Speech or Document 26

WHAT WILSON DID AND LINCOLN DIDN'T

A NOTABLE ADDRESS DELIVERED AT CARNEGIE HALL, NEW YORK, ON OCTOBER 28, 1918

I COME to this meeting as an American, and only as an American.  In this crisis I do not consider politics at all whenever doing so conflicts in the slightest degree with the great cause of Americanism or with our immediate purpose of winning the war and of securing the peace of unconditional surrender by Germany.  I will support no disloyal man on any ticket and no man who is not heartily in favor of winning the war and of the peace of overwhelming victory.  I make my appeal to all good Americans, in the name of Americanism, and I make it just as much to all independents and to all far-sighted, patriotic Democrats who are awake to the real needs of the situation as I do to Republicans.  Americanism means that in this country there is to be loyalty to only one flag — the American flag — and that we will permit no fifty-fifty loyalty, no loyalty to any foreign flag and no loyalty either to the red flag of anarchy or to the black flag of international or Germanized socialism.  During the last four years international socialism has shown itself the enemy of all the liberty-loving nations and the tool of the capitalistic and militaristic tyranny of the Hohenzollerns.  When applied by its leading practical advocates, according to the Stark-Marxian formulas of class consciousness and class hatred, it has thrown Russia into hideous ruin; so that at this moment, while autocratic Germany is dangerous to all liberty-loving peoples as a man-eating wild beast is dangerous, Russia is dangerous because she has become a plague spot of infection and misery for the nations of mankind.  In this country we must steer equally clear of Kaiserism and of Bolshevism, for if we swerve toward either we swerve toward the gulfs of ruin.  This meeting is held under peculiar circumstances.  If the President of the United States is right in the appeal he has just made to the voters, then you and I, my hearers, have no right to vote at this election or to discuss public questions while the war lasts.  If his appeal is justified, only that faction of the Democratic party which accepts towards the President the rubber stamp attitude of complete servility is entitled to control Congress; and no man who is a Republican, and no man whether a Republican or not who puts loyalty to the people ahead of loyalty to the servant of the people, is to have a voice in determining the greatest questions ever brought before this Nation.

In this election appeal which the President has issued to the voters of the country he states that he " earnestly begs" the voters to return " a Democratic majority to both the Senate and the House of Representatives," and that although " the leaders of the minority in the present Congress have unquestionably been pro-war they have been anti-administration," and that " the return of a Republican majority to either House of Congress would certainly be interpreted on the other side of the water as a repudiation of my (President Wilson's) leadership."

This is an extraordinary document.  It is an emphatic repudiation and reversal of the President's announcement of a few months back that “politics is adjourned." It casts the gravest doubt on the sincerity of that announcement; and indeed for the last few months the Democratic party organization, acting with the support and direction of the President's closest advisers, such as Messrs.  Burleson and Creel, has been working with naked eagerness for partisan success, and has displayed a greedy unscrupulousness as to methods and a complete subordination of national interest to partisan welfare never before known in our history during a great war.  When this war broke out I, and all those who believed as I did, cast all thought of politics aside and put ourselves unreservedly at the service of the President.  Of course if Mr.  Wilson had really meant to disregard politics he would at once have constructed a coalition, non-partisan cabinet, calling the best men of the nation to the highest and most important offices under him, without regard to politics.  He did nothing of the kind.  In the positions most vital to the conduct of the war, and in the positions now most important in connection with negotiating peace, he retained or appointed men without the slightest fitness for the performance of the tasks, whose sole recommendation was a supple eagerness to serve Mr.  Wilson personally and to serve Mr.  Wilson's party insofar as such service benefited Mr.  Wilson.

I am glad that Mr.  Wilson has now cast off the mask.  His appeal is now to pure partisanship.  By his actions (since he announced that politics were adjourned) he had already repudiated his words; for he had already interfered for purely political reasons in the election contents in Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan and many other States.  Now he openly by formal announcement repudiates all pretense of putting the public welfare above party.  Now he declares that this is a party war, and that the Republicans, although he admits “that they have been unquestionably pro-war," are to be excluded from any share in controlling the war.

Nor is this all.  He makes his appeal on behalf of the Democratic party.  But he is careful to qualify it so as to exclude all Democrats who put loyalty to the Nation or even loyalty to their party principles ahead of adherence to the administration.  He in no way discriminates between Democrats who are pro-war and those who are anti-war.  He asks the exclusion from Congress of the man who is anti-administration, without the slightest reference to whether he is pro-war or antiwar, loyal or disloyal, patriotic or unpatriotic.  The one test he imposes is loyalty to himself.  The President of the United States repudiates the position of being President of all the people, and substitutes for it the position of partisan leadership of one political faction; while even in this faction he makes servile adherence to his administration the test of membership and of the moral right of any man to do his share in the great work of national self-government.

Contrast with this the position of Abraham Lincoln.  In the darkest days of the Civil War, Lincoln declined outright to make any party appeal or to apply any party test or any test save that of loyalty in the prosecution of the war and loyalty to the Union and to liberty.  In March, 1863, he advocated sending to Congress only " unconditional supporters of the war," making no reference to any party; and in June of that year, in answer to some correspondents who signed themselves as " Democrats," he expressed his regret that they had not called themselves " American citizens," saying, " In this time of national peril I would have preferred to meet you upon a level one step higher than any party platform "; and in August, in the only political letter he wrote that year, he appealed to " all those who maintain unconditional devotion to the Union," and in this appeal he explicitly included his own political friends with those of his political enemies, " whom no partisan malice or partisan hope can make false to the nation's life." He thus explicitly based his appeal to pro-war men, without asking about their attitude towards himself.  Again and again he appealed to “all loyal men” and to “all friends of union and liberty “and in 1864 he accepted his nomination as coming from the “unconditional Union men."

