_United States Senator From Idaho_
[DELIVERED IN THE SENATE, MARCH 18, 1918, AT THE CLIMAX OF A DEBATE OVER
THE FIXING OF WHEAT PRICES]
Mr. President: The German historian, Professor Meyer, in a book written
since the beginning of the war, in which he sums up the issues involved,
or rather the issue, because it all resolves itself into one, uses this
language: "The truth of the whole matter undoubtedly is that the time
has arrived when two distinct forms of State organization must face each
other in a life-and-death struggle."
That is undoubtedly the understanding and belief of those who are
responsible for this war. It is coming to be the understanding and
belief of those who have had the war forced upon them. We have finally
put aside the tragedy at the Bosnian capital and the wrongs inflicted
upon Belgium as the moving causes of the war. They were but the prologue
to the imperial theme. We now see and understand clearly and
unmistakably the cause at all times lying back of these things. Upon the
one hand are Magna Charta, the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of
Independence, the Constitution of the United States, and the principles
of human liberty which they embody and preserve. Upon the other hand is
that peculiar form of State organization which, in the language of the
Emperor, rests alone upon the strength of the army and whose highest
creed finds expression in the words of one of its greatest advocates
that war is a part of the eternal order instituted by God. We go back to
Runnymede, where fearless men wrenched from the hands of power habeas
corpus and the trial by jury. They point us to Breslau and Molwitz,
where Frederick the Great, in violation of his plighted word,
inaugurated the rule of fraud and force and laid the foundation for that
mighty structure whose central and dominating principle is that of
power.
[Illustration: SENATOR WILLIAM E. BORAH]
It is that power with which we are at war today. Shall men, shall the
people, be governed by some remorseless and soulless entity softly
called the "State" or shall the instrumentalities of government yield
alone and at all times to the wants and necessities, the hopes and
aspirations, of the masses? That is now the issue. Nothing should longer
conceal it. It is but another and more stupendous phase of the old
struggle, a struggle as ancient and as inevitable as the thirst for
power and the love of liberty, a struggle in which men have fought and
sacrificed all the way from Marathon to Verdun.
It seems strange now, and it will seem more extraordinary to those who
come after us, that we did not recognize from the beginning that this
was the issue. But, obscured by the débris of European life, confused
with the dynastic quarrels and racial bitterness of the Old World, it
was difficult to discern, and still more difficult to realize, that the
very life of our institutions was at stake, that the scheme of the
enemy, amazing and astounding, was not alone to control territory and
dominate commerce, but to change the drift of human progress and to
readjust the standards of the world's civilization. Perhaps, too, our
love of peace, our traditional friendship for all nations, lulled
suspicion and discouraged inquiry. Be that as it may, there can be no
doubt now.
Whatever the cause, however perverse the fates which bring us to this
crisis, we are called upon not to settle questions of territory or
establish new spheres of national activity, but to defend the
institutions under which we live. Who doubts should we fail that the
whole theory and system of government for which we have labored and
struggled, our whole conception of civilization, would be discredited
utterly? Who but believes that, should we lose, militarism would be the
searching test of all Governments and that the world would be an armed
camp harried and tortured and decimated by endless wars?
No; we can no longer doubt the issue, and, notwithstanding some
discouraging facts, we must not doubt the result. We are simply meeting
the test which brave men have met before, for this issue has been fought
over and over again for 3,000 years. Islam's fanaticism was grounded in
the same design and made of the same stuff, but it broke upon the valor
of Charles Martel's men at Tours. But the conflict was not conclusive.
The elder Napoleon was obsessed by the same dream of world dominion, the
same passion for military glory, that now obsesses those against whom we
war. But he, too, saw his universal sceptre depart when chance and
fate, which sometimes war on the side of liberty, turned from him on the
field of Waterloo. And now the issue is again made up, and again this
dream of world dominion, this passion for military glory, torments the
souls of our would-be masters. And now again somewhere on the
battlefields of Europe the same fate awaits the hosts of irresponsible
power. In such a contest and with such an issue we cannot lose; it would
not harmonize with the law of human progress.
It has been the proud belief of some that not only would this war result
in greater prestige and greater security for free institutions, but that
it would effectuate the spread of democracy throughout Europe. We all
hope for great things, for we believe in the ultimate triumph of free
institutions, but we must not expect these things out of hand. The
broken sobs of nations struggling to be independent and free so often
heard in that part of the world and then heard no more, the story of
Russia just now being written in contention and blood, admonishes anew
that the republican road to safety and stability is encompassed by all
kinds of trials and beset by countless perils. Democracy is the severest
test of character which can be put upon a people, and must be learned
and acquired in the rigid school of experience. It cannot be handed
whole and complete to any people, though every member of the community
were a Socrates.
But what we have determined in this crisis, as I understand it, is that
we will keep the road of democracy open. No one shall close it. If any
nation shall hereafter rise to the sublime requirement of
self-government and choose to go that way, it shall have the right to do
so. Above all things we have determined, cost what it may in treasure
and blood, that this experiment here upon this Western Continent shall
justify the faith of its builders, that there shall remain here in all
the integrity of its powers neither wrenched nor marred by the passions
of war from within nor humbled nor dishonored by military power from
without, the Republic of the fathers; that since the challenge has been
thrown down that this is a war unto death between two opposing theories
of government we are determined that whatever else happens as a result
of this war this form of organization, this theory of state, this last
great hope, this fruition of 130 years of struggle and toil, "shall not
perish from the earth."
