REDEDICATING AMERICA
Life and Recent Speeches of
WARREN G. HARDING
%
FREDERICK E. SCHORTEMEIER
Formerly Private Secretary to United State*
Senator Harry S. New; now Secretary
Indiana Republican State
Committee
WITH FOREWORD BY WILL H. HAYS
Republican National Chairman
O27
INDIANAPOLIS
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY PUBLISHERS
COPYRIGHT 1920 THE BOBBS- MERRILL COMPANY
Printed in the United States of America
PRESS OF
BRAUNWORTH & CO.
BOOK MANUFACTURERS
BROOKLYN. N. V.
FOREWORD
SENATOR HARDING possesses just those vital quali- ties of mind and heart necessary to-day and in the time just ahead. His poise of mind, his soundness of judgment, his hold on fundamentals, his appreciation of the needs of to-day and of to-morrow, his love of the people from whom he came and of whom he is one, and his faith in them; his magnificent grasp of large affairs, his great native ability and his training in statesmanship, his regard for the opinion of others, his experience and success in the handling of men, his proper appreciation of his country's position as a re- sponsible factor in the world's future, but with the fullest realization of the absolute importance of our own supreme nationalism, his sterling Americanism, his righteous character and manhood, and withal his thorough humanness, all qualify him in the most ex- ceptional degree for the tremendous responsibilities which will soon be his. He will make a splendid candi- date and a great president. The country will love him, honor him, trust him and follow him, just as all who know him love and trust him, and the world will honor him.
WILL H. HAYS. AUGUST 1, 1920
CONTENTS
I WARREN GAMALIEL HARDING , <• r * . 11
II SPEECH OF ACCEPTANCE. Address at Formal No- tification of His Nomination for the Presidency, At Marion, Ohio, July 22, 1920 ...... 34
Constitution Charts the Way — Popular Gov- ernment to Be Restored — Republican Senators Saved America — Will Preserve American In- dependence — To Restore Formal Peace — In- dependent Aid to World Justice — To Restore Constitution Must Encourage Competition—- Increased Production Great Need — Industrial Cooperation Urged — Classism Decried — De- liberate Readjustment Sought — The Railroad Problem — Highway Development Advocated — Deflation of Finance — Thrift and Economy Essential — Agricultural Cooperation Urged — • Irrigation and Reclamation — Specific Pro- posals — Importance of Law Enforcement — Tribute to World War Veterans— Woman Suffrage — Confidence in America.
JII SAFEGUARDING AMERICA. Address on the League of Nations in the United States Senate, Sep- tember 11, 1919 ........ *.»-'« 62
Nationality Is Paramount — Involvements of League — America Essential Factor in War — Secret Bartering Unheeded — America's Inter- ests Ignored — Nothing Substantial Offered — Supergoyernment Created— Disarmament Not Accomplished — Arbitration Not Assured — Ar- ticle Ten Mere Phantom — Fought for Amer- ican Rights — Many Peoples Not Heard — Avenue to Unending War — To Preserve Americanism — Why America Entered War — > Proclamation of Neutrality Recalled — Forced to Declare War— Our Task Completed— Not Committed to League — Autocracy of Peace — Nationality Sacrificed — American Conscience Fixes Obligation — Respect for American
CONTENTS— Continued
CHAPTER PAGE
Rights — Significance of Nationalism — Amer- ican Safety at Stake — Patriots Save America — Reservations Are Essential — Righteousness Is' Goal — Must Preserve Inheritance — Must Save Soul of America.
IV AMERICANISM. Address Delivered before the Ohio Society of New York, at the Waldorf Ho- tel, New York Cit>, January 10, 1920 . . .. 103 Birth of Americanism — Constitution Is Sacred — Duty of Citizenship — Must Practise Amer- icanism— Devotion to Duty — Back to Normal »— Supremacy of Law — Civil Liberty at Stake *— Honest Living Is Solution — Must Preserve Nationalism — America First
V THEODORE ROOSEVELT. Ohio Legislative Memo- rial Address before a Joint Convention of the Eighty-third General Assembly, January 29, 1919 115 Eminent American — Exalted by Americanism - — Sought Foreign Service — Extraordinary Manhood — Man of Action — Awakened Na- tional Conscience — Made America Better.
VI RELATIONS WITH THEODORE ROOSEVELT. Public
Address at Topeka, Kansas, March 8, 1920 . . 123
.VII WILLIAM McKiNLEY. Address at the McKin- ley Memorial Dinner, Niles, Ohio, January 29,
1920 125
Pioneer of Expansion — American Nationalist —A Partisan Republican — Cooperated with Congress — Political Parties Essential — Re- stored Prosperity in 1896 — Apostle of Protect- ive Tariff — His Leadership Is Inspiration — Memory Gives Confidence.
VIII GEORGE WASHINGTON. Address Delivered Feb- ruary 22, 1918, at Washington's Birthday Celebration before the Sons and Daughters of the Revolution, at Washington, D. C. ... 136 Founders Divinely Inspired — Developed Amer- ican Soul — Duty to Preserve Republic — Advice of Washington — Factionalism Decried — To Preserve National Rights.
IX ABRAHAM LINCOLN. Address before Lincoln
Club, Portland, Maine, February 13, 1920 . . 145
CONTENTS— Continued
CHAPTER PAGE
Duty of Citizenship — Exponent of Nationality —America Affords Equal Opportunity.
X GENERAL GRANT'S REPUBLICANISM. Address at Grant Dinner, Middlesex Club, Boston, Massa- chusetts, 1916 149
Political Principles Important— Equal Oppor- tunity Is Basis — Republicanism Means Pros- perity— Need Protective Policies — Sane Pro- gressivism Needed— Renewed Consecration- Home Production Urged— The Awakened Conscience.
XI VOTE ON DECLARATION OF WAR WITH GERMANY. Address in the Senate of the United States,
Wednesday, April 4, 1917 164
Not Fighting in Name of Democracy — To
Maintain American Rights — To Preserve
America — Guarantee of Nationality.
XII AMERICA IN THE WAR. Address at the Ohio
Republican State Convention, Columbus, Ohio,
August 27, 1918 t .... 170
Partisanism Forgotten — Republicans Sup- ported War — New Birth of National Soul — Republicans Urge Concord — Investigations Prove Helpful — Reconstruction Ahead — Not the President's War— Internationalism Decried — Democratic Extravagance Attacked.
XIII THE REPUBLICAN PARTY AND AMERICA. Address before the Republican Rally at Memorial Hall, Columbus, Ohio, February 23, 1920 (Washing- ton's Birthday) 182
Civilization Never Stands Still— We Were Neg- lectful—Parties Government Agencies— Dan- ger Mark Was Near— Country Wants Formal peace — Why Meddle in Europe — Need Judg- ment of the Many— Has No Personal Ends- Seeks Stable Ways of Peace— For American Square Deal — Dreamer Needs ^ Awakening- Must Reiterate Wholesome Policies — Believes in Government Aid— Ours Not Ungrateful Re- public.
XIV THE PROBLEMS OF BUSINESS. Address before the Providence Chamber of Commerce, at Provi- dence, Rhode Island, February 25, 1920 ... 198
CONTENTS— Continued
CHAPTER PAGE
Evolution of Modern Business — America Greatest Producer — Workmen Not Mere Ma- chines— Humanism Should be Developed — Many Commissions Useless — Too Much Reg- ulation— Minimized Production Destructive — Collective Bargaining Favored — Increased Pro- duction Needed.
XV THE EXCESS PROFITS TAX. Address in the
United States Senate, February 27, 1917 . . 206 Heavy Tax Burden Necessary — What Consti- tutes Real Capital — Looking Forward to Peace — Business Should Be Encouraged — Foreign Producer Should Assist — Protective Tariff Needed — Business Needs Encouragement — Washington's Advice Applicable — Tax Is Pen- alty on Success.
XVI AUTO-INTOXICATION. Address before Baltimore Press Club, at Baltimore, Maryland, February 5, 1920 218
Too Much High Living — Back to the Constitu- tion— Party Government Necessary — Heart of America Still Sound — Government Ownership Opposed.
XVII BACK TO NORMAL. Address before Home Mar- ket Club at Boston, Massachusetts, May 14, 1920 223 Normal Conditions Great Need — Formal Peace Sought — Should Seek Understanding — Work Is Solution — Supremacy of Law — Pro- duction Is Great Need — Sober Thinking Urged — Save America First.
XVIII THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS. Address in the United
States Senate, Friday, January 28, 1916 . . . 23Q America Has Obligation — Not Seeking Terri- tory— No Oppression of Philippines — McKin- ley Not Selfish — Honorable Withdrawal Im- possible— Commercial Advantages Shown—- Filipinos Need America — American Progress Must Continue, XIX SOME SPECIFICATIONS. Delivered before the
Builders' Exchange, Cleveland, Ohio .... 240 America Prodigal Gift of Creation — Makers of America — Honest Building Essential — Con- secration to Civic Duty.
CONTENTS— Continued
CHAPTER PAGE
XX THE KNOX RESOLUTION. Address in the United States Senate, May 11, 1920, on Resolution to
Declare State of War Ended 247
President Was Warned—Congress Still Func- tions.
XXI THE PEACE TREATY. Address in the United States Senate, November 18, 1919, When the Final Vote on the Peace Treaty Was Taken . 250 Reservations Are Essential — Majority Able to Reach Agreement — Treaty Negotiated upon Misunderstanding — Minority Did Not Seek Agreement — America Must Be Preserved-^ Welcomes Decision of People.
Rededicating America
CHAPTER I [WARREN GAMALIEL HARDING
NATIONALISM is the life theme of Warren Harding. When the delegates to the Republican National Con- vention at Chicago called Senator Harding as the party's leader for the campaign of 1920, they chose a man whose controlling passion is, and has ever been, a complete devotion to America, strong and free, sovereign and supreme. As Senator Harding be- comes better known to the American people, he will stand forth as the greatest nationalist of his day. Ever since he entered public life as a member of the Ohio legislature, he has thought in terms national. His de- votion to the national ideal is the composite of the belief of William McKinley in representative govern- ment and the absolute Americanism of Theodore Roosevelt.
The Hardings have always thought in terms of na- tionalism. For three centuries those of his family who came before him were of the sturdy stock which early made its way to our colonial shores and had its part in the making of America as this country grew to be the best expression of governmental individual-
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f!2 REDEDICATING AMERICA
ism and developed nationality. The name Harding is as old as the Doomsday Book of 1086. Before America had its birth as a nation, many Hardings had come to cast their lot in the New England colony ; indeed, his- torical records show that at least six Hardings came to America's shores a century before the Revolution. Abraham Harding came to Massachusetts, his widow, Elizabeth, settled in Boston ; George Harding to Salem, John to Weymouth, Robert to Connecticut — all before* 1650. From the Connecticut line of Robert Harding came Captain Stephen Harding, whose son, Abraham Harding, was the father of Amos Harding. The latter was the direct ancestor of Senator4 Harding. He reared a family of fourteen boys, all of whom bore Biblical names with the exception of George Try on Harding, who was the father of Charles Alexander Harding and William Perry Harding. Charles Alex- ander left but one son, George Tryon Harding, father of Senator Harding.
Warren and his mother were genuinely intimate and affectionate. She was an ardent member of the Sev- enth Day Adventists and had the reputation of being the best versed woman in Biblical literature in her community. She was thoroughly cultured and had read widely. Persons who knew her well have told me that when Warren was a mere child, not over seven years old, she said to him repeatedly, "Warren, stay with your books and some day you will be presi- dent of the United States."
In after years Warren Harding moved to Marion, while his parents continued to reside in Caledonia, a small town ten miles to the east. For years it was
WARREN GAMALIEL HARDING 13
Warren's habit to go to his mother's home early every Sunday morning and the Sundays he missed were very few, indeed. By eight o'clock he was usually on his way to the old homestead armed with a handful of flowers. For nineteen years he took or sent flowers to her every week without fail. In the homecoming celebration following his nomination, D. R. Cris- singer, his fellow townsman who made the welcoming address, referred graciously to this tender, weekly trib- ute which Senator Harding bestowed on his mother. It touched Mr. Harding deeply and was probably the most impressive moment of the celebration. The sen- ator worshiped his mother and he did not endeavor to conceal his heart's regret that she was not here to be present at the homecoming. A stately woman, always of good cheer, she was universally loved. She was devoutly religious and her love for the beautiful and the true has made its eternal impress upon Warren's character. She died in 1910.
Senator Harding's father has been granted more than his three score and ten years, a kind Providence giving him the privilege of celebrating his seventy- sixth natal day on the very day his son was nominated for the highest honor at the bestowal of the American people. His father is a man of strong personality, with a kindly good will toward all the world and with a disposition characterized by tenderness and sym- pathy. He is still actively engaged in the practise of medicine. Of course, he has always been proud of Warren. In his modest way, however, he has en- deavored to conceal his deep satisfaction upon his son's nomination. "I am not much excited," he said
14 REDEDICATING AMERICA
when Harding was nominated, but the truth is that he did not eat anything that day, having forgotten his meals altogether. He was just supremely happy and nobody in Marion begrudges him the genuine delight he so richly deserves. He sacrificed much in his ear- lier life that Warren might be thoroughly educated, and his son's success is his just reward.
A typical farm homestead near Blooming Grove, Morrow County, Ohio, was the birthplace of Warren Gamaliel Harding, November 2, 1865. He will cele- brate his fifty-fifth anniversary on election day. This American community had already come to fame as the birthplace of Senator Calvin S. Brice and Albert P. Morehouse, governor of Missouri, and his great state, even before this time, had won its way into the hearts of Americans as the "Mother of Presidents."
All that is good in citizenship and honest living is the priceless possession of the Hardings. They lived the typical life of the early Americans. They did not suffer from an over-abundance of wealth, but without exception they held the esteem of their neighbors and were true to themselves. Warren, in turn, lived the normal life of an American boy in the country districts of the great Central West. He was early a leader of his boyish crowd. As was the custom of his time, the winter months of his early years were spent in the country or village school, while the summers found him hard at work on his father's farm, or seeking em- ployment in the village. Warren was naturally bright in school. It would hardly be proper to say that he was precocious, but his lessons came very easily and he led his class without having to dig; moreover, be
WARREN GAMALIEL HARDING 15
was too hearty and healthy a boy to study much more than was necessary to keep him ahead of his fellows. He especially enjoyed grammar, and so it comes about that he possesses a remarkable aptitude for the choice of accurate and meaningful words.
As he came to his teens he did the work of the Ohio pioneer, clearing the woodland and developing the crops. At one time he worked in a sawmill. The owner of this mill to this day insists that Warren was such a good worker that it almost cost him his life. He had been given the task of cleaning the floor near a handsaw and was warned not to clear away the rubbish too near the saw. Warren was determined to make a complete job of it; he leaned over to brush under the saw and in an instant the crown of his hat was clipped by the buzzer and whirled to the ceiling. The lad came within three inches of never having the opportunity to lead his party to victory. Later he worked as a laborer in building the Toledo and Ohio Central Railroad which was laid through Morrow County, and he followed such other pursuits as the days might bring.
While a boy, young Harding is well remembered as having ridden the family mule from Caledonia to Marion, after the removal of the family from the vil- lage to the county-seat. The story is told that on the trip he stopped a farmer to inquire how much of his journey to Marion remained. The farmer looked at him reproachfully and dolefully exclaimed, "Wai, it taint so fur if you get off that there mule and walk, but if you're goin' to ride that beast, it's a purty durn fur ways off !"