Lincoln made no party test.  He appealed to all loyal men of all parties.  He asked that the test of fitness for Congress be, not adherence to his personal administration, but unconditional support of the war.  Mr.  Wilson applies the most rigid party test.  He explicitly repudiates loyalty to the war as a test.  He demands the success of the Democratic party, and asks the defeat of all pro-war men if they have been anti-administration.  He asks for the defeat of pro-war Republicans.  He does not ask for the defeat of antiwar Democrats.  On the contrary, he supports such men if although anti-war they are pro-administration.  He does not ask for loyalty to the Nation.  He asks only for support of himself.  There is not the slightest suggestion that he disapproves of disloyalty to the nation.  I do not doubt that he does feel some disapproval of such disloyalty; but apparently this feeling on his part is so tepid that it slips from his mind when he contemplates what he regards as the far greater sin of failure in adherence to himself.

I ask all patriotic Americans to consider just what is meant when the President says that in the present Congress “the leaders of the minority although unquestionably pro-war have been anti-administration." These leaders supported the Administration when a declaration of war was needed.  They supported it when there was a demand for the draft.  They supported it when we sent the army overseas.  They supported every demand for money whether by taxation or by loans.  They supported it or gave it initiative and guidance on every issue where it stood for vigorous prosecution of the war; and they supported it on these issues when half the leaders of President Wilson's own party opposed him when he had committed himself to war measures — and yet President Wilson now makes a partisan appeal in favor of the Democrats who opposed the war measures and against the Republicans who supported them.

Now, what does Mr.  Wilson mean when he speaks of these leaders as being, although “pro-war," yet "anti-administration"? He means that when the War Department was administered with utter inefficiency they investigated the matter and insisted upon efficiency.  He means that when they found that nothing effective was being done in ship-building they insisted that the work be speeded up.  He means that when they found that six hundred million dollars had been spent for airplanes and yet that not an airplane had reached our soldiers at the front they insisted that our soldiers should get the airplanes for which the people had paid.  Mr.  Wilson regards it as “anti-administration “to demand that our gallant men at the front receive the guns and auto-rifles and tanks and airplanes and shoes and clothing for which Congress has appropriated so many billions of dollars.  The entire offense of the Republican leaders in Mr.  Wilson's eyes is that they have demanded that inefficiency, waste and extravagance be remedied.  Such a demand he treats as “anti-administration." In other words, the attitude which patriotic people regard as pro-United States he regards as anti-administration.  I hold, on the contrary, that these Republican leaders have in a great crisis shown complete indifference to party and complete devotion to the Union.  They have disinterestedly supported Mr.  Wilson in everything he did that was right, and fearlessly opposed him where he was wrong.  Over half the Democratic leaders whom he is now supporting opposed him when he was right, and supported him when he was wrong.  He urges that the people return to Congress the men who were anti-war but who shielded the failures of the administration.  He urges that the people defeat for Congress the men who were pro-war but who sought to remedy the failures of the administration.  He puts loyalty to the Nation second, and adherence to his personal leadership first.  The Republican leaders whom he assails have put loyalty to the Nation ahead of all other considerations and have conditioned their support of every executive official solely upon the efficiency with which that official serves the Nation.

And I ask you to consider one thing more, you Republicans and Independents and you Democrats who decline to put cringing subservience to any man, ahead of the Republic.  Indeed, I appeal most of all to the high-minded and patriotic Democrats whose boys are over in the army side by side with the boys of their Republican neighbors, and who do not wish to see these loyal neighbors treated as enemies of the Republic.  President Wilson says that Republicans are not good enough to serve the Republic in Congress at this time.  But they are good enough to die for the Republic in the army and navy! They are good enough to pay the taxes and subscribe to the Loan! We have sent our sons and our brothers to spill their blood like water overseas under the flag; we have given our strength and our money without stint to serve the country at home, to float the Loans, to back up the war activities of every kind; and now we are told that the blood of our sons, and the money saved at the expense of our wives and little children, do not entitle us to any word in saying1 how the war is to be waged! Or what are the terms on which peace is to be made, or what shall be our policies after the war!

Mr.  Wilson says that this is no time for divided counsels.  Yet the Constitution of the United States says that he must counsel with the Congress of the United States.  It is mere insolence for the servant of the people to say that he will not counsel with those other servants of the people whom the people have elected for the express purpose of giving him counsel.  The world would be better off now by hundreds of thousands of fearless lives and by many billions of dollars of treasure if Mr.  Wilson had been willing to supplement his own self-sufficient ignorance by the counsel of those who would gladly have counseled him wisely, but who would not creep into his presence as slaves.

So far as I know, no Democratic Congressman has resigned his seat to go to the war.  But six Republican Congressmen have resigned to go into the army, and already one of these has died.  These men are deemed fit to die for the country; but the President says that they and those like them are not fit to sit in the councils of the Nation and to take part in so shaping our policy that our men shall not die in vain.  The President says that this is his war, not the people's war, and that the half of the people who have been most resolute in favor of the firm and efficient prosecution of the war are hereafter to be excluded from all share in its management, and from all say-so as to the peace which is to crown and justify it.  We can pay with the blood of our hearts' dearest; but that is all that we are to be allowed to do; and yet the price we pay, and the peace the Nation is to get for that price, are to be settled by the agency or the aid of the men of cold heart who do not fight themselves, whose nearest kin are not in danger, who prepared for war not at all, who helped wage the war feebly, and who are content with a craven peace.

