forth the need and the justice of this war and the duty of patriotic
Americans in the most straightforward and clear-cut fashion. He
states that this is the war for liberty and humanity and for American
rights, and that there rests “upon every American and upon every man
who has partaken of America’s bounty the solemn obligation of loyally
doing their part to win victory for the cause America represents.” He
promises the mine workers that their rights shall be protected and
secured, but insists that they shall lend every energy to increase the
output of coal so as to help our army at the front, which, as he finely
says, includes “sons of the rich and sons of the poor men who love life
as one, but who prefer death to life without liberty and who have made
common cause and entered the lists in answer to the Nation’s need.”
The improper practices are specifically pointed out and condemned,
such as shutting down mines in violation of agreement in order to
force some desired condition, or making improper restrictions to
curtail production. The appeal is solemnly made to, and on behalf
of, the miners’ union that there must be full service to the Nation
and no shirking of duty, and that no agreement into which the union
enters shall be treated as a scrap of paper, but shall be in good
faith fulfilled. President Farrington in his official circulars lays
constantly increasing stress upon the seriousness of the obligation
resting upon the miners to aid and sustain the Allied armies in
their fight for the freedom of humanity by hard, steady work and by
increasing the output of coal. He condemns with genuine loftiness of
feeling and expression all who fail to give the utmost help to the men
who at the front are doing so much and suffering so much.
The Illinois mine workers number about ninety thousand members. They
are divided into three hundred and twenty local unions. Of these I
have figures from only one hundred and twenty. They have sent over
four thousand men into the army and navy of the United States, have
purchased over two million dollars’ worth of Liberty bonds, $700,000 of
War Savings Stamps, and have contributed over $90,000 to the Red Cross
and over $20,000 to other war funds.
The Illinois mine workers have made a fine showing in applied
patriotism.
GOOD LUCK TO THE ANTI-BOLSHEVISTS OF KANSAS
SEPTEMBER 12, 1918
The absolute prerequisite for successful self-government in any
people is the power of self-restraint which refuses to follow either
the wild-eyed extremists of radicalism or the dull-eyed extremists
of reaction. Either set of extremists will wreck the Nation just as
certainly as the other. The Nation capable of self-government must
show the Abraham Lincoln quality of refusing to go with either. The
dreadful fall which has befallen Russia is due to the fact that when
her people cast off the tyranny of the autocracy, they did not have
sufficient self-control and common sense to avoid rushing into the gulf
of Bolshevist anarchy.
In this country there are plenty of highbrow Bolsheviki who like to
think of themselves as intellectuals, and who in parlors and at pink
teas preach Bolshevism as a fad. They are fatuously ignorant that it
may be a dangerous fad. Some of them are mere make-believe, sissy
Bolsheviki, almost or quite harmless. Others are sincere and foolish
fanatics, who mean well and who do not realize that their doctrines
tend toward moral disintegration. But there are practical Bolsheviki
in this country who are in no sense highbrows. The I.W.W. and the
Non-Partisan League, just as long and so far as its members submit
to the dominion of leaders like Mr. Townley, represent the forces
that under Lenine and Trotzky have brought ruin to Russia. If these
organizations obtained power here, they would cast this country into
the same abyss with Russia.
The I.W.W. activities may have been officially set forth by the Chicago
jury which found the I.W.W. leaders guilty of treasonable practices.
These leaders protested that they were only trying to help “the wage
slave of to-day,” and had not taken German money. But the jury found
them guilty as charged. The American people, when fully awake and
aroused, will tolerate neither treason nor anarchy. No Americans are
more patriotic than the honest American labor men, and these above all
had cause to rejoice in the verdict. Undoubtedly there are plenty of
poor ignorant men who join the I.W.W. because they feel they do not
receive justice. We should all of us actively unite in the effort to
right any wrongs from which these men suffer. But we should set our
faces like flint against such criminal leadership as that of the I.W.W.
The Non-Partisan League endeavored to ally itself with the I.W.W. since
we entered the war. When the League was started, I felt much sympathy
with its avowed purposes. I hope for and shall welcome wisely radical
action on behalf of the farmer. But only destruction to all of us can
come from the venomous class hatred preached by the present leadership
of the League. Some of its leaders have been convicted and imprisoned
for treasonable activities. Some of the League’s representatives have
been actively pro-Germans. Some are Socialists or Socialist-Anarchists.
For the first six months of the war and until it became too dangerous,
they were openly against the war, against our allies, and for Germany.
The only half-secret alliance between these leaders and certain high
Democratic politicians is deeply discreditable to the latter. The
victory of the League in its recent efforts to gain control of the
Republican Party in Minnesota and Montana would have given immense
strength to the pro-German and Bolshevist element throughout the
country and its defeat was a matter of rejoicing to all right-minded
and patriotic men.
