Part 14

The President has now personally requested Mr. Henry Ford to come forward as his personal candidate for the Senate in Michigan. This action cannot be reconciled either with the President’s statement that politics must be adjourned or with the reasons he alleged for opposing Mr. Lenroot. No man was a more intense pacifist, no man struggled harder against preparedness, no man was more eagerly hailed as an ally by the pro-Germans than Mr. Ford during the two and a half years before we did our duty and entered the war. He is not a Republican; he is not a Democrat. He supported Mr. Wilson on the “he kept us out of war” issue. Mr. Wilson can only desire his election on grounds of personal politics, as Mr. Wilson wishes as associates not strong men, but servants, and from the servants he demands servility even more than service. I have not the slightest political feeling when politics comes into hostile contact with patriotism and Americanism. There is no public servant whom during the past year I have supported more heartily than the Democratic Senator, Chamberlain. I oppose Mr. Ford, because in the great crisis I feel that his election would be a calamity from the standpoint of far-sighted and patriotic Americanism. I would oppose him if he had been nominated by the Republican Party. I oppose him in precisely the same spirit now that he has been nominated on personal grounds by Mr. Wilson.

HATS OFF TO THE INTERNATIONAL TYPOGRAPHICAL UNION

JUNE 27, 1918

The published reports of the International Typographical Union, issued from Indianapolis, make a very remarkable showing and put that organization high on the honor roll of America for the Great War.

Forty-one hundred journeymen members of the union and seven hundred apprentices are in the military and naval forces of the United States and Canada. Seventy-five members have already paid with their lives for their devotion to their country. The union has paid $22,000 mortuary benefits to the widows, orphans, and mothers of these men. The union, through its executive council, has invested $90,000 in the Liberty loans, and subordinate local unions and individual members have invested $3,000,000 in the Liberty loans.

These are war-time activities. During the same period the International Typographical Union has continued all its ordinary benefit works. It has paid over $350,000 to fifteen hundred old-age pensioners, over $300,000 in mortuary benefits, and $170,000 to the Union Printers’ Home at Colorado Springs. Every dollar has been paid by members of the organization in the form of regular dues and assessments. The union neither solicits nor accepts contributions to its benefit funds.

During the same period the union has expended only $1200 for strike expenses. The union acts in thoroughgoing patriotic fashion on the conviction that there should be no strikes or lockouts during the war. Its officers regard themselves as volunteers in the army for the preservation of industrial peace, at least for the duration of the war, and I hope for long after the war. Such conduct offers a striking contrast to the action of certain corporations which during this war have refused to permit their employees to organize. Labor has as much right as capital to organize. It is tyranny to forbid the exercise of this right, just as it is tyranny to misuse the power acquired by organization. The people of the United States do not believe in tyranny and do believe in coöperation.

The International Typographical Union has offered an admirable example of Americanism and patriotism. Its attitude is typical of the attitude of organized labor generally. Hats off to the International Typographical Union! And hats off to the working-men and working-women of the United States!

THE PERFORMANCE OF A GREAT PUBLIC DUTY

JULY 3, 1918

It is announced from Washington that the President has been converted to the need of universal military training of our young men, as a permanent policy. This is excellent. If this policy is forthwith incorporated into our laws, it will represent an immense national advance. In the first place, it will guarantee us against a repetition of the humiliating experiences of the last four years, when our helpless refusal to prepare invited Germany’s attack upon us and then forced us to rely entirely upon our allies to protect us from that attack while for over a year we slowly made ready to defend ourselves. In the next place, it will immeasurably increase the moral and physical efficiency of the young men who are trained and fit them both to do better for themselves and to perform in better fashion the tasks of American citizenship. Finally it is essential that the policy should be adopted now while we are at war and therefore while our people are awake to the needs of the situation. As soon as peace comes, there will be a revival of the sinister agitation of the pro-German or other anti-American leaders and of the silly clamor of the pacifists, all of whom will with brazen folly again reiterate that preparedness ends with war, and that, anyhow, all war can be averted by signing scraps of paper. The adoption at once of the policy of obligatory universal military training will be the performance of a great public duty.