Mr.  Henry Ford has announced that he does not believe in patriotism, that he thinks the flag is silly and does not believe in it, and that when this war is over he will pull the flag down and never hoist it again.  The son of this multi-millionaire stays at home while hundreds of thousands of men of small means leave their wives and children and go to the war.  But Mr.  Wilson is supporting Mr.  Ford for the Senate.  On the other hand, Senator Weeks does believe in patriotism.  He does believe in the war.  His only son is fighting overseas at this moment facing death' side by side with his comrades from every rank of life.  But Mr.  Wilson is opposing Mr.  Weeks.  There are dozens of such cases; and the only explanation possible of the President's attitude is that he makes adherence to his personal fortunes and not loyalty to the Nation the acid test in accordance with which he gives or withholds sup~ port.

The President's personal organ, The World, itself says that the present Democratic Congress is a “slacker Congress." And the President asks the voters to keep these slackers in control provided only that these slackers follow him with abject alacrity in whichever new direction he may momentarily lead.  Small wonder that in the cloakroom of the House the bitter jest circulates: “Here’s to our Czar, last in war, first towards peace, long may he waver!” The President says he is anxious about the effect on Germany and our Allies of the election of a Congress which would follow the present Republican leadership of the House and Senate.  He need be under no anxiety.  It would be clearly understood abroad as at home.  Our Allies would know that it meant that America was determined to speed up the war, to back her own army and the armies of the Allies to the limit, to tolerate no corruption or inefficiency in waging the war and to insist on Germany's unconditional surrender.  Germany and her vassal states would know that in this country the pro-Germans and pacifists and Bolshevists and Germanized Socialists could no longer be counted upon as efficient and tortuous tools, that the fighting men and not the rhetoricians were uppermost, and that henceforth the Germans would have to deal with the resolute and straightforward soul of the American people and not merely with the obscure purposes and wavering will of Mr.  Wilson.

And finally, let our people remember that the incoming Congress will deal with the vital questions of reconstruction after the war.  The President proposes to let these questions be dealt with by those who control what his personal organ calls the present “slacker Congress." He proposes to put the reconstruction of the country in the hands of these slackers under the guidance of such men as Mr.  Kitchin, the present leader of the House, and incidentally one of the anti-war leaders of the House.  Surely the country will feel that this work of reconstruction ought to be entrusted to other hands, and that these hands shall be those of the Republican leaders whose vision is for the future and who yet possess practical ability to work for the best interests of the present.

I speak at this party meeting only because the attitude of the Administration and the attitude of the Democratic organization, which is wholly subservient to the Administration, makes it, in my judgment, absolutely imperative upon good citizens to support the Republican ticket this year and to secure the election of a Republican House and Senate at Washington.  When I speak of the Republican party and what it stands for I ask you to think not only of the words of the leaders, but of their acts in Congress for over a year and a half.  And by leaders I mean the men like Senators Lodge and Poindexter and Johnson and Nelson, and Congressmen Fess and Gillett and McCormick, and all those like them, and all who have taken substantially the attitude that these men have taken about the war during the last eighteen months, including especially the last three weeks; and I mention the men I have named almost at random among their colleagues, and only because I wish by illustration to make my point absolutely clear.

I believe in putting this war through to our last man and our last dollar rather than to fail in beating Germany to her knees.  That is the spirit of our wonderful fighting men at the front.  The world has never seen finer fighting men than our soldiers at the front.  But let this people never forget that in the bitter weather of last winter we left our small army overseas without a sufficient number of overcoats or shoes; we got uniforms from the British, and two-thirds of the ships in which we ferried our troops across the ocean were from the British; we got our cannon and our machine guns from the hard-pressed French, the tanks from the British and French; we had practically no airplanes at the front until seventeen months after we went to war — in short, our governmental shortcomings were so lamentable that even now we can fight at all only because of the weapons our allies give us.

I hold that it was a foolish and evil thing to have failed to prepare during the two years and a half after the world war began, and a foolish and evil thing to have shown the hesitation and delay and incompetency displayed in making our strength effective, which we showed for over a year after we had finally helplessly drifted stern foremost into the war.  I hold that it is our duty now to insist upon the maximum efficiency and upon absolute disregard of all political considerations in speeding up the war.  Let us try to win it at once; but let us set ourselves resolutely to win it, no matter what the cost and no matter how long it takes.  I hold that it is necessary clearly to face the dreadful blunders and worse than blunders that have been made in order to avoid repeating them in the future.  But I hold with even greater tenacity that it is our duty to treat these blunders not in any way as an excuse for failure to do our duty, but as an additional incentive to devoting every ounce of strength we have to winning the war.  If we had prepared in advance the war would have been over ninety days after we entered it.  If the Administration had used with moderate efficiency the results of the lavish generosity of Congress our armies and the Allied armies would have been doing last March what they actually are doing now in October.  I trust our people will keep well in mind, as a lesson concerning the mere money cost of unpreparedness, that the enormous sums we have had to raise by taxation and by borrowing are at the very least twice as great as if we had begun to prepare in advance, without hurry and confusion and without the attendant waste and extravagance and profiteering, and with the patriotic and businesslike refusal to consider politics or anything else except winning the war.

We should accept no peace not based on the unconditional surrender of Germany and her vassal allies, Austria and Turkey, and upon the freeing of the subject races of Austria and Turkey from the yoke of the Austrian, the Magyar and the Turk.  Therefore, it is inexcusable in us, and is a reflection upon our good faith, to have remained so long without declaring war on Turkey, for it is mere hypocrisy to talk of making the world safe for democracy so long as we are not at war with Turkey and have not insisted upon putting the Turk out of Europe and freeing the Armenian and the Syrians of all creeds from his yoke and giving Palestine to be made a Jewish state.

