continually advocated our doing things which now every one in his
senses admits ought to have been done. Nine tenths of wisdom consists
of being wise in time. General Wood was wise in time. Moreover,
by twenty years of hard, practical work, he fitted himself to do
peculiarly well in this very crisis. He was our senior general in rank,
he was recognized by the best French and English military authorities
as by experience trained to play an immediate and important part in
the difficult and perilous joint work of the war. He had testified
at length and with exhaustive professional knowledge before the
congressional military committees, one year and two years prior to
our entry into the war, pointing out all the military lacks, which
experience has since shown to exist and which the War Department then
denied existed. He is to be credited with the only piece of serious
military preparedness in advance which is to our credit. In the service
of 1915, in the teeth of indifference and hostility from his superiors,
he created the Plattsburg officers’ reserve training camp, starting the
system of training camps which has enabled us to officer our draft army.
He is in splendid physical condition. Recently when in France he
was severely wounded by a shell burst, and the surgeons reported his
recovery as being more rapid than would have been the case with the
average young man of robust bodily health and vigor. He has done
excellent work in training his men at Camp Funston. He has been
unwearied in looking after the health and welfare of his men. He has
been rewarded by their loyal devotion; they have been profoundly
grieved and moved by having him suddenly taken from them. The refusal
to use his great ability and energy means a distinct subtraction from
the sum total of our military efficiency, a distinct addition to the
risk from disease and discomfort which some of our men at the front
will have to incur, and a distinct benefit to the cause of Germany.
No explanation has been given the American people for the action
concerning him. Nothing has been made public which warrants our belief
that this action was due either to professional or to patriotic
considerations.
HELP RUSSIA NOW
JUNE 20, 1918
Russia has been thrown under the iron tyranny of German militarism
and capitalism by the Bolshevists of the Lenine type. The Russian
people are slowly awakening to this bitter truth. The far-sighted, the
Russians of genuine patriotism, have long been awake, but the peasants,
who are at heart good, but who are ignorant and misled, are now
awakening also. Plenty of them, especially among the Cossacks, are well
aware that submission to Germany now means death for Russia. Plenty of
them are eager to fight and know well that only by successful war on a
grand scale can Russia now be saved and regenerated, but they must have
help and the help must be given immediately or it may be too late, and
America can best give the help.
A Russian peasant woman who can hardly write her name is here to ask
that the help be given immediately and that it be given in Siberia.
She is a remarkable character in her strength, her simplicity, her
direct straightforwardness, and her intense earnestness and entire
disinterestedness. She was a major in the Russian army until the
Russian army was betrayed and dissolved. Her peasant husband was
killed in the ranks. She served in the ranks of a regiment of men. She
commanded in a regiment of women. She has been wounded four times. She
was born in Tomsk, Siberia. She is a peasant of the best class, in
habits of thought and belief and life and sympathy. But she has a wide
outlook. She knows that America will keep her word about Siberia, just
as America kept her word about Cuba. She asks that for our own sake,
just as much as for Russia’s sake, we now send an army to Siberia,
entering through Vladivostok or Harbin, or through both. She asks us to
announce that after the war is over we guarantee to return to Russia
her country with the right for her people to decide for themselves
how they are to be governed, and that in the war we fight with and for
all the Russians who will fight against Germany for Russia, and that
we fight to the death against the Germans and against all Russians who
side with the Germans.
Siberia is in chaos. Eastern Siberia has plenty of food and contains
large elements of the population, especially Cossacks, who would
promptly join with an Allied force which they believed would, in good
faith, aid in the reconquest of Russia for the purpose of giving it
back to the Russians themselves. West of Lake Baikal is a region
dominated by a German army, some twenty thousand strong, composed of
former German prisoners of war, who are organized under the name of
the German Red Guards and who are the permanent adherents of German
autocracy, but who help the cause of Russian anarchy in order to
conquer Russia for the German autocracy. West of these again a stretch
of country, which includes the passes of the Ural Mountains, is held
by the splendid Czechs, who, by the way, must at the end of this
war be rewarded by seeing an independent Czech-Slovak commonwealth
established, just as there must also be a great Jugo-Slav commonwealth.
