  OUR FOLLY  DEPART  FROM   US?
IT is useless to cry over spilt milk. But it is much worse than useless, it is mischievous, and may be ruinous, to pretend that the milk was not spilt, and therefore to invite a repetition of the conditions which caused the spilling. For the last three years our foremost duty, to ourselves and to the world, has been to prepare. This duty we have shamefully neglected, and our neglect is responsible for the dragging on of the war, and for the needless sacrifice of myriads of lives. Yet those highest in authority seem to read this lesson backwards, as medieval sorcerers read the Lord's Prayer.

The Secretaries of War and the Navy, of course, speak for President Wilson. They are his instruments in formulating and carrying out the entire military policy, temporary and permanent, of the Government. In the Official Bulletin of June 7th, the Secretary of War, Mr. Baker, is reported as saying that there is "difficulty . . . disorder and confusion ... in getting things started," and as adding: "But it is a happy confusion. I delight in the fact that when we entered this war we were not, like our adversary, ready for it, anxious for it, prepared for it and inviting it. Accustomed to peace, we were not ready." The Secretary of the Navy, Mr. Daniels, is quoted in the public press (of course less authentic authority than the Official Bulletin) as answering a query as to whether the Navy was preparing new weapons, by saying: "That cannot be determined until we know whether we are going to fight an offensive or a defensive war."

The importance of these statements is that they lay down the rule of conduct which we as a people are now officially supposed to accept for our future policy; therefore it is proposed that we continue the policy of unpreparedness which we have followed in such striking fashion in the last three years. We are so to act, on the ground that although our unpreparedness produced "difficulty, disorder and confusion," yet that it was a "happy confusion," and that our failure to prepare ought to give us "delight"; and that before we make ready the engines which alone can make our navy thoroughly effective and formidable in war, we must wait until some months after the war comes and then try to reach a cautious, provisional conclusion as to whether it is to be offensive or defensive!

Apparently, it is proposed to continue our policy of unpreparedness in the future because it has not brought us to destruction in the past The explanation of the latter fact is simple. For the last four years the international situation has been such that we could, and did, commit every species of blunder and yet escape punishment. Our task in foreign affairs was very easy; it was very badly performed; but the conditions were such that no formidable nation in the world dared take its eyes off the other formidable nations; and so, in spite of the really marvelous indecision and feebleness of our governmental policy, we were able to follow a devious, and often a retrograde, course through and among our difficulties with little loss of money—and seemingly loss of honor did not concern us, for we had grown to accept streams of adroit and irrelevant rhetoric as a worthy substitute for honorable action.

In Mexico the various insurgent leaders whom we alternately petted and opposed systematically slaughtered our own men, women and children, and those of the Spaniards, and Chinese, whom they despised as heartily as they did us; but they played no such antics with the nations they feared and respected, such as the Germans, English, French and Japanese; accordingly none of the latter found it necessary to interfere at the moment; and therefore the mass of our people, who were not in Mexico, and who were taught by the Government to look with lethargic, indifference on the slaughter of their fellow citizens in Mexico, were able to eat the bread of humiliation in physical safety. How any people with an honorable past could submit to such shame as our Government inflicted on our people in connection with the Carrizal incident is literally inexplicable.

Then the great war occurred. It at once became a matter of incalculable consequence to each of the contending nations not to irritate us; and our safety for the time being seemed assured. Germany, however, gradually acquired such overweening contempt for our career of greedy and peaceable infamy, she so despised the merely conversational reply of our Government to her outrages, she regarded with such utter derision our tame submission to murder at the same time that we prattled of peace and duty, and our failure to prepare so thoroughly convinced her that our scabbard held nothing save either a pen or a wooden sword, that she literally kicked vis into war—a war which our own lack of self-respect had rendered inevitable and for which we had not prepared in the smallest degree.
On January 3ist last Germany sent us a note which, after a couple of months' hesitation and uncertainty, was accepted by the President and Congress as a declaration of war—for we did not go to war in April, but merely stated that Germany was already at war with us. We sundered diplomatic relations with Germany a couple of days after the arrival of the note. For two months we announced that we were waiting for an "overt act" of murder.

Our Government denned this term with meticulous precision. It decided, for example, that the murder of the two little American-born O'Donnell girls was not, so far as we were concerned, a murder, because their father had not been naturalized—apparently we did not regard the slaughter of the children of a non-naturalized parent as "making democracy unsafe." Some thirty American non-combatants were killed before a case occurred in which the Germans consented to commit murder in such fashion as to violate all, instead of merely some, of the rules our Government had laid down as guides for the justifiable homicide of peaceful Americans going about their lawful business on the high seas.

We sluggishly drifted sternforemost into war. The reasons alleged were acts precisely like the acts which had been committed throughout the previous two years; there was more justification for going to war two years previously when the Lusitania was sunk than at that particular moment. After an interval of meditation we announced through our Government that we had discovered that it was our duty to wage the war because it was a fight for the perpetuation of democracy and for the rights of small nations and of humanity generally—all of which we had been strenuously denying, directly and indirectly, for the preceding two years and a half.

Then our people began to wake up to the actual situation. They had been taught to believe that easy—and slippery—rhetoric was a cheap substitute for action, and they now found it so cheap as to be worthless. They had been taught to trust for safety to boasts about our peaceful power and virtuous intentions, and to clamorous demands that everybody should love us because we were so harmless, and to quavering assertions that the way to avoid war was not to prepare for it. When the test came they found that all these devices in the aggregate amounted to absolutely nothing when once we were face to face with the "merciless old verities." We began, rather dimly, to realize that, as a national asset, a combination of glib sophistry with the feeble sham-amiability which obviously springs from fear, was of small value when we were faced by stern and brutal men. with guns in their hands.

Let our people keep steadily in remembrance that the pacifists, sometimes speaking their own folly, and sometimes acting under the sinister inspiration of the paid German emissaries, insisted that we should keep unprepared because, in the words of Mr. Wilson's Secretary of War, to be prepared for war is to be "anxious for it ... and inviting it." They insisted that unpreparedness meant peace. The Presidential campaign last fall was fought and won on the issue that such persistent unpreparedness "kept us out of war"—all of the political leaders on one side and a considerable number of those on the other side taking this position. Yellow called to yellow.

Well, we all know the outcome. Our unpreparedness did not "keep us out" of the war. Unpreparedness never does keep a nation out of war; it merely makes a nation incompetent to carry it on effectively. And preparedness does not "invite" war; on the contrary it usually averts war, and always renders the prepared nation able to act efficiently if war should, unhappily, come.

Seven months have passed since Germany's practical declaration of war against us—(our immediate breaking of diplomatic relations and the subsequent action of Congress show that our Government really accepted the German note of January 3ist as in effect a declaration of war, although the Administration's inveterate habit of shuffling obscured the truth for the first sixty days). During these months there has been admirable work done by the men, including the big business men, who in a spirit of the highest patriotism have given up their whole time to governmental work, food conservation and control, Red Cross activities, public work of all kinds at Washington and elsewhere. The preparatory work for a really extensive program of aircraft construction has been both speedy and efficient. Congress, with fine patriotism, appropriated vast sums of money for the use of the Administration. Admiral Sims and our anti-submarine craft are doing effective work in support of the similar British craft; General Wood, General Bell, General Crowder, General Squier, Admiral Cleaves, and many other army and navy officers have in their several fields accomplished very much—the utmost possible with the means at hand; that gallant and efficient officer, General Pershing, and his fine divisions of infantry are certain to give us all cause for pride and exultation when they are put on the firing line. Some hundreds of thousands- of other gallant men have volunteered, under very discouraging circumstances, and some millions stand ready to be drafted.

But let us look facts squarely in the face. If Germany were free to use even a tenth of her strength against us all the troops that we have at this moment assembled, at home and abroad, would not hold her a week. During the last seven months the bad effects of our complete failure to prepare during the preceding three years have been appallingly evident. The "difficulty, disorder and confusion," as Secretary Baker puts it, have been such as in sum to have amounted to absolute inability to produce within these seven months any force thai' could match even a single German army corps. If we had been pitted single-handed against any one old-world military power of the first rank, whether European or Asiatic, we should have been conquered as completely as Belgium or Roumania, within these seven months—indeed, within the first three months. We owe our ignoble safety, we owe the fact that we are not at this moment cowering under the heel of an alien conqueror, solely to the protection given us by the British fleet and the French and British armies during these months. Except for the safety thus secured us, Pershing and his men, and Sims and his men, and some tens of thousands like them, would have bravely died in hopeless battle; and our remaining millions of men would never even have had a chance to fight for their wives and children.

No American worth his salt can look these facts in the face without shame and alarm. Rhetoric is a poor substitute for action, and we have trusted only to rhetoric. If we are really to be a great nation, we must not merely talk big; we must act big. And our actions have been very, very small!

Had we prepared in advance we could have put a couple of million troops in the field last April; and the war would have been over now. As it is, we have so far done nothing.

We cannot permanently hold a leading place in the world unless we prepare. But there is far more than world-position at stake. Our mere safety at home is at stake. We cannot prevent ourselves from sooner or later sinking into precisely the position China now occupies in the presence of Japan, unless we prepare. The probabilities are overwhelming that the next time we fight a formidable foe we shall not again find allies whose interest it will be to protect us, and to shield us from the consequences of our feebleness and short-sightedness, as France and England have for seven months—indeed for three years—been doing. This means that ruin will surely in the end befall us unless we ourselves so prepare our strength that against a formidable opponent we shall be able to do for ourselves what the English and French armies and navies are now doing for us.

Let us make no mistake. Unless we beat Germany in Europe, we shall have to fight her deadly ambition on our own coasts and in our own continent. A great American army in Europe now is the best possible insurance against a great European or Asiatic army in our own country a couple of years, or a couple of decades hence.

We are fighting for humanity; but we are also, and primarily, fighting for our own vital interests. Our army in France will fight for France and Belgium; but most of all it will be fighting for America. Until we make the world safe for America (and incidentally until we make democracy safe in America), it is empty rhetoric to talk of making the world safe for democracy; and no one of these objects can be obtained merely by high-sounding words, or by anything else save by the exercise of hard, grim, common sense in advance preparation, and then by unflinching courage in the use of the hardened strength which has thus been prepared.

Nine-tenths of wisdom is being wise in time. In this crisis we have been saved by the valor of others from paying a ruinous price for our folly. Let us now put ourselves in such shapft that next time we shall be able to save ourselves, instead of helplessly asking some one who is stronger and braver to do the job for us. The first step toward the achievement of this end is clearly to understand the present situation. Seven months after Germany virtually declared war on us, five months after we reluctantly admitted that we were at war, we have a few tens of thousands of gallant infantry near the front, forming an almost inappreciable proportion of the large armies engaged; we have some hundreds of thousands of men who have just begun, or expect soon to begin, training. We have refused to standardize our ammunition by the ammunition of our allies. We are beginning to manufacture good artillery, and to get our submarines and anti-submarines in shape—although we have signally failed to meet the submarine menace affirmatively by the development of an anti-submarine force sufficient to quell it; we have shaped an excellent plan for aircraft development; but as yet we have not a single big field gun or a single war aeroplane fit to match against the field artillery and flying machines of either our allies or our enemies. We are short of rifles, of tents, of clothing, of everything. We are actually building rifles of a new type which nevertheless will not take the standardized ammunition of either of our allies. And in the Official Journal of the Administration we are officially told on behalf of the Administration that this is a "happy confusion" and that we should feel "delight" because of our shameful unpreparedness.

Once again, let us remember Germany's record of ruthless efficiency in her former wars—in each of which her stoutest allies were the pacifists, the foolish braggart optimists, and all the anti-preparedness host, in the households of her foes.

Seven months have elapsed since Germany's practical declaration of war against us; and less than seven months were required by Germany in 1870-71 to conquer France. She needed only as many weeks to conquer Austria. Japan's efficiency against Russia was as marked.

I do not describe these conditions in order to reproach those responsible for them. I would gladly pass them by in silence, and devote myself exclusively, as I have been doing for the last seven months, to backing up every belated measure for war-efficiency which by any stretch of my conscience I found myself able to champion. But when Mr. Wilson's Administration jauntily expresses "delight" in conditions which are a source of bitter humiliation to every patriotic and reasonably clear-sighted American, when the Administration thus impliedly advocates making our past record the standard for our future conduct, it becomes a matter of imperative obligation upon an honest man to speak out. The task of our Government during the last four years in foreign affairs has not been difficult. It has been exceptionally easy and yet it has been wretchedly performed. Our task in this war is not difficult. On the contrary it is exceptionally easy, so easy that we must clearly understand that never again will the conditions be so favorable to wage serious war, and escape the consequences of our blunders and our folly; for never again can we expect other nations to protect us with their armies and fleets while our politicians slowly make ready.

I believe that with our wealth, our population, our immense energy, and extraordinary resources, we will within a year or so after our entry into the war develop such usable strength as to make us a ponderable element in aid of our allies. I believe that by that time we shall be able to defend ourselves with reasonable efficiency if by any mischance the war should come to our own continent. But if we ever fight a formidable foe single-handed, we shall not be granted a year in which to prepare, even inadequately.
One of the most ominous of our shortcomings has been our failure to prepare cargo ships in view of the ever-growing danger from the submarine menace. The submarine has developed into a more formidable offensive than defensive weapon. It has not been able to prevent the transport of great invading armies across the seas, for the toll it takes is too small to be serious as against one such expedition. But the toll continues, month after month; with the result that, as the years continue, it exercises tremendous pressure.

Britain, France and Italy now need fuel and food; our armies abroad, as they increase in number, will need food, munitions, reenforce-ments; the submarines are steadily cutting down the available tonnage of the world; and during these seven months we have done nothing whatever to provide against this mortal danger, either by developing an efficient anti-submarine force or a sufficient number of speedy cargo ships. When, on January 3ist last, the German note came, even the blindest of our public servants ought at once to have grasped its significance and begun with the utmost energy to prepare both for warfare against the submarine and also for the output of immense quantities of ships reasonably able to escape from the submarine.

We could have commandeered many ships that were being built. Any number of things could have been done; and nevertheless we are only just getting ready to begin! Ships of the necessary speed could be built only of steel, and only steel ships would be permanently useful; yet the Administration dawdled through month after month, doing nothing save to acquiesce in or abet a squabble started on behalf of wooden ship interests, and of service only to Germany. General Goethals was admirably fitted to build the ships, if he had been backed as he was backed when he built the Isthmian canal; but he was not given the backing, and the conditions were made such that he was finally driven from office. We are only now beginning to exert our business energy along this vitally necessary line; we may yet make our position partially good; but our seven months' delay has been unpardonable, and we cannot offset its evil effects—and how evil these effects will be no one can as yet foretell. Think what Germany did to her foes in the first ninety days, in the first thirty days of this war, and you will have an idea of the appalling disaster that will some day befall us unless we turn seriously to the solution of the problem of self-defense.

There is but one such solution. It is the adoption of the principle of universal military training of our young men in advance, in time of peace, with as a corollary the acceptance of the obligation of universal service in time of war. This is the only democratic system. This is the only efficient system. Acceptance of the principle it involves will automatically result in eliminating during peace time, instead of waiting until war comes to eliminate, the kind of administration of the War and Navy departments which has resulted in inefficient submarines, aircraft that could not be sent across the enemy's trenches, and artillery which could not be pitted in battle against the guns of military nations. When the average citizen has received a year's training with the colors on the field he will recoil from our present fatuous acceptances of shams.

It is at present the duty of every good American to do the best he can with the inadequate or imperfect means provided. Let him, if a man of fighting age, do his utmost to get into the fighting line—Red Cross work, Y. M. C. A. work, driving ambulances, and the like, excellent though it all is, should be left to men not of military age or unfit for military service, and to women; young men of vigorous bodies and sound hearts should be left free to do their proper work in the fighting line. A war is primarily won by soldiers; the work of the non-47 soldiers, however valuable, is merely accessory to the primary work of the fighting men.

Let every man volunteer who can; let him volunteer in the army, the navy, the national guard; let him eagerly serve in the drafted troops if he is drafted. Hundreds of thousands of men have responded to the President's various. calls for volunteers; volunteers for the army, for the navy, for the marine corps, for the national guard, for the officers' training camps; and there would have been none of the shortage that has actually occurred if only the right kind of appeal for volunteers had been made and the proper methods of using and developing them had been adopted.

The draft has been admirably administered by General Crowder and is excellent in so far as it recognizes the principle of obligatory service; it is inadequate and unjust in so far as it is treated only as a temporary device, and in so far as it makes such service "selective," that is, in so far as it requires the haphazard selection of one man to make sacrifices while other men, not entitled to exemption, are relieved of duty at his expense. It is not too late to remedy this. A law should at once be passed making military training universal for our young men, and providing for its immediate application to all the young men between 19 and 21. In the Civil War three-fourths of the Union soldiers entered the army when they were 21 or under.

The officers' training camps have done invaluable service. They were started by a small group of young men in New York, two years and a half ago; these young men persevered in spite of the cold, discouraging, and sometimes hostile attitude of the Administration; and to Major General Leonard Wood the credit mainly belongs, for he took hold of the work and put it through and thereby did more than any other one man for our preparedness in advance—and when this war broke out, he was actually punished for this and for other things he had done in the interest of preparing our military strength. Advantage can be taken of these camps only by men of a "college education or its equivalent," who have sufficient means to enable them to stand the expense. Under existing conditions men of less means cannot become officers—whereas, if we had only been already under a system of universal military training the officers would have been chosen in democratic fashion from the best among all the men, rich or poor, who underwent the training.

We are in the war. The shortcomings, due to failure to prepare, and to ill-advised action, must at the moment be treated only as additional spurs to action. We must render service in spite of them. But if we have a shred of common sense we will see to it that hereafter they are not repeated and that our permanent policy is such that we shall be ready for the next war, and not have to trust to somebody else to save us.

We honor the regulars of the army and navy. We honor the national guardsmen. We honor the men of the training camps, and the drafted men whom they are to command and train. But never forget that all these men are now able to fit themselves to render service only because the British and French fleets give us time, for if we had not such protection we should already have been trampled into dust beneath the feet of our foes.

Shame shall be our portion if we rest content with such safety. Shame shall bow the heads of our sons and daughters if we do not prepare in advance so that at any moment we can guard our hearthstones with our own hardened strength.

There is but one effective way in which thus to prepare. Base universal suffrage on the only safe foundation, universal service. Let the man be trained in time of peace to military duty; and let no man vote in the country who is not willing to fight for the country. To make military service in a democracy a matter of individual choice is as unjustifiable as to make obedience to law or the payment of taxes an individual choice.

Let the woman be trained in all the ways that will fit her for her work in peace or war. Give to man and woman equality of right; base the privilege thus secured on the service each must render; and demand from them, not identity of function, but, as a matter of obligation, the full performance of whatever duty each can best perform.

Let every young man, at nineteen or twenty, serve a year in the field. Let all officers be chosen from the best of those who have thus served and who wish the chance to enter the officers' school; this will put rich man and poor man on the same footing. When once this system has begun fairly to function, we shall be ready at any time to repel the attack of any foreign foe who may make war on us; and at the same time by training them in soul, mind and body, in giving them habits of self-respect, moral and physical cleanliness, respect for the rights of others, self-reliance and obedience, we shall have immeasurably bettered the young men of the nation and have fitted them for the tasks of peace.

Nor should the benefit of such training be confined to young men. In this great war, a war between peoples as well as between armieSj, the woman has worked in the hospital, in the factory, in the fields, thereby releasing the man for work on the battle line. Her training in time of peace would render her more fit for such duties, and also more fit to do the peace work of home nursing, home sanitation and the like. We need in our national life a common, democratic purpose, expressing itself in a sense of heightened social responsibility. Let America adopt for her sons and her daughters the principle of universal training, of universal service; and let her take the lead among nations by making both the training and the service really universal, so that the collective strength of the nation may be used against our foes of peace as well as our foes of war.

So much for our future policy. At this moment our policy should consist in wholeheartedly bending our every effort to win an overwhelming triumph in the war. We are for the time being safe behind the rampart of the British fleet, and of the French and British armies. It is galling thus to owe our safety to others; but let us at least bend all our energies to developing our might so that in our turn we may be able to guarantee safety to ourselves and triumph to our allies. We would not have time to develop our strength were it not for the protection the allies give us. But they do give it. Therefore we have the opportunity to make use of our gigantic resources. We can, within a year, if only we choose, develop our strength so that we shall be the deciding factor in the war, and develop our intelligent purpose so that we shall refuse to accept any peace not based on the complete overthrow of the Prussianized Germany of the Hohenzollerns. If we do this we shall restore our self-respect, we shall incalculably benefit our children, we shall win a commanding position, and we shall be able to render untold service to ourselves and to our allies. If we do not do this, if we fail to develop and exert our strength to the utmost, if we partly adopt the attitude of the onlooker, if we let others do the hard, rough, dangerous fighting work, then we shall have betrayed a sacred trust, from the standpoint of America, of heroic and bleeding France, of gallant and suffering Belgium, and of the world at large. In such case^1 we must, when peace comes, stand humbly in the presence of the nations who have really fought. In such case, the world will have been saved, but it will have been saved by England, and not by us. In such case all that we can do will be to thank England for having saved the world—and the peace will be England's peace. Only those who do the job will have a right to the reward in honor and in power. Only if we play a leading part in bringing the war to a close can we expect to make the peace in reality our peace. I honor England for all that she is doing; but I wish us to do as well, for otherwise we shall have no right to be more than a looker-on at England's peace, at the allies' peace—unless, indeed, in the unbelievable event that our Government should make us traitorous to our duty, and secure a base peace which would really be Germany's peace, a peace without victory, a peace welcomed by all the Huns within our gates, by all the pacifists and pro-Germans, by all the shirkers and slackers and soft fools; a peace which would make high-spirited Americans bow their heads with shame. Only if we do our full duty can we make it a joint peace of ourselves and our allies, a peace in which we rightfully have our full say, on an equality with England, France, Russia, Italy. If we aren't going to do the job, then I shall be glad to see it done by England and the rest of the allies. But I am a good American and therefore I wish to see us do the job ourselves. Rhetoric and boasting won't give us our place in the world. This is the hour of the fighting men and of the other men and the women who stand back of the fighting men, and enable them to fight.

To my fellow Americans I preach the sword of the Lord and of Gideon. In this great war for righteousness, we Americans have a tremendous task ahead of us. I believe the American people are entirely willing to make any sacrifice, and to render any service, and I believe that they should be explicitly shown how great the service is they are called upon to render, how great the need is that they should unflinchingly face any sacrifice that is made. I ask of you, and I ask of those who govern you—who govern this great mass of people—that we may be given direct practical lines of effort. With all my heart I believe that our people have in them the same patriotism, the same nobility of soul to which Washington and Lincoln were able to appeal. I ask that the appeal be made, the appeal for effort, and with it the guarantee by actual governmental performance that the effort shall not be wasted.

It is through the Government that we must do the chief work, of course; but let us also ourselves do individually each his or her own part. Let us help the Red Cross; let us cheerfully accept the draft, and gladly volunteer, if we meet the requirements, and if we are allowed to volunteer. Then in addition let each of us make up his mind willingly and cheerfully to accept any personal hardships that may come, in high taxes, in repeated loans and reduced income. Let us fare more simply, and cut out alcohol; let us show our eager and resolute purpose to key up the industrial and social life of the country to the highest scale of efficiency and accomplishment. We must raise food in abundance. We must speed up our industries. We shall need an enormous provision of supplies; we shall need much concentration and control of the means of production.

If we are to hold our proper place as a great nation, there must be prodigious exertions on the part of this republic. We are in this war, and we must not make it a half war. The only proper rule is never to fight at all if you can honorably avoid it, but never under any circumstances to fight in a half-hearted way. W^rhen peace comes it must be the peace of complete victory. In winning this victory we must have played a full part—the part of deeds—the deeds of fighting men. We should instantly strain every nerve to make ready millions of men, and an abundance of all the huge and delicate and formidable and infinitely varied instruments of modern warfare.

We can't achieve our ends by talk—they must be achieved by effort. We can't achieve them unless we act together loyally, and with all our hearts; as Americans and nothing else. We are fighting for humanity, for the right of each well-behaved nation to independence and to whatever form of government it desires; and we are fighting for our own hearthstones and for the honor and the welfare of our children and our children's children. We are fighting against a very efficient and powerful, and an utterly brutal and unscrupulous enemy. Let us give every man in this country his rights without regard to creed or birthplace, or national origin, or color. Let us in return exact from every man the fullest performance of duty, the fullest loyalty to our flag, and the most resolute effort to serve it.

The test of our worth now is the service we render. Sacrifice? Yes, as an incident of service; but let us think only of the service, not of the sacrifice. There never yet was a service worth rendering that did not entail sacrifice; and no man renders the highest service if he thinks overmuch of the sacrifice.

Let us pay with our bodies for our souls' desire!

CHAPTER 3
THE CHILDREN OF THE CRUCIBLE
Americans are the children of the crucible. The crucible does not do its work unless it turns out those cast into it in one national mould; and that must be the mould established by Washington and his fellows when they made us into a nation. We must be Americans; and nothing else. Yet the events of the past three years bring us face to face with the question whether in the present century we are to continue as a separate nation at all or whether we are to become merely a huge polyglot boarding house and counting house, in which dollar hunters of twenty different nationalities scramble for gain, while each really pays his soul-allegiance to some foreign power.

We are now at war with Germany. For three years Germany has heaped insult upon insult, injury upon injury, on our people. We showed a reluctance passing the bounds of ordinary timidity either to resent the insults or to prepare for defense. We feared to resent wrong in the present. We did not even dare to prepare so as to be able effectively to resent wrong in the future. Our supine inaction was partly due to the folly engendered in our people by the professional pacifists. But an even more important factor was the dread many of our politicians felt not merely of the German Army abroad but of German votes at home. The cold, greedy selfishness and short-sightedness of our political leaders were indefensible; and were due to the fact that the men who took the lead in the professional German-American movement sought entirely to subordinate the actions of the country of which they were nominally citizens, the United States, to the needs of the country for which they really cared, Germany. Now we are at open war with Germany; yet many of these persons—supported of course by the professional pacifists—continue to champion Germany's cause as against the cause for which we are fighting. This is moral treason to the Republic, and all who engage in it, whether senators, congressmen, editors, or professed humanitarians, are in fact, although not in law, traitors, who have no right longer to be treated as American citizens. The time has come to insist that they now drop their dual allegiance, and in good faith become outright Germans or outright Americans. They cannot be both; and those who pretend that they are both, are merely Germans who hypocritically pretend to be Americans in order to serve Germany and damage America. At the moment, the vital thing to remember about these half-hidden traitors is that to attack America's allies, while we are at death grips with a peculiarly ruthless and brutal foe, or to champion that foe as against our allies, or to apologize for that foe's infamous wrong-doing, or to clamor for an early and inconclusive peace, is to be false to the cause of liberty and to the United States.

In this war, either a man is a good American, and therefore is against Germany, and in favor of the allies of America, or he is not an American at all, and should be sent back to Germany where he belongs. There are no stancher Americans in the country than the average Americans who are in whole or in part of German descent; and all these are as stanchly against Germany now as the Americans of English descent were against Great Britain in 1776. I speak of them with knowledge; for German blood runs in my own veins. But the American of German descent who remains a German or a half-German is not an American at all; and a large number of the men of this type are dangerous traitors who ought instantly to be sent out of the country. These men work steadily against America in the company of the native American professional pacifists, and the pro-German Socialists, and all the anti-English foreigners. Some of these pro-German and anti-American leaders have been advocating that men of German descent should not be required to serve in our armies against Germany. This is precisely as if in the Revolutionary War it had been proposed that men of English descent should not serve against England. Such a proposal should be regarded as treasonable, and all men making it should be treated accordingly.

Many of these German sympathizers, of these foes of the United States (including not only men of German descent but men of Irish descent whose blind hatred of England makes them disloyal to America, and men of native origin, who are conscienceless politicians or who are pacifists or denationalized and therefore thoroughly unpatriotic) fear openly to assail our country; and therefore they serve our country's enemies effectively by assailing England, by endeavoring to keep us from effective cooperation with the allies, or by condoning and defending such acts of barbarity as the Zeppelin raids on English cities and the murderous assaults on ships crowded with innocent non-combatants.

In the Revolutionary War France was our ally. Fifteen years before she had been our bitter enemy. Therefore certain Tories endeavored to harm the American cause by reviving the old anti-French animosities. They acted precisely as the men act who to-day seek to harm the United States and help our ruthless and bitter enemy, Germany, by reviving the old anti-British enmity. Any man who during the Revolution stated that although he favored the United States against England nevertheless he also favored England against France, was really a traitor to America. Any man who now announces that although he favors the United States against Germany yet he favors Germany against England is a traitor to America. There can be no half and half attitude in this war, and no honorable man can afford to take such an attitude. We are now bound by every consideration of loyalty and good faith to our allies, and any opposition to them or any aid given to their and our enemy is basely dishonorable as regards our allies, and treasonable as regards our own country.

Weak-kneed apologists for infamy say that it is "natural" for American citizens of German origin to favor Germany. This is nonsense, and criminal nonsense to boot. Any American citizen who thus feels should be sent straight back to Germany, where he belongs. We can have no "fifty-fifty" allegiance in this country. Either a man is an American and nothing else, or he is not an American at all. We are akin by blood and descent to most of the nations of Europe; but we are separate from all of them; we are a new and distinct nation, and we are bound always to give our whole-hearted and undivided loyalty to our own flag, and in any international crisis to treat each and every foreign nation purely according to its conduct in that ;risis.

This is a new nation, based on a mighty continent, of boundless possibilities. No other nation in the world has such resources. No other nation has ever been so favored. If we dare to rise level to the opportunities offered us, our destiny will be vast beyond the power of imagination. We must master this destiny, and make it our own; and we can thus make it our own only if we, as a vigorous and separate nation, develop a great and wonderful nationality, distinctively different from any other nationality, of either the present or the past. For such a nation all of us can well afford to give up all other allegiances, and high of heart to stand, a mighty and united people, facing a future of glorious promise.

This nation was founded because the Americans of 1776, although predominately English by blood, fought their own kinsmen to establish their liberty and to make this nation the hope of the world. Again, over a century ago, our forefathers once more fought England; and the men in this country who were of English blood stood with absolute loyalty by America and against England. It is not merely our right but our duty to insist on exactly the same full-hearted loyalty by all Americans of other descent, whenever we are at war with the countries from which their ancestors came. We are now at war with Germany. The offenses committed against the men of 1776 by King George and the England of his day were as nothing 'Compared to the crimes committed against us and against all civilization and humanity by the brutalized Germany of the Hohenzollerns during the last three years. There must be the same unhesitating loyalty shown now, by every American fit to call himself an American, as was shown in the days of our forefathers, when Paul Revere's ride and the fight of the Minute Men at Lexington called the country to arms.

The obligation of single-minded Americanism has two sides—one as important as the other. On the one hand, every man of foreign birth or parentage must in good faith become an American and nothing else; for any man who tries to combine loyalty to this country with loyalty to some other country inevitably, when the strain arises, becomes disloyal to this country—he who is not with us is against us.

On the other hand, if a man in good faith, in soul and in body, becomes an American, he. stands on a full and entire equality with everybody else, and must be so treated, without any mental reservation, without any regard to his creed, or birthplace or descent. One obligation is just as binding as the other. It is both weak and wicked to permit any of our citizens to hold a dual or divided allegiance; and it is just as mischievous, just as un-American, to discriminate against any good American, because of his birthplace, creed or parentage.

Let us immediately and practically apply these principles in the present crisis. A former member of my cabinet, who was born in Germany and who does not profess my religious creed, but who is in every way precisely as good an American as I am, has sent me cuttings from the New York Times which contain extracts from statements issued by the United States Government to the Red Cross societies, in which the Red Cross units and hospital units intended for service at the base hospitals abroad are directed to exclude from service not merely American citizens born in Germany or Austria-Hungary but even Americans whose fathers were born in those countries. I most emphatically protest against such discrimination. It represents the kind of attack on loyalty which tends actually to encourage disloyalty.

There have been instances of misconduct on the part of Germans in American hospital or Red Cross units; but this was due to the fact that our Government was then unduly influenced by fear of the German Government abroad or of the German vote at home, and so dared not act in the drastic manner necessary. Now it swings to the opposite extreme and offsets its former fear of punishing German offenders by failure in the present to guard the rights and the self-respect of loyal Americans of German origin.

If I had been permitted to raise the four divisions of troops for service abroad which Congress gave me permission to raise, among the regular officers whom I would have recommended for command of the divisions and brigades would have been General Kuhn, the present head of the War College, and Colonel Bandholtz, who, when I was President, served as Chief of Constabulary in the Philippines; and I would have counted myself happy to have served under either. Of the regular officers whom I had chosen to recommend as Colonels of various regiments in the division were four of German parentage or descent. Among the few men not in the regular army whom I should have recommended for colonelcies, one, a National Guard Colonel, from Chicago, is of German parentage, and he informed me that of the troops he would raise in Chicago probably 85% would be of foreign parentage. My headquarters chaplain would have been a retired army officer, who was born in Germany—a man not of my religious faith. He is as good a citizen and as thoroughly an American of the best type as is to be found anywhere in this land. My brigade Quartermaster General would have been a man of German parentage. Now, if I had been permitted to take these men abroad to fight, I would have tolerated no discrimination from any source or of any kind between the Americans of Revolutionary stock and the Americans of foreign birth or parentage; and in return I would have demanded of all of them, with absolute disregard'of all considerations of national origin, an undivided and whole-hearted allegiance to the one flag that floats over all of us.

What is true of military life is true of civil life. The man who for the past fifteen years has been my closest political friend, and who is also one of my closest personal friends, is of German parentage, as is his wife—and the fathers of both of them were Union soldiers in the Civil War. They are both of them exactly as good Americans as I am. If they don't "belong," then I don't "belong.'' In my Cabinet, when. I was President, sat a descendant of one of Blucher's colonels. Some of the best books written about our duty in this war have been, written by men who are, in whole or in part, of German blood—James Beck, Owen Wister, Gustavus Ohlinger and Hermann Hagedorn.

I have just received a letter from one of my old captains of the Spanish War, a man born in Germany, running in part: "I can stand as much now as I could in the Spanish War, and I am ready and anxious to go whenever you say; as matters now are, every American citizen must stand by his country, and anyone that is not willing to do so should not be tolerated here." One of the naturalists who was with me in my South African exploration is now in our volunteer army with an officer's commission; his father was born in Germany. One of the naturalists who was with me in Africa (a joint author with me of a scientific book on the big game of Africa), a man who is now on a trip of scientific exploration in China, was born here of German parents. He has recently written me: "We have just learned that America has finally declared war on Germany. This good news has restored our hopes .for our country and its manhood. I hope that America will make the declaration more than a matter of 'moral support' and will succeed by force of arms in materially shortening the task of subduing Germany and Austria and Turkey even at this apparently eleventh hour of the great struggle."

There spoke the true American spirit! These, three men are Americans, precisely as I am; they are not German-Americans any more than I am a Dutch-American or an Anglo-American. We are all of us Americans, and nothing else; we all have equal rights and equal obligations; we form part of one people, in the face of all other nations, paying allegiance only to one flag; and a wrong to any one of us is a wrong to all the rest of us.

The men of whom I speak, and countless others like them, represent the best and most intense Americanism; they teach and they practice the highest service, and the most patriotic devotion to our common country, in the face of no matter what foreign foe; they are fit to guide our thoughts and rule our councils in peace and to lead our armies in war. Any one of these men who are born here, no matter where their ancestors were born, may become President; all are liable to serve in our armies; and yet our Government permits them to be exeluded from service with the Red Cross. It is a base and unworthy thing for any section of our people, and above all for our Government, to discriminate, or permit even the slightest discrimination, against these, our fellow Americans. They "belong," exactly as much as the rest of us do. We are one; and we will tolerate no effort to divide us.

So much for one side of our twofold duty. Now for the other side. The men who enjoy the privileges of American citizenship, and yet seek in any way to serve some other nation which is hostile to us, are guilty of moral treason to the Republic. If possible, the Government should act against them; if not, then they should be made to feel the full weight of the sternest condemnation by the people as a whole. Germany is now our bitter and envenomed foe. She has repeatedly and brutally murdered our women and children and defenseless men. She has proposed to join with Mexico and Japan to dismember us. Her publicists and newspaper writers back up, with foul abuse and untruthfulness, the efficient brutality which her military men have exercised at our expense and at the expense of the tortured and heroic people of Belgium and of northern France. Whoever now upholds or justifies Germany is an enemy, of the United States. Recently certain public men and newspapers—newspapers published in German and newspapers published in English— have sought to apologize for such German infamies as the submarine war against non-combatants, and the destruction of undefended an3 peaceful cities, by saying that we would behave in like manner if we had the opportunity. The infamous falsity of such accusations is shown by the history of our Civil War, in which the most intense and bitter excitement of passion never betrayed the combatants on either side into for one moment permitting such organized atrocities as those of which the Germans have been guilty. Turn to Emerson's "Life of Charles Russell Lowell," the nephew of the poet Lowell; read his letter to the War Department of June 26, 1863, in which he condemns the burning of a deserted town, and says that to permit "burning and pillaging" will turn the troops into a "horde of savages"; and then think of the fury of indignation this typical American officer would have shown over the hideous atrocities committed in Louvain and Dinant and hundreds of other places in Belgium and northern France. The deed he condemned was by comparison so slight that to-day the wretched victims of the German army would treat it as a mercy. Or contrast the brutality shown toward women and children on the Lusitania and scores of other ships, by the officially directed German submarines, with the Alabama's action fifty years previous; Semmes never destroyed a vessel without providing for the safety of the passengers and crew; he turned his own officers out of their cabins to put in them the women and children of his foes; and once when he had 700 prisoners, and a prize, the Ariel, he actually permitted them to go in freedom on the vessel rather than send them to a nearby port when he found that there was yellow fever in this port. Compare these actions with the methodical and organized brutality of the German military authorities in this war; and then brand with shame the American traitors who seek to aid Germany by asserting that we, if given the chance, would be guilty of atrocities like those she has committed.

