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.