Speech or Document 11

NINE-TENTHS OF WISDOM IS BEING WISE IN TIME

A SPEECH DELIVERED 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 Appomattox.

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 allegiance even more incompatible with a loyalty divided between 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.

I.  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.

2.  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.

3.	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 of 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 today 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 doing 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 out-siders, 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 the 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.  Today, 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 can not 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 wholehearted 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 was 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 today.  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 un-readiness 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, untempered 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.

Speech or Document 12

FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

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

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

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

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

Patriotism should be an integral part of our every feeling at all times, for it is merely another name for those qualities of soul which make a man in peace or in war, by day or by night, think of his duty to his fellows, and of his duty to the nation through which their and his loftiest aspirations must find their fitting expression.  After the Lusitania was sunk, Mr.  Wilson stated in effect that such a time was not the right time to stir up patriotism.  This statement is entirely incompatible with having a feeling of deep patriotism at any time.  It might just as appropriately have been made by George Washington immediately after his defeat at the Brandywine, or by Abraham Lincoln immediately after the surrender of Fort Sumter; and if in either of these crises our leaders had acted on any such principle we would not now have any country at all.  Patriotism is as much a duty in time of war as in time of peace, and it is most of all a duty in any and every great crisis.  To commit folly or do evil, to act inconsiderately and hastily or wantonly and viciously, in the name of patriotism, represents not patriotism at all, but a use of the name to cloak an attack upon the thing.  Such baseness or folly is wrong, at every time and on every occasion.  But patriotism itself is not only in place on every occasion and at every time, but is peculiarly the feeling which should be stirred to its deepest depths at every serious crisis.  The duty of a leader is to lead; and it is a dreadful thing that any man chosen to lead his fellow-countrymen should himself show, not merely so profound a lack of patriotism, but such misunderstanding of patriotism, as to be willing to say in a great crisis what President Wilson thus said at the time of the sinking of the Lusitania.  This statement, coupled with his statement made about the same time as to being “too proud to fight," furnishes the clue to the Administration's policy both before and since.  This policy made our great democratic commonwealth false to its duties and its ideals in a tremendous world crisis, at the very time when, if properly led, it could have rendered an inestimable service to all mankind, and could have placed itself on a higher pinnacle of worthy achievement than ever before.

Patriotism, so far from being incompatible with performance of duty to other nations, is an indispensable prerequisite to doing one's duty toward other nations.  Fear God; and take your own part! If this nation had feared God it would have stood up for the Belgians and Armenians; if it had been able and willing to take its own part there would have been no murderous assault on the Lusitania, no outrages on our men and women in Mexico.  True patriotism carries with it not hostility to other nations but a quickened sense of responsible good-will towards other nations, a good-will of acts and not merely of words.  I stand for a nationalism of duty, to oneself and to others; and, therefore, for a nationalism which is a means to internationalism.  World peace must rest on the willingness of nations with courage, cool foresight, and readiness for self-sacrifice to defend the fabric of international law.  No nation can help in securing an organized, peaceful and justice-doing world community until it is willing to run risks and make efforts in order to secure and maintain such a community.

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

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

The professional pacifists, the leaders in the pacifist movement in the United States, do particular harm by giving well-meaning but uninformed people who do not think deeply what seems to them a convincing excuse for failure to show courage and resolution.  Those who preach sloth and cowardice under the high-sounding name of “peace " give people a word with which to cloak, even to themselves, their failure to perform unpleasant duty.  For a man to stand up for his own rights, or especially for the rights of somebody else, means that he must have virile qualities; courage, foresight, willingness to face risk and undergo effort.  It is much easier to be timid and lazy.  The average man does not like to face death and endure hardship and labor.  He can be roused to do so if a leader of the right type, a Washington or Lincoln, appeals to the higher qualities, including the stern qualities, of his soul.  But a leader, or at least a man who holds a leader's place, earns praise and profit unworthily if he uses his gift of words to lull well-meaning men to sleep, if he assures them that it is their duty to do the easy and selfish thing, and furnishes them high-sounding phrases with which to cover ignoble failure to perform hard and disagreeable duties.

Peace is not the end.  Righteousness is the end.  When the Savior saw the money-changers in the Temple he broke the peace by driving them out.  At that moment peace could have been obtained readily enough by the simple process of keeping quiet in the presence of wrong.  But instead of preserving peace at the expense of righteousness, the Savior armed himself with a scourge of cords and drove the money-changers from the Temple.  Righteousness is the end, and peace a means to the end, and sometimes it is not peace, but war which is the proper means to achieve the end.  Righteousness should breed valor and strength.  When it does breed them, it is triumphant; and when triumphant, it necessarily brings peace.  But peace does not necessarily bring righteousness.  .  .  .

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

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

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