I would not subject the German or the Magyar to the dominion of any one else.  But neither would I permit them to lord it over any one else.  The true way to put a stop to Germany's ability again to convulse the world by an effort to secure world dominion is to give, not autonomy, but freedom to all the nations that now cower under the tyranny of Germany and her allies.  Belgium, of course, must be restored and amply indemnified; and all the gold that Germany has can not repay Belgium the frightful wrongs so wantonly committed against her by Germany during the last four years.  France must receive back Alsace and Lorraine, and Germany be forced to carry out her broken promise to the Danes of North Schleswig.  All of Poland must be a separate commonwealth with a seafront on the Baltic; Finland, the Baltic provinces, Lithuania and Ukrainia must be made as absolutely independent of Germany as of Russia; the Czecho-Slovaks and the Jugo-Slavs must be made into independent commonwealths ; the Roumanians in East Hungary restored to Roumania; the Italians of Southwestern Austria joined to Italy; the Greeks safeguarded in their rights; Constantinople made a free city, and all other injustices remedied in so far as it is humanly possible to do so.  The German stranglehold must be removed from Russia, and we should ourselves help Russia so far as she will permit us to do so; and we can not efficiently do so unless our government acts with infinitely greater wisdom, forethought, insight and resolution than it has shown in its handling of the Siberian matters for the last six months.

Then, when the end of the war is come and we have obtained the peace of complete victory, a peace obtained by machine guns and not type-writers, we shall have to turn to the affairs of our own household and undertake the work of reconstruction with cool intelligence and resolution, with firm determination to secure the highest good for the average man, and yet with equally firm determination not to be misled by the visionaries and fanatics who, under the plea of helping the average man, would bring our whole civilization to ruin.

I believe that in order efficiently to perform these different tasks it is absolutely essential to recognize the fact that of the parties, as at present constituted and led, it is only the Republican party that is a fit instrument for the purpose.  That is why I come before you tonight to speak for the success of the Republican state ticket here in New York and for the success of the Republican Congressional ticket throughout the Union.

I shall not try to speak at length to you on behalf of the state ticket, because those whose special familiarity is with State matters will specially address you on the subject.  But I ask for support of Governor Whitman and all his associates, not only because of their record in office, but also because this State can not with wisdom see Tammany Hall extend its grip from New York to Albany.  It is not necessary to speak of personalities in such a matter.  The reforms for which Governor Whitman stands are the very reforms which Tammany most opposes.  The system upon which Tammany is based has in the past always been applied at the cost of all that is best in our social life wherever Tammany has been victorious.  This system when applied to New York City has borne such results that I think all fair-minded men will agree with me that it would be a veritable calamity to have it applied through-out the State.

I especially ask the women of New York, now about to vote for the first time, to think well what the enthronement of Tammany in power at Albany may mean.  As you know, I have been a very ardent champion of woman suffrage for the State and the nation.  I am sure that having granted it in New York means that it will speedily have to be granted in the nation as a whole.  Therefore, I earnestly hope that the women of New York, the first time they vote, will not give New York State to the control of the organization which having long mastered completely the Democratic party in New York City has now equally completely mastered it in New York State, and which has stood with lamentable insistency for precisely those forms of evil misgovernment which are peculiarly offensive to decent womanhood.  We have a right to appeal to all good citizens who are men to be against Tammany, and an even stronger right so to appeal to all good citizens who are women.

Now for the national side of the question.  I ask support for the Republicans, because it is time to put an end to that one party rule which has so rapidly developed intolerable invasion of the rights of free speech and of a free press; and because it is time fearlessly to assert the right of the Republican party to a life of useful performance of public duty in the United States.  The Democratic party, under the lead of the Administration, and taking adroit advantage of the great patriotic outburst in support of the war, has, under the pretense of the elimination of partyism, come dangerously near to creating a condition of one-partyism.  It has not striven to eliminate partisanship; it has merely striven to destroy the Republican party in the interest of the Democratic party.

The Republican party has an honest duty to perform and an honest appeal to make in this matter.  Party is an instrument that has been degraded and abused; but the degradation and abuse consequent upon the existence of two parties can never approach in mischievous effect the degradation and abuse where the whole power of the government is devoted to crushing out everything except one party and to making within that party the sole test of party loyalty, loyalty not to our nation but to the Administration in power.  Under the cover of an entirely insincere declaration against perseverance in partisan politics, the Democratic party, under the lead of the Administration, has carried partisan politics during the last eighteen months to an extreme never before known in this country in a time of war, as among loyal upholders of the war.

The effort is constantly made to confuse the mind of the average citizen and to cow him into supporting the Democratic party by accusations of lack of patriotism if he does not do so.  This is an intolerable outrage.  We admit that a party is an instrument that can be abused; but we hold not only that the Republican party has shown itself staunchly patriotic, but that actually, in Congress and out of Congress, it has rendered a greater percentage of war service to the nation during and before this war than has the Democratic party.  We hold that the Republican party must tell its war service to the nation, and that it must ask the people to remember that it gave the President greater support in every measure designed efficiently to wage the war than did the party to which he himself belongs and which he is striving to keep in power.  We hold that the Republican party is the only party that as a party has dared to attack the war failures and has stood for the duty of criticism of what is wrong, and therefore for the imperative duty of telling the truth.

