Speech or Document 25

AMERICANS MUST STAND TOGETHER OR HANG TOGETHER

FROM AN ADDRESS OPENING THE FOURTH LIBERTY LOAN CAMPAIGN AT BALTIMORE, MARYLAND, ON SEPTEMBER 28, 1918

TODAY we are gathered to back up the government in its call to our people to subscribe to the Fourth Liberty loan.  It is our duty not only to subscribe to it, but to over subscribe to it, and thereby to make our own men on the other side and our enemies on the other side understand how heartily and loyally the people of the United States are back of this war.  Moreover in asking our people to subscribe to this loan I am asking them to display wisdom, but not self-sacrifice.  There are plenty of war activities where there must be some sacrifice.  Of course, the men at the front and their mothers and wives at home are making the supreme sacrifice and are rendering the supreme service.  All that the rest of us can do is simply to back up these men at the front.  Of course, when we give money for war charities or cheerfully pay our taxes or do any of the hundred things we ought to do to aid in the war, we are making to some extent a sacrifice — although it is too trivial a sacrifice to be even alluded to in connection with the sacrifice made by the men at the front.  But in subscribing to the Liberty bonds we are benefiting ourselves.  The interest is good and the security is the very best in the world.  Whoever subscribes is certain to get his money back, unless Uncle Sam bursts up, and in that event it won't matter, because every one of us will burst up too.  In other words, the security is the best in the world, and we are helping ourselves and encouraging habits of thrift and foresight and prudence at the same time that we are helping Uncle Sam.  The bonds are so arranged that every one can take them and every human being in the country ought to take either a Liberty bond or Thrift stamps.  We should make the bondholders and the people interchangeable terms.  It is not the obligation of the government officials to raise and furnish the money.  That, my fellow citizens, is your obligation, our obligation, and duty.  We must in the heartiest and most generous spirit raise the money.  Then, when it has been raised, it is the duty of the officials to see that it is well and wisely spent.

It is our business to give the government all the money it demands, whether in taxes or in loans.  It is our business to back up every official, wholly without regard to party, so long as he does his duty efficiently in speeding up the war, so that we may secure the peace of overwhelming victory.  It is also our business to see that every official actually does his duty and that of the money appropriated, every dollar spent represents 100 cents worth of service to the army and the public.  It is the duty of the executive officials of the government to demand all the money that is necessary in order to render the great service that is necessary.  It is the duty of the congressmen to give this money freely, to back up the rendering of the service, and to insist that it be rendered; and it is also their duty to see that we get the proper return for the money spent.  I don't care how heavy the taxes or how big the loans, I will not only stand for them all but insist upon them all, and I believe our people will stand for them all, right up to the bed rock dollar of the nation, if it is necessary in order to put this war through, until Germany is brought to her knees.  But I believe I speak for the nation, and I know I speak for myself, when I say that we intend to see that the money produces results.  Therefore it is our clear duty to send to congress men who will take this attitude.  There must be no skimping, no niggardliness when the nation's honor and vital interests are at stake.  Our representatives must give the executive officers all the assistance, all the money that is necessary.  But it is their clear duty to investigate and supervise and see that the money is well and wisely spent by these executive officials, and that from now on our men who fight at the front are backed with the airplanes and the field cannons and the tanks and the machine guns for which we have paid.

It is no less our duty and the duty of our governmental representatives both to hurry up the war so that it may be finished as speedily as possible and also to show such foresight in preparedness that we shall be ready with overwhelming forces to fight it through, no matter how long it takes.  We must be content with no peace except a peace dictated by the victorious allies, a peace which will leave Germany and her vassal states powerless to repeat the hideous wrongdoing which for over four years has plunged the world into a sea of slaughter.  We do not intend that Germany shall be oppressed, but neither do we intend she shall be able to oppress us.  She must be punished, if the dreadful wrongs she has inflicted on France and Belgium are really to be righted.  Therefore, the Turk must be driven from Europe and the races subject to him be given their freedom.  Therefore, the Austrian empire must be broken up and the German strangle-hold removed from Russia.  All Roumanians and all Italians must be united to Roumania and Italy.  The Jugo-Slavs, the Czecho-Slovaks and the Poles must be made into independent commonwealths; Finland, the Baltic provinces and the Ukraine must be made free not merely of Russia, but of Germany also.  As for poor Russia herself, we earnestly wish we could help her.  We will help her when she allows us to.  She fought valiantly and suffered terribly during the early years of the war, while this nation was still neutral and was making a profit out of the awful struggle.  But under the Bolshevists Russia has become an ally of Germany — an enemy of the free peoples.  We are fighting for our dearest rights.  We are also fighting for the rights of all people, small or great, so long as they are well-behaved and do not wrong others, to enjoy their liberty and govern themselves in the forms they see fit to adopt.  We intend to try to help others, but we know well that we can not do so unless we are able to do justice within our own borders and to manage well the affairs of our own household.  Therefore it behooves us even now, while we are bending all our energies to winning the great war, also to look to the future and to begin to ponder the things that we must do to bring greater happiness and well-being and a higher standard of conduct and character within our own borders when once the war is through.

