Speech or Document 5
NATIONAL DUTY AND INTERNATIONAL IDEALS

A SPEECH   MADE BEFORE THE ILLINOIS BAR ASSOCIATION AT CHICAGO, APRIL 29,, 1916

A YEAR and three-quarters have passed since the opening of the great war.  At the outset our people were stunned by the vastness and terror of the crisis.  We had been assured by many complacent persons that the day of great wars had ended, that the reign of violence was over, that the enlightened public opinion of the world would prevent the oppression of weak nations.  To be sure, there was ample proof that none of these assurances were true, and far-seeing men did not believe them.  But there was good excuse for the mass of the people being misled.  Now, however, there is none.  War has been waged on a more colossal scale than ever before in the world's history; and cynical indifference to international morality and willingness to trample on inoffensive peace-loving people who are also helpless or timid have been shown on a greater scale than since the close of the Napoleonic Wars over a century ago.  Alone of the great powers, we have not been drawn into this struggle.

A two-fold duty was imposed upon us by the fact of our prosperity and by the fact of our momentary immunity from danger.  This twofold duty was, first, to make our voice felt for the weak who had been wronged by the strong, and for international humanity and honor, and for peace on terms of justice for all concerned; and, second, immediately and in thorough going fashion to prepare ourselves so that there might not befall us on an even greater scale such a disaster as befell Belgium.  We have signally failed in both duties.  Incredible to relate, we are not in any substantial respect stronger at this moment in soldiers or rifles, in seamen or ships, because of any Governmental action taken in consequence of this war; and moreover we have seen every device and provision designed by humanitarians to protect international right against international wrongdoings torn into shreds, and have not so much as ventured to speak effectively one word of protest.

The result is that every nation in the world now realizes our weakness, and that no nation in the world believes in either our disinterestedness or our manliness.  The effort to placate outside nations by being neutral between right and wrong, and to gain good will along professional pacifist lines by remaining helpless for self-defense, has resulted, after two fatuous years, in so shaping affairs that the nations either already feel, or are rapidly growing to feel, for us, not only dislike but contempt.

This is not a pleasant truth; but it is the truth; and as a people we will do well to remember Emerson's saying that in the long run the most unpleasant truth is a safer traveling companion than the pleasantest falsehood.  Our duty is to face the facts and then to take the thorough-going action necessary in order to meet the situation that these facts disclose.

Our prime duty, infinitely our most important duty, is the duty of preparedness.  Unless we prepare in advance we can not when the crisis comes be true to ourselves.  If we can not be true to ourselves, it is absolutely certain that we shall be false to every one else.  If we are not able to safeguard our own national honor and interest, we shall make ourselves an object of scorn and derision if we try to stand up for the rights of others.  We have been sinking into the position of the China of the Occident; and we will do well to remember that China — pacifist China — has not only been helpless to keep its own territory from spoliation and its own people from subjugation but has also been helpless to exert even the most minute degree of influence on behalf of right dealing among other nations.

There are persons in this country who openly advocate our taking the position that China holds, the position from which the best and wisest Chinamen are now painfully trying to raise their land.  Nothing that I can say will influence the men and women who take this view.  The holding of such a view is entirely incompatible with the right to exercise the privileges of self-government in a democracy, for self-government can not permanently exist among people incapable of self-defense.

But I believe that the great majority of my fellow-countrymen, when they finally take the trouble to think on the problem at all, will refuse to consent to or acquiesce in the Chinafication of this country.  I believe that they will refuse to follow those who would make right helpless before might, who would put a pigtail on Uncle Sam, and turn the Goddess of Liberty into a pacifist female huckster, clutching a bag of dollars which she has not the courage to guard against aggression.  It is to these men and women that I speak.  I speak to the mass of my fellow-countrymen.  I speak to all men and women who are loyal to the principles of those who in the Revolutionary War made us a nation, and who have in their souls the high qualities possessed by the men who in the iron days of the Civil War followed the banners of Grant and of Lee, and of the mothers and wives of these men.  My appeal may not be heeded; if so, then either our people will pay heed in time to the appeal of some other man, able to speak more strongly and more convincingly, or else they will when it is too late learn the lesson from some terrible gospel in which it is written by an alien conqueror in letters of steel and of flame.

The first necessity is that we shall in good faith and without reservation undertake to be a nation, and not merely to call ourselves a nation.  I make my especial appeal to the national spirit here in Chicago, here in the great Middle West, here in the territory stretching from the Alleghanies to the Rockies.  The prophets of gloom have said that the West, prosperous and indifferent, secure in her fancied safety because she is in the middle of the continent, cares nothing for the dangers that might befall the cities on the Atlantic or the Pacific Coast, cares nothing for what has befallen the dwellers along the Mexican boundary, and is as indifferent to what befalls elsewhere as Peking once was to what befell its outlying Chinese provinces— to the ultimate ruin of Peking, by the way.  This I do not for one moment believe.  If I did, I should despair of the republic.  This is to a peculiar degree the democratic, the intensely and characteristically American, section of our land.  The West produced for the service of the whole nation Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Jackson; and I know that their spirit is still the spirit of her sons.