The Democrats have announced that it is disloyal to tell the truth.  We hold on the contrary that the highest proof of loyalty is truth-telling when only by telling the truth can we expose and remedy shameful failure efficiently to carry on the war.  We hold that the record of the Republican party for patriotism in the past eighteen months has never before been equalled or approached by any party in opposition during a great war, and that its record shines by comparison with the record of its party opponents.  We have the right to assert our patriotism and to stand by it and to say — and challenge the support of the people when we do say — that we will stand by the President and by every other executive official so long as he is right, that we will stand against him when he is wrong and that we show our loyalty to the people in both attitudes.  We act in letter and spirit according to the words of Abraham Lincoln when he said: “Stand with anybody that stands right, stand with him while he is right and part with him when he goes wrong.  In both cases you are right.  In both you are national and nothing less than national.  To act otherwise for any reason is to be less than a man, less than an American."

This means that it is our duty to stand by the President when he really represents the American people and carries forward the policies demanded by the honor and interest of the people, and to fearlessly call him to account when he fails to stand by the American people.  It means that it is not merely the privilege but the duty of the American people to support or oppose the President as a political leader, precisely as the convictions of the American people incline them to act.  We Republicans pledge ourselves to stand by the President so long as he stands by the American people, and to part company with him at any point where in our judgment he does not stand by the people.  This is the people's government, this is the people's war and the peace that follows shall be the people's peace.

Such is the essence of our position.  As for the need of taking it, I ask you to consider the following facts: Advantage has been taken of Liberty Loan meetings and meetings of Four-Minute Men to distribute at, Liberty bond booths and elsewhere cards with this appeal: " Stand by Wilson over here.  Don't let the elections go against the government.  Vote with President Wilson and for the Democratic ticket." This is a frank appeal to win votes for the Democratic ticket by misleading patriotic citizens and making them confused between patriotism and partisanship.

In the recent letters of the President on behalf of the election of various Democratic Senators and Congressmen he has set forth explicitly what he demands.  One letter, for instance, runs: “Senator So and So has been conspicuous among the Democrats in the Senate for his opposition to the Administration.  If the voters of his State should again choose him I should be obliged to accept their action as a condemnation of my administration." This language is explicit; what is demanded is not loyalty to the country, but loyalty to the Administration.  It is the language not of a President appealing, without regard to party, to the people for loyalty to the people's cause, but the language of a party leader insisting upon the most rigid discipline among all his party subordinates in the rank and file of the party, and asserting that loyalty to him personally, and not even loyalty to the party and far less loyalty to the country, is to be accepted as the final test.

But on October 14 last — just two weeks ago — the President went even further than this, and by his utterance cast vivid light on the path which our people must tread if in servile spirit they accept loyalty to any man as an adequate substitute for loyalty to the nation.  The President's words, as reported in the press, were: " I earnestly request every patriotic American to leave to the governments of the United States and of the Allies the momentous discussions initiated by Germany, and to remember that for each man his duty is to strengthen the hands of these governments, and to do it in the most important way now immediately presented — by subscribing to the utmost of his ability for bonds of the fourth Liberty Loan."

I have often found it difficult to understand the meaning of the President's statements, but there is no difficulty in understanding the meaning of this statement.  It is the straightforward expression of the President's view that the ordinary man, Democrat, or Republican, or independent, is to contribute all the money that the government needs, but that there his function stops, and that he is to have no voice in deciding the policy the government can carry out only because he contributes the money.  There is a popular expression which runs “Put up or shut up," but this request to the average citizen is that he shall both put up and shut up.  The declaration is so extraordinary that it is hard to be believe it accurate, but it has appeared without comment in the public press as a quotation from President Wilson's speech, and I have seen no contradiction.

I ask you men and women, I ask all good citizens, and I ask Democrats just exactly as much as I ask Republicans or independents, to think what it means if we in the first place abolish all parties except one; if we then make full membership in that one party depend not upon loyalty to the country, or even loyalty to the party's principles, but loyalty to and support of the Administration; and if finally we accept the view that members of other parties and of all parties who subscribe the money necessary to run the government are to be told that their function is to be limited to giving up the money, that they are to have no say-so in the governmental policy, and are not even to discuss what the government is doing.

This has a direct bearing upon what has happened within the last two weeks.  The events in connection with the peace negotiations or interchange of notes between the President and the Central governments illustrate just what I mean.  The President's first note to Germany, about two weeks ago, delivered him into the hands of Germany by his compromising inquiries.  It was accepted by the Allies and accepted by our own people as meaning that if Germany answered as she actually did answer he was bound by the implications of the questions he had asked.  There was in this country a very extraordinary outburst of indignation and protest and a demand for the peace of unconditional surrender.  Senators Lodge and Poindexter and a number of other Senators, including one or two high-minded independent Democrats, but in the great majority of instances Republicans, introduced resolutions or took other action emphatically repudiating the implications of the President's inquiries and demanding unconditional surrender by Germany.  Our Allies were as profoundly disturbed as our own people, and their clear understanding of the situation is shown by a special cable from Paris contained in the Democratic New York Times of October 9, which says: " The reports of the debates in the American Senate share first pages with the news of the great military victories on the Western front.  Senators McCumber, Nelson and Lodge are as highly thought of in France today as are the American generals."

The feeling was so strong that President Wilson speedily grew to realize it.  Germany answered him by an acceptance of his terms, phrased in the very words he had used.  There remained for him then only two courses of action.  He was compelled either to fulfill the plain obligation of his note by entering into negotiations with Kaiserism, which meant the sacrifice of America and humanity, and which would have also certainly meant the repudiation of his action by the American people, or else he was himself obliged to respond in such fashion as to stultify his own diplomacy and repudiate his own implied offer.  I am thankful that he chose the latter course; he served our people and humanity by so doing; but it was a service rendered only because he had received the sternest warning, by the voice of the nation, that this people would ratify no compromise and would tolerate no such parley as that upon which he had entered; and inasmuch as he was the spokesman for the nation, it was not a pleasant thing for Americans that he should have put himself, and the nation behind him, in the position of inviting a.  proposition which when accepted he repudiated.  For the very reason that I abhor Germany's trickery, treachery and bad faith, I am most anxious that Americans shall not imitate her in these matters.  And now, in the light of the latest developments, we are again utterly at sea as to what position he will ultimately take.