The American citizens who traitorously preach such doctrines sometimes preach them in the English tongue, sometimes in the German. Those who use the former are the more despicable; but those who use the latter are the more dangerous because the great bulk of their loyal fellow citizens are ignorant of the speech in which they write treason. The events of the last few years have made it evident that in this country we should not only refuse to tolerate a divided allegiance but also that we should insist on one speech. We must have in this country but one flag, the American flag, and for the speech of the people but one language, the English language. There is no analogy with the European countries where different nationalities of different tongues have coalesced or been conquered, and where therefore it is an injustice not to replace the Greater Bohemia, the greater Jugo-Slavia, the old-time Poland, the old-time Lithuania in the ranks of self-governing countries, each with its own speech. But any man who comes here, whether he be a German, a Slav, an Italian, a man from the British Islands or the Scandinavian countries, or anyone else, if he becomes a citizen at all either commits perjury or else becomes an American, and only an American, and specifically foreswears all allegiance to his former country and its ruler. Either he has committed perjury, or else he has ceased to be a German, or an Englishman, or an Irishman, or a Slav, or a Frenchman, and has become an American, and only an American. He must adopt the institutions of the United States, and therefore he must adopt the language ,>which is now the native tongue of our people, no matter what the several strains of blood in our veins may be. It would be not merely a misfortune but a crime to perpetuate differences of language in this country, for it would mean failure on our part to become in reality a nation. Many of the newspapers published in foreign tongues are of high character and have done and are doing capital work, by helping the immigrants who speak these tongues during the transition period before they become citizens. These papers deserve hearty recognition for their work. But it must be recognized as transition work, and therefore its usefulness must be recognized as conditioned upon its finally coming to an end. This is as true of the use of a foreign language in schools and churches as in newspapers. I belong to the Dutch Reformed Church; it is now an entirely American church; yet when my grandfather was a young man, the services were still conducted in Dutch, and until this practice was stopped the church dwindled. Exactly as we must have but one flag, so we should have but one tongue, the tongue of the Declaration of Independence, of Washington's Farewell Address, of Lincoln's Gettysburg Speech and Second Inaugural.

The Cologne Gazette of June 10 brazenly declares that the German-Americans of the United States are the "best allies" of Germany against the United States, and rejoices in the fact that these German-Americans "embarrass and restrain" us in the war. The German-American Alliance stands among the foremost of the organizations which have thus worked against the interests of the United States; and the most prominent German newspapers in New York and Chicago during the last three years, at the time of the Lusitania infamy and since, have richly deserved the ominous and sinister praise of the Cologne Gazette and the other organs of the German autocracy. The German-American organizations and newspapers have served Germany against the United States. They seek to embarrass and restrain our Government so as to bring victory for Germany over the United States. They may have kept within the law, but they have been guilty of moral treason against the Republic.

The Philadelphia North American, with equal courage and patriotism, has called to account the German newspapers of Philadelphia, which have shown similar disloyalty to the Republic. It conducted an investigation into the matter these German newspapers had been publishing; the investigation, by the way, being made by Mr. Einar Barfod, an American of Scandinavian birth, but just as straight an American as exists—and as he writes in English his fellow Americans can understand him. The North American proved that the German papers in question were in effect behaving as enemies of the United States in this war, sneering at and misrepresenting our country, and violently attacking our allies, especially England, and praising and upholding Germany and the Kaiser in extravagant terms. The worst offender was a socialist paper. This was natural; for the German socialists in the United States, who for years have been the leaders in the American Socialist Party, have in this war shown themselves not only disloyal to the United States but traitors to humanity and to democracy, and tools of the unscrupulous militaristic autocracy of the Hohenzollerns. The censor at Washington should deal with such a paper and not leave the matter to the North American.

These German papers of course like to quote Americans of the stamp of Senator La Follette who in this great crisis stand as hostile to the cause of the American people and of liberty loving mankind, occupying a position like that which the Vallandighams of the Civil War occupied in relation to the cause of the Union. During this war we should not permit the publication in the United States of any German paper, or any paper published in the tongue of any of our enemies.

I condemn these men. But I condemn more strongly the foes of our own household who, for political reasons, or from sheer, easy-going, selfish inertness, have encouraged or acquiesced in what they have done. Prior to the war ignorance or lack of foresight in this matter was perhaps excusable. But since the outbreak of the war the action of the German Government and the action of the German-Americans, who, whether for hire or for other reasons, in this country played the game of Germany, have been so flagrantly evil that to be ignorant of them was impossible, and to fail to denounce them was explicable only on the ground of folly, cowardice or moral obliquity.

The actions of the agents of Germany in this country have ranged from seditious propaganda to attacks by dynamite on property and murderous assaults on life. They were accurately described by President Wilson in his message to Congress of December 7, 1915, as follows:

"There are citizens of the United States, I blush to admit, born under other flags . . . who have poured the poison of disloyalty into the very arteries of our national life; who have sought to bring the authority and good name of our Government into contempt, to destroy our industries wherever they thought it effective for their vindictive purposes to strike at them, and to debase our politics to the purposes of foreign intrigue . . . such creatures of passion, disloyalty, and anarchy must be crushed out . . .they are infinitely malignant . . . they have formed plots to destroy property, they have entered into conspiracies against the neutrality of the Government, they have sought to pry into every confidential transaction of the Government in order to serve interests alien to our
own."

Having thus spoken of the German spies, dynamiters, and murderers in this country, the President proceeded to state that they were no worse than the Americans whose judgment and sense of honorable obligation made them sympathize with Belgium and the allies, in contrast with the Germany which had employed the spies, dynamiters and murderers against the United States. He said that "every man" should "make it his duty and his pride to keep the scales of judgment even and prove himself a partisan of no nation but his own." He continued by reprobating the "men among us" who although "calling themselves Americans have so far forgotten themselves and their honor as citizens as to put their paramount sympathy with one or the other side in the great European conflict above their regard for the peace ... of the .United States. They also preach and practice idisloyalty. No laws, I suppose, can reach corruption of the mind and heart; but I should not speak of others without also speaking of these and expressing the even deeper humiliation and scorn which every self-possessed and thoughtfully patriotic American must feel when he thinks of them and of the discredit they are daily bringing upon us."

This was a carefully prepared, deliberately phrased official message to Congress. When the message was written the war had lasted for over sixteen months. It was precisely as much a war "to make the world safe for democracy" then as it is now; unless this statement was true at that time it was a mere rhetorical flourish, an untruth, sixteen months later. Every cause alleged as a reason for our going to war against Germany sixteen months later existed then. Seven months had elapsed since the sinking of the Lusitania; and the sinkings of other passenger and freight ships, with the attendant murders of innocent non-combatants, including scores of American women and children, had continued month by month. The hideous nature of the German outrages in Belgium, Servia, Poland, and Northern France had been officially established and made known to every human being who was not wilfully blind to the truth. The various outrages by German spies and dynamiters in the United States, and the intrigues of the Germans against this Government, were due to the direct action of the German Government, usually working through the German Embassy in Washington; this was known to every Government official from the President down, and was so self-evident that no reasonably intelligent and well-informed private citizen was ignorant of the truth.

It was under these conditions that the head of our Government officially declared that the American citizen who declined "to keep the scales of judgment even" between tortured Belgium and the Germany that wronged and tortured her was guilty of "corruption of the mind and heart," which put him on the same plane of "disloyalty" with the other "citizens of the United States" who were "creatures of anarchy" and "sought to destroy our industries," by dynamite, with murder as an incident. The head of our Government officially declared on behalf of the American people that the Americans who, after the murder by Germany of hundreds of innocent American men, women and children on the Lusitania and other boats, expressed passionate sympathy "against" Germany without "regard for the peace of the United States" were causes of "even deeper humiliation and scorn" to "thoughtfully patriotic" persons than were the German spies, intriguers, and murderers themselves. Incidentally, of course, if these Americans who stood for America and Belgium and against Germany in December, 1915, were at that time proper subjects for "scorn and humiliation," and were guilty of "corruption of the mind and heart" and of "disloyalty," then every American who took part in or approved and supported our going to war in April, 1916, was similarly guilty of corruption and disloyalty, and equally a subject for humiliation and scorn. Neither the situation nor the duty of America had changed in the smallest degree during the intervening sixteen months.

This address apparently at the time met the approval of most politicians, and there was little adverse criticism of it; and therefore we, the American people, became responsible for the doctrine that the German spies, intriguers and dynamiters were no worse than the men who sympathized with the wrongs of Belgium, or jeopardized "peace" by demanding action against Germany on account of the Lusitania horror. It is axiomatic that to condemn, equally, good and bad actions is completely to destroy all effect of the condemnation of the bad. The net result of the conduct of the American politicians—which was not repudiated by the American people—was really to encourage Germany and her German-American allies in their campaign against the United States, and to discourage and dishearten the great mass of American citizens of German blood who needed only fearless official leadership in order to make them the most effective of all possible instruments against the disloyal German propaganda. We Americans must ourselves shoulder the major share of the responsibility for the effectiveness of this pro-German and anti-American movement within our own borders.

Here again it would not be worth while mentioning the evil we have done in the past were it not necessary to do so in order by concrete example to warn us against its repetition in the future. Unless we realize the full menace of the wrong we have done humanity, and the danger we have caused ourselves by our course as a nation during the last three years, we can not in the future provide against a repetition of such wrong-doing by our governmental leaders. It is we, ourselves, who during these trials have —among other things—done most to puzzle our citizens of foreign birth as to the real meaning of their "true faith and allegiance."

Not only must we as a people never again permit such conduct among our political leaders as that which has signalized our attitude in international and preparedness matters during the last three years; but we must hereafter adopt an affirmative instead of a merely negative attitude toward the stranger within our gates who has come here to become a citizen or merely to make a fortune and return to his former home. We should exercise the strictest control over, and wherever necessary entirely exclude, the transitory laborer who does not intend to become a citizen. As for those who do intend to become citizens, we should consider them primarily as possible citizens and parents of future citizens. We cannot have too many of the right type—the type that is right morally, physically and economically—and we should have none at all of the wrong type. We should never admit any merely because there is "need of labor"; better run short of labor than foul or dilute the body of citizenship into which our children are to enter. In practice it is not easy to apply exactly the proper tests; but fundamentally our aim should be to admit only immigrants whose grandchildren will be fit to intermarry with our grandchildren, with the grandchildren of the Americans of to-day.

We wish no further additions to the persons whose affection for this country is merely a species of pawnbroker patriotism, of pork barrel patriotism. In so far as these are native Americans, let us strive to get rid of them; and let us not add to them by the importation from abroad of persons whose coming here represents nothing but the purpose to change one feeding trough for another feeding trough. We should guarantee to the newcomer his rights, and we should exact from him the full performance of his duties.

We should provide for every immigrant, by day schools for the young and night schools for the adult, the chance to learn English; and if after say five years he has not learned English, he should be sent back to the land from whence he came. We should have a system of labor exchanges and employment bureaus which will enable us to distribute the immigrants to the places where they are most needed and can do most for their own advancement. We should protect them from fraud and rapacity.

And having thus protected them we should demand full performance of duty from them. Every man of them should be required to serve a year with the colors, like our native born youth, before being allowed to vote. Nothing would do more to make him feel an American among his fellow Americans, on an equality of rights, of duties and of loyalty to the flag.

There is no truth more important than the truth that it is the performance of duty toward the commonwealth, and not the enjoyment of unearned privilege from the commonwealth, that breeds loyalty, devotion, patriotism. In a family, the father and mother who fail to rear their sons and daughters to recognize and perform their duties neither receive nor deserve the loyal devotion felt for the heads of the household where the whole household is trained to put duty ahead of pleasure. It is exactly the same with a nation.

We have believed that we would get devotion to our country from immigrants who came here merely to make money and escape meeting obligations. The belief was ill founded. The man who feels that the country owes him everything and that he owes the country nothing, will pay the country just what he thinks he owes— nothing. It is a curious fact that many Germans who came here to avoid military service, and who while here have had to do nothing they did not care to do, yet as soon as the strain came, felt all their loyalty toward the country which exacted much from its citizens, and none at all for the country which expected nothing from its citizens.

The wisest and quickest way to Americanize the immigrant is to make him understand that here in America we have at last waked up to our needs, and that henceforth every man, whether born here or abroad, owes this country the fullest service of body and of soul.

CHAPTER 4
WASHINGTON  AND   LINCOLN
Let Us To-day Do as They Did and Practice What They Preached
THERE is nothing sillier and more mischievous than to dull the conscience with lofty sentiments which cloak ignoble failure to perform duty; or to praise the great men of the past for what they did in the past and yet refuse to act in similar fashion in the present.

Lip loyalty to Washington and Lincoln costs nothing and is worth just exactly what it costs. What counts is the application of their principles to the conditions of to-day. Whoever is too proud to fight, whoever believes that there are times when it is not well to arouse the spirit of patriotism, whoever demands peace without victory, whoever regards the demand for ample preparedness as hysterical, whoever attacks conscription and the draft or fails to uphold universal, obligatory, military service, is false to the teachings and lives of Washington and Lincoln. Whoever seeks office, or upholds a candidate for office, on the ground that he "kept us out of war," without regard to whether the honor and vital interests of the nation and of mankind demand the war, is treacherous to the principles of Washington and Lincoln; they did not "keep us out of war," and they never sought or accepted office on a platform which they cynically repudiated when once they had secured office. The professional pacifist, who exalts peace above righteousness, is not only a traitor to the memory of the two greatest Americans, but has no claim to have any part in governing or in voting in the nation which one founded and the other preserved.

Washington's career, taken as a whole, and Considering all that he did as soldier and statesman during his twenty years of leadership in American public life, probably placed him on an even higher level of great achievement than Lincoln. But he lacked Lincoln's marvelous power of expression. In his case it is the deeds alone to which we must generally look. In Lincoln's case we consider both the deeds and the winged and deathless words which he translated into deeds.

Yet, just because Washington never spoke a word which he did not make good by an act, and always acted with serene, far-sighted wisdom and entire fearlessness, there are teachings of his which should be forever engraved on our hearts. No American should ever forget Washington's insistence upon the absolute necessity of preserving the Union; his appeals to our people that they should cherish the American nationality as something indestructible from within and as separating us in clear-cut manner from all other nations; his stern refusal to yield to the tyranny of either an individual or a mob, and his demand that we seek both liberty and order as indispensable to the life of a democratic republic; and his unwearied persistence in preaching the great truth that military preparedness is essential to our self-respect and usefulness and that the only way to prepare for war is to prepare in time of peace. But it is worse than useless to praise these as abstract truths and to fail to apply them to present instances. Every public man who after the August day in 1914 when the great war broke out, failed at once to do all in his power to prepare this nation on a gigantic scale for the danger looming in our immediate front was blind and deaf to the writings and warnings of Washington and was recreant to his duty to the Republic; and so were all the apologists and upholders of such a man.

Washington's Farewell Address contains advice which is permanently applicable.    At the time when the address was written a violent faction of his countrymen were endeavoring to secure the submission of the United States to the outrages and insults of Revolutionary and Directorial France by appealing to and inflaming the American antipathy to England. Washington's Address condemned the effort thus to make hatred of England blind us to our duty to the United States as follows: "Nothing is more essential (to a free, enlightened and great nation) than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations ... be excluded. The nation which indulges toward another an habitual hatred ... is in some degree a slave." This applies with even greater force to the sinister enemies of our country who at this moment endeavor to serve German brutality at the expense of the United States and of humanity at large by stirring up antipathy to England. When Washington wrote his address he was separated by but sixteen years from that winter camp at Valley Forge in which, under his leadership, the manhood of democratic and liberty-loving America stood its supreme test. We are separated from it by a century and a quarter. He had faced the British bullets. The anti-English agitators of to-day shriek against England in complete personal safety. The England of his day was still hostile to the United States. The England of our day has been friendly to the United States for half a century. The men who at this crisis try in any way to stir up our people against Britain are traitors to the United States. Some of them are the paid agents of America's malignant foe, Germany. The rest, whether from folly or wickedness, are playing Germany's game. No man is a true American who hates another country more than he loves his own.

What is true of the teachings of Washington and Lincoln as regards our international relations is no less true of their teachings as regards affairs within our own household.

It has been the fashion among some well-meaning but crude extremists to contrast Lincoln as a radical with Washington as a conservative. This is a shallow misreading of the facts. Each was the conservative leader of the efficient radicalism of his time. In each case the radicalism became efficient only because such leadership was furnished. It would have been absurd to expect either to be a radical about matters which in his time were not yet in real existence. To the Bourbons of his own day, to the Tories or the copperheads, each seemed the most dangerous of radicals; and when necessary, as in the crises of 1776, and 1862-3, each took the extreme radical position. But by the extremists, whether visionary or sinister, each was denounced as a reactionary—the sympathizers with license and disorganization taking this position about Washington from 1789 to the day of his death, just as the extreme radicals in Missouri and elsewhere took the same position about Lincoln in 1864. To use the terminology of today each preferred an attitude of liberalism rather than radicalism until the arrogant obscurantism of the reactionaries themselves—• George III in one case, the slaveocracy in the other—made radicalism imperative. When this became evident, neither one hesitated to cut loose from the trimmers and halfway men and unfalteringly to lead the effective fight against Bourbonism; and of course each then practiced a constructive, and not merely a destructive, radicalism.

Lincoln was always against slavery, but until the upholders of slavery, in 1854, became violently aggressive, he stood by Clay and Webster and against the abolitionists; and at first he remained a Whig, not becoming a Republican for several months after the formation of the party. He upheld Clay's compromise measures. He took Webster's position on the fugitive slave law—it is one of the melancholy ironies of history that the very men who abandoned and frantically denounced Webster for taking this position, later turned ardently to Lincoln, who had also taken it and who did not change from his position until the Civil War had begun. During the Civil War the radicals of the Wade-Davis type denounced him almost as bitterly as the conservatives who followed Seymour or Vallandigham; and the extremists among them nominated a presidential candidate against him.

Yet Lincoln was a great radical. He was of course a wise and cautious radical—otherwise he could have done nothing for the forward movement. But he was the efficient leader of this forward movement. To-day many well-meaning men who have permitted themselves to fossilize, to become mere ultra-conservative reactionaries, to reject and oppose all progress, but who still pay a conventional and perfunctory homage to Lincoln's memory, will do well to remember exactly what it was for which this great conservative leader of radicalism actually stood.

Much of what he said applies, with only a change of names, to the conditions of our own time.

In October, 1854, when it was objected that the course he advocated included some action demanded by the Northern abolitionists, and other action demanded by the Southern disunionists, to both of whom he had been opposed, he answered: "Stand with anybody that stands right. Stand with him while he is right and part with him when he goes wrong. Stand with the abolitionist in restoring the Missouri compromise and stand against him in attempting to repeal the fugitive slave law. In the latter case you stand with the Southern dis-unionist. What of that? You are still right. In both cases you are right. In both cases you oppose the dangerous extremes. In both you stand on middle ground and hold the ship steady and level. In both you are national and nothing less than national. To desert such ground because of any company is to be less than a man— less than an American." And he remarked of those who took the opposite view that he must be allowed "to tell them, good humoredly," that their course was "very silly."

In precisely similar fashion to-day we find conservatives objecting to some piece of wise legislation because it is demanded by the socialists, and radicals objecting to some piece of wise legislation of another kind, because it is looked upon favorably by Wall Street. In Lincoln's words we must be allowed good humoredly to say that both attitudes are very silly—equally so whether we always oppose the Socialists or always oppose Wall Street. In one case we uphold what the Socialists demand, in the other case what Wall Street favors. In Lincoln's words: "What of it? We are still right. In both cases we are right."

(FOOTNOTE, I omit the sentence addressed merely to his fellow Whigs. END FOOTNOTE)

In August, 1863, Lincoln dealt with the questions of peace and war and the means necessary to make war a success. To his critics, who put peace above national salvation secured through war, he said: "You desire peace and you blame me that we do not have it. But how can we attain it ? There are but three conceivable ways. First, to suppress the rebellion by force of arms. This I am trying to do. Are you for it? If you are, so far we are agreed. If you are not for it, a second way is to give up the Union. I am against this. Are you for it? If so you should say so plainly." He then pointed out that the third method, a "compromise," was impossible because "no paper compromise" could "affect the (enemy's) army" and it was this army, this military strength of the enemy, which dominated the situation and which could not be affected by any "convention" of "peace men"— because nothing that such a peace convention could do would "keep (the enemy's) army out of Pennsylvania." The professional pacifists, the neo-copperheads of to-day, must either repudiate Lincoln or accept these words as their own condemnation. Make the terms as general as the truth they express, thereby applying them to any just war; and Lincoln says that he is opposed to the surrender of vital national rights, that he believes in maintaining these rights by force of arms, that peace (for which he so earnestly prayed) can be obtained only by armed strength backing right, and that no action by any "convention of peace men" can keep a European army out of New York or an Asiatic army out of San Francisco.

He is just as explicit in upholding the principle of obligatory universal military service (the draft) as compared with purely voluntary service. He of course heartily approved the volunteers who volunteered to fight, and he used them with efficiency during the first years of the war—for otherwise the war would have been lost. But he had no patience with the volunteers who volunteered to stay at home, and when these became too numerous he refused to "waste time" by further "experimenting" with the "volunteer system" which had been shown to be "inadequate." He wrote that the men who had refused to volunteer should now be subject to "the principle of ... involuntary or enforced service," so as to make them do what their "manly brethren" had already done; saying of the latter: "Their toil and blood has been given as much for you as for themselves. Shall it all be lost rather than that you, too, will bear your part? . . . The principle of enforced service (has) been used in establishing our independence . . . shall we shrink from the necessary means to maintain our free Government, which our grandfathers employed to establish it and our own fathers have already employed once to maintain it? Are we degenerate? Has the manhood of our race run out?"

One of Washington's earliest acts as President was to submit to Congress a plan for universal obligatory military training and service; and all those who now oppose such a plan deserve the scorn which Lincoln expressed for the men who opposed the plan in his day. The men who were too proud to fight he dismissed as degenerates, whose manhood had run out. To those who desired peace without victory he answered that in order to secure a just and lasting peace he would if necessary continue the war until all the wealth piled up by the bondsman's two hundred years of unrequited toil should be sunk and until every drop of blood drawn by the lash had been paid by another drawn with the sword.

In Lincoln's time wise radicals treated the preservation of the Union and the destruction of slavery as paramount over and precedent to all questions of social and individual betterment; exactly as wise radicals to-day treat the questions of Americanism—true Nationalism— and thoroughgoing preparedness for defense as dwarfing all others. But incidentally Lincoln expressed himself now and then on these social and industrial questions, and always in a spirit of sane but thoroughgoing and intense democracy. He as emphatically stated that the people were "the rightful masters of both congresses and courts" as any Progressive of 1912; and, in like spirit, he showed that this attitude was accompanied by entire respect for the courts and their authority. But it is as regards human rights and property rights, the rights of labor and the rights of capital, that his example is especially instructive.

In 1859 Lincoln announced as the true doctrine that "the rights of property" are secondary to the "personal rights of men," and that he was "for both the man and the dollar, but in case of conflict, the man before the dollar"; and he added the pregnant sentence: "He who would be no slave must consent to have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves." This applied to black slavery then. It applies now to any wealthy corporation which fails to respect and preserve and encourage all the manhood rights of its workers and to treat them as partners; and it no less applies to any powerful labor union which shows brutality or insolent disregard for equity in dealing with the rights of any of our citizens.

Lincoln had a seriously thought-out philosophy about the rights of capital and the rights of labor, which he developed before he was President, and to which he held throughout his Presidency. In 1859 and 1860 he formulated these views on several occasions. His radicalism had not a touch of Marxian socialism. He repeatedly and explicitly approved of protection for capital, and insisted that a "certain relation" between it and labor "rightfully existed." His words were: "That men who are industrious and sober and honest in the pursuit of their own interests should after a while accumulate capital, and also if they should choose when they have accumulated it, to use it to save themselves from actual labor, and hire other people to labor for them, is right," and again: "It is best for all to leave each man free to acquire property as fast as he can. Some will get wealthy. I do not believe in a law to prevent men from getting rich; it would do more harm than good. So while we do not propose any war upon capital we do wish to allow the humblest man an equal chance to get rich with every one else." But he regarded the laboring man as the normal man and the interests of labor as supreme, saying: "Labor is prior to and independent of capital; labor can exist without capital, but capital could never have existed without labor. Labor is the superior—greatly the superior—of capital." In line with this yiew he declares that: "Henceforth educated people must labor. Otherwise education itself would become an intolerable evil"; and he especially holds up to admiration a community of highly skilled, educated, soil-tillers, able each of them to derive a comfortable subsistence from his own intelligent, thorough work in the intensive cultivation of a small farm. "Such a community," says Lincoln, "will be alike independent of crowned kings, money kings, and land kings."

When he became President his convictions if anything strengthened. In his view, as he expressed it in his special message to Congress on July 4, 1861, the war was "essentially a people's contest . . . (for) the rights of men and the authority of the people ... for maintaining in the world that form and substance of government whose leading object is to elevate the condition of men—to lift artificial weights from all shoulders; to clear the paths of lawful pursuit for all; to afford all an unfettered start and a fair chance in the race of life." Five months later, in his regular message to Congress, he repeated what he had said before he was President: "Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Labor is the superior of capital and deserves much the higher consideration. Capital has its rights, which are as worthy of protection as any other rights." He continued by stating that "there is, and probably always will be, a relation between labor and capital producing mutual benefits"; but insisted that there were only a few capitalists, and a few men who labored for capitalists, but that the large majority of the people neither worked for others nor had others working for them—a statement not even then as broadly true as he made it, and much less so now; and he went on to praise "the just, generous and prosperous system which opens the way to all, gives hope to all, and consequent energy and progress and improvement of condition to all," and he then singled out for special praise "those who toil up from poverty" as eminently disinclined "to take or touch aught which they have not honestly earned"—a statement certainly more sweeping than is warranted by our subsequent experience with strong, self-made men. On March 21, 1864, in a reply to a committee of workingmen, he read this part of his message to Congress ofDecember, 1861, and added a few sentences running in part as follows: "The strongest bond of human sympathy, outside of the family relation, should be one uniting all working people, of all nations, and tongues, and kindreds. Nor should this lead to a war upon property or upon the owners of property. Property is the fruit of labor; property is desirable; is a positive good in the world . . . Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another, but let him work diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built."

These are the expressions of a man who held to the creed of democracy with fervent intensity of conviction and yet who never tried to apply his creed either with the rancor of the fanatic or with the experience-proof zeal of the doctrinaire. The kind of democracy with which Lincoln was familiar was the democracy of a farming country where the conditions were akin to those of pioneer days, and of "cities" which were hustling, overgrown villages, where there was little stratification of either the raw social or the raw industrial life. In consequence what he says has no direct bearing in detail on a community life of great capitalists and masses of wage workers, where the social conditions are far more static than in the early decades of the statehood of Illinois. His experience on the prairies had not enabled him to think out either the indispensable necessity of capitalism in great industrial achievements, or the need of a complex system of safeguards for labor under the very conditions necessary for such achievements. But the principles apply; and he carefully guarded his statements, so that they should not be too sweeping. Of course his words must be interpreted by his deeds—for example, his advocacy of the spirit of international brotherhood among workingmen must be read in the light of the fact that at the time he was straining every nerve to make the people submit to the most colossal sacrifices in order to secure the perpetuation of the national life—for Lincoln's life teaches us nothing more clearly than that international duty can be performed only as the sequence to the fullest insistence upon an intense spirit of nationalism.

Lincoln's belief in the superiority of the rights of labor to those of capital was expressed again and again; before he became President, in an official message to Congress while he was President, and again after he had been three years President. Evidently it was his deeply held belief. Surely the perpetuity of our institutions, even of our civilization, depends upon our holding and acting on the same view. We must shape our governmental policy primarily with a view to the welfare of the working-man and the farmer. Lincoln's words give us no hint of the details of the course we should follow; but they do clearly indicate that course.

But Lincoln also stood for the rights of capital; and here again we should follow his policy. If the laboring man permits himself to put improper burdens on capital, he will bring everything down with a crash; and even if the man higher up is smashed, this will be small comfort to the man lower down if he, too, is under the ruins. Lincoln explicitly disclaimed any hostility to a man because he was wealthy. He explicitly asserted that the accumulation of individual property was "right, and for the general good." He held up as the proper ideal, not burning down the house of another, but building up a house for oneself—a corollary to which is that it is better for the owner of a small house that another man should have a big house, rather than that neither should have any house. In other words, he believed in a constructive system which, while guarding the rights of capital, should see that the benefits were as widely diffused as possible and that all artificial obstacles to a fair start in the world, and to industrial democracy, were done away with. Finally, it is evident that, although he neither used modern terminology nor was familiar with modern industry, his ideal was a cooperative system in which each man labored and each man was to some extent an owner of the capital necessary for the work.

In order to live up to the spirit of Lincoln's teaching in this matter, it is necessary that we refuse to be bound by the letter, which is not applicable to an industrial world where capital is used in huge masses, mostly corporate, while labor is helpless unless it combines. In Lincoln's simple world capital was of far smaller importance than where gigantic, complex, highly useful undertakings have either to be financed on a huge scale or else left undone; and labor was far more fit to maintain its rights under a system of primitive individualism. In that simple world Lincoln saw only a few men as employers, and a few others as employed wage workers, while the majority were owners of the tools with which or on which they worked. What he upheld as a desirable principle was that the average man—who can never be the man of large means—should himself own a piece of the world and do his own work as regards that piece of the world. What he saw has changed. What he upheld as the desirable principle has not changed. The individualism of Lincoln's section in Lincoln's day has vanished and cannot be restored. At present the mass of people engaged in industry cannot become owners as individuals; and to give this mass a nominal ownership which does not imply control fails to reach the heart of the matter, for control is the element which implies equality between men. But no man is fit for control who does not possess intelligence, self-respect, and respect for the just rights of others. Therefore, instead of individual control of industry, there must to-day be some species of collective control of industry; which means that the tool users shall become the tool owners; but which also means that they will assuredly break down themselves and their business unless they are willing to pay for skilled management a price, in some measure, corresponding to the high value of the service rendered, and unless they are willing to give a just reward to whatever necessary capital they cannot themselves supply. This means an effort toward a combination of the proper functions of the corporation with the wise activities of the labor union (and I emphasize proper in one case and wise in the other). It is the negation of the I. W. W. theories and practices. From the standpoint of Lincoln's teachings and practices, those of the I. W. W. are harmful and wrong. But most certainly any fair treatment of any development of his theories points to progress, step by step, in the direction of securing a share of the control of the big corporation in the hands of the men who work for the corporation, but who ought not to remain merely the wage-earning employees of the corporation. This means some adaptation of cooperative ownership and management. Lincoln's teachings, applied to the facts of to-day, mean that if alive now he would lead toward a working combination of collective control and liberty, just as he once led toward a working combination of individual control and liberty. He would lead toward practical idealism in industry now exactly as he actually did lead toward practical idealism in government; and he would have been measurably successful precisely because he would never have forgotten that industry, like government, must be made a going concern.
In Lincoln's day, as in our day, there were wise men and foolish men, good men and evil men, both among those who called themselves conservatives and among those who called themselves radicals; and sometimes emphasis had to be placed on the need of daring, and sometimes on the need of caution. It was the radicals who were most interested in the destruction of slavery; and in this the radicals were right; and although Lincoln held them back, and steadied them and waited until the fullness of time, yet in the end he led them to victory. But on the whole the radicals put the destruction of slavery above the preservation of the Union, and herein they were wrong; and the conservatives took the reverse view, and herein they were right, and Lincoln sided with them; and in the end they followed him when he saw that it was best to make one cause both of freeing the slave and of saving the nation. From all his record it is safe to say that if Lincoln had lived to deal with our complicated social and industrial problems he would have furnished a wisely conservative leadership; but he would have led in the radical direction.

CHAPTER V
A   SQUARE   DEAL   IN    LAW   ENFORCEMENT
THERE has been much talk about compulsory arbitration, on either the Canadian or New Zealand models, as a method of hereafter averting the danger which it is alleged menaced us at the time of the threatened railway strike in the summer of 1916. As a matter of fact, that threatened danger was due entirely to the character of the men we had in public office, and to their actions in view of the pending political campaign, and no plan will ever permit us to escape such danger as long as we have such public servants. I doubt the possibility of any mere law eliminating the chance of trouble in a great strike. I doubt even more strongly whether a law modeled on the Canadian or New Zealand plans will have this effect. But I think something can be done to lessen the danger of strikes, and to give us a far better chance, than at present, of averting them, and of dealing wisely with them if they come.

Before considering the plan, it is necessary that we get clearly into our heads two facts as to which our people are apt to be a little misty— the wage workers being especially misty about one, and the capitalists about the other.

In the first place it should be accepted as axiomatic that the country will never resort to any policy aimed at reducing the effectiveness of the police power, or at preventing it from becoming more effective. This is a point, which I am sorry to say, the labor unions need specially to remember. It is both regrettable and discreditable that they should so often antagonize efficiency in the police force. It is regrettable and discreditable for example, that they should oppose the Pennsylvania State Constabulary System, and should object to its being introduced in New York or Colorado. There can be no possible justification for such opposition; and it speaks ill for any person who becomes a party thereto. There is every possible reason for seeing that the efficiency of the police is not impaired, for such impairment is always at the expense of law-abiding and upright men, whether rich or poor. There can be no possible justification for seeking to impair this efficiency. If the police power is used oppressively, or improperly, let us by all means put a stop to the practice and punish those responsible for it; but let us remember that a brute will be just as much of a brute whether he is inefficient or efficient. Either abolish the police, or keep them at the highest point of efficiency. To follow any other course is foolish. A bad man in a uniform may perhaps use his weapon to evil purpose; but it would be childish because of this fact to insist that all policemen, instead of having automatic revolvers, be armed with flintlock pistols. We must give the individual policeman the best arms possible, in order that he may not be at a disadvantage when pitted against a criminal; and then see to it that under no circumstances are these arms used unless the need is imperative, and the justification complete. Exactly the same rule applies as regards the efficiency of the police force as a whole.

But while this feeling against the police is entirely improper, it is perfectly natural; because in labor disturbances the action of the police, when it has been called out, in nineteen-twentieths of the cases is against the interest of the wrong-doing wage worker, and not against the interest of the wrong-doing capitalist. The wage worker is right in resenting this fact. But he is wholly wrong in failing to see where the trouble comes in. He makes his attack on the wrong point. The trouble is not that the Government represses the wrong-doing of one side. The trouble is that it does not also repress the wrong-doing of the other side. The protest should be not against the efficient use of the police power but against the failure to use it with equal efficiency against both sides. The trouble is not in the use of the police force to restore order. No Government has any warrant for existing, if it cannot keep order, and suppress disorder and violence. This is the first step to take and until it has been taken all further progress is impossible. The trouble is that the Government is apt to confine itself to keeping order, whereas it ought by rights to treat keeping order, not as in itself an end, but as a means for securing justice. The old-style Bourbon capitalist was fond of insisting that the Government should do nothing except keep order; that it was its highest duty by force to interfere with violence, which was the weapon of the misguided or criminal wage worker, but that it was an abhorrent wrong for it to interfere with the greed, cunning, trickery, and ruthless indifference to the welfare of others, which were shown not only by evil capitalists, but by many well-meaning capitalists who simply did not think and did not possess foresight and vision. In so far as this view still prevails, it is evident that the police power of the Government is a power exercised only in the interest of the capitalists. But where Government exerts in favor of one class a power vital to the welfare of that class, it has the right to lay down conditions which must be complied with by that class in order to warrant the exercise of the power. Those who invoke governmental aid must submit to governmental regulation.

As a matter of fact, while the tasks of securing justice from the wage worker to the capitalist and from the capitalist to the wage worker differ widely as regards the ease of execution, they are morally on the same level of justifiability and necessity. For example, the disturbances in connection with a mining company in one of the Rocky Mountain States in 1914 reached a pitch that made it necessary for the army of the United States to go into the state. It was entirely proper to send the army into the state. It was entirely proper to deal as sternly as was necessary with riot and murder; for whoever condones riot and murder is an enemy of the commonwealth. But when once the United States Government had sent the regular army of the United States into the state in question, to put a stop to violence which was wholly or partially due to the conditions of work and living created by the action of the mining company, it was clearly the duty of the Government also to step in and deal with the conditions which called forth the violence. In other words, the Government should have dealt impartially with the wrong-doing by both sides—and there can be no question of the gravity of some of the wrong-doing by each side. The Government should have insisted upon its right, and its duty, to take action so thoroughgoing as to remedy both the immediate and the ultimate wrongs done by both sides, and to guarantee straight and clean dealing by both sides for the future. As a matter of fact, the Washington authorities did nothing to remedy the conditions which had produced the outbreak of homicidal anarchy; they took no steps to guarantee that justice should come as the sequel to establishing law and order.

Any one with any knowledge of labor troubles can point to instance after instance during the last few years where the fault has lain almost wholly with the labor men, and also to instance after instance in which the fault has lain almost wholly with the capitalists. The man is a thoroughly bad public servant who declines to face the truth as regards either set of cases. Many employers, individual and corporate, have been shamelessly and brutally arrogant toward labor, and the Government should fearlessly interfere against them. But many employers have learned wisdom which makes them, in a sense, rival the unions by sedulously providing for the workers the very things the unions demand (sometimes to the chagrin, instead of the pleasure, of the mere agitators among the labor leaders) ; and where this is the case the Government should in its actions recognize the fact just as fearlessly as it recognizes the opposite fact when the conditions are reversed.

Where, as in the case above referred to, the company is not only the man's employer, but the man's landlord, and owns the streets and public buildings of the town in which he lives as well as the land on which he works, and controls absolutely the public officials, the condition of affairs created is one which not merely justifies but requires the interference of the Government. The Government should interfere in such manner as to encourage and not harm the business in so far as the business is carried on with just regard for the rights of the wage workers as well as for the rights of the general public; but in addition to encouraging the business it should also control it and see that the rights both of the wage workers and the public are really conserved. In the case in question the soldiers wearing Uncle Sam's uniform did well, as usual. They were for many months supreme in their control of the situation in so far as their powers were permitted to extend. They not only put a stop to all excesses by the strikers and by the armed employees of the operators, but they also very wisely prohibited all organized importation of strike-breakers from other localities. The Federal Government, however, took no efficient steps to secure a just and permanent solution of the difficulties; and the withdrawal of the army left conditions precisely as they formerly were. This was not right. The Federal Government should in all such cases unhesitatingly interfere to police disorder; but it ought not to rest content with this. It should also police the causes of disorder. It is necessary first to deal with the dreadful situation caused by the results up to which these causes have led; but the only final solution is to deal with the causes themselves. If the state will not deal with them, and if it nevertheless takes the view that the Federal Government is bound to interfere in order to enforce the law which the state is powerless to enforce, then the Federal Government should be given and should assume, as a necessary corrollary to its power of intervention to restore order, the further power to establish the reign of justice in such manner as to prevent a recurrence of the causes which inevitably lead to disorder. There must somewhere be governmental power to deal with both sides. Violence must be vigorously repressed; but the law must be enforced by lawful methods. This means that the Government must supply the police, and must not only eliminate the mob on one side, but must eliminate on the other the private mine-guard and imported thug. Moreover, the police power should always be exercised in conjunction with a thoroughgoing and impartial governmental inquiry into the causes of the strike; and until this Government commission has had time to investigate the facts and make its findings, it would be wise to forbid the importing of strike-breakers—for the imported strikebreaker stands on an entirely different footing from the non-unionist (or unionist) who refuses to go on strike.