16 REDEDICATING AMERICA
Like most young men who were the leaders of their set, young Harding took his turn at teaching elemen- tary school, mainly for the purpose of obtaining funds to continue his education. He was a good teacher, due partly to his genuine desire for learning plus his men- tal attainments, but more because of his executive abil- ity. He taught the fundamentals very successfully and he held the respect and esteem of his pupils. But what is even more important, he instilled into them the Spirit of thrift, of activity, of getting things done — and of patriotism.
When he was fourteen years of age, his parents were able to send him to Ohio Central College at Iberia, from which institution he was graduated with a very good record in scholarship, and the degree of Bachelor of Science. It was there, as editor of the college pa- per, that he found a liking and displayed a talent for journalism. "If I have any faculty for the work I am now doing," he said in later years, "I owe it most to my training as editor of the college paper while a stu- dent." His college course was marked by varied va- cation employments, not because of poverty, but be- cause his parents had taught him the value of work. He, therefore, engaged in cutting corn, painting houses and grading roadbeds. He was an average farmer, a very good house painter and a steady -workman for the railroad.
His favorite pastime during this period of life was playing in the Caledonia and Marion bands. Despite stories to the contrary regarding the instrument he played, let it be said here in finality that Warren Harding played a tenor horn as a beginner, sometimes
WARREN GAMALIEL HARDING 17
the tuba when a substitute was needed, and ultimately the cornet. Since his nomination he has been made to perform on almost every instrument known to a band, but his fellow musicians told me that there need be no doubt about it, for they all remember distinctly that he was a very good musician, regular at practise, and that he played the aforesaid horns. His band visited the neighboring cities and took third prize in the state- wide band tournament at Findlay, Ohio, in 1882. Only seven members of this organization now survive, and to a man they declare that Warren Harding was a jolly good fellow as a young man, modest, unassum- ing, industrious, full of fun, loyal to his friends and de- voted to his parents. "And what is more important," declared Joe Mathews, who played in the celebrated band with him, "is that Warren has never changed a bit to this day."
The odor of printers* ink took hold of him when he left college. He had become a hand typesetter as a boy, and when the linotype was first introduced he learned to operate the machine. He is a practical pressman, job printer and make-up editor. To this day he carries, as his "luck piece," the printer's rule of his composing-room days. During the Blaine cam- paign he was employed on a Democratic newspaper and when his Republicanism could no longer be held within bounds and he joined a Blaine club and donned a Blaine hat, he lost his job.
He turned to reportorial and editorial work on the Marion Daily Star of Marion, Ohio. The supreme desire of his early life was to own this newspaper and so in time his father gave him the small financial as-
18 REDEDICATING AMERICA
sistance that permitted him to purchase it. The guiding spirit of the Marion Star has been, and is, Senator Harding himself. Always constructive, always fear- less, it has become known throughout the country as a newspaper of prestige and power. Senator Harding is justly proud of the fact that his paper has never had a labor strike or even a threatened controversy with its employees. As soon as he was able to put the Daily Star on a firm financial foundation, he organized a stock company with his employees, distributing shares to his workmen so that now they, with him, own the paper. Years ago he expressed his conception of the relation between the newspaper and the public in this creed, written in his office for his office staff:
"Remember there are two sides to every question. Get both. Be truthful. Get the facts. Mistakes are inevitable, but strive for accuracy. I would rather have one story exactly right than a hundred half wrong. Be decent ; be fair, be generous. Boost — don't knock. There's good in everybody. Bring out the good in everybody, and never, needlessly, hurt the feel- ings of anybody. In reporting a political gathering, give the facts ; tell the story as it is, not as you would like to have it. Treat all parties alike. If there's any politics to be played, we will play it in our editorial columns. Treat all religious matters reverently. If it can possibly be avoided never bring ignominy to an innocent man or child in telling of the misdeeds or mis- fortune of a relative. Don't wait to be asked, but do it without the asking, and, above all, be clean and never let a dirty word or suggestive story get into type. I want this paper so conducted that it can go into any home without destroying the innocence of any child."
WARREN GAMALIEL HARDING .19
Senator Harding*s general business ability soon be- came recognized and he was called to interest himself in other commercial lines before he entered politics. He became a director of the Marion County Bank of Marion, Ohio ; a member of the board of directors of the Marion Lumber Company, the Marion County Telephone Company, the Marion Home Building and Loan Association and numerous other concerns. He gave financial support to several new industries which came to Marion when these commercial organizations sought his business counsel. He devoted much time to civic affairs, and became a trustee of the Trinity Bap- tist Church, which he attends regularly when at home.
Warren Harding is essentially human. He has al- ways been interested in the charities of his town and has done innumerable acts of helpfulness known only to himself and the beneficiary of his kindness. He has given financial assistance to more than one fellow townsman who had met adversity and in whom many people had lost faith. On one of his recent trips he met an acquaintance whom he had not seen in many months and wh6 was threatened with total blindness, Harding took his friend of earlier years with him to .Washington, placed him in the hands of an eminent eye specialist, and was so sincerely happy when the physician was able to restore the sight of one eye that he confidentially told one or two of his neighbors about it.
Harding's humanitarianism, simple, unheralded, al- ways behind closed doors, is one of his truly great characteristics, and ranks in importance with his utter
20 ^EDEDICATING AMERICA
sincerity. When I asked a fellow member of the TJnited States Senate what he regarded as the senator's greatest attribute, he replied instantly:
"Modesty and sincerity. Harding's modesty mani- fests itself at all times and sometimes to his disad- vantage through being mistaken for a lack of confi- dence in himself. I have always been impressed with this quality in him. Both in committee meetings and on the floor of the Senate he advances his views, not with an air of finality, nor yet timidity, but with be- coming modesty, and seldom until he has listened pa- tiently to what others have to say, but he is tenacious of his opinions and is not easily swayed from his con- clusions once they have been reached. He is as sincere as a man can be. I have never yet known him to tem- porize. What he believes he says and he does not say what he does not believe. I know of no other man in public life so little given to dissembling; for better or for worse, he is just what he appears to be."
No sketch of the Republican standard bearer is com- plete without tender and just tribute to Florence Kling Harding, his devoted, enthusiastic and very able wife, whom he married in 1891. She is his eternal inspira- tion and their relations are as near ideal as could be on this mundane sphere. They are the best comrades, sharing their problems in full together and finding their happiness in their affection for each other. Mrs, Harding is a woman of culture, sincere, genuine, anc} always happy. She has lived her entire life in or near her present home. Her father, Amos Kling, was a substantial business man of Marion, and she attended the Marion schools. She is widely read and spends much time with her books. As a young woman, her;
WARREN GAMALIEL HARDING 21
hobby was horseback riding; she was a clever rider and now is an excellent judge of saddle horses. She loves the great outdoors.
"I can not realize that Warren has been nominated for the presidency," she said to me a month after the nomination. "It hardly seems real to me." And her attitude bespeaks the fact, for she is the same cordial, lovable woman to-day that she was five years ago. Fully able to bear the heavy tasks which now come to her, she refuses absolutely to permit the tremendous honor to change her one iota.
Senator Harding also is privileged to enjoy the com- radeship of three loyal sisters. Miss Abigail Harding resides with her father in Marion and is a teacher of English in the Marion High School. Another sister, Mrs. Carolyn Votaw, is the wife of Doctor Herbert Votaw, of Washington, D. C. She is deeply interested in social problems and is a member of the Women's Bureau of the Police Department of the capital city. A third sister, Mrs. Charity M. Remsberg, resides in California. His only brother, Doctor G. T. Harding, Jr., is an eminent physician of Columbus, Ohio.
While Senator Harding has always maintained his numerous business connections, increasing them from year to year, his interest in and ability for things gov- ernmental early turned him to an active participation in public affairs. He was elected a member of the upper chamber of the Seventy-fifth and Seventy-sixth Ohio General Assemblies as senator from the Thirteenth Ohio District, serving from 1899 to 1903. He had al- ready gained a state-wide reputation as a public speaker and as editor of his forceful paper, whose editorials,
22 REDEDICATING AMERICA
written largely by the senator himself, were read and valued throughout his state. He was now an Ohio fig- ure and the following year his leadership was recog- nized in his nomination and election as lieutenant-gov- ernor. Seven years later found him the Republican candidate for governor, but, because of a party disaf- fection, he met his first political defeat. At that time he said publicly that he would leave the political arena, but in the short space of two years' time he returned actively to politics, supporting William Howard Taft for renomination and reelection as president of the United States. In another two years' time he became a candidate for the Republican nomination for senator and in the first primary election held in his state he defeated Senator Joseph B. Foraker. This was in the spring of 1914. When the votes were counted at the November election his fellow Ohioans sent him to the United States Senate with a majority of 102,373 over Timothy S. Hogan, his Democratic opponent, and with 73,000 more votes than the next highest candidate on the Republican ticket.
When he reached Washington, Senator Harding quickly won the respect and esteem of his fellow sen- ators. He had the happy fortune of making and hold- ing the genuine friendship of every member of that body. From that time to the present it has been an almost daily occurrence in the Republican senatorial cloak-room for some senator, in the course of a confer- ence, to say, "Let's see what Warren thinks about this." His judgment, abundance of common sense and breadth of understanding are recognized as his most valued assets. Senator Harding has a fine poise and
WARREN GAMALIEL HARDING 23
'a deliberate and judicial manner. His friends say they have never known him to lose his temper in vio- lent fashion and that he always has himself under per- fect command. His opinions and views on public questions have met the almost universal approval of the members on his side of the chamber. They wel- come his counsel and he invites theirs. If he removes from Capitol Hill to the White House, Senator Har- ding can not do otherwise than understand Congress and work with it to the expedition of legislation. And his lifelong desire for counsel will unquestionably cause him to call to his Cabinet strong, able, loyal Americans ; to the eternal glory of the republic.
Warren Harding attends to his senatorial business. Relying upon the ability and faithfulness of his sec- retary, George B. Christian, Jr., who is greatly de- voted to his chief, he has established a reputation among his fellow senators for the efficient administra- tion of the varied lines of activity which United States senators these days are called upon to perform. His office has an atmosphere of hospitality ; his visitors feel unconsciously that they are welcome ; he is always ac- cessible, generous with his time, ready to hear and to help.
Senator Harding is in regular attendance at his com- mittee meetings. Several years before he was pub- licly considered for the presidency, I observed him in committee sessions. In the course of an hour's meet- ing he invariably asks half a dozen pointed questions. He calls bluntly for the opinions of other senators on the committee and relies, to a considerable extent, upon their combined judgments in reaching his own conclu-
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sions on the question tinder consideration. He does a full day's work and is busy at his office from nine o'clock in the morning until Mrs. Harding comes for him at six in the evening, and often then his day's work is not yet completed. With Mrs. Harding and his devoted secretary, he gathers up in his automobile one or more other senators who are "going his way," shar- ing their comradeship and taking them to their homes.
Those acquainted with the official life of Washing- ton know that the work of the government is done largely by congressional committees. It is in the com- mittee rooms that the innumerable vital questions are considered in detail and committee conclusions reached after many hours of discussion and deliberation. Since his election to the Senate, Senator Harding has had important committee assignments. During the last two years he has served as chairman of the Committee on the Philippines. His most important assignment has been the Foreign Relations Committee, and next to that the Committee on Commerce. His other committees are : Territories ; Pacific Islands and Porto Rico ; Pub- lic Health and National Quarantine; Standards, Weights and Measures, and Expenditures in the Treasury Department
In his busy career he has found time for three trips abroad, devoted largely to a study of European gov- ernments and their economic problems, and because of his travels his counsel has been much sought on questions before the Philippines Committee, Pacific Islands and Porto Rico and Territories. His extensive business connections throughout Ohio, covering many
WARREN GAMALIEL HARDING 25
years, have made him an invaluable member of the Committee on Commerce. His especial interest in this committee relates to the merchant marine, and his ac- tivities were signally helpful in speeding up ship con- struction to meet war needs. He views the nation's commercial problems from a business man's standpoint, bringing to them practical considerations rather than the theories of the professional economist.
His greatest usefulness, as well as his deepest satis- faction and genuine interest, is in his membership on the Committee on Foreign Relations. This committee, since the signing of the armistice, has been by far the most important committee of Congress, and during the war it ranked second only to the Committee on Mili- tary Affairs. The Senate Committee on Foreign Rela- tions has been charged with the gigantic task of consid- ering the peace treaty. The time will surely come when the American historian will give just credit to those members of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations who held firm to the advocacy of an America free, strong, untrammeled and supreme in her individualism. In this little group of stout-hearted Americans, Warren Harding deserves high rank. He was one of those senators who maintained their calm and deliberation, who kept their minds clear and their hearts strong in the devotion to their country during the unsettled, anxious and abnormal times of the war and in all the subsequent and often acrid peace discussions. This service has been his highest contribution to America up to the present time. It is proper that Americans judge him by his attitude toward our international re-
26 REDEDICATING AMERICA '
lations in connection with the war and I am sure that he would welcome all Americans in estimating his worth on this basis.
Senator Harding has always been in favor of a proper understanding among the nations of the world. He does not underestimate the awful horrors of war and he is willing to go far to prevent future conflicts. But he has a consuming passion for his beloved coun- try, her safety and her preserved identity. "We do not need, and we do not mean to live within and for ourselves alone," he said on the floor of the Senate during the league of nations debate, "but we mean to hold our ideals safe from foreign incursion. It is eas- ily possible to hold the world's highest esteem through righteous relationships. We are willing to give, but we resent demands. Let us have an America walking erect, unafraid, concerned about its rights and ready to defend them, sure of its ideals and strong to support them. Out of the discovered soul of this republic and through our preservative actions, we shall hold the word 'American' the proudest boast of citizenship in all the world."
He could never bring himself to accept the involve- ments which he felt sure would come to America by her membership in the league of nations as submitted to the Senate by the peace conference. The privacy and secrecy which he felt were so conspicuous in the peace conference were abhorrent to him. In his frank, sure manner of thought and action which has characterized his senatorial service, sometimes to his political disadvantage, he deeply resented the attitude of the peace confreres in failing to take the peoples of
WARREN GAMALIEL HARDING 27
their respective countries into full confidence. He be-« lieved sincerely that the result of the peace negotia- tions would be to create a supergovernment over this country and, so believing, he declared his conviction to the people of the United States that he regarded this, though unconscious and unintended, a betrayal of the country.
His devotion to America was not a new attitude with him when the peace treaty was presented to the Senate. In explaining his vote on the declaration of war in> the United States Senate, Wednesday, April 4, 1917, he said, in his vigorous and deliberate way: "I want it known to the people of my state and to the nation that I am voting for war to-night for the maintenance of just American rights, which is the first essential to the preservation of the soul of this republic." That was his view of America before the European war was dreamed of ; it was his view of America when we en- tered the war and it was still his conception when the conflict had ended. He could not do otherwise in voting on the peace treaty than remain true to the faith that was in him. He was ready to go to war because America had been attacked, and he was willing to con- clude peace only on a basis which preserved his country inviolate. He believed that our entrance into the war was determined by the conscience of America and he thought that the dictates of that conscience should de- termine the terms of peace, so far as the United States was concerned.
His absolute candor, as exhibited in connection with the peace treaty, has shown itself in his attitude on all public questions. To some of his friends, and to some
28 REDEDICATING AMERICA
senators, it is almost uncanny. "Warren is making a mistake which will hurt him politically" has been the comment heard in Washington on numerous occasions when he stated publicly his attitude on questions which held the attention of the American people. This same frankness was shown during the consideration of the Cummins railroad bill. He voted for the anti-strike clause in the railroad bill despite the protests and threats that it would annihilate him politically. "If the government representing all the people can not guarantee transportation service under any and all conditions, it fails utterly," he declared, and he squared his public attitude with this conscientious belief. He has always favored rational unionism and collective bargaining, and has so stated publicly on many occa- sions ; for eleven years he has operated his newspaper on the share-holding plan with the employees. But when the question was squarely put up to him as to whether he should vote to permit any one class to become stronger than his government, he took his stand, and this at a time when he contemplated becoming a candi- date for the presidency. Again his love for America and his belief that she should be supreme overpowered all other considerations, and he said so.
