Speech or Document 19

ONE FLAG AND ONE LANGUAGE

FROM A STATEMENT ISSUED FOR PUBLICATION BY THE VIGILANTES ON SEPTEMBER 5,

WE are Americans and nothing else.     We are the true children of the crucible.     This is a new nation.  It is a melting pot of the old world nationalities that come hither.  The new type is different from all other types.  But the mold into which the crucible pours its contents was fixed in the days of Washington and the Revolution.  All the children of the crucible must be loyal to the American tradition as established by the men of Washington's day, as preserved by the men of Lincoln's day.  Otherwise they are not true Americans.  Unless we come out as one people, and unless that people is the American people, true to the old ideals, then the crucible has failed to do its work.  We must have one flag, and only one flag; and we must tolerate no divided loyalty.  We must have one language, the language of the Declaration of Independence, of Washington's farewell address, and Lincoln's great speeches.  While this war lasts we should not permit any newspaper to be published in German or in the tongue of any of the other nations with which we are at war; and laws to this effect should be passed at once by Congress.  The leading German papers of this country have been scandalously disloyal to the United States and to humanity.  The conduct of Germany in this war has been hideous beyond belief.  The obscene cruelty and brutality of the German armies under the explicit direction of the German government has been of such unspeakable foulness that it is a crime against this nation and against all mankind directly or indirectly to uphold Germany; and all who do not heartily back the United States, and the allies of the United States, against Germany are guilty of this crime, and are disloyal to this country.  Above all, any man, and especially any senator or congressman or editor who seeks to exempt Americans of German descent from service in the army against Germany, is a traitor, pure and simple; he should be proceeded against under the law, if possible, and if that is not possible the law should be amended so as to make his offense a crime.

We Americans have a two-fold duty imposed on us by our diversity of origin.  First we are bound to insist that every American citizen, no matter from what stock he comes, be loyal only to this country, and that in every international crisis he treat every other nation simply according to its conduct in that crisis, and wholly without regard to his ancestral origin.  In the Revolution and the War of 1812 any man of English descent who was not against England was a traitor to America; and now any man of German descent who is not against Germany is a traitor whether he be outright in his attack on America or whether with mean indirectness and treachery he endeavors to hide his treachery by merely attacking America's allies.  Usually he attacks England.  In this crisis the man who attacks our ally England is just as much a traitor to America as was the man in revolutionary days who attacked our ally France.  And any man who now demands peace except the peace of complete victory over the brutalized and Prussianized Germany of the Hohenzollerns is an enemy to this country and an enemy to mankind.

Next, when men are thus entirely loyal to this country it is an outrage to discriminate, or permit discrimination against them because of where their fathers or they themselves were born.  The highest honor at this time should be paid to the Americans in whole or in part of German blood whose loyalty to the United States in this crisis has been whole-hearted and without reserve.  These men are fit to hold the highest positions in our government from President, lieutenant-general and admiral down.  They would in such positions act as Americans and nothing else.  The stanchest leaders and representatives of true Americanism in this crisis have included a very large proportion of men in whole or in part of German blood; and any failure to recognize this is itself a sinister attack on Americanism and a blow to this nation.

In addition to insisting upon an absolutely undivided Americanism we must insist upon social and industrial justice among our own people; and this not merely in the negative sense of refraining from doing wrong, but by affirmative action to eradicate or at least to minimize wrongdoing.  It is the business of all of us to see that the farmer and the wage-worker get justice, for they are the two men upon whose work and well-being all else depends.  But with these men, as with all other men — as with each of us here, friends — the demand must be both for justice to, and justice from, the persons concerned.  It is of no permanent benefit to anybody — boy or man, girl or woman — to teach him or her to be everlastingly clamoring about his or her rights and never saying a word about the performance of duty.  We should guarantee to every man his full rights, and we should exact from every man the full performance of his duty.  We should aid the farmer by in every way encouraging cooperation between him and his fellows.  If necessary, we should also aid him by the direct action of the state when necessary to secure him from exploitation and to bring producer and consumer together without paying toll to those middlemen who do not serve a useful purpose.  But the proper way to help him permanently is to help him to help himself by cooperating with his fellows.  Such cooperation should not only be permitted but in every way encouraged by the government, subject of course to governmental supervision and control; and the same course should be followed as regards the business men.  Cooperation and control should be our slogan so as to avoid on the one hand a single-headed, irresponsible monopoly, and on the other hand a system of ruinous, cut-throat competition among a crowd of individuals and weak concerns who are hurtful to each other and helpless against any strong outside corporation.  As regards the workingman, our aims should steadily be to promote all practical measures for the democratization of industry, for making the tool user a tool owner and giving him a voice in the control of the business in which he ought to be a partner.  But we should set our faces like flint against slack or poor or scamped work; and we should deal relentlessly and speedily with lawlessness.  We must hold an even hand and punish alike crimes of greed and cunning by the wealthy and crimes of brutal violence by those who are not wealthy.  One type is as bad as the other in its effects; although morally the heavier load of blame rests on the man who is well off and who therefore has least excuse for wrongdoing.  The man who makes a huge profit out of a war in which his fellow-citizens suffer and give their lives is an enemy of his country; and an organization like the I.  W.  W., which is playing the German game in this country, and whose preaching and practice spell destruction to civilization, is as much an enemy to this country as a hostile army.  The unscrupulous profiteers who wish to make huge sums out of their country's needs, and the workingmen who refuse to do first-class work for a first-class wage are really the allies of our enemies and of course the pro-Germans, the professional pacifists, the men who wish an inclusive peace or a peace without victory, the I.  W.  W., the Socialist party machine, are not merely the allies of our enemies, but are themselves our enemies.

