Part 27

My friends, a great day of duty has come, and duty finds a man's soul as no kind of work can ever find it. May I say this? The duty that faces us all now is to serve one another, and no man can afford to make a fortune out of this war. There are men among us who have forgotten that, if they ever saw it. Some of you are old enough--I am old enough--to remember men who made fortunes out of the civil war, and you know how they were regarded by their fellow-citizens. That was a war to save one country--this is a war to save the world. And your relation to the Red Cross is one of the relations which will relieve you of the stigma. You can't give anything to the Government of the United States; it won't accept it. There is a law of Congress against accepting even services without pay. The only thing that the Government will accept is a loan, and duties performed; but it is a great deal better to give than to lend or to pay, and your great channel for giving is the American Red Cross.

Down in your hearts you can't take very much satisfaction in the last analysis in lending money to the Government of the United States, because the interest which you draw will burn your pockets, it is a commercial transaction, and some men have even dared to cavil at the rate of interest, not knowing the incidental commentary that constitutes upon their attitude.

But when you give, something of your something of your soul, something of yourself goes with the gift, particularly when it is given in such form that it never can come back by way of direct benefit to yourself. You know there is the old cynical definition of gratitude as "the lively expectation of favors to come." Well, there is no expectation of favors to come in this kind of giving. These things are bestowed in order that the world may be a fitter place to live in, that men may be succored, that homes may be restored, that suffering may be relieved, that the face of the earth may have the blight of destruction taken away from it, and that wherever force goes there shall go mercy and helpfulness.

And when you give, give absolutely all that you can spare, and don't consider yourself liberal in the giving. If you give with self-adulation, you are not giving at all, you are giving to your own vanity; but if you give until it hurts, then your heartblood goes with it.

INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION

And think what we have here! We call it the American Red Cross, but it is merely a branch of a great international organization, which is not only recognized by the statutes of each of the civilized Governments of the world, but it is recognized by international agreement and treaty, as the recognized and accepted instrumentality of mercy and succor. And one of the deepest stains that rests upon the reputation of the German Army is that they have not respected the Red Cross.

That goes to the root of the matter. They have not respected the instrumentality they themselves participated in setting up as the thing which no man was to touch, because it was the expression of common humanity. We are members, by being members of the American Red Cross, of a great fraternity and comradeship which extends all over the world, and this cross which these ladies bore today is an emblem of Christianity itself.

It fills my imagination, ladies and gentlemen, to think of the women all over this country who are busy tonight and are busy every night and every day doing the work of the Red Cross, busy with a great eagerness to find out the most serviceable thing to do, busy with a forgetfulness of all the old frivolities of their social relationships, ready to curtail the duties of the household in order that they may contribute to this common work that all their hearts are engaged in, and in doing which their hearts become acquainted with each other.

When you think of this, you realize how the people of the United States are being drawn together into a great intimate family whose heart is being used for the service of the soldiers not only, but for the service of civilians, where they suffer and are lost in a maze of distresses and distractions. And you have, then, this noble picture of justice and mercy as the two servants of liberty. For only where men are free do they think the thoughts of comradeship; only where they are free do they think the thoughts of sympathy; only where they are free are they mutually helpful; only where they are free do they realize their dependence upon one another and their comradeship in a common interest and common necessity.

MAKING THE WORLD DEMOCRATIC

I heard a story told the other day that was ridiculous, but it is worth repeating, because it contains the germ of truth. An Indian was enlisted in the army. He returned to the reservation on a furlough. He was asked what he thought of it. He said: "No much good; too much salute; not much shoot." Then he was asked: "Are you going back?" "Yes." "Well, do you know what you are fighting for?" "Yes, me know; fight to make whole damn world Democratic Party." He had evidently misunderstood some innocent sentence of my own.

But, after all, although there is no party purpose in it, he got it right as far as the word "party"--to make the whole world democratic in the sense of community of interest and of purpose; and if you ladies and gentlemen could read some of the touching dispatches which come through official channels, for even through those channels there come voices of humanity that are infinitely pathetic; if you could catch some of those voices that speak the utter longing of oppressed and helpless peoples all over the world, to hear something like the "Battle Hymn of the Republic," to hear the feet of the great hosts of liberty going to set them free, to set their minds free, set their lives free, set their children free, you would know what comes into the heart of those who are trying to contribute all the brains and power they have to this great enterprise of liberty.