This passionate devotion to America caused him to lay aside all partisan feeling during the war. He dis- agreed with many of the acts of the administration, but he would not permit his disagreement to swerve him in his course in support of a vigorous prosecution of the war. He voted for the measure to arm mer- chant ships. He supported the espionage bill and the selective draft measure. He voted for food control
WARREN GAMALIEL HARDING 29
legislation. He supported the administration war rev- enue bills, opposing several amendments for sixty to seventy-five per cent, taxes on war profits in the be- lief that such taxes directly injured business, slowed down production and thereby reacted to the detriment of the American people. He supported the merchant marine measure and has always been an ardent advo- cate of a powerful merchant marine. He voted for the Sheppard resolution proposing national prohibition. Having voted for the prohibition amendment, he sup- ported the Volstead enforcement law and again voted to enact this measure over the president's veto. He believed that the time had come when women should be taken into participation in the political activities of the country and he voted for the proposed suffrage amend- ment. He supported the resolution to withdraw American troops from Russia because he felt that our participation in Russian affairs was neither wise, nec- essary, nor American. When the measure requiring publicity for campaign contributions was considered, he voted in favor of it, against the protests of a cer- tain class of politicians. He is a strong protectionist, although there has been little occasion for him to ex- hibit his attitude publicly in the Senate upon this ques- tion during the last five years. He believes strongly in efficiency in government, just as he insists upon it in his private business, and has long been an advocate of the budget system as the proper basis for the business affairs of our federal government.
That governmental legislation will not prove a cure- all for the economic and social ills of the day is only too well understood and appreciated by Harding.
30 REDEDICATING AMERICA
Proper legislation can do much to improve conditions, but thrift, economy and simple living on the part of the American people is of far more importance, Harding knows. "Let us call to all the people for thrift and economy, for denial and sacrifice; if need be for a nation-wide drive against extravagance and luxury, to a recommittal to simplicity of living, to that prudent and normal plan of life which is the health of the republic," he admonished in his address accept- ing the presidential nomination. More than any other public man, Senator Harding has, during the last year, urged his countrymen to counteract the fervid anxiety of the war and its aftermath, to end the hysteria of the day of the world conflict, and to "get back to normal." War powers should have been rescinded months ago in his belief, and Americans should re- turn to their normal activities of peace.
Harding's face is forward. He is in entire sym- pathy with well developed movements which make better the lot of the American people. He has eagerly supported such measures as that to impose a high rate of duty on imports of child-labor-made goods. He voted for the establishment of a minimum wage board to fix wages for women and children in the District of Columbia. He favored overtime pay for federal em- ployees when employed extra hours. He supported those proposals which in his opinion were beneficial to the American soldier and sailor. His kindly heart and his clear, calm mind have given him an admirable grasp on the social problems of the day.
Harding is distinctly a constructive statesman; negatives are unknown to him. Constructive meas-
WARREN GAMALIEL HARDING 31
ures to receive his favor must be able to stand the test of experience, must meet the requirements of an his- torical analysis and above all must be based upon good common sense. When they can withstand these tests, Harding is the first to advocate them. The assertion is made, without contradiction, that every constructive, progressive measure which has been voted upon in the United States Senate since he was elected to that body six years ago and which withstood the aforementioned requirements, has had his vote and his voice.
His advocacy of American nationalism is analogous to his belief in the Republican party as a party strong in and of itself. He warmly admired William Mc- Kinley, who was his good personal friend for many years, first as an American nationalist and secondly, as a partisan Republican. Senator Harding is being pop- ularly likened to William McKinley these days and there is much basis for the comparison. Harding be- lieves profoundly in the principles of the Republican party as did William McKinley. Speaking of Mc- Kinley, he said: "He believed in party government through the agency of political parties and believed in his party as the agency of greatest good to the Amer- ican people. He was considerate, tolerant, courteous, but ever a Republican. He did not believe his party had a monopoly on all that was good or patriotic, but he did believe it best capable of serving our common country and its policies best suited to promoting our common fortune." When Senator Harding spoke thus of William McKinley, those who know him best are sure that he was speaking his own firm belief in the party of his choice. Harding believes that political
32 REDEDICATING AMERICA
parties are essential to the American form of represen- tative government and he is the true exponent of party rather than personal government. The simple truth is that the views of McKinley and Harding upon party affairs and upon the basic principles of our govern- ment are, to a great extent, identical.
During the disaffection in the party which began in the campaign of 1912, he could not entertain the be- lief that it was wise to disrupt the party organization and he said so in vigorous fashion at every public op- portunity. Four years later, Colonel Roosevelt sent for him and Senator Harding gladly accepted the in- vitation. They did not dwell long on the conditions of 1912. Both agreed that mistakes had been made and that the greatest need of the country was the complete unification of the Republican party. Colonel Roose- velt asked Senator Harding to champion a measure to permit the former president to lead a volunteer detach- ment to France and the senator enthusiastically intro- duced such a bill in the United States Senate. He ob- tained its passage, but it fell under the presidential veto. "If he had lived, Colonel Roosevelt would have been our Republican nominee by acclamation in 1920," Senator Harding said but a few months before his own nomination.
As Roosevelt was grim and resolute, so is Har- ding. The Republican nominee, often silent in his determination, takes counsel in abundance, and, with it all, reaches his own conclusions. With the com- bined thought of the best American minds, he will show the way to the Constitution, to constructive
WARREN GAMALIEL HARDING 33
American development, to a virile nationalism. He will rededicate America.
His admirers see in Senator Harding a composite of Roosevelt and McKinley. "Colonel Roosevelt's name will be inseparably linked with the finding of the American soul, with the great awakening and consecra- tion," he said, and of McKinley he declared, "If he were alive to-day, William McKinley would be an American nationalist." Harding's every public utter- ance has been based upon nationalism and American- ism. He estimates American leaders who have gone before by these two standards. He has lived his life thus far by them and he now goes before the American people as a candidate for their highest honor submit- ting as his greatest asset his devotion to them. When his work is done, of him the historian will say, "War- ren Harding, Nationalist and American."
CHAPTER II SPEECH OF ACCEPTANCE
Address at Formal Notification of His Nomination for the Presidency, at Marion, Ohio, July 22, 1920
CHAIRMAN LODGE, MEMBERS OF THE NOTIFICATION COMMITTEE, MEMBERS OF THE NATIONAL COMMITTEE, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN — The message which you have formally conveyed brings to me a realization of responsibility which is not underestimated. It is a supreme task to interpret the covenant of a great po- litical party, the activities of which are so woven into the history of this republic, and a very sacred and solemn undertaking to utter the faith and aspirations of the many millions who adhere to that party. The party platform has charted the way, yet somehow we have come to expect that interpretation which voices the faith of nominees who must assume specific tasks.
Let me be understood clearly from the very begin- ning. I believe in party sponsorship in government. I believe in party government as distinguished from per- sonal government, individual, dictatorial, autocratic or what not. In a citizenship of more than a hundred millions it is impossible to reach agreement upon all questions. Parties are formed by those who reach a consensus of opinion. It was the intent of the found- ing fathers to give to this republic a dependable and en-
34
SPEECH OF ACCEPTANCE 35
during popular government, representative in form, and it was designed to make political parties not only the preserving sponsors but also the effective agencies through which hopes and aspirations and convictions and conscience may be translated into public perform- ance.
CONSTITUTION CHARTS THE WAY
Popular government has been an inspiration of lib- erty since the dawn of civilization. Republics have risen and fallen, and a transition from party to per- sonal government has preceded every failure since the world began. Under the Constitution we have the charted way to security and perpetuity. We know it gave to us the safe path to a developing eminence which no people in the world ever rivaled. It has guaranteed the rule of intelligent, deliberate public opinion expressed through parties. Under this plan a masterful leadership becomingly may manifest its in- fluence, but a people's will still remains the supreme authority.
The American achievement under the plan of the fathers is nowhere disputed. On the contrary the American example has been the model of every repub- lic which glorifies the progress of liberty, and is every- where the leaven of representative democracy which has expanded human freedom. It has been wrought through party government.
No man is big enough to run this great republic. There never has been one. Such domination was never intended. Tranquillity, stability, dependability — all are assured in party sponsorship, and we mean
36 REDEDICATING AMERICA
to renew the assurances which were rended in the cataclysmal war.
POPULAR GOVERNMENT TO BE RESTORED
It was not surprising that we went far afield from safe and prescribed paths amid the war anxieties. There was the unfortunate tendency before ; there was the surrender of Congress to the growing assumption of the executive before the world war imperiled all the practises we had learned to believe in ; and in the war emergency every safeguard was swept away. In the name of democracy we established autocracy. We are not complaining at this extraordinary bestowal or assumption in war, it seemed temporarily necessary; our alarm is over the failure to restore the constitu- tional methods when the war emergency ended.
Our first committal is the restoration of representa- tive popular government, under the Constitution, through the agency of the Republican party. Our vision includes more than a chief executive, we believe in a Cabinet of highest capacity, equal to the responsi- bilities which our system contemplates, in whose coun- cils the vice-president, second official of the republic, shall be asked to participate. The same vision includes a cordial understanding and coordinated activities with a house of Congress, fresh from the people, voicing the convictions which members bring from direct contact with the electorate, and cordial cooperation along with the restored functions of the Senate, fit to be the great- est deliberative body of the world. Its members are the designated sentinels on the towers of constitutional government. The resumption of the Senate's authority
SPEECH OF ACCEPTANCE 37
saved to this republic its independent nationality, when autocracy misinterpreted the dream of a world experi- ment to be the vision of a world ideal.
REPUBLICAN SENATORS SAVED AMERICA
It is not difficult, Chairman Lodge, to make our- selves clear on the question of international relation- ship. We Republicans of the Senate, conscious of our solemn oaths and mindful of our constitutional obliga- tions, when we saw the structure of a world super- government taking visionary form, joined in a becom- ing warning of our devotion to this republic. If the torch of constitutionalism had not been dimmed, the delayed peace of the world and the tragedy of disap- pointment and Europe's misunderstanding of America easily might have been avoided. The Republicans of the Senate halted the barter of independent American eminence and influence which it was proposed to exchange for an obscure and unequal place in the merged government of the world. Our party means to hold the heritage of American nationality unim- paired and unsurrendered.
The world will not misconstrue. We do not mean to hold aloof. We do not mean to shun a single re- sponsibility of this republic to world civilization. There is no hate in the American heart. We have no envy, no suspicion, no aversion for any people in the world. We hold to our rights, and means to defend, aye, we mean to sustain the rights of this nation and our citizens alike, everywhere under the shining sun. Yet there is the concord of amity and sympathy and fraternity in every resolution. There is a genuine as-
38 REDEDICATING AMERICA
piration in every American breast for a tranquil friend- ship with all the world.
WILL PRESERVE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE
More, we believe the unspeakable sorrows, the im- measurable sacrifices, the awakened convictions and the aspiring conscience of human kind must commit the nations of the earth to a new and better relation- ship. It need not be discussed now what motives plunged the world into war, it need not be inquired whether we asked the sons of this republic to defend our national rights, as I believe we did, or to purge the Old World of the accumulated ills of rivalry and greed, the sacrifices will be in vain if we can not acclaim a new order, with added security to civilization and peace maintained.
One may readily sense the conscience of our Amer- ica. I am sure I understand the purpose of the dom- inant group of the Senate. We were not seeking to defeat a world aspiration, we were resolved to safe- guard America. We were resolved then, even as we are to-day, and will be to-morrow, to preserve this free and independent republic. Let those now respon- sible, or seeking responsibility, propose the surrender, whether with interpretations, apologies or reluctant reservations — from which our rights are to be omitted • — we welcome the referendum to the American peo- ple on the preservation of America, and the Republican party pledges its defense of the preserved inheritance of national freedom.
SPEECH OF ACCEPTANCE 39
TO RESTORE FORMAL PEACE
In the call of the conscience of America is peace, peace that closes the gaping wound of world war, and silences the impassioned voices of international envy and distrust. Heeding this call and knowing as I do the disposition of the Congress, I promise you formal and effective peace so quickly as a Republican Congress can pass its declaration for a Republican ex- ecutive to sign. Then we may turn to our readjust- ment at home and proceed deliberately and reflectively to that hoped-for world relationship which shall satisfy both conscience and aspirations and still hold us free from menacing involvement.
I can hear in the call of conscience an insistent voice for the largely reduced armaments throughout the world, with attending reduction of burdens upon peace-loving humanity. We wish to give of American influence and example; we must give of American leadership to that invaluable accomplishment.
I can speak unreservedly of the American aspiration and the Republican committal for an association of na- tions, cooperating in sublime accord, to attain and pre- serve peace through justice rather than force, deter- mined to add to security through international law, so clarified that no misconstruction can be possible with- out affronting world honor.
This republic can never be unmindful of its power, and must never forget the force of its example. Pos- sessor of might that admits no fear, America must stand foremost for the right. If the mistaken voice of America, spoken in unheeding haste, led Europe,
40 REDEDICATING AMERICA
in the hour of deepest anxiety, into a military alliance which menaces peace and threatens all freedom, in- stead of adding to their security, then we must speak the truth for America and express our hope for the fraternized conscience of nations.
INDEPENDENT AID TO WORLD JUSTICE
It will avail nothing to discuss in detail the league covenant, which was conceived for world supergov- ernment, negotiated in misunderstanding, and intol- erantly urged and demanded by its administration sponsors, who resisted every effort to safeguard Amer- ica, and who finally rejected when such safeguards were inserted. If the supreme blunder has left Euro- pean relationships inextricably interwoven in the league compact, our sympathy for Europe only mag- nifies our own good fortune in resisting involvement. It is better to be the free and disinterested agent of international justice and advancing civilization, with the covenant of conscience, than be shackled by a writ- ten compact which surrenders our freedom of action and gives to a military alliance the right to proclaim America's duty to the world. No surrender of rights to a world council or its military alliance, no assumed mandatory, however appealing, ever shall summon the sons of this republic to war. Their supreme sacrifice shall only be asked for America and its call of honor. There is a sanctity in that right we will not delegate.
When the compact was being written, I do not know whether Europe asked or ambition insistently be- stowed. It was so good to rejoice in the world's confi- dence in our unselfishness that I can believe our evident
SPEECH OF ACCEPTANCE 41
disinterestedness inspired Europe's wish for our asso- ciation, quite as much as the selfish thought of enlisting American power and resources. Ours is an outstand- ing, influential example to the world, whether we cloak it in spoken modesty or magnify it in exaltation. We want to help ; we mean to help ; but we hold to our own interpretation of the American conscience as the very soul of our nationality.
Disposed as we are, the way is very simple. Let the failure attending assumption, obstinacy, impractica- bility and delay be recognized, and let us find the big, practical, unselfish way to do our part, neither cov- etous because of ambition nor hesitant through fear, but ready to serve ourselves, humanity and God. V/ith a Senate advising as the Constitution contemplates, I would hopefully approach the nations of Europe and of the earth, proposing that understanding which makes us a willing participant in the consecration of nations to a new relationship, to commit the moral forces of the world, America included, to peace and in- ternational justice, still leaving America free, inde- pendent and self-reliant, but offering friendship to all the world.
TO RESTORE CONSTITUTION
If men call for more specific details, I remind them that moral committals are broad and all inclusive, and we are contemplating peoples in the concord of hu- manity's advancement. From our own view-point the program is specifically American, and we mean to be Americans first, to all the world.