For three years the foremost advocates of this policy have pointed out that it can advantageously be combined with a certain amount of industrial training. It is earnestly to be hoped that this element of industrial training will be incorporated in the law. Of course, in such case the length of service with the colors in the field, aside from preliminary training in the higher school grades, ought to be a year, so as to avoid superficiality. Credit should be given the graduates of certain scholastic institutions or to individuals who speedily attain a high degree of proficiency, and for them the time of service could be shortened. All officers or other candidates for officers’ training schools would be chosen from among the best of the men who had gone through the training, without regard to anything except their fitness. This would represent the embodiment in our army of the democratic principle which insists upon an equal chance for all, equal justice for all, and the need for leadership, and therefore for special rewards for leadership. The industrial training could be so shaped as to emphasize the need that hard workers who are efficient should become in a real sense partners in industry, and that insistence upon efficiency should be accompanied by a fair division of the rewards of efficiency, and by insistence that the work should be made healthful and interesting, so that its faithful performance would be a matter of pride and pleasure.

At this moment our training camps are huge universities, huge laboratories of fine American citizenship. Let us make them permanent institutions. They develop both power of initiative and power of obedience. They inculcate self-reliance and self-respect. They also inculcate respect for others and readiness for discipline, which means readiness to use our collective power in such shape as to make us threefold more efficient than we have been. To make these camps permanent training schools for all our young men would mean the greatest boon this Nation could receive.

REPEAL THE CHARTER OF THE GERMAN-AMERICAN ALLIANCE

JULY 11, 1918

The United States Senate has struck an effective blow against the Hun within our gates by unanimously voting to repeal the charter of the German-American Alliance. It is earnestly to be hoped that the House will at once follow suit with like unanimity. The Alliance has been thoroughly mischievous in its activities. It has acted in the interest of Germany and against the interest of America. It has tried to perpetuate Germanism as a separate nationality with a separate language in the United States; it has attacked our allies; it has encouraged disloyalty; it was decorated by the Kaiser for its services to Germany. It has endeavored to prostitute our politics to German needs. I have personally had the honor of being specially singled out by it for attack. It received money from the Brewers’ Association for the campaign against prohibition.

At this time, when the campaign of German frightfulness is in full blast, when the Prussianized Germany of the Hohenzollerns is steadily adding to its list of literally unforgivable offenses against civilization, there is no room in this country for any organization, great or small, which either defends Germany or is lukewarm in the great crusade against her in which America will henceforth play a leading part. Germany has recently scored another victory for frightfulness by sinking a Canadian hospital ship without warning and drowning two hundred persons, including women nurses. The ship was a mercy vessel, not a warship, and was so distinctly marked that it was impossible to mistake it. The attack upon it was sheer murder. Yet the German people tolerate, applaud, and approve the action of the German Government in this continuous and methodically organized campaign of murder, rape, and outrage.

The most complete exposure of Germany’s infamous purpose in forcing this dreadful war upon the world is contained in the pamphlet written by the leading German steel magnate, Herr August Thyssen. This pamphlet has been translated into English, has been put into the official record by Senator Owen, of Oklahoma, has been printed in full in the San Francisco Argonaut and Baltimore Manufacturers’ Record, and circulated in pamphlet form by Mr. J. G. Butler, Jr., of Youngstown, Ohio. It is accessible to everybody. Herr Thyssen has no conception of the monstrous turpitude of the plan which he supported. His only complaint is that he and the other German financiers were fooled by the German Kaiser and the German Government, who promised them victory and failed to furnish it. He proves that German capitalism was just as responsible for the war as German militarism (which incidentally shows the peculiar infamy of the Russian Bolshevists and American Socialists and their allies in playing Germany’s game). He shows that Germany’s ruthless brutality was equaled by her sordid greed. He showed that the Hohenzollern Government, through the Emperor and the Chancellor, deliberately planned the war over a year and a half before it broke out, and at that time and on several occasions gathered the leading business men of Germany, informed them of the plans, and got their support by holding out the war as one of sheer plunder. The other nations were to be attacked simply in order to rob them naked. Herr Thyssen himself was promised thirty thousand acres in Australia. The Emperor particularly dwelt on the conquest of India, saying that the English allowed the vast Indian revenue to be used for and by the Indians themselves, but that Germany after her conquest would turn the whole “Golden Stream into the Fatherland.” There could be no finer tribute to England when compared with Germany than that which is thus furnished by the Emperor.

In point of international morality the Germany of the Hohenzollerns has become the wild beast of the nations. Whoever directly or indirectly works for her or against our allies or who is merely lukewarm in the war is an enemy of this country, and an enemy of all mankind.

EVERY MAN HAS A RIGHT TO ONE COUNTRY

JULY 15, 1918

Every man ought to love his country. If he does not love his country and is not eager to serve her, he is a worthless creature and should be contemptuously thrown out of the country when possible, and at any rate debarred from all rights of citizenship in the country. He is only entitled to one country. If he claims loyalty to two countries, he is necessarily a traitor to at least one country. If he claims to be loyal to both Germany and America, he is necessarily a traitor to America. No man can be a good American now unless he is an enemy of Germany and Germany’s allies and a stanch supporter of America’s allies.