Mr. Townley’s leadership in its moral purpose and national effect
entitles him to rank with Messrs. Lenine and Trotzky, and the
utterances of the League’s official organ, especially in its appeals to
class hatred, puts the official representatives of the League squarely
in the clan with the Bolshevist leaders who have done such evil in
Russia.
I have before me an official letter from the League written in January
last refusing to coöperate in non-political work for the benefit of the
farmers, saying, “This organization is a political one, the farmers
being organized for the purpose of controlling legislation in their
own interests.” In other words, the title, Non-Partisan, is a piece
of pure hypocrisy, and its league is really partisan in the narrowest
and worst sense. Americans should organize politically as Americans
and not as bankers, or lawyers, or farmers, or wage-workers. To
organize politically on the basis adopted by the League is thoroughly
anti-American and unpatriotic, and if copied generally by our citizens,
would mean the creation in this country of rival political parties
based on cynically brutal class selfishness.
I have no doubt that the rank and file of the members of the League
are good, honest people who have been misled. I am certain that
there has been much neglect of the rights of the farmers and that it
is a high duty for this country to begin a constructive, practical
agricultural policy. But no good American can support the League while
it is dominated by its present leadership. The Kansans who have joined
to fight the League because it represents Bolshevism are rendering a
patriotic service to America.
THE FOURTH LIBERTY LOAN
SEPTEMBER 17, 1918
The Government of the United States is asking us Americans, is asking
us, the citizens of the United States, to subscribe to the Fourth
Liberty Loan, a bigger loan than any yet issued. It is our duty to back
up the Government by floating the loan. Moreover, the performance of
this duty should be treated by us as a high privilege. It opens to us
a fine opportunity to put our shoulders with all the strength we have
into the great shove which is pushing the German barrier back across
the Rhine.
The Liberty bonds are the best of all possible investments. Their
security and their interest returns give them a peculiar position.
Moreover, every one can invest in big or little amounts, exactly as
his resources permit. All the people of this country can now become
bondholders if they wish. Therefore, all investors in the bonds will
get benefits, but what is vastly more important, they will give
benefits. They will therefore render service to the country.
We Americans are not, and must not permit ourselves to become, swayed
by question of material gain in this war. We must think primarily of
our duties. We must keep our minds fixed on what we owe to others, and
what we owe to ourselves. We owe a service to humanity. Our sons and
brothers at the front pay this service in blood. The rest of us must
pay it in money.
Commensurate with the great resources and unparalleled prosperity with
which our Nation has been blessed, we owe all the more because for
three years the debt accumulated, while other nations were bearing the
burden for us. We thank God we have begun to pay. From every village
and city of every state the best of our young men are streaming across
the Atlantic to join the victorious army under Foch and Pershing. The
men and women of America are keeping mill and shipyard and munition
factory and mine busy to the limit, so that the troops may not fail nor
the supplies on which they depend be lacking.
All this is not one whit more than we ought to do; it is what we owe
to the world and owe to ourselves. We are glad and proud to do it.
Let us, as part payment of our great debt, subscribe and oversubscribe
to the bonds of the Fourth Liberty Loan. This is a service which lies
within the ability of the poorest of us. It is the duty and privilege
of every right American. Every dollar put into Liberty loans is a
dollar working for the downfall of the system of greed and treachery,
of tyranny and callous brutality which has drenched the world in blood.
Americans are not quitters. The Kaiser’s troops cannot stop our men at
the front. Nothing must be permitted to stop the flow into the treasury
of the money with which we back up these men. Sloth and easy living
have no place in America now. We must give, give to the utmost. If
putting our money at the disposal of the Government requires us to work
harder and live more simply, we shall be the better for it. Let us buy
these Liberty bonds to the utmost of our capacity and thereby show the
men at the front that the people at home will back them to the limit.
FAIR PLAY AND NO POLITICS
SEPTEMBER 20, 1918
A Democratic member of the Senate has introduced a resolution to
investigate the primary campaign expenses of certain Republican
candidates for the Senate, including Commander Truman Newberry,
whose recent triumph over Mr. Henry Ford in the Michigan Republican
primaries was greeted with heartfelt thanks by every sincere and
far-sighted American patriot.
This Senate, which comes to an end on March 4 next, has the same, and
only the same right to investigate the election conduct of candidates
for the Senate, which comes into existence on March 4 that it has to
investigate the campaign conduct of any other candidates for office.
