life, and inherent love of liberty which we call Anglo-Saxon
civilization. We defeated her once upon the land and once upon the sea.
But Australia, New Zealand, Africa, and Canada are free because of what
we did. And they are with us in the fight for the freedom of the seas.
Because of Russia--new Russia. She must not be overwhelmed now. Not
now, surely, when she is just born into freedom. Her peasants must have
their chance; they must go to school to Washington, to Jefferson, and
to Lincoln, until they know their way about in this new, strange world
of government by the popular will.
Because of other peoples, with their rising hope that the world may be
freed from government by the soldier.
We are fighting Germany because she sought to terrorize us and then to
fool us. We could not believe that Germany would do what she said she
would do upon the seas.
We still hear the piteous cries of children coming up out of the sea
where the _Lusitania_ went down. And Germany has never asked the
forgiveness of the world.
We saw the _Sussex_ sunk, crowded with the sons and daughters of
neutral nations.
We saw ship after ship sent to the bottom--ships of mercy bound out of
America for the Belgian starving, ships carrying the Red Cross and
laden with the wounded of all nations, ships carrying food and clothing
to friendly, harmless, terrorized peoples, ships flying the Stars and
Stripes--sent to the bottom hundreds of miles from shore, manned by
American seamen, murdered against all law, without warning.
We believed Germany's promise that she would respect the neutral flag
and the rights of neutrals, and we held our anger and outrage in check.
But now we see that she was holding us off with fair promises until she
could build her huge fleet of submarines. For when spring came, she
blew her promise into the air, just as at the beginning she had torn up
that "scrap of paper." Then we saw clearly that there was but one law
for Germany, her will to rule.
We are fighting Germany because in this war feudalism is making its
last stand against on-coming democracy. We see it now. This is a war
against an old spirit, an ancient, outworn spirit. It is a war against
feudalism--the right of the castle on the hill to rule the village
below. It is a war for democracy--the right of all to be their own
masters. Let Germany be feudal if she will. But she must not spread her
system over a world that has outgrown it.
We fight with the world for an honest world in which nations keep their
word, for a world in which nations do not live by swagger or by threat,
for a world in which men think of the ways in which they can conquer
the common cruelties of nature instead of inventing more horrible
cruelties to inflict upon the spirit and body of man, for a world in
which the ambition of the philosophy of a few shall not make miserable
all mankind, for a world in which the man is held more precious than
the machine, the system, or the State.
SECRETARY FRANKLIN K. LANE, June 4, 1917.
GENERAL PERSHING
In April, 1917, a small group of men in civilian dress climbed up the
side of the ocean liner, the _Baltic_, just outside of New York harbor.
Each one carried a suitcase or a hand-bag, which was his only baggage.
They had come down the harbor through the fog and mist on a tugboat.
These men were officers in the United States army, and among them were
General Pershing and his staff--"Black Jack Pershing," as his men
affectionately called him.
They were given no farewell at the dock, in fact their going was kept a
profound secret; for should the Germans learn upon what liner the chief
officers of the American army that was soon to gather in France, took
passage, all their submarines would neglect everything else in
attempting to sink this one vessel.
The officers reached England in safety, and made preparations for the
great American armies that were soon to follow them. General Pershing
was appointed commander of these armies. He had just come from service
in Mexico, where he had led American troops in search of the outlaw,
Villa.
[Illustration: GENERAL JOHN J. PERSHING
_Photograph from Underwood & Underwood, N.Y._]
General Pershing is a West Point graduate; but he narrowly escaped
following another career, for he gained his appointment to West Point
by only one point over his nearest competitor. He has made fighting his
life work. We are all beginning to see that in the world as it is made
up at present, some men must prepare for fighting and make fighting
their life work. Universal peace must come through war, and many are
hoping that it will come as a result of the World War. William Jennings
Bryan and Henry Ford are among the world's leading advocates of
universal peace. When the United States declared war, Bryan said, "The
quickest road to peace is through the war to victory"; and Henry Ford
turned over to the government his great automobile factories and gave
his own services on one of the war boards, to make the war more quickly
successful.