We are at war.  Every man and woman in this nation is therefore bound to serve the country in whatever way is necessary.  We should work in the spirit of the body of men representing the railroad brotherhoods whom I addressed not long ago in Philadelphia; whose chairman in introducing me said that the one purpose, now the country was at war, was to help the country in every possible way, not only by making it a matter of pride to do their work with the utmost efficiency, and pending the war to insist on nothing in their own interest unless it was primarily in the interest of the country as a whole.  The able-bodied young man, rich or poor, should by preference render such service in the army.  Other men should render it in business or agriculture, by the work of food production and food conservation along the lines indicated by Mr.  Hoover and the national and State officials engaged in similar work, by speeding up transportation, manufacturing and every other kind of business, and by paying taxes.  The taxes should be laid progressively on those able to pay, up to, but not beyond, the point where the payment becomes unjust or oppressive and interferes with production.

What we and our allies at this time most need is maximum production and quick distribution of food, munitions, clothing — in short, everything.  Any such restriction of profits as would reduce production would be a calamity.  Moreover, in many of the most important industries labor is the largest element of cost; in view of the high cost of living a reduction in wages would be a calamity; and therefore profits must not be kept down so as to injure the ability to pay this rate of wages.  Again, nothing should be done to upset the general financial situation, for the United States is the last financial reservoir of the world, and it would be a grave calamity to upset the financial situation by upsetting the economic basis of our business.  As regards certain necessities of life the government must certainly prevent owners, and especially speculators, from charging excessively high prices; but it is equally important that the government should be cautious not to enforce unreasonably low prices, especially as regards what the government itself uses, and as regards exports.  Our ability to extend credit to the allies largely depends on our continuing to get properly full prices on exports; we should follow the rule that England has followed, of refusing to sell to our allies at less than the open market price.  Let us help our allies primarily by a great army; we can rest assured that even if they asked us merely to give them money and goods at half price and to let them do the fighting, we should earn their utter contempt and derision if we acquiesced.  We would be in the position of a pawn-broker who bribes a gunman to defend him; we would have put a premium on both our allies and our enemies ultimately joining to plunder us.  Heavily graduated inheritance and income taxes are necessary.  They should follow the English and German models.  But at present what is most needed is a heavily — a very heavily — graduated tax on the excess profits due to war conditions; a tax as heavy as Great Britain has now imposed.  In the purchases made by the government it ought to pay prices high enough to enable not merely the big manufacturers, but their smaller and less advantageously situated rivals to secure a generous living profit.  This means that the big manufacturers would have excess profits; and the proper way to reach these is by taxing them heavily.  If the government fails to follow such action, if it follows a course of indecision and delay, the result will be as bad as it has already proved in the matter of building ships.  Seven months ago Germany went to war with us because she deemed it more important to sink unarmed cargo and passenger ships than to keep our friendship.  This, of course, ought to have shown us that our instant and prime duty was to nullify the threat by exerting all our wisdom and energy, to grappling aggressively with the sub-marine by building many of the big and most efficient anti-submarine cruisers, and striving to devise new methods of attack on the submarines, and by without the smallest delay beginning on a vast scale to build numbers of strong, swift steel cargo ships.  These were almost our vital duties.  But we shilly-shallied over them, and dawdled and backed and filled.  We did nothing new, and very little that was effective in building anti-submarine craft of the largest, best engined and most effective type.  We didn't take any effective steps at all to provide for building the cargo ship our-selves, and yet in at least one case we prevented a great firm from building the ships for one of our allies.  The result may prove a capital misfortune; one of those misfortunes which is practically a crime against the nation; for if during these seven months we had gone properly to work in the business of getting ships built, we would have had the first ships ready next month; and I believe that the knowledge of this fact would have meant to Germany the knell of doom, so far as her submarine campaign was concerned, and therefore would have made peace immediately probable.

The war has clearly raised two problems; the problem of the present, which is to help our allies win this war, by endeavoring in every way now, to offset the effect of our utter failure to prepare in advance; and the permanent problem, the problem of defense against a future — perhaps a distant, perhaps an immediately impending future — attack upon us when we have no allies; the problem of preparing our strength as a permanent policy so that never again shall we be caught as shamefully unprepared as now, so that never again shall we be forced as at present to owe our safety purely to the valor of our allies and not to our own courage and strength.