Surely friends, all of us and especially those of us who stay at home and who are denied the opportunity to go to the front, ought to realize the need in this country of a loftier idealism than we have had in the past; and the further and even greater need that we should in actual practice live up to the ideals we profess.  The things of the body have a rightful place and a great place.  But the things of the soul should have an even greater place.  There has been in the past in this country far too much of that gross materialism which in the end eats like an acid into all the finer qualities of our souls.

The war came — our gross ideals were shattered and the scales fell from our eyes and we saw things as they really were.  Suddenly in the awful presence of death we grew to understand the true value of life.  We realized that only those men were fit to live who were not afraid to die; that although death was a terrible thing, yet that there were other things that were more terrible, other things that made life not worth living.  All the finest of our young men, all those of high souls, responded eagerly to the call to arms, the son of the rich man and the son of the poor man, side by side, neither claiming any favor except the chance to win honor and perform duty in the face of deadly peril.  These men who have been going and are going abroad by the millions are sacrificing everything for the sake of a great ideal.  They have shown their willingness to sacrifice money and ease and pleasure and life itself when duty calls and the nation bids them go.

Let us who are left behind in our turn strive to make our lives a little nearer the right ideal.  Let us introduce into the work of peace something of the spirit that they have introduced into the work of war.  When these men come home, or at least when those of them who escape death come home, I believe that they will demand and I know that they ought to demand a juster type of life, socially and industrially, in this country.  I believe, and I hope, that they will demand a loftier idealism in both our public and private affairs, and better and more common sense methods of reducing our ideals to practice and making them realizable.  I believe that they will themselves show both idealism and also that common sense the lack of which insures disaster in peace as in war.  I think they will insist upon a livelier sense of brotherhood and yet will no less insist upon the duty of recognizing leadership.  Let the difference of reward be as great as that between our generals and admirals, such as Pershing and Sims, and the warrant officers or senior non-commissioned officers under them.  But let there be a better proportion than is now the case in industrial life between the service rendered and the reward given.  Gradually I hope to see the wage-worker become in a real sense a partner in the enterprise in which he works; and to achieve this end he must develop the power of self-control, the power of recognizing the rights of others no less than insisting upon his own; he must develop common sense, and that strength of character which can not be conferred from without, and the lack of which renders everything else of no avail.  Above all, I wish to see that farmers develop their strength by cooperation so that the elemental work of the soil will resume its ancient importance among us.

At this moment we can only lay the foundation in outline; but there are certain things that we should do at once in connection with the war.  One of them is to stop all profiteering by capitalists, and another is to stop all slacking and loafing whether by individual workmen or as a result of union action.  Of these two perhaps the profiteer is worse, but the slacker is almost as bad.  As for the profiteer, any man who makes a fortune out of this war ought to be held up to derision and scorn.  No man should come out of this war materially ahead of what he was when we went into it.  There must be the reward for capital necessary in order to make it profitable to do the necessary work and to cover the necessary risks; this is indispensable, and the government should see that neither demagogy nor ignorance interferes with this necessary reward.  But we heartily approve, as a war measure, heavy progressive taxation of all profits, beyond the reasonable profits necessary for the continuance of industry.  Most of our captains of finance are doing with all their energy necessary governmental work without any financial reward for themselves.  I honor these men, I honor their sons who have gone to the war.  But I have scant patience with the other men who treat the war merely as a chance for profit; and I have least patience with the rich men who keep their sons at home.  I will not excuse the poor man from going to war; but I would make it obligatory on the man who has much.  As for the profiteer if I could get at him I would like to put him to digging the front trenches.  And I would put beside him his brother in wrongdoing, the slacker or loafer, the man who limits the output when it is necessary at this time that we should have the greatest possible production; and I would do this whether he was acting as an individual or an official or member of a labor union.  Pershing's men are not limiting their output, and shame and disgrace should be the portion of any man who limits his output here at home.

In all things I would keep just as far from, Bolshevism as from kaiserism.  In this country the Germanized socialists have shown themselves in their true light as the enemies of the republic; and I would permit no enemies of the republic to be at large while the republic is at death-grips with a foreign foe.  I am utterly against every species of anarchy, and therefore I am against Bolshevism in all its forms; but I am equally against the gross industrial and social abuses which tend to promote the growth of anarchy and of Bolshevism and of Germanized socialism.

