I take it for granted that those who argue thus do not stop to think
what that means. Do they mean that you must be paid, must be bribed,
to make your contribution, a contribution that costs you neither a
drop of blood, nor a tear, when the whole world is in travail and men
everywhere depend upon and call to you to bring them out of bondage
and make the world a fit place to live in again amidst peace and
justice?
Do they mean that you will exact a price, drive a bargain, with the
men who are enduring the agony of this war on the battlefield, in the
trenches, amid the lurking dangers of the sea, or with the bereaved
women and pitiful children, before you will come forward to do your
duty and give some part of your life, in easy, peaceful fashion, for
the things we are fighting for, the things we have pledged our
fortunes, our lives, our sacred honor, to vindicate and
defend--liberty and justice and fair dealing and the peace of
nations?
Of course you will not. It is inconceivable. Your patriotism is of
the same self-denying stuff as the patriotism of the men dead or
maimed on the fields of France, or else it is no patriotism at all.
Let us never speak, then, of profits and of patriotism in the same
sentence, but face facts and meet them. Let us do sound business, but
not in the midst of a mist.
Many a grievous burden of taxation will be laid on this Nation, in
this generation and in the next, to pay for this war; let us see to
it that for every dollar that is taken from the people's pockets it
shall be possible to obtain a dollar's worth of the sound stuffs they
need.