Appraising preserved nationality as the first essential
42 REDEDICATING AMERICA '
to the continued progress of the republic, there is linked with it the supreme necessity of the restoration — let us say the re-re vealment — of the Constitution, and our reconstruction as an industrial nation. Here is the transcending task. It concerns our common weal at home and will decide our fu- ture eminence in the world. More than these, this republic, under constitutional liberties, has given to mankind the most fortunate conditions for human ac- tivity and attainment the world has ever noted, and we are to-day the world's reserve force in the great contest for liberty through security, and maintained equality of opportunity and its righteous rewards.
It is folly to close our eyes to outstanding facts. Humanity is restive, much of the world is in revolu- tion, the agents of discord and destruction have wrought their tragedy in pathetic Russia, have lighted their torches among other peoples, and hope to see America as a part of the great red conflagration. Ours is the temple of liberty under the law, and it is ours to call the Sons of Opportunity to its defense. Amer- ica must not only save herself, but ours must be the ap- pealing voice to sober the world.
MUST ENCOURAGE COMPETITION
* More than all else the present-day world needs un- derstanding. There can be no peace save through composed differences, and the submission of the indi- vidual to the will and weal of the many. Any other plan means anarchy and its rule of force.
It must be understood that toil alone makes for ac- complishment and advancement, and righteous posses-
SPEECH OF ACCEPTANCE 43
sion is the reward of toil, and its incentive. There is no progress except in the stimulus of competition. When competition — natural, fair, impelling competi- tion— is suppressed, whether by law, compact or con- spiracy, we halt the march of progress, silence the voice of aspiration, and paralyze the will for achieve- ment. These are but common-sense truths of human development.
The chief trouble to-day is that the world war wrought the destruction of healthful competition, left our storehouses empty, and there is a minimum pro- duction when our need is maximum. Maximums, not minimums, is the call of America. It isn't a new story, because war never fails to leave depleted storehouses and always impairs the efficiency of production. War also establishes its higher standards for wages, and they abide. I wish the higher wage to abide, on one explicit condition — that the wage-earner will give full return for the wage received. It is the best assurance we can have for a reduced cost of living. Mark you, I am ready to acclaim the highest standard of pay, but I would be blind to the responsibilities that mark this fateful hour if I did not caution the wage-earners of America that mounting wages and decreased pro- duction can lead only to industrial and economic ruin.
INCREASED PRODUCTION GREAT NEED
I want, somehow, to appeal to the sons and daugh- ters of the republic, to every producer, to join hand and brain in production, more production, honest pro- duction, patriotic production, because patriotic pro- duction is no less a defense of our best civilization than
44 REDEDICATING AMERICA
that of armed force. Profiteering is a crime of com- mission, under-production is a crime of omission. We must work our most and best, else the destructive re- action will come. We must stabilize and strive for normalcy, else the inevitable reaction will bring its train of sufferings, disappointments and reversals. We want to forestall such reaction, we want to hold all advanced ground, and fortify it with general good- fortune.
Let us return for a moment to the necessity for un- derstanding, particularly that understanding which concerns ourselves at home. I decline to recognize any conflict of interest among the participants in industry. The destruction of one is the ruin of the other, the suspicion or rebellion of one unavoidably involves the other. In conflict is disaster, in understanding there is triumph. There is no issue relating to the founda- tion on which industry is builded, because industry is bigger than any element in its modern making. But the insistent call is for labor, management and capital to reach understanding.
INDUSTRIAL COOPERATION URGED
The human element comes first, and I want the em- ployers in industry to understand the aspirations, the convictions, the yearnings of the millions of American wage-earners, and I want the wage-earners to under- stand the problems, the anxieties, the obligations of management and capital, and all of them must under- stand their relationship to the people and their obliga- tion to the republic. Out of this understanding will come the unanimous committal to economic justice,
SPEECH OF ACCEPTANCE 45
and in economic justice lies that social justice which is the highest essential to human happiness.
I am speaking as one who has counted the contents of the pay envelope from the view-point of the earner as well as the employer. No one pretends to deny the inequalities which are manifest in modern industrial life. They are less in fact than they were before or- ganization and grouping on either side revealed the inequalities, and conscience has wrought more justice than statutes have compelled, but the ferment of the world rivets our thoughts on the necessity of progres- sive solution, else our generation will suffer the experi- ment which means chaos for our day to reestablish God's plan for the great to-morrow.
Speaking our sympathies, uttering the conscience of all the people, mindful of our right to dwell amid the good fortunes of rational, conscience-impelled ad- vancement, we hold the majesty of righteous govern- ment, with liberty under the law, to be our avoidance of chaos, and we call upon every citizen of the republic to hold fast to that which made us what we are, and we will have orderly government safeguard the on- ward march to all we ought to be.
CLASSISM DECRIED
The menacing tendency of the present day is not chargeable wholly to the unsettled and fevered condi- tions caused by the war. The manifest weakness in popular government lies in the temptation to appeal to grouped citizenship for political advantage. There is no greater peril. The Constitution contemplates no class and recognizes no group. It broadly includes all
46 REDEDICATING AMERICA
the people, with specific recognition for none, and the highest consecration we can make to-day is a commit- tal of the Republican party to that saving constitution- alism which contemplates all America as one people, and holds just government free from influence on the one hand and unmoved by intimidation on the other.
It would be the blindness of folly to ignore the ac- tivities in our own country which are aimed to destroy our economic system, and to commit us to the colossal tragedy which has both destroyed all freedom and made Russia impotent. This movement is not to be halted in throttled liberties. We must not abridge the freedom of speech, the freedom of press, or the free- dom of assembly, because there is no promise in re- pression. These liberties are as sacred as the freedom of religious belief, as inviolable as the rights of life and the pursuit of happiness. We do hold to the right to crush sedition, to stifle a menacing contempt for law, to stamp out a peril to the safety of the republic or its people, when emergency calls, because security and the majesty of the law are the first essentials of liberty. He who threatens destruction of the govern- ment by force or flaunts his contempt for lawful au- thority ceases to be a loyal citizen and forfeits bis rights to the freedom of the republic.
DELIBERATE READJUSTMENT SOUGHT
Let it be said to all of America that our plan of pop- ular government contemplates such orderly changes as the crystallized intelligence of the majority of our people think best. There can be no modification of this underlying rule, but no majority shall abridge the
SPEECH OF ACCEPTANCE 47
rights of a minority. Men have a right to question our system in fullest freedom, but they must always re- member that the rights of freedom impose the obliga- tions which maintain it. Our policy is not of re- pression, but we make appeal to-day to American intelligence and patriotism, when the republic is men- aced from within, just as we trusted American pa- triotism when our rights were threatened from without We call on all America for steadiness, so that we may proceed deliberately to the readjustment which concerns all the people. Our party platform fairly ex- presses the conscience of Republicans on industrial re- lations. No party is indifferent to the welfare of the wage-earner. To us his good fortune is of deepest concern, and we seek to make that good fortune per- manent. We do not oppose but approve collective bar- gaining, because that is an outstanding right, but we are unalterably insistent that its exercise must not de- stroy the equally sacred right of the individual, in his necessary pursuit of livelihood. Any American has the right to quit his employment, so has every Ameri- can the right to seek employment. The group must not endanger the individual, and we must discourage groups preying upon one another, and none shall be al- lowed to forget that government's obligations are alike to all the people.
THE RAILROAD PROBLEM
I hope we may do more than merely discourage the losses and sufferings attending industrial conflict. The strike against the government is properly denied, for government service involves none of the elements of
48 REDEDICATING AMERICA
profit which relate to competitive enterprise. There is progress in the establishment of official revealment of issues and conditions which lead to conflict, so that unerring public sentiment may speed the adjustment, but I hope for that concord of purpose, not forced but inspired by the common weal, which will give a regu- lated public service the fullest guaranty of continuity. I am thinking of the railroads. In modern life they are the very base of all our activities and interchanges. For public protection we have enacted laws providing for a regulation of the charge for service, a limitation on the capital invested and a limitation on capital's earnings. There remains only competition of service on which to base our hopes for an efficiency and ex- pansion which meet our modern requirements. The railway workmen ought to be the best paid and know the best working conditions in the world. Theirs is an exceptional responsibility. They are not only es- sential to the life and health of all productive activities of the people, but they are directly responsible for the safety of traveling millions. The government which has assumed so much authority for the public good might well stamp railway employment with the sanc- tity of public service and guarantee to the railway em- ployees that justice which voices the American con- ception of righteousness on the one hand, and assure continuity of service on the other.
The importance of the railway rehabilitation is so obvious that reference seems uncalled for. We are so confident that much of the present-day insufficiency and inefficiency of transportation are due to the wither- ing hand of government operation that we emphasize
SPEECH OF ACCEPTANCE 49
anew our opposition to government ownership, we want to expedite the reparation, and make sure the mistake is not repeated.
It is little use to recite the story of development, ex- ploitation, government experiment and its neglect, gov- ernment operation and its failures. The inadequacy of trackage and terminal facilities, the insufficiency of equipment and the inefficiency of operation all bear the blighting stamp of governmental incapacity during federal operation. The work of rehabilitation under the restoration of private ownership deserves our best encouragement. Billions are needed in new equip- ment, not alone to meet the growing demand for serv- ice, but to restore the extraordinary depreciation due to the strained service of war. With restricted earn- ings and with speculative profits removed, railway activities have come to the realm of conservative and constructive service, and the government which im- paired must play its part in restoration. Manifestly the returns must be so gauged that necessary capital may be enlisted, and we must foster as well as re- strain.
We have no more pressing problem. A state of in- adequate transportation facilities, mainly chargeable to the failure of governmental experiment, is losing millions to agriculture, it is hindering industry, it is menacing the American people with a fuel shortage little less than a peril. It emphasizes the present-day problem and suggests that spirit of encouragement and assistance which commits all America to relieve such an emergency.
50 REDEDICATING AMERICA
HIGHWAY DEVELOPMENT ADVOCATED
The one compensation amid attending anxieties is our new and needed realization of the vital part trans- portation plays in the complexities of modern life. We are not to think of rails alone, but highways from farm to market, from railway to farm, arteries of life- blood to present-day life, the quickened ways to com- munication and exchange, the answer of our people to the motor age. We believe in generous federal co- operation in construction, linked with assurances of maintenance that will put an end to criminal waste of public funds on the one hand and give a guaranty of upkept highways on the other.
Water transportation is inseparably linked with ad- equacy of facilities, and we favor American eminence on the seas, the practical development of inland water- ways, the upbuilding and coordination of all to make them equal to and ready for every call of developing and widening American commerce. I like that recom- mittal to thoughts of America first which pledges the Panama Canal, an American creation, to the free use of American shipping. It will add to the American reawakening.
One can not speak of industry and commerce, and the transportation on which they are dependent, with- out an earnest thought of the abnormal cost of living and the problems in its wake. It is easy to inveigh, but that avails nothing. And it is far too serious to dismiss with flaming but futile promise.
Eight years ago, in times of peace, the Democratic party made it an issue, and when clothed with power
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that party came near to its accomplishment by destroy- ing the people's capacity to buy. But that was a cure worse than the ailment. It is easy to understand the real causes, after which the patient must help to effect his own cure.
DEFLATION OF FINANCE
Gross expansion of currency and credit have de- preciated the dollar just as expansion and inflation have discredited the coins of the world. We inflated in haste, we must deflate in deliberation. We debased the dollar in reckless finance, we must restore in hon- esty. Deflation on the one hand and restoration of the one-hundred-cent dollar on the other ought to have begun on the day after the armistice, but plans were lacking or courage failed. The unpreparedness for peace was little less costly than unpreparedness for war.
We can promise no one remedy which will cure an ill of such wide proportions, but we do pledge that ear- nest and consistent attack which the party platform covenants. We will attempt intelligent and courageous deflation, and strike at government borrowing which enlarges the evil, and we will attack high cost of gov- ernment with every energy and facility which attend Republican capacity. We promise that relief which will attend the halting of waste and extravagance, and the renewal of the practise of public economy, not alone because it will relieve tax burdens but because it will be an example to stimulate thrift and economy in pri- vate life.
I have already alluded to the necessity for the ful-
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ness of production, and we need the fulness of service which attends the exchange of products. Let us speak the irrefutable truth, high wages and reduced cost of living are in utter contradiction unless we have the height of efficiency for wages received.
In all sincerity we promise the prevention of un- reasonable profits, we challenge profiteering with all the moral force and the legal powers of government and people, but it is fair, aye, it is timely, to give re- minder that law is not the sole corrective of our eco- nomic ills.
THRIFT AND ECONOMY ESSENTIAL
Let us call to all the people for thrift and economy, for denial and sacrifice if need be, for a nation-wide drive against extravagance and luxury, to a recommit- tal to simplicity of living, to that prudent and normal plan of life which is the health of the republic. There hasn't been a recovery from the waste and abnor- malities of war since the story of mankind was first written, except through work and saving, through in- dustry and denial, while needless spending and heed- less extravagance have marked every decay in the his- tory of nations. Give the assurance of that rugged simplicity of American life which marked the first cen- tury of amazing development and this generation may underwrite a second century of surpassing accomplish- ment.
The Republican party was founded by farmers, with the sensitive conscience born of their freedom and their simple lives. These founders sprang from the farms of the then Middle West. Our party has never
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failed in its realization that agriculture is essentially the foundation of our very existence, and it has ever been our policy, purpose and performance to protec^ and promote that essential industry.
New conditions, which attend amazing growth and Extraordinary industrial development, call for a new and forward-looking program. The American farmer had a hundred and twenty millions to feed in the home market, and heard the cry of the world for food and answered it, though he faced an appalling task amid handicaps never encountered before.
AGRICULTURAL COOPERATION URGED
In the rise of price levels there have come increased Appraisals to his acres without adding to their value in fact, but which do add to his taxes and expenses without enhancing his returns. His helpers have yielded to the lure of shop and city, until, almost alone, he has met and borne the burden of the only insistent attempts to force down prices. It challenges both the wisdom and the justice of artificial drives on prices to recall that they were effective almost solely against his products in the hands of the producer and never effective against the same products in passing to the consumer. Contemplating the defenselessness of the individual farmer to meet the organized buyers of his products and the distributors of the things the farmer buys, I hold that farmers should not only be permitted but encouraged to join in cooperative association to reap the just measure of reward merited by their ar- duous toil. Let us facilitate cooperation to insure against the risks attending agriculture, which the urban
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world so little understands, and a like cooperation to market their products as directly as possible with the consumer, in the interests of all. Upon such associa- tion and cooperation should be laid only such restric- tions as will prevent arbitrary control of our food sup^ ply and the fixing of extortionate price upon it.
Our platform is an earnest pledge of renewed con- cern for this most essential and elemental industry, and in both appreciation and interest we pledge effect- ive expression in law and practise. We will hail that cooperation which again will make profitable and de- sirable the ownership and operation of comparatively small farms intensively cultivated, and which will fa- cilitate the caring for the products of farm and orchard without the lamentable waste under present conditions.
America would look with anxiety on the discourage- ment of farming activity either through the govern- ment's neglect or its paralysis by socialistic practises. A Republican administration will be committed to re- newed regard for agriculture, and seek the participa- tion of farmers in curing the ills justly complained of, and aim to place the American farm where it ought to be — highly ranked in American activities and fully sharing the highest good fortunes of American life.
IRRIGATION AND RECLAMATION
Becomingly associated with this subject are the poli- cies of irrigation and reclamation, so essential to agri- cultural expansion, and the continued development of the great and wonderful West. It is our purpose to continue and enlarge federal aid, not in sectional par- tiality, but for the good of all America. We hold to
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that harmony of relationship between conservation and development, which fittingly appraises our natural re- sources and makes them available to developing Amer- ica of to-day, and still holds to the conserving thought for the America of to-morrow.