I summon you to the comradeship. I summon you in this next week to say how much and how sincerely and how unanimously you sustain the heart of the world.

Address on Revenue Legislation

[DELIVERED BEFORE CONGRESS MAY 27, 1918, BY PRESIDENT WILSON]

It is with unaffected reluctance that I come to ask you to prolong your session long enough to provide more adequate resources for the Treasury for the conduct of the war. I have reason to appreciate as fully as you do how arduous the session has been. Your labors have been severe and protracted. You have passed a long series of measures which required the debate of many doubtful questions of judgment and many exceedingly difficult questions of principle, as well as of practice. The Summer is upon us, in which labor and counsel are twice arduous and are constantly apt to be impaired by lassitude and fatigue. The elections are at hand, and we ought as soon as possible to go and render an intimate account of our trusteeship to the people who delegated us to act for them in the weighty and anxious matters that crowd upon us in these days of critical choice and action. But we dare not go to the elections until we have done our duty to the full. These are days when duty stands stark and naked, and even with closed eyes we know it is there. Excuses are unavailing. We have either done our duty or we have not. The fact will be as gross and plain as the duty itself. In such a case lassitude and fatigue seem negligible enough. The facts are tonic and suffice to freshen the labor.

And the facts are these: Additional revenues must manifestly be provided for. It would be a most unsound policy to raise too large a proportion of them by loan, and it is evident that the $4,000,000,000 now provided for by taxation will not of themselves sustain the greatly enlarged budget to which we must immediately look forward. We cannot in fairness wait until the end of the fiscal year is at hand to apprise our people of the taxes they must pay on their earnings of the present calendar year, whose accountings and expenditures will then be closed. We cannot get increased taxes unless the country knows what they are to be and practices the necessary economy to make them available. Definiteness, early definiteness, as to what its tasks are to be is absolutely necessary for the successful administration of the Treasury. It cannot frame fair and workable regulations in haste; and it must frame its regulations in haste if it is not to know its exact task until the very eve of its performance. The present tax laws are marred, moreover, by inequities which ought to be remedied. Indisputable facts, every one; and we cannot alter or blink them. To state them is argument enough.

WAR PROFITS AND LUXURIES

And yet, perhaps, you will permit me to dwell for a moment upon the situation they disclose. Enormous loans freely spent in the stimulation of industry of almost every sort produce inflations and extravagances which presently make the whole economic structure questionable and insecure, and the very basis of credit is cut away. Only fair, equitably distributed taxation of the widest incidents and drawing chiefly from the sources which would be likely to demoralize credit by their very abundance can prevent inflation and keep our industrial system free of speculation and waste. We shall naturally turn, therefore, I suppose, to war profits and incomes and luxuries for the additional taxes. But the war profits and incomes upon which the increased taxes will be levied will be the profits and incomes of the calendar year 1918. It would be manifestly unfair to wait until the early months of 1919 to say what they are to be. It might be difficult, I should imagine, to run the mill with water that had already gone over the wheel.

Moreover, taxes of that sort will not be paid until June of next year, and the Treasury must anticipate them. It must use the money they are to produce before it is due. It must sell short-time certificates of indebtedness. In the Autumn a much larger sale of long-time bonds must be effected than has yet been attempted. What are the bankers to think of the certificates if they do not certainly know where the money is to come from which is to take them up? and how are investors to approach the purchase of bonds with any sort of confidence or knowledge of their own affairs if they do not know what taxes they are to pay and what economies and adjustments of their business they must effect? I cannot assure the country of a successful administration of the Treasury in 1918 if the question of further taxation is to be left undecided until 1919.

The consideration that dominates every other now, and makes every other seem trivial and negligible, is the winning of the war. We are not only in the midst of the war, we are at the very peak and crisis of it. Hundreds of thousands of our men, carrying our hearts with them and our fortunes, are in the field, and ships are crowding faster and faster to the ports of France and England with regiment after regiment, thousand after thousand, to join them until the enemy shall be beaten and brought to a reckoning with mankind. There can be no pause or intermission. The great enterprise must, on the contrary, be pushed with greater and greater energy. The volume of our might must steadily and rapidly be augmented until there can be no question of resisting it. If that is to be accomplished, gentlemen, money must sustain it to the utmost. Our financial program must no more be left in doubt or suffered to lag than our ordnance program or our ship program or our munition program or our program for making millions of men ready. These others are not programs, indeed, but mere plans upon paper, unless there is to be an unquestionable supply of money.