   In any labor disturbance of a size or character to jeopardize the public welfare, there are three parties in interest—the property owners, the wage earners, and the general public. I refuse to assent to the view that either the owners of the property, or the workers, have interests paramount to the general interest of the public at large. This position was formerly taken by the owners, who insisted that the property was theirs, and that the Government had nothing whatever to do with their management of it, except to furnish them protection if they were threatened by lawless violence on the part of the workers. I then declined to accept this view. In exactly the same way I now decline to accept any claim put forth in their turn by the workers that they must not be interfered with by the Government, and that the public has no rights which it can assert—as against the will of the workers—to do whatever they choose in the premises. One view is precisely as untenable as the other. The public servant who is worth his salt, will do what is right, no matter which side is hurt, and will pay no heed to the threats of either side when the question is one affecting the public interests.

Having in view the considerations above set forth, it seems to me that the following course should be adopted by the nation in dealing with those exceptional labor disturbances where the national as distinct from merely local welfare is menaced, and where the national interest is so greatly involved that the custodians of the greater welfare are not warranted in refraining from action. In such cases the representatives of the Government should thoroughly investigate all the facts, and all the claims advanced by both sides, and decide exactly what the rights and wrongs are, and what ought to be done in the premises—deciding for instance, if necessary, any such question as what ought to be the proper maximum hours for labor, or minimum rates of wage, or conditions of labor, or methods for safe-guarding lives, or, in short, any or all the questions at issue. They should then make an award which will be binding upon the capitalists, the property owners. The award would be in the nature of a decree. The Government would see that the terms were strictly complied with; failure to comply would mean that the Government itself would take hold and run the business until the orders were carried out. The Government would not say that the wage earners would have to return to work on the conditions laid down. It would not interfere with the right of the wage earners to strike, or by entirely peaceful methods endeavor to dissuade other men from taking their places. But, if the employers, or capitalists, carried out fully, and in good faith, the Government's directions, the Government would guarantee, by the exertion of the entire police power of the nation, that there should be no violence against them, no lawless interference with their running the business according to the terms laid down.

Many men, who do not think out the matter, will doubtless feel at first glance that such a system would bear more heavily against the capitalist than against the laborer. Such is not really the fact. On the contrary, the method would work substantial justice to both sides. It is the capitalists who need the protection of the police power, and who cannot exist without such protection. There are, of course, exceptional instances (under conditions such as existed in connection with some of the Rocky Mountain Mining Companies), where there is also violence on the part of the capitalists by the use of hired fighters; and in this case the governmental police power would be used promptly to suppress violence on both sides. But violence by capitalists through the use of fighting mercenaries is exceptional. Ordinarily, the misdeeds committed by the employers against the laborers are not of a character that can in any way be affected by the armed force of the Government. This force therefore is called out only to help one side in the dispute. It is emphatically proper that it should give this help, and that it should put a stop to any misdeeds of the other side. But it is no less emphatically proper that at the same time the Government, which thus furnishes protection to property against the lawless violence of labor, should also, just as effectively, deal with any wrongs committed by the owners of the capital, or property, at the expense of labor.

In short, it is the business of the Government to find out the causes that have resulted in the outbreak and see just where wrong has been done. If the wrong has been committed by the capitalists, it must correct this wrong. Then, having acted on behalf of the rights of the workers, and inasmuch as the capitalists have complied with its orders, the Government must in turn furnish full protection to them in their rights, by guaranteeing them against any form of lawless disorder and violence.

CHAPTER  6
industrial justice; the tool-owner and the tool-user
We have failed lamentably to prepare for this war during the two and a half years of peace contemptuously granted us after Germany began the war. Let us refrain from aggravating our folly by now failing to prepare for the tremendous industrial problems which will come to the forefront as soon as peace arrives. One of the greatest and most pressing of these is that which is concerned with the relations between labor and capital, and the relations of both to the public. The immediate exigencies of the war have been met at Washington with confusion and absence of coherent plan. At the moment the Government has partially waked to the need, and has summoned the big business leaders of the country to its aid; and on the whole they have responded with both patriotism and efficiency. Yet the Government for many months seemed equally afraid to refuse their aid and to treat them well. It wished to pay less than a proper profit on their work for the Government; and yet was not prepared to tax with proper heaviness the excess profits when they became of huge dimensions. The Sherman Law, which for nearly a decade had caused more damage than good, because of the refusal of Congress to amend it into proper shape, has, for the time being, practically been suspended; the Government is encouraging business men in certain lines of business to get together, pool their purchases, fix prices, adopt a common sales policy; in short to do the very things forbidden by the Sherman Law. We thus see one department of the Government asking business men in certain lines to do the very thing for which the Department of Justice has the same men under anti-trust indictments. If the Sherman Law hurts our production and business efficiency in war time, it hurts it also in peace time, for the problems of boring for oil, of producing steel, manufacturing and selling agricultural implements, are no different now from what they were six months ago. Instead of having the Administration connive at breaking the law at this time, the law should be amended so as to make it unnecessary to break it at any time—along the lines of seeing that business is both encouraged and controlled. Big work can only be done by big business; and Government must courageously but intelligently control big business.

In this present crisis the right course to follow is to guarantee the business man who works for the Government a good profit; then to put a heavy progressive tax on all the excess profits above this. See that labor is paid a first-class wage; and then that it gives first-class work for the first-class wage. Exempt plain food and plain clothing, and all the necessities for a simple life and family rearing from taxation. Let incomes bear substantial progressive taxes; but not on the basis of class envy; and initiate a national policy of heavy progressive inheritance taxes.

So much for the immediate needs of the moment. Let us meet them instantly; and let us furthermore begin to secure industrial justice— the square deal—for the future. The first essential is to rid ourselves of the cant and hypocrisy of those who, usually for improper political reasons, seek to persuade people that large-scale business concerns, including the so-called trusts, owe their growth to the tariff, or to governmental corruption, and should be destroyed— not controlled in the public interests. The politicians who take this attitude work nothing but mischief.

Unlimited cutthroat competition between small and weak concerns is not now possible; and, if possible, it would be wholly undesirable. People have said that the tariff causes trusts. It does nothing of the sort. The Sugar Trust, for example, has not been harmed in the smallest degree by the removal of the tariff on sugar, although multitudes of small producers have been ruined. The Standard Oil Corporation was wholly unaffected by the tariff (and breaking it into small corporations under the Sherman Law merely resulted in the oil costing more to the consumer, in the men on the inside making enormous fortunes, and in the reduction of the efficiency of the concern in international business). The unscientific lowering of the tariff has not harmed the trusts in the smallest degree save as an incident of harming the entire business world. People have said that governmental corruption has favored trusts, that they have been built up by rebates and the like. Unquestionably some trusts have been favored improperly by certain governmental bodies; and others have been built up by improper practices. But, speaking of the business world as a whole, these are not the prime causes and are hardly even considerable factors in the growth of big corporations. They are responsible for some of the evil that has accompanied the growth; and to suppress them there must be efficient governmental control. But the simple fact is that modern big corporations are due primarily to three causes, namely, steam transportation, the electric telegraph, and the telephone. No change in the tariff will stop the upgrowth of big corporations. No moral reform in the world of business or the world of politics will stop it. But big corporations could be ended to-morrow by the abandonment of the railway, the telegraph and the telephone. The trouble is that the price would be somewhat heavy!

This is an era of combination. Big business has come to stay. It cannot be put an end to; and if it could be put an end to, it would mean the most widespread disaster to the community. The proper thing to do is to socialize it, to moralize it, to make it more an agent for social good and to do away with everything in it that tends toward social evil. To do this there must be a wise governmental control, a governmental control that will check the corporation when it is doing wrong and check the labor union when it is doing wrong, and hold each accountable and responsible for its deeds and misdeeds, but which shall at the same time recognize that the corporation has its rights just as the union has its rights, and that each is to be encouraged as long as it does well. No great industrial well-being can come unless big business prospers. China is the home of the small industrial unit, and the Chinese laborer is badly off. Persons who inveigh against capital as the source of all troubles of labor should ponder the fact that over large and densely populated areas in China, there are no capitalists and no capital; and that in these areas the laborers are steeped in the most abject poverty. We cannot hold our own with foreign competition, we cannot lead in developing South America, without successful big business concerns.

Over a century ago the "industrial revolution" began to turn the industrial world into one of big business, in which the dominant features were massed capital on a hitherto unheard-of scale, and laborers employed, also in enormous masses, by the capitalist, without personal touch or sense of responsibility on his part. The new system was inaugurated in England. France and Germany speedily followed suit. In the United States, the change from the old system of unlimited cutthroat competition among a multitude of small, weak concerns, to the new system of concentration (without either cooperation or control), got under full headway about the time of the Civil War; in economically backward countries like Russia and Spain it was yet later.

There was much that was beneficial in the change. It produced an immense increase of population and aggregate wealth; it was every where accompanied or followed by a great spread of education and community effort; and it probably, on the whole, raised the standard of attainable luxury and comfort for the workers in the industrial countries, compared to what it remained in the backward countries such as Spain and Russia.

But it was accompanied by evils so numerous and so grave that to this day one of our heaviest tasks is the struggle to do away with them. The movement substituted for the old social contrast between privileged patrician and unprivileged plebeian an even more offensive and violent industrial contrast between the man of one type of specialized capacity who possessed capital and the men of all other types of capacity who did not possess capital. Under the stimulus of the economic individualism taught by writers of the school of Adam Smith, the social and administrative nihilism taught by philosophers like Herbert Spencer, and the ultra political individualism taught by liberal political leaders like Thomas Jefferson and Richard Cobden, each man was impressed with the belief that the selfish seeking of his own interest represented substantially his whole duty to the state. The revolt against these doctrines showed itself in such teachings as those of Marx and such practises as those of the Paris Commune; and these abstract and concrete applications of the theory of ultra-collectivism naturally reacted in favor of the apostles of ultra-individualism.

Here in America we have in many ways been more backward than in most countries of middle and western Europe, because our situation was such that we could shut our eyes to unpleasant truths and yet temporarily prosper. But our system, or rather no-system, of attempting to combine political democracy with industrial autocracy, and tempering the evil of the boss and the machine politician by the evil of the doctrinaire and the demagogue, has now begun to creak and strain so as to threaten a breakdown.

Surely the time has come when we should with good nature and practical common sense set ourselves to the practical work of solving the problem. This means that we must disregard equally the apostles of ultra-collectivism and the doctrinaires of ultra-individualism. It also means that we must rebuke with equal emphasis the men who can see nothing wrong in what is done by capitalists and corporations, and the other men who can see nothing wrong in what is done by labor leaders and trades unions. Moreover, it means that we must not permit ourselves to be misled by bitterness concerning wrong-doing that is past into condoning wrong-doing of the opposite type in the present —for this is the road that leads straight down to that bottomless pit where the spirits of Robespierre and Danton find themselves in the company of the high-born tyrants whose bloody tyranny they denounced and copied.

At the outset of the industrial revolution, the capitalist, the man whose special ability lay in the "money touch," profited hugely and with gross injustice. He gained an improperly large part of the benefit that should have been shared between himself and the inventors and managers, and almost all of the part that should have been shared between himself and his wage-workers. He practically applied the theory that it was his right, and even his duty, to get from his workingmen the largest possible amount of labor per man for the smallest possible amount of pay. Naturally, such a grossly improper attitude tended to produce among the laborers in the unions a no less improper fanaticism in desiring that each man should perform as little labor as possible for as much pay as possible. In similar fashion, the extreme capitalistic tyranny which once treated trades unions as illegal and sought to make of the laborer a serf was largely responsible for the subsequent outbreaks of labor-union tyranny which in certain places and at certain times have taken the form of criminal conspiracies against society. Arrogant selfishness by a combination of capitalists, met by arrogant selfishness by a combination of workingmen, may be better than the reign of unchecked selfishness by either side alone; but it can never be satisfactory, and must always be fraught with grave danger to the whole social fabric.

It is profoundly to the disadvantage of the commonwealth that laborers shall be worked to the limit for the lowest wages at which they can be obtained. It is also profoundly to the disadvantage of the commonwealth that they shall do as little work as possible, and that the standard of labor adopted shall be that of the least efficient man. We need the highest possible standard of efficiency. But we also need the highest possible reward for that efficiency, and reasonable equity in the distribution of the reward. Unlimited and unregulated competition will not secure either end; and mere rancorous warfare against property and efficiency will do even less. What is needed is a wise and resolute effort toward cooperation of a character which shall give each worker, so far as possible, a certain interest in the capital with which he works—that is, which shall give the user of the tool some property interest in and control over the tool. Together with this should go such control by the Government as shall help in securing efficiency in the business and justice both as among those in the business and as between all of them and outsiders.

There are several conditions which must be met if the problem is to be really solved. The first is that our aim must be not to damage successful business, but to insure good conduct in business; which means greater fairness in apportioning the profits among all those engaged in the business, and propriety of behavior in the business as a whole in its relations to the public. We wish to get for the workers, among other things, permanency of employment, pensions which will permit them to face old age with a feeling of dignity and security, insurance against accidents and disease, proper working and living conditions, reasonable leisure—all these as tending toward enabling the worker to get for himself interest and joy in life, and on condition that he prove his fitness for partnership, for the enjoyment of rights, by the way in which he in his turn performs his duties and heartily and nobly recognizes his obligation to others. Now, of course, it ought to be accepted as an axiomatic truth that none of these things can be obtained from an unprosperous business; that if profits are not existent, all talk of sharing them becomes idle. Yet in practise a great mass of more or less insincere and more or less ignorant politicians and demagogues disregard this self-evident truth; and the popular feeling roused by the misdeeds of many corporations in the past and of some corporations in the present spurs them to disregard it. Many railroad corporations, for instance, a decade or two ago, were guilty of shameful practices, and there have been one or two conspicuous instances of such malpractices of recent years. It was absolutely necessary that these misdeeds should be checked and punished; this was done; and then too many legislative bodies proceeded on the assumption that by law railroads could be made to assume all kinds of burdens to their employees and the public at the same time that their rates were cut down so as to leave their margin of profit almost nil. There has been both failure to exercise sufficient control over railways in stock-watering and the like, and over-much burdening of them by vexatious legislation passed without regard to whether or not the burdens were just and necessary. In consequence, there is now real difficulty in getting investors to put into the railroads the capital necessary for fitting them to meet the growing needs of the country.

Business and labor are different sides of the same problem. It is impossible wisely to treat either without reference to the interests and duties of the other—and without reference to the fact that the interests of the general public, the commonwealth, are paramount to both. I am not asking for the adoption of an impossible ideal. Under Hiram Johnson, the Californian governmental authorities have realized with reasonable success precisely this ideal.

Another vitally important fact to keep in mind is the mischievous folly of the nominally progressive, but in reality merely Bourbon, effort to turn back the wheels of the modern movement. The loudest of the professional "antitrust" leaders of the last decade, those who have declaimed against all corporations, have sought to treat the size of big business as in itself an evil, and have diverted popular attention from the necessary work of regulating and controlling big corporations to the vain effort to smash and break up all big corporations without regard to their conduct. This has not only represented mere evil and folly; it has represented evil and folly of the genuinely reactionary type. It has represented the obstinate refusal to face the new facts and the new needs. It has represented the foolish desire to return to the very practices which produced the evils against which these men clamor. The politicians and agitators of this type have shown themselves as emphatically Bourbon and Tory as the worst of the trust magnates they have assailed; and have been as mischievous.

We must face the fact that big business has come to stay, and that it cannot be abolished in any great nation under penalty of that nation's slipping out of the front place in international industrialism. During the quarter of a century preceding the present war, England slipped back in business leadership compared to Germany, precisely because in Germany they were beginning to do business on a large scale, by huge combinations. The vital point was that the state when necessary encouraged and at the same time supervised and controlled these big combinations, securing justice and reasonably fair treatment among capitalists, managers, salaried experts and wage-workers—all of whom had some voice in, some control of, at least certain parts of their common business.

In the world of international industry the future belongs to the nation which develops either the big-scale businesses; or else the ability among small-scale business men, workingmen, and farmers, to cooperate, to work together and pool their resources for production, distribution, and the full use of scientific research; or else, what is most desirable, develops both types of business. The small individualistic business cannot compete in any field in which either of the other types flourishes. Therefore, whether we like it or not, we must either permit and encourage the development of these two types or fall behind other nations, as Spain once fell behind England and France. Our duty is not with futile obstinacy to try to stop the new movement, but to guide and control it; to encourage it, and yet to make it subservient to the common good. If we face it in this spirit we shall speedily find that it is far from representing mere evil. On the contrary, it is precisely the strong, wealthy, prosperous business concerns which can afford to treat their workingmen as in the interest of the commonwealth it is imperative that they should be treated. Only—it is necessary that the Government shall possess such control, shall exercise such supervision, over them as to insure the use of their giant and prospering strength in the common interest. It would be as unwise—even if it were possible— to exterminate big corporations as to exterminate big labor unions. But it is eminently wise for the Government to itself make the people a partner of both, to supervise the relations of each to the other and of both to the general public, and gradually to substitute the principle of cooperation for that of Devil-take-the-hind-niost.

To make the Government a partner in this manner is necessary to the wise handling of labor difficulties. The worst faults of trades unionism to-day are largely, and probably mainly, due to past and present misconduct and shortcoming by the capitalists, the corporations. Trades unionism grew up as an effort to organize the resistance of labor to capitalistic exaction; and it has acquired or inherited many of the vices against which it warred. Corporations and labor unions are alike bound to serve the commonwealth. Each must recognize in the future its public duty; and this can only come as the result of the state becoming the partner of both, a partner sincerely anxious to help both, but determined that each shall do its duty. Public opinion can do much, and no governmental movement can succeed without an intelligent and determined public opinion behind it; but the prime necessity is governmental action. This action must have for its goal the guidance of all the men in any business, from the top to the bottom, so that they may severally and jointly make the best use of their lives, and help all of us to make the best use of our common national life. Such action will end in mere nullity unless it encourages the business and helps it to prosper, and therefore welcomes the growth—the large-scale growth—which comes as the result of prosperity; for it is only the big, prosperous, nationalized business, backed by the Government and in close touch with the Government, that can take the long look ahead necessary for the really right treatment of labor; that can plan for a use of labor which will benefit both the community and the worker himself; that can bargain with the man on what is normally a life-time basis, so that he may be thoroughly trained to his job and may know that if he does his work well he has ahead of him in the end leisure, independence, security (and, by the way, this means that the gypsy or roving or unsettled type of worker, who never stays long in one job, is always, whether the fault be his own or his employer's, a detriment to business and a detriment to labor). Under such conditions there can and will come— gradually and by evolution, not revolution—a shift in control which will mean that the competent workers become partners in the enterprise. This partnership must mean not only a sharing of profit, but a sharing in the guidance and management; and therefore it can only come step by step, as the wage workers grow out of the narrow envy and jealousy which make so many men resent superior ability and strive to deny it proper reward. It is not necessary that the Van Homes and the Jim Hills of the future shall receive the enormous financial reward they have had in the past; but it must be substantial, or they will not lead to success the business in which the brakemen, switchmen, engineers, firemen will, we hope, ultimately become part owners as well as workers. Such leadership is absolutely needed by the men below, and it must be handsomely paid for—there is no more mischievous form of privilege than giving equal rewards for unequal service, and denying the great reward to the great service. But it need not be a reward fantastically out of proportion to the reward of the men beneath; the difference need not be many times greater than the differences between the rewards given such men as Lincoln, Farragut and Sheridan, and the rewards given the men in the ranks under them—• and there was not a man in the ranks, worth his salt, who felt that this difference was not more than justified by the difference between the service rendered by the three men named and the service rendered by himself.

This shift in control will help to solve the difficulties connected with "scientific management." Such management becomes intolerable unless it is exercised under conditions which give the wage worker his full share in the benefits accruing; and this is not permanently possible unless the men become more closely associated with the management, so that they may take some part in the guidance, even if only by acquiescence, after they have become thoroughly familiar with the difficulties and have become willing to share the responsibilities.

When the tool user has some ownership in and some control over the tool, the matter of opposition to labor-saving machinery will largely solve itself; for then a substantial part of the benefit will come to the workingman, instead of having it all come as profit to the capitalist, while the workingman may see his job vanish.

Let me again repeat that industrial democracy does not mean handing over the control of matters requiring expert knowledge to masses of men who lack that knowledge; and therefore it does mean that it cannot come until the men in the ranks have sufficient self-knowledge and self-control to accept and demand expert leadership as part of the necessary division of labor. If democracy, whether in industry or politics, refuses to employ experts, it will simply show that it is unfit to survive. At the outset, at least, the share of the workers in control would not be on the business side proper of the management, but over the conditions of daily work —the essentially human side of the industrial process.

Documentation—the mixture of theorizing and paper research—is within reasonable limits good; but experimentation is indispensable. It is only by experiments in the actual work of business that we shall find the exact methods by which, and the exact degree to which, we can measurably realize the ideal. For full success, the trial should be made in a business in which the workers are of a high type in skill, intelligence and character, and are fairly well accustomed to act together. The Government could well afford to experiment along these lines in some of its work. Whenever in private business there is any serious, even although only partial, attempt to try for a solution along these lines, it should receive our sympathetic attention. Let us watch them all with encouragement and open minds—profit-sharing as in the steel corporation, high wages, home building, partial cooperative discipline—no matter what the method. Let us study each attempt, trying especially to look at the results from the workers' standpoint, and ready to learn any lesson, no matter how unexpected nor how much at variance with our preconceived notions. Then, as we gather wisdom, let us go cautiously forward in making the state the guarantor that what has been gained for the worker without its aid shall not be lost because that aid continues to be withheld.

We must   become,   to   a   real degree,  our  brother's keeper, if only for the sake of our own children; for in the long run this world will not be a pleasant living place for our children unless it is also a reasonably comfortable living place for our brother's children. The great scientist, Huxley, was about as far removed from mushy sentimentalism as any man could be; he was a singularly clear-headed man, free from illusions, and with a fine fearlessness in facing truth. In his capital volume, "Method and Result," he lays bare with unsparing hand the folly alike of the ultra-individualist and of the ultra-col-lectivist. He was utterly intolerant of shams, and perhaps especially of the exuberant sham-monger who promises the arrival of the mil-lenium if mankind will adopt his specific patent for the abolition of poverty, or war, or vice, or whatever evil may at the moment be most advertised. Yet Huxley realized absolutely the need of grappling with our social and industrial dangers, if our civilization is to endure or to deserve to endure. Said he: "If there is no hope of a large improvement in the condition of the greater part of the human family; if it is true that the increase of knowledge, the winning of a greater dominion over nature, which is its consequence, and the wealth which follows upon that dominion, are to make no difference in the extent and the intensity of want, with its concomitant physical and moral degradation, among the masses of the people, I should hail the advent of some friendly comet, which would sweep the whole affair away, as a desirable consummation."

This is a stern truth.    Let us keep it steadily in mind, and govern our actions accordingly.

CHAPTER 7
social justice; the brotherly court of philadelphia
SCOCIAL justice means the effort to guard women and children from evil and brutality, and, so far as may be, to secure them against grinding misery. It means also the effort to open the doors of fair dealing to those men who would otherwise find them closed.

We Americans are only on the threshold of the campaign for a better national life. We have only begun to consider our duty toward the child; to realize that the child-drudge is apt to turn into the shiftless grown-up; to realize that the child growing up in the streets has first-class opportunities for tending toward criminality; and, therefore, that playgrounds may be as necessary as schools. We have only begun to realize that the child's mother, if wise and duty-performing, is the only citizen who deserves even more from the state than does the soldier; and that, if in need, she is entitled to help from the state, so that she may rear and care for her children at home. We have only begun to realize that, as regards the father, the man, we must help him to help himself; help him to learn the vitally important and difficult business of cooperation; help him to learn industrial citizenship by beginning to exercise industrial power; and also help him along many different lines by outright governmental action—insurance against sickness, accident, and undeserved unemployment, provision for old age, provision against overwork and unsanitary conditions. To this end we shall ultimately need a system of nationally federated labor exchanges, co-ordinated with the schools, so that both the capacity of the pupil and the demands of industry may be considered. The experiences in the town of Gary, Indiana, have shown how much the right kind of industrial education can improve the efficiency and the character of labor.

Part of the program which includes such matters can be achieved by sheer growth of public opinion, and by many individuals, acting separately or in non-governmental organizations. Part must be secured by wise, moderate, steady action through governmental agencies, through the agencies that represent the people as a whole, that represent all of us. In taking such action we must, as always, remember that the demagogue is as dangerous a public enemy as the corruptionist himself, that the insincere radical is not a whit better than the insincere Tory, and that the enthusiastic fool will probably work even more mischief than the selfish reactionary. All of these men are among the foes of our own household! We must also remember that reforms cost money, and therefore we cannot go into them save in so far as we have the money. Excellent intentions are of no use if we cannot pay our debts. If we impose too great a tax on any business, whether this tax comes in the shape of money directly paid to the Government or of obligations and expenses imposed by governmental action, the business cannot prosper and must be abandoned. Therefore, while we have a right to require that each man shall contribute in proportion to his ability and his privilege, and that as to certain forms of taxation and obligation there shall be a heavy cumulative imposition of duty to go with marked increase in fortune, yet we must be scrupulously careful not to damage the general prosperity. General prosperity is conditioned mainly upon private business prosperity. Such private prosperity, if obtained by swindling in any form, represents general detriment. But it is essential, in the common interest, not to damage legitimate private business by either misdirected or over-rapid activity in securing, for the public at large or for the less fortunate among our fellows, benefits which ought to be secured but which can only be secured if the community as a whole is in a strong, healthy and prosperous condition. It is essential to pass prosperity around; but it is mere common sense to recognize that unless it exists it cannot be passed around. The wage workers must get their full share in the general well-being; but if there is no general well-being there will be no share of it for anybody.

These are excellent sentiments! How can they be realised, even partially, in actual practice? Well, here and there, over the country there are various communities and governmental instrumentalities which actually have in certain fields measurably achieved the purposes above set forth; and to study the practical working of one of these—I choose, as an example, the Municipal Court of Philadelphia—is worth far more than any amount of speculation in vacuo. As engineers put it, the only, and the final, test of theory is the service test.

The really valuable—the invaluable—reform is that which in actual practice works; and therefore the credit due is overwhelmingly greater as regards the men and women actually engaged in doing the job, than as regards the other men and women who merely agitate the subject or write about it—and a single study of a reform which is being applied is worth any number of uplift books which are evolved from the reformer's inner consciousness. Of course there must be agitation in order to get the reform started, and there must be some preliminary theoretical studies, and where the object is really worth while, the agitation sensible as well as zealous, and the studies capable of application, the early agitators and writers deserve well of the community. But under no circumstances do they deserve as well as do the men and women who in very fact make the machinery function to advantage, and who by constant test and trial and experiment eliminate faults and develop new and useful activities. Therefore an institution like the Municipal Court of Philadelphia deserves the study—and the cordial support—of all who desire to achieve something definite toward giving aid to those who most need it.

The purposes of the Municipal Court were admirably set forth, when it was established, by its nine judges in the following statement to the public:

"The civil side of the court will be managed to give prompt but equitable justice to creditors and debtors, brushing aside the legal crusts, the observance of which, while dear to those who admire the growth of the law, causes much unnecessary delay in settling disputes. The elimination of unnecessary technicalities will give a sane and effective settlement of the obligations between suitors.

"The delinquent and criminal side will be guarded to reduce the number of complaints by bringing together, as far as possible, those estranged, and to render a trial that will guard the right of the individual. We assume the right of persons to be equal to, or even paramount to, that of property, and, while protecting the one, we will strive to save the person to himself and society, recognizing that the value of a nation is based on unit life. We will not be theoretical, but practical. While dealing on this plane with those who should know right from wrong, we will try to save and protect those who may be redeemed, and we will utilize the corrective purposes of the law upon others whose acts and doings will benefit society by their absence.

"We will deal with the juvenile in a manner that will correct ills and reduce delinquency by removing the causes thereof, with the purpose of not only correcting the child, but using the child to correct the parents and make the home."

It was my good fortune to pass part of a day at the court, watching it in action; and even a superficial examination was enough to show how well the court was succeeding in its purposes.

The court has explicitly announced that it will eliminate from its action those legalistic technicalities so dear to the legalistic mind, so ruinous from the standpoint of justice, and so heartbreaking from the standpoint of humanity. The court has faithfully kept its promise. The court puts the protection of property high—and it is emphatically proper in so doing, for full protection of property is an essential to civilization; but it puts human rights even higher, laying down the rule that its duty is to save the individual both for himself and for society. The court draws the necessary line against foolish sentimentality with clearness when it says that it will endeavor to save and protect those who can be redeemed, to remove the causes of youthful delinquency, correct parents, preserve the home, and, where possible, reconcile those who are estranged outside of the court; but that it will use the corrective and punitive purposes of the law upon those whose segregation from society is necessary for the well-being of society.

This spirit is something wholly different from what any court would have shown even a generation ago; and it is as remote from the spirit of Blackstone as from that of Hammurabi. It represents, inasmuch as it has been translated into action, that ideal of service v* hich—in spite of the way it is often warped, by silly sentimentality as much as by selfish materialism—is here and there taking root in our governmental, social, and industrial systems.

While visiting the court I myself saw instance after instance of the way in which the court has humanized its procedure at the points which most concern the average citizen, the man or woman who most sadly needs an understanding and sympathetic justice and to whom mere formal legal-ism is a brazen wall, forbidding all access to justice.

In one of the rooms a most charming and capable woman presided as a court official—and, incidentally, it is nonsense to limit appointments of judges of the Municipal Courts exclusively to men when there are some women pre-eminently fit for the position. She had various women and girls as assistants; neatly dressed, attractive— pleasant, smiling assistants, with nothing of the awful and gloomy solemnity of the professional uplifter about them. One of these assistants, herself, I think, of Italian parentage, but looking like any bright American girl, was dealing with two rather forlorn, battered persons, a man and a woman, Italian immigrants of the lower laboring class. They had quarreled bitterly some months previously, had separated, and had then indulged in mutual recriminations of a type which would have made any one not accustomed to their habits of thought and expression abandon all hope or even desire to get them together. But the brave and experienced young girl who was getting them together possessed both an authoritative mind and an understanding heart. When I appeared the pair had been persuaded to "talk things over," each had admitted the loneliness caused by the absence of the other, and before I left a rather effusive reconciliation took place, and the reunited couple left court.

I was much interested, and in response to my queries I was told that already, during the court's short life, considerably over a thousand similar cases had been settled, each being promptly dealt with on a basis of common sense and sympathy, and each being carefully followed afterward so as to secure every opportunity for the settlement to be permanent.

Another branch of the court's work deals with small suits for damages and unpaid bills. People of means and leisure have no conception of the amount of misery due to the causes which lie hidden behind these small suits. They represent in the aggregate an extraordinary amount of bitterness, and they ferment into economic unrest, violent social revolt, and much individual crime and failure. Organizations such as the admirable Legal Aid Society have been created especially to deal with them. The Philadelphia Municipal Court settles them on the average in as many days as it formerly took months in the ordinary courts. As an illustration of the cases dealt with, take the following:

A salesman in a hat store brought suit for a week's wages. The defense of his employers was that he was not entitled to a full week's wages, having been discharged for cause, in that he had left their store to take a hat across the street to a rival concern to have a small repairing job done. That was considered so indiscreet by the employers that he was discharged at once, and paid only for the days he had worked. The salesman's reply was that he had been instructed by his employers not to accept small repair jobs. The particular job in question was brought to him by an old customer of the store, and the salesman thought he would retain the good will of the customer and his continued trade by having the little job done at once. The salesman had been with the concern for a number of years, which was evidence of his reliability and prior good conduct. The judge who heard the case suggested to the employers that they withdraw temporarily and talk the matter over with their former employee. The result was that the salesman not only received his week's wages, but was re-engaged by his employers.

A servant girl brought suit against her former mistress for wages. The hearing brought out these facts: The servant girl had a new pair of shoes which squeaked, and as she clumped around the floor, waiting on the table, the mistress became nervous and ordered her to walk on her tiptoes. The girl obeyed for several days, until one evening, when there were guests at dinner, she came clumping in with her squeaking shoes. The mistress thereupon discharged her without paying her her wages. The girl told the Court she walked on her tiptoes until the muscles of her legs were so sore that she could not continue to obey her mistress' instructions. The Court, in a friendly talk, pointed out to the mistress the unreasonableness of her demands, and she thereupon paid the girl her wages.

The Juvenile Court side of the work is, o* course, in many ways the most important of all. Thousands of boys and girls are dealt with. Formerly they were merely treated as "bad," and they were dealt with in ways that made them worse. This court, like other such courts, treats them wherever possible as having been warped, or starved, or misdirected, and with a mixture of sanity and good temper—and firmness! always firmness!—sets them on the right path, tries in some degree to smooth the path, and, above all, tries to put heart into them. Moreover, thank Heaven, the court thoroughly understands that while public institutions for the care and correction of boys are often lamentable necessities, where there is no home, or where the home is hopelessly vile, yet that even the humblest home, if it possesses anything of the right spirit, is a better place for right upbringing than the best equipped public institution. The "institutionalized" boy or girl is recognized as a rather uncomfortable problem even by those who also fully recognize the great service rendered by many institutions to children who would otherwise be on the streets or worse. Perhaps we shall ultimately realize the similar danger in the "standardized" child, or man or woman. •"Standardize" is one of the fashionable terms of the day; there are plenty of lines of human endeavor—notably in minimum wages and in minimum standards of comfort in the working and living conditions of laborers—in which standardization is eminently proper; but it is peculiarly easy to misdevelop it into a wooden and cramping formalism.

The Juvenile Workers' Bureau in connection with the Philadelphia Municipal Court represents the pioneer effort to run an employment agency of this kind. It meets a very real need; for all social workers, and almost all decent citizens who have tried to do occasional work for the neighbors who have been "in trouble," know how hard it is to place probationers. The bureau persuades the employer that the "bad" boy may really be good at heart and in purpose, but needs work and some one to take an interest in him. The practical success of the bureau has been striking, especially when it dealt with boys with whom the real difficulty was that they had too much steam and no outlet for it. Of course there are many obstacles to be overcome; one of the gravest is the fact that many of the boys who have special qualifications for certain kinds of work have no qualification for the work which is easiest to obtain, such as that of an office boy. In the very interesting report of the court, acknowledgment is made of the kind and helpful cooperation of many of the leading professional and business firm,s of Philadelphia. In the report is given an example of the way in which helping a given boy sometimes results in helping an entire family, thanks to the kindness of some outside individual whose sympathy has been enlisted:

"Michael, the probationer, was 14 years old, the oldest of five children and the only member of the family able to work. We obtained a position for Michael and delved into his history. We found that the father had been in ill health and was idle for some time and that the family lived in two rooms iu a tenement house in the downtown section. We enlisted the interest of a prominent Main Line physician, who needed a farmer, and though Michael's father knew very little about farming, the physician agreed to take him. The family moved to a cottage on the estate and the change has been most beneficial in every way. The earning capacity of the family was largely increased, with the result that the services of Michael as a wage earner are no longer needed and he is permitted to continue his school studies. From extreme poverty this family is now,enjoying a comfortable living. The father receives $30 a month and free rent. The mother is employed several days a week, and sometimes oftener, in the physician's house, earning $1.50 each day. The oldest girl of 12 years washes the dishes after mealtime and is paid ten cents for each service.

"This is only one case out of many. Early in the history of the bureau, when times were particularly trying and there were many probationers out of employment, we interested 108 persons in 14 families who were greatly in need of
assistance."

But the bureau never commits the dreadful fault of reducing all cases to the same test. It tries to keep the family together, so long as there is any possibility of good coming from the effort; but where necessary it unhesitatingly protects and separates the boy or girl from the drunken mother or brutal father. In other words, it always strives to act with common sense, and as the peculiar needs of the case in hand require. A large number of philanthropically minded persons of excellent intention need to keep themselves perpetually in check by reading books by such admirably practical workers as Miss Loame shows herself to be in that philanthropic classic, "The Next Street But One." The Philadelphia Municipal Court stands in no such need.

The court uses every agency to facilitate its purpose—playgrounds, settlement houses, and schools. The regular probation officers do work for which there could be no complete substitute; but it can be supplemented by the Big Brother movement, and the probation officers do all they can to help in the creation of a Big Brother organization. As in other divisions of the court, so in the Juvenile division every effort is made to settle cases without bringing them into court, and, if they have to be brought in, to deal with them promptly.

One of the most difficult, and most melancholy, features of the court's work is in connection with sex crimes. Special effort is made in the case of illegitimate children to secure from the father proper care for the mother and child. In the bad old days—and in accord with the principle upheld not only by men, but by most sheltered women, who were selfish, unimaginative, and free from temptation—the whole burden fell on the wretched woman. She had to care for both herself and the child, the man, even if committed, paying a mere pittance. Even yet this wretched inequality of duty and penalty has been but imperfectly remedied; the changes, however, are in the right direction. I was myself sufficiently under the rule of tradition to assume that the desirable thing was to secure the marriage of the parents; but the lady who was chief of the woman's division of the criminal department explained to me that in actual practice this had not been found desirable. What was needed from the father was that he should do his full share in supporting the child until it was of age. The so-called "forced" marriages usually cause much unhappiness and rarely result in permanent good. The maternal instinct is strong; the unmarried mother rarely deserts her child; while the father is only too apt to show an animal-like indifference to it.

The hearing is in private, and the suffering woman—she may or may not be a wronged woman •—tells her story to another woman, skilled to find out the facts, and to secure the best solution possible. The applicant is cared for until the birth of the child, and until she has recovered her strength; every effort is made to secure her work, so that she may keep her child; and every effort is made to get the father to pay his full share. If the father and mother desire to marry, they are of course encouraged to do so.

Some rather unexpected results were developed by the inquiries into the cases of illegitimacy. To my surprise I was told that the vast majority of unmarried mothers were of normal mentality; feeble-mindedness played a small part. Another surprise to me was the discovery that nearly half of the unmarried mothers were living at home, and were therefore supposedly sheltered; but relatively few of these came into court. Nearly a fourth were in domestic service. The remainder were in various occupations; and a much larger percentage of these than of domestic servants came into court to assert their rights.

This is the merest sketch of what the court is doing. Some of the work is of a kind never before attempted; for example, there has never before been an attempt made by court officials to secure a reconciliation between man and wife before permitting the case to come for trial. There is a constant effort to perfect the machinery; and with this in view the records are kept with extraordinary thoroughness.

But the distinguishing feature of the court is not the machinery, but the human factor. The court officers feel a genuine sympathy for the men, women and children who come before them, or whom they seek out. No machine is of use without men and women of the right sort behind it. In the Municipal Court of Philadelphia, as in every other really first-class institution, the human equation is of paramount importance; it is the sane, zealous, disinterested work of the judges and all the other court officials to which the striking quality of the success must be attributed.