An interesting story is told us in the _Dallas News_ of Pershing's
school days at normal school, before he went to West Point. It shows
that he never shunned a fight, if the rights of others needed to be
defended.
An incident of the boyhood days of General John J. Pershing,
illustrating how the principle for which the American general is
leading this nation's armies against the hordes of
autocracy--the square deal for every one--has always
predominated in the American leader, was related yesterday by
Dr. James L. Holloway of Dallas, who went to school with
Pershing in Kirksville, Missouri, many years ago, and who
during that period was an intimate friend of the General.
"When I arrived at Kirksville to attend the Normal School there,
I was a green country boy," Dr. Holloway said, "and carried my
belongings in a very frail trunk. The baggageman who was on the
station platform was handling my trunk roughly, and when I
remonstrated with him in my timid way, he merely pitched the
trunk off the baggage wagon and laughed at me. When the trunk
fell on the ground it broke open and scattered my things around
on the platform. I indignantly told him that I would report the
matter to the headquarters of the railroad in St. Louis, and
again he laughed at me.
"I wrote the head of the baggage department, as I said I would,
and later learned that the offending baggageman had been
severely censured. Meanwhile I had struck up a strong
acquaintance with Jack Pershing, who was a big, husky boy from a
Missouri country town. I will always remember his broad
forehead, his determined-looking jaw, and his steel gray eyes.
He was a favorite among the boys at the Normal School, not so
much on account of his mental brilliancy but because of his
personal stamina.
"Two weeks after my encounter with the baggageman, Pershing and
I walked down to the railroad station. It was on Sunday and the
baggage office was closed. Pershing left me for a moment, and as
I walked around a corner of the station I met the baggageman,
who approached threateningly. 'You're the fellow who reported me
to headquarters,' he said, bullying me. I admitted that I had.
'Well,' said the baggageman, 'I'm going to lick you good for
it.' With these words he started toward me. At this juncture
Pershing's big frame rounded the corner of the station.
"'What's the trouble, Holloway?' he asked. I told him the
baggageman was threatening me with violence. 'He is, is he?'
said Pershing. 'Well, we'll clean his plowshare for him right
now.'
"I shall never forget this expression. The baggageman, seeing
that he was no match for Pershing--let alone the two of us--left
the scene of action. We didn't even have a chance to lay our
hands on him.
"Six months after this occurred, Pershing was appointed to West
Point. I have never seen him since."
For several years after his graduation from West Point, no promotion
came to Pershing; but he was not idle nor soured by disappointment. He
continued to study, especially military tactics. He became so well
versed in this branch that he was sent to West Point to teach it.
When the Spanish-American War broke out, Pershing asked for a command,
and was appointed first lieutenant with a troop of colored cavalry, and
sent to Cuba. At the battle of El Caney he led his troops with such
bravery and success that he was at once promoted and made a captain
"for gallantry in action."
Then he went to the Philippines with General Chaffee. He performed much
valuable service there. Perhaps the single deed by which his work there
is best known is the lesson he taught the Sultan of Mindanao. The
Sultan was a Mohammedan, and ruled over many thousand Malays. To kill a
Christian was thought to be a good deed by the Sultan, and he was
always glad of an opportunity to show his goodness. For three hundred
years, he and his predecessors had escaped punishment by the Spaniards,
who owned and ruled the islands.
The Sultan's chief village and stronghold could be reached only by
passing through the dense and dangerous tropical jungles; and when it
was reached, it was found to be surrounded by a wall of earth and
bamboo, forty feet thick, and outside the wall by a moat fifty feet
wide. It does not seem so strange that the Spaniards had done nothing.
But Pershing cut a path through the jungles and reached the Sultan's
village, and informed him that there must be no more murders of
Christians. The Sultan was very pleasant, in fact he laughed at the
young American captain.