A TAX ON PROFITEERING

That is the situation, and it is the situation which creates the duty; no choice or preference of ours. There is only one way to meet that duty. We must meet it without selfishness or fear of consequences. Politics is adjourned. The elections will go to those who think least of it; to those who go to the constituencies without explanations or excuses, with a plain record of duty faithfully and disinterestedly performed. I for one, am always confident that the people of this country will give a just verdict upon the service of the men who act for them when the facts such that no man can disguise or conceal them. There is no danger of deceit now. An intense and pitiless light beats upon every man and every action in this tragic plot of war that is now upon the stage. If lobbyists hurry to Washington to attempt to turn what you do in the matter of taxation to their protection or advantage, the light will beat also upon them. There is abundant fuel for the light in the records of the Treasury with regard to profits of every sort. The profiteering that cannot be got at by the restraints of conscience and love of country can be got at by taxation. There is such profiteering now, and the information with regard to it is available and indisputable.

I am advising you to act upon this matter of taxation now, gentlemen, not because I do not know that you can see and interpret the facts and the duty they impose just as well and with as clear a perception of the obligation involved as I can, but because there is a certain solemn satisfaction in sharing with you the responsibilities of such a time. The world never stood in such a case before. Men never before had so clear and so moving a vision of duty. I know that you will begrudge the work to be done here by us no more than the men begrudge us theirs who lie in the trenches and sally forth to their death. There is a stimulating comradeship knitting us all together. And this task to which I invite your immediate consideration will be performed under favorable influences, if we will look to what the country is thinking and expecting and care nothing at all for what is being said and believed in the lobbies of Washington hotels, where the atmosphere seems to make it possible to believe what is believed nowhere else.

SPIRIT OF THE NATION

Have you not felt the spirit of the nation rise and its thought become a single and common thought since these eventful days came in which we have been sending our boys to the other side? I think you must read that thought, as I do, to mean this, that the people of this country are not only united in the resolute purpose to win this war, but are ready and willing to bear any burden and undergo any sacrifice that it may be necessary for them to bear in order to win it. We need not be afraid to tax them, if we lay taxes justly. They know that the war must be paid for, that it is they who must pay for it, and, if the burden is justly distributed and the sacrifice made a common sacrifice from which none escapes who can bear it at all, they will carry it cheerfully and with a sort of solemn pride. I have always been proud to be an American, and was never more proud than now, when all that we have said and all that we have foreseen about our people is coming true. The great days have come when the only thing that they ask for or admire is duty, greatly and adequately. done; when their only wish for America is that she may share the freedom she enjoys, when a great, compelling sympathy wells up in their hearts for men everywhere who suffer and are oppressed, and when they see at last the high uses for which their wealth has been piled up and their mighty power accumulated, and, counting neither blood nor treasure, now that their final day of opportunity has come, rejoice to spend and to be spent through a long night of suffering and terror in order that they and men everywhere may see the dawn of a day of righteousness and justice and peace. Shall we grow weary when they bid us act?

The President's Appeal for Economy

_Secretary McAdoo, realizing that to carry the war through to a successful issue may test this nation's resources to the extreme limit of endurance and self-denial, inaugurated a campaign in the middle of May, 1918, for fuller conservation of food, fuel, labor, and money. In support of this campaign President Wilson issued the following signed letter on May 29:_

This war is one of nations--not of armies--and all of our 100,000,000 people must be economically and industrially adjusted to war conditions if this nation is to play its full part in the conflict. The problem before us is not primarily a financial problem, but rather a problem of increased production of war essentials, and the saving of the materials and the labor necessary for the support and equipment of our army and our navy. Thoughtless expenditure of money for nonessentials uses up the labor of men, the products of the farm, mines, and factories, and overburdens transportation, all of which must be used to the utmost and at their best for war purposes.

The great results which we seek can be obtained only by the participation of every member of the nation, young and old, in a national concerted thrift movement. I therefore urge that our people everywhere pledge themselves, as suggested by the Secretary of the Treasury, to the practice of thrift; to serve the Government to their utmost in increasing production in all fields necessary to the winning of the war; to conserve food and fuel and useful materials of every kind; to devote their labor only to the most necessary tasks; and to buy only those things which are essential to individual health and efficiency; and that the people, as evidence of their loyalty, invest all that they can save in Liberty bonds and war savings stamps.