In the face of these facts, The New York World, which shares with Mr.  Hearst's papers the credit of being the special organ of the national administration, demands a Democratic victory this year so as to stand by the President on the alleged ground that our allies and Germany would misinterpret the election of a Republican House as being a repudiation of the war aims of this country.  Such a statement is the veriest nonsense that even partisanship can conceive.  The quotation I have given above from The New York Times shows that the French people absolutely understand that the Republican leaders are the statesmen on this side of the water who are most uncompromisingly bent on the complete overthrow of Germany and bent on securing a peace which shall guarantee to all nations, great and small, so long as they are well behaved, the complete liberty from foreign invasion and from interference with their domestic concerns which we demand for ourselves.  The triumph of the party that has been led during the last eighteen months, and especially during the last fortnight, by such leaders as Messrs.  Lodge, Poindexter, Nelson, Johnson and their associates will be accepted everywhere as the triumph of the war spirit of America and of our purpose to insist upon the peace of victory for justice and right and popular freedom.  There have been high-minded and honorable Democrats who have not feared to tell the exact truth about our failures and blunders and to insist on speeding up the war.  But the great bulk of the action thus indispensably necessary has been furnished by the Republicans, and the great bulk of the Democrats have tended to sink more and more into the position of mere rubber stamps for the administration.

Democratic Senator Lewis, of Illinois, has actually introduced a resolution pledging Congress to abdicate its allegiance to the people and to substitute therefore a frankly rubber stamp attitude of cringing acquiescence in any reversal of policy by the Administration.  What we now need is an American Congress, a Congress of straight-out Americans, and not a Congress of rubber stamps.

It is necessary to make the world safe for democracy, and we can not do it unless we make this nation safe for truth.  Truth telling, both where the Administration is right and where it is wrong, is imperatively demanded.  Criticism is imperatively demanded.  Nine times out of ten this Administration has never led the people.  The leadership has been furnished by others, and the Administration has been reluctantly forced forward into action by criticism against which it has violently protested.  Even when it has followed this leadership it has sullenly and sometimes maliciously sought to punish the men who by their truth telling have forced it into action.  It was such truth telling that forced the Administration reluctantly into the war; it was such truth telling that forced the Administration to send our army abroad; it was such truth telling which forced reasonable efficiency in the War Department; it was such truth telling which has forced the speeding-up of the ship program, the aircraft program and all the other programs which have been so lamentably delayed.

The patriotic zeal of the people was taken advantage of to secure legislation for the purpose of dealing with the work of German spies and with seditious conduct in our own country.  The laws thus enacted, however, have been used far less for their legitimate purpose than to discourage and penalize any truth-telling by newspapers or by private individuals about the Administration.  Never before, in any war, has there been such interference with freedom of the press and freedom of speech as in this war.  The whole weight of effort has been not against seditious action but against that legitimate criticism of public measures and public servants which is absolutely indispensable if any country is to remain free in fact as well as in name.  According to a former chief of the Secret Service, there are a quarter of a million German spies in this country, and a Democratic Senator, Mr.  Overman, is reported as making the figures even larger.  Only an infinitesimal number of these men have been really punished.  But the loyal press has been bullied and cowed as never before.  The test insisted upon has been not loyalty to our allies and hostility to Germany, but adherence to the Administration.  It is utterly impossible to account on any other ground for the immunity granted the so-called Hearst papers, when compared with the extreme severity with which many other papers were treated for conduct which amounted to nothing whatever but entirely legitimate criticism of wrong action or of failure to act properly by the Administration.

I know personally, from conversation after conversation with editors of dailies, weeklies and monthlies, of the apprehension felt by the best papers in the land of telling the truth lest they be crippled financially by some act of the Administration.  Take what was done by the Administration in suppressing the report of the airplane scandal.  This was a report by a committee of the United States Senate, made by Democrats and Republicans alike.  It was printed in Canadian and other outside papers, so that our allies and our enemies were certain to know every fact it contained; yet, on the plea of restraining daily papers and magazines from giving information to the enemy, tens of thousands of copies — probably many hundreds of thousands of copies — were seized and deleted or withdrawn from circulation and great financial loss and trouble thereby caused many reputable papers.  Within a fortnight I have been told by two editors that they were afraid to publish any further comments on the airplane scandal at all lest the government should take further action against them.

Our enemies know all about it, our allies know all about it; the only people kept in ignorance are the people of the United States.  I hope to see a Republican Congress elected, because such a Congress will insist upon the most vigorous prosecution of the war and upon the complete overthrow of Germany and an absolutely satisfactory peace; and because it will also insist that the laws meant to punish German spies and to put a stop to sedition be effectively used for that purpose, and not used to subvert the freedom of the press and the freedom of speech in the United States and the perpetuation in power of a group of politicians.