From the days when civilized man first began to strive for self-government and democracy success has depended primarily upon the ability to steer clear of extremes.  For almost its entire length the course lies between Scylla and Charybdis; and the heated extremists who insist upon avoiding only one gulf of destruction invariably land in the other — and then take refuge in the meager consolation afforded by denouncing as " inconsistent " the pilot who strives to avoid both.  Order without liberty and liberty without order are equally destructive; special privilege for the few and special privilege for the many are alike profoundly anti-social; the fact that unlimited individualism is ruinous in no way alters the fact that unlimited state socialism spells ruin of a different kind.  All of this ought to be trite to reasonably intelligent people — even if they are professional intellectuals — but in practice an endless insistence on these simple fundamental truths is endlessly necessary.

Before our eyes the unfortunate Russian nation furnishes an example on a gigantic scale of what to avoid in oscillating between extremes.  The autocratic and bureaucratic despotism of the Romanoffs combined extreme tyranny with extreme inefficiency; and the Bolshevists have turned the revolution into a veritable witches Sabbath of anarchy, plunder, murder, utterly faithless treachery and inefficiency carried to the verge of complete disintegration.  Each side sought salvation by formulas which were condemned alike by common sense and common morality and which their own actions belied.

I believe that when this war is over we should prepare for our self-defense against other nations, and I believe we should prepare for our own inner development.  And in order to meet both needs, I believe in the principle of universal service.  Of this, military service is but a part.  It is a vital part and under no circumstances can we neglect it.  But it is only a part.  Universal suffrage can be justified only by universal service, service in peace and service in war.  The man who will not render this service has no right to the vote.  If he won't fight for the country in war and do his duty by the country in peace, we ought not to permit him to vote in the country.  The conscientious objector, who won't serve as a soldier or won't pay his taxes, has no place in a republic like ours, and should be expelled from it, for no man who won't pull his weight in the boat has a right in the boat.  The society of Friends have come forward in this war just as gallantly as they came forward in the Civil War, and all true believers in peace will do well to follow their example.

We now have an approach to the universal service which some of us have for many years been demanding.  We now have all men from 18 to 45 required to serve their country, and required to register.  Let us make this system permanent and let us use it for the purposes of peace no less than for the purposes of war.  Let us extend the principle to women no less than to men.  Let us have suffrage on service.  Let us demand the service from women as we do from men, and in return give the suffrage to all men and women who in peace and war perform the service, and to no others.  Base suffrage on service and not on sex.  Treat it not as an unearned privilege, but as a duty which each of us is to perform in a spirit of service to all of us, and as a right which is not to be enjoyed unless the person enjoying it does his or her full duty in peace and war.

Universal training is a prerequisite for efficient universal service.  It is just as much a prerequisite for efficient service in war as for efficient service in peace.  It is just as much a prerequisite for women as for men.  At this moment we have embodied in law the principle of universal military service for men, but inasmuch as there has never been universal obligatory military training for the service we now have to do all this training during the war itself.  In consequence we were not able to exert any considerable fraction of our man power until over a year after we went to war, and over two will have elapsed before the proportion of our strength thus actually usable and used will be anywhere near as great as the proportion of the French, English or Italian strength thus used.  This means that during the first year of the war we would have been absolutely helpless, and during the first year and a half almost helpless, against our antagonists if we had not been protected by the armies and navies of our allies.  In other words, while we were hardening our unprepared and helpless strength, and making it ready, we were saved from the strength and fury of our enemy only by the strength and valor of our allies.  We now have universal military service.  If four years ago we had had universal military training, so that the service would have been immediately efficient when called for, the war would have been over within 90 days from the time we entered it, and infinite bloodshed and treasure would have been spared.  Next time we may not have allies to protect us.  And even if we do have allies, let us remember that our latent strength is such that if we prepare it in advance, the chances are strong for our imposing an almost immediate peace in any conflict into which we are obliged to enter; whereas, if we do not prepare it in advance we are doomed to impotence in any war unless we have allies who protect us during the year or two we spend in hurried and extravagant effort to do what we ought to have already done.

I am not advocating Prussian militarism.  I am advocating the kind of democratic preparedness which Switzerland has developed to her own great advantage, socially and economically, and with the result of keeping war out of her borders.  I refer you to our own experience of the last year.  I believe that our training camps have been universities of applied Americanism.  I believe that for every young man between the ages of 18 and 20 to have six months in such a camp, which would include, of course, some field service, would be of incalculable benefit to him, and of like benefit to the nation.  It would teach him self-reliance, self-respect, mutuality of respect between himself and others, the power to command and the power to obey; it would teach him habits of cleanliness and order and the power of cooperation ; and above all devotion to the flag, the ideal of country.  It would make him a soldier immediately fit for defense and readily to be turned into a soldier fit for offensive work if, as in the present war, offense prove the only method of real defense.  I believe that every such man, after his experience in the camp, would tend to be a better citizen and would tend to do his own work for himself and his family better and with more efficient result.  I believe it would help him in material matters and at the same time would teach him to put certain great spiritual ideals in the foremost place.