The securities issued by the Treasury Department are so many of them within the reach of every one that the door of opportunity in this matter is wide open to all of us. To practice thrift in peace times is a virtue and brings great benefit to the individual at all times; with the desperate need of the civilized world today for materials and labor with which to end the war, the practice of individual thrift is a patriotic duty and a necessity.

I appeal to all who now own either Liberty bonds or war savings stamps to continue to practice economy and thrift and to appeal to all who do not own Government securities to do likewise and purchase them to the extent of their means. The man who buys Government securities transfers the purchasing power of his money to the United States Government until after this war, and to that same degree does not buy in competition with the Government.

I earnestly appeal to every man, woman, and child to pledge themselves on or before the 28th of June to save constantly and to buy as regularly as possible the securities of the Government; and to do this, so far as possible, through membership in war savings societies. The 28th of June ends this special period of enlistment in the great volunteer army of production and saving here at home. May there be none unenlisted on that day!

WOODROW WILSON.

Memorial Day Proclamation, 1918

_Following is the proclamation issued by the President of the United States for Decoration Day observance, May 30, 1918:_

Whereas, The Congress of the United States on the second day of April last passed the following resolution:

Resolved, by the Senate, (the House of Representatives concurring,) That, it being a duty peculiarly incumbent in a time of war humbly and devoutly to acknowledge our dependence on Almighty God and to implore His aid and protection, the President of the United States be, and is hereby, respectfully requested to recommend a day of public humiliation, prayer, and fasting, to be observed by the people of the United States with religious solemnity and the offering of fervent supplications to Almighty God for the safety and welfare of our cause, His blessings on our arms, and a speedy restoration of an honorable and lasting peace to the nations of the earth; and,

Whereas, It has always been the reverent habit of the people of the United States to turn in humble appeal to Almighty God for His guidance in the affairs of their common life;

Now, therefore, I, Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim Thursday, the 30th day of May, a day already freighted with sacred and stimulating memories, a day of public humiliation, prayer and fasting, and do exhort my fellow-citizens of all faiths and creeds to assemble on that day in their several places of worship and there, as well as in their homes, to pray Almighty God that He may forgive our sins and shortcomings as a people and purify our hearts to see and love the truth, to accept and defend all things that are just and right, and to purpose only those righteous acts and judgments which are in conformity with His will; beseeching Him that He will give victory for our armies as they fight for freedom, wisdom to those who take counsel on our behalf in these days of dark struggle and perplexity and steadfastness to our people to make sacrifice to the utmost in support of what is just and true, bringing us at last the peace in which men's hearts can be at rest because it is founded upon mercy, justice, and good-will.

In witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

_Done in the District of Columbia, this eleventh day of May, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and eighteen, and of the independence of the United States the one hundred and forty-second._

WOODROW WILSON.

_By the President:_

ROBERT LANSING,

Secretary of State.

Mexico and the United States

The President's Pledge

President Wilson delivered the following important speech to a delegation of Mexican editors at the White House June 7, 1918:

I have never received a group of men who were more welcome than you are because it has been one of my distresses during the period of my Presidency that the Mexican people did not more thoroughly understand the attitude of the United States toward Mexico. I think I can assure you, and I hope you have had every evidence of the truth of my assurance, that that attitude is one of sincere friendship--not merely the sort of friendship which prompts one not to do his neighbor any harm, but the sort of friendship which earnestly desires to do his neighbor service.

My own policy and the policy of my own Administration toward Mexico was at every point based upon this principle; that the internal settlement of the affairs of Mexico was none of our business; that we had no right to interfere with or dictate to Mexico in any particular with regard to her own affairs.

Take one aspect of our relations which at one time may have been difficult for you to understand. When we sent our troops into Mexico our sincere desire was nothing else than to assist you to get rid of the man who was making the settlement of your affairs for the time being impossible. We had no desire to use our troops for any other purpose, and I was in hopes that by assisting in that way and thereupon immediately withdrawing the troops I might give you substantial proof of the truth of the assurances that I had given your Government through President Carranza.

GERMAN INTRIGUES

And at the present time it distresses me to learn that certain influences, which I assume to be German in their origin, are trying not only to make a wrong impression, but to give an absolutely untrue account of the things that happen.

You know distressing things have been happening just off our coast; you know of vessels that have been sunk. I yesterday received a quotation from a paper in Guadalajara which stated that thirteen of our battleships had been sunk off the Capes of Chesapeake.