Remember that the terms of peace are not to be settled by the President alone, but by the President acting in conjunction with two-thirds of the Senate.  Both the President and the Senate must be responsible to the American people.  The platform adopted by the Republicans of Kansas offers a model of what the Republican position should be at this time because of its straightforward truthfulness and broad Americanism.  It begins by demanding the absolute crushing of the Prussian military power.  It insists that there shall be no peace without victory.  It declares against all sectionalism, and states that war profiteering should be treated as treason.  It continues: “In this crisis there is no room for narrow partisanship.  This is no one-party war.  It is an American war, and we denounce all attempts to make the support of Democratic candidates a test of loyalty.  The best statesmanship and business ability, regardless of party, should be utilized.  There is no place for desk soldier favoritisms, for shielding of graft or incompetence.  There is no place for mere faultfinding, but there is a vital need for criticism, fair and constructive.

" The Democratic slogan of 1916,' Kept us out of war,' is now known to every intelligent person to have been political camouflage.  Vital information was withheld from the public to make the slogan effective.  Ambassador Gerard's disclosures and other evidences of Prussian intrigue and insolence, subsequently given to the public, show the true facts of our relations with Germany as far back as the sinking of the Lusitania.  This concealment of facts showing the fixed and sinister purposes of Germany and the failure for more than two years to make adequate preparation immeasurably increases the price in blood and money we must now pay for victory." This is the sound doctrine to which all good Americans should subscribe.

When it comes to the peace negotiations we should emphatically repudiate the famous fourteen points announced by the President last January.  One of them he has himself repudiated, but the remainder are either so mischievous that they ought to be repudiated without further definition or else we should insist upon having them defined in order to know just exactly what they mean.  They have been greeted with enthusiasm by Germany and by all the pro-Germans on this side of the water, especially by the Germanized Socialists and by the Bolshevists of every grade; and for this reason good Americans should regard them with suspicion.  For example, the statement about the freedom of the seas may be interpreted as meaning what Germany contends, and if so no patriotic American can support it.  The first need in freeing the seas is to free them from the German practice of murder of innocent women and children.

Again, we ought to know just what the President means when he speaks of breaking down economic barriers.  If he means that he proposes to allow Germany to dump her manufactures on us without restriction we ought to be against it, and neither business man nor workingman can afford to accept it.  We ought to insist on keeping in our hands the complete right to handle our tariff as the vital interests of our own citizens and especially our own workingmen demand.  If these two points mean anything they mean that the seas are to be free for our enemies' use in time of war and our home markets free for our enemies' trade in time of peace.

Again, if the President's language means anything, one of these fourteen points is a proposal to guarantee that every nation shall reduce its armament to a point sufficient to preserve domestic order.  If this language is to be taken according to its necessary meaning, America would be obliged to scrap its navy and reduce its army to a police force capable only of putting down riot, and would have to trust to a league of nations for protecting it against outside aggression.  Either the President's language means this or it means nothing.  But if it means this, every high-minded and farsighted patriotic American citizen should be against the proposal.  According to what is contained in the President's fourteen points, under this proposal Germany, Austria, Turkey and Russia would, as part of the League of Nations, have the say-so as to America's future, and America would have nothing but a small police force with which to protect its own rights.

It is hard for me to speak patiently of such a proposition.  If it were made by any one except the President it would be considered as foolish as the wildest folly uttered by the professional pacifists prior to the occurrence of this great war.  The conduct of the powers above named shows that whenever it was to their interest they would treat any agreement they made with us as a scrap of paper.  The simple fact is that no league of nations or any other scheme of the kind should be accepted as anything but an addition to, and never as a substitute for, the development for our own defense of our own strength and its preparedness in advance.  Internationalism is a curse if it is sought to make it as a substitute for nationalism.  We have to be good Americans first before we can be good citizens of the world; we must behave justly to all other nations, but we must remember in the first place our duty to our own wives and children and to the generations that are to come after us in this fair and mighty land.  There are plenty of questions, such as our territorial integrity, our right to control immigration, our right to establish our own tariff policy and the like, which I trust we will never surrender to the safe-keeping of any league of other nations.

Remember one or two obvious facts, my friends.  Remember that in Asia there are about ten times as many people as there are in the United States.  If the league of nations means anything, and if internationalism is substituted for nationalism, this means that the Asiatics in such a league would have ten votes for every American vote, and that they would have the right to decide such questions as the admission of unchecked Asiatic immigration to the United States and of the refusal to permit us to build up any barriers for the keeping up of the standard of living of our people and our distinctive American nationality and American social and industrial life.  Whoever advocates the submerging of nationality in internationalism is either hypocritical or else he advocates just precisely and exactly what I have outlined.  With all my heart and soul I adjure our people not to be fooled by fine phrases and glittering generalities, but to insist on facing facts as they actually are.  If they do so they will put nationalism in the first place and accept our duty to prepare our own strength for our own self-defense as our prime duty.  Then, as an addition to, but never as a substitute for, the performance of these duties, they will join in any international agreement that promises only what can and ought to be performed and that in good faith seeks to secure international fair-dealing on a basis of justice and right and of scrupulous respect for all nations, big or little, which are well behaved and do not wrong others and which preserve at least a reasonable measure of orderly freedom within their own bounds.  But we can help the world at large only if we stand by our own people first.  More than two thousand years have passed since it was written: “He who fails to provide for his own, they of his own household, hath denied the faith and is worse than an infidel."

But the task of the next Congress will be to deal not only with war and peace and international relations; it will also have to deal with the vital work of the reconstruction of our industrial system at home.  At the present moment it is our duty to speed up production to the limit.  This means that there must be some interference with the private rights of individuals.  Such interference must be equitable.  The farmer must not have the price of his products cut down when the price of what he gets is not cut down and when other products of farmers in other sections are left without price fixing at all.  There must be no war profiteering, but there must be a legitimate reward for the money invested and the risk taken, or the great work necessary to be done will not be done.  When this legitimate reward is passed the heaviest kind of progressive taxation on the surplus should be enforced.  The working-men should receive the highest wages possible, and their housing and living conditions in all plants doing government work should be carefully safeguarded.  But when this has been done it should be understood that our motto is " work or fight," that slackers will be at once sent into the army and to the front, and that every man is expected to do a full day's work every day and a full week's work every week, and that we permit no limitation of output whatever, whether under the pretext of obeying a union rule or from sheer loafing.