Moreover, any such proposed investigation undertaken on the eve of
an election is tainted with bad faith unless it is conducted with
conspicuous fairness and impartiality and is undertaken at once so that
it can be finished at least a month before the elections. Personally,
I shall be glad if the election expenses or any other conduct of any
of the candidates be investigated, provided that the investigation be
undertaken at once and finished within the next fortnight, and provided
that it be entirely impartial. Therefore, it must deal comprehensively
with all serious charges affecting the desirability of candidates as
governmental representatives of the American people at this time.
If the men backing the proposal are acting in good faith they will
investigate Mr. Ford’s record on the following points in order to
determine his fitness to represent patriotic Americans at this time.
They will find out how much money he spent on the peace ship, and
on his lavishly expensive newspaper advertising campaign against
preparedness, and against our standing up for Belgium’s rights, and
against our taking action about Germany’s sinking the Lusitania and
her other assaults on us, and in favor of the McLemore resolution. This
was part of the great pacifist campaign of which another part, as our
government investigations show, was financed by the German authorities
themselves or by their affiliated societies in this country.
The investigation should include Mr. Ford’s contributions in the last
presidential campaign and the names of the candidates he supported, for
his politics seem to have been purely personal and pacifist.
Moreover, the investigation should include a full examination of the
justification for Mr. Ford’s aiding and abetting his son Edsell in
escaping draft and staying at home when the great majority of young
Americans of his age are eagerly striving for places of honor and peril
at the front. Mr. Ford is an enormously wealthy man. Mr. Newberry is
not. Mr. Newberry himself at once entered the military service of
the United States. His two sons have wives and children, but they
immediately entered the service, striving eagerly to get to the front.
Mr. Edsell Ford waited until he was drafted, then fought hard for an
exemption, which the local board disallowed. He succeeded, however, in
escaping service and is at home.
Unless the investigation takes up these matters, it will be stamped
with the stamp of unworthy and improper partisanship. The simple truth
is that all patriotic Americans rejoice in the nomination and will
rejoice in the election at this time of such Americans as Mr. Newberry
in Michigan and Mr. Medill McCormick in Illinois.
SPIES AND SLACKERS
SEPTEMBER 24, 1918
Mercy to the German spy or pacifist slacker in America is foul
injustice to the American soldier in France and to his brother, who
is preparing to go to France. Our Government has been altogether too
weak in dealing with the pacifist slackers and so-called conscientious
objectors. It has actually issued elaborate instructions for and to
these creatures practically telling them how to escape doing the duty
which all patriotic Americans are proudly eager to perform.
There is not the slightest excuse for such weakness. No man has any
right to remain in a free country like ours if he refuses, whether
conscientiously or unconscientiously, to do the duties of peace and of
war which are necessary if it is to be kept free. The true lovers of
peace recognize their duty to fight for freedom. The Society of Friends
has furnished the same large proportion of soldiers for this war that
it did for the Civil War.
It is all wrong to permit conscientious objectors to remain in camp or
military posts or to go back to their homes. They should be treated
in one of three ways: First, demand of them military service, except
the actual use of weapons with intent to kill, and if they refuse
to render this service treat them as criminals and imprison them at
hard labor; second, put them in labor battalions and send them to
France behind the lines, where association with soldiers might have a
missionary effect on them and cause them to forget their present base
creed and rise to worthy levels in an atmosphere of self-sacrifice and
of service and struggle for great ideals; third, if both of the above
procedures are regarded as too drastic, intern them with alien enemies
and send them permanently out of the country as soon as possible.
As for the spies, there is no question as to the treatment needed. They
should be shot or hung. They are public enemies and this is war-time
and they should no more be dealt with by the civil law than the enemy
armies should be so dealt with. The German spies and secret agents
and dynamiters and murderers in this country are as much a part of
Germany as the soldiers of von Hindenburg. Bismarck employed thirty
thousand of them to disorganize Germany’s foes fifty years ago, and
now Germany is employing them by the hundred thousand. They are as
formidable as the visible German army. It was these German Spies,
agents, and propagandists who, in 1917, disintegrated and destroyed
Russia, and inflicted a crushing disaster on Italy, and conducted the
most dangerous intrigue in France, and aided and abetted the British
pacifists.
In this country Senator Overman has estimated their number at four
hundred thousand, and Mr. Flynn, the recently resigned chief of the
secret service, has put them at a quarter of a million. Our official
government reports have shown that in obedience to orders from the
German Government they have carried on in all hostile and even neutral
countries a systematic warfare by means of aiding pacifists’ movements,
inciting strikes, fomenting disloyalty, and employing direct action
dynamiters and murderers. They have received aid and coöperation,
conscientiously and unconscientiously, by many evils in pacifist
and Bolshevist societies and in organizations like the I.W.W. and
Non-Partisan League.