Soon word came to American headquarters that the Sultan had caused the
death of another Christian missionary. In forty-eight hours most of the
earth and bamboo wall was in the moat, and the Sultan's village was
destroyed. In less than two years, Pershing established law and order
in all of western Mindanao.
He was also in command of the troops sent to the Border and into Mexico
after the outlaw, Villa. The soldiers with him there always recall his
constant advice, "Shoulders back, chin up, and do your best."
General Pershing is a man who has never feared obstacles, and has
never hesitated to give the time and labor necessary to overcome them.
That there is no easy path to greatness and success, but that both will
come to him who prepares himself, who works, who sticks at it, who is
brave and sacrificing--this is the lesson of General Pershing's life
and work.
Shortly after General Pershing reached France, the French people
celebrated the birthday of Lafayette; and General Pershing visited the
tomb of the great French patriot, to place there a wreath in token of
America's gratitude. A large number of French people were gathered
there, and every one supposed General Pershing would make a
speech--that is, every one except General Pershing. When he was called
upon, he was dumfounded, but at last he said, "Well, Lafayette, we are
here." That was all.
Could he have said more if he had talked an hour? He said, "Lafayette,
your people now need us. We have not forgotten. Here we are, and behind
us are all the resources of the wealthiest and most enterprising nation
in the world, billions of dollars and millions of men. We are only the
first to arrive to pay the debt we have owed to you for one hundred and
forty years, but here we are at last."
It is said that men and women wept aloud as the full significance of
the words and all they meant for France became clear to them.
THE MELTING POT
America has been called the "crucible" or the "melting pot" of nations,
because many peoples of many races and many countries come together
here, and in the heat of life and struggle are molded into Americans.
President Wilson said, in a speech at Cincinnati in 1916, "America is
not made out of a single stock. Here we have a great melting pot."
As soon as we entered the war against Germany, the question arose in
the minds of most people as to how the large number of Germans in the
United States would act. Germany had taught them that even though they
became naturalized and took the oath of allegiance as American
citizens, such action was not binding, but was like "a scrap of paper"
to be destroyed and forgotten whenever necessity demanded, and that
"once a German" meant "always a German." It seems now that Germany
actually expected the Germans, who had left their native land to seek
opportunity, freedom, and citizenship under the Stars and Stripes, to
fight against their new and adopted home; but events have proved that
most German-Americans have higher ideals of right. A leading
German-American has written a book entitled "Right before Peace"; its
title carries the thought that has guided most of his fellow-countrymen
and their children in the United States during the World War.
A few months after the United States had declared that a state of war
existed with Germany, many leading men of this country of foreign birth
and parentage, signed, with others, a declaration drawn up by Theodore
Roosevelt. This declaration, somewhat abbreviated but not altered in
thought, is as follows. It makes very clear what America should mean to
her adopted children.
We Americans are the children of the crucible. We have boasted
that out of the crucible, the melting pot of life, in this free
land, all the men and all the women who have come here from all
the nations come forth as Americans, and as nothing else, like
all other Americans, equal to them, and holding no allegiance to
any other land or nation. We hold it then to be our duty, as it
is of every American, always to stand together for the honor and
interest of America, even if such a stand brings us into
conflict with our fatherland. If an American does not so act, he
is false to the teachings and the lives of Washington and
Lincoln; he has no right in our country, and he should be sent
out of it; for he has shown that the crucible has failed to do
its work. The crucible must melt all who are cast into it, and
it must turn them out in one American mold, the mold shaped one
hundred and forty years ago by the men who, under Washington,
founded this as a free nation, separate from all others. Even at
that time, these true Americans were of different races; Paul
Revere and Charles Carroll, Marion, Herkimer, Sullivan,
Schuyler, and Muhlenberg were equals in service and respect
with Lighthorse Harry Lee and Israel Putnam. Most of them,
however, were of English blood, but they did not hesitate to
fight Great Britain when she was in the wrong. They stood for
liberty and for the eternal rule of right and justice, and they
stood as Americans and as nothing else.