CHAPTER 8
SOCIALISM  VERSUS  SOCIAL REFORM
IT is always difficult to discuss a question when it proves impossible to define the terms in which that question is to be discussed. Therefore there is not much to be gained by a discussion of Socialism versus Individualism in the abstract. Neither absolute Individualism nor absolute Socialism would be compatible with civilization at all; and among the arguments of the extremists of either side the only unanswerable ones are those which show the absurdity of the position of the other. Not so much as the first step towards real civilization can be taken until there arises some development of the right of private property; that is, until men pass out of the stage of savage socialism in which the violent and the thriftless forcibly constitute themselves co-heirs with the industrious and the intelligent in what the labor of the latter produces. But it is equally true that every step toward civilization is marked by a check on individualism. The ages that have passed have fettered the individualism, which found expression in physical violence, and we are now endeavoring to put shackles on that kind of individualism which finds expression in craft and greed. There is growth in all such matters. The individualism of the Tweed Ring type would have seemed both commonplace and meritorious to the Merovingian Franks, where it was not entirely beyond their comprehension; and so in future ages, if the world progresses as we hope and believe it will progress, the standards of conduct which permit individuals to make money out of pestilential tenements or by the manipulation of stocks, or to refuse to share with their employees the burdens laid upon the latter by old age and by the inevitable physical risks in a given business, will seem as amazing to our descendants as we now find the standards of a society which regarded Clovis and his immediate successors as pre-eminently fit for leadership.

There are many American "Socialists" to whom "Socialism" is merely a rather vaguely conceived catchword, and who use it to express their discontent with existing wrongs and their purpose to correct them. These may be men of high character, who wish to protest against concrete and cruel injustice. So far as they make any proposals which tend towards betterment, we can wisely act with them. But the real, logical, advanced Socialists, who teach their faith as both a creed and a party platform, may deceive to their ruin decent and well-meaning, but short-sighted men; and there is need of plain speaking in order accurately to show the trend of their teaching. The leaders of the Socialist party have, in the present war, shown themselves the enemies of America, and the tools of German militaristic brutality.

The immorality and absurdity of the doctrines of Socialism as propounded by these advanced advocates are quite as great as those of the advocates of an unlimited individualism. As an academic matter Herbert Spencer stands as far to one side of the line of sane action as Marx stands on the other. But practically there is more need of refutation of the creed of absolute Socialism than of the creed of absolute individualism; for it happens that at the present time a greater number of visionaries, both sinister and merely dreamy, believe in the former than in the latter. One difficulty in arguing with professed Socialists of the extreme type, however, is that those of them who are sincere almost invariably suffer from great looseness of thought; for if they did not keep their faith nebulous, it would at once become abhorrent in the eyes of any upright and sensible man. The doctrinaire Socialists, the extremists, the self-styled "scientific" Socialists, the men who represent the doctrine in its most advanced form, are, and must necessarily be, not only convinced opponents of private property, but also bitterly hostile to religion and morality; in short, they must be opposed to all those principles through which, and through which alone, even an imperfect civilization can be built up by slow advances through the ages.

Indeed, these thoroughgoing Socialists occupy, in relation to all morality, and especially to domestic morality, a position which can only be described as revolting. In America the leaders even of this type have usually been cautious about stating frankly that they proposed to substitute free love for married and family life as we have it, although many of them do in a round-about way uphold this position. In places on the continent of Europe, however, they are more straightforward, their attitude being that of the extreme French Socialist writer, M. Gabrielle Deville, who announces that the Socialists intend to do away with both prostitution and marriage, which he regards as equally wicked—his method of doing away with prostitution being to make unchastity universal. Professor Carl Pearson, a leading English Socialist, states their position exactly: "The sex relation of the future will not be regarded as a union for the birth of children, but as the closest form of friendship between man and woman. It will be accompanied by no child-bearing or rearing, or by this in a much more limited number than at present. With the sex relationship, so long as it does not result in children, we hold that the state in the future will in no wise interfere, but when it does result in children, then the state will have a right to interfere." He then goes on to point out that in order to save the woman from, "economic dependence" upon the father of her children, the children will be raised at the expense of the state; the usual plan being to have huge buildings like foundling asylums.

Mr. Pearson is a scientific man who, in his own realm, is worthy of serious heed, and the above quotation states in naked form just what logical scientific Socialism would really come to. Aside from its thoroughly repulsive quality, it ought not to be necessary to point out that the condition of affairs aimed at would in actual practice bring about the destruction of the race within at most a couple of generations; and such destruction would be heartily to be desired for any race of such infamous character as to tolerate such a system. Moreover, the ultra-Socialists of our own country have shown on occasion, that, so far as law and public sentiment will permit, they are ready to try to realize the ideals set forth by Messrs. Deville and Pearson. To those who doubt this statement I commend a book called "Socialism; the Nation of Fatherless Children," a book dedicated to the American Federation of Labor. The chapters on Free Love, Homeless Children, and Two Socialist leaders are especially worth reading by any one who is for the moment confused by the statements of certain Socialist leaders to the effect that advanced Socialism does not contemplate an attack upon marriage and the family.

These same Socialist leaders, with a curious effrontery, at times deny that the exponents of "scientific Socialism" assume a position as regards industry which in condensed form may be stated as, that each man is to do what work he can, or, in other words, chooses, and in return is to take out from the common fund whatever he needs; or, what amounts to the same thing, that each man shall have equal remuneration with every other man, no matter what work is done. If they will turn to a little book recently written in England called "The Case Against Socialism," they will find by looking at, say, pages 229 and 300, or indeed almost at random through the book, quotations from recognized Socialist leaders taking exactly this position; indeed, it is the position generally taken—though it is often opposed or qualified, for Socialist leaders usually think confusedly, and often occupy inconsistent positions. Mrs. Besant, for instance, putting it pithily, says that we must come to the "equal remuneration of all workers"; and one of her colleagues, that "the whole of our creed is that industry shall be carried on, not for the profit of those engaged in it, whether masters or men, but for the benefit of the community. ... It is not for the miners, bootmakers, or shop assistants as such that we Socialists claim the profits of industry, but for the citizen." In our own country, in "Socialism Made Plain," a book officially circulated by the Milwaukee division of the Socialist party, the statement is explicit: "Under the labor time-check medium of exchange proposed by Socialists, any laborer could exchange the wealth he produced in any given number of hours for the wealth produced by any other laborer in the same number of hours." It is unnecessary to point out that the pleasing idea of these writers could be realized only if the state undertook the duty of task-master, for otherwise it is not conceivable that anybody whose work would be worth anything would work at all under such conditions. Under this type of Socialism, therefore, or communism, the Government would have to be the most drastic possible despotism; a despotism so drastic that its realization would only be an ideal. Of course in practice such a system could not work at all; and incidentally the mere attempt to realize it would necessarily be accompanied by a corruption so gross that the blackest spot of corruption in any existing form of city government would seem bright by comparison.

In other words, on the social and domestic side doctrinaire Socialism would replace the family and home life by a glorified state free-lunch counter and state foundling asylum, deliberately enthroning self-indulgence as the ideal, with, on its darker side, the absolute abandonment of all morality as between man and woman; while in place of what Socialists call "wage slavery" there would be created a system which would necessitate either the prompt dying out of the community through sheer starvation, or an iron despotism over all workers, compared to which any slave system of the past would seem beneficent, because less utterly hopeless.

"Advanced" Socialists leaders are fond of declaiming against patriotism, of announcing their movement as international, and of claiming to treat all men alike. As regards patriotism their practice is generally as bad as their preaching;-in this war the Socialist leaders have played the part of traitors to America, and many sincere men have in consequence left the Socialist party —although as so many of the Socialist leaders here are Germans, and as they have been warm upholders of every revolting act of the German autocracy, they may claim that their patriotism is merely inverted. But as regards real internationalism, the Socialists would not for one moment stand the test of actual experiment. If the leaders of the Socialist party in America should to-day endeavor to force their followers to admit all negroes and Chinamen to a real equality, their party would promptly disband,' and rather than submit to such putting into effect of their avowed purpose, would, as a literal fact, follow any capitalistic organization as an alternative.

It is not accident that makes thoroughgoing and radical Socialists adopt the principles of free love as a necessary sequence to insisting that no man shall have the right to what he earns. When Socialism of this really advanced and logical type, or any social system really, although not nominally, akin to it, is tried as it was in France in 1792, and again under the Commune in 1871, it is inevitable that the movement, ushered in with every kind of high-sounding phrase, should rapidly spread so as to include, not merely the forcible acquisition of the property of others, but every conceivable form of monetary corruption, immorality, licentiousness, and murderous violence. In theory, distinctions can be drawn between this kind of Socialism and anarchy and nihilism; but in practice, as in 1871, the apostles of all three act together; and if the doctrines of any of them could be applied universally, all the troubles of society would indeed cease, because society itself would cease. The poor and the helpless, especially women and children, would be the first to die out, and the few survivors would go back to the condition of skin-clad savages, so that the whole painful and laborious work of social development would have to begin over again. Of course, long before such an event really happened the Socialistic regime would have been overturned, and in the reaction men would welcome any kind of one-man tyranny that was compatible with the existence of civilization.

So much for the academic side of unadulterated, or as its advocates style it, "advanced scientific" Socialism. Its representatives in this country who have practically striven to act up to their extreme doctrines, and have achieved leadership in any one of the branches of the Socialist party, especially the parlor Socialists and the like, be they lay or clerical, deserve scant consideration at the hands of honest and clean-living men and women. What their movement leads to may be gathered from the fact that in several Presidential elections they nominated and voted for a man who earned his livelihood as the editor of a paper which not merely practiced every form of malignant and brutal slander, but condoned and encouraged every form of brutal wrong-doing, so long as either the slander or the violence was supposed to be at the expense of a man who owned something—wholly without regard to whether that man was himself a scoundrel, or a wise, kind and helpful member of the community. As for the so-called Christian Socialists who associate themselves with this movement, they either are or ought to be aware of the pornographic literature, the pornographic propaganda, which make up one side of the movement. That criminal nonsense should be listened to eagerly by some men bowed down by the cruel conditions of much of modern toil is not strange; but that men who pretend to speak with culture of mind and authority to teach, men who are or have been preachers of the Gospel or professors in universities, should affiliate themselves with the preachers of criminal nonsense is a sign of grave mental or moral shortcoming.

I wish it to be remembered that I speak from the standpoint of, and on behalf of, the wage worker and the tiller of the soil. These are the two men whose welfare I have ever before me, and for their sakes I would do anything, except anything that is wrong; and it is because I believe that teaching them doctrine like that which I have stigmatized represents the most cruel wrong in the long run, both to wage worker and to earth-tiller, that I reprobate and denounce such conduct.
We need have but scant patience with those who assert that modern conditions are all that they should be, or that they cannot be immensely improved. The wildest or most vicious of Socialistic writers could preach no more foolish doctrine than that contained in some ardent defenses of uncontrolled capitalism and individualism. There are dreadful woes in modern life, dreadful suffering among some of those who toil, brutal wrong-doing among some of those who make colossal fortunes by exploiting the toilers. It is the duty of every honest and upright man, of every man who holds within his breast the capacity for righteous indignation, to recognize these wrongs, and to strive with all his might to bring about a better condition of things. But he will never bring about this better condition by misstating facts and advocating remedies which are not merely false, but fatal.

Take, for instance, the doctrine of the extreme Socialists, that all wealth is produced by manual workers, that the entire product of labor should be handed over every day to the laborer, that wealth is criminal in itself. Of course wealth or property is no more criminal than labor. Human society could not exist without both; and if all wealth were abolished this week, the majority of laborers would starve next week. As for the statement that all wealth is produced by manual workers, in order to appreciate its folly it is merely necessary for any man to look at what is happening right around him, in the next street, or the next village. In New York, on Broadway between Ninth and Tenth Streets, is a huge dry-goods store. The business was originally started, and the block of which I am speaking was built for the purpose, by an able New York merchant. It prospered. He and those who invested under him made a good deal of money. Their employees did well. Then he died, and certain other people took possession of it and tried to run the business. The manual labor was the same, the goodwill was the same, the physical conditions were the same, but the guiding intelligence at the top had changed. The business was run at a loss. It would surely have had to shut, and all the employees, clerks, laborers, have been turned adrift, to infinite suffering, if it had not again changed hands and another business man of capacity taken charge. The business was the same as before, the physical conditions were the same, the good-will the same, the manual labor the same, but the guiding intelligence had changed, and now everything once more prospered, and prospered as had never been the case before. With such an instance before our very eyes, with such proof of what every business proves, namely, the vast importance of the part played by the guiding intelligence in business, as in war, in invention, in art, in science, in every imaginable pursuit, it is really difficult to show patience when asked to discuss such a proposition as that all wealth is produced solely by the work of manual workers, and that the entire product should be handed over to them. Of course, if any such theory were really acted upon, there would soon be no product to be handed over to the manual laborers, and they would die of starvation. When the workers themselves recognize the need of able, highly skilled and well-paid managers and leaders they will be able themselves to own and control great industries. But until this is done a great industry can no more be managed by a mass-meeting of manual laborers than a battle can be won in such fashion, than a painters' union can paint a Rembrandt, or a typographical union write one of Shakespeare's plays.

The fact is that this kind of Socialism represents an effort to enthrone privilege in its crudest form. Much of what we are fighting against in modern civilization is privilege. We fight against privilege when it takes the form of a franchise to a street railway company to enjoy the use of the streets of a great city without paying an adequate return; when it takes the form of a great business combination which grows rich by rebates which are denied to other shippers; when it takes the form of a stock-gambling operation which results in the watering of railway securities so that certain inside men get an enormous profit out of a swindle on the public. All these represent various forms of illegal, or, if not illegal, then antisocial, privilege. But there can be no greater abuse, no greater example of corrupt and destructive privilege, than that advocated by those who say that each man should put into a common store what he can and take out what he needs. This is merely another way of saying that the thriftless and the vicious, who could or would put in but little, should be entitled to take out the earnings of the intelligent, the foresighted, and the industrious. Such a proposition is morally base. To choose to live by theft or by charity necessarily means the complete loss of self-respect. The worst wrongs that capitalism can commit upon labor would sink into insignificance when compared with the hideous wrong done by those who would degrade labor by entailing upon it the rapid lowering of self-reliance. The Roman mob, living on the bread given them by the state and clamoring for excitement and amusement to be purveyed by the state, represent for all time the very nadir to which a free and self-respecting population of workers can sink if they grow habitually to rely upon others, and especially upon the state, either to furnish them, charity, or to permit them to plunder, as a means of livelihood.

In short, it is simply common sense to recognize that there is the widest inequality of service, and that therefore there must be a reasonably wide inequality of reward, if our society is to rest upon the basis of justice and wisdom. Service is the true test by which a man's worth should be judged. We are against privilege in any form: privilege to the capitalist who exploits the poor man, and privilege to the shiftless or vicious poor man who would rob his thrifty brother of what he has earned. Certain exceedingly valuable forms of service are rendered wholly without capital. On the other hand, there are exceedingly valuable forms of service which can be rendered only by means of great accumulations of capital, and not to recognize this fact would be to deprive our whole people of one of the great agencies for their betterment.

The test of a man's worth to the community is the service he renders to it, and we cannot afford to make this test by material considerations alone. One of the main vices of the Socialism which was propounded by Proud-hon, Lassalle, and Marx, and which is preached by their disciples and imitators, is that it is blind to everything except the merely material side of life. It is not only indifferent, but at bottom hostile, to the intellectual, the religious, the domestic and moral life; it is a form of communism with no moral foundation, but essentially based on the immediate annihilation of personal ownership of capital, and, in the near future, the annihilation of the family, and ultimately the annihilation of civilization.

But the more we condemn unadulterated Marxian Socialism, the stouter should be our insistence on thoroughgoing social reforms. As for the distinction between Marxian Socialism and that socialism, which is merely another name for social reform, I commend all who are interested to the little book by Vladimir Simkovich called "Marxism versus Socialism."

It is true that the doctrines of communistic Socialism, if consistently followed, mean the ultimate annihilation of civilization. Yet the converse is also true. Ruin faces us if we decline to try tb reshape our whole civilization in accordance with the law of service, and if we permit ourselves to be misled by any empirical or academic consideration into refusing to exert the common power of the community where only collective action can do what individualism has left undone, or can remedy the wrongs done by an unrestricted and ill-regulated individualism. There is terrible evil in our social and industrial conditions to-day, and unless we recognize this fact and try resolutely to do what we can to remedy the evil, we run great risk of seeing men in their misery turn to the false teachers whose doctrines would indeed lead them to greater misery, but who do at least recognize the fact that they are now miserable.

I have scant patience with the men who fear to adopt necessary reforms lest they be stigmatized as "socialistic." Let us not be frightened by the term. Personally I believe that our young men should all render industrial service as well as military service. There is no necessary work which any man should regard as dishonorable; but there is plenty of necessary work which it is not a good thing for any one to have to do all his life; and there are seasonal industries which demand for short periods large numbers of workers but offer them no steady employment. A year's industrial service to the commonwealth by every young man would be an Advantage from every standpoint. It would generally be hard, unskilled labor; it would build up the man himself, physically and morally; it would prevent the permanent employment of men in trades which no man should permanently follow; it would enable the state to help meet crises in the demand for occasional or seasonal labor; it would greatly develop mutual sympathy and understanding among all sorts of rich and poor who had actually toiled at the same tasks. Of course I recognize that this is for the far future. But immediate needs can be met. At the present time there are scores of laws in the interest of wage workers and soil-tillers, of workingmen and farmers, which should be passed by the National and the various State Legislatures; and those who wish to do effective work against Socialism would do well to turn their energies into securing the enactment of these laws.

It cannot be too often said that Socialism is both a wide and a loose term, and that the self-styled Socialists are of many and utterly different types. If we should study only the professed apostles of radical Socialism, or if we should study only what active leaders of Socialism in this country have usually done, or read only the papers in which they have usually expressed themselves—which papers, by the way, are at least as low in moral tone, at least as reckless in their mendacity, as the worst "capitalist" sheets—we would gain an utterly wrong impression of very many persons who call themselves Socialists. The recent experience of the Socialist mayor of Schenectady with the Socialist state "machine," as told by himself, shows that the worst abuses of machine and boss tyranny in the old political parties are surpassed in practice by the conduct of the Socialist party when in power. Nevertheless there are plenty of self-styled Socialists who have proved themselves excellent public servants. There are many peculiarly high-minded men and women who like to speak of themselves as Socialists, but whose attitude, conscious or unconscious, is really merely an indignant recognition of the evil of present conditions and an ardent wish to remedy them, and whose Socialism is really only an advanced form of liberalism. Many of these men and women do in actual fact take a large part in the advancement of moral ideas, and in practice wholly repudiate the purely materialistic, and therefore sordid, doctrines of those Socialists whose creed really is in sharp antagonism to every principle of public and domestic morality, and who do war on private property with a bitterness but little greater than that with which they war against the institutions of the home and the family, and against every form, of religion, Catholic or Protestant. The Socialists of this moral type may in practice be very good citizens indeed, with whom we can at many points cooperate. They are often joined temporarily with what are called the "opportunist Socialists"— those who may advocate an impossible and highly undesirable Utopia as a matter of abstract faith, but who in practice try to secure the adoption only of some given principle which will do away with some phase of existing wrong. With these two groups of Socialists it is often possible and indeed necessary for all far-sighted men to join heartily in the effort to secure a given reform or do away with a given abuse. Probably, in practice, wherever and whenever Socialists of these two types are able to form themselves into a party, they will disappoint both their own expectations and the fears of others by acting very much like other parties, like other aggregations of men; and it will be safe to adopt whatever they advance that is wise, and to reject whatever they advance that is foolish, just as we have to do as regards countless other groups who on one issue or set of issues come together to strive for a change in the political or social conditions of the world we live in. The important thing is generally the "next step." We ought not to take it unless we are sure that it is advisable; but we should not hesitate to take it when once we are sure; and we can safely join with others who also wish to take it, without bothering our heads overmuch as to any somewhat fantastic theories they may have concerning, say, the two hundredth step, which is not yet in sight.

There are many schemes proposed which their enemies, and a few of their friends, are pleased to call Socialistic, or which are indorsed and favored by men who call themselves Socialists, but which are entitled each to be considered on its merits with regard only to the practical advantage which each would confer. Every public man, every reformer, is bound to refuse to dismiss these schemes with the shallow statement that they are "Socialistic"; for such an attitude is one of mere mischievous dogmatism. There are communities in which our system of state education is still resisted and condemned as Socialism; and we have seen in this country men who were themselves directors in National banks which were supervised by the Government, object to such supervision of other corporations by the Government on the ground that it was "Socialistic." An employers' liability or old-age pension law is no more Socialistic than a fire department; the regulation of railway rates is by no means as Socialistic as the digging and enlarging of the Erie Canal at the expense of the state. As communities become more thickly settled and their lives more complex, it grows ever more and more necessary for some of the work formerly performed by individuals, each for himself, to be performed by the community for the community as a whole. Isolated farms need no complicated system of sewerage; but this does not mean that public control of sewerage in a great city should be resisted on the ground that it tends toward Socialism. Nowadays nobody denies this particular proposition, but there are plenty of persons who deny precisely similar propositions. Let each proposition be treated on its own merits, soberly and cautiously, but without any of that rigidity of mind which fears all reform. If, for instance, the question arises as to the establishment of day nurseries for the children of mothers who work in factories, the obvious thing to do is to approach it with an open mind, listen to the arguments for and against, and, if necessary, try the experiment in actual practice. We cannot afford to dismiss such a proposition off-hand as "Socialistic." We should look into the matter with an open mind, and try to find out, not what we want the facts to be, but what the facts really are.

Again we cannot afford to subscribe to the doctrine, equally hard and foolish, that the welfare of the children in the tenement-house district is no concern of the community as a whole. If the child of the thronged city cannot live in decent surroundings, have teaching, have room to play, have good water and clean air, then not only will he suffer, but in the next generation the whole community will to a greater or less degree share his suffering. If this be Socialism, make the most of it!

In striving to better our industrial life we must ever keep in mind that, while we cannot afford to neglect its material side, we can even less afford to disregard its moral and intellectual side. Each of us is bound to remember that he is in very truth his brother's keeper, and that his duty is, with judgment and common sense, to try to help the brother. To the base and greedy attitude of mind which adopts as its motto, "What is thine is mine," we oppose the doctrine of service, the doctrine that insists that each of us, in no hysterical manner, but with common sense and good judgment, and without neglect of his or her own interests, shall yet act on the saying, "What is mine I will in good measure make thine also."

We should all join in the effort to do away with any evil; we should realize that failure to grapple with grave evil may mean ruin in the future; but we should refuse to have anything to do with remedies which are either absurd or mischievous, for such, of course, would merely aggravate the present suffering. The first thing to recognize is that, while economic reform is often vital, it is never all-sufficient. The moral reform, the change of character—in which law can sometimes play a large, but never the largest, part—is the most necessary of all.

There are many questions as to which the ultra-socialists occupy a position which is not merely indifferent, but antogonistic to all morality. As I have already said, this is notably true as regards the questions of sex. In dealing with the marriage relation the Socialist attitude is one of unmixed evil. Our effort should be to raise the level of self-respect, self-control, sense of duty in both sexes, and not to push them down to an evil equality of moral turpitude by doing away with the self-restraint and sense of obligation which have been slowly built up through the ages. We must bring them to a moral level by raising the lower standard, not by depressing the high.

However—and this we must say again, and again, and again—the fact that the professed socialists hold views that are on some points profoundly immoral, does not in the smallest degree excuse us from warring against existing evils. To fail to do so would rank us among the foes of this nation's own household. And in thus warring, we must lose sight neither of our moral nor of our economic needs.

We should do everything that can be done, by law or otherwise, to keep the avenues of occupation, of employment, of work, of interest, so open that there shall be, so far as it is humanly possible to achieve it, a measureable equality of opportunity; an equality of opportunity for each man to show the stuff that is in him. We ought, as far as possible, to make it possible for each man to obtain the education, the training which will enable him, to take advantage of the opportunity, if he has the stuff in him to do so. When it comes to reward, let each man, within the limits set by a sound and far-sighted morality, get what, by his energy, intelligence, thrift, courage, he is able to get, with the opportunity open. We must set our faces against privilege; just as much against the kind of privilege which would let the shiftless and lazy laborer take what his brother has earned as against the privilege which allows the huge capitalist to take toll to which he is not entitled. We stand for equality of opportunity, but not for equality of reward unless there is also equality of service. If the service is equal, let the reward be equal; but let the reward depend on the service; and, mankind being composed as it is, there will be inequality of service for a long time to come, no matter how great the equality of opportunity may be; and just so long as there is inequality of service it is eminently desirable that there should be inequality of reward.

We recognize, and are bound to war against, the evils of to-day. The remedies are partly economic and partly spiritual, partly to be obtained by laws, and in greater part to be obtained by individual and associated effort; for character is the vital matter, and character cannot be created by law. These remedies include a religious and moral teaching which shall increase the spirit of human brotherhood; an educational system which shall train men for every form of useful service—• and which shall train us to prize common sense no less than morality; such a division of the profits of industry as shall tend to encourage intelligent and thrifty tool-users to become tool-owners ; and a Government so strong, just, wise, and democratic that, neither lagging too far behind nor pushing heedlessly in advance, it may do its full share in promoting these ends.

CHAPTER  9
the farmer; the corner-stone of civilization
"DECENTLY an Indiana woman was peeling some potatoes, and in a hollow in one she found a note from the Southern farmer who had raised the potatoes running:

"I got 690. a bushel for these potatoes. How much did you pay for them?"
She wrote back:
"I paid $4 per bushel."
The farmer sent her just one more letter. It said:

"I got 6gc. for those potatoes. It could not have cost more than 3ic. to carry them to you. Who got the other $3? I am going to try to find out."

It is idle to say that when such an occurrence is typical—and it most certainly is to a large extent typical—there is no cause for uneasiness. Something is wrong It may be wholly the fault of outsiders. It may be at least partially the fault of the farmers and of those who eat the food the farmers raise. The trouble may be so deep-rooted in our social system that extreme caution must be exercised in striving for betterment. But one thing is certain. The situation is not satisfactory and calls for a thoroughgoing investigation, with the determination to make whatever changes, including radical changes, are necessary in order once more to put on a healthy basis the oldest and most essential of all occupations, the occupation which is the foundation of all others, the occupation of the tiller of the soil, of the man who by his own labor raises the raw material of food and clothing, without which the whole fabric of the most gorgeous civilization will topple in a week.

We cannot permanently shape our course right on any international issue unless we are sound on the domestic issues; and this farm movement is the fundamental social issue—the one issue which is even more basic than the relations of capitalist and workingman. The farm industry cannot stop; the world is never more than a year from starvation; this great war has immensely increased the cost of living without commensurately improving the condition of the men who produce the things on which we live. Even in this country the situation has become grave.

The temporary causes of this situation have produced such effect in our land only because they aggravated conditions due to fundamental causes which have long been at work. These fundamental causes may all be included in one: the farmers' business in our country has remained almost unchanged during the century which has seen every other business change in profound and radical fashion. He still works by methods belonging to the day of the stage-coach and the horse canal-boat, while every other brain or hand worker in the country has been obliged to shape his methods into more or less conformity to those required by an age of steam and electricity.

Our commercial, banking, manufacturing, and transportation systems have been built up with a rapidity never before approached. We have accumulated wealth at an unheard of rate. There has been grave injustice in the distribution of the wealth, our law-givers having erred both by unwisdom in leaving the matter alone, and at times by even greater unwisdom when they interfered with it. But on the whole the growth and prosperity have been enormous; and yet we have allowed the basic industry of farming, the industry which underlies all economic life, to drift along haphazard, we have allowed the life of the dwellers in the open country to become more and more meager, and their methods of production and of marketing to remain so primitive that their soil was impoverished and their profits largely usurped by others.

In 1880, one farmer in four was a tenant; and at that time the tenant was still generally a young man to whom the position of tenant was merely an intermediate step between that of farm laborer and that of a farm owner. In 1910, over one farmer in three had become a tenant; and nowadays it becomes steadily more difficult to pass from the tenant to the owner stage. If the process continues unchecked, half a century hence we shall have deliberately permitted ourselves to plunge into the situation which brought chaos in Ireland, and which in England resulted in the complete elimination of the old yeomanry, so that nearly nine-tenths of English farmers to-day are tenants and the consequent class division is most ominous for the future. France and Germany are to-day distinctly better off than we are in this respect; and in New Zealand, where there is an excellent system of land distribution, only one-seventh of the farmers are tenants.

If the tendencies that have produced such a condition continue to work unchecked no prophetic power is needed to foretell disaster to the nation. Therefore, the one hopeless attitude, in this as in recent international matters, is "watch ful waiting," sitting still and doing nothing to prepare for or to avert disaster. It is far better to try experiments, even when we are not certain how these experiments will turn out, or when we are certain that the proposed plan contains elements of folly as well as elements of wisdom. Better "trial and error" than no trial at all. And the service test, the test of actual experiment, is the only conclusive test. It is only the attempt in actual practice to realize a realizable ideal that contains hope. Mere writing and oratory and enunciation of theory, with no attempt to secure the service test, amount to nothing.

This applies to the tenancy problem. It also applies to every other farming problem. As regards each, let us test the plans for reform, so far as may be, by actual practice.

For many of these plans the several states offer themselves as natural laboratories, where experiments can be tried when conditions and public opinion are right; and this although the permanent remedies must ultimately, at least in major part, be national. It is exceedingly interesting to watch such an experiment as that seemingly to be tried in North Dakota. This is a farming state, where the farming is the predominant interest, and inasmuch as all reforms cost money, and as even advisable reforms become utterly disastrous if in spending money upon them we treat "the sky as the limit," and decline to consider the proportion between what the reform achieves and what it costs, it is well that the farmers themselves should pay a good proportion of the cost of reforms necessary to and peculiarly affecting themselves. In North Dakota, in addition to matters like hail insurance, it is proposed that the state shall purchase and operate grain elevators, mills and terminals and other business instrumentalities of vital concern to farmers. I most heartily commend the earnest effort the leaders in the movement have made actually to better conditions; and I say this although from the facts at my command I judge that most of the work which it is thus proposed to have done by the state could be done better by cooperative societies among the farmers themselves. Present conditions should certainly be changed. To keep them unchanged is to act in a spirit of mere Toryism. From the North Dakota experiment, when put in actual practice, we can learn some things to follow and some things to avoid; and perhaps we can also learn to be wise in time, and, by sane determination to put in practice reforms that we are reasonably sure will have no bad effects, avoid the sad necessity of paying with our own skins for experiments which probably will have bad effects.

I greatly prefer to see the Government leave untouched whatever the corporations under Government supervision can do; and just as far as possible I want to see all the corporations made into cooperative associations. But there are things so important that the Government must do them, if it is only through such exercise of collective power that they can be done.

Our object must be (i) to make the tenant farmer a landowner; (2) to eliminate as far as possible the conditions which produce the shifting, seasonal, tramp type of labor, and to give the farm laborer a permanent status, a career as a farmer, for which his school education shall fit him, and which shall open to him the chance of in the end earning the ownership in fee of his own farm; (3) to secure cooperation among the small landowners, so that their energies shall produce the best possible results; (4) by progressive taxation or in other fashion to break up and prevent the formation of great landed estates, especially in so far as they consist of unused agricultural land; (5) to make capital available for the farmers, and thereby put them more on an equality with other men engaged in business; (6) to care for the woman on the farm as much as for the man, and to eliminate the conditions which now so often tena to make her life one of gray and sterile drudgery; (7) to do this primarily through the farmer himself, but also, when necessary, by the use of the entire collective power of the people of the country; for the welfare of the farmer is the concern of all of us.

The most important thing to do is to make the tenant farmer a farm owner. He must be financed so that he can acquire title to the land. In New Zealand the government buys land and sells it to small holders at the price paid with a, low rate of interest. Perhaps our Government could try this plan, or else could outright advance the money, charging three and a half per cent, interest. Default in payments—which should of course be on easy terms—would mean that the land reverted to the Government. The experience of the firms which have loaned to the largest number of people to acquire homes on small instalment payments has been that foreclosure occurs in a very small percentage of cases; but it would have to be absolutely understood that no failure to pay would be tolerated; for such toleration would in the end discredit the whole system, and work ruin to the honest and hard-working men who would pay. We could follow the precedents established in connection with the reclamation act in the arid and semi-arid regions of the West. It would be desirable, and entirely feasible, to try the experiment first on a small scale, in experimental fashion; and then to apply it on a larger and larger scale with the modifications shown to be necessary in actual practice.

To break up the big estates it might be best, to try the graduated land tax, or else to equalize taxes as between used and unused agricultural land, which would prevent farm land being helc? for speculative purposes. There can without question be criticism of either proposal. If any better proposal can 'be made and tried we can cheerfully support it and be guided in our theories by the way it turns out. But we ought to insist on something being done—not merely talked about. Every one is agreed that we ought to get more people "back to the land"; but talk on the subject is utterly useless unless we put it in concrete shape and secure a 'service test" even although it costs some money to furnish the means for doing what we say must be done.

As regards furnishing capital to the farmer, the first need is that we shall understand that this is essential, and is recognized to be essential in most civilized lands outside of Russia and the United States, but especially in Denmark, France and Germany. Our farmers must have working capital. The present laws for providing farm loans do not meet the most important case of all, that of the tenant farmer, and do not adequately provide for the landowning farmer. An immense amount of new capital—an amount to be reckoned in billions of dollars—is needed for the proper development of the farms of the United States, in order that our farmers may pass from the position of under-production per acre, may improve and fertilize their lands, and so stock them as both to secure satisfactory returns upon the money invested and also enormously to increase the amount of food produced, while permanently enhancing the value of the land. Lack of capital on the part of the farmer inevitably means soil exhaustion and therefore diminished production. The farmer who is to prosper must have capital; only the prosperous can really meet the needs of the consumer; and in this, as in every other kind of honest business, the only proper basis of success is benefit to both buyer and seller, producer and consumer.

To achieve certain of these objects it may be necessary to make use of the Government; but wherever possible it is better to use private, usually corporate or cooperative, effort. I believe that the day is coming when many kinds of successful business will admit, and insist on, an alloy of philanthropy. It often adds to, instead of diminishing, business success, to become within reasonable limits one's brother's keeper. (Is it necessary to say that in this as in everything else there is need of common sense?)

The Jewish Agricultural and Industrial Aid Society has actually tried the experiment of a land bank to help men become farmers. In seventeen years, at an outlay of two million dollars, it has established thirty-five hundred families on farms; and the losses have been small. The manager of this society is now head of the Federal Land Bank in Springfield, Massachusetts. He has proposed an agrarian land bank to do for the United States as a whole what it has already taken part in successfully doing for some thousands of people. Such a land bank would aid tenants to become landowners, agricultural laborers to become small farmers, and landless immigrants with a farming past to go out on the land—where we need them.

California, under the wise administration of Hiram Johnson, pointed the path for advance in this as in so many other directions. She has begun the development of five thousand acres, not by merely throwing the land open for settlement, but by building roads, school-houses, and even certain "improvements" on farms of suitable size; the effort has been to help the man who wishes to farm to go into the country and there find liveable conditions.

Whenever farmers themselves have the intelligence and energy to work through cooperative societies this is far better than having the state undertake the work. Community self-help is normally preferable to using the machinery of Government for tasks to which it is unaccustomed. This applies to the ownership of granaries, slaughter-houses, and the like. There are in Europe cooperative farmers' associations which own and run at a profit many such institutions; and when this is shown to be the case, the other owners of such agencies face the accomplished fact; and it often becomes possible for the farmers then to deal with them on a satisfactory basis.

In Europe these great farmer cooperative associations sometimes control the whole machinery by which their products are marketed. Each little district has its own cooperative group. The groups of all the districts in the state are united again in a large cooperative unit. In this way they do collectively what is beyond the power of any one farmer individually to accomplish. By sending their shipments to market they move them in great bulk-quantities at the lowest possible cost. They contract for long periods ahead and sell in the most advantageous market.

Middlemen are eliminated. The labor of moving farm products is reduced to a minimum. But these enterprises are not state enterprises. The relationship of the state to them is confined to supervision, just as our bank examiners supervise the association of stockholders who come together to do a banking business; and certain general regulations that are in the interest of public policy are imposed upon them. A standard of equity and fair dealing is maintained by the forcing of the publication of accounts and by supplying disinterested examiners who see to it that equity is preserved by honesty and fairness among those associated in the enterprise.

Of course the personal equation is all important; the best of schemes will work badly if we force it against the fundamental issues of fairness and honesty.

A single farmer to-day is no match for the corporations, railroads and business enterprises with which he must deal. Organized into cooperative associations, however, the farmers' power would be enormously increased. The principle upon which such cooperative groups are formed is very simple. The profits are divided partly in the shape of a rebate that is paid in proportion to the volume of business done for each member. The control, however, of the association does not depend upon the number of shares that a member may own but rests upon the democratic basis of one man, one vote. In such associations they elect their own officers who are specifically qualified to deal with the agricultural problems of the association. These officers are subject to the direct control of those whose business and interests they handle. In this way politics is kept out of the farmer's business. Through cooperative organization our farmers can build up their strength.

And normally they can do better in this way than by recourse to an extreme form of state Socialism. The farmers of Denmark, Holland (and parts of France, North Italy and Germany) have pointed the way. In Denmark on a country road in the afternoon one can see a man wearing the cap of the cooperative association push a light wagon through the village, gathering from each house a dozen or two dozen eggs and a roll of butter and cheese. As he takes it he stamps the eggs and records the quantity delivered in the record book of the member. At the end of his three- or four-mile trip he meets a half-dozen other men at a small transfer station owned by the cooperative association. There wagons or trucks load the products brought in and haul them to a nearby railroad station where the trucks from five or six transfer stations gather and fill a railroad car. The railroad car starts and in its journey to the seaport meets several dozen additional cars loaded with the products of the association. At the seaport a ship load is waiting and the entire train load of products is loaded and started for England. In England this ship is unloaded in the warehouse of an English cooperative association. The products—butter, eggs, cheese, milk and other standard farm outputs—have been contracted for on a sliding scale on a yearly basis in advance. Between the peasant farmer of Denmark and the workingman consumer in London there is no middleman. Handling charges are reduced to the minimum. The gain goes to the producer in the shape of almost the full price and to the consumer in the shape of reduced cost. The cooperative farmers association of Denmark buys saltpetre and nitrates in Chili by the ship load, and distributes them as they are unloaded in carload lots to the cooperative associations in every village at a handling charge that is almost insignificantly small. This is the right way for farmers to organize.

Examples of what is done in foreign lands are of great use; yet we must always adapt them to our own needs, and not merely copy them; for no scheme of national betterment can succeed unless it takes into account national characteristics. Experiments in our own country therefore have a peculiar guidance value for us. For this reason those interested in the problem of farm life can well afford to pay some attention to what is at this moment being done in the Sandhill district of central North Carolina.

This is a district of sandy, and rather easily exhausted, soil. It was settled in the middle of the eighteenth century, chiefly by Highland Scotch. It was then covered with valuable pine forest, and there was good, natural pasture. The people worked at lumbering and raised cattle. Gradually the timber was cut off, and the wild pasture grazed out—in our usual wasteful fashion. A rather poor type of tillage was left —cotton and tobacco being the best crops. The people were of fine stock; but the schools were poor, the land was poor, the methods of farming were poor, the roads were bad, life was hard and flattened and joyless, and there was no idea of cooperation among the farmers—or indeed among the townsmen.