When the war is over we should begin to reshape our economic policy on the basis of endeavoring to secure a general raise of the tableland of reward for ordinary effort, without reducing the peaks of exceptional reward for exceptional achievement.  We must insist both on the need of practically recognizing the spirit of brotherhood and also of recognizing in full and generous fashion the necessity of leadership and of an ungrudging, although never an excessive, reward for such leadership.  Capital should have the right to combine, for combination is essential to the efficient and economic handling of much business; but because of the power it confers such combination should always be strictly controlled and regulated by the government.

Our aim should be to encourage business efficiency by guaranteeing it an ample reward, but also to supervise it in such fashion as to insure its usefulness to the community, and to prevent the reward from becoming excessive and disproportionate to the service rendered.  Service should be the true test and the reward should so far as possible be proportionate to the service.  In a very true sense our effort should be steadily and cautiously to give labor a certain right of ownership and control in the business in which it is associated with capital, and inasmuch as this right can not be wisely given nor maintained at all unless labor intelligently recognizes its duties and the rights of capital, we must insist that labor, no less than capital, never forgets that the enjoyment of right should be conditioned upon the performance of duty and that the enjoyment of one's own rights must always be accompanied by the fullest recognition of the rights of others.

Labor has the same right to collective action, including collective bargaining, that capital has.  We should insist upon the guaranteeing of the safety of each right, and we should furthermore insist that neither right be abused and that the government act fearlessly when either is abused.  We should guarantee to the hard-working man who toils with his hands the right to safety and comfort while working and during his old age, and therefore we should insist upon proper forms of old age insurance and insurance against accident, disease and unemployment, and no business should receive any favors unless the living and working conditions of labor are properly cared for.  We must steer equally clear of the deadening paralysis of state socialism and of the lawless anarchy of unregulated individualism.  We are equally against Bourbonism and Bolshevism.

The foundation of our permanent civilization rests on the farmer, and by farmer I mean not the man who owns lands which others till, but the man who himself tills or helps till the ground, part of which at least he himself owns.  He is the man who raises our food in peace and does his full share of fighting our battles in war.  A cardinal feature of our national policy should be the insuring of his rights to this man; and this not only for his sake, but for the sake of all of us, for his welfare is fundamental to the welfare of all of us.  Normally he must be the owner of the ground he and his sons and his hired man till; and the hired man must have conditions shaped so that if he is hard working, thrifty and energetic he shall have the means and the opportunity himself to purchase farming land on which to dwell and to bring up his family.  Nation and state must combine to secure this.

Normally, in farming regions, where the land is agricultural land, tenancy should be recognized only as a transitional and temporary phase, and normally the working farmer should himself be the land owner, and legislation to secure this should at once be enacted.  Of course, I recognize fully that the needs are widely different in different sections, and must be met in different ways.

Drastic action should be taken to stop the purchase of agricultural land for speculative purposes.  Systems of marketing must be developed, partly by governmental action, partly by organized action among the farmers themselves, so as to do away with the holdup methods that in so many places still obtain.  The producer must get more and the consumer pay less than at present, and both these ends can be, and have been, attained by proper legislation.

We ought to do these and the many other things necessary now, when it is possible to do them without causing too great distress to those in possession of long undisputed privileges which by time have grown to possess much of the character of rights.  Nine-tenths of wisdom is being wise in time.  In this country tenant farming and the individual ownership of enormous tracts of agricultural land are growing at the expense of the homestead holders.

Let us take whatever steps — conservative, if possible; radical, if necessary — are needed to remedy the situation; for if left unremedied the result may be something unpleasantly near revolution a half century hence; and in such case the wrongs will be remedied only by action which causes other wrongs to innocent people and works deep demoralization to those benefited; whereas, at present, by the exercise of forethought and resolution, we may escape both kinds of evil.

There are certain things the state can do and must do for the farmer.  But most things the farmer can do for himself by association with his fellow farmers, and such independence of unnecessary state action is healthy in itself and is consonant with the rugged self-reliance characteristic of that most typical of American citizens the American who dwells in the open country and tills the soil with his own hands.

Finally, we should make it our prime duty, coming ahead of all other duties, to care for the soldier, and the wife and children of the soldier, who has served his country in this war.  We should shape our whole policy so as to give him when he returns the opportunity to get back into the industrial system in improved position.  I do not mean to coddle him or excuse him from work, whether he be wounded or unwounded, for no man is helped by being coddled or excused from work.  The law of worthy life is the law of worthy work! I mean to treat him as the man whom we most delight to honor and whose self-respect we guard as jealously as we guard our own.  We should take all the steps necessary to give full opportunity to go on the land to all soldiers who are willing to go on the land, and we should guarantee them the opportunity, on reasonable terms, to get the land and to work and live on it.  If the soldier turns to other forms of labor or business, his opportunity should be made as open as possible and his rights guarded with a jealousy which we extend to no other citizen of our commonwealth.

The American army overseas, and the officers and enlisted men of the navy, and the officers and enlisted men of our army here who eagerly desire to go abroad, have put us all under an immeasurable debt; they are the Americans who more than any others we delight to honor, and we must make our honoring them as a matter of actual fact and not of empty phrase.