So must all Americans of whatever race act to-day; otherwise
they are traitors to America. This applies, especially to-day,
to all Americans of German blood who, in any manner, support
Germany against the United States and her Allies.
Many pacifists have during the last three years proved
themselves the evil enemies of their country. They now seek an
inconclusive peace. In so doing they show themselves to be the
spiritual heirs of the Tories, who, in the name of peace,
opposed Washington, and of the Copperheads, who, in the name of
peace, opposed Lincoln. We look upon them as traitors to the
Republic and to the great cause of justice and humanity. This
war is a war for the vital interests of America. When we fight
for America abroad, we save our children from fighting for
America at home beside their own ruined hearthstones. To accept
any peace, except one based on the complete overthrow of Germany
as she is under the ideals of Prussia and the Hohenzollerns, we
believe would be an act of baseness and cowardice, and a
betrayal of this country and of mankind.
The test of an American to-day is service against Germany. We
should put forth as speedily as possible every particle of our
vast, lazy strength to win the triumph over Germany. The
government should at once deal with the greatest severity with
traitors at home.
We must have but one flag. We must also have but one language.
This must be the language of the Declaration of Independence, of
Washington's Farewell Address, and of Lincoln's Gettysburg
Speech.
Of us who sign, some are Protestants, some are Catholics, some
are Jews. Most of us were born in this country of parents born
in various countries of the Old World--in Germany, France,
England, Ireland, Italy, the Slavonic and the Scandinavian
lands; some of us were born abroad; some of us are of
Revolutionary stock. All of us are Americans, and nothing but
Americans.
THE AMERICAN'S CREED[8]
I believe in the United States of America as a government of the
people, by the people, for the people, whose just powers are derived
from the consent of the governed; a democracy in a republic; a
sovereign Nation of many sovereign States; a perfect Union, one and
inseparable, established upon those principles of freedom, equality,
justice, and humanity for which American patriots sacrificed their
lives and fortunes.
I therefore believe it is my duty to my country to love it; to support
its Constitution; to obey its laws; to respect its flag; and to defend
it against all enemies.
FOOTNOTES:
[8] COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY E.J. WYATT, BALTIMORE.
BIRDMEN
Although I am an American, I am still in the French aviation corps, in
which I enlisted when the war broke out. I am too old for service under
the Stars and Stripes, but not too old to risk my life under the French
flag for the freedom of the world.
I was trained in a French aviation school. Flyers were needed
immediately; and so I did not go through "a ground school," or any
teaching like that given for eight weeks in the American ground
schools. I was sent directly to the flying field and given a machine at
once. I did not, as they do at American flying fields, go up first with
an instructor who might be tempted to "scare me to death" by "looping
the loop" or doing "tail spins." I took my own machine at the very
start and, after being given the simplest directions, away I went in
it; but I did not break any records for altitude.
It was a small monoplane with a 20-horse-power motor, and its wings had
been clipped; so all it could do was to roll along the ground. It was,
however, some time before I could guide it in a straight line. I was
discouraged at first, but felt better when I learned that it was very
difficult even for an experienced flyer.
Such machines are called "penguins" and have a trick of turning
suddenly in a short half circle and smashing the end of a wing against
the ground. The queer antics of beginners in them furnish fun for every
one on the flying fields.
After I had mastered this machine, I was given one with a motor of
greater horse power, and in this I could fly along the ground at nearly
sixty miles an hour; but I could not rise into the air, for the wings
were clipped and did not have sufficient sustaining power to hold the
machine in the air.
Then at last I was given a plane with full-sized wings; but, as its
motor generated only about 25-horse power, I could get only from three
to six feet above the ground, and went skimming along now on the ground
and now a few feet in the air.