I appeal to the men of the West to take the lead in the movement for the genuine nationalization of our people.  If the republic founded by Washington and saved by Lincoln is to be turned into a mere polyglot boarding-house, where dollar-hunters of twenty different nationalities scramble for gain, each nationality bearing no real allegiance except to the land from which it originally came, then we may as well make up our minds that the great experiment of democratic government on this continent will have failed.  No less will it have failed if each section thinks only of the welfare of that section, and with crass blindness believes that disaster to some other section will not affect it.  And the failure will be the greatest of all if foolish men are persuaded by wicked men that one caste or class is the prime, enemy of some other class or caste.  I appeal to the men of the East to prepare so that the men of the Pacific Slope shall be free from all menace of danger.  I appeal to the men of the West to prepare so that the men of the Atlantic Coast shall be free from all danger.  I appeal to the North, South, West and East alike, to hold the life of every man and the honor of every woman on the most remote ranch on the Mexican border as a sacred trust to be guaranteed by the might of our entire nation — and the life of every man, woman and child who should be protected by the United States on the high seas likewise.  I appeal to every good American, whether farmer or merchant, business man or professional man, whether he works with brain or hand.  Anything of disgrace or dishonor that befalls our people anywhere is of vital moment to all of us wherever we live; and any deed that reflects credit on the American name is a subject of congratulation for every American of every section of this country.  I speak of the United States as a whole.  Surely it ought to be unnecessary to say that it spells as absolute ruin to permit divisions among our people along the lines of creed or of national origin as it does to permit division by geographical section.  We must not stand merely for America first.  We must stand for America first and last; and for no other nation second — except as we stand for fair play for all nations.  There can be no divided loyalty in this country.  The man who tries to be loyal to this country and also to some other country is certain in the end to put his loyalty to the other country ahead of his loyalty to this.  The politicoracial hyphen is the breeder of moral treason.  We are a new nation, by blood akin to but different from all the nations of Europe.  In the veins of our people runs the blood of German, Englishman and Irishman, of Scandinavian, Slav and Latin.  Any one of these people can bring something of value to our common national life.  Each can contribute social and cultural traditions and customs of value; and all must join in cordial mutuality of respect for whatever is valuable that each brings; but each must put the contribution at the service of our common and unified citizenship, and by utilizing all that is thus contributed, and by adapting and developing it so that it shall meet and express our common needs, we shall build our own distinctive national culture.  .  .  .

No form of government will survive unless it can justify its existence.  Boasting about democracy won't make democracy succeed.  We are the greatest democratic republic and we are false not only to our own country but to democracy everywhere if we do not seriously endeavor to show, by our actions .and success, that with us the many men can make a nation as efficient as elsewhere nations have been made efficient by a few men.  We must make America efficient within its own borders, efficient to repel attack from beyond its own borders, and yet a friend and not a menace to other peoples.  We must make ourselves serviceable to democracy, to the cause of popular rights and popular duties in national and also in international matters.  A happy-go-lucky belief that we can become serviceable by combining sentimental speeches with selfish actions will bring us to futility.  Service-ableness comes only through preparedness; and both the training and the service — through economic, social and military efficiency — imply courage, sustained effort, clear vision, and the power for self-sacrifice.

I speak for military preparedness.  I speak for industrial preparedness.  I speak for the performance of international duty, which can only come when we fit ourselves to do our duty to ourselves, and when we have made up our minds never to make a promise to any other nation which can not be kept, which ought not to be kept, and which will not be kept.  I speak of all this in the interest of national unity and manhood, of international peace, and of the service of our country and of the world at large.  It is our duty to secure justice and well-being at home; but we live in a fool's paradise if we think that we shall be permitted to secure such justice and well-being, as the world now is, unless we are prepared to hold our own against all alien enemies.  I appeal to the men of the West; I appeal to Americans everywhere to stand against the crass materialism which can show itself just as much in peace as in war.  I appeal to our people to prepare in advance so that there shall be n< hideous emergency which renders it necessary to submit to inordinate profit-making by the few simply because, when the emergency comes, we must improvise at whatever cost the things that for our sins we have failed to provide beforehand.  We can not afford to leave this democracy of ours inefficient.  If we do it will assuredly some day go down in ruin.  We can not afford to tolerate with cynical indifference the pork-barrel theories of government so dear to the hearts of politicians of the baser sort.  With a wealth of billions of dollars, and a population of one hundred million, we can not afford to be in a condition of utterly unstable social and industrial equilibrium, nor to see our sons grow up steeped in a spirit of mere selfish individualism, without self-control or discipline or sense of cooperation, or firmness of purpose.  We have great individual capacity.  This we must keep.  But we must train it so that we shall have great collective capacity, so that there may be that collective democratic power and discipline with-out which no great modern democracy can permanently subsist.

We must not only do away with sectionalism but we must see that our land really is a melting-pot of citizenship and that all peoples who come here become Americans and nothing else.  We have equally to dread the sleek, well-fed materialist whose be-all and end-all in life are ease and comfort; and the base, selfish man who thinks only of his individual aggrandizement; and the foolish, boastful, wordy sentimentalist who with amazing ignorance fancies that Americans armed only with words can successfully oppose strong and brutal men with rifles.

Our national character is in the balance.  Americanism is on trial.  If we produce merely the self-seeking, ease-loving, duty-shirking man, whether he be a mere materialist or a mere silly sentimentalist; if we produce only the Americanism of the grafter and the mollycoddle and the safety-first, get-rich-quick, peace-at-any-price man, we will have produced an American faithful only to the spirit of the Tories of 1776 and the Copperheads of 1861, and fit only to vanish from the earth.