At once there should be in East Siberia an American army of say thirty
thousand men with a Japanese army of the same size and a British
imperial army of as nearly the same size as possible. If there was
difficulty as to the command of the Allied forces, borrow some man of
great reputation, Joffre, for instance, from France. Let the woman
major above spoken of and other Russian friends of the peasants and of
a Russian republic go in advance to make clear that the Allied army
comes only to restore Russia to the Russians. Let all Russians who
join be paid by the United States on the same scale as our own troops,
and if necessary let the United States guarantee the payment of the
Japanese. Move against the German Red Guards as quickly as possible
and then push instantly to join the heroic Czechs in the Urals. Let
the railroads be organized back of the army by our best railroad men
and let them carry immediately behind the army immense quantities of
clothing, boots, and farm machinery. Siberia has food and it will
furnish hundreds of thousands of soldiers who will rally around such
an Allied army as a nucleus. Before this army reached the Urals, the
Germans would have to prepare to meet it and their pressure on the
Western front would thereby be relieved.
Russia is at this moment lost, so that no change in Russia can make
things worse for the Allies than they now are. We ought to have acted
with energy and intelligence on her behalf a year ago. Let us at least
act now, for no possible action can be worse than our inaction. She
does not need talk and envoys to study the situation. She needs an
army to serve as a nucleus around which she can create her own immense
armies. The above plan is better than none. If our Government can
devise a better, let them do so, but let us act at once.
AN AMERICAN FOURTH OF JULY
JUNE 23, 1918
It is announced that on the Fourth of July the celebration is to be
by race groups--that is, by Scandinavians, Slavs, Germans, Italians,
and so forth. In sport organizations it may be necessary to have such
a kind of divided celebration in some places, but I most emphatically
protest against such a type of celebration being general, and I doubt
whether it is advisable to have it anywhere. On the contrary, I believe
that we should make the Fourth of July a genuine Americanization day,
and should use it to teach the prime lesson of Americanism, which is
that there is no room in the country for the perpetuation of separate
race groups or racial divisions; that we must all be Americans and
nothing but Americans, and that therefore on the Fourth of July we
should all get together simply as Americans and celebrate the day as
such without regard to our several racial origins.
At two thirds of the places where I have made speeches on Americanism
(and these speeches have at least been free from any pussy-footing on
Americanism), I have been introduced by straight Americans who were
in whole or in part of German blood. At Milwaukee, for example, I was
introduced by August Vogel, who has three sons already in the army and
a fourth who will enter this summer. At Martinsville, Indiana, I was
introduced by the mayor, George F. Schmidt, who has two sons in the
army. One of the sons, Wayne Schmidt, was the catcher of the University
of Indiana baseball nine. He was in the same regiment with my two
sons, Ted and Archie, and like Archie has been severely wounded. Mayor
Schmidt writes me:
We are proud of Wayne and hope that his wounds will soon heal and that
he may get back to his regiment and continue to serve his country.
There is nothing fifty-fifty in this boy’s blood or any of his kin.
His greatest ambition is to lead a company up the streets of Berlin.
This speaks the true American!
I also have German blood in my veins. We Vogels and Schmidts and
Roosevelts intend to celebrate the Fourth of July with all our fellow
Americans, without regard to whether they are of German, English or
Irish, French, Scandinavian, Spanish, or Italian blood. Unless they
are Americans and nothing else, they are out of place at a Fourth of
July celebration, and if they are straight Americans, absolutely loyal
to America, and resolutely bent on putting this war through until
it is crowned by the peace of complete victory, then we are their
brothers, their fellow Americans, and we decline to permit any lines of
separation between us and them.