Then, a score of years ago, there began to be an uneasy consciousness that things were going backward rather than forward, and that some joint effort must be made or there would be complete dry rot. The effort was begun, with the usual preliminary struggles and failures. Enthusiastic reformers attempted to better matters by wrong-headed action; and "hard-headed, practical men" sourly refused to take part in any action at all. But gradually leaders were developed. Gradually wisdom grew out of the soil of disheartening experience.

The first concerted effort at joint action, made under the lead of half a dozen public-spirited citizens, was an attempted organization confined to the farmers—the cotton, fruit and tobacco growers. The objects were to solve the marketing problem, to devise a system of rural credit for the small farmer, and to spread better knowledge of agricultural methods. This effort failed, one prime cause of the failure being the fact that the townspeople of the section, the merchants and business men who were in reality just as vitally interested in the agricultural prosperity of the section as the farmers themselves, were not asked to join. They had more ready money than the farmers, they were more accustomed to act together and were better acquainted with the outside world, and it was found that their help was essential.

So the organization was transformed into a Board of Trade, which was pledged to promote the development of the section as a whole and the interests of all classes of its citizens. It is composed of farmers, merchants, doctors—all the leading citizens. By its activities it has shown that it represents the organized Sandhill community, covering an area as large as Rhode Island and having a population of some ten thousand souls.

The Board of Trade works in practical fashion; which means that while it tries to educate the people to their real needs, it also commands their confidence by meeting the—usually less important—needs to which they are fully awake. Therefore it advertises fully—but honestly—the advantages of the Sandhills region for settlers and has been instrumental in getting a number to come in. If it did only this it would be no more important than a thousand other local advertising committees. If it did not do this, it would soon cease to appeal to the ordinary man, and would sink into the well-meaning impotence of so many "high brow" associations for a species of uplift which the average man does not regard as practical. This board is a practical organization with intelligently high purposes. No organization can last long enough even to make a beginning in doing practical good to the people unless it is practical; and unless it actually functions instead of confining itself to manifestos and advice. Great is the persuasive power of concrete action!

   The people of the district are working out the two problems of schools and health work. These two problems are, of course, themselves merely portions of the great problem of securing in our struggling, individualistic country democracy the proper regulation by coherent community cooperation and self-control. In other words, our affair is to get our democracy to discipline itself; a difficult task, but essential to perform if we are to become a really great nation.

The Derby Memorial School in the Sandhills represents the consolidation of three small, struggling backwoods schools. There are now over 150 pupils in the school; those that live more than two and one-half miles away are transported in cheap motors at a cost of eight cents per child per day. The school is an excellent school—not markedly different from other first-class country schools in different country regions. There is a school paper, edited by the pupils; the girls set the type and the boys do the printing. There is a library of 1,200 volumes, used as much by the older people of the community as by the children —and it speaks well for the taste of the community that "Treasure Island" is on the whole the most popular book. Not much has been done in the way of vocational training, for the community is conservative and is wedded to old-fashioned book learning; but the school is being used more and more as a community center, and shows what important assets schools can become in neighborhood betterment.

The Sandhill Farm Life School is an agricultural school, started by the Board of Trade, under the state law. The principles of this school are: (i) That the children shall be trained primarily for life in the country, not by books simply, but by actually doing the various things at school that they will be called upon to do in later life. (2) That the school shall turn out good citizens, taught to cooperate, and with a sense of obligation to their community and their nation. Both these ends are being measurably achieved.

There are eighty scholars in the school. All the work is done by the boys and girls themselves. The boys are under military discipline. They dress in khaki, they belong to a rifle club, they drill. Their instructor was at a Platts-burg camp. Some of the boys were at the Plum Island camp last year. The boys do all the work of the farm, which deals chiefly with animal industry; and they fire the furnaces, cut wood, build the roads, etc. There is some theoretical agriculture and laboratory work; but the emphasis is placed on actually doing the job. The school is not an institution of "higher learning." It is not intended to turn out boys who will seek clerkships or become school teachers. The effort is to turn out farmers who will farm.

As regards the girls, the effort is to turn out first-class farmers' wives. They are all dressed in uniforms which they made themselves. They are given a setting-up drill which has proved most beneficial. They do all the housework and cooking, learning by actual practice to do it efficiently and economically. In the kitchen they use the implements of the kind they will have in their own houses—not those used in large hotels. They work hard, but not to the point of drudgery and exhaustion; and in the evenings there is singing, dancing, games or lectures. Surely this is a school along the right lines!

One of the things with which the Board of Trade has grappled is the health problem. As in so many country communities the health of the children is below par. Half of them have hookworm; and there are other common complaints. Some day or other we shall follow Germany's lead in having the Government take care of the health of the ordinary citizen—and of his welfare in other respects also—in return for requiring from him training and service to the state in time of war. At present our physical efficiency is low compared with that of Germany; and private organizations have to partially make good the failure of governmental action.

Three years ago the board instituted fairs, the first ever held in the region. A local paper, the Pinehurst Outlook, describes one of the fairs: There were bands; and parties of girl dancers—an unusual and very pretty feature; and the boy scouts and the boys who had been at the Plum Island camp paraded in company with the Confederate Veterans, all escorting the national flag. Everything was by home talent; there wasn't an imported show in the whole fair. Then there were the usual county fair exhibits; and the girls' canning clubs, and the boys' pig and corn clubs—all managed by the girls and boys who had actually done the work. And there was an exhibition by booths of what the community expected to become; a credit union booth, a cooperative sire owners' association booth, a county hospital booth, a consolidated school booth, etc., etc.

The Board of Trade does not merely write manifestos. It reduces its preaching to practice. In the fall of 1914 cotton went to six cents a pound, and the situation in the South became critical. Every form of wild relief scheme was suggested. But the Sandhill Board of Trade acted with equal energy and common sense. It borrowed $100,000 in Boston, built warehouses at various points in the section and loaned the money on cotton warehouse receipts at eight cents per pound and six per cent, interest. Collateral was provided by patriotic members of the community. It was a striking case of united community action for mutual self-protection; something peculiarly needed in the South, and a long step toward the cooperative spirit and away from the "every man for himself and the community be damned" spirit.

The board employs a secretary, who is also a farm demonstrator-agent for the whole section—a farmer's boy, the son of a poor Kansas farmer, who has worked his way through college, and knows his subject from the ground up no less than from above down. In a recent paper this gentleman put what he was striving to do so well, and what he says is so applicable to so many country communities that I cannot forbear quoting it:

"Whenever the late Marcus Tully Cicero emptied the Roman Senate in order to fill a modern text-book, he usually devoted a considerable part of his speech to matters which he said, 'I shall pass over in silence.' You have asked me to talk about the use of the local paper in community development. I think I have something to say about the use of the local paper; but just what to do in order to develop a community is a subject that 'I shall pass over in silence.' We Sandhillers are making progress, and much that we are doing is, we trust, worthy of being put into operation elsewhere. If any of you care to know just what we think most worth doing for the development of our section, I will be glad to give you a copy of a circular letter written to the members of the Sandhill Board of Trade. From it you will learn that we divide our work into two parts. The first is the stimulating of immigration by means of advertising. To get our section before the eyes of prospective buyers we have used booklets, magazines, lectures, lantern slides, and exhibits. The second and more important part of our work is to prevent emigration by making our community a place which people cannot afford to leave. The first step toward the accomplishment of this is to work out more profitable methods of crop production, less expensive ways of marketing, and all else that makes for prosperity, for as wise old Dr. Knapp persistently pointed out, without prosperity all else must fail. But this is not enough. The philosophy of the belly will never get a community very far. Statistics prove this, for we find that where farm and village people are making money the fastest there they are going to the cities the fastest, because in the cities they find schools, household comforts, entertainment, society, and other things for which they wish to spend their money while they are well; and when they are sick in the cities they can find something more than antediluvian hospital facilities at something less than multi-millionaire prices. That is why we are working so hard to improve our rural schools, build up a successful farm life school, establish our hospital, get public health work going, and to do all else that is mentioned in this circular letter, and which I, like Cicero, now that I have stated the matter pretty fully, 'shall not mention but shall pass over in silence.''

The secretary, assisted by the county agent, gives many lectures with a stereopticon at the schools, thereby meeting inadvertently one of the greatest needs of Southern country life— the need for social life and amusement. They organize those practical children's agricultural clubs—girls' poultry clubs, boys' pig and corn clubs, and the like—which are such forces in the development of the South, where livestock is a necessity to a perfectly balanced farming system, while few farmers can make a success of handling livestock unless they have begun as boys. Soil improvement is, of course, one prime object—and the secretary is really applying his ideas, which, I an? sorry to say, is too often not the case with theoretically excellent farm demonstration work. In farming the theoretical man can often help the practical man—but if he is merely a theorist, even although a very well trained theorist, he is much more apt to be wrong than the practical man he starts in to educate. Yet there must be men of vision to lead. In the South the exclusively "practical" man has gone in for "all cotton" farming; and "all cotton" means a submerged civilization.

The secretary has also organized two credit unions which are working successfully, one at the Derby school and one at the Sandhill Farm Life School. Under the North Carolina Credit Union law the farmers can organize associations very similar to the Raffeissen Credit Unions of Germany. The treasurer of the one at the Derby school writes me as follows: "We have loaned out to the farmers this summer about $400 of their own money. The whole community is tied together on each other's notes. Each man who owns stock or has deposits in the union takes a pretty vital interest in the kind of farming that the men who have borrowed money are doing. It is simply applying the Christian principle to actual life, 'Am I my brother's keeper?' You certainly are if you are a member of a credit union and have gone on his note for money to buy a hog with. It is your business to see that he buys a good hog and feeds it properly and doesn't waste the money on an organ or a graphophone, for if he doesn't succeed, then the community and you don't succeed.

"This fall all the loans of my credit union are being paid promptly and in full. I find that the farmers consider their obligations to the credit union of the first importance. For next year we 'are buying fertilizer cooperatively on money borrowed by the credit union. The farmers are only paying six per cent, for their loans. In buying from the fertilizer companies they were paying from ten per cent, to forty per cent. I never thought the credit unions would work in this individualistic society but I am now convinced that if people of education and with the desire to lead will take off their coats and get down and fight the battles of the people out with them, almost anything- can be made to succeed."

The section stands well in roads, thanks to a leading citizen who combined vision and common sense. He built the first sand-clay road, of a type which is both cheap and serviceable. The first section was built for a quarter of a mile parallel to an old sand road. Then he gave a barbecue to the neighbors; loaded a wagon with more cotton than anybody present had ever seen pulled by a team before, and sent it up the sand-clay road. The horses pulled it easily; but as soon as it ended and they reached the sand road they came to a dead halt. This practical demonstration won the day, and the section is now covered by real roads, built by the people themselves.

What is being done in the Sandhill district along this line is being done on genuinely patriotic grounds. Those who have taken the lead frankly say that they are interested less from the mondial-humanitarian than from the national-American standpoint. As one of them has expressed it, "I want to play on a strong team and I want my team—the United States— to win when it comes to a showdown."

The Board of Trade has arranged with the State Board of Health for a complete medical examination of all the school children. It has built at the Farm Life School a hospital with two six-bed wards, an operating room, and equipment. It has employed a competent resident nurse—and she is assisted by the school girls, who thus learn the rudiments of nursing. It has aided the doctors of the Sandhills to organize a hospital staff; and a marked impetus has been given the medical and surgical work of the district. The hospital is not a charitable institution; it is run on the theory that it is to be self-supporting, and that every patient must pay something.

One of the most active organizers and promoters of this Sandhill work has recently summed it up as follows:

"Our organization, such as it is, has many defects and we have had many failures and many disappointments. We have not accomplished half of what we set out to accomplish. But we have done two things. We have inspired in the people of this section a spirit of real cooperation that is rare everywhere in our country, and perhaps especially rare in the South. We have succeeded in making them see the advantage of pulling together and occasionally sacrificing themselves and their interests for the welfare of the community. That only a few men have done most of the leading is only natural. Only a few will lead under any circumstances. It is the number that will follow that counts. We have also imposed on the community certain institutions that eventually will be of great benefit to it and which the people will eventually support in full. In my estimation we have gone quite far in making a democratic community discipline itself. We endeavor to make our people more prosperous, with fuller, happier lives; but above all we endeavor to make them less  selfish  and  readier to sacrifice themselves for an ideal."

This is the spirit, both practical and lofty, deferential both to common sense and to idealism, considerate of both one's own needs and of those of one's fellows, in which we should approach the problems of our farming population—and all our other problems also.

CHAPTER 10
THE WORD OF MICAH ; THE RELIGION OF SERVICE
    WHEN our troops made ready to sail across the seas the New York Bible Society distributed among them little Pocket Testaments, and asked me to write a message which should go with each Testament. I wrote as follows:

"The teachings of the New Testament are foreshadowed in Micah's verse: 'What more doth the Lord require of thee than to do justice, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God.'

"Do justice; and therefore fight valiantly against the armies of Germany and Turkey, for these nations in this crisis stand for the reign of Moloch and Beelzebub on this earth.
"Love mercy; treat prisoners well; succor the wounded; treat every woman as if she were your sister; care for the little children, and be tender with the old and helpless.
"Walk humbly; you will do so if you study the life and teachings of the Savior.
"May the God of Justice and Mercy have you in His keeping."

The most perfect machinery of government will not keep us as a nation from destruction if there is not within us a soul. No abounding material prosperity shall avail us if our spiritual senses atrophy. The foes of our own household shall surely prevail against us unless there be in our people an inner life which finds its outward expression in a morality not very widely different from that preached by the seers and prophets of Judea when the grandeur that was Greece and the glory that was Rome still lay in the future.

In his Farewell Address to his countrymen, Washington said: "Morality is a necessary spring of popular government . . . and let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle."

Washington lacked Lincoln's gift of words; but not Lincoln himself possessed more robust common sense in the thought that lies back of words. In this case the thought is not new— only a few good thoughts are new; but it was given expression at a time when the European movement with which the American people were in most complete sympathy—the French Revolution—had endeavored to destroy the abuses of priestcraft and bigotry by abolishing not only Christianity but religion, in the sense in which religion is properly understood. The result was a cynical disregard of morality and a carnival of cruelty and bigotry, committed in the names of reason and liberty, which equalhd anything ever done by Torquemada and the fanatics of the Inquisition in the names of religion and order. Washington wished his fellow countrymen to walk clear of such folly and iniquity. As in all cases where he dealt with continuing causes his words are as well worth pondering now as when they were written.

Washington was certainly not thinking of dogmatic theology; and still less need we lay much emphasis upon it when we speak of the need of religion in our national life. How do I define religion? I use the term as it is used in Boutroux's "Science and Religion," in Bade's "The Old Testament in the Light of To-day." But I am not thinking primarily of the philosophers, or of those who, in Washington's phrase, possess "minds of peculiar structure." I am thinking of the rest of us, of those of whom Washington thought when he demanded a national morality based on religious principles. I am thinking of the mass of the men who make up this nation, who toil in time of peace and fight in time of war, and of the women who are their wives and helpmeets, and who toil and suffer and are brave and know the joy of life, as they go through the years beside their men.

These men and women profess many different creeds; and perhaps the priceless boon we have won here in America is the entire freedom to lead each the spiritual life which is demanded by his or her conscience, and to seek truth as that conscience demands. Yet normally a man can work best when he works with his fellows; and in religious matters this means that he must ordinarily find the outlet for his power and his sympathies, and the satisfaction for his spiritual hunger, in some church, whether that church be Protestant or Catholic, or as separate from most institutions of recognized orthodoxy as Charles Stelzle's Labor Temple or Felix Adler's Ethical Culture School.

In this actual world a churchless community, a community where men have abandoned and scoff at or ignore their religious needs, is a community on the rapid down grade. It is true that occasional individuals or families may have nothing to do with church or with religious practices and observances and yet maintain the highest standard of refined ethical obligation. But this does not affect the case in the world as it now is, any more than the fact that exceptional men and women under exceptional conditions have disregarded the marriage tie without moral harm to themselves interferes with the larger fact that such disregard if at all common means the complete moral disintegration of the body politic. In the pioneer days of the West we found it an unfailing rule that after a community had existed for a certain length of time either a church was built or else the community began to go down hill. In those old communities in the Eastern States which have gone backward, it is noticeable that the retrogression has been both marked by and accentuated by a rapid decline in church membership and work; the two facts being so interrelated that each stands to the other partly as a cause and partly as an effect. This has occurred not only in the "poor white" communities of the South, but in the small hamlets of the "abandoned farm" region of New England and New York. As the people grow slack and dispirited they slip from all effective interest in church activities; and on the other hand, the building up of a strong country church or Young Men's Christian Association in such a community often has an astonishing effect in putting such virile life into them that their moral betterment stimulates a marked physical betterment in their homes and farms. For all those whose lives are led on a plan t above the grimmest and barest struggle for existence church attendance and church work of some kind mean both the cultivation of the habit of feeling some responsibility for others and the sense of braced moral strength which prevents a relaxation of one's own fiber.

That man is unfortunate who has not owed much, in teaching and in companionship, to hardworking priest or hard-working parson. In my own experience I recall priest after priest whose disinterested parish work has represented one continuous battle for civilization and humanity. Out of my own experience I recall case after case where the clergyman and his wife—who have themselves enjoyed no rest on Sunday— are engaged all the week long in a series of wearing and important and humdrum tasks for making hard lives a little easier and gray lives a little brighter; and both this man and this woman, in the vast majority of cases, are engaged in constant self-denial, are doing much for humble folk, of whom few of us think, and are keeping up a brave show on narrow means. Surely the average man ought to sympathize with such work and help such workers; and he cannot do this if his attitude is merely that of an unsympathetic outsider.

The church must fit itself for the practical betterment of mankind if it is to attract and retain the fealty of the men best worth holding and using. The betterment may come in many ways. The great exhorter or preacher, the priest or clergyman or rabbi, the cardinal or bishop or revivalist or Salvation Army commander, may, by sheer fervor and intensity, and by kindling some flame of the spirit which mystics have long known to be real and which scientists now admit to be real, rouse numbed conscience to life and free seared souls from sin; and then the roused conscience and the freed soul will teach the bodies in which they dwell how to practice the great law of service. But such stormy awakening of the spirit, though often of high usefulness, loses all savor unless, in the times of calm which follow on the storm, the workaday body makes good in its round of life and labor the promise given by the spirit in its hour of stress. Far more often the betterment must come through work which does not depend on the gift of tongues; that is, through consistently persistent labor conducted with wary wisdom no less than with broad humanity. This may take the old form of individual service to the individual; of visiting and comforting the widow and the fatherless and the sore-stricken; of personal sympathy and personal aid. It may take the form of organized philanthropy—a form not merely beneficial but absolutely essential where a dense population increases the mass of suffering and also the mass of imposture and of that weakness of will which, if permitted, becomes parasitic helplessness; but a form which needs incessant supervision lest it lose all vitality and become empty and stereotyped so as finally to amount to little except a method of giving salaries to those administering the charity.

Under the tense activity of modern social and industrial conditions the church, if it is to give real leadership, must grapple zealously, fearlessly and cool-headedly with the problems of social and industrial justice. Unless it is the poor man's church it is not a Christian church at all in any real sense. The rich man needs it, heaven knows; and is needed by it. But, unless in the church he can work with all his toiling brothers for a common end, for their mutual benefit and for the benefit of those without its walls, the church has come short of its mission and its possibilities. Unless the church in a mining town or factory town or railway center is a leading force in the effort to secure cleaner and more wholesome surroundings, moral and physical, for the people, unless it concerns itself with their living and working conditions, with their workshops and houses and playgrounds, with their chance to open a cleft upward into the life of full development, it has forfeited its right to the foremost place in the regard of men. By their fruits shall ye know them! We judge a man nowadays by his conduct rather than by his dogma. And, to keep its hold on mankind the church must, as in its early days, obey the great law of service; for it shall not live by ceremonial and by dogmatic theology alone.

There are plenty of clergymen of all denominations who do obey this law; they render inestimable service. Yet these men can do but little unless keen, able, zealous laymen give them aid; and this aid is beyond comparison most effective when rendered by men and women who are themselves active participants in the work of the church. It was aid thus rendered which enabled Dr. Rainsford to give St. George's Church a leadership in service which at the time was equalled by no other Protestant Church in New York City; it is aid thus rendered which has rendered the St. Vincent de Paul Society, when it is under the lead of a man like Judge de Lacy of Washington, a potent force against the "foes of our own household." Such churches and church organizations foster a fine feeling of fellowship. Surely if our churches are not democratic the root of the matter is not in us; and therefore the church is beyond all other places that in which men of every social grade and degree of wealth should come together on a footing of brotherhood and of equality of rights and obligations. There, arrogance and envy are equally out of place; there, every sincere man should feel stirred to exceptional effort to see questions at issue as his brother sees them, and to act toward that brother as he would wish, under reversed conditions, the brother to act toward him. Surely half of our labor troubles 'would disappear if a sufficient number of the leaders on both sides had worked for common ends in the same churches and religious organizations, and approached one another's positions with an earnest desire to understand them and respect them.

One important thing for the layman interested in church work to do is to make the church an instrument for securing the healthy happiness of young people. The influence of the Puritan has been most potent for strength and for virtue in our national life. But his somber austerity left one evil: the tendency to confound pleasure and vice, a tendency which, in the end, is much more certain to encourage vice than to discourage pleasure—a tendency especially strong among the rigid formalists, including the ultra-sabbatarian formalists, who remain true  only to  what  is  least desirable  in  Puritanism.

Let every layman interested in church work battle against this tendency. Let him proceed on the assumption that innocent pleasure which does not interfere with things even more desirable is in itself a good; that this is as true of one day of the week as of another; and that one function of the church should be the encouragement of happiness in small things as well as in large. No general rules can be laid down in such a matter; the customs and feelings and peculiar conditions of each community must be taken into account and so far as possible respected. Therefore I can on this point speak only of my own experience. I have known a village baseball nine, which, because after church on Sunday afternoons it held games in a field a mile away, was a potent help in keeping young men out of the "blind pig" saloons. It is only very backward church organizations that now object to music. But many good people still put dancing under a ban. I believe that dancing, like all other healthy and proper pastimes, should be encouraged in the parish house; and this because I dread the professional dance hall, where liquor can be obtained and where foolish girls go with foolish or vicious young men, while there are no older men and women to look after them. If the natural desire of young people for pleasure is not given a healthy outlet it is only too apt to find an unhealthy outlet.

If good people feel that in what I have said I have slurred dogma and unduly exalted conduct, I am sorry; but each man must bear testimony as his soul bids; and the teachings to which I turn are those which impress this lesson.

Isaiah, the seer, the man of the vision, condemned ritual and formalism, and exalted conduct, when he thundered: "Hear the word of the Lord; to what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? I delight not in the blood of bullocks. Your appointed feasts my soul hateth. Cease to do evil; learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow."

Amos—no son of a prophet, but a laboring man, a herdsman and a gatherer of sycamore fruit—said: "Hear ye the Word; I despise your feast days; I will not accept your burnt offerings. But let judgment run down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream; hate the evil, and love the good, and establish judgment in the gate." What is this but insistence on the great law of service? In peace and in war we must spend and be spent, in the endless battle for right against wrong; deeds, not words, alone shall save us.

"By their fruits ye shall know them," is a teaching of the Sermon on the Mount; and James, spurning the unctuous professions of righteousness by those who do not make good what they preach, by those who profess a faith which is dead—which was never alive—because it bears no fruit in works, sums up the matter by insisting that we must be doers and not hearers only, because "Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world."

I know not how philosophers may ultimately define religion; but from Micah to James it has been defined as service to one's fellow men rendered by following the great rule of justice and mercy, of wisdom and righteousness.

CHAPTER 11
THE   PARASITE   WOMAN;   THE   ONLY   INDISPENSABLE   CITIZEN
Of all species of silliness the silliest is the assertion sometimes made that the woman whose primary life-work is taking care of her home and children is somehow a "parasite woman." It is such a ridiculous inversion of the truth that it ought not to be necessary even to allude to it. Nevertheless, it is acted upon by a large number of selfish, brutal or thoughtless men, and it is screamed about by a number of foolish women. Therefore a word of common sense on the matter may not be out of place.

There are men so selfish, so short-sighted or so brutal, that they speak and act as if the fact of the man's earning money for his wife and children, while the woman bears the children, rears them and takes care of the house for them and for the man, somehow entitles the man to be known as the head of the family, instead of a partner on equal terms with his wife, and entitles him to the exclusive right to dispose of the money and, as a matter of fact, to dispose of it primarily in his own interest.

There are professional feminists and so-called woman's-rights women who, curiously enough, seem to accept so much of this male attitude as implies that the partner who earns the money is the superior partner and that therefore the woman, who is physically weaker than the man, should accept as her primary duty the rivaling of him in the money-making business in which he will normally do better than she will; and they stigmatize as parasites the women who do the one great and all-essential work, without which no other activity by either sex amounts to anything.

Apply common sense and common decency to both attitudes. It is entirely right that any woman should be allowed to make any career for herself of which she is capable, whether or not it is a career followed by a man. She has the same right to be a lawyer, a doctor, a farmer or a storekeeper that the man has to be a poet, an explorer, a politician or a painter. There are women whose peculiar circumstances or whose peculiar attributes render it advisable that they should follow one of the professions named, just as there are men who can do most good to their fellows by following one of the careers above indicated for men. More than this. It is indispensable that such careers shall be open to women and that certain women shall follow them, if the women of a country, and therefore if the country itself, expect any development. In just the same way, it is indispensable that some men shall be explorers, artists, sculptors, literary men, politicians, if the country is to have its full life. Some of the best farmers are women just as some of the best exploring work and scientific work has been done by women. There is a real need for a certain number of women doctors and women lawyers. Whether a writer or a painter or a singer is a man or a woman makes not the slightest difference, provided that the work he or she does is good.

All this I not merely admit; I insist upon it. But surely it is a mere statement of fact to add that the primary work of the average man and the average woman—and of all exceptional men and women whose lives are to be really full and happy—must be the great primal work of home-making and home-keeping, for themselves and their children.

The primary work of the man is to earn his own livelihood and the livelihood of those dependent upon him, to do his own business, whether his business is on a farm or in a shop, in the counting-room of a bank or the engine-cab of a train, in a mine or on a fishing-boat, or at the head of a telegraph or telephone line; whether he be an engineer or an inventor, a surgeon or a railway president, or a carpenter or a brakeman. In other words, the man must do his business and do it well in order to support himself and his wife and children and in order that the nation may continue to exist. I appreciate to the full the work of the politician, the poet, the sculptor and the explorer; and yet it is mere common sense to say that they cannot do any work at all unless their average fellow countryman does his business, whether with hand or brain, pen or pick, in such fashion that the country is on a decent industrial basis. If it is not, nobody will have any house or anything to eat or any means of getting around; and therefore there won't be any poets or politicians. This is not exalting one class at the expense of another. On the contrary, it recognizes the absolute need from the standpoint of national greatness and permanent achievement, that there shall be some men in a state the worth of whose activities cannot be and is not measured or expressed by money. But there is also the absolute need that this shall not be true of the average man—and, as a matter of fact, it is a great deal better even if it is not true of the exceptional man—if, in addition to his non-remunerative work, he is able by his activities to pay his way as he goes.

Now, this also applies to women. Exceptional women—like Julia Ward Howe or Harriet Beecher Stowe or Mrs. Homer—are admirable wives and mothers, admirable keepers of the home, and yet workers of genius outside the home. Such types, of course, are rare whether among men or women. There are also exceptional—and less happy, and normally less useful—women whose great service to the state and community is rendered outside the home, and who have no family life; just as is true of exceptional—and normally less happy and less useful—men. But exactly as it is true that no nation will prosper unless the average man is a home-maker; that is, unless at some business or trade or profession, he earns enough to make a home for himself and his wife and children, and is a good husband and father; so no nation can exist at all unless the average woman is the home-keeper, the good wife, and unless she is the mother of a sufficient number of healthy children to insure the race going forward and not backward. The indispensable work for the community is the work of the wife and the mother. It is the most honorable work. It is literally and exactly the vital work, the work which of course must be done by the average woman or the whole nation goes down with a crash.

   Foolish men treat this fact as warranting them in all kinds of outcries against what they call "unwomanly" activities, including the outcry against the "higher education." This is nonsense. The woman is entitled to just as much education as the man; and it will not hurt her one particle more than it hurts the man. It may hurt a fool in either case; but no one else. However, justification is given these people who cry against the "higher education" by such utterances as those made the other day by a president of a women's college who fatuously announced, in advocacy of a small birthrate, that it was better to have one child brought up in the best way than several not thus brought up. In the first place, there is no such antithesis as is thus implied, for, as a matter of fact, children in a family of children are usually better brought up than the only child, or than the child of a two-child family. In the next place, the statement, which must of course be taken to apply to the average individual, is on its face false, and the woman making it is not only unfit to be at the head of a female college, but is not fit to teach the lowest class in a kindergarten, for such teaching is not merely folly, but a peculiarly repulsive type of mean and selfish wickedness. The one-child family as an average ideal of course spells death; and death means the end of all hope. It is only while there is life that there is hope. A caste or a race or a nation, where the average family consists of one child, faces immediate extinction, and therefore it matters not one particle how this child is brought up. But if there are plenty of children then there is always hope. Even if they have not been very well brought up, they have been brought up; and so there is something to work on.

Just as the prime work for the average man must be earning his livelihood and the livelihood of those dependent upon him, so the prime work for the average woman must be keeping the home and bearing and rearing her children. This woman is not a parasite on society. She is society. She is the one indispensable component part of society. Socially, the same standard of moral obligation applies both to her and to the man; and in addition she is entitled to all the chivalry of love and tenderness and reverence, if in gallant and fearless fashion she faces the risk and wearing labor entailed by her fulfilment of duty; but if she shirks her duty she is entitled to no more consideration than the man who shirks his. Unless she does her duty, the whole social system collapses. If she does her duty, she is entitled to all honor.

This last statement is the crucial statement. The one way to honor this indispensable woman, the wife and mother, is to insist that she be treated as the full equal of her husband. The birth pangs make all men the debtors of all women; and the man is a wretched creature who does not live up to this obligation. Marriage should be a real partnership; a partnership of the soul, the spirit and the mind, no less than of the body. An immediately practical feature of this partnership should be the full acknowledgment that the woman who keeps the home has exactly the same right to a say in the disposal of the money as the man who earns the money. Earning the money is not one whit more indispensable than keeping the home. Indeed, I am inclined to put it in the second place. The husband who does not give his wife, as a matter of right, her share in the disposal of the common funds is false to his duty. It is not a question of favor at all. Aside from the money to be spent on common account, for the household and the children, the wife has just the same right as the husband to her pin money, her spending money. It is not his money that he gives to her as a gift. It is hers as a matter of right. He may earn it; but he earns it because she keeps the house; and she has just as much right to it as he has. This is not a hostile right; it is a right which it is every woman's duty to ask and which it should be every man's pride and pleasure to give without asking. He is a poor creature if he grudges it; and she in her turn is a poor creature if she does not insist upon her rights, just exactly as she is worse than a poor creature if she does not do her duty.

It is the men who insist upon women doing their full duty, who insist that the primary duty of the woman is in the home, who also have a right to insist that she is just as much entitled to the suffrage as is the man. We believe in equality of right, not in identity of functions. The woman must bear and rear the children, as her first duty to the state; and the man's first duty is to take care of her and the children. In neither case is it the exclusive duty. In neither case does it exclude the performance of other duties. The right to vote no more implies that a woman will neglect her home than that a man will neglect his business. Indeed, as regards one of the greatest and most useful of all professions, that of surgery and medicine, it is probably true that the average doctor's wife has more time for the performance of political duties than the average doctor himself.

There was a capital article recently in The Britannia, the official organ of the Women's Social and Political Union in England, by Mrs. Emmeline Pankhurst. She was urging the full performance of duty in the war both by men and by women. In it she denounced the laboring men who did not whole-heartedly do everything in their power to aid the cause of England in the war. She spoke of the fact that workingmen and women in France could not understand how there could be strikes among workers in England during the war. She insisted that the prime duty during the war was for the men and women alike to put aside all other grievances and make common cause on behalf of the nation, and then to try to make the country a better one for their children to live in. It was a capital article, and it should be read by men and women here just as much as by men and women in England. It is because I believe that the American woman will in time of need and when the facts are brought home to her take such a position as Mrs. Pank-hurst has thus taken, that I emphatically believe that she should have the right just as much as the man to vote, and, what is even more important, that she shall be given her full rights in connection with the performance by her as wife and mother of those indispensable duties which make her the one absolutely indispensable citizen of this Republic.

I end as I began by speaking of the good woman who is the best of all good citizens.   I speak of goodness in the largest sense, as implying also wisdom and courage—for the woman who is either a fool or a coward is not a really useful member of the commonwealth. I ask that we search our hearts, that we cast aside selfish sloth and craven love of ease, and dare to live nobly and bravely. I make my appeal to all the good and wise and brave men and women of our Republic. I make it in the name of the larger Americanism, which means fealty to the highest national ideal. I speak for those who greatly prize peace, but who prize duty and justice and honor even more than peace. I believe in that ardent patriotism which will make a nation true to itself by making it secure justice for all within its own borders, and then so far as may be, aid in every way in securing just and fair treatment for all the nations of mankind. I believe that the people of the United States have in them the power to rise to the level of their needs, their opportunities and their obligations. But they can only do so if they face the facts, however unpleasant. For some years we have as a people shown an appalling unfitness for world leadership on behalf of the democratic ideal; for, especially during the last three years, we have played a mean and sordid part among the nations, and have been faithless to our obligations and to all the old time ideals of American patriotism. Women, as much as men, must put righteousness and justice before peace. We must prepare at once in amplest fashion to defend ourselves against outside aggression from any source, and the women must do their part just as much as the men. Then, in addition to striving for material well-being and reasonable equality of opportunity for our own people, in addition to making ready to defend our own rights with our own strength, surely the heirs of Washington and Lincoln, the women just as much as the men, must, as regards the rest of the world, stand at any cost for justice and righteousness for and among the peoples and the nations of mankind.
Concrete examples usually teach more than abstract statements. The principles laid down in this chapter are illustrated in the following correspondence between a woman in a small town in Michigan and myself. Her letter to me ran:
"February 3, 1916, -   —, Michigan.
"Dear Sir: When you were talking of 'race suicide' I was rearing a large family on almost no income. I often thought of writing to you of some of my hardships and now when 'preparedness' may take some of my boys I feel I must. I have eleven of my own and brought up three step-children, and yet in the thirty years of my married life I have never had a new cloak or winter hat. I have sent seven children to school at one time. I had a family of ten for eighteen years with no money to hire a washerwoman though bearing a child every two years. Nine—several through or nearly— of my children have got into high school and two into State Normal School and one into the University of Michigan. I haven't eaten a paid-for meal in twenty years or paid for a night's lodging in thirty. Not one of the five boys— the youngest is fifteen—uses tobacco or liquor. I have worn men's discarded shoes much of the time. I have had little time for reading.

"I think I have served my country, my husband has been an invalid for six years—leaving me the care and much work on our little sandy farm. I have bothered you enough. To me race suicide has perhaps a different meaning when I think my boys may have to face the cannon.
"Respectfully,
"mrs.	."
I answered as follows:
"February 9, 1916.
"My dear Mrs.	:   Your letter interests
me very much. It interests me both because of what you tell me about yourself, and because of what may be the attitude of mind of other women and men, whom I heartily respect and admire, and who do not understand quite what it is that I am trying to say to our people.

"You say that when I was talking- of race suicide you were rearing a large family on almost no income; that you often thought of writing to me of some of your hardships; and that now, inasmuch as my 'preparedness' policy may take some of your boys, you feel you must write to me. You state you have eleven children of your own and have brought up three step-children, and that yet, in the thirty years of your married life, you have 'never had a new cloak or winter hat'; and that you had sent seven of the children to school at one time and had a family of ten for eighteen years, with no money to hire a washerwoman, although you were bearing a child every two years; and you say that, of your children, nine have gotten into high school and two into the State Normal School and one into the University of Michigan; that you 'haven't eaten a paid-for meal in twenty years or paid for a night's lodging in thirty,' and that you have had most of the time to wear men's discarded shoes and have had little time for reading; and you say that you feel that you have served your country. (And so you have.) You add that your husband has been an invalid for six years, so that you have had to do most of the work on your little sandy farm. You end by saying that race suicide has perhaps a different meaning to you now, when you think your boys 'may have to face the cannon.'

"Now, my dear Mrs. 	, you have described a career of service which makes me feel more like taking off my hat to you and saluting you as a citizen deserving of the highest honor, than I would feel as regards any colonel of a crack regiment. But you seem to think, if I understand your letter aright, that 'preparedness' is in some way designed to make your boys food for cannon. Now, as a matter of fact, the surest way to prevent your boys from being food for cannon is to have them, and all the other young men of the country—my boys, for instance, and the boys of all other fathers and mothers throughout the country—so trained, so prepared, that it will not be safe for any foreign foe to attack us. Preparedness no more invites war than fire insurance invites a fire. I shall come back to this matter again in a moment. But I will speak to you first a word as to what you say about race suicide. I have never preached the imposition of an excessive maternity on any woman. I have always said that every man worth calling such will feel a peculiar sense of chivalric tenderness toward his wife, the mother of his children. He must be unselfish and considerate with her. But, exactly as he must do his duty, so she must do her duty. I have said that it is self-evident that unless the average woman, capable of having children, has four, the race will not go forward; for this is necessary in order to offset the women who for proper reasons do not marry, or who, from no fault of their own, have no children, or only one or two, or whose children die before they grow up. I do not want to see us Americans forced to import our babies from abroad. I do not want to see the stock of people like yourself and like my family die out—and you do not either; and it will inevitably die out if the average man and the average woman are so selfish and so cold that they wish either no children, or just one or two children. We have had six children in this family. We wish we had more. Now the grandchildren are coming along; and I am sure you agree with me that no other success in life, not being President, or being wealthy, or going to college, or anything else, comes up to the success of the man and woman who can feel that they have done their duty and that their children and grandchildren rise up to call them blessed.

"You have had to work very hard, but, Mrs.
'	, I am sure you are the type of woman who takes pride in what you have accomplished. Surely, you feel you are entitled to respect, not sympathy or pity. Certainly this is the way / feel about you. I feel that you are the kind of American of whom all good Americans should be proud. I think that what you have done puts you in the first rank of those men and women of this generation who have served their country.