The federal government's relation to reclamation and development is too important to admit of ample discussion to-day. Alaska, alone, is rich in resources beyond all imagination, and needs only closer linking, through the lines of transportation and a governmental policy that both safeguards and encourages develop- ment, to speed it to a foremost position as a common- wealth, rugged in citizenship and rich in materialized resources.
These things I can only mention. Within becoming limits one can not say more. Indeed, for the present many questions of vast importance must be hastily passed, reserving a fuller discussion to suitable occa- sion as the campaign advances.
SPECIFIC PROPOSALS
I believe the budget system will effect a necessary, helpful reformation, and reveal business methods to government business.
I believe federal departments should be made more businesslike and send back to productive effort thou- sands of federal employees who are either duplicating work or not essential at all.
I believe in the protective tariff policy and know we will be calling for its saving Americanism again.
I believe in a great merchant marine — I would have this republic the leading maritime nation of the world.
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I believe in a navy ample to protect it, and able to assure us dependable defense.
I believe in a small army, but the best in the world, with a mindfulness for preparedness which will avoid the unutterable cost of our previous neglect.
I believe in our eminence in trade abroad, which the government should aid in expanding, both in revealing markets and speeding cargoes.
I believe in establishing standards for immigration, which are concerned with the future citizenship of the republic, not with mere man-power in industry.
I believe that every man who dons the garb of American citizenship and walks in the light of Amer- ican opportunity must become American in heart and soul.
I believe in holding fast to every forward step in unshackling child labor and elevating conditions of woman's employment.
I believe the federal government should stamp out lynching and remove that stain from the fair name of America.
I believe the federal government should give its ef- fective aid in solving the problem of ample and becom- ing housing of its citizenship.
I believe this government should make its Liberty and Victory bonds worth all that its patriotic citizens paid in purchasing them.
I believe the tax burdens imposed for the war emer- gency must be revised to the needs of peace, and in the interest of equity in distribution of the burden.
I believe the negro citizens of America should be guaranteed the enjoyment of all their rights, that they
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have earned the full measure of citizenship bestowed, that their sacrifices in blood on the battlefields of the republic have entitled them to all of freedom and op- portunity, all of sympathy and aid that the American spirit of fairness and justice demands.
I believe there is an easy and open path to righteous relationship with Mexico. It has seemed to me that our undeveloped, uncertain and infirm policy has made us a culpable party to the governmental misfortunes in that land. Our relations ought to be both friendly and sympathetic; we would like to acclaim a stable government there, and offer a neighborly hand in point- ing the way to greater progress. It will be simple to have a plain and neighborly understanding, merely an understanding about respecting our borders, about pro- tecting the lives and possessions of American citizens lawfully within the Mexican dominions. There must be that understanding, else there can be no recognition, and then the understanding must be faithfully kept.
Many of these declarations deserve a fuller expres- sion, with some suggestions of plans to emphasize the faith. Such expression will follow, in due time, I promise you.
IMPORTANCE OF LAW ENFORCEMENT
I believe in law enforcement. If elected I mean to be a constitutional president, and it is impossible to ig- nore the Constitution, unthinkable to evade the law, when our very committal is to orderly government. People ever will differ about the wisdom of the enact- ment of a law — there is divided opinion respecting the .eighteenth amendment and the laws enacted to make it
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operative — but there can be no difference of opinion about honest law enforcement.
Neither government nor party can afford to cheat the American people. The laws of Congress must har- monize with the Constitution, else they soon are ad- judged to be void; Congress enacts the laws, and the executive branch of government is charged with en- forcement. We can not nullify because of divided opinion, we can not jeopardize orderly government with contempt for law enforcement. Modification or repeal is the right of a free people, whenever the de- liberate and intelligent public sentiment commands, but perversion and evasion mark the paths to the failure of government itself.
TRIBUTE TO WORLD WAR VETERANS
Though not in any partisan sense, I must speak of the services of the men and women who rallied to the colors of the republic in the world war. America real- izes and appreciates the services rendered, the sacri- fices made and the sufferings endured. There shall be no distinction between those who knew the perils and glories of the battle front or the dangers of the sea, and those who were compelled to serve behind the lines, or those who constituted the great reserve of a grand army which awaited the call in camps at home.
All were brave, all were sacrificing, all were sharers of those ideals which sent our boys thrice-armed to war. Worthy sons and daughters, these, fit successors to those who christened our banners in the immortal beginning, worthy sons of those who saved the Union and nationality when civil war wiped the ambiguity
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from the Constitution, ready sons of those who drew the sword for humanity's sake the first time in the world, in 1898.
The four million defenders on land and sea were worthy of the best traditions of a people never war- like in peace and never pacifist in war. They com- manded our pride, they have our gratitude, which must have genuine expression. It is not only a duty, it is a privilege to see that the sacrifices made shall be re- quited, and that those still suffering from casualties and disabilities shall be abundantly aided and restored to the highest capabilities of citizenship and its enjoy- ment
WOMAN SUFFRAGE
The womanhood of America, always its glory, its in- spiration and the potent, uplifting force in its social and spiritual development, is about to be enfranchised. Insofar as Congress can go, the fact is already accom- plished. By party edict, by my recorded vote, by per- sonal conviction I am committed to this measure of justice. It is my earnest hope, my sincere desire that the one needed state vote be quickly recorded in the affirmation of the right of equal suffrage and that the vote of every citizen shall be cast and counted in the approaching election.
Let us not share the apprehensions of many men and women as to the danger of this momentous extension of the franchise. Women have never been without in- fluence in our political life. Enfranchisement will bring to the polls the votes of citizens who have been born upon our soil, or who have sought in faith and as-
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surance the freedom and opportunities of our land. It will bring the women educated in our schools, trained in our customs and habits of thought, and sharers of our problems. It will bring the alert mind, the awak- ened conscience, the sure intuition, the abhorrence of tyranny or oppression, the wide and tender sympathy that distinguish the women of America. Surely there can be no danger there.
And to the great number of noble women who have opposed in conviction the tremendous change in the ancient relation of the sexes as applied to government, I venture to plead that they will accept the full respon- sibility of enlarged citizenship and give to the best in the republic their suffrage and support.
CONFIDENCE IN AMERICA
Much has been said of late about world ideals, but I prefer to think of the ideal for America. I like to think there is something more than the patriotism and practical wisdom of the founding fathers. It is good to believe that maybe destiny held this New- World re- public to be the supreme example of representative de- mocracy and orderly liberty by which humanity is in- spired to higher achievement. It is idle to think we have attained perfection, but there is the satisfying knowledge that we hold orderly processes for making our government reflect the heart and mind of the re- public. Ours is not'only a fortunate people but a very common-sensical people, with vision high but their feet on the earth, with belief in themselves and faith in God. Whether enemies threaten from without or men- aces arise from within, there is some indefinable voice
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saying: "Have confidence in the republic! America; will go on !"
Here is a temple of liberty no storms may shake, here are the altars of freedom no passions shall de- stroy. It was American in conception, American in its building, it shall be American in the fulfillment. Sectional once, we are all American now, and we mean to be all Americans to all the world.
Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, my coun- trymen all : I would not be my natural self if I did not utter my consciousness of my limited ability to meet your full expectations, or to realize the aspirations within my own breast, but I will gladly give all that is in me, all of heart, soul and mind and abiding love of country, to service in our common cause. I can only pray to the omnipotent God that I may be as worthy in service as I know myself to be faithful in thought and purpose. One can not give more. Mindful of the vast responsibilities I must be frankly humble, but I have that confidence in the consideration and support of all true Americans which makes me wholly unafraid. With an unalterable faith and in a hopeful spirit, with a hymn of service in my heart, I pledge fidelity to our country and to God, and accept the nomination of the Republican party for the presidency of the United States.
CHAPTER III SAFEGUARDING AMERICA
'Address on the League of Nations in the United States Senate, September nf
MR. PRESIDENT — If it were not for seeming indif- ference in an hour of imperiled nationality, I believe I should be content to rest my expression as to the pend- ing treaty wholly on the report of the Committee on Foreign Relations. I say this with propriety, I think, because I had no part in its writing, though I was a participant in the conclusions reached. My judgment is that it is one of the American documents well worthy of preservation.
Mr, President, every day of discussion, presidential utterances included, and every hour of study combine to persuade me that the league of nations venture in the form in which the covenant has been negotiated is one of peril to the republic. To accept it unaltered would be a betrayal of America. It is not for me to consider constitutional inhibitions. There is probably nothing to prevent a nation undertaking self-destruc- tion by indirection or otherwise if the treaty-making powers are in accord about the desirability of such a course. Nor is it for me to discuss the finer points involved in international law and diplomatic niceties, because once the league is established it becomes the
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maker of international law and diplomacy ends in league autocracy.
NATIONALITY IS PARAMOUNT
Such impressions as I wish to offer are the very simple ones of an American who is jealous of the re- public's nationality and fears paralysis in that inter- nationality which is the league's loftiest aim. Sub- merged nationality and supreme internationality are more to be expected than the proclaimed permanency of peace, which first caught the sympathy and support of a peace-loving world.
Mr. President, I know the natural aspirations of civilized humanity and share them. I know how the heart of the world, torn and bleeding and anguished and palpitant in the cataclysmal war, throbs in hunger for assured tranquillity. I pity him who has not felt the yearnings within his own breast. No real Ameri- can is so bereft of feeling. There is no monopoly of the love of peace, and there is no exclusiveness in concern for humanity's sake. Neither is there a limited circle of those who act in patriotic devotion nor restricted groups in loving our common country. I say these perfectly obvious things because it is time to clear up some mistaken impressions. The pro- ponents of the Wilsonian league of nations have no more claim to an exclusive desire for the peace of our country and the world than the opponents of this league have exclusive claim to patriotic devotion to our own nation. And the considerable numbers who are grieving that there is involved in the treaty-making
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power of a portion of the Senate which is impelled by partisan bias ought to revise their judgment, because it is as unfair and uncomplimentary to one side as the other and challenges the wisdom of popular govern- ment. However, if disagreement with the executive, now that the war is won, is to invite the charge of narrow partisanship, I welcome it and am content to let it go at that.
INVOLVEMENTS OF LEAGUE
It was the truth, last year, two years ago, three and four years ago, the people of this country were heed- lessly and overwhelmingly for a league of nations, or a society of nations, or a world court, or some inter- national association which should develop a fraternity of action among civilized peoples and save humanity not only from the sorrows and sufferings like those which came with the war now ended, but from the in- volvements of which we are not yet emerged. Many leaders of the party represented on this side of the chamber were conspicuous in its advocacy, and thou- sands less notable joined the chorus. Among the latter I joined in writing a favoring declaration in the platform of the Republican party in Ohio, which I think fairly voiced the aspirations of the people of that state. In the popular thought was the wish to abolish war and promote peace and make justice supreme, and it was believed that the world, war wearied and drenched with the blood of millions of devoted nation- alists, would be ready for the committal. Our people were thinking of the thing desired, and never pondered the method or the cost of its making. Nobody stopped
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to think of the involvements then. We are only learn- ing them now.
It would have been well to have counseled with one another before the covenant was fashioned. The people voted such a preference most emphatically last November. Most people thought there would be coun- seling, and it ought to have been done. When the armistice brought humanity's greatest sigh of relief since ^Fellowship engirdled the earth, it was the com- mon thought that sympathy would inspire and justice would impel and safety would demand some created agency of the conscience of the world that should contribute to the furtherance of peace and maintained tranquillity. But the immediate task was the settlement of the war suspended by the armistice. The manifest yeaniing was for recovery from madness and destruc- tion and waste and disorder, and the instincts of self- preservation called for speedy restoration. No one doubted that the measureless cost and unspeakable suffering would awaken the consciences of nations to take stock of their relationships and readjust them to guard against recurrent horrors. But the pressing call was for peace, peace among the belligerent powers, peace for convalescence, peace for deliberation, peace for that understanding which is the first essential in undertaking a world-wide covenant which mankind had never effected heretofore.
AMERICA ESSENTIAL FACTOR IN WAR
No one can doubt the advantageous position of this republic when the armistice was signed. We had proven our unselfishness. We alone had not won the
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war, but our entrance into the conflict in April, 1917, saved the waning morale of allied nations which bore the brunt of German attack, and our first expedition- ary forces in the summer of 1917 revived the drooping spirits of the fighting forces of France and England, and in 1918 the sons of this republic turned the sweep- ing tide of battle backward. It is not unseemly to say our forces were an absolutely essential factor in the winning, though our 2,000,000 of fighting and ir- resistible Americans were only a partial expression of our resources and our resolution that Germany and her allies must be brought to terms. It is a glorious record which calls for no recital here. I am trying only to call to mind our advantageous position — the grati- tude of the powers with whom we were associated, the belated realization and respect of the Central Pow- ers, the tardy awakening of Germany, who learned the lesson that Americans could and would fight, and the world's understanding of our unselfishness in the defense of our national rights.
The loftiness of our position was correctly and creditably appraised, notwithstanding the excessive proclamation of democracy and humanity. The latter was mainly for home consumption. It may be taken as one of the inevitable things in popular government, it was distinctly a symptom of our neglect of the American spirit. Those who stop to analyze know, of course, that if the German assault had been aimed at the world's democracy— our defense of democracy ought to have answered with every American gun when Belgium was invaded. And the same analytical thought must have persuaded the thinking American
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that if it was our duty to make war for humanity's sake, duty called loudly above the horrified exclama- tion of the world when the Lusitania was sunk without pity for dying humanity on her unsuspecting decks. I am not indulging in belated complaint, because I knew the tremendous seriousness of plunging the re- public in war, and I knew then our unreadiness of spirit for such a committal. The point I am aiming at is to clarify our purpose in entering the war in order to emphasize our favorable position when it came to an end. The everlasting truth is that we were lashed by German ruthlessness to a defense of our national rights, and we did defend them, until Germany's power for ruthlessness has been destroyed beyond recovery for generations to come. We defended only our rights, and we know now, if we did not realize before, that the nation which does not defend its national rights does not deserve to survive. We did not ask more, except to help in righteous restoration, and the world correctly appraised the unselfishness which marked our efforts.
COUNSEL NEEDED AT PEACE CONFERENCE
It was a very simple course to have taken. Ours was a commanding voice in the adjustments of peace, willingly and gladly heeded. It was ours to pass judg- ment on the terms of peace and speed their conclusion. I must confess, Senators, I could find no fault with the president going to the peace table. The world had never seen before such an opportunity for service, and I thought it fitting that the first citizen of the republic should Q and utter the unbiased advice of America
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amid the «mbitterments and prejudices that had grown out of twenty centuries of European conflict. I do not share the criticism that he invited no members of this body, which must approve every treaty to which the republic is committed. I do complain that in this most extraordinary and unparalleled wreck in the wake of world-wide war he consented to counsel and advise with none who have sworn duties to perform, and devoted, essentially alone, his talents and his supreme influence to reformations and restitutions, and the establishment of governments and the realiza- tions of ambitions and the fulfillment of dreams which human struggles and battling peoples and heroic sacri- fices have not effected since the world began, and never will be realized until that millennial day that marks the beginning of heaven on earth. The situation pre- sented intensely practical problems, and he clung mainly to lofty theories.
Sometimes I think a very capable writer of history is very much spoiled for the making of it. I can recall now my reverent regard for Julius Caesar when I struggled with his recital of the wars in Gaul. It re- quired a wider reading before I realized that the great commoner of that day was making history and recording it for the effect it might and did have south of the Rubicon. It is easy to understand the perfectly natural and laudable ambition to do the superlative thing which history is waiting to record, which super- lative thing was in the historian's mind, but it needed penetrating vision to meet the pressing, practical prob- lems which were awaiting solution, by very practical men.