The activities of the German spies, agents, and sympathizers vary from
mere disloyal utterances, which the Attorney-General of the United
States has stated to be the cause of most of the disorder in the
country, up to seeking to corrupt our soldiers and practicing sabotage
in our munitions works and factories for war materials. All offenders
of the latter type, wherever committed, can, under the existing law,
be tried by court-martial and executed, and this is the proper course
to follow. It was the course followed under Lincoln’s administration,
which is one of the reasons why Lincoln’s administration differed so
markedly from Buchanan’s.
The former chief of the secret service says that there are a quarter
of a million of these German spies and agents in this country. We
have ample law to warrant these being punished with death by summary
court-martial, under military law as military enemies. We have been at
war eighteen months, but not one Spy has thus been punished. This means
grave remissness in the performance of our duty.
QUIT PLAYING FAVORITES
SEPTEMBER 30, 1918
It is announced that the young men of eighteen or nineteen included in
the draft will be sent free to college by the Government and will there
be given the chance to earn commissions and escape service in the ranks.
Either this represents sheer deception or it will mean gross
favoritism. We now have plenty of young men who have been serving in
the ranks for nearly eighteen months. Scores of thousands of these left
college to go or had just finished high school when they went. All
these boys, whether they have or have not been to college, are entitled
to the first chance for commissions on equal terms with one another,
except that preference should be given those who have been engaged in
the fighting overseas. Almost all the second lieutenancies should now
be filled in this manner by promotion from the ranks. To give to boys
now about to enter college the preference over those who have actually
served in the ranks, and especially over those who have actually faced
death overseas, would be a cruel injustice.
But the injustice would be equally great among the new recruits
themselves. It is wholly illusory for the Government to say it will
send to college all who wish to go. The average working-man or small
farmer has not had money enough to educate his son so that the boy can
now enter college without further training. Yet that boy may have in
him the qualities of leadership which especially fit him for command.
Such a working-man or farmer ought to wish, and does wish, that his
son be tested on his merits by actual service in the ranks, alongside
of all other boys, no favors being shown either him or them. For the
Government at this time to send some of these boys to college and thus
give them a start over the bulk of their fellows represents privilege
given to money and is thoroughly unfair.
For the two years before we entered the war the only important piece
of preparedness was that of the men who at their own expense went to
the Plattsburg training camp established by General Wood, and when
Germany forced us into war it was imperatively necessary at once to
establish many additional camps of this kind or we should have had no
officers whatever for our army. It is still advisable to keep a few
training camps for older men whose age and qualifications especially
fit them for certain kinds of service. But it is not wise nor right for
the Government now to put certain especially favored classes of boys
of eighteen and nineteen into college with a view to giving them an
advantage over their fellows. This is undemocratic. It is not fair to
the other boys of their age who are not in the army. It is exceedingly
unfair and unjust to the young men who are already enlisted in the
army, and especially to those who have seen service overseas.
From now on no young officer should be appointed saving after service
in the ranks out of which he is chosen by fair test in comparison with
his fellows as fit to enter an officers’ training camp. Moreover,
there should be a resolute effort to give preference to the men who
have served in the front in France, the very men who are now apt to be
neglected.
WAR AIMS AND PEACE PROPOSALS
OCTOBER 12, 1918
Our war aim ought to be unconditional surrender of Germany and of her
vassal allies, Austria and Turkey. We ought not to consider any peace
proposals from Germany until this war aim has been accomplished by the
victorious arms of our allies and ourselves.
It is worthy of note that the Central Powers show a greedy eagerness to
accept the so-called “fourteen points” laid down by President Wilson. I
earnestly hope that when the time for discussing peace proposals comes,
we shall ourselves repudiate some of these fourteen points, and that we
shall insist on having all of them put into plain and straightforward
language before we assent to any of them. Let us remember that Congress
shares with the President the right to make treaties and that the
people are bound to insist that they, the people, are the ultimate
arbiters and that their will in the peace treaty is followed by both
the President and the Congress.
For example, what does that one of the fourteen points referring to the
freedom of the seas mean? If it means what Germany interprets it to
mean, then every decent American ought to be against it. The kind of
freedom of the seas upon which it is really vital to count is freedom
from murder. International law at present condemns exactly the kind
of murder which Germany practiced in the case of the Lusitania and in
hundreds of other cases, and is still practicing. We ought to make her
atone heavily for such conduct and explicitly renounce it before we
ever discuss any other kind of freedom of the seas.
Again, we ought to know just what the President means by freedom of
commercial intercourse. If he means that he proposes to allow Germany
to dump her manufactures on us without restriction, we ought to be
against 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 working-men, demand.