"Now, for what you say about preparedness. I am enclosing you a slip of paper containing an account of the destruction that has been wrought in Belgium by the German Army. Over 18,000 houses have been destroyed. You will see that in one town 127 out of 130 houses were burned to the ground, and in another 1,263 out of 1,375. A population twice the size of that of Michigan is now living under conditions where, if the women of a family are maltreated, the father and sons dare not stand up for them against any soldier of the invading army, because they would be shot if they did so. In some towns, the officers treat the women and children well. In other towns they permit frightful misconduct toward them. Would you wish your sons to see you and their sisters frightfully maltreated and be afraid in any way even to show resentment against the brutal men guilty of the misconduct? This is exactly what has happened to the population of Belgium-^ 7,000,000 souls—because they had not prepared their strength in advance. Belgium gave no cause of offense to any nation. She was much freer from giving offense than the United States has been. She had not committed a wrong of any kind or sort; but she was rich; she was badly prepared; only a small proportion of her people had been trained to war; and so she was invaded. For eighteen months her people have been living in misery such as you and I can hardly picture to ourselves. The shame, the humiliation and suffering have been well-nigh intolerable. Many hundreds of Belgian women and children, many thousands of men, have been killed. Multitudes of innocent non-combatants have been killed, or their houses burned, and their little all taken from them. Many hundreds of thousands are in the direst want. All are suffering greatly. And this is because her allies (and indeed Belgium herself) were not prepared, as Germany was, and because a big, powerful neutral nation like the United States did not dare to stand up for them.

"Mrs. Roosevelt and I have four sons and they are as dear to us as your sons are to you. If we now had war, these four boys would all go. We think it entirely right that they should go if their country needs them. But I do not think it fair that they should be sent to defend the boys who are too soft or too timid 'to face the cannon,' or the other boys who wish to stay at home to make money while somebody else protects them. If throughout this country all young men like your sons and like mine are trained so that they can defend this country in time of trouble, I do not believe that the trouble will ever come. Preparedness will probably prevent these boys from having 'to face the cannon' ; but if other nations become convinced that the mothers of this country have raised their boys to be afraid to face the cannon, then you can be absolutely certain that, sooner or later, these other nations will come over and treat us just as the military powers of the Old World have treated the Chinese. The Chinese were 'too proud to fight'; and so they have been kicked. Those of our people who are 'too proud to fight' ought to wear pigtails.

"You say you have had little time for reading; but your letter interests me so that I am sending you a copy of my autobiography. You won't care to read it all; but I wish you would read about our family life and about what I say of war and of social justice. I think, on the whole, you will agree with what is therein said. "Sincerely yours,

CHAPTER 12
BIRTH   REFORM,   FROM   THE   POSITIVE,   NOT   THE NEGATIVE,  SIDE
"DEFORMS are excellent, but if there is nobody to reform their value becomes somewhat problematical. In order to make a man into a better citizen we must first have the man. In order that there shall be a "fuller and better expressed life for the average woman," that average woman must be in actual existence. And the first necessity in "bringing up the child aright" is to produce the child.

Stated in the abstract, these propositions are of bromidic triteness. But an astonishingly large number of persons, including a lamentably large number who call themselves social reformers, either are, or act as if they were, utterly blind to them when they try to deal with life in the concrete. This is true of every group of persons who treat Bernard Shaw seriously as a social reformer. It is true of every group of reformers who discuss the home and the school, but regard it as indelicate to lay stress on the fact that neither is worth discussing unless there are children in sufficient numbers to make the home and the school worth perpetuating. It is true of all blatant sham, reformers who, in the name of a new morality, preach the old, old vice and self-indulgence which rotted out first the moral fiber and then even the external greatness of Greece and Rome. It is true of the possibly well-meaning but certainly silly persons who fail to see that we merely enunciate a perfectly plain mathematical truth when we say that the race will die out unless the average family contains at least three children, and therefore that less than this number always means that, whether because of their fault or their misfortune, the parents are bearing less than their share of the common burdens, and are rendering less than their due proportion of patriotic service to the nation.

There has recently been published a "Study of the Birth Rate in Harvard and Yale Graduates," by John C. Phillips, of Boston. It should be circulated as a tract among all those most foolish of all foolish people, the half-baked educated people who advocate a profoundly immoral attitude toward life in the name of "reform" through "birth control." These people see that in the "submerged tenth" of society, and even among all the very poor, excessive child-bearing is a grave evil which crushes the woman, turning her into a broken-spirited, overworked, slatternly drudge; and which therefore crushes the family also, making it difficult for the children, on the average, to rise above a very low level. They do not see that it is the directly reverse danger against which we have to guard as soon as we rise above the class of the very poor, of those whose livelihood is so precarious that they are always on the brink of the gulf of disaster. As soon as we get above this lowest class the real danger in American families, whether of mechanics, farmers, railroad workers, railroad presidents, deep-sea fishermen, bankers, teachers or lawyers, is not lest they have too many children, but lest they have too few. Yet it is precisely these people who are really influenced by the "birth control" propaganda. What this nation vitally needs is not the negative preaching of birth control to the submerged tenth, and the tenth immediately adjoining, but the positive preaching of birth encouragement to the eight-tenths who make up the capable, self-respecting American stock which we wish to see perpetuate itself.

Mr. Phillips studies the birth rate for the two colleges in question by decades from 1850 to 1890. The figures for both colleges are substantially similar, Yale making a trifle better showing. They prove conclusively that for over fifty years the men who have been graduated from Harvard and Yale have left behind them a number of sons inferior to their own number—that is, to the number of fathers—and that, therefore, this college stock, which in point of worthy achievement is certainly among the thoroughly good stocks of the country, is tending to die out; and they show that this tendency has hitherto been slightly accentuated with each decade.

For the decade ending in 1870, for example, the showing was a trifle better than in 1880; and in 1890 there was a further, although a slighter, drop. 1890 was taken as the last year, because the number of children born to graduates after they have been graduated for a quarter of a century is too few materially to affect the averages.

On the average, during the thirty years, the graduate who married did so after he had left college eight years. About 78 per cent, married, roughly four-fifths. But over 20 per cent, of the marriages were childless. This leaves only three-fifths of the men of the class who contracted fertile marriages, and who, therefore, if their stock were to progress, had to make good the shortcomings of their fellows. The average number of children per capita per married graduate was about 2.3, and shrank decade by decade. Taking the entire number of graduates the average number of children surviving was 1.55 per capita (of whom, of course, on the average half are daughters). This means roughly, that in these thirty classes of Harvard and Yale graduates, representing, of course, a high average of the energy, ambition and cultivation, and a reasonably high average of the wealth, of the land, every four fathers left behind them three sons. If this ratio continues it will mean that 140 years hence—a period as long as that which divides us from the Declaration of Independence—the average college graduates of to-day will be represented in their descendents by only three-tenths of their present number.

This would be bad enough if the disease were confined to college graduates. But, as Mr. Phillips shows in the brief summaries at the end of his article, it is merely representative of what is taking place among native-born Americans generally.

The most pitiable showing is made by the graduates of the women's colleges. So far, among the older classes of the older among these colleges, the average girl is represented in the next generation by only 0.86 of a child. This means, that for every five possible mothers there were two daughters. Do these colleges teach "domestic science," and if so, what is it that they teach? There is something radically wrong with the home training and the school training that produce such results. To say this, is not in the least to join with the ignorant and foolish man who denounces higher education for woman; he is usually himself a striking illustration of the need of wiser education for men. But it most certainly is a recognition of the fact, not that there should be any abandonment of, nor indeed any failure to enlarge, the scheme of higher education for women, but that for women as for men this higher education should keep a firm grip on the true perspective of life, and should refuse to sacrifice the great essentials of existence to even the easiest and pleasantest non-essentials.

The trouble in our national life, however, is far more deep-seated than anything affecting only the most highly educated classes. The same drift is visible among our people generally; most so in the East, and in the cities and big towns of the West. In Massachusetts, for the twenty-five years ending in 1911, the deaths among the native-born population exceeded the births by 270,-ooo, whereas during the same period the births in families with foreign-born parents exceeded the deaths by nearly 530,000. If this process continues the work of perfecting the boasted common school and college system for Massachusetts native Americans will prove about as useful as the labor of those worthy missionaries who on different occasions have translated the Bible into the tongues of savage races who thereupon died out.

In the West the native stock—and I use the term with elasticity to include all children of mothers and fathers who were born on this side of the water—is only just about holding its own. It is a little less than holding its own in the cities, a little more than doing so in the country districts. In the cities of Minneapolis and Cleveland, for example, such families average less than three children. In the country districts of Minnesota and Ohio they average about one child more a family, which in this case marks just the difference between increase and decrease. In the South the native white stock is still increasing, although with diminishing rapidity.

The figures given for the Harvard and Yale graduates show that, taking into account the number of children that die before growing up, the number of adults that do not marry and the number of marriages where for physical and natural reasons—that is, reasons presumably implying no moral blame in the parents—there are no children or only one or two children, it is necessary that the family physically able to produce children shall average over three or the race will slowly decrease in numbers. When the health conditions become such that child mortality is reduced still lower than at present, and when marriages become more universal and the having and rearing of a sufficient number of children is recognized for both man and woman as the highest duty and the greatest and most extraordinary pleasure of life, then an average family of three children may mean a slow increase. Under any circumstances an average of one or two children means rapid race suicide, and therefore profound moral delinquency in those wilfully responsible for it. But this is not all! At present whoever has only three children must be understood to represent a slight drag on the forward movement of the nation, a slight falling below the average necessary standard in the performance of the indispensable duty without which there will in the end be no nation; the duty, failure to perform which means that all talk of eugenics and social reform and moral uplift and self-development represents mere empty threshing of the air, as pointless as similar talk by a suicide.

What I have said does not represent preaching. It merely represents the application of certain mathematical truths to life. It is no more debatable than the statement that less than two and two cannot make four. Apparently some persons regard it as a satisfactory answer to point out that some worthless or hopelessly poverty-stricken family would benefit themselves and the country by having fewer children. I heartily agree to this, and will support any measures to make this agreement effective by limiting the production of the unfit, after we have first taken effective measures to promote the production of the fit. Doubtless there are communities which it would be to the interest of the world to have die out. But these are not the communities reached by the "birth-control" propagandists—even by that rather small proportion of these propagandists who are neither decadent nor immoral. I hold that the average American is a decent, self-respecting man, with large capacities for good service to himself, his country and the world if a right appeal can be made to him and the right response evoked. Therefore, I hold that it is not best that he and his kind should perish from the earth. The great problem of civilization is to secure a relative increase of the valuable as compared with the less valuable or noxious elements in the population. This problem cannot be met unless we give full consideration to the immense influence of heredity. There is far less danger of our forgetting the also very great influence of environment, which includes education. Except in a small number of cases, the state can exercise little active control against the perpetuation of the unfit. Therefore, the real and great service must be rendered by those who help put an aroused and effective public opinion on the side of the perpetuation of the stocks from which it is particularly important that the future citizenship of the nation should be drawn.

Really intelligent eugenists understand and insist on these facts. The Journal of Heredity for July, 1917, contains one article showing the evil which has come from permitting the unrestricted breeding of a feeble-minded, utterly shiftless and worthless family in Ohio; and another, and even more important article showing that the idea that, in a normal and healthy community, large families are an evil is false and dangerous in the highest degree. The writer says: "Large families in the slums may be considered undesirable; unregulated [excessive] child-bearing for any woman may be considered undesirable; but this [is untrue as to] large families separated from the influence of poverty. It is doubtless true that in the Hull House district, where many children have feeble and unintelligent parents and lack the necessities of life, a large family means weakness. But the reverse is true in normally sound stocks, in sections of population which have average intelligence, physique and prosperity." The writer shows that in such normal stocks the health of the mother is best, and the infant mortality lowest, in families with at least six children. The writer shows that in superior parts of the population large families are desirable from the point of view of the parents, the children and the world, alike; but that "in eugenically inferior parts of the population the smaller the family the better for all concerned." He shows that the birth-control extremists are dealing with pathological conditions—and indeed themselves represent a pathological condition.

At different times in different nations the needs and the duties differ widely. Professor Ross has shown that China has suffered immeasurably because of the reckless overbreeding of its people. France is now in hazard of her national existence because of exactly the opposite cause. A century ago France was as populous as Germany. Her soil is fertile, her natural advantages great. But France's population remained nearly stationary while Germany's population increased, until the two countries stand nearly as five to three. The increase in Germany's population was accompanied by such industrial and social development (having no relation whatever to such mere swarm,ing of poverty-stricken incompetents as China and, formerly, Southern Italy have seen) as also to mean ? marked increase in social and national efficiency. In consequence, all of France's heroic gallantry and self-devotion and her utmost self-sacrifice have been needed in order to enable her, with the help of potent allies, even to hold back a foe whom once she was able to meet single-handed. The United States need not follow the example of China in order to avoid the French shortcomings, and it can still avoid these shortcomings while profiting by the magnificent French example in other ways.

In instancing France I merely take what the best and most patriotic Frenchmen say. The French Academy in its Proceedings has throughout this war been carrying a series of studies on the dwindling birth-rate in France, and has shown that on the average the mother capable of having children must have over three or the race will slowly diminish; of course only one or two children means closely impending race suicide* As M. Herve has recently said, the man who leaves behind him no children, or the father of only one son, must hereafter realize that he is not a patriot; that he is not doing his duty by his country. (I speak, of course, of the average, not the exception.) A French newspaper before me says: "In 1850 the population of France surpassed that of Germany. When this war broke out it had become inferior by 27 millions. It was this fact to which the war was really due. If the Germans had had before them 60 millions of French instead of 39 they would have hesitated long. The cause of the war was that we had not furnished to France enough children. ... If the French birth-rate continues to diminish we shall some day face a new war of conquest waged against us. It is a question of life or death which confronts France. She must live! But in order to live she must face the implacable realities of existence. The national conscience should insist that our legislators put the matter of the repopu-lation of France in the first place." The lesson applies as much to the United States. If our birth-rate continues to diminish we shall by the end of this century be impotent in the face of powers like Germany, Russia or Japan; we shall have been passed by the great states of South America.

We are dealing with rules, not with exceptions. We are discussing the birth-rate in any given community, just as we discuss the ability of a community in time of war to provide soldiers for the nation's safety. In any small group of men it may happen that, for good and sufficient reasons, it is impossible for any of the members to go to war: two or three may be physically unfit, two or three may be too old or too young, and ' the remaining two or three may be performing civil duties of such vital consequence to the commonwealth that it would be wrong to send them to the Front. In such case no blame attaches to any individual, and high praise may attach to all. But if in a group of a thousand men more than a small minority are unwilling and unfit to go to war in the hour of the nation's need, then there is something radically wrong with them, spiritually or physically, and they stand in need of drastic treatment. So it is as regards marriage and children. In a small group there may be good and sufficient explanations why the individual men and women have remained unmarried ; and the fact that those that marry have no children, or only one or two children, may be cause only for sincere and respectful sympathy. But if, in a community of a thousand men and a thousand women, a large proportion of them, remain unmarried, and if of the marriages so many are sterile, or with only one or two children, that the population is decreasing, then there is something radically wrong with the people of that community as a whole. The trouble may be partly physical, partly due to the strange troubles which accompany an over-strained intensity of life. But even in this case the root trouble is probably moral; and in all probability the whole trouble is moral, and is due to a complex tissue of causation in which coldness, love of ease, striving after social position, fear of pain, dislike of hard work and sheer' inability to get life values in their proper perspective all play a part.

The fundamental instincts are not only the basic but also the loftiest instincts in human nature. The qualities that make men and women eager lovers, faithful, duty-performing, hardworking husbands and wives, and wise and devoted fathers and mothers stand at the foundations of all possible social welfare, and also represent the loftiest heights of human happiness and usefulness. No other form of personal success and happiness or of individual service to the state compares with that which is represented by the love of the one man for the one woman, of their joint work as home-maker and home-keeper, and of their ability to bring up the children that are theirs.

Among human beings, as among all other living creatures, if the best specimens do not, and the poorer specimens do, propagate, the type will go down. If Americans of the old stock lead lives of celibate selfishness (whether profligate or merely frivolous or objectless, matters little), or if the married are afflicted by that base fear of living which, whether for the sake of themselves or of their children, forbids them to have more than one or two children, disaster awaits the nation. It is not well for a nation to import its art and its literature; but it is fatal for a nation to import its babies. And it is utterly futile to make believe that fussy activity for somebody else's babies atones for failure of personal parenthood. I shall never forget witnessing a reception given by the governor of a big state to a "Mothers' Meeting." The governor enthusiastically advised his audience to remember that it was their duty to have a sufficient number of healthy children so that the race should go forward and not backward; and then discovered that the "mothers" were such only in a highly figurative sense, the large majority being spinster schoolteachers and many of the remainder zealous maiden ladies at the head of philanthropic associations. They were there to tell some one else how to do the vital work! Now, it was quite proper for them to be there, but they should have been there as distinctly subordinate to the mothers themselves.

The remedy? There are many remedies, all of them partial. The state can do something, as the state is now doing in France. Legislation must be for the average, for the common good. Therefore legislation should at once abandon the noxious sentimentality of thinking that in America at this time the "only son" is entitled to preferential consideration, either for the sake of himself or of his mother. The preference, as regards all obligations to the state, should be given to the family having the third and fourth children. In all public offices in every grade the lowest salaries should be paid the man or woman with no children, or only one or two children, and a marked discrimination made in favor of the man or woman with a family of over three children. In taxation, the rate should be immensely heavier on the childless and on the families with one or two children, while an equally heavy discrimination should lie in favor of the family with over three children. This should apply to the income tax and inheritance tax, and as far as possible to other taxes. I speak, as usual, of the average, not the exception. Only the father and mother of over three children have done their full duty by the state; and the state should emphasize this fact. No reduction should be made in a man's taxes merely because he is married. But he should be exempted on an additional $500 of income for each of his first two children, and on an additional $1,000 of income for every subsequent child—for we wish to put especial emphasis on the vital need of having the third, and the fourth and the fifth children. The men and women with small or reasonable incomes are the ones who should be encouraged to have children; they do not represent a class which will be tempted by such exemption to thriftlessness or extravagances. I do not believe that there should be any income exemption whatever for the unmarried man or the childless married couple; let all the exemptions be for the married couples of moderate means who have children.
An aroused and enlightened public opinion can do infinitely more. There must be a sterner sense of duty and a clearer vision of the perspectives among which duty must work. That standard of living is poor, whether for mechanic or bank president, which is based on ease, comfort, luxury and social ambition rather than on education, culture and wide ability to shift for oneself. The oldest duty of all is that owed by the fathers and mothers of Americans to care for the future of their country and the ideals of their race. The man and the woman must be partners in love, in mutual forbearance, in gallant facing of the future, in wise choice of duty among conflicting considerations. I would be the first to admit that no universal rule can be laid down, applicable to all people under all conditions. But let our people study, not only books on sociology, but also stories like Kathleen Norris's "Mother," Cornelia Comer's "Preliminaries," and Dorothy Can-field's "Hillsboro People." These books are wholesome reading for man and for woman—and they have the additional merit of being interesting.

The serious student can turn to one of the best books recently written by an American scientific man: "Heredity and Environment," by Prof. Edwin C. Conklin, of Princeton. Let him look at pages 434-435. 45O-455, and 498-507. I wish these pages could be circulated as a teacher's leaflet in all our schools and universities, in all the editorial rooms of our magazines and newspapers—especially in those whose editors pose as reformers and advocate every form of quack remedy from pacifism to birth-control. Says Mr. Conklin (I condense) : "The cause for alarm is the declining birth-rate in the best elements of a population, while it continues to increase among the poorer elements. The descendants of the Puritans and the Cavaliers, who have raised the cry for 'fewer and better children/ are already disappearing, and in a few centuries, at most, will have given place to more fertile races of mankind . . . if we had fewer luxuries we could have, and could afford to have, more children. . . . No eugenical reform can fail to take account of the fact that the decreasing birthrate among intelligent people is a constant menace to the race. We need not 'fewer and better children,' but more children of the better sort and fewer of the worse variety. There is great enthusiasm to-day on the part of many childless reformers for negative eugenical measures. [They forget that] sterility is too easily acquired; what is not so easily brought about is the fertility of the better lines. . . . What Bernard Shaw regards as the greatest discovery of the nineteenth century, -viz., artificially limiting the size of families, may prove to be the greatest menace to the human race. . . . The chief motive for limiting the size of families is personal comfort and pleasure rather than the welfare of the race. It is more important for the welfare of the race that children with good inheritance [in mind, body and will] should be brought into the world than that parents should live easy lives and have no more children than they can conveniently rear amid all the comforts of a luxury-loving age.

    Race preservation, not self-preservation, is the first law of nature. Among the higher organisms, the strongest of all the instincts are those connected with reproduction. The struggle to be free is part of a great evolutionary movement, but the freedom must be a sane one, which neither injures others nor eliminates posterity. [Any movement which] demands freedom from marriage and reproduction is suicidal. In every age and country where men, and especially women, have demanded freedom from the burdens of bearing and rearing children, as well as from other natural social obligations, the end has been degeneration and extinction ... if we continue to put individual freedom and luxury and selfishness above social obligations, our race and civilization will also see the writing on the wall: Thou art weighed in the balance and art found wanting."
In any discussion such as this, where it is necessary to deal in sweeping manner with great truths, the statements made must be accepted as referring to the general and the average conditions. It is not possible at every point to qualify them so as to allow for exceptions. In this case it is, in my judgment, vital to establish the principles above laid down as generally applicable, and to insist that no country is healthy, indeed that any country is sick nigh to death, where these principles are not in general lived up to. But, of course, there are exceptions. There are a few—a very few—good men and women who, when unmarried, can do such admirable work that the question of marriage is negligible so far as they are concerned. There are men and women who remain unmarried for good and sufficient reasons, even although they never do great work in the outside world. The imposition on any woman of excessive child-bearing is a brutal wrong; and of all human beings a husband should be most considerate of his wife. Then, among married couples who are childless or have only one or two children, there are plenty to whom this is a dreadful grief and who are morally in no way to blame. For these men and women I have the same respectful sympathy that I have for a gallant man, of soldier stock, who, because of physical trouble for which he is in no way responsible, is denied the chance to serve his country under arms when that country's need is sore. There is no more fearless and danger-defying heroism than that shown by some women of the true heroic type, in walking through the valley of the shadow to bring into life the babies they love; and there is no punishment too heavy for the man who does not revere and serve such a woman as he reveres and serves nothing else that is human. And it may be his highest duty if the danger is too great to see that she does not face it. I know one girl who has just for the second time eagerly faced motherhood; and to bring the second baby to join her first she had to show a splendid courage which (and I speak accurately) ranges her beside any of the men who in their ragged blue and buff and their gaping shoes followed Washington, or any gaunt Confederate who charged with Pickett, or any of the sailor-men who held the sinking launch steady while Gushing torpedoed the Albemarle; which ranges her beside her husband and brothers who have crossed the sea to face the German and Turkish armies.

It would be wicked, without due thought, to expose woman or man, girl or young man, to the possible stroke of fate; but we revere them all alike, precisely because they face the stroke of fate, high-hearted, if the need warrants it. They only who are not afraid to die are fit to live!
APPENDIX A 
why we are at war; the german horror
Chapters II, VII, X, and XI are based on articles that have appeared in the metropolitan ; chapter VIII on an article that has appeared in the outlook; chapter III on a speech delivered on the Fourth of July last.

Let those who wish to understand the hideous evil wrought by the foes who at the moment are the most dangerous of those outside our own household, and the even greater menace to our future well-being presented by those who at the moment are the most dangerous of the foes within our own household, read such books as Owen Wister's "Pentecost of Calamity," Gustavus Ohlinger's "Their True Faith and Allegiance," James Beck's "Evidence in the Case," and "The War and Humanity," Arthur Gleason's "Golden Lads," and "Our Part in the Great War," Frederick Palmer's "With Our Faces Towards the Light," Vernon Kellogg's "Headquarters' Nights," and the various documents, including poems, sketches, brief essays issued by that capital organization the Vigilantes—among the writers being Hermann Hage-dorn, Porter Emerson Browne, Julian Street, Edwin Carty Ranck, arid Wm. H. Fischer. If any man still honestly wishes to know "why we are at war," these writings will enlighten him. He can well ask why we did not go to war immediately after the Lusitania horror —and to this there never can be any satisfactory answer; but no brave and patriotic man or woman has the right to ask why we are at war now.

    Germany and her subject-allies are now our foes from without. We must oppose her imperious will and high efficiency by developing as rapidly as possible an equal efficiency and by using it with an even firmer will until we have brought down her whole fabric of Prussianized militarism. But she does not rely merely on military efficiency. She relies just as much on a policy of organized terrorism and brutality, firmly trusting thereby to daunt and cow all men with a streak of cowardice in their make-up, and trusting no less to the assistance she always receives in her brutality from the base folly of the pacifists in our land, and from the intrigues of the paid and unpaid German tools and sympathizers. We should meet her terrorism and brutality by a stern and relentless retaliation; and this would mean not brutality, but the putting a stop to brutality. Until the German people separate themselves from the German Government we are against tho German people; and Germany has shown that she respects nothing whatever but force; that she treats good conduct as weakness, and that she can be withheld from the foulest cruelty only by punishment and by fear.

We are fighting this war for. humanity. But primarily we are fighting it for America. Germany has murdered our innocent men, women and children wholesale. She has plotted to dismember us. She has brutally wronged us. We fight her armies abroad in order that we ourselves or our children may not have to fight them here, on this continent, beside our own ruined homes.

During the last few months, since we have been at war with Germany, the Germans have added to the list of infamies they have committed in Belgium, Servia and Rou-mania, and to those which their tools and allies the Turks have committed in Armenia and Syria, the fresh infamy of the devastation of the parts of France from which they have retreated.
This devastation, now being perpetrated, is in accordance with the fixed military policy of Germany. It is done merely with malignant purpose and without hope of military advantage. In March, 1917, the military correspondent of the Berlin Lokalanzeiger gleefully described the process:

"In the course of these last months great stretches of French territory have been turned by us into a dead country. It varies in width from six and a quarter to seven and a half or eight miles, and extends along the whole of our new position, presenting a terrible barrier of desolation to any enemy hardy enough to advance against our new lines. No village or farm was left standing on this glacis, no road was left passable, no railway track or embankment was left in being. Where once were woods there are gaunt rows of stumps; the wells have been blown up, wires, cables and pipe lines destroyed. In front of our new position runs, like a gigantic ribbon, an empire of death."

The Berlin Tageblatt gloats over this destruction of the dwellings and property of helpless peasants as follows:

"And the desert, a pitiful desert leagues wide, bare of trees and undergrowth and houses! They sawed and hacked; trees fell and bushes sank; it was days and days before they had cleared the ground. In this war zone there was to be no shelter, no cover. The enemy's mouth must stay dry, his eyes turn in vain to the wells—they are buried in rubble. No four walls for him to settle down into; all levelled and burnt out, the villages turned into dumps of rubbish, churches and church towers laid out in ruins athwart the roads."

This brutal devastation did not in the slightest degree check the advance of the French armies. Across the waste they built highways and rebuilt roads. The wells were poisoned; but the armies laid water pipes for their supply. Every farmhouse and peasant's cot was reduced to dust, but the armies carried their own shelter.

The "frightfulness" had no more military purpose or effect than the "frightfulness" which expressed itself in the baby-killing and woman-killing air-raids on England; and it was no more excusable than the butcheries and slave-drives in Belgium and Poland.

Germany has re-introduced from the dark ages poison gas and liquid fire, so as to kill her enemies with torture. With cynical cruelty she has attacked hospitals and hospital ships, nurses, doctors, surgeons and wounded patients alike. She has deliberately destroyed undefended villages, and churches and schools. She has murdered in cold blood, in broad day and in the darkness of night, on cold and stormy seas, the non-combatant officers and crews, and the passengers, including women and children, on merchantmen of all flags, repeatedly including our own. She has persecuted, tortured, raped and abused her victims, and has loaded the wretched survivors with crushing monetary fines.

The nation responsible for such horrors is the foe of humanity. Whoever in the peace discussions proposes to treat that nation as on an equal footing of right with its antagonists is serving the powers of the pit. Peace without victory over such a nation would be a far-reaching wrong to mankind. We should fight this foe to a complete victory, if it takes five years, and ten million men, and even if all our allies made peace.

APPENDIX B
fair play for all americans
June 26, 1917. My dear Sir:
In the New York Times of the 22nd and 23rd instant it is stated that the United States Government has announced that in Red Cross units sent to the base hospitals of the allies abroad, American citizens born in Germany or in Austro-Hungary, or whose parents were born in Germany or Austro-Hungary will not be allowed to serve.

I very earnestly hope that the Government will at once recede from this position. If our Red Cross units are not desired abroad, whether with the base hospitals of the allies, or anywhere else, then we can use them purely for our people or with our own armies; but wherever we do send them it should be on the assumption that we no more permit distinction to be made among the American personnel on the ground of birthplace or parentage than on the ground of creed. Service in the Red Cross should be like service in the ranks of the army; no man worthy to serve in one should be barred from service in the other. If any spy or disloyal person is found in either, in the theater of war, he should be hung out of hand or shot by drumhead court-martial, without mercy, whether he is of native or foreign parentage. But it is an intolerable wrong and insult to discriminate, or permit discrimination, between loyal and devoted Americans because of their parentage or birthplace.
I have the right to speak in this matter because I have insisted that we should take the most drastic measures against any man who acts disloyally; and I hold that all men who attack our allies or uphold our enemies while we are in this war are disloyal to America. No man can now be loyal both to this country and to Germany; no man can be both a German and an American; he must be either all German or all American. If he is the former, he should be turned out of the country or put in a detention camp. If he is the latter, it is an intolerable outrage not to treat him as on an exact equality with all other good Americans.

When I was President, one of the men who sat in my cabinet was born in Germany; another was a descendant of one of Blucher's colonels. The man who has been closest to me politically for the last fifteen years is of German parentage. In this great crisis no organization has done better work in rousing the slumbering patriotism of the nation than the Vigilantes; and no one of the Vigilantes has done better work than Hermann Hagedorn, of German parentage. If I had been allowed to raise the four divisions of volunteer troops which Congress authorized me to raise, I would have asked that one of the divisions should be commanded by General Kuhn, the head of the War College, and another division, or else a brigade, by my old head of the Philippine Constabulary, Colonel Band-holtz. Both are of German parentage; both are Americans and nothing else; and I would eagerly and proudly have served under either. Four of the regular officers whom I would have recommended for Colonels are of German parentage or descent. One of the few non-regulars whom I would have recommended for a Colonelcy, at present the Colonel of a National Guard regiment in Illinois, is of German parentage; and he told me that 85% of the men who would have come in with him were of foreign parentage. My headquarters chaplain (not of my religious creed) would have been a retired regular army officer, born in Germany; my brigade quartermaster, a man of German parentage.

These men, and many, many others like them, are fit to lead our armies in war, and to hold our highest civil offices; and they stand in the forefront of our citizenship in time of peace. They are Americans in every fiber of soul and body. I would gladly confide the honor of the flag to their keeping, exactly as I would gladly confide my own honor and good name to their keeping. I resent any slur on their loyal Americanism as keenly as I would resent any slur on my own; and if they, and those in heart like them, from the highest to the lowest, are not fit to represent this country—in the army, in the Red Cross, in any and every capacity—-at home or abroad, then no Americans are fit to represent us.

I earnestly hope that the Government will punish with alert, instant and unsparing severity any man of whatever origin who is disloyal to us or false to our allies, in any position, during this war; but I no less earnestly hope that the Government will refuse to permit any discrimination among true and loyal Americans because of their parentage, birthplace or creed. Yours truly,
theodore roosevelt. mr. C. A. A. McGEE,
San Diego, Cal.

APPENDIX C
murder Is not debatable
On July sixth, at the reception in New York to the envoys of the Russian Republic, I made a speech of welcome. In the course of it I spoke in severe condemnation of the recent riots in East St. Louis, where a white mob had murdered and maimed, or otherwise maltreated, hundreds of negroes and had burned or otherwise destroyed their property. Mr. Gompers, the head of the Federation of Labor, in his following speech, spoke in extenuation of what had been done, so far as the white workingmen were concerned. As soon as he was through I spoke briefly again, my remarks being in part as follows:

"I demand that the Government representatives put down violence with ruthless resolution, whether it be of white against black or black against white. Before we can help others in drawing the beam from their eyes let us draw out the beam that is in our own eyes. The most dangerous form of sentimental debauch is to give expression to good wishes in behalf of virtue somewhere else when you do not dare to enforce decency in your own province.

"Justice is not merely words. It is to be translated into living acts, and how can we praise the people of Russia if we by explanation, silence or evasion apologize for murdering the helpless. In the past I have listened to the same form of excuse from the Russian autocracy for the pograms inflicted on the Jews. Shall we by silence acquiesce in this amazing apology for the murder of men, women and children in our own country?

"Never will I sit motionless while directly or indirectly apology is made for murder of the helpless."

Mr. Gompers in his speech had alluded to a telegram from the Illinois State Federation of Labor. Subsequently, the secretary of this body sent me a letter which I answered, as follows:
July  17,  1917. My dear Sir:
I thank you for your courteous letter enclosing the report of the Committee on Labor of the Illinois State Council of Defense, concerning the race riots at East St. Louis. They had nothing to do with any commission or alleged commission of rape or any other crime. Aside from race antipathy, the report seems to show that the riots were due to economic conditions. I was not informed, in any way, as to these economic conditions which it is alleged led up to the riot, until after Mr. Gompers' speech on July 6th. When on that evening I made my first remarks on the riot I supposed the underlying cause to be racial, and in my remarks I made no allusion whatever to organized labor, or indeed to labor at all, in connection with the riots. It was Mr. Gompers' speech which first gave me clearly to understand that the fundamental cause was alleged to be economic, and that organized labor regarded itself as especially concerned with the riots. Then my attention was called to the newspapers of July 4th, which carried an alleged statement by Mr. Michael Whalen, President of the Central Trades and Labor Councils of East St. Louis. If this statement is correctly reported, Mr. Whalen said, "The chief objection to the negroes is that they would not unionize, and would not strike." I hold with the utmost intensity of conviction, that it is absolutely impossible for us to succeed along the lines of an orderly democracy, a democracy which shall be industrial as well as political, unless we treat the repression of crime, including crimes of violence, and the insistence on justice obtained through the enforcement of law, as prime necessities. I, of course, refuse, under any conditions, to accept the fact that certain persons decline "to unionize and strike" as warranting their murder, or as warranting any kind of violence against them. But I go much further than this. I will aid in every way in my power to secure by governmental as well as private action, the remedying of all the wrongs of labor, and in so acting I shall pay no heed to any capitalistic opposition. But I refuse to treat any industrial condition as warranting riot and murder; and I condemn all persons, whether representatives of organized labor or not, who attempt to palliate or excuse such crimes, or who fail to condemn them in clear-cut and unequivocal fashion. I heartily believe in organized labor, just as, and even more than, I believe in organized capital; I am very proud of being an honorary member of one labor organization; but I will no more condone crime or violence by a labor organization or by workingmen than I will condone crime or wrong-doing by a corporation or by capitalists. A square deal for every man! That is the only safe motto for the United States.

This is a democracy, a government by the people, and the people have supreme power if they choose to exercise it. The people can get justice peaceably, if they really desire it; and if they do not desire it enough to show the wisdom, patience and cool-headed determination necessary in order to get it peaceably, through the orderly process of law, then they haven't the slightest excuse for trying to get it by riot and murder. All the governmental authorities concerned in the East St. Louis situation should have taken notice of that situation in advance, and should take notice of it now. The National Government, and all local governmental authorities in places where such a situation is likely to arise, should take notice now, and act now. Nine-tenths of wisdom is being wise'in time. If there has been improper solicitation of negroes to come to East St. Louis, or improper housing and working conditions among them after they have come, or an improperly low wage-scale, or if anything else improper has been done by the capitalists and employers, so that injustice has been done the workingmen, then it was the bounden duty, and is now the bounden duty, of the Government authorities to remedy the wrong and see justice done the workingmen. But the first consideration is to stop, and to punish, lawless and murderous violence. Lawless violence inevitably breeds lawless violence in return, and the first duty of the Government is relentlessly to put a stop to the violence and then to deal firmly and wisely with all the conditions that led up to the violence. If black men are lawlessly and brutally murdered, in the end the effect is to produce lawlessness among brutal blacks. Recently the I. W. W. has been guilty of all kinds of misconduct, and has been acting as in effect a potent ally of Germany, with whom we are now at war; and finally their lawlessness produced an explosion of counter-lawlessness. Of course the Government should repress both kinds of lawlessness. It should prevent all lawless excesses against the I. W. W. and it should also act on the theory that these excesses are fundamentally due to the previous failure of the Government to deal in drastic fashion and with all necessary severity with the turbulent, lawless, murderous and treasonable practices which have been so common among the I. W. W. and kindred organizations. And then it should deal in thoroughgoing fashion with the social and industrial conditions which have produced such results. We Americans must hold the scales even.

A few years ago certain negro troops shot up a Texas town, and the other members of their companies shielded them from punishment. The Government proceeded to the limit of its power against them all, and dismissed them from the army; not because they were black men who had committed a crime against white men, but because they had acted criminally; and justice should be invoked against wrong-doers without regard to the color of their skins, just as it should be invoked against wrong-doers without regard as to whether they are rich or poor, whether they are employers or employees, whether they are capitalists and heads of corporations who commit crimes of cunning and arrogance and greed, or wage workers and members of labor organizations who commit crimes of violence and envy and greed.

I have just received an abusive letter from an organization styling itself "The Industrial Council of Kansas City," and claiming to be affiliated with the Federation of Labor, which states that I accused organized labor of being responsible for the outrages at East St. Louis. I made no such accusation until the fact that there was at least a measure of truth in the accusation had been in effect set forth in the speech by the special representative of organized labor at the meeting at which I spoke and by the telegram quoted in that speech. Whenever I have the power, I will protect the white man against the black wrong-doer, and the black man against the white wrong-doer; I will as far as I have power secure justice for the laboring man who is wronged by the man of property, and for every man, whether he has property or not, if he is menaced by lawless violence; and when I haven't the power, I will at least raise my voice in protest, if there is the least chance of that protest doing good.

We are at this moment at war with a most formidable and ruthless enemy. We are fighting for our own dearest rights; we are also fighting for the rights of all self-respecting and civilized nations to liberty and self-government. We have demanded that the negro submit to the draft and do his share of the fighting exactly as the white man does. Surely when such is the case we should give him the same protection by the law, that we give to the white man. All of us who are fit to fight are to serve as soldiers, shoulder to shoulder, whether we are farmers or townsfolk, whether we are workingmen or professional men, men who employ others or men who are employed by others. We fight for the same country, we are loyal to the same flag, we are all alike eager to pay with our bodies in order to serve the high ideals which those who founded and preserved this nation believed it our mission to uphold throughout the world. Surely in such case it is our duty to treat all our fellow countrymen, rich or poor, black or white, with justice and mercy, and, so far as may be, in a spirit of brotherly kindness.