HOW NOT TO ADJOURN POLITICS
JUNE 25, 1918
In the current North American Review and its supplemental War Weekly
there are two strong and deeply patriotic articles on the President’s
recent announcement that politics is to be adjourned. When contrasted
with the injection of politics by the President into the senatorial
contests in Wisconsin and Michigan, never before in any great crisis in
this country has there been such complete subordination of patriotism
to politics as by this Administration during this war. Witness the
activities of the organization under Messrs. Burleson and Creel and the
working alliance between the Administration and the Hearst newspapers,
while Vice-President Marshall and Secretary McAdoo give the signal for
frank partisanship of an extreme type in their public speeches. The
various activities are, of course, co-related and directed toward the
same end.
In Wisconsin the President interfered by a personal appeal for the
Democratic senatorial candidate against the Republican. He based his
appeal on certain alleged positions taken by the Republican candidate,
Mr. Lenroot, during the two years and a half preceding our entry into
the war, which positions, he asserted, did not meet the “acid test” of
patriotism. The President made the conduct of our public men during
the two years and a half prior to the war the test by which they are
to be judged, and where he himself applies this test to others he must
himself be judged by it.
His supporters make the plea that to call attention to the President’s
record during these two and a half years is to cry over spilt milk. But
the President’s attack on Lenroot was a square repudiation of this
plea when it applied to anybody except himself. In reality the “acid
test” of patriotism during these two and a half years is to be found
in the use of phrases like “too proud to fight” and “peace without
victory” and the refusal to act instead of merely talking after the
sinking of the Lusitania; in the fatuous refusal to prepare and in the
insistence on preserving an ignoble neutrality between right and wrong
between those who were fighting to make the world safe for democracy
and liberty and those who were fighting to overthrow both. Tried by the
test of past conduct which the President applied to Mr. Lenroot, he is
himself found wanting. Mr. Lenroot spilled a teaspoonful of milk, but
Mr. Wilson spilled a bucketful and he must not call attention to the
teaspoon and expect to escape having attention called to the bucket.
The President has now personally requested Mr. Henry Ford to come
forward as his personal candidate for the Senate in Michigan. This
action cannot be reconciled either with the President’s statement that
politics must be adjourned or with the reasons he alleged for opposing
Mr. Lenroot. No man was a more intense pacifist, no man struggled
harder against preparedness, no man was more eagerly hailed as an
ally by the pro-Germans than Mr. Ford during the two and a half years
before we did our duty and entered the war. He is not a Republican;
he is not a Democrat. He supported Mr. Wilson on the “he kept us out
of war” issue. Mr. Wilson can only desire his election on grounds of
personal politics, as Mr. Wilson wishes as associates not strong men,
but servants, and from the servants he demands servility even more
than service. I have not the slightest political feeling when politics
comes into hostile contact with patriotism and Americanism. There is no
public servant whom during the past year I have supported more heartily
than the Democratic Senator, Chamberlain. I oppose Mr. Ford, because
in the great crisis I feel that his election would be a calamity from
the standpoint of far-sighted and patriotic Americanism. I would oppose
him if he had been nominated by the Republican Party. I oppose him in
precisely the same spirit now that he has been nominated on personal
grounds by Mr. Wilson.
HATS OFF TO THE INTERNATIONAL TYPOGRAPHICAL UNION
JUNE 27, 1918
The published reports of the International Typographical Union,
issued from Indianapolis, make a very remarkable showing and put that
organization high on the honor roll of America for the Great War.
Forty-one hundred journeymen members of the union and seven hundred
apprentices are in the military and naval forces of the United States
and Canada. Seventy-five members have already paid with their lives
for their devotion to their country. The union has paid $22,000
mortuary benefits to the widows, orphans, and mothers of these men.
The union, through its executive council, has invested $90,000 in the
Liberty loans, and subordinate local unions and individual members have
invested $3,000,000 in the Liberty loans.