So, Sir, stripped of all incidental and confusing things, the problem
which our soldiers will help to solve is whether the theory of
government exemplified in the dynasty of the Hohenzollerns or the theory
of government exemplified in the faith of Abraham Lincoln shall prevail.
It is after all a war of ideals, a clash of systems, a death struggle of
ideals.
Amid the sacrilege of war it is our belief that the old order passeth.
In such a contest there is little room for compromise. We can no more
quit than Washington could have quit at Valley Forge. We can no more
compromise than Lincoln could have compromised after Chancellorsville.
We can and should keep the issue clear of all selfish and imperialistic
ambitions, but the issue itself cannot be compromised. Cost what it may
in treasure and blood, the burden, as if by fate, has been laid upon us,
and we must meet it manfully and successfully. To compromise is to
acknowledge defeat. The policies of Frederick the Great, which would
make of all human souls mere cogs in a vast military machine, and the
policies of Washington, which would make government the expression and
the instrument of popular power, are contending for supremacy on the
battlefield of Europe. Just that single, simple, stupendous issue,
beside which all other issues in this war are trivial, must have a
settlement as clear and conclusive as the settlement at Runnymede or
Yorktown. To lose sight of this fact is to miss the supreme purpose of
the war, and to permit it to be embarrassed or belittled by questions of
territory is to betray the cause of civilization. And to fail to settle
it clearly and conclusively is to fail in the most vital and sublime
task ever laid upon a people.
We need not prophesy now when victory will come. Neither is it
profitable to speculate how it will come. If it is a real and not a
sham peace, we will have no trouble in recognizing it when it does come.
Whether it shall come in the bloody and visible triumph of arms or, as
we hope, through the overthrow and destruction of militarism by the
people of the respective countries, we do not know. But that it will
come we confidently believe. Indeed, if the principles of right and the
precepts of liberty are not a myth, we know it will come.
It has been said by some one that it was not possible for Napoleon to
win at Waterloo, not on account of Wellington, not on account of
Blücher, but on account of the unchanging laws of liberty and justice.
Let us call something of this faith to our own contest. Let us go
forward in the belief that it is not possible in the morning of the
twentieth century of the Christian civilization for militarism, for
brute force, to triumph. It would be in contravention to every law,
human and Divine, upon which rests the happiness and preservation of the
human family. It would be to place brute force first in the Divine
economy of things. It would be to place might over right, and in the
last and final struggle that cannot be done.
No; we cannot lose. We must win. The only question is whether we shall,
through efficiency and concerted and united action, win without
unnecessary loss of life, unnecessary waste of treasure, or whether we
shall, through lack of unity in spirit and purpose, win only after
fearful and unnecessary sacrifices.
It has often been said since the war began, Mr. President, that a
republic cannot make war. I trample the doctrine under my feet. I scorn
the faithless creed as the creed of cowards and traitors. If a republic
cannot make war, if it cannot stand the ordeal of conflict, why in the
name of the living God are our boys on the western front? Are they there
to suffer and die for a miserable craft that can only float in the
serene breeze of the Summer seas and must sink or drive for port at the
first coming on of the storm? No; they are there to defend a craft which
is equal to every conflict and superior to every foe--the triumph and
the pride of all the barks that have battled with the ocean of time.
A republic can make war. It can make war successfully and triumphantly
and remain a republic every hour of the conflict. The genius who
presided over the organization of this Republic, whose impressive force
was knit into every fibre of our national organization, was the greatest
soldier, save one, of the modern world; and the most far-visioned leader
and statesman of all time. He knew that though devoted to peace the time
would come when the Republic would have to make war. Over and over again
he solemnly warned his countrymen to be ever ready and always prepared.
He intended, therefore, that this Republic should make war and make war
effectively, and the Republic which Washington framed and baptized with
his love can make war. Let these faithless recreants cease to preach
their pernicious doctrine.
Sir, this theory, this belief that a self-governing people cannot make
war without forfeiting their freedom and their form of government is
vicious enough to have been kenneled in some foreign clime. A hundred
million people knit together by the ties of a common patriotism, united
in spirit and purpose, conscious of the fact that their freedom is
imperiled, and exerting their energies and asserting their powers
through the avenues and machinery of a representative Republic is the
most masterful enginery of war yet devised by man. It has in it a power,
an element of strength, which no military power of itself can bring into
effect.
The American soldier, a part of the life of his nation, imbued with
devotion to his country, has something in him that no system or mere
military training and discipline as applied to automatons of an absolute
Government can ever give. The most priceless heritage which this war
will leave to a war-torn and weary world is the demonstrated fact that a
free people of a free Government can make war successfully and
triumphantly, can defy and defeat militarism and preserve through it all
their independence, their freedom, and the integrity of their
institutions.