The victims of the mob in East St. Louis were very humble people. They were slain, and their little belongings destroyed. In speaking of the draft riots in New York during the Civil War, Lincoln, addressing a Workingmens' Association, singled out as the saddest feature of the riots the killing "of some working people by other working people." We have recently entered into a war, primarily it is true to secure our own national honor and vital interest, but also with the hope of bringing a little nearer to all the world the day when everywhere the humble and the mighty shall respect one anothers' rights and dwell together in the peace of justice. Surely, when we thus go to war against tyranny and brutality and oppression, our own hands must be clean of innocent blood. We hope to advance throughout the world the peace of righteousness and brotherhood: surely we can best do so when we insist upon this peace of righteousness and brotherhood within our own borders.

In securing such a peace the first essential is to guarantee to every man the most elementary of rights, the right to his own life.    Murder is not debatable. Sincerely yours,
(Signed) theodore roosevelt.
mr. victor A. olander, Sec'y-Treas., Illinois State Federation of Labor, 184 W. Washington Street, Chicago, 111.

APPENDIX D the "conscientious objector"
We have heard much of the conscientious objectors to military service, the outcry having been loudest among those objectors who are not conscientious at all but who are the paid or unpaid agents of the German Government.

It is certain that only a small fraction of the men who call themselves conscientious objectors in this matter are actuated in any way by conscience. The bulk are slackers, pure and simple, or else traitorous pro-Germans. Some are actuated by lazy desire to avoid any duty that interferes with their ease and enjoyment, some by the evil desire to damage the United States and help Germany, some by sheer, simple, physical timidity. In the aggregate, the men of this type constitute the great majority of the men who claim to be conscientious objectors, and this fact must be remembered in endeavoring to deal with the class.

In some of our big cities, since the war began, men have formed vegetarian societies, claiming to be exempt from service on the ground that they object to killing not merely men, but chickens. Others among the leading apostles of applied pacificism are not timid men; on the contrary they are brutal, violent men, who are perfectly willing to fight, but only for themselves and not for the nation. These rough-neck pacifists have always been the potent allies of the parlor or milk-and-water pacifists; although they stand at the opposite end of the developmental scale. The parlor pacifist, the white-handed or sissy type of pacifist, represents decadence, represents the rotting out of the virile virtues among people who typify the unlovely senile side of civilization. The rough-neck pacifist, on the contrary, is a mere belated savage, who has not been educated to the virtues of national patriotism and of willingness to fight for the national flag and the national ideal. The savage is a turbulent person anxious to brawl and to fight for his personal advantage, but too short-sighted and selfish to be willing to fight for the common good. So in the New York draft riots during the Civil War, the disturbance was at the outset fostered by the parlor pacifists who were shrieking for peace at any price and for the immediate stopping of the war; but it speedily passed under the management of the rough-neck pacifist mob who killed hundreds of innocent people; they were perfectly willing to risk life and to take it to gratify their private passions; all that they objected to was risking their lives for the well-being and preservation of the nation.

There remains the pacifist, the conscientious objector, who really does conscientiously object to war and who is sincere about it. As regards these men we must discriminate sharply between the men deeply opposed to war so long as it is possible honorably to avoid it, who are ardent lovers of peace, but who put righteousness above peace; and the other men who, however sincerely, put peace above righteousness, and thereby serve the Devil against the Lord.

The first attitude is that of great numbers of the Society of Friends who in this war behave as so very many of the Friends did in the Civil War; as that great English Quaker statesman, John Bright, lover of freedom and righteousness, behaved in the Civil War. I wish all good American peace lovers would read the recent address delivered by Professor Albert C. Thatcher of Swarth-more, and signed by some scores of the Society of Friends. He shows that in the Civil War it is probable that their branch of the Society of Friends furnished more soldiers in proportion to their numbers than any other denomination. Liberty was part of their religion. They not only fought, but they insisted that the war should go on, at whatever cost, until it was crowned by complete victory. John Bright said, in speaking of the pacifists, who in the time of the Civil War wanted peace without victory: "I want no end of the war, and no compromise, and no re-union, 'till the negro is made free beyond all chance of failure." He was for peace, but he was not for peace at the price of slavery. In the same way now, the best and most high-minded Friends, and lovers of peace in this country, are for peace, but only as the result of the complete overthrow of the barbarous Prussian militarism which now is Germany, and the existence of which is a perpetual menace to our own country and to all mankind. The Friends and peace lovers of this type are among the very best citizens of this country. They abhor war; but there are things they abhor even more. Every good citizen will support them in their opposition to wanton or unjust war, to any war entered into save from the sternest sense of duty.

The peace people of the directly opposite type include the men who conscientiously object to all participation in any war however brutal the opponents, and however vital triumph may be to us and to mankind. These persons are entitled to precisely the respect we give any other persons whose conscience makes them do what is bad. We have had in this country some conscientious polygamists. We now have some conscientious objectors to taking part in this war. Where both are equally conscientious, the former are, on the whole, not as bad citizens as the latter. Of course, if these conscientious objectors are sincere they decline in private life to oppose violence or brutality or to take advantage of the courage and strength of those who do oppose violence and brutality. If these men are sincere they will refuse to interfere (for moral suasion is not interference) with a white-slaver who runs off with one of their daughters or a blackhander who kidnaps and tortures a little child or a ruffian who slaps the wife or mother of one of them in the face. They are utterly insincere unless they decline to take advantage of police protection from burglary or highway robbery. Of course if such a man is really conscientious he cannot profit or allow his family to profit in any way by the safety secured to him and them by others, by soldiers in time of war, by judges and policemen in time of peace; for the receiver is as bad as the thief. I hold that such an attitude is infamous; and it is just as infamous to refuse to serve the country in arms during this war. If a man's conscience bids him so to act, then his conscience is a fit subject for the student of morbid pathology.

If a man does not wish to take life, but does wish to serve his country, let him serve on board a mine-sweeper or in some other position where the danger is to his own life and not to the life of any one else. But if he will take no useful and efficient part in helping in this war, in running his share of the common risk, and doing his part of the common duty, then treat him as having forfeited his right to vote. He has no right to help render at the polls any decision which in the long run can only be made good in the face of brutal and hostile men by the ability and willingness of good citizens to back right with might.

The case has been admirably put by the Methodist Bishop, R. J. Cooke, of Helena, Montana. He points out that the vast majority of these conscientious objectors do not object to receiving the benefits from the suffering, hardships and deaths of other men; they only object to doing anything in return. Such a conscientious objector gives no service in return for the value he receives. He claims citizenship, but will not perform the duty of a citizen. Now, he has no moral right to take such a twofold position. "If any man will not work neither shall he eat." If his conscience forbids him to work, do not violate his conscience, but refuse to feed him at the expense of somebody with a healthy conscience which does not forbid work. Service to the nation in war stands precisely on a footing with any other service. If a man will not perform it, let him lose all the benefits of war; and therefore let him lose the political rights which a free country can keep only if its free citizens are willing to fight for them. Respect the conscientious objector's opinions, but let him abide by the full consequences of his opinions. Universal suffrage can be justified only if it rests on universal service. We stand against all privilege not based on the full performance of duty; and there is no more contemptible form of privilege than the privilege of existing in smug, self-righteous, peaceful safety because other, braver, more self-sacrificing men give up safety and go to war to preserve the nation. If a man is too conscientious to fight then the rest of us ought to be too conscientious to let him vote in a democratic land which can permanently exist only if the average man is willing in the last resort to fight for it, and die for it. A man has no right to the things that do not belong to him; and this country does not belong to the men who will not defend her. The man who will not defend the country has no business to vote in the country. Extreme Quakers take this position. They refuse to vote or pay taxes, in addition to refusing to fight. Such men are unwise, but consistent. But nothing can be said for the pacifist who wishes to vote, but refuses to fight.

Monsignor Cassidy of St. Mary's Cathedral, Fall River, Massachusetts, in an address to a body of Massachusetts troops who were about to leave for the war, said: "The future would be filled with shame and ignominy if we had been led by those who would have peace at any price; we should have been a soulless nation, and shame and reproach and everlasting infamy would have been the profit of our peace. But the nation did not sell its soul for peace! In the spirit of '76 we fight for peace, that justice may prevail, that frightfulness and inhumanity may not possess the earth."

There spoke a true American, fit interpreter of the soul of America!

APPENDIX E the hun within our gates
The Hun within our gates is the worst of the foes of our own household, whether he is the paid or the unpaid agent of Germany. Whether he is pro-German or poses as a pacifist, or a peace-at-any-price man, matters little. He is the enemy of the United States. Senators and Congressmen like Messrs. Stone, La Follette and Maclemore belong in Germany and it is a pity they cannot be sent there, as Vallandigham was sent to the hostile lines by Lincoln during the Civil War. Such men are among the worst of the foes of our own household ; and so are the sham philanthropists and sinister agitators and the wealthy creatures without patriotism who support and abet them. Our Government has seemed afraid to grapple with these people. It is permitting thousands of allies of Berlin to sow the seeds of treason and sedition in this country. The I. W. W. boasts its defiance of all law, and many of its members exultingly proclaim that in their war against industry in the United States they are endeavoring to give the Government so much to do that it will have no troops to spare for Europe. Every district where the I. W. W. starts rioting should be placed under martial law, and cleaned up by military methods. The German-language papers carry on a consistent campaign in favor of Germany against England. They should be put out of existence for the period of this war. The Hearst papers, more ably edited than the German sheets, play the Kaiser's game in a similar way. When they keep within the law they should at least be made to feel the scorn felt for them by every honest American. Wherever any editor can be shown to be purveying treason in violation of law he should be jailed until the conflict is over. Every disloyal German-born citizen should have his naturalization papers recalled and should be interned during the term of the war. Action of this kind is especially necessary in order to pick out the disloyal but vociferous minority of citizens of German descent from the vast but silent majority of entirely loyal citizens of German descent who otherwise will suffer from a public anger that will condemn all alike. Every disloyal native-born American should be disfranchised and interned. It is time to strike our enemies at home heavily and quickly. Every copperhead in this country is an enemy to the Government, to the people, to the army and to the flag, and should be treated as such.

This pro-German, anti-American propaganda has been carried on for years prior to the war, and its treasonable activities are performed systematically to-day. The great majority of the men and women of German blood, are absolutely good Americans, and we owe it just as much to them as to the rest of our fellow countrymen with the utmost severity to suppress the tens of thousands of Germans and German-Americans who, having taken the oath of allegiance, yet intrigue and conspire against the United States and do their utmost to promote the success of Germany and to weaken the defense of this nation. These men support and direct the pro-German societies. They incite disloyal activities among the Russian Jews. They finance the small groups of Irish-Americans whose hatred for England makes them traitors to the United States. They foment seditious operations among the German-American socialists and the I. W. W.'s. They support the German-language periodicals. Their campaigns range from peace movements and anti-draft schemings to open efforts in favor of sedition and civil war.

These traitors are following out the vicious teachings of Prussian philosophers; there is no cause for surprise at their treasonable course. Unfortunately there is cause for surprise at the license which the Administration extends to their detestable activities. In this attitude the Administration is repeating its course of indifference to world-threatening aggression, and of submission to studied acts of murderous violence, which resulted, after two and a half years of injury and humiliation, in our being dragged unprepared into war.

If during those two and a half years a policy of courage, and of consistent and far-sighted Americanism, had been followed, either the brutal invasion of our national rights would have been checked without war or else if we had been forced into war we would have brought it instantly to a victorious end. Our failure to prepare is responsible for our failure now efficiently to act in the war. In exactly the same fashion it may be set down as certain that continuance of the present craven policy of ignoring sedition and paltering with treason will encourage and aid German autocracy, and will be translated either into terrible lists of Americans slain and crippled on the battlefield or else into an ignoble peace which will leave Germany free at some future time to resume its campaign against America and against liberty-loving mankind.

APPENDIX F
nine-tenths of wisdom is being wise in time (Part of Speech at Lincoln, Nebraska, June 14, 1917)
In the past there have been two great crises in our national life: that in which the infant nation was saved by the soldierly valor and single-minded statesmanship of Washington, and that in which, in its raw maturity, the nation was again saved by the men who followed Lincoln and Grant. In each case the victory was followed by over half a century of national unity, secured by the peace of victory; and during this peace, brought by the victory of righteousness, men forgot that all its benefits would be lost if it were turned into the peace of cowardice and slackness. The Revolution was a war for liberty; and that liberty became of permanent value only when, again under Washington's lead, it was made secure by the orderly strength of the Union. The liberty secured in the Civil War to the black man was thus secured only because the white man was willing to fight to the death for the Union, and for the flag to which we owe undivided allegiance.

The old thirteen states were born of the Revolution. Nebraska, like Kansas, was born of the Civil War. It was the struggle over the admission to statehood of Kansas and Nebraska which marked the real opening of the contest that culminated at Appomatox.

The contest settled three great principles:
I. That we were no longer to make words substitutes for facts, or accept fine phrases in lieu of great deeds; and that therefore we were to make our devotion to liberty a fact instead of a phrase by abolishing slavery.
2.	That we were all hereafter to be Americans with an undivided allegiance to the flag of the Union; an alle giance even more incompatible with a loyalty divided be tween our flag  and some foreign flag than with a loyalty divided between the whole country and some section of the country.
3.	That we were definitely to realize that while peace was normally a good thing, yet that righteousness stood above peace, and that the only good citizens were those who were sternly ready to face war rather than submit to an unrighteous or cowardly peace.

All these principles are at stake at the present moment. All three have been threatened, and therefore the honor and the welfare and the usefulness and, indeed, the very life of the Republic have been threatened by the pacifist and pro-German agitation of the last three years.

Our national record during these three years is not one to which we can look back with pride; for during these three years we violated the three principles established by the Civil War.
1. For two years and a half we used fine phrases to cover ugly facts, when we unctuously protested our devotion to the liberties of small, well-behaved nations in the abstract, and yet, in the concrete did not say one word of indignant protest when with ruthless brutality, and without one shadow of moral justification, Germany conquered and enslaved Belgium. We did not even dare to act when our own innocent women and children and unarmed men lost their lives on the high seas, and when their murder was insolently justified by the tyrannous Prussianized autocracy which now menaces the entire peace-loving and liberty-loving world.  We permitted our national policy to be swayed by the national devotions and national antipathies of men who exercised the rights of American citizens but who showed themselves traitors to America by the way in which they prostituted our citizenship to the interests of Germany,  or to their hatred of  England; men whose allegiance to this country   was   merely one of the lips, while in their hearts their loyalty was wholly given to Germany, or else to any and every enemy of England, even although that enemy was also   an   enemy of the United States and of mankind.     Such   disloyalty was quite as mischievous as, and far less excusable than, sectional disloyalty.
2.	It would be impossible to overstate the damage done to the moral fiber of our country by the professional pacifist propaganda, the peace-at-any-price propaganda, which had been growing in strength for the previous decade and which for the first two and a half years of the war was potent in influencing us as a people to play a part which was wholly unworthy of the teachings of the great men of our past.    The professional pacifist movement was heavily financed   by   certain   big capitalists. This was not merely admitted but blazoned abroad by some among them;  whereas   the   accusations  that the munition makers or any other interested persons, played any important part in the movement  for preparedness were malicious  falsehoods, well known to be such by those who uttered them.    The professional pacifists during these two and a half years have occupied precisely the  position  of the   copperheads   during   the  time  of Abraham Lincoln.

We now pay the same tribute of respect to the men who fought for their convictions in the Civil War, whether they wore the blue or the gray—kinsmen of mine were in the Union army, and other kinsmen oi mine in the Confederate army, and I am equally proud of both. But nobody is proud of the copperheads, who exalted peace above righteousness; and the professional pacifists of to-day are their spiritual heirs.

At last, thank Heaven, we came to our senses, realized our shortcomings, and tardily did our duty. At last we spurned the mean counsels of timidity and folly. At last we showed that we were not too proud to fight; and we have reversed and repudiated the mean and base proposal to secure peace without victory. At last we took up the challenge which Germany had, with equal brutality and contempt, so often hurled in our faces. At last we determined to make our loyalty to this nation's past and to the welfare of humanity, a matter of deeds and not merely of empty words. We have entered the great war for the future of civilization; and now that we are at war it behooves us to bear ourselves like men.

We are utterly unprepared. The things we are now doing, even when well done, are things which we ought to have begun doing three years ago. We can now only partially offset our folly in failing to prepare during these last three years, in failing to heed the lesson writ large across the skies in letters of flame and blood. Nine-tenths of wisdom consists in being wise in time! Now we must fight without proper preparation. But we must prepare as well as we can at this late date; and the most important of all forms of preparedness is spiritual preparedness.

First of all we must sternly insist that all our people practice the patriotism of service, and that we all give a fervid and undivided loyalty to our common country. Patriotism is an affair of deeds, and patriotic words are good only in so far as they result in deeds. If phrase-making and oratory, whether by public servants or by outsiders, are treated as substitutes for deeds, the result is unmixed mischief. We read Lincoln's Gettysburg speech and Second Inaugural, only because his words were made good by his deeds, only because he threw aside all considerations other than the welfare of the nation, and with steadfast efficiency fought to the end for freedom and for the preservation of the Union.

As it was with that very great man in the past, so it must be with us lesser men in the present. Unless we now, at this moment, in this war, strive each of us to serve the country according to our several abilities, we are false to the memories of il.a nation-builders to whose sagacity and prowess we owe the creation of this state fifty years ago. Nebraska was founded as a State of the Union only because there were in the nation at that time enough men who were willing to do and dare and die at need for the Union. To-day likewise, the instant and overwhelming need of the nation is for men who will serve in arms, and if necessary die, for the nation; and next to this is the need for the men and women who will put our entire industrial and agricultural strength back of the fighting men in the field. Only the men and women who do this are true patriots; for patriotism means service to the nation; and only those who render such service are fit to enjoy the privilege of citizenship.

We cannot render such service if our loyalty is in even the smallest degree divided between this and any other nation. There must be no division within our own ranks along the lines of creed or national origin; and any citizen of this country who uses his citizenship in the interest of some other country is a traitor to the United States. It is not merely our right, but our high duty, to insist on this fact. Twice over a century ago we fought Great Britain. In each contest the great majority of the citizens of British descent took the lead and proved that they were Americans and nothing else. Those who did not so act were traitors. Now we are at war with Germany; and every citizen of German blood is bound in this contest to show the same whole-hearted Americanism in support of the United States against Germany that was shown in 1776 and 1812 by the Americans of British descent in the contests with Great Britain. To act otherwise is to be guilty of treason.

In the Revolutionary War the British armies who strove against our liberties were aided by powerful bodies of German auxiliaries. One of Washington's most famous victories, that at Trenton, was gained purely over Germans; and his first military experience was against the French. But it would be unworthy folly now to inveigh against Germany because a hundred and forty years ago she furnished mercenary troops for our subjugation; or to inveigh against the French because they were the bitter foes of our people in colonial days. It is precisely as unworthy, precisely as silly and wicked, now to nourish hatred against England. Washington's troops included men of English and Irish, of German and French, blood. But they were Americans and nothing else! They did not ask whether they were to fight English, French, or Germans. They fought the foes of the American flag, whoever these foes might be.

This must be our spirit to-day. We are a different people from any people of Europe. It is our boast that we admit the immigrant to full fellowship and equality with the native born. In return we demand that he shall share our undivided allegiance to the one flag which floats over all of us. The events of the last few years have conclusively shown that the man, whether of German, or of any other origin, who attempts to combine allegiance to this country with allegiance to another, is necessarily false to this country.

In this country we must have but one flag, the American flag; but one language, the English language; and above all, but one loyalty, an exclusive and undivided loyalty to the United States, with no Lot's wife attitude, no looking back to the various Old World countries from which our ancestors have severally come.

Now for the lesson of preparedness—military and economic, spiritual and material. As yet, nearly five months after Germany declared war on us, we have not so much as a division of troops ready for action. As yet we are utterly helpless to act in our own defense. The fault lies primarily in our complete failure to prepare during the last three years since the great war opened. Nine-tenths of wisdom, is being wise in time! We have not been wise in time; and now we rely on our allies to protect us from the effect of our folly. Just think of what Germany would have done to us within the first month—not to speak of the first four months—after we broke off diplomatic relations with her if we had not been able to shield our feeble and short-sighted unreadiness behind the navy of Great Britain and the armies of the allies. We owe our ignoble safety to the British fleet, and the French and English armies. We escape paying an utterly ruinous payment for our folly only because the soldiers and sailors of our allies pay for it with their lives. Uncle Sam is in the undignified position of the man who gets on a street car and then fumbles in his pocket while somebody else pays his fare.

If we had been willing to prepare, and if we had showed that we meant what we said, we would probably have prevented the war, and would certainly have brought it to a close as soon as we entered it. Now, friends, there is no use crying over spilt milk. But it is even worse to make believe that the milk was not spilt. The important thing is to face the fact of the spilling and resolve that it shall not be spilt again. Let us act in the spirit of the words of Abraham Lincoln at the close of the Civil War: "Human nature will not change. In any future great national trial, compared with the men of this, we shall have as weak and as strong, as silly and as wise, as bad and as good. Let us therefore study the incidents of this as philosophy to learn wisdom from, and none of them as wrongs to be revenged." Let us manfully acknowledge how great have been our shortcomings for the last few years, and then let us, without a particle of revengeful or recriminatory or uncharitable feeling, learn from them wisdom to be applied in our future conduct. From this time on let us insist on an absolute and undivided Americanism in this land, un-tempered by any half allegiance to the countries from which our ancestors may severally have sprung, and untainted by any unworthy national animosity towards any other country. Let us prepare ourselves spiritually, economically, and in all military and naval matters—including as a permanent policy the policy of universal military training and service—so that never again shall we be utterly unready, as we now are, to meet a great crisis. Finally, in the present war, a war for liberty and democracy against the ruthless militaristic tyranny of the Prussianized Germany of the Hohenzollerns, let us as speedily as possible train our giant, but our soft and unready, strength, so that we may use our hardened might to bring the slaughter to an end in the only way honorably possible, by securing for ourselves and our allies the peace of justice based on overwhelming victory.
APPENDIX G
correspondence with the president and the secretary of war
metropolitan
432 Fourth Avenue, New York
February 2,  1917. Sir:
I have already on file in your Department, my application to be permitted to raise a Division of Infantry, with a divisional brigade of cavalry in the event of war (possibly with the permission to make one or two of the brigades of infantry, mounted infantry). In view of the recent German note, and of the fact that my wife and I are booked to sail next week for a month in Jamaica, I respectfully write you as follows:

If you believe that there will be war, and a call for volunteers to go to war immediately, I respectfully and earnestly request that you notify me at once, so that I may not sail. Otherwise, I shall sail, and in such case, I respectfully request that if or when it becomes certain that we will have war, and that there will be a call for volunteers to go to war, you will direct that a telegram be sent to me, at the metropolitan magazine office, New York, from whence a cable will be sent me to Jamaica, and I shall immediately return. I have prepared the skeleton outline of what I have desired the Division to be, and what men I should recommend to the Department, for brigade and regimental commanders, -Chief of Staff, Chief Surgeon, Quartermaster General, etc., etc. The men whom I would desire for officers and enlisted men are, for the most part, men earning their living in the active business of life, who would be glad to go to war at their country's call, but who could not be expected, and who would probably refuse, to drop their business and see their families embarrassed, unless there is war, and the intention to send them to war. So it is not possible for me to do much more in the way of preliminary action than I have already done, until I have official directions. Very respectfully,
theodore roosevelt.
hon. newton D. baker, Secretary of War, Washington, D. C.
Washington, February 3, 1917. Dear Sir:
I have received your letter of February 2. No situation has arisen which would justify my suggesting a postponement of the trip you propose. Your letter and its suggestion will be filed for consideration should occasion arise.
Very respectfully yours,
newtoh  D. baker, Secretary of War.
hon. theodore roosevelt, 432 Fourth Avenue, New York City.
metropolitan 432 Fourth Avenue, New York
February 7, 1917. 

Sir:
I beg to acknowledge receipt of your letter, informing' me that I could go on my trip to Jamaica. It had crossed my letter to you informing you, that in view of the President having broken off diplomatic relations with Germany, I should of course abandon my trip.

   In the event of being allowed to raise a division, I should of course strain every nerve to have it ready for efficient action at the earliest moment, so that it could be sent across with the first expeditionary force, if the Department were willing. With this end in view, I am desirous of making all preparations that are possible in advance. I have intended, in the event of being allowed to raise a division, to request the Department to appoint Captain Frank McCoy, of the regular army, as my divisional Chief of Staff, with the rank of Colonel. Would it be proper for me to ask that he be permitted now to come on and see me here, so that I may immediately go over with him all the questions that it is possible to go over at this time, in connection with raising the division ? Very respectfully yours,
theodore roosevelt. hon. newton D. baker, Secretary of War, Washington, D. C.
war department
Washington, February 9, 1917. Sir:
I beg to acknowledge receipt, yesterday, of your letter of the 7th instant.
In reply to your patriotic suggestion that in due time you be authorized to raise a division of troops for service abroad and that it is your desire, in anticipation of that authority, to take certain preliminary steps, I have to state the limitations under which the War Department is in respect to this matter.

No action in the direction suggested by you can be taken without the express sanction of Congress. Should the contingency occur which you have in mind, it is to be expected that Congress will complete its legislation relating to volunteer forces and provide, under its own conditions, for the appointment of officers for the higher commands.
Very respectfully,
newton D. baker,
Secretary of War. hon. theodore roosevelt, 432 Fourth Avenue, New York City.
telegram
March 19, 1917. To the Secretary of War, Washington, D. C.:

In view of the fact that Germany is now actually engaged in war with us, I again earnestly ask permission to be allowed to raise a division for immediate service at the front. My purpose would be after some six weeks preliminary training here to take it direct to France for intensive (.raining so that it could be sent to the front in the shortest possible time to whatever point was desired. I should of course ask no favors of any kind except that the division be put in the fighting line at the earliest possible moment. If the Department will allow me to assemble the division at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and will give me what aid it can, and will furnish arms and supplies as it did for the early Plattsburg camps, I will raise the money to prepare the division until Congress can act, and we shall thereby gain a start of over a month in making ready. I would like to be authorized to raise three three-regiment brigades of infantry, one brigade of cavalry, one brigade of artillery, one regiment of engineers, one motorcycle machine-gun regiment, one aero squadron, and of course the supply branches, and so forth. As Captain McCoy whom I asked to have detailed to me as Chief of Staff has been sent to Mexico, I would ask that Captain Moseley be immediately assigned me as Chief of Staff and Lieutenant Colonel Allen, Major Howze and Major Harbord as brigade commanders. I would further ask for one regular officer of less rank, whose names I will suggest to you, for about every eight hundred or one thousand men in the division.
theodore roosevelt.
telegram
Washington, D. C, March 20, 1917. Hon. Theodore Roosevelt:
Your telegram March nineteenth arrived. No additional armies can be raised without the specific authority of Congress which by its act of February 27, 1906, has also prohibited any executive department or other government establishment of the United States to involve the Government in any contract or other obligation for the future payment of moneys in excess of appropriations unless such contract or obligation is authorized by law. A plan for a very much larger army than the force suggested in your telegram has been prepared for the action of Congress whenever required. Militia officers of high rank will naturally be incorporated with their commands, but the general officers for all volunteer forces are to be drawn from the regular army.
newton D. baker, Secretary of War.
Sagamore Hill, March 23, 1917. 
To the Secretary of War, Sir:

I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your telegram in answer to my telegram of the nineteenth, and will govern myself accordingly.

I understand, Sir, that there would be a far larger force than a division called out; I merely wished to be permitted to get ready a division for immediate use in the first expeditionary force sent over.

In reference to your concluding sentence, I wish respectfully to point out that I am a retired Commander-in-Chief of the United States Army, and eligible to any position of command over American troops to which I may be appointed. As for my fitness for command of troops, I respectfully refer you to my three immediate superiors in the field, Lieutenant-General S. B. M. Young (retired), Major-General Samuel Sumner (retired), and Major-General Leonard Wood. In the Santiago campaign I served in the first fight as commander, first of the right wing, and then of the left wing ot the regiment; in the next, the big fight, as colonel of the regiment; and I ended the campaign in command of the brigade.

The regiment, First United States Volunteer Cavalry, in which I first served as lieutenant-colonel, and which I then commanded as colonel, was raised, armed, equipped, drilled, mounted, dismounted, kept for two weeks on a transport, and then put through two victorious aggressive fights, in which we lost a third of the officers, and a fifth of the enlisted men, all within a little over fifty days.

I have the honor to be,

Very respectfully yours,
theodore roosevelt. the secretary of war
Washington, March 26, 1917. 

My dear Mr. President: *

I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the twenty-third. The military record to which you call my attention is, of course, a part of the permanent records of this Department and is available, in detail, for consideration.

The patriotic spirit of your suggestion is cordially appreciated.
Respectfully yours,
newton D. baker. hon. theodore roosevelt, Sagamore Hill.
Oyster Bay, April 12, 1917. 

My dear Mr. Secretary:

First, let me say how greatly I enjoyed our conversation the other day, and how much I appreciate your courtesy in calling upon me.

I enclose, in accordance with our conversation, copy of the letter I have just sent to Congressman Dent and to Senator Chamberlain. If there is any way in which you can suggest that I can be of further help to the Administration as regards your obligatory service bill, or as regards the loan, pray command me.

   There is one point I did not have a chance to discuss with you, but I suppose it is hardly necessary. If I were Sic; of course, an error; for "Mr. Roosevelt." a younger man I would be entirely content to go in any position, as a second lieutenant, or as a private in the force. With my age I cannot do good service, however, unless as a general officer. I remember when I went to the Spanish War there was talk about rejecting me on account of my eyes; but, of course, even in the position I then went in, it was nonsense to reject me for any such reason. To the position which I now seek, of course, the physical examination does not apply, so long as I am fit to do the work, which I certainly can do—that is enlisting the best type of fighting men, and putting into them the spirit which will enable me to get the best possible results out of them in the actual fight. Hindenberg, was of course, a retired officer, who had been for years on the retired list, and who could not physically have passed an examination. I am not a Hindenberg; but I can raise and handle this division in a way that will do credit to the American people, and to you, and to the President.
Very sincerely yours,
theodore roosevelt.
hon. newton D. baker, Secretary of War, Washington, D. C.
war department
Washington, April 13, 1917. My dear Mr. Roosevelt:
I have thought earnestly about the subject of our conversation the night before last, and have reached some conclusions which I think, in frankness, I ought to indicate to you.

   The War College Division of the General Staff has repeatedly reaffirmed a recommendation to me in the following language:

"The War College Division earnestly recommends that no American troops be employed in active service in any European theater until after an adequate period of training, and that during this period all available trained officers and men in the Regular Army or National Guard be employed in training the new levies called into service. It should, therefore, be our policy at first to devote all our energies to raising troops in sufficient numbers to exert a substantial influence in a later stage of the war. Partially trained troops will be entirely unfit for such duty, and even if our regular forces and National Guard could be spared from training duty, their number is too small to exert any influence."

This policy I have a number of times approved. It is, of course, a purely military policy, and does not undertake to estimate what, if any, sentimental value would attach to a representation, of the United States in France by a former President of the United States, but there are doubtless other ways in which that value could be contributed apart from a military expedition.

Cooperation between the United States and the Entente Allies has not yet been so far planned as that any decision has been reached upon the subject of sending an expeditionary force; but should any such force be sent, I should feel obliged to urge that it be placed under the command of the ablest and most experienced professional military man in our country, and that it be officered by and composed of men selected because of their previous military training and, as far as possible, actual military experience. My judgment reaches this conclusion for the reason that any such expedition will be made up of young Americans who will be sent to expose their lives in the bloodiest war yet fought in the world, and under conditions of warfare involving applications of science to the art, of such a character that the very highest degree of skill and training and the largest experience are needed for their guidance and protection. I could not reconcile my mind to a recommendation which deprived our soldiers of the most experienced leadership available, in deference to any mere sentimental consideration, nor could I consent to any expedition being sent until its members had been seasoned by most thorough training for the hardships which they would have to endure. I believe, too, that should any expeditionary force be sent by the United States, it should appear from every aspect of it that military considerations alone had determined its composition, and I think this appearance would be given rather by the selection of the officers from the men of the Army who have devoted their lives exclusively to the study and pursuit of military matters and have made a professional study of the recent changes in the art of war. I should, therefore, be obliged to withhold my approval from an expedition of the sort you propose.

I say these things, my dear Mr. Roosevelt, as the result of very earnest reflection, and because I think you will value a frank expression of my best judgment rather than an apparent acquiescence in a plan which I do not approve, drawn from my failure to comment.
With assurance of appreciation of your patriotic intentions, I beg leave, with great respect, to remain, 

Sincerely yours,
newton D. baker,
Secretary of War. hon. theodore roosevelt,
Oyster Bay, N. Y.

THE FOES OF OUR OWN HOUSEHOLD
metropolitan
432 Fourth Avenue, New York
April 22, 1917. My dear Mr. Secretary:
I thank you for your very frank and courteous letter of April I3th. Of course, my dear sir, you wish me to write with equal frankness in return, and I gladly do so. Since the German message of January 3ist, which was practically a declaration of war, I have scrupulously refrained from public criticism of the Administration, keeping silent when I could not support it; but your letter makes it incumbent on me to speak plainly.

My whole purpose is to help make good the President's message. If we make it good by efficient and speedy action it will rank with the great state papers of our history. Otherwise, it will amount to nothing. I have ungrudgingly and whole-heartedly backed up the Administration's plans. There was much about these plans of which I entirely disapproved, but I did not wish to mar the support I was giving the President by anything public in the way of criticism. I felt that the employment of the national guard was a mistake; but I said nothing. I did, however, feel it imperative (without uttering one word of criticism of your plans) to make a strong appeal for the additional use of volunteers who would otherwise be exempt from service, for immediate service at the front. Not to make such use of them is in my opinion a capital mistake.

You say that only "military considerations" should govern your action. In that event I am unable to understand the effort to continue to utilize the national guard, when the actual experience on the border has shown that the attempt to do what was done in Mexico (and what it is now proposed to do in Europe), with the national guard inevitably produces waste, extravagance, military inefficiency and cruel injustice. Last summer you tried to mobilize the guard. You were not able to mobilize much more than half of it; and of this half three-fifths had practically no training, and only one-fifth could shoot. Nothing more completely divorced from sound military policy can be imagined than this attempt to utilize the national guard. Did the General Staff protest against it? If so, their protest must have been over-ridden for non-military reasons. If they did not protest, and if they do not now protest, their advice on other military matters must be regarded as discredited in advance. In this letter of yours you say that only officers of the regular army (Army officers "who have devoted their lives exclusively to military matters") are to be sent on an expeditionary force. Yet the officers of the national guard are certainly called out on the theory that they are to be sent to the front. Some of them doubtless will be glad not to go. But many admirable men among them are eager to go; and it is a wrong to force them to abandon their business and go into camp when there is no serious intention to use them for the serious work that alone would justify requesting them to make the sacrifices they have made.

I wish to point out another thing. You decline my application on the ground of lack of military training and experience; and yet you are summoning, and have summoned, to the field, numbers of military officers, as division and brigade commanders, who have not had one-tenth my experience. My dear sir, you forget that I have commanded troops in action in the most important battle fought by the United States Army during the last half century, and that I have commanded a brigade in the campaign of which this battle was an incident.

I most heartily favor universal obligatory military training and service, not only as regards this war, but as a permanent policy of the Government. Selective obligatory military service, as a "temporary" expedient, is better than having resort only to volunteering; but it is a mischievous error to use it in order to prevent all volunteering. Universal obligatory service, as a permanent policy, is absolutely just, fair, democratic and efficient. But it needs a period of perhaps two years in order to produce first-class results; and so does the "selective" substitute for it. It is folly not to provide by volunteering for the action that ought to be taken during these two years. (Volunteering to serve in the ranks of the regular army and national guard, of course, in no way meets the need.)

The vice of the volunteer system lies chiefly, not in the men who do volunteer, but in the men who don't. A chief, although not the only, merit in the obligatory system lies in its securing preparedness in advance. By our folly in not adopting the obligatory system as soon as this war broke out, we have forfeited this prime benefit of preparedness. You now propose to use its belated adoption as an excuse for depriving us of the benefits of the volunteer system. This is a very grave blunder. The only right course under existing conditions is to combine the two systems. My proposal is to use the volunteer system so that we can at once avail ourselves of the services of men who would otherwise be exempt, and to use the obligatory as the permanent system as to make all serve who ought to serve. You propose to use the belated adoption of the obligatory system as a reason for refusing the services of half the men of the nation who are most fit to serve, who are most eager to serve, and whose services can be utilized at once.

You quote with approval the recommendation of certain of your military advisers to the effect that no expeditionary force should soon be sent across to fight. They wish instead that "all the available trained officers and men in the regular army and national guard be employed in training the new levies" so as to exert a substantial influence in a "later stage of the war." You add that, as this is the proper "military policy," you do not think it should be departed from for any "sentimental value" or "sentimental consideration." I have not asked you to consider any "sentimental value" in this matter. I am speaking of moral effect, not of sentimental value. Sentimentality is as different from morality as Rousseau's life from Abraham Lincoln's. I have just received a letter from James Bryce urging "the dispatch of an American force to the theater of war" and saying, "The moral effect of the appearance in the war line of an American force would be immense." From representatives of the French and British Governments, and of the French, British and Canadian military authorities, I have received statements to the same effect, in even more emphatic form, and earnest hopes that I myself should be in the force. Apparently your military advisers in this matter seek to persuade you that a "military policy" has nothing to do with "moral effect." If so, their militarism is like that of the Aulic Council of Vienna in the Napoleonic Wars, and not like that of Napoleon, who stated that in war the moral was to the material as two to one. These advisers will do well to follow the teachings of Napoleon and not those of the pedantic militarists of the Aulic Council, who were the helpless victims of Napoleon.

If we had been wise enough to begin thoroughgoing preparations two and a half years ago, after this great war broke out, and if, as the main feature thereof, we had introduced the principle of obligatory universal military training and service (and had also done such elementary things as running the Springfield factory at full speed, in which case we would now be a million rifles to the good), there would be scant need of a volunteer force now, for we would have been able to put a couple of million men, well armed and equipped, into the field, and would have finished this war at once. Nine-tenths of wisdom is being wise in time. But we were not wise in time. We did not prepare in advance the instruments which would alone be thoroughly satisfactory, and which cannot possibly be improvised to meet immediate needs. Therefore, let us use every instrument that is available to meet the immediate needs. Let us not advance our unwisdom in the past as a justification for fresh unwisdom in the present. If the people of a town do not prepare a fire company until a fire breaks out, they are foolish. But they are more foolish still if when the fire breaks out, they then decline to try to put it out with any means at hand, on the ground that they prefer to wait and drill a fire company. Your military advisers are now giving you precisely such advice. Put out the fire with the means available, and at the same time start the drill of the fire company!