These are war-time activities. During the same period the International
Typographical Union has continued all its ordinary benefit works. It
has paid over $350,000 to fifteen hundred old-age pensioners, over
$300,000 in mortuary benefits, and $170,000 to the Union Printers’
Home at Colorado Springs. Every dollar has been paid by members of the
organization in the form of regular dues and assessments. The union
neither solicits nor accepts contributions to its benefit funds.
During the same period the union has expended only $1200 for strike
expenses. The union acts in thoroughgoing patriotic fashion on the
conviction that there should be no strikes or lockouts during the
war. Its officers regard themselves as volunteers in the army for the
preservation of industrial peace, at least for the duration of the
war, and I hope for long after the war. Such conduct offers a striking
contrast to the action of certain corporations which during this war
have refused to permit their employees to organize. Labor has as much
right as capital to organize. It is tyranny to forbid the exercise
of this right, just as it is tyranny to misuse the power acquired by
organization. The people of the United States do not believe in tyranny
and do believe in coöperation.
The International Typographical Union has offered an admirable
example of Americanism and patriotism. Its attitude is typical of the
attitude of organized labor generally. Hats off to the International
Typographical Union! And hats off to the working-men and working-women
of the United States!
THE PERFORMANCE OF A GREAT PUBLIC DUTY
JULY 3, 1918
It is announced from Washington that the President has been converted
to the need of universal military training of our young men, as a
permanent policy. This is excellent. If this policy is forthwith
incorporated into our laws, it will represent an immense national
advance. In the first place, it will guarantee us against a repetition
of the humiliating experiences of the last four years, when our
helpless refusal to prepare invited Germany’s attack upon us and then
forced us to rely entirely upon our allies to protect us from that
attack while for over a year we slowly made ready to defend ourselves.
In the next place, it will immeasurably increase the moral and physical
efficiency of the young men who are trained and fit them both to do
better for themselves and to perform in better fashion the tasks of
American citizenship. Finally it is essential that the policy should
be adopted now while we are at war and therefore while our people are
awake to the needs of the situation. As soon as peace comes, there
will be a revival of the sinister agitation of the pro-German or other
anti-American leaders and of the silly clamor of the pacifists, all
of whom will with brazen folly again reiterate that preparedness ends
with war, and that, anyhow, all war can be averted by signing scraps
of paper. The adoption at once of the policy of obligatory universal
military training will be the performance of a great public duty.
For three years the foremost advocates of this policy have pointed
out that it can advantageously be combined with a certain amount of
industrial training. It is earnestly to be hoped that this element of
industrial training will be incorporated in the law. Of course, in such
case the length of service with the colors in the field, aside from
preliminary training in the higher school grades, ought to be a year,
so as to avoid superficiality. Credit should be given the graduates of
certain scholastic institutions or to individuals who speedily attain
a high degree of proficiency, and for them the time of service could
be shortened. All officers or other candidates for officers’ training
schools would be chosen from among the best of the men who had gone
through the training, without regard to anything except their fitness.
This would represent the embodiment in our army of the democratic
principle which insists upon an equal chance for all, equal justice for
all, and the need for leadership, and therefore for special rewards for
leadership. The industrial training could be so shaped as to emphasize
the need that hard workers who are efficient should become in a real
sense partners in industry, and that insistence upon efficiency should
be accompanied by a fair division of the rewards of efficiency, and by
insistence that the work should be made healthful and interesting, so
that its faithful performance would be a matter of pride and pleasure.
At this moment our training camps are huge universities, huge
laboratories of fine American citizenship. Let us make them permanent
institutions. They develop both power of initiative and power of
obedience. They inculcate self-reliance and self-respect. They also
inculcate respect for others and readiness for discipline, which
means readiness to use our collective power in such shape as to make
us threefold more efficient than we have been. To make these camps
permanent training schools for all our young men would mean the
greatest boon this Nation could receive.