In these machines, we learned only how to manage the tail of the
machine. As we skimmed along the ground, we tipped the tail at an angle
slightly above a straight line. In a few moments we were off the
ground, and the roar of the motor sounded softer and smoother. It
seemed as if we were very far from the earth, and that something might
break and dash us to our death--in reality, we had not risen six feet.
To get back to earth, we must push the lever that lowers the tail--but
this must be done very slightly and very carefully. A little push too
much, and the machine will suddenly dive into the ground.
After my experience with the first two machines, I found it easy to
handle this one, and was soon given one that would take me up about
fifty feet and give me a chance to learn the "feel of the air." All my
flying was still in straight lines, or as nearly straight as I could
make it. We were not yet allowed to try to turn.
In the next machine I could rise two or three hundred feet and began to
learn to turn, although most of the flying was still in straight lines.
I was beginning to make good landings, which is the hardest part of the
game. We have to let the ship down on two wheels and let the tail skid
at a speed of thirty-five miles an hour and not break the landing gear.
The machines often bound three or four times when landing and that is
hard on the landing gear. My last landing was so soft that I was not
sure when I touched the ground. To take off is quite easy. The ship is
controlled by an upright stick which is between one's knees and just
right for the left hand. The rudder is controlled by the feet, and the
throttle is on the right side. To take off, we get up a speed of about
forty-six miles per hour and raise the tail up until the ship is level,
and then when she starts to rise, lift the nose just a little and climb
slowly.
On turns, the ship has to be banked, tipped up with the inside wing
low, and turned with the rudder. It is quite a hard thing to do when it
is rough, as just about the time we bank, we get a puff of wind which
will hit one wing and she will roll and rock so that we have to get her
straightened out. It is a fight all the time until you get about 3000
feet up, when the air gets steady.
To land, we slow the engine down to idling speed and come down in a
steep glide until five or six feet from the ground, then level off and
glide along until she begins to settle, then jerk the tail down until
she stops. We always have to take off and come down against the wind.
I was obliged to follow the directions of my instructor, much against
my own wishes. It seemed to me that I could now do anything in the air
and that there was not the slightest danger. This too early feeling of
mastery is the cause of many beginners' being injured or killed, by
trying "stunts" too difficult for them.
I did not spend much time in flying at first, after I had learned how
to handle the airplane. It is not difficult to stay in the air and to
fly, but it is difficult to land safely without breaking the machine.
So I was kept practicing landing.
To secure my license I was required to fly 50 miles in a straight line
to a named place, and then back; then to fly 200 miles in a triangle,
passing through two named places; and last of all to stay one hour in
the air at an altitude higher than 7000 feet.
Now the French schools require only a 30-mile flight with three
successful landings, before sending the flyer to the finishing school,
where he learns to do all the "stunts" that a fighter must be able to
do in order to succeed. I learned the tail wing slip, the tail spin and
dive, the _vrille_, to loop the loop, and many other fancy flying
tricks. They have saved my life more than once.
I was interested in reading the other day James Norman Hall's funny
description of how he learned at last to master the penguin. He felt
triumphant, but he says, "But no one had seen my splendid sortie. Now
that I had arrived, no one paid the least attention to me. All eyes
were turned upward, and following them with my own, I saw an airplane
outlined against a heaped-up pile of snow-white cloud. It was moving at
tremendous speed, when suddenly it darted straight upward, wavered for
a second or two, turned slowly on one wing, and fell, nose-down,
turning round and round as it fell, like a scrap of paper. It was the
_vrille_, the prettiest piece of aërial acrobatics that one could wish
to see. It was a wonderful, an incredible sight.
"Some one was counting the turns of the _vrille_. Six, seven, eight;
then the airman came out of it on an even keel, and, nosing down to
gather speed, looped twice in quick succession. Afterward he did the
_retournement_, turning completely over in the air and going back in
the opposite direction; then spiraled down and passed over our heads at
about fifty meters, landing at the opposite side of the field so
beautifully that it was impossible to know when the machine touched the
ground."