The entrance of our own beloved country into the grim and terrible war
for democracy and human rights which has shaken the world creates so
many problems of national life and action which call for immediate
consideration and settlement that I hope you will permit me to address
to you a few words of earnest counsel and appeal with regard to them.
We are rapidly putting our navy upon an effective war footing and are
about to create and equip a great army, but these are the simplest parts
of the great task to which we have addressed ourselves. There is not a
single selfish element, so far as I can see, in the cause we are
fighting for. We are fighting for what we believe and wish to be the
rights of mankind and for the future peace and security of the world. To
do this great thing worthily and successfully we must devote ourselves
to the service without regard to profit or material advantage and with
an energy and intelligence that will rise to the level of the enterprise
itself. We must realize to the full how great the task is and how many
things, how many kinds and elements of capacity and service and
self-sacrifice, it involves.
These, then, are the things we must do, and do well, besides
fighting,--the things without which mere fighting would be fruitless:
We must supply abundant food for ourselves and for our armies and our
seamen not only, but also for a large part of the nations with whom we
have now made common cause, in whose support and by whose sides we shall
be fighting.
We must supply ships by the hundreds out of our shipyards to carry to
the other side of the sea, submarines or no submarines, what will every
day be needed there, and abundant materials out of our fields and our
mines and our factories with which not only to clothe and equip our own
forces on land and sea but also to clothe and support our people for
whom the gallant fellows under arms can no longer work, to help clothe
and equip the armies with which we are cooeperating in Europe, and to
keep the looms and manufactories there in raw material; coal to keep the
fires going in ships at sea and in the furnaces of hundreds of factories
across the sea; steel out of which to make arms and ammunition both here
and there; rails for worn-out railways back of the fighting fronts;
locomotives and rolling stock to take the place of those every day going
to pieces; mules, horses, cattle for labor and for military service;
everything with which the people of England and France and Italy and
Russia have usually supplied themselves but cannot now afford the men,
the materials, or the machinery to make.
It is evident to every thinking man that our industries, on the farms,
in the shipyards, in the mines, in the factories, must be made more
prolific and more efficient than ever and that they must be more
economically managed and better adapted to the particular requirements
of our task than they have been; and what I want to say is that the men
and the women who devote their thought and their energy to these things
will be serving the country and conducting the fight for peace and
freedom just as truly and just as effectively as the men on the
battlefield or in the trenches. The industrial forces of the country,
men and women alike, will be a great national, a great international,
Service Army,--a notable and honored host engaged in the service of the
nation and the world, the efficient friends and saviors of free men
everywhere. Thousands, nay, hundreds of thousands, of men otherwise
liable to military service will of right and of necessity be excused
from that service and assigned to the fundamental, sustaining work of
the fields and factories and mines, and they will be as much part of the
great patriotic forces of the nation as the men under fire.
I take the liberty, therefore, of addressing this word to the farmers of
the country and to all who work on the farms: The supreme need of our
own nation and of the nations with which we are cooeperating is an
abundance of supplies, and especially of food-stuffs. The importance of
an adequate food supply, especially for the present year, is
superlative. Without abundant food, alike for the armies and the peoples
now at war, the whole great enterprise upon which we have embarked will
break down and fail. The world's food reserves are low. Not only during
the present emergency but for some time after peace shall have come both
our own people and a large proportion of the people of Europe must rely
upon the harvests in America. Upon the farmers of this country,
therefore, in large measure, rests the fate of the war and the fate of
the nations. May the nation not count upon them to omit no step that
will increase the production of their land or that will bring about the
most effectual cooeperation in the sale and distribution of their
products? The time is short. It is of the most imperative importance
that everything possible be done and done immediately to make sure of
large harvests. I call upon young men and old alike and upon the
able-bodied boys of the land to accept and act upon this duty--to turn
in hosts to the farms and make certain that no pains and no labor is
lacking in this great matter.
I particularly appeal to the farmers of the South to plant abundant
food-stuffs as well as cotton. They can show their patriotism in no
better or more convincing way than by resisting the great temptation of
the present price of cotton and helping, helping upon a great scale, to
feed the nation and the peoples everywhere who are fighting for their
liberties and for our own. The variety of their crops will be the
visible measure of their comprehension of their national duty.
The Government of the United States and the governments of the several
States stand ready to cooeperate. They will do everything possible to
assist farmers in securing an adequate supply of seed, an adequate force
of laborers when they are most needed, at harvest time, and the means of
expediting shipments of fertilizers and farm machinery, as well as of
the crops themselves when harvested. The course of trade shall be as
unhampered as it is possible to make it and there shall be no
unwarranted manipulation of the nation's food supply by those who handle
it on its way to the consumer. This is our opportunity to demonstrate
the efficiency of a great Democracy and we shall not fall short of it!
This let me say to the middlemen of every sort, whether they are
handling our food-stuffs or our raw materials of manufacture or the
products of our mills and factories: The eyes of the country will be
especially upon you. This is your opportunity for signal service,
efficient and disinterested. The country expects you, as it expects all
others, to forego unusual profits, to organize and expedite shipments of
supplies of every kind, but especially of food, with an eye to the
service you are rendering and in the spirit of those who enlist in the
ranks, for their people, not for themselves. I shall confidently expect
you to deserve and win the confidence of people of every sort and
station.
To the men who run the railways of the country, whether they be managers
or operative employees, let me say that the railways are the arteries of
the nation's life and that upon them rests the immense responsibility of
seeing to it that those arteries suffer no obstruction of any kind, no
inefficiency or slackened power. To the merchant let me suggest the
motto, "Small profits and quick service"; and to the shipbuilder the
thought that the life of the war depends upon him. The food and the war
supplies must be carried across the seas no matter how many ships are
sent to the bottom. The places of those that go down must be supplied
and supplied at once. To the miner let me say that he stands where the
farmer does: the work of the world waits on him. If he slackens or
fails, armies and statesmen are helpless. He also is enlisted in the
great Service Army. The manufacturer does not need to be told, I hope,
that the nation looks to him to speed and perfect every process; and I
want only to remind his employees that their service is absolutely
indispensable and is counted on by every man who loves the country and
its liberties.
Let me suggest, also, that everyone who creates or cultivates a garden
helps, and helps greatly, to solve the problem of the feeding of the
nations; and that every housewife who practices strict economy puts
herself in the ranks of those who serve the nation. This is the time for
America to correct her unpardonable fault of wastefulness and
extravagance. Let every man and every woman assume the duty of careful,
provident use and expenditure as a public duty, as a dictate of
patriotism which no one can now expect ever to be excused or forgiven
for ignoring.
In the hope that this statement of the needs of the nation and of the
world in this hour of supreme crisis may stimulate those to whom it
comes and remind all who need reminder of the solemn duties of a time
such as the world has never seen before, I beg that all editors and
publishers everywhere will give as prominent publication and as wide
circulation as possible to this appeal. I venture to suggest, also, to
all advertising agencies that they would perhaps render a very
substantial and timely service to the country if they would give it
widespread repetition. And I hope that clergymen will not think the
theme of it an unworthy or inappropriate subject of comment and homily
from their pulpits.
The supreme test of the nation has come. We must all speak, act, and
serve together!