But it is just as wicked and just as un-American to deny the loyal American, of whatever origin, the full benefit of his allegiance to one country as it is to permit the disloyal American to exercise a treacherous alternative allegiance to two countries. Every man has a right to one country. He has a right to love and serve that country and to feel that it is absolutely his country and that he has in it every right possessed by any one else. It is our duty to require the man of German blood who is an American citizen to give up all allegiance to Germany whole-heartedly and without on his part any mental reservation whatever. If he does this, it becomes no less our duty to give him the full rights of an American, including our loyal respect and friendship without on our part any mental reservation whatever. The duties are reciprocal, and from the standpoint of American patriotism one is as important as the other.

There has been nothing finer in this war, nothing of better augury for the future of America, than the high courage and splendid loyalty shown by the American soldiers and sailors who are of German blood. Relatively to their number they have come forward as freely into the ranks of our fighting men as the Americans of any other stock, and all alike have shown the same soldierly efficiency, the same devoted patriotism, and, when the need arose, the same heroism. The crew of the torpedo destroyer who face the submarine, and the airmen of the battle planes whose lives are in peril every hour, and the infantry stoggers and doughboys and marines who stand the killing and suffer the grueling hardship and misery of the line fighting, all alike number in their ranks relatively just as many Americans of German as of any other blood. Any one can see this who will look over the lists of casualties and the lists of men cited for deeds of high gallantry. The official reports of the German officers bear unintended testimony to the intense and patriotic Americanism of these men whom the Hohenzollern officials sneer at as “half Americans,” and who, even when taken prisoners, are admitted by the German army officers to “express without hesitation purely American sentiments.” In other words, the Pan-German propaganda on behalf of German _kultur_ has broken down in America, and as a consequence there are no people in this country so hated in the Prussianized Germany of the Hohenzollerns as the Americans of German blood.

The very worst enemies of these Americans have been the traitors and dupes of traitors who have been during the last few years the leaders of the German-American Alliance and of the newspapers in German or English who have backed up the Alliance and similar organizations. The dissolution by law of the Alliance and the gradual change of German newspapers into newspapers published in English will be of benefit to true Americans of German blood more than any other of our citizens. But the Americans of other blood must remember that the man who in good faith and without reservations gives up another country for this must in return receive exactly the same rights, not merely legal, but social and spiritual, that other Americans proudly possess. We of the United States belong to a new and separate nationality. We are all Americans and nothing else, and each, without regard to his birthplace, creed, or national origin, is entitled to exactly the same rights as all other Americans.

MURDER, TREASON, AND PARLOR ANARCHY

JULY 18, 1918

One of the cheapest methods by which some well-meaning, silly people, and some sinister people who are not well-meaning, achieve a reputation for broad-minded liberality in matters relating to social reforms is to champion or excuse criminality on the ground that it is due to social conditions. The parlor anarchist or parlor Bolshevist is not an attractive person, and he may be mischievous when he joins the genuine anarchist, the “direct” man with the bomb, because selfish and unpatriotic politicians then find it advantageous to pander to both. This species of parlor anarchist appeals to emotional persons of superficial cultivation, whether writers, college men, sham economists, or sham religious and charitable workers, because it makes no demand either upon robust vigor of soul or thoroughness of mental process. At the moment it manifests itself in sympathy for the I.W.W. and for convicted dynamiters and murderers like Mooney.

There are honest and ignorant working-men who join the I.W.W. because they are misled or because in some given locality industrial conditions really are intolerable. I have heard on good authority of logging camps, for instance, where the men joined the I.W.W. and practiced sabotage because they were treated tyrannically and foolishly and where good treatment turned them into good citizens. But I know far more numerous instances in which the leaders have simply been thugs and murderous malefactors whose criminality was not in the least due to social conditions, but to their own foul natures. By all means let us remedy the social conditions that are wrong, but let us shun, as we would shun the plague, that mawkish sentimentality of downright moral and physical cowardice which fears to call murder, treason, violence, arson, and rape by their right names and treat them as crimes to be punished with relentless severity.

Actually there have been make-believe social reformers who have sought to excuse a brute who raped a little girl on the ground that social conditions made him what he was, and others who on similar grounds have protested against the condign punishment of men who burn haystacks, ruin machinery, dynamite peace parades, and, in the interest of German agents, destroy machinery in mines or munition factories. Any man who is misled in these matters can get full information by buying a pamphlet recently written by a former Socialist, Mr. Everett Harri, called “The I.W.W. an Auxiliary of the German Espionage System.” The simple truth is that the men who lead and give the tone to the I.W.W. are more dangerous criminals than an equal number of white-slavers and black-handers, and to give aid and comfort to one set of enemies of the Nation is as bad as to give aid and comfort to the others.