Our nation has not prepared in any adequate way 'during the last two and a half years to meet the crisis which now faces us. You, therefore, propose that we shall pay billions of dollars to the allies to do our fighting for us, while we stay here in comfort and slowly proceed to train an army to fight in the end, unless the war is over, one way or the other, before our army is ready. This is exactly as if after Sumter was fired on, Lincoln had demanded a draft and declined to use volunteers in the interval. In such a case he would have doubtless had a good army in a year. But it would then have been useless because the Union would meanwhile have been destroyed. Or take the,, history of the past three years. In 1914 the British were unprepared. They were not nearly as unprepared as we now are, but inasmuch as their danger was far greater (for we have been safe behind the British fleet and the allied armies) their short-sightedness was probably as blameworthy as ours. For some years Lord Roberts had been preaching universal obligatory military training and service. They declined to profit by his preaching, and war came upon them. In consequence they were wholly unfit to do in the military way what they are now doing and what Germany and France could then do. They immediately sent abroad, however, a small military force which fought valiantly. They followed it by volunteer armies as rapidly as possible. They accepted masses of volunteers from Australia and Canada. All the time they were training the great armies they have now put in the field. If they had acted upon the principles which you desire us now to apply, they would have refused to send any troops at all to France; they would have declined to receive the Canadian and Australian volunteers; they would have kept all their regulars at home to train the new levies; and to any suggestion as to the "moral effect" of such conduct, they would have responded as you do when you say that a military policy should not deal with "sentimental values" and "sentimental considerations." If England had adopted such a course, it is conceivable that after eighteen months her army would have been better than, as a matter of fact, it actually was; but *iiis would not have been of much consequence, because if she had so acted the war would have been already lost.

Our task has been and is incomparably easier and safer than the tasks of the European powers in this war. Any one of them which behaved as we have behaved would long before this time have been ruined. And we can still secure a measure of material well-being while shirking our duty. If we follow the advice of the military men you quote we shall shirk our duty. I earnestly hope we refuse this advice, and play the part of men. I earnestly hope that we shall not advance our failure to provide universal obligatory military training in the past as an excuse for refusing to make use of the volunteer organizations that we can raise with reasonable rapidity in the present, while we are, with belated wisdom, introducing the principle of obligatory service.

My dear Mr. Secretary, the proposal as you outline and adopt it, must come from doubtless well-meaning military men, of the red-tape and pipe-clay school, who are hide bound in the pedantry of that kind of wooden militarism which is only one degree worse than its extreme opposite, the folly which believes that an army can be improvised between sunrise and sunset. The two kinds of folly are nominally opposed, but really complementary to one another. It is unnecessary for me to say that military men differ among themselves in wisdom and far-sightedness, precisely as civilians do_t The civilian heads of a government, when faced by a great military crisis, have to show their own wisdom primarily in sifting out the very wise military advice from the very unwise military advice which they will receive. This is especially true in a service where promotion is chiefly by seniority and where a large number of the men who rise high owe more to the possession of a sound stomach than to the possession of the highest qualities of head and heart. The military advice which you have received in this matter is strikingly unwise. I dp not know whether those giving it openly advocated the principle of universal obligatory military training two and a half years ago—not within the last few months when people everywhere have been waking up to the matter—but two and a half years ago. If they did not, then they themselves are partly responsible for the condition of unpreparedness which renders it expedient from every standpoint that we should utilize every military asset in the country.

The proposed bill of the Administration, in the last form shown me, was not to take any man over twenty-five. My proposal is to utilize the men who will not be brought in under your proposed conscription. If we had had a wise law for universal military training and service two and a half years ago, it certainly would have included some method for utilizing the men who would be of great value in war, but who are past the age limit when the first training would naturally be given. In the Spanish War I knew well the conditions of the training camps. I know that men put into service for a long period of training with no certainty that they are ever to be employed at the front, will feel far more disheartened than if they could be sent to the front within a reasonable time. I am certain that as rapidly as possible the various units should be transferred to France for intensive training; that as soon as possible an American force, under the American flag, should be established on the fighting line, should be steadily fed with new men to keep its members to the required point, and steadily reinforced by other units, so that it would be playing a continually more important part in the fighting. It is an ignoble thing for us not to put our men into the fighting line at the earliest possible moment. Such failure will excite derision and may have a very evil effect upon our national future.

So much for the general consideration raised in your letter. Now, my dear sir, for what you specifically say about my offer. You say that the officers in command of any expedition must be chosen from the officers of the regular army, "who have devoted their lives exclusively to the study and pursuit of military matters," and have had "actual military experience," and that it would be improper to trust the "guidance and protection" of the young men sent abroad in such a force, to men like myself. Doubtless the rule you thus indicate is generally wise. But to follow it without exercising any judgment as to exceptions would have barred the Confederate Army from using Forrest, and the Union Army from using Logan, and would have kept Wood and Funston out of the Spanish War. Most certainly I do not claim to be a Forrest, or a Logan. But I ask you to consider my actual experience. In the Spanish War I took part in raising a regiment, which I afterward commanded. Exactly the same objections were made to the use of that regiment then that you now make to the use of the division (to be composed of just such regiments) which I ask leave to raise. One of the pacifist papers of that day, about a week prior to our going into action, gave expression to this feeling as follows—"competent observers have remarked that nothing more extraordinary has been done than the Bending to Cuba of the first United States volunteer cavalry, known as the Rough Riders. Organized but four weeks, barely given their full complement of officers, and only a week of regular drill, these men have been sent to the front before they have learned the first elements of soldiery and discipline. There have been few cases of such military cruelty in our military annals." This was the prophecy. The fulfilment you will find in the reports of the expedition. In health, in achievement, and in the loss necessarily paid to purchase the achievement, the regiment stood with the best and most forward of the regular regiments with which it served. This efficiency was, of course, largely due to the way we set about raising it, and to the character of its first Colonel—Leonard Wood. He was at the time a surgeon in the U. S. Army. When President McKinley offered me the Colonelcy, I said I would take the Lieutenant-Colonelcy if he would make Wood Colonel. Since then Wood's record of achievement (for which he was conspicuously recognized by President McKinley—his promotion of a later date having been in the regular order) has been on a par with that of Lord Kitchener prior to the outbreak of the present war; Lord Cromer once said to me that Wood's administration of Cuba was the greatest feat of the kind that had been done in our time.

At the close of the campaign, I was in command of the brigade, which consisted of my regiment, and of two regular regiments. Since then I have been com-mander-in-chief of the Army of the United States, and devoted much time and thought to the study of military and naval problems throughout the seven and a half years when I was President. I now ask permission to raise a division to consist of regiments like the regiment which I commanded in the Santiago campaign (and I can raise you an army corps on this basis). If I were young enough I should be willing to raise that division, and myself merely go as a second lieutenant in it. As it is, I believe I am best fitted to be the division commander in an expeditionary corps, under the chief of that corps; but if you desire to put me in a less position, and make me a brigade commander, I will at once raise the division, and can raise it without difficulty, if it is to be put under any man of the type of General Wood, General Pershing, or General Kuhn. These men served with loyalty and efficiency under me when I was President, and I believe that they will tell you, and that my former commanders, Lieutenant-General Young, retired, and Major-General Sumner, retired, will tell you that I will serve with loyalty and efficiency and entire subordination under my superiors. Of course, my dear sir, I could not raise the division speedily and satisfactorily without the active and generous support of yourself and of the Department.

As for the young Americans who you feel should have better guidance and protection than I can give them, my dear Mr. Secretary, why not let them judge for themselves? The great majority of the men who were in my old regiment will eagerly come forward under me, in so far as they are yet fit. I believe I can appeal to the natural fighting men of this country. The plan you outline in your letter makes most of these men useless as a military asset to the United States at the very time when they could be most useful. Let me give you two examples. If you grant me permission, I would put at the head of most of my regiments, captains or young majors in the regular army. One of my three civilian Colonels would probably be Roger Williams of Kentucky, who is now a Major-General in the National Guard. The other two would be John Greenway of Arizona, and John Groome, the head of the Pennsylvania State Constabulary. I believe that only the very best men in the regular army would be better colonels than Greenway and Groome. They can be used to render to the United States, the splendid service they will render, if I am given the division for which I ask; otherwise, if the plan you outline is put in effect, they will be left unused at the very time when their services would be most valuable. As for the time necessary to train the division, I refer you to the time in which my regiment was utilized in the Spanish War. I have just received from one of the highest Canadian military authorities, a letter running in part as follows: "I can personally say that with the Canadian system of intensive military training your announced plan to have Americans at the front in four months would be entirely practical." Under your orders, and by the aid of your Department, I am confident this could be done. If when I made my offer to you nearly three months ago, you had aided me in going ahead (the money I offered was as a gift, not a loan; the justification for the Government's permitting its use would have been precisely the same as the justification for permitting the men—all volunteers by the way—recently summoned to the officers' training camp at Plattsburg to pay portions of their own expenses, or have their friends pay them, which your Department has directed), and if the Department had acted toward my division as General Wood acted toward the original Plattsburg camp (which started our whole Officers' Reserve movement)  that division would now be ready to sail for France for the intensive training.

I desire that you judge me on my record. All I am asking is the chance to help make good the President's message of April 2d. If you don't know whether the governments of the allies would like me to raise such a division, and take it abroad at the earliest possible moment, I wish you would ask those governments yourself their feeling in the matter. I know that they earnestly desire us to send our men to the fighting line ; and I have been informed from the highest sources that they would like to have me in the fighting line. Of course, they will not desire to have me go, or the division go, unless the Administration expresses its willingness.

Let me repeat that if you permit me to raise a division, it will be composed of men who would not be reached in the bill you proposed to Congress, and who would otherwise not be utilized at all. I should, of course, like your authority to have about two regular officers for every thousand men, and perhaps four of the Reserve Officers for every thousand men, and perhaps certain additional ones if you saw fit to grant them. But the subtraction of these men from the number of men available to train the force called out under your proposed bill would be inconsiderable, compared to the immense gain which would come from having such a division put into the fighting line at the earliest moment. You already know the names of some of the regular officers for whom I would ask you. At the head of the medical corps I would ask for Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Page, U. S. A. You, of course, know the record of Colonel Page as surgeon and medical director. He has his arrangements made, if he is allowed to go with me; and I believe that no division of any regular army would go with a better medical and surgical preparation than we should have under Colonel Page. In four months the men of the division would have been seasoned, under the thorough training which you rightly demand. Most of the men who would come forward would be seasoned already, exactly as was the case in my regiment nineteen years ago. Very many would have had military training and experience. I very earnestly hope you will be able to grant my request, sir. I make it not only because I most earnestly desire to serve the country under the President and under you, but because I am certain that in this way I can render the best service. Very respectfully,
theodore roosevelt. hon. newton D. baker, Secretary of War, Washington, D. C.
war  department
Washington, May 5, 1917. My dear Mr. Roosevelt:
I have read several times your long letter of April B2d, and find myself much embarrassed in attempting more than mere acknowledgment of its receipt. For obvious reasons I cannot allow myself to be drawn into a discussion of your military experience and qualifications. That is a subject upon which my personal opinion would be of little importance and upon which I am without the technical qualifications to form a judgment. Nor can I undertake a general defense of regular army officers and particularly of my associates in the General Staff against your suggestion that they may be possibly "of the red-tape and pipe-clay school." They are, after all, that part of our professional army of longest experience and by our law are my constituted military advisers. Incidentally, however, I cannot refrain from saying that I have found them men of intense and discerning enthusiasm for their profession, filled with loyalty to their country, and very zealous so to train, equip and use our military forces as to make them most effective and to minimize to the utmost the inevitable losses of life which all uses of such forces necessarily entail. I am, of course, not unaware that there are soldiers not now connected with the General Staff who have an absentee sense of superiority about the conduct of business in which they are not personally participating; but all such differences of opinion must of necessity be resolved in favor of those who are charged with the responsibility for action, as, no doubt, your own experience as an executive has shown.

The questions raised by your letter, however, seem to  me  to  become  simple   when   stripped   of  personal considerations.     The   war   in   Europe   is   confessedly stern, steady and relentless.    It is a contest between the morale of two great contending forces.    Any force sent by the United States into this contest should be so chosen as, first, to depress as  far as may be the morale of the enemy; second, to stimulate as far as may •   be the morale of our associates in arms; third, in itself to be as efficient from a military point of view as is possible, and fourth, so organized and led as to reduce its own losses and sacrifices to the minimum.

   As between a hastily summoned and unprofessional force on the one hand and a part of the regular professional army of the United States on the other, I am convinced that our adversary would esteem the former lightly; that our associates would be depressed by the dispatch of such a force, deeming it an evidence of our lack of seriousness about the nature of the enterprise. Unless the whole theory of having a professional army is vicious, a portion of our professional army would be more efficient from a military point of view than such a hastily summoned force, and, quite obviously, the long and systematic training to which the members of our regular army are subjected will have taught them better how to fight without needless exposure and how to protect their health and diminish their losses both in camp and on the field.

Thus, upon every consideration, my mind justifies the conclusion expressed to you in my letter of April I3th. This reasoning quite frankly eliminates the consideration of personality; but upon that subject there is so much uncertainty of judgment that I do not feel that I could with confidence elect a course at plain variance with every other consideration in order to satisfy a personal conclusion based wholly upon a personal consideration.
Cordially yours,
newton D. baker,
Secretary of War. hon. theodore roosevelt
432 Fourth Avenue, New York City, N. Y.
metropolitan
432 Fourth Avenue, New York
May 8, 1917. My dear Mr. Secretary:

Many thanks for your letter of May 5th.
You say that the questions raised by my letter are "simple when stripped of personal considerations." You then describe the war in Europe, and the objects to be achieved by the United States sending over a force to take part in the contest. I, of course, entirely agree with what you thus say as to the nature of the war, the need of our sending over an efficient force to depress the morale of our enemy, and to raise that of our friends.

Your next paragraph indicates that your present intention is to send over a portion of the "regular professional army of the United States" (rather than use a force, such as I suggest) ; and you state in the following paragraph that in consequence your mind "justifies the conclusion" expressed in your letter of April I3th. But, my dear Mr. Secretary, this is the direct reverse of the conclusion of your letter of April I3th. In that letter you approved the recommendation of the general staff, that the regular army of the United States should not be sent over as an expeditionary force, but, on the contrary, should in its entirety be kept here to train the selective draft army; and you dismissed, as of "sentimental" and "no military" value, the idea of sending over this force at once. In your present letter you take the ground that such a force should be sent over, and give as two of the reasons that it would depress the morale of the enemy, and stimulate the morale of our associates in arms. I entirely agree with the position taken by you in this letter as to immediately sending an expeditionary force abroad, and as to the fact that it would, among other objects, achieve the two above mentioned. But permit me, my dear Mr. Secretary, to say that this shows that you have reversed the action of the general staff, which you approved in your letter of April I3th, and surely the need of such reversal, as regards the most vital military matter which must immediately be decided, shows that my criticism of the men who gave you the advice was exactly justified. The matter of most immediate importance, which the staff had to decide at the time you wrote me on April I3th, was whether we should at once begin sending forces to the other side, or whether the entire regular army and everybody else fitted to do any soldiering should be kept on this side to train our army for a year or two, in order, as you phrased it in your letter, to use the army for decisive effect in the later stages of the war. The general staff adopted the latter view as you stated in your letter of April I3th. I protested, with all possible emphasis, against this view. The French and the military authorities, with the utmost emphasis, have since protested against it also, and have taken, in this matter, exactly the position which I took in my letter to you, and in my letters to Senator Chamberlain and Mr. Dent, and in my public utterances. From your letter, and from the statements in the press, I gather that the Administration has now reversed the position which was thus taken by the general staff, and, as regards sending abroad an expeditionary force, has come to the position I have so earnestly advocated, and which I set forth in detail in the letter that you have now answered.
There remains the question of the composition of the force, and inasmuch, my dear Mr. Secretary, as in one of the vital matters the general staff misled you, and inasmuch as my advice has proved to be right, I beg you to at least consider the reasons I now advance for the advice I propose to give as regards another phase of the matter.

There is every reason why a portion of the regular army should go abroad. There is also every reason why, in view of the smallness of the regular army and the need of its giving instruction, this proportion should not be too large. There is, therefore, every reason why the force should consist of a proportion of the regular army as a nucleus, with an efficient volunteer force under and with it. Under the act of March 2, 1899, volunteer regiments were raised which, in actual service in the Philippines, did almost as well as the regular regiments, especially when mixed with them. My own regiment in Cuba was raised under substantially similar legislation, and so I know, at first hand, of what I am speaking. Our own regular troops not having been trained in modern warfare, would themselves need some preliminary training in the theater of war before we could expect them to be as good as their French or English allies, or German foes. Volunteer regiments, chosen as above indicated, and used as hereinafter outlined in close association with the regulars, could be made almost as good as the regulars during this period of training—and here again, my dear Mr. Secretary, remember that I am not making a mere guess, for I am stating what actually occurred in connection with my regiment at Santiago, and with the other United States volunteer regiments in the Philippines.

    I, therefore, respectfully, but earnestly suggest, that I be allowed, under the direction of the War Department, to raise, or help raise, an army corps of two divisions. Inasmuch as we have no artillery fit to go into the battle front abroad, and inasmuch as it is at least doubtful whether artillery ought to be included permanently in the organization of an infantry division, I assume you would not. wish this first expeditionary force to have artillery. Furthermore, I believe you will find that the wisest military men do not sympathize with the plan of having one divisional regiment of cavalry with each division. Cavalry should be able to act as a mass. I therefore very earnestly recommend that in connection with each division we raise a three-regiment brigade of cavalry. As long as the fighting is in the trenches, this cavalry will be used dismounted, and will represent an addition to the infantry strength of equal value. (As soon as we began to fight outside the trenches, the two brigades could be joined together, and could be used as a small cavalry division, under the direction of the corps commander.)

Each of the divisions sent over would thus consist, in addition to the supply, transportation, and other services, of three three-regiment infantry brigades, one three-regiment cavalry brigade, a regiment of engineers, and a regiment of machine guns. (I will give you the details of the organization, if you so desire, and send you also a carefully wrought out blue print of the entire organization of the division.) For a corps of two divisions, therefore, there would be six infantry brigades, two cavalry brigades, two machine gun regiments, and two engineers' regiments, or twenty-eight regiments in all. There should be one regular regiment in every cavalry or infantry brigade; eight regular regiments in all. This would leave twenty volunteer regiments. As regards four of these, I would suggest civilian colonels, two of them being of the National Guard; namely, Brigadier General Roger Williams of Kentucky, and Colonel Forman of Illinois, together with Colonel John Groome of the Pennsylvania State Constabulary, and John C. Greenway of Arizona. For the other sixteen colonels, together with the corps and divisional chiefs of staff and the like, I would suggest to you captains and junior majors from the regular army, including such men as those I have mentioned—Frank McCoy, Fitz Hugh Lee, Edgar Collins, Phil Sheridan, Moseley, Gordon Johnston, Jim Shelley, Hugh D. Wise, the two Parker brothers (one cavalry, one infantry), Smedberg, Goethals, Quekenmeyer, Quackenbush, Baer, Fitch, Lincoln Andrews, and others. For brigade commanders I would suggest to you to appoint men like Lieutenant-Colonel Allen, Colonel Howze, and Major Harbord. Rear Admiral Winslow, retired, would make an admirable brigade commander. The corps and division commanders would be, I presume, men already with the rank of general, whom you chose; any men of the stamp of those mentioned in my previous letter would do admirably. I would be glad to accept the junior brigade generalship, ranking behind the other seven brigade commanders, as well, of course, as the division and corps commanders. This would be merely giving me the position which I held at the close of the Santiago campaign when, because of my conduct in the field, I was recommended by my superior officers, not only for promotion, but for the medal of honor and for brevets.

In addition, I should trust that you would allow certain junior cfficers, men like Lieutenant Stonewall Jackson Christian, Lieutenant Wainwright, Lieutenant Chaffee, and others of like position, to come in as majors or adjutants, or with similar rank. If possible, I should like to use, in each volunteer regiment, two or three regulars, and six or eight, or ten reserve officers from the Plattsburg and similar camps, together with half a dozen of the best regular non-commissioned officers, giving these the rank of second lieutenant. This would not represent an appreciable drawing off of strength from the body of men you wish to use in training the draft army, for you have about 35,000 men in the training camps, and this proposal of mine would only be to take out, all told, from the officers and noncommissioned officers of the regular army, and from the reserve officers, between 200 and 300 men, who would be employed in training some 40,000 volunteers. These volunteers would be men of exceptional quality, enlisted for the war, with the special purpose of being immediately sent to the fighting line in Europe.

Under this plan you would immensely increase the size of the army you sent abroad, and, owing to the nature of the volunteer regiments, four-fifths of whom would be under regular officers, and all of them brigaded with regulars, the force would be almost or practically as good as if composed solely of regulars; and yet you would not be sending abroad a wholly dis-proportioned amount of our small regular army, and would be enabled to use the others for the purposes of instruction at home. The two divisions at the front would be kept filled, all the losses being made good by recruits, and as rapidly as possible other divisions would be put beside them. In each case, as soon, or almost as soon, as raised, the brigades and divisions would be sent across to, or just behind, the theater of war in France, or if this was impossible, at least to England, and there trained in bayonet work, bombing, gassing, and all the other incidents of modern trench warfare.

I have the highest respect for the individual officers and men of the National Guard, the greatest admiration for the patriotism of those who served on the border last year, and a thorough belief in the efficiency of the National Guard for its proper duty, which is purely state duty. But, of course, divided control between state and nation is thoroughly vicious. Moreover, many of the men in the National Guard are family men, supporting their families by their wages, and it is a cruel injustice to these men to take them to the front when there are literally millions of other men who ought to go first. Again, there are plenty of men in the National Guard who can do state work well, but who are not fit for a gruelling campaign. Therefore, the National Guard regiment should not be sent out as such, if there is a desire either to do equal justice to the men or to secure efficient results. Each regiment should furnish a nucleus—which might be a quarter, or which might be a half of its strength, and which would be composed both of officers and enlisted men, and should, in most cases, be put under the command of a regular officer; then, around this nucleus as a framework, could be built up a purely National United States regiment, either by volunteering or by the draft. Such a regiment would be fit for duty very quickly, and would render admirable service; while at the same time these guardsmen who ought not to be asked to undertake a foreign campaign would be left within the state, to do the necessary and important state duty which the National Guard is peculiarly fitted to perform.

The selective draft has been authorized by Congress. The Harding amendment, or similar measures, will en able the Government to admirably use men who desire to serve, whose ardor it is certainly unwise to damp, who could render invaluable service, and who otherwise would be unused. If this amendment is adopted, and the Department authorizes me to raise a force as above outlined, I can at once assign the regular officers whom the Department desires as colonels to different localities, where they can raise regiments or battalions, already provisionally provided. We can get private help precisely as in connection with the training camps. While, of course, we cannot act as instantaneously as if we had begun these steps a couple of months ago, yet we can act with great speed, and in a way to establish the best possible precedent, while at the same time we are putting a substantial force of good fighting men on the firing line at the earliest possible moment.
I am, sir, with great respect,
Very sincerely,
theodore roosevelt. hon. newton D. baker,
Secretary of War, Washington, D. C.
war department
May ii, 1917. 
My dear Mr. Roosevelt:

I beg leave to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of May 8th.

It does not seem to me that the considerations urged affect in any degree the soundness of the conclusions stated in my letter of May 5th, and I suppose that, since the responsibility for action and decision in this matter rests upon me, you shall have to regard the determination I have already indicated as final, unless changing circumstances require a re-study of the whole question. I appreciate your willingness so thoroughly to discuss this important subject, and have read with interest your suggestions for organization and action. It is, of course, unpleasant to find myself at variance with you in a matter of opinion of this sort, but the earnestness with which you have pressed your views is a comforting assurance of the zeal with which you will cooperate in carrying forward unitedly, whole-heartedly and effectively the operations determined upon, now that this particular phase of the question is finally disposed of.
newton D. baker,
Secretary of War. hon. theodore roosevelt,
432 Fourth Avenue, New York.
telegram

To the President: May 18, 1917.
White House, Washington, D. C.

I respectfully ask permission immediately to raise two divisions for immediate service at the front under the bill which has just become law, and hold myself ready to raise four divisions, if you so direct. I respectfully refer for details to my last letters to the Secretary of War. If granted permission, I earnestly ask that Captain Frank McCoy be directed to report to me at once. Minister Fletcher has written me that he is willing. Also if permission to raise the divisions is granted, I would like to come to Washington as soon as the War Department is willing, so that I may find what supplies are available, and at once direct the regular officers who are chosen for brigade and regimental commands how and where to get to work.
telegram
the white house, Washington, D. C., May 19, 1917. I very much regret that I cannot comply with the request in your telegram of yesterday.    The reasons I have stated in a public statement made this morning, and I need not assure you that my conclusions were based entirely upon imperative considerations of public policy and not upon personal or private choice.
woodrow wilson.
Letter sent to each of various men who had done work in personally raising units for the proposed divisions which Were finally authorized by Congress:
May 25, 1917. 

My dear Sir:

You have doubtless seen the President's announcement wherein he refused to make use of the Volunteer Forces which Congress had authorized him to permit me to raise.

Prior to this announcement by the President, I had sent him a telegram as follows:

[Here I included the two telegrams quoted immediately above.]

Accordingly, I communicated with as many of the men who had agreed to raise units for service in this division as possible, and after consultation with about twenty of them I issued the statement which is herewith appended.

I now release you and all your men. I wish to express my deep sense of obligation to you and to all those who had volunteered under and in connection with this division.

As you doubtless know, I am very proud of the Rough Riders, the First Volunteer Cavalry, with whom I served in the Spanish-American War. I believe it is a just and truthful statement of the facts when I say that this regiment did as well as any of the admirable regular regiments with which it served in the Santiago campaign. It was raised, armed, equipped, drilled, mounted, dismounted, kept two weeks aboard transports and put through two victorious aggressive fights in which it lost one-third of the officers and one-fifth of the men; all within sixty days from the time I received my commission.

If the President had permitted me to raise the four divisions, I am certain that they would have equalled the record, only on a hundredfold larger scale. They would have all been on the firing line before or shortly after the draft army had begun to assemble, and moreover they could have been indefinitely reinforced, so that they would have grown continually stronger and more efficient.

I regret from the standpoint of the country that your services were not utilized. But the country has every reason to be proud of the zeal, patriotism and businesslike efficiency with which you came forward.

With all good wishes,
Faithfully yours,
theodore roosevelt.
May 21, 1917. 
To the men who have volunteered for immediate service on the firing line in the divisions which Congress authorized:

The President has announced that he will decline to permit those divisions to be organized or to permit me to have a command in connection with such a force. After consultation yesterday, personally or by wire, with some of the men who have volunteered to raise units—regiments and battalions—for the divisions, ineluding John C. Groome, of Pennsylvania; Seth Bullock, of South Dakota; John C. Greenway, of Arizona; John M. Parker, of Louisiana; Robert Carey, of Wyoming; J. P. Donnelly, of Nevada; Sloan Simpson, of Texas; D. C. Collier and F. R. Burnham, of California; I. L. Reeves, Frazer Metzger, and H. Nelson Jackson, of Vermont; Harry Stimson, W. J. Schieffelin, and William H. Donovan, of New York, and Messrs. James R. Gar-field, Raymond Robbins, R. H. Channing, David M. Goodrich, W. E. Dame, George Roosevelt, Richard Derby and various others who were immediately accessible, it was decided unanimously that in view of the decision of the President the only course open to us is forthwith to disband and to abandon all further effort in connection with the divisions, thereby leaving each man free to get into the military service in some other way, if that is possible, and, if not, then to serve his country in civil life as he best can.

As good American citizens we loyally obey the decision of the Commander-in-Chief of the American Army and Navy. The men who have volunteered will now consider themselves absolved from all further connection with this movement. The funds that have been promised will be treated as withdrawn and applied to other purposes. I therefore direct that this statement be sent to the leaders in the various states who have been raising troops and that it be published.

Our sole aim is to help in every way in the successful prosecution of the war and we most heartily feel that no individual's personal interest should for one moment be considered save as it serves the general public interest. We rejoice that a division composed of our fine regular soldiers and marines under so gallant and efficient a leader as General Pershing is to be sent abroad. We have a right to a certain satisfaction in connection therewith.

The Brooklyn Eagle last evening stated authoritatively that "the sending of this expedition was a compromise between the original plans of the General Staff, which favored no early expedition, and the request of Colonel Roosevelt for authority for an immediate expedition. The Roosevelt agitation, backed by the express desire of such distinguished military leaders as General Joffre and General Petain, unquestionably had its effect in bringing about the Pershing expedition. The compromise is that France gets American soldiers in the trenches, but Roosevelt will not lead or accompany them. It is believed in Washington that any criticism for turning down Roosevelt will be fully answered by the fact that American soldiers are going over."

If this gives the explanation of the matter, I gladly say that we are all unselfishly pleased to have served this use, although naturally we regret not to have been allowed ourselves to render active service.

It is due to the men who have come forward in this matter during the three and a half months since February 2d, when I began the work of raising one or more divisions, that the following facts should be known:

If yesterday my offer immediately to raise four divisions for immediate use at the front had been accepted the various units of the first division would to-morrow have begun to assemble at whatever points the War Department had indicated, and they would have assembled in full force and without an hour's delay as rapidly as the War Department directed them where to go and as soon as it provided them camping places, tents, blankets, etc.

    We were prepared by the use of private funds partly to make good any immediate lack in such supplies as regards many of the units. Fifteen days afterward the second division would have mobilized in a similar fashion, and then, at intervals of thirty days, the two other divisions.

In accordance with what I had found to be the wish of the military authorities among our allies, each of the divisions would have been ready to sail for France for intensive training at the theater of war within thirty days of the time it began to mobilize, if the War Department were able to furnish supplies; and we would have asked permission to use the rifles and ammunition now in use in the French and British armies.

All four divisions would have sailed and two would have been on the firing line by September ist, the time at which the Secretary of War has announced that the assembling of the selective draft army is to begin. Abouf one-half of our men, at least of those in the first division, were men who had already seen military service.

I wish respectfully to point out certain errors into which the President has been led in his announcement. He states that the purpose was to give me an "independent" command. In my last letter to the Secretary of War I respectfully stated that if I were given permission to raise an army corps of two divisions, to be put under the command of some General like Wood or Bell or Pershing or Barry or Kuhn, I desired for myself only the position of junior among the eight brigade commanders. My position would have been exactly the same as theirs, except that I would have ranked after and have been subordinate to the rest of them.

The President alludes to our proffered action as one that would have an effect "politically," but as not contributing to the "success of the war," and as representing a "policy of personal gratification or advantage." I wish respectfully but emphatically to deny that any political consideration whatever or any desire for personal gratification or advantage entered into our calculations. Our undivided purpose was to contribute effectively to the success of the war.

I know nothing whatever of the politics of the immense majority of the men who came forward, and those whose politics I do know numbered as many Democrats as Republicans. My purpose was to enable the Government to use as an invaluable military asset the men who would not be reached under the selective draft, who were fit for immediate service, and the great majority of whom would not otherwise be used at all.

As above pointed out, all four divisions, if the War Department could equip them, would have been sent to the aid of our hard-pressed allies before the training of the selective draft army was even begun, and they would not have been put into the firing line until the French and British military authorities deemed them fit.

The President says in effect that to comply with our offer would have been mischievous from the military standpoint and he adds that the regular officers whom I have asked to have associated with me are "some of the most effective officers of the regular army," who "cannot possibly be spared from the duty of training regular troops." One of the chief qualifications for military command is to choose for one's associates and subordinates "the most effective officers," and this qualification the President thus states that I possess.

As for my withdrawing them from the "more pressing and necessary duty of training" the troops, I wish to point out that I had asked for about fifty regular officers from lieutenant-colonels to second lieutenants for the first division. This would be only about one-tenth of the number who will go with General Pershing's division which, the President announces, is to be composed exclusively of regulars. Therefore, the present plan will take from "most pressing and necessary duty" about ten times as many regular officers as would have been taken under our proposal.

It has been stated that the regular officers are opposed to our plan. As a matter of fact "the most effective" fighting officers have been eager to be connected with or to have under them the troops we proposed to raise.

The President condemns our proposal on the ground that "undramatic" action is needed, action that is "prao tical and of scientific defmiteness and precision." There was nothing dramatic in our proposal save as all proposals indicting eagerness or willingness to sacrifice life for an ideal are dramatic. It is true that our division would have contained the sons or grandsons of men who in the Civil War wore the blue or the gray; for instance, the sons or grandsons of Phil Sheridan, Fitz Hugh Lee, Stonewall Jackson, James A. Garfield, Simon Bolivar Buckner, Adna R. Chaffee, Nathan Bedford Forest; but these men would have served either with commissions or in the ranks, precisely like the rest of us; and all alik'-"-would have been judged solely by the efficiency—including the "scientific definiteness"—with which they did their work and served the flag of their loyal devotion.
theodore roosevelt.
In view of the President's reference to the "political" effect and "personal gratification or advantage" involved in the offer to raise the divisions in question it is but just to point out the following facts:

    My offer was first made long before the German note of January 3ist last. I repeated it immediately after that date, on the morning of February 2d. If the offer had been accepted at that time a division would have been ready to sail for France in April, the moment that Congress declared that war existed. We received, all told, applications from over 300,000 men for the divisions. From our rough preliminary examinations we were able to guarantee that we could from these have raised over 200,000—double the number that the four divisions would have contained.

On February 9th the President's Secretary of War stated, as a reason for refusing my offer, that Congress must provide "under its own conditions" for raising troops. When Congress did thus provide, the President refused to act under the conditions provided.

The President's suggestion that I had asked for an "independent" command was in flat contradiction of the facts; which were all before him when he made the statement. I had repeatedly and explicitly asked to be put under the command of whatever commander was chosen for the expedition.

On April I3th Mr. Baker wrote that there was to be no expedition sent to the front until the armies were trained [which would be some time in 1918]. Before May 8th, the pressure initiated by my offer caused him, or his chief, to reverse this decision, and therefore to save this nation the humiliation of taking no military part in the war throughout 1917 and part of 1918.

The refusal of the President to accept my offer was supported and applauded by the leaders among the zealous and intelligent partisans of Germany and opponents of war with Germany in this country, including senators such as Messrs. LaFollette and Stone, and papers like Mr. Hearst's, and the German-American press generally.

Mr. Wilson's Secretary of War in April advanced as a reason for refusing my application, that commanding officers ought to be "selected because of their previous military training, and, as far as possible, actual military experience." In August, four months later, Mr. Wilson nominated for the position of Brigadier-General, a gentleman from New York, whose "military training and experience" apparently consisted in having been a Captain in the militia, a major in a volunteer regiment which did not leave the country, and Adjutant-General under Governor Sulzer. The Senate requested from the Administration information as to the nominee's military record. The nomination was then withdrawn, on the ground of temporary physical incapacity. A number of the nominations which were not withdrawn were seemingly of substantially similar character.

President Wilson's reasons for refusing my offer had nothing to do either with military considerations or with the public needs. 
The End

A concluding word from Robert J. Kuniegel

TR AMERICAN PATRIOT hopes you enjoyed our books. Theodore Roosevelt lived his life in a manner that is the only way possible to make government responsive to the people. He has written how to make meaningful reform possible not only for his generation but for future generations. If we reed what he has said. We only need to interest others in reading what he has said to transform our government.

Reading the books on TR AMERICAN PATRIOT DOT COM  and having others do the same, will develop citizens and leaders capable of transforming American politics into a system of government that will be honest, and responsive to “a square deal”. A square deal has no special deals for the rich, the middle class, or the poor. Our government today has degenerated into a system that rewards citizens for not being productive. It promotes entitlements under the guise of helping people, when in fact it only helps politicians to protect their own royal positions. This was the type of government Theodore Roosevelt fought against and won. He was a visionary. He knew this fight would need to be fought through the ages if we were to keep our country strong. 

Theodore Roosevelt’s greatest gift to this country is before us. It is not in the past, if we as Americans recognize that his message is not just a story from American history pages. His message is an example, clearly defined. It details actions that are required if we desire to do something meaningful for our country. Join the good fight today. You only need to read and interest others to do the same. 

David Boyd, repeating what he had read, once said, “The person we become is because of our experiences in life, the people we meet, and the books we reed.” It is time to have others meet Theodore Roosevelt. It is time for a Theodore Roosevelt revival, “Fear God and do your own part”, is one of his famous quotes. Your own part is as simple as helping to introduce others to an example of a life well lived by recommending our web site.

A concluding word from Robert J. Kuniegel

TR AMERICAN PATRIOT hopes you enjoyed our books. Theodore Roosevelt lived his life in a manner that is the only way possible to make government responsive to the people. He has written how to make meaningful reform possible not only for his generation but for future generations, if we read what he has said. We only need to interest others in reading what he has said to transform our government. 
The End

A concluding word from Robert J.  Kuniegel 

TR AMERICAN PATRIOT hopes you enjoy our books.  Theodore Roosevelt lived his life in a manner that is the only way possible to make government responsive to the people.  He has written how to make meaningful reform possible not only for his generation but for future generations, if we read what he has said.  We only need to interest others in reading what he has said to transform our government. 

Reading the books on TR AMERICAN PATRIOT DOT COM  and having others do the same, will develop citizens and leaders capable of transforming American politics into a system of government that will be honest, and responsive to “a square deal”.  A square deal has no special deals for the rich, the middle class, or the poor.  Our government today has degenerated into a system that rewards citizens for not being productive.  It promotes entitlements under the guise of helping people, when in fact it only helps politicians to protect their own royal positions.  Policies that foster a special privileged class was the type of government policies Theodore Roosevelt fought against and won.  He was a visionary.  He knew this fight would need to be fought through the ages if we were to keep our country strong.  He was an intrepid pioneer that blazed a trail through a jungle of corrupt government, so that others might follow his proven and highly successful common sense approach toward honest government.  His fearless course helped make America a beacon of hope to all that seek justice.  His endless devotion to America helped make America a super power that no just nation has needed to fear as long as our citizens value his lofty resolute square deal policy toward our fellow citizens and those of other nations. 

Theodore Roosevelt’s greatest gift to this country is before us.  It is not in the past, if we as Americans recognize that his message is not just a story from American history pages.  His message is an example, clearly defined.  It details actions that are required if we desire to do something meaningful for our country.  Join the good fight today.  You only need to read and interest others to do the same.  

David Boyd, repeating what he had read, once said, “The person we become is because of our experiences in life, the people we meet, and the books we read. ” It is time to have others meet Theodore Roosevelt. It is time for a Theodore Roosevelt revival, “Fear God and do your own part”. Dare to help make Theodore Roosevelt the standard and not the exception.  America needs to adopt a wise, fearless and honest role model as the standard we revere, so that our public servants know what we expect.  The first step to honest government is no harder than setting proper standards of conduct for our public servants through the use of a proper role model.  Can you find one quality in Theodore Roosevelt that is not right in a public servant?  If you think you can, I bet your conjecture is based upon something other than truth and honest reasoning and this American would love an opportunity to debate any such conjecture.