Incidentally, if I had my way, I would change the draft rules now, so far as giving any special privileges to the young fellows between 18 and 20 in the matter of college training, to fit them to be officers.  To say that the nation will pay for all of them to go to college is a deception, and to believe it is a delusion.  I do not believe in a selective draft for a favored class.  I wish to see fair play for the workman's son who has not had the chance to learn so that he can go to college, but who has the natural ability to command and lead men.  Only boys whose parents, in the past, have had the money to give them a special education can enter college at the present time, and it is unfair to the other boys to give these a special advantage.  Let all go into the ranks together and after six months or a year of service the best men to be chosen out.  Of course with the older men and at the beginning we had to take those already available.  But when we come to need the young fellows under 21 let every man enter the ranks and stand on fair footing with every one else, and be given promotion on his merits.  Hitherto the men who came in under 21 came in as volunteers, and they were entitled to try for any position they could get, but now we have at last done what we ought to have done in the beginning.  Now let them all stand alike.

Therefore, I hope that now we will make the system of universal military service and military training which we have introduced permanent, although of course in modified form.  But I would not stop here.  I would use the registration of all our men as a basis for further development for training and service in the duties of peace.  I would register the young women just as much as the young men.  I would give them both certain fundamental forms of industrial training — training in the things that are fundamental in the ordinary work of the ordinary man and woman in their business occupations and in and around their home; in the things which it is good for every man and woman to know.  I mean certain forms of manual labor and mechanical labor for men, and certain forms of household work and work outside of the house for women.  The teaching in the schools should be only in English; in this country there is room for but one flag and for but one language.  I believe in education.  I believe in giving it free to every man and every woman, because I don't think we can have a successful democracy unless it is an educated one.  I believe in making it obligatory so far as primary education is concerned; and I believe in making it possible for every man or woman who really desires it to have a higher education, but that this shall be permissive and not obligatory.  Moreover, I believe that the education shall be an education not only of the mind but also of the soul and the body.  I think we should educate men and women toward and not away from what is to be their life work, toward the home, toward the farm, toward the shop — and not away from them.  I would use the introduction of a system of universal training and service as a means for securing this education.

I mention education only as one of the aims we ought to have in view in connection with universal training of our citizenship for service.  There are very many lines of endeavor in such an effort of constructive statesmanship; for construction and not destruction should be the keynote of our policy at this time.  Our educational system should deal especially with all immigrants; and a peculiarly important branch of it at the present time ought to be the training of the disabled and the crippled returning soldiers so that they may become not objects of charity, but self-supporting citizens.  We should develop the water powers under the government, keeping ownership in the public, and preventing the pollution of interstate streams.  We should begin at once to take thought for the soldiers when they return; to develop national employment agencies for the redistribution of men after the war.  We should enter on a course of taxation, purchase and development of land so as to give to the returned soldier who is fit for it the chance to do the most vital of all works, to till the soil on the farm which he himself owns; and we can treat this as a stepping stone to further study of and action concerning country life and farm production so as to promote the growth and prosperity of the farmers who work hard on their own land.  We must prepare our shipping for times of peace, and prepare to deal with the foreign markets situation, as part of our program of wise universal service, and, what is even more important, we can deal on a national scale with factory and industrial conditions, city and country housing conditions, child labor, and old age, health and unemployment insurance for workers.  As for the needs of the moment, let us act with drastic severity, much greater severity than at present, against German spies and pro-German traitors.  There is room for no half-and-half loyalty in this country; every man who has the slightest feeling in favor of Germany should be interned or sent out of the country, and if he is guilty of serious disloyalty he should be shot or hung.  Let us go to the limit against every pro-German and in uncompromising insistence that we speed up the war and fight it through until we beat Germany to her knees and impose our own peace on her.  But save in the case of spies and traitors and preachers of sedition, let us insist on a free press and free speech, for a free press and free speech are the foundation-stones of self-government by a free people.  Let us make our belated intervention in Russia more effective both as regards military measures against the Germans and the pro-German Russians and as regards friendly economic relief and aid for the mass of the Russian people.  Now is the time to accomplish constructive work which will make us strong for the conflict and able to deal with the aftermath of the conflict, and the step to be taken at this moment is to back up the fourth Liberty loan.