The ablest, most far-sighted, and most patriotic of the heads of organized labor are more opposed to the I.W.W. as it is at present handled than are any other persons in the Nation. In just the same way the farmers whose resentment of wrongdoing is keenest should repudiate the Non-Partisan League just as long as it submits to such leadership as that of most of the men who are at present at its head, and just so long as it stands for covert disloyalty, as it has recently done on so many different occasions in so many different places. I am well aware that great numbers of honest and loyal farmers of high character have joined the League, because they rightly think that many of the economic conditions now affecting the farmer imperatively call for remedy. There are any number of men like myself who will join with the farmers in any sane and patriotic movement to remedy these conditions, no matter how radical such a movement may be. But we will join with no movement whose leaders are tainted with disloyalty, or who refuse to give to others the same square deal they demand for themselves, or who fail to insist that here in America the one organization to which we all of us owe a loyalty greater than is any other, greater than to any labor union or farmers’ league or business or professional body, is the union of the entire American people.

BACK UP THE FIGHTING MEN AT THE FRONT

JULY 26, 1918

There is no American worth calling such whose veins do not thrill with pride when he reads of what has been done by General Pershing and his gallant army in France. The soldiers over there who wear the American uniform have made all good Americans forever their debtors. Now and always afterward we of this country will walk with our heads high because of the men who face death and wounds, and so many of whom have given their lives fighting for this Nation and for the great ideals of humanity across the seas.

But we must not let our pride and our admiration evaporate in mere pride, in mere admiration of what others have done. We must put the whole strength of this Nation back of the fighting men at the front. We owe it to them. We owe it at least as much to the gallant Allies, who for near four years fought the great battle that was our battle, no less than theirs.

At last we have begun to come to their assistance, but let us solemnly realize that we came very late, and that it is a dreadful thing if we waste one hour that can now be saved, or weaken in the smallest degree any effort that can be made. The inability, or refusal, of Bolshevist Russia to do her part in the great war for liberty and democracy has cast a terrible added burden upon the Allies. On the eastern front this has meant the temporary Allied ruin and the freeing of the armies of the autocracy for action against the western peoples. England, France, and Belgium for four years and Italy for over three years have been fighting the battle of civilization. Their man power is terribly depleted. Thank Heaven, we have got some hundreds of thousands of soldiers across in time to be a real element in saving Paris. Our first duty, if we wish to win the war, is to save Paris. Temporarily, at least, and I hope permanently, we have done our part in this respect. But the least faltering, the least letting-up, or failure in pushing forward our preparations and our assistance, would be dangerous to the Allied cause and a wicked desertion of our allies.

From now on America should make this peculiarly America’s war. From now on we should take the burden of the war upon our shoulders. We should move forward at once with all the force that there is in us. We should not allow the war to drag for so much as a day, and above all we should not permit our people to fall under the spell of pacifist dreams or possible pacifist actions. There should not be intermission of so much as a week in sending our troops across the seas. This war won’t be won by food, or by money, or by savings, or by Thrift Stamps, or by the Red Cross, or by anything else, although all of these will help win the war. It will be won by the valor of the fighting men at the front, and this valor will fail unless our fighting men at the front are millions strong.

Every week this summer and fall we should be putting fresh troops by scores of thousands across the ocean, and now, to-day, this week, we should provide for placing a larger army in the field next spring than Germany itself, or France and England combined. We are a more populous, a richer country than Germany, we have a larger population than Great Britain and France combined. These nations have fought for four years. We have only just begun to fight. Let us at once mobilize the whole man power of this country between the ages of nineteen and fifty or sixty. The draft should take in all men of nineteen, even if they were not sent abroad until they were twenty years old. Let us act at once. Perhaps we can beat the Germans this year if we keep pouring our troops over with the utmost speed. But let us take no chances. Let us proceed upon the assumption that Germany will fight next spring, and therefore let us act instantly so that by spring we will have in France an army of fighting men, exclusive of non-combatants and exclusive of home dépôts, which shall amount to four million armed soldiers at the very least. Let us fight beside the French, the British, the Italians, and be ready to fight instantly in the Balkan Peninsula and in Asia Minor against the Germans and all her vassal states. There must be no delay, not by so much as one hour, and no letting-up for one moment in the cause of our entire strength.

THE AMERICANS WHOM WE MOST DELIGHT TO HONOR