REPEAL THE CHARTER OF THE GERMAN-AMERICAN ALLIANCE
JULY 11, 1918
The United States Senate has struck an effective blow against the
Hun within our gates by unanimously voting to repeal the charter of
the German-American Alliance. It is earnestly to be hoped that the
House will at once follow suit with like unanimity. The Alliance has
been thoroughly mischievous in its activities. It has acted in the
interest of Germany and against the interest of America. It has tried
to perpetuate Germanism as a separate nationality with a separate
language in the United States; it has attacked our allies; it has
encouraged disloyalty; it was decorated by the Kaiser for its services
to Germany. It has endeavored to prostitute our politics to German
needs. I have personally had the honor of being specially singled out
by it for attack. It received money from the Brewers’ Association for
the campaign against prohibition.
At this time, when the campaign of German frightfulness is in full
blast, when the Prussianized Germany of the Hohenzollerns is steadily
adding to its list of literally unforgivable offenses against
civilization, there is no room in this country for any organization,
great or small, which either defends Germany or is lukewarm in the
great crusade against her in which America will henceforth play
a leading part. Germany has recently scored another victory for
frightfulness by sinking a Canadian hospital ship without warning and
drowning two hundred persons, including women nurses. The ship was a
mercy vessel, not a warship, and was so distinctly marked that it was
impossible to mistake it. The attack upon it was sheer murder. Yet the
German people tolerate, applaud, and approve the action of the German
Government in this continuous and methodically organized campaign of
murder, rape, and outrage.
The most complete exposure of Germany’s infamous purpose in forcing
this dreadful war upon the world is contained in the pamphlet written
by the leading German steel magnate, Herr August Thyssen. This pamphlet
has been translated into English, has been put into the official
record by Senator Owen, of Oklahoma, has been printed in full in
the San Francisco Argonaut and Baltimore Manufacturers’ Record, and
circulated in pamphlet form by Mr. J. G. Butler, Jr., of Youngstown,
Ohio. It is accessible to everybody. Herr Thyssen has no conception
of the monstrous turpitude of the plan which he supported. His only
complaint is that he and the other German financiers were fooled by
the German Kaiser and the German Government, who promised them victory
and failed to furnish it. He proves that German capitalism was just as
responsible for the war as German militarism (which incidentally shows
the peculiar infamy of the Russian Bolshevists and American Socialists
and their allies in playing Germany’s game). He shows that Germany’s
ruthless brutality was equaled by her sordid greed. He showed that
the Hohenzollern Government, through the Emperor and the Chancellor,
deliberately planned the war over a year and a half before it broke
out, and at that time and on several occasions gathered the leading
business men of Germany, informed them of the plans, and got their
support by holding out the war as one of sheer plunder. The other
nations were to be attacked simply in order to rob them naked. Herr
Thyssen himself was promised thirty thousand acres in Australia. The
Emperor particularly dwelt on the conquest of India, saying that the
English allowed the vast Indian revenue to be used for and by the
Indians themselves, but that Germany after her conquest would turn the
whole “Golden Stream into the Fatherland.” There could be no finer
tribute to England when compared with Germany than that which is thus
furnished by the Emperor.
In point of international morality the Germany of the Hohenzollerns has
become the wild beast of the nations. Whoever directly or indirectly
works for her or against our allies or who is merely lukewarm in the
war is an enemy of this country, and an enemy of all mankind.
EVERY MAN HAS A RIGHT TO ONE COUNTRY
JULY 15, 1918
Every man ought to love his country. If he does not love his country
and is not eager to serve her, he is a worthless creature and should
be contemptuously thrown out of the country when possible, and at any
rate debarred from all rights of citizenship in the country. He is only
entitled to one country. If he claims loyalty to two countries, he is
necessarily a traitor to at least one country. If he claims to be loyal
to both Germany and America, he is necessarily a traitor to America. No
man can be a good American now unless he is an enemy of Germany and
Germany’s allies and a stanch supporter of America’s allies.