SAFEGUARDING AMERICA &
SECRET BARTERING UNHEEDED
One can conceive the idealist who is blind to the bald realities of secret covenants and selfish bartering inci- dent to the alliances wrought amid the anxieties and necessities of so stupendous a war. Nations were battling for their very existence, and they made pledges with little reckoning of the future. It was as- sumed our government knew the details, but the as- sumption was a mistaken one. The president frankly said he did not know. Merely fighting in our own defense, it was excusable for us not to know, for we should have given to our utmost of lives and treasure regardless of the aftermath. But in joining the strug- gle professedly for democracy's sake, we ought to have had some forecast of democracy's fate in the pregnant aftermath. More, to meddle effectively in the affairs of the world, we ought to have known the world's promises. Herein lies the weakness of our whole part at the peace table.
The war had its inception in German ambition, ex- panded domain, if not world domination, all conceived in drunkenness with power. It was met in self-defense — righteous self-defense — but there was inevitable con- sideration of the spoils of victory. They became the inspiration and considerations of alliances, and there were understandings, written and unwritten. We should be blind not to recognize the necessity and naturalness of it. The pity is that we did not recog- nize the evident truth and speak with the confident voice of justice, and hold ourselves aloof from any committal which savored of unrighteousness. If
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Europe, in the stress of war or out of it, will barter in territories and peoples, we can not hinder, but we need not approve and surely we must not guarantee.
Whether the president knew the details of negoti- ated selfishness while the war was raging, it was in- evitable that he soon learned when he made his tri- umphant landing on the friendly soil of France. It was not then too late to hold aloof. We were seeking only peace. We sought no territory, no mandatory, no reparation — nothing was asked. Our unselfishness was genuine, to the everlasting honor of this republic. But the glory of the league of nations — an appealing conception — filled the American commission's vision, while distinctly American interests — aye, sacred Ameri- can interests — were ignored and forgotten in a new and consuming concern for the world.
Empires and sovereign states, autocratic, imperial, or democratic, had fought and sacrificed and bargained and covenanted — and we had fought with them — and they craved peace and we craved peace. But they wanted annexations and extensions and creations, and they wanted this republic, with its resources — with its wealth of men and materials — to guarantee the changes they had wrought, and wanted the United States of America in their unselfishness to guarantee in per- petuity the selfishness of the Old World.
NOTHING SUBSTANTIAL OFFERED
They had nothing to offer us but the phantasmal thing, taking the elusory shape of the image of peace.
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a promise deeply appealing to the aspirations of our- selves and the world, for tranquillity and the banish- ment of war. And we bargained for it, and then they fashioned it into a reality, suited to serve Europe and the Orient as the seal of righteousness on all to which the allied powers had agreed.
Mr. President, I grant the worthiness, the loftiness of the ideal when we look above and beyond the im- morality which it cloaks. One must concede the good which is aimed at. No one who is sincere can question the desirability of closer fraternity among the nations of the earth. No thoughtful citizen of any country will dispute the need of the clarification and codifica- tion of international law. Such a thing might have saved us from involvement in the European war, un- less Germany was madly determined to effect her own destruction.
SUPERGOVERNMENT CREATED
International arbitration and a world court for jus- ticiable disputes appeal to all who think justice is sus- tained in reason rather than in armed dispute. The establishment of an agency for the revelation of the moral judgment of the world can never be amiss. These things might well have come out of the com- bined consciences of the nations awakened to new ideals amid the sufferings of war, and they will yet come. But it does not require a supergovernment to effect them, nor the surrender of nationality and inde- pendence of action to sanction them.
It is my deliberate conviction that the league of nations covenant, as negotiated at Paris and signed at
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Versailles, either creates a supergovernment of the nations which enter it or it will prove the colossal disappointment of the ages. Though it would be vastly more serious as the former, I can not believe this re- public ought to sanction it in either case. Why pro- claim a promise that will embitter the world's disap- pointment ?
DISARMAMENT NOT ACCOMPLISHED
Let us note, first, the probability of disappointment. Does it effect disarmament? The member nations decide for themselves the necessary size of their armed forces, which are not to be increased except with the league's approval. Of course there is to be studied recommendation for reduction, but any two powers In concerted action may reject the entire program. Who has heard of a proposal to dimmish the great British navy, which holds Great Britain undisputed mistress of the world's seas ? Few will question Great Britain's wisdom in her well-known attitude. Surely no British subject will question it. She has an empire to defend and a commerce to guard, without which England's glory is at an end.
Only a few days ago the cabled news told us that France will maintain a larger army than that republic possessed when she entered the world war. Doubtless France's security demands it, in spite of the negotiated alliance which calls the United States and Great Britain to her aid in case of a renewed German assault. We know little about Japan, but we do know that Japan may fix her own limitations as to army and
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navy, "taking into account geographical conditions and national safety," until under this treaty we give our sons and our resources to the enforcement of international agreements by common action under articles 8 and 10.
Is disarmament looming as a hope realized? Look for an instant at home. With the league confidently expected, with all its blessings of peace, limited only by "interpretations," we are contemplating an army of half a million, seven times our previous establish- ment in peace, and the men, in Congress or out, who would cut our program for an expanded navy are few and far between. More, the man who would suggest it would be unmindful of our security. Verily, he who sees world disarmament in this league covenant has a faith which surpasses understanding.
ARBITRATION NOT ASSURED
Will nations arbitrate their differences under the league covenant ? They will if both parties to the dis- pute are agreed, and they can not do that without it Under the covenant one party may decline, then the council takes the case, and we have recently come to know the recommendations of the council' constitute its judgment only as to a "moral" obligation.
We have heard much lately about "moral" obliga- tions. When a thing is covenanted it is difficult for me to distinguish between moral and legal obligation. For this republic either or both ought to be solemnly binding. The nation which ignores either is losing the conscience which is essential to self-respect and
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respect among nations. It was Germany's contempt for a "scrap of paper" that made her an outcast in the eyes of the civilized world.
There has been a curious conflict of meaning in the use of the word "moral." When senators, speaking in this chamber in defense of the league covenant, found opposition developing to the powers conveyed in article 10, they hastened to say the council's call to war, armed or economic, in defense of any member was not binding — "only a moral obligation." I have heard the term quoted again and again and in the recorded conference between members of the Foreign Relations Committee and the president it was declared by the president that we were not bound to go to war on recommendation of the council, that there was "only a moral obligation," on which we should have to pass judgment for ourselves. Later on, in the record of the meeting, the president emphatically de- clared a moral obligation the most binding of all. Let every man make the distinction that he prefers. A contract is a contract, a covenant is a covenant, and if this republic does not mean to do as it promises, it has no business to make the promise.
ARTICLE TEN MERE PHANTOM
There is no language in the covenant more plain than article 10. Either it means what it says, and obli- gates the member nations to go to war in defense of a member nation, or it means nothing at all. If it leaves any member nation free to exercise its own judgment as to the merits of any attack, it does not guarantee the territorial integrity or peace of any nation. It is
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worse than phantom ; it is the mirage that lures nations thirsting for peace to the very desert of cruel destruc- tion. The pity of it is that no reservation will cure the ill. Without the power, which is clearly expressed, "the league is a rope of sand," as the senator from Connecticut described it, and with the power estab- lished, as it must be to make the league effective, we have surrendered our own freedom of action to a council whose members will represent the prejudices, ambitions, hatreds, and jealousies of the Old World, or to the assembly, where we are outvoted six to one by Great Britain and her colonies, and we still remain a party to the racial, geographical, and inherited enmities of Europe and the Orient.
Many have written me, and senators have spoken and the president has argued, that we are no longer isolated from the Old World, that we have a duty to humanity, and we can not escape our manifest duty to world civilization. It is urged that we struck down the barriers when we sent the sons of the republic to war, and there can be no withdrawal now. One can not dispute our ever-widening influence; none would narrow it. It began when we unsheathed the sword literally in behalf of humanity for the first time in the world. That was when we went to war to liberate Cuba and expanded to the Philippines. It is easy to recall the outcry against imperialism then by the very adherents of world sponsorship to-day — aye, by those who only three years ago would have furled the flag there, and promise it now, after our contri- bution to one defenseless people's progress unmatched in all history.
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FOR AMERICAN RIGHTS
Ours is truly an expanded influence and a world interest, but there is yet for us a splendid isolation. The sons of America, 2,000,000 of them, crossed the seas in spite of submarine ruthlessness and every danger Germany could devise, and 2,000,000 more were ready, and 5,000,000 more would have prepared if needed, and they heroically fought and effectively taught arrogant Germany to respect American rights and left a wholesome impress on the remainder of the world. The soldiers have in the main returned, and, having accomplished our righteous purpose, it was vastly more easy to have severed our involvement than it was to bring the boys home and turn to the pursuits of peace again. The people of this republic were not concerned with governing the universe. Their interests, their hearts, their hopes, their ambitions, their weal or woe — all of these are in the United States of America. We wanted nothing abroad but respect for our just rights, and that we mean to have, in peace or war, no matter who threatens.
It would have been so easy, if our commission had thought of America first, to have said to the allied powers, "Look here, friends and allies — yes, and to enemies as well — we came over and helped you bring an outlaw to terms, because he trespassed our rights beyond endurance. He is humbled now, and it is yours to restore order and make a just and abiding peace. We want peace, and we want to go to work and replace the waste of war. We will advise, if we can and you wish it, but we are asking nothing, and
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we will go back home and see to our own affairs. We do not mean to mix in again, unless some bully in making a row infringes our rights and murders our citizens and destroys our lawful property. In that event we will be forced to come back, but we will come more promptly the next time." That would have left a good impression, and we would have been at peace, and so would Europe, months ago.
Mr. President, the first official of our government is touring the country to invite the people of the re- public, the great mass whose heart is ever right in ulti- mate decision, to the support of this untouchable and unamendable and supposedly sacred document He visited the capital of the state which I have the honor to represent, and was received with the respect be- coming his great office, and was applauded, as often happens to appealing speech, of which he is the master. He has spoken and is speaking elsewhere, and the people of our state are reading, in common with the reading people of America. I am not finding fault with the tour, even if it is not wholly purposed to promote the league covenant. One may not assume that it involves a feeling of the political pulse of the country, but if it is, if it is to test popular feeling about putting the presidency permanently in the hands of one equipped to direct the world aright and at the same time merge this republic in a supergovernment of the world, my partisan prejudices would be rejoic- ing. But the president told the reverent people of Ohio that he had only to report to them — in a broad sense, the people — and it so happens that I, too, as insignificant as my position is, relatively, have to report
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to the same people, and I want them to have not only the truth but all the truth; not only fine generalities but illuminating details.
MANY PEOPLES NOT HEARD
Mr. President, the treaty is being expounded by its chief author to the people with vastly more freedom of utterance than this body has known, notwithstand- ing our solemn responsibility in making it a binding covenant on the part of this republic. Perhaps it does not matter, because we have before us the treaty itself, and we know what it says, though we do not have all the collateral covenants and do not know all to which we are pledged or to what ratification commits us. Yet we have had the advantage, or disadvantage, if you prefer, of hearing also from others of the peace commission, from experts who drafted many of its articles, and alas, we have heard from many who spoke for those who pleaded for their rights at Paris and who declared they were not heard, no matter what is said now about this being the first consecration of international conscience to the rights of helpless peoples and small nations.
Let me digress for a moment to suggest some of my own impressions gathered during the hearings granted to the American representatives of the as- piring peoples of Europe and Asia and Egypt, whose aspirations and long-deferred hopes of liberty and nationality are alleged to have been safeguarded in this supercreation of humanity. It was futile, of course, for a Senate committee to assume to answer prayers or comply with protest, for our function is not
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one of negotiation. However, there were citizens cry- ing to be heard, after a denial at the fount of justice in Europe, and we listened. They begged amendment or rejection to save their liberties or to preserve their nationalities or to maintain their homogeneous peoples. Spokesmen for China cried out against the rape of the first great democracy of the Orient, and the plea .was eloquent with recited sacrifices and noble assistance in the winning of the war. We uttered our chagrin that the spokesmen for the American conscience — aye, for the "conscience of civilization" — had sanctioned the confessed immorality of the Shantung award to satisfy a secret covenant against which we righteously proclaimed, and we did all we can do to right the wrong.
We heard the Americans speaking for their kinsmen of Greece, our allies in war, protesting the award of Thrace and its Greek peoples to Bulgaria who fought for German domination. We listened to those who were Croats or Slovenes or Serbs utter their despair over "the rectifications of history" under territorial awards arrived at for Jugo-Slavia, and Americans of Italian origin or ancestry presented the appeals of Italians for unsevered relationship from the mother- land. More, Americans who originated in Egypt, with its traditions and ancient civilization, begged that we shall not sanction their transfer from Turkey and Germany to Great Britain, but save them their in- herited freedom and their right to becoming aspira- tions. Hungarians prayed for restored enfranchise- ment amid the racial inspiration of the Magyars ; and the irrepressible advocates of Irish freedom made the
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plea before the Senate Committee which could not be heard at Paris. I have not named them all, but enough to reveal the utter futility, the hopeless impracticability of this republic attempting to right the cumulative wrongs of history and satisfy the perfectly natural ambitions and aspirations of races and peoples. One can not wave the wand of democracy, even of exces- sively proclaimed American democracy, and do for Poland in a day or a year or a generation what cen- turies of sacrifice and warfare and self-determination have not done.
AVENUE TO UNENDING WAR
Does any thinking man stop to measure the colossal and endless involvement before which the sublimest unselfishness and most confident altruism must falter ? Contemplate for a moment only the mandatory for Armenia. It is very appealing to portray the woes, the outrages, the massacres, the awakening hopes of Armenia, and visualize the doubts and distresses and sacrificed lives while "the Senate waits." I know the appeal that touches the heart of Christian America in its concern and sympathy for Armenia. It easily may be made to seem as if the sympathetic Son of God had turned to the omnipotent Father to send this twentieth-century defender of the New Testament to succor those stricken believers in the great Trinity. But the big, warning truth is little proclaimed. Our armies — sons of this republic, the youths from Ameri- can homes — are wanted there. Armenia calls and Great Britain is urging, insisting. A hundred thou- sand eoldiers are needed. More American soldiers for
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Armenia than we heretofore maintained under the flag in any of the years of peace. Answer the call, and we station this American army at the gateway between Orient and Occident, to become involved in every conflict in the Old World, and our splendid isola- tion becomes a memory and our boasted peace a mock- ery. This is not the way to peace. This is the avenue to unending war.
Mr. President, I am not insensible to the sufferings of Armenia, nor am I deaf to the wails forced by the cruelties of barbarity wherever our ideals of civiliza- tion are not maintained. But I am thinking of America first. Safety, as well as charity, begins at home. Self- ishness? No. It is self-preservation. Measureless as our resources are, large as our man power is, and chivalrous as our purposes may be, we are not strong enough to assume sponsorship for all the oppressed of the world. No people, no nation is strong enough for such a supreme responsibility. We in America have the republic to preserve. And in this very pro- gram of meddlesome assumption, in some instances bordering on presumption, we are endangering our own republic. It is not alone the abandonment of security, so much warned against by the founding fathers, which suggests alarm. I am thinking of di- vided citizenship at home that must attend our at- tempted reorganization of the world.
Turn back for a moment to the appealing citizens who appeared before the Foreign Relations Committee in prayer or protest. They fairly represented a large proportion of American citizenship. We have no racial entity in this republic. .We arc polyglot of tongue,
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which generations will not wholly change. The in- volvement in the world war found us divided in spirit. The founding fathers were eager to share their free- dom and speed development of our incalculable re- sources, and they asked the world to come, and the world did come — the oppressed, the adventurous, the industrious; but there was neglected consecration of citizenship.