The last is the permanently vital problem, and we can never understand it or meet it unless we fully understand the pitiful condition in which we have been for the last seven months; a condition due purely to our own lack of forethought and of steadfast resolution during the last three years.  Now and then we read in the papers boastful accounts of how much money we have appropriated, of how many men have been registered for the draft, of what wonderful plans we intend to develop for an aeroplane fleet, of how many cargo ships and big guns we intend to build.  All of this would be excellent, if we meant to prepare for a war three years hence; but it is all of it, every particle of it, just exactly what we ought to have done three years ago, or at the very least two years and a half ago, when the Lusitania was sunk — for we had exactly the same cause for action then that we have now.  Seven months have passed since the German note of January 31 last, which was in effect a declaration of war.  This is a longer time than it took Germany to conquer France in 1870.  And when you read anything boastful about what we have done during these seven months, remember what our accomplishment— not belated preparation, but actual accomplishment — really is.  We have put a few anti-submarine craft into European waters under Admiral Sims; and that is all! We have in training camps in France gallant Gen.  Pershing and his fine divisions of infantry, his engineers, and his artillery regiments without guns.  We have several hundred thousand National Guardsmen about to begin training in camp; and several hundred thousand drafted men are preparing to go to camp.  We have not yet been able to put in France any heavy field guns fit to match the German artillery.  We have not yet a single airplane fit to send over the German lines.  We have not put a single man into the firing line.  We have only what is relatively to the size of the armies engaged, a small body of infantry, without artillery, who will be fit to go to the firing line in the immediate future.  As for the rest, after seven months, this nation of a hundred millions of people, the wealthiest nation in the world, able to work without any danger behind the shield of the British fleet and the French and British armies, has neither the trained troops nor the guns nor the air craft to meet even a single small German army if it could get at us.  After these seven months we are still nothing like as formidable as Belgium or Rumania.  Under such conditions boasters would do well to remember the remark of Thangbrand, the priest, about the boastful Icelanders, in the Norse saga:

“What’s the use
Of all this bragging up and down 
When three women and one goose
Make a market in your town."

I do not mention this for the sake of criticizing any one.  I mention it so that we may take warning and never again be guilty of such shameful shortcomings.  There is no use of crying over spilt milk; but there is far less use of making believe that it has not been spilt.  Let us make up our minds, we Americans, hereafter to behave like men and to quit acting like spoiled, overgrown children.  Children don't have forethought.  Men do.  Let us make ready in advance so that hereafter we may owe our safety to our own prepared strength and trained courage.  There is but one way thus to prepare and that is by introducing as a permanent policy the policy of universal obligatory military training, for all our young men in time of peace, and of universal service in time of war, so that every man and woman in this country shall be fitted in advance to render, and at need required to render, whatever service the nation demands.  Then we won't have to begin to train for a fight after the fight has itself begun.  The law of service should be the law of life; and in every real democracy universal suffrage will be based on universal service.  So much for our ultimate and permanent need.  The immediate need is to bring this war to a close by complete and overwhelming victory.  We must strive for the peace of victory as in their day our forefathers strove.  As yet we count for almost nothing in the war; but sooner or later — I hope within six months or so — we shall develop our tremendous strength, and then let us see the war through.  Hitherto the allies have been fighting our battles, as an incident to fighting theirs, and, of course, because their interest demanded it.  Now let us fight our own battles; thereby we shall also fight theirs.  We are fighting for humanity; but primarily we are fighting for our own country, for the safety of America in the world.  We are fighting on the other side of the water so that we may not have to fight on this side of the water.  Only the overthrow of the brutal and unscrupulous militarism of the Prussianized Germany of the Hohenzollerns will make this world safe either for the United States or for democracy.  Let us bend our whole energies towards this end.  Let us resolve that if all our allies should slip away from us we would nevertheless continue the war single-handed until the end is attained.  Let us heartily back up the government in every wise step it takes for the speedy achievement of this end; but let us, as patriots, not less clearly emphasize the fact that we demand from our government wisdom, energy and a spirit of broad Americanism and a patriotic absence of partisanship in thus prosecuting the war.  Let us furthermore each as individuals do all we severally can to aid in securing the triumph.  Let us live simply, cut out all extravagance and all alcohol, show thrift, avoid waste, and do every bit of productive work we can, in agriculture or industry, in producing food, or clothing, or munitions, or in managing the transportation of the country.  Let us cheerfully pay our increased taxes, subscribe to government loans, help the Red Cross and Y.  M.  C.  A.  and all similar organizations which are trying to aid our soldiers.  So far as our bodily strength and condition permit let us serve with our bodies.  If we are permitted let us volunteer in the army or the navy; if we are drafted let us treat the fact as a great privilege.  Service should be the law of life, and thrice blessed is that man who in this world crisis is granted the supreme good fortune of risking his life and all else that he has for the honor of serving his country and mankind.