TO PRESERVE AMERICANISM
In the travail of war the American soul was born, and we have preached and practised Americanization ever since, and we mean to go on and make this repub- lic American in fact as well as in name. No republic can endure half loyal and half disloyal ; no citizenship is of permanent value whose heart is not in America. I had thought the war worth all it cost, in spite of its unutterable expenditure in lives and treasure, to have found ourselves. It was an inspiration to find the adopted sons of the republic consecrated to the com- mon cause. Yet, sirs, the unhappy aftermath is resur- recting the old lines of divided citizenship. We are restoring hyphenism under internationalism.
One can not complain at the revealment, but I am lamenting the cause. It is all directly traceable to our assumption of world sponsorship. One can little blame the American of Italian origin for being concerned about the affairs of those bound by ties of blood, or find fault with the American of Greek origin for deep feelings about the fate of those of kin in Thrace, or criticize the American son of the old sod who finds in his heart an undying echo of the Irish cry for free-
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dom. Instead of effacing the native interest, instead of merging the inherited soul in exclusive American- ism, we have already embarked on a program that awakens every racial pride, every Old-World prejudice, every inherited aspiration, and are rending the con- cord of American spirit which once promised to be the great compensation for all our sacrifices. This is no idle fancy. Justice, only simple justice, and liberty, God's own bequest of liberty, were on every lip, and there was no perfunctory utterances among those who appealed to the Senate through our committee. There was deep feeling no words could belie and that sin- cerity for which men die, and as I listened I deplored the eloquence of speech unperformed, which leads hope to flame high, then die in disappointment. And, sirs, I doubly deplored the proposals and pretenses that open anew the cleavage in the consecration of our adopted American citizenship.
WHY AMERICA ENTERED WAR
Senators, it is a great thing to be eloquent and per- suasive in speech, but it is also a very dangerous thing. I mean to be quite as respectful as I am sincere when I say that our present involvement and our further entanglement and most of the world's restlessness and revolution and threatened revolution are largely traceable to pre-war utterances and war-time pro- nouncements. Once before in this chamber I chal- lenged some of the statements as to why we went to war. I speak of it again now, because the president told the people of my state that our soldiers were "drafted for the very purpose of ending war," and
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this league as negotiated is the only thing that will do it. It does not seem to have occurred to any one that we might appeal to the pride of the peoples of the earth. Still more recently a very eminent authority has proclaimed all opponents of the covenant as "con- temptible quitters if they do not see the game through." Mr. President, I turned to the Record of Congress for that fateful 6th of April, 1917, when this body voted the declaration of war against Germany. It had occurred to me that perhaps the resolution itself would give the official reason for going to war, as Congress would prefer history to record it. I turned to the preamble to the official declaration, and there is given the reason in the simplest language that words can express :
"Whereas the Imperial German Government has committed repeated acts of war against the Govern- ment and the people of the United States of America, therefore be it resolved,"
And so forth.
There is the whole story. Nothing there especially proclaiming democracy or humanity, because both had been fighting, sacrificing, and dying for more than two and a half years and we neither saw nor heard.
PROCLAMATION OF NEUTRALITY RECALLED
Let me clarify by further quotation from the presi- dent. I omit the official proclamation of neutrality in August of 1914, but want to reveal the conscience of America as spoken by him in the following January, when Belgium was devastated and France was bleed-
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ing, and Britain was sacrificing her volunteer defend- ers. I quote from a speech made at Indianapolis, scene of the more recent admonition to "put up or shut up." Search the quotation for democracy, humanity, "the end of all war/' or "the rectified wrongs of history" :
"Only America at peace! Among all the great powers of the world only America saving her power for her own people. Do you not think it likely that the world will some time turn to America and say, 'You were right and we were wrong. You kept your head when we lost ours.' " — The President, Indian- apolis, January 8, 1915.
More than three months passed, and still the con- science of the republic was unchanged. I quote from the New York speech of the chief executive, delivered on April 20, 1915 :
"I am interested in neutrality because there is some- thing so much greater to do than fight ; there is a dis- tinction waiting for this nation that no nation ever got. That is the distinction of absolute self-control and self- mastery."
Let us as an act of courtesy, pass the Philadelphia address, delivered three days after the Lusitania sink- ing, when humanity's cry was muffled by the ocean's depths and democracy was too shocked to speak. In December we still "stood apart, studiously neutral — it was our manifest duty." Thus the president spoke. But it is especially interesting to quote from an address delivered at Des Moines, Iowa, on February 1, 1916,
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at the same place where the "quitters" were so recently gibbeted :
"There are actually men in America who are preach- ing war, who are preaching the duty of the United States to do what it never would before — seek en- tanglements in the controversies which have arisen on the other side of the water — abandon its habitual and traditional policy and deliberately engage in the conflict which is engulfing the rest of the world. I do not know what the standards of citizenship of these gentlemen may be. I only know that I for one can not subscribe to those standards."
It was an unspeakable thing to abandon our "habitual and traditional policy" and seek entanglements in Old- World controversies then, when actual conflict was threatening our very safety, but "only the selfishness or ignorance or a spirit of Bolshevism" is debating it now. Surely the American people will not compare without understanding.
FORCED TO DECLARE WAR
We went to war precisely for the reason uttered in the preamble which I quoted, forced to action by the conscience and self-respect of the American people. Perhaps the people were greater than their govern- ment in conscience and self-respect, but they were not great enough to overcome the costly months of delay. But once we were committed it was unalterable. "Quitters" in Congress? They were trampled deep beneath the forward march. Congress submerged Jtself, abdicated, to give limitless power to the com-
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mander in chief. No finer surrender of power is recorded in history, no lawful dictatorship offers paral- lel in the story of free government. I am not com- plaining, I am commending ! It was necessary to speed the winning.
"Quitters" among the people ? Not one among the millions of patriotic Americans. We pledged all we had, our wealth, our lives, our sacred honor. It was the committal unalterable. Germany was making war on us, and had to be brought to terms. Let me record it for all time — the unquitting resolution of these United States. Suppose poor, weak but proud and brave Serbia had been trampled to earth and utterly destroyed; suppose brave heroic Belgium had been driven wholly into the sea and none but her enslaved people remained to cherish the scory of her opening guns of defense; suppose Italy, resolute and courage- ous, in spite of her difficulties, had been brought to terms ; suppose Russia in her betrayal had joined her German masters and sought to destroy the world's civilization as she did her own ; suppose noble, heroic, self-sacrificing, respiritualized France had been brought to her knees, wounded unto death ; suppose determined, fearless and powerful Great Britain had been starved and brought to terms as the Central Powers had planned; suppose all these disasters had attended, then, even then, this republic would have gone on and on and on until Germany was brought to terms, be- cause without established American rights there could be no American nation, and we had rather perish than fail to maintain them.
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OUR TASK COMPLETED
No, Senators, there were no "quitters" after the task was once assumed. We finished in triumph. An arrogant, offending military Germany is no more. That job was well done. But after it was done, having no concern for Europe's affairs, seeking nothing of territory, nothing of reparation — and getting none, let it be said — the sons of the republic wanted to come home, and the people of the United States wanted them home, and it was in the great heart of the republic to turn to the restoration, reestablish our nor- mal pursuits, and make the earliest recovery possible from the ravages and extravagances and wastes and sorrows of war.
That is not a "quitter's" program. That was dis- tinctly and becomingly the American policy, the wish of highest American devotion. We had never entered any alliances. The treaty speaks again and again of the "principal allied and associated powers." We were the "associated power," because when Germany committed her acts of war against us, we joined the warfare of the Allies against her and made common cause against the common enemy. We had no com- pacts, no covenants, no secret arrangements. Alas! We did not even know the secret agreements the Allies had. It would have little mattered, perhaps, had we not proclaimed overmuch against secret agreements and proposed a new birth for all the world.
We did cooperate. We fought under French com- mand, and our soldiers were comrades to French, to Italian, to Belgian, and to British, because we were
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battling for the defeat of a common enemy. We paid our own way to the last farthing. We gave of treasure without reckoning, and Americans died not as allies but as Americans. That was the one supreme con- solation in every hero's last living thought. Crusaders, seeking a hitman relationship that God Himself hath not wrought? No! They were heroic defenders of these United States.
NOT COMMITTED TO LEAGUE
It may be recorded, Senators, that America finished the task for which her sons were sent to Europe, and the unfinished work which is now alleged is an after- thought, to which America was never committed, about which our people were never consulted, concerning which our very peace commissioners were not advised. No one questions the lofty aims of President Wilson, no one would hinder consistent endeavor for all desir- able attainment. No one opposes because the Ameri- can participation is exclusively Wilsonian, or because the covenant is of British conception. It is the cov- enant itself and the effect of our committal which calls for consideration.
It is appropriate, however, to dispel some of the illusions about it being the expressed hope and guaran- teed security of small nations and struggling peoples. They had no voice in its making. Their protests were stifled at the moment of its adoption. Eyewitnesses to the submission of this super-concept to the peace com- missioners testify that this "covenant is a perversion of what men who really favored a league of nations intended and wished for." I quote Mr. Frank P.
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Walsh, once its ardent supporter, now protesting its adoption. When Mr. Walsh appeared before our committee he was asked if the assembled peace com- missioners, representing nations, great or small, ex- pressed any surprise when the covenant was presented. Mj. Walsh replied :
"Oh, it was very marked. They jumped up all over the place to make protests. Man after man got up. You know there was an awful censorship upon this whole business."
AUTOCRACY OF PEACE
There was no debate. It was the offering of th'e big four, the autocracy of peace, not submitted to de- bate by the commissioners signing, and is now too sacred for modification by this body which must speak for America. I believe it designed to establish super- government, and no explanation nor apology has al- tered my opinion. It may consider any questions affect- ing the affairs of the world, and the council's decision is a binding thing, else language has no dependable meaning. Supergovernment was the great dream, and the very essentials of supergovernment were in- corporated. If one believes in surrendered nationality, if one prefers world citizenship to American citizen- ship, which I delight to boast, the covenant is ideal. But it ends democracy instead of promoting it, and it means international autocracy for all who accept it without specific reservations.
The authority, as written, is limitless. Any national sovereignty may be invaded. The authority which can prevent war can make it, and it will. The president
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has said the council may even consider internal con- troversies which threaten world peace, and he holds out the promise that the league will correct the in- justices of the peace commission which created it. If that does not mean the assumption of power to extend to limitless authority, the promise is not sincere. On the other hand, it means abandoned self-determi- nation for every member nation, and unending inter- ference and invited conflict with nations outside the autocratic circle.
NATIONALITY SACRIFICED
No one has made the venture to estimate our possible obligations. Only last Saturday the cable told us how a member of the French chamber of deputies had ad- vocated that the league of nations should assume a proportion of the French war debt. It does not matter that we renounced all reparation ourselves, it does not matter that we expended without measure, it neverthe- less appears that in the new idealism there is a "touch" of the practical. Europe is calling for our soldiers and we are sending, though our task was ended last No- vember. Europe wants our sponsorship, to enforce the new alignments, and wants our treasure to lighten her own burdens. Involvement piles upon involve- ment and responsibility upon responsibility, until inde- pendence of action fades into precious memory and nationality becomes a lost inheritance.
Senators, no one in all the land has greater pride than I feel in having this nation and our people exert a becoming influence on the progressive march of civ- ilization. We can not hope to remain utterly aloof,
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and would not choose a complete isolation if such a course were possible. We are the exemplars of rep- resentative democracy, and we have seemingly devel- oped the most dependable popular government in the world. We know that no pure democracy ever sur- vived, and we know that republics have failed before. We ought and do realize that the fundamentals of the United States are not of new discovery, and we are yet but a child among the nations in point of years, though our achievement would glorify centuries of de- velopment. My point is that civilization is not ex- clusively ours, of justice solely an American conception, or righteousness wholly a New- World development. We are committed to them all, and we are the best exemplars of unselfishness in the world.
AMERICAN CONSCIENCE FIXES OBLIGATION
Our merits are appraised and our weaknesses are known. We have power and wealth and conscience; we do have lofty sentiments and high ideals. We would have ours the best example of national right- eousness in all the world, and influence the world ac- cording to the confidence and respect we command. We do not need Europe or Asia to define our moral obligations, we do not need the Old World to quicken the American conscience. The obligations to civiliza- tion are not designated by men, they are written by the hand of divinity which records the onward march. No league, no council of any league, no assembly of any league can ever appeal to the American conscience as will the voice of intelligent and deliberate public
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opinion. Aye, and if we proclaim democracy to the world, we must not crush it at its hearthstone.
Must we have this particular covenant to save us from European broils and Old- World conflicts, as the president asserts? In a hundred years of American development and growing influence no war involved us, though one hundred and twenty-six wars are re- corded in that period. We were not involved in 1898 ; we went because conscience was impelling. I quite agree that Germany might have preferred to respect our rights than to involve us in the late world war if she had believed we would answer affront with armed defense, but the president was too busy then keeping us out of war to utter a vigorous American warning. Germany held us in a contempt which one militant American voice in authority might have dissolved, but we delayed until two million righting sons of the re- public shot Germany to respectful understanding.
RESPECT FOR AMERICAN RIGHTS
We have settled it for all time, league or no league^ peace or no peace, war or no war, the rights of this na- tion and the rights of our citizens must and will be respected at home or abroad, on land or sea, every- where an American may go on a lawful and righteous mission under the shining sun. To adopt any other policy, to call an international council to destroy the American spirit, would rend the life of the republic. It may be very old-fashioned, sirs, it may be reaction- ary, it may be shocking to pacifist and dreamer alike, but I choose for our own people, a hundred millions or
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more, the right to search the American conscience and prescribe our own obligations to ourselves and the world's civilization.
Let us pause for a moment to note the tendency of the propagandists of the hour and the proponents of the league. There is a drive to nationalize industry, to denationalize governments, and internationalize the world. All are contrary to everything that made us what we are, all stamp failure on all we have wrought, and propose paralysis instead of the virile activity which sped us on to achievement.
SIGNIFICANCE OF NATIONALISM
Nationalism was the vital force that turned the dearly wrought freedom of the republic to a living, impelling power. Nationalism inspired, assured, up- builded. In nationalism was centered all the hopes, all the confidence, all the aspirations of a developing peo- ple. Nationalism has turned the retreating processions of the earth to the onward march to accomplishment, and has been the very shield of democracy wherever its banners were unfurled. Why, Senators, nationality was the hope of every appealing delegation which came to our committee in the name of democracy. It was nationality that conceived the emergence of new na- tions and the revival of old ones out of the ashes of consuming warfare. Nationality is the call of the heart of liberated peoples, and the dream of those to whom freedom becomes an undying cause. It was the guiding light, the song, the prayer, the consummation for our own people, although we were never assured
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indissoluble union until the Civil War was fought. Can any red-blooded American consent now, when we have come to understand its priceless value, to merge our nationality into internationality, merely because brotherhood and fraternity and fellowship and peace are soothing and appealing terms ?
Oh, sirs, I know it is denied. I can understand the indignant denial. I will not challenge its sincerity. It would be very disheartening to believe that any Amer- ican in official position, or who donned the garb of an armed defender, knowingly assents to surrendered nationality. I may be wrong, but I elect to take no chances. If this league as negotiated can do all that its proponents have promised, it can tighten its grip on the destiny of nations and make our inspiring nation- ality only a memory. Extravagant utterance? Well, establish the council without strong reservations pro- tecting our freedom of action, and establish the as- sembly with its powers unhindered by reservations, and no man can foresee the exercise of authority by the league of great powers, against whom small nations will protest in vain. Suppose it proves all that is claimed in discouraging war, which many honestly doubt. Let me say in passing that an able and experi- enced officer of the army, stalwart in his Americanism and his love of country, whose devotion has been proven again and again, and who not only fought in the late war but is a student of European affairs, said to me not a month ago : "Senator, as a military man, I ought to favor this league because it means war after war and constant activity in the work for which I am
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trained. But I pray in my American heart you will never commit us to it, because I can see involvements and regrets unending."
AMERICAN SAFETY AT STAKE
But suppose it makes for the promised peace, I still prefer, and the great majority of Americans still pre- fer, to be the keepers of our national conscience and let Europe pass upon its moral obligations while we righteously meet our own.
Only the other day the president called upon the op- ponents of this league to "Put up or shut up." Among opponents he classes reservationists as well as those who would destroy it all. A good many people have been "putting up" in this country. Perhaps they have a right to speak. But in modified terms the president is uttering that very familiar demand, "If you won't have this, what have you to offer?" It is the well- known call for constructive proposals in place of ob- structive discussion. There are times when obstruction justifies the call for something constructive. But this situation, Senators, calls for action preservative. When some one proposes an impossible thing it is not fit chal- lenge to demand a constructive substitute. The pres- ervation of American safety is the main thing. A safe- guarded inheritance is infinitely better than the wasted riches of nationality.
Nobody is going to "shut up." Democracy does not demand such a surrender. Men in th^s body have a sworn duty to perform, no less important to ratifica- tion than presidential authority is to negotiation. A senator may be as jealous of his constitutional duty
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as the president is jealous of an international con- coction, especially if we cling to the substance as well as the form of representative democracy. The dic- tatorship was for the war only, and does not abide in the aftermath.
PATRIOTS SAVE AMERICA
Members of this body are not insensible to the criti- cism of their actions, official criticism, and the com- plaints of constituents. There are expressions of ap- proval, too. Men have not been blind to the unusual mail from home ; they have appraised letters inspired, letters perfunctory, letters from the heart, letters urg- ing support, letters breathing deep alarm. I have heard the charge of partisanship and the threat of de- stroyed party and the prophecy of individual political ignominy. But I record it now, because it ought to be recorded ; the soul of this discussion is splendidly pa- triotic. It is not confined to one side of the chamber nor to one side of the pending issue. I yield the be- lief in sincerity even to those who do not grant it. More, the radical, the unalterable oppot\?nts of the league and the treaty have rendered a r/al service to this country. I do not agree to all they urge in oppo- sition, but I credit them with the awakening of Amer- ica, without which the republic might have been un- consciously betrayed.
To what conclusion am I leading ? Speaking for my- self alone, voicing no faction, no group, no party, I do not see how any senator can decide upon his final vote till the disputed amendments and proposed reser- vations shall have the stamp of the decision of a Sen-
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ate majority. I can never vote to ratify without safe- guards. I am not yet persuaded to cast a ratifying vote without amendments. I have listened to the commit- tee's earnest discussions. I bear witness that there was no fixed program of action in advance. I have sought to retain a fairly open mind, withholding un- alterable utterance in the face of the charge of wab- bling indecision.
RESERVATIONS ARE ESSENTIAL,
I mean to vote for the amendments proposed by the committee. They ought to be accepted. If the presi- dent is correct in declaring the proposed reservations will send the treaty back, then amendments will not un- duly delay. Suppose there is delay? Civilized peo- ples are not supposed to move unthinkingly in creating the surpassing covenant of all the ages. This is an epoch-making treaty, no matter what its terms pre- scribe.
America need not fear the ill-will of our allied cov- enanters. Their need for cooperation is not so crit- ical as when the German armies were battering the western ba/Je fronts, but Europe needs us infinitely more than we need Europe. The aftermath is little less difficult than the problems of war itself. We can carry the banners of America to the new Elysium, even though we have to furl them before we enter.
RIGHTEOUSNESS IS GOAL
It is well to do any job right. It is imperative to do a mighty job right, especially when it involves the fate of all civilization. If the world is to start all over, it
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ought to start with the square deal. The treaty has not written it; the square deal was reserved for informal promises not uttered in the supreme document. Though we performed a great service in armed battling for a preserved civilization, we have yet a greater service to render to the same civilization by making the covenant of peace everlastingly righteous.
All fair men realize the embarrassment incident to the Shantung award. Perhaps we can not change it. No one believes we mean to go to war to restore to China what Germany looted and Japan traded for. But we need not be a party to an international im- morality that challenges our every utterance about lofty purposes and the reign of justice. I want it recorded, for all the world to read, that America esteems her unarmed friend no less than she respects her armed associate.
If reservations are to send the German treaty and league covenant back, we ought to amend fully, we ought to write into the text the things which America is thinking. There has been inclination to yield some points rather than necessitate prolonged delay. We now know there are to be reservations, unmistakable reservations, else there will be no treaty. They must speak in clearest terms. The covenant is unthinkable without them. These reservations must be strong and unmistakable. I could no more support "mild reser- vations" than I could sanction mild Americanism. These reservations come of a purpose to protect Amer- ica first, and still save a framework on which to build intelligent cooperation. These reservations come of a desire to offer opportunity f or.a clearing house for;
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the consciences of peoples. These reservations declare that we hold for ourselves the right to maintain our own peace, and are willing to encourage Europe's effort toward the great desideratum. But in these reservations there must be no surrender of the basic things on which this nation was builded to the present- day height of world eminence.
Without the amendments we shall be remiss in utter- ing the conscience of the republic ; without any reser- vations we shall be recreant to duty. This is not the universal thought. There is dispute about it being the majority thought of the American millions, but I be- lieve it will become the deliberate judgment of Amer- ica.
MUST PRESERVE INHERITANCE
If such a course delays reconstruction, let recon- struction wait. It awaited the long negotiation at Paris, it waited amid barter, it can await correction where the blunder was made. You have heard the call of finance, voicing its impatience. Let finance recall that fundamental Americanism transcends its impor- tance for to-day and the morrow, too. Industry calls for normal conditions of formal peace. Let industry remember that nationalism is its fostering influence, and internationalism means to merge its interests with the industries of the world. Momentous achievements are not wrought in impatience.
Out of the ferment, the turmoil, the debts, and echo- ing sorrows ; out of the appalling waste and far-reach- ing disorder; out of the threats against orderly government and the assaults on our present-day civil-
SAFEGUARDING AMERICA 101
, I think I can see the opening way for America. We must preserve the inheritance and hold sensitive the conscience which has guided our national life. We must cling to just government and hold to intelligent and deliberate 'public opinion as shield and buckler to representative democracy. We must hold to civil lib- erty, no matter who assails or in what garb he appears, and we must hold equal opportunity and the reward of merit no less vital to a living republic than liberty itself.
We do not need and we do not mean to live within and for ourselves alone, but we do mean to hold our ideals safe from foreign incursion. We have com- manded respect and confidence, commanded them in friendship and the associations of peace, commanded them in the conflicts and comradeships of war. It is easily possible to hold the world's high estimate through righteous relationships. If our ideals of civ- ilization are the best in the world, and I proudly be- lieve that they are, then we ought to send the American torch-bearers leading on to fulfillment. America aided in saving civilization ; Americans will not fail civiliza- tion in the deliberate advancements of peace. We are willing to give, but we resent demands.
MUST SAVE SOUL OF AMERICA
I do not believe, Senators, that it is going "to break the heart of the world" to make this covenant right, or at least free from perils which would endanger our own independence. But it were better to witness this rhetorical tragedy than destroy the soul of this great republic.
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It is a very alluring thing, Mr. President, to do what the world has never done before. No republic has permanently survived. They have flashed, illumined, and advanced the world, and faded or crumbled. I want to be a contributor to the abiding republic. None of us to-day can be sure that it shall abide for gen- erations to come, but we may hold it unshaken for our day, and pass it on to the next generation preserved in its integrity. This is the unending call of duty to men of every civilization ; it is distinctly the American call to duty of every man who believes we have come the nearest to dependable popular government the world has yet witnessed.
Let us have an America walking erect, unafraid, concerned about its rights and ready to defend them, proud of its citizens and committed to defend them, and sure of its ideals and strong to support them. We are a hundred millions and more to-day, and if the miracle of the first century of national life may be re- peated in the second the millions of to-day will be the myriads of the future. I like to think, sirs, that out of the discovered soul of this republic and through our preservative actions in this supreme moment of human progress we shall hold the word American the proudest boast of citizenship in all the world.
CHAPTER IV AMERICANISM
Address Delivered before the Ohio Society of New
York, at the Waldorf Hotel, New York
City, January 10, 1920
MR. TOASTMASTER, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN — The
topic of the evening makes it befitting to allude to the contemporaneousness of the birth of Ohio and the be- ginning of Americanism. Ohio became a definite part of the Northwest Territory in 1787, and the first flam- ing torch of Americanism was lighted in framing the Federal Constitution in that momentous year. Every- thing else American is preliminary or subsidiary.
The Pilgrims signed their simple and majestic cov- enant a full century and a half before, and set aflame their beacon of liberty on the coast of Massachusetts, and other pioneers of New- World freedom were rear- ing their new standards of liberty from Jamestown to Plymouth for five generations before Lexington and Concord heralded a new era ; and it was all American in the destined result, yet all of it lacked the soul of nationality. In simple truth, there was no thought of nationality in the revolution for American independ- ence. The colonists were resisting a wrong and free- dom was their solace. Once it was achieved, nation- ality was the only agency suited to its preservation,
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Ours was the physically incomparable America, so enriched by God's bounty and so incalculable in its possibilities that adventurous Spaniard and developing Englishman stood only at the gateway and marveled. Ours were American colonies in name, but the col- onists were still echoing the prejudices and aspirations of the lands from which they came. There were con- flicting ideas, varying conditions, and contending jeal- ousies, but no common confidence, no universal pride, no illuminating spirit. These essentials came with the adoption of the Federal Constitution and the riveting of union, and the star of the American republic was set aglow in the world firmament on the day that ratifica- tion was effected.
BIRTH OF AMERICANISM
On that day Americanism began, robed in nation- ality. On that day the American republic began the blazed trail of representative popular government. On that day representative democracy was proclaimed the safe agency of highest human freedom. On that day America headed the forward procession of civil, hu- man and religious liberty, which ultimately will effect the liberation of all mankind.
I am not thinking to magnify its comparative excel- lence, its charm of simplicity, or its exalted place among the written fundamental laws. I am recalling the Federal Constitution as the very base of all Amer- icanism, as the ark of the covenant of American lib- erty, as the very temple of equal rights, as the very foundation of all our worthy aspirations. More, it was the supreme pledge of coordinate government by
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law, with the sponsorship of majorities, the protected rights of minorities, and freedom from usurpation of power — the people to rule.
Men ofttimes sneer nowadays like it were some useless relic of the formative period, seemingly unmind- ful that on its guaranties rests the liberty which per- mits ungrateful sneering. Others pronounce it time- worn and antiquated and unsuited to modern liberty, but they forget that the world's orderly freedom has come of its inspiration. Perhaps its very simplicity, its utter naturalness for a popular government under majority rule, has led to scant appreciation if not un- mindfulness. But it does abide and ever will so long as the republic survives.
CONSTITUTION IS SACRED
The trouble is that its sacredness, if not forgotten, has been too little proclaimed. Most of us think it too righteous to assail and too essential to ignore, and we have held the superstructure so nearly ideal that for more than a hundred years we have had no peace-time statute to make seditious utterance a crime. Appar- ently we have held the freedom of speech which the Constitution guarantees more sacred than the guaran- teeing instrument. I have come to think it is funda- mentally and patriotically American to say there isn't room anywhere in these United States for any one who preaches destruction of the government which is within the Constitution.
This patriotically, if not divinely, inspired funda- mental law fits every real American citizen, and the man who can not fit himself to it is not fit for Amer-
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ican citizenship nor deserving of our hospitality. It fully covers all classes and masses in its guaranteed liberties, and any class or mass that opposes the Con- stitution is against the country and the flag.
DUTY OF CITIZENSHIP
This republic has never feared an enemy from with- out. It no longer intends to be menaced by enemies from within. If any man seeks the advantages of American citizenship, let him assume the duties of that citizenship. If he wishes the freedom of America, let him subscribe to freedom's protection. If he craves our hospitality, let him not abuse it. If he wishes to profit by American opportunity, let him join in making the same opportunity open to others. One can not be half American and half European or half something else. This is the day for the all-American.
Nor can the foreigner hereafter be a prolonged vis- itor or resident alien, gathering the fruits of Amer- ican opportunity, assuming the privileges of a citizen without whole-heartedly plighting his faith of citizen- ship. I do not mean the mere perfunctory declaration and legal naturalization. I mean renounced allegiance to the land from which he came and a heart and soul consecration to this republic. It were better to leave some of our industrial work undone than to have the government undermined in its doing.
But we must not accept the overwrought impression that the assault on stable American government is chargeable wholly or mainly to those of foreign birth who have not sworn American allegiance. The worst disloyalists and most effective conspirators wear the
AMERICANISM 107
garb of full-fledged American citizenship, and many of them inherited American opportunity at their birth and turned liberty into license. The ignorant for- eigner is more a victim than a conspirator, because he has heard the gospel of revolution when no one preached the blessings of orderly government and the rewards of American opportunity. Agitator and revo- lutionist found profit in agitation. They learned the foreigner's language and thought his thoughts and reached his sympathies, and lied to his ignorant preju- dices, while the captains of American industry were counting dividends without concern for the human ele- ment in their making. There were exceptions to this crime of negligence, but in most instances the Amer- icans who invited and enlisted foreign activities to swell the man power of industry have neglected to teach the American language, failed to utter American sympathies, forgot to extend American fellowship, and omitted the revealment of the loftier ideals of American citizenship. The grind of the workshop alone is poor culture for that citizenship which makes the ideal republic.
MUST PRACTISE AMERICANISM
It is well enough to preach Americanism, and we ought. It is more important to practise it, and we must. In truth, my countrymen, we need practical Americanism in business as well as proclaimed Amer- icanism in politics. It is superb to lead in commerce and excel in industry — and no nation ever filled a bril- liant page in history until it reached industrial and commercial eminence — but the distinction is too costly
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If wrought in the neglected qualities of citia«nskip Attending unrest and ultimate revolution.
It is well enough to be concerned about the quantity and quality of our wares, but it is better to be sure of the spirit of the workers who make them. We must be thinking of men as well as materials and the condi- tions of making as well as marketing. The enhance- ment of conditions in twenty years is tribute to awak- ened American conscience, but the neglect of education is the warning to American heedlessness.
DEVOTION TO DUTY
There must be concern about devotion to duty as well as dividends. There must be a thought of the eventful morrow as well as the golden day. It is of no avail merely to preach contentment. Content never lighted a furnace nor turned a wheel in all creation. It doesn't exist in the human being who is really worth while. Mere subsistence does not make a citizen, and generous compensation without thrift blasts every hope of acquirement.
What humanity most needs just now is understand- ing. The present-day situation is more acute because we are in the ferment that came of war and war's aftermath. Ours was a fevered world, sometimes flighty, as we used to say in the village, to suggest fever's fancies or delirium. I forbear specification. But we are slow getting normal again, and the world needs sanity as it seldom needed it before.
Many have thought the ratification of the peace treaty and its league of nations would make us normal,
AMERICANISM 109
but that is the plea of the patent-medicine fakir, whose one remedy will marvelously cure every ill. Undoubtedly formal peace will help, and I would gladly speed the day, if we sacrifice nothing vitally American. Yet as a matter of fact actual peace pre- vails and commerce has resumed its wonted way.
BACK TO NORMAL
Normal thinking will help more. And normal liv- ing will have the effect of a magician's wand, para- doxical as the statement seems. The world does deeply need to get normal, and liberal doses of mental science freely mixed with resolution will help mightily. I do not mean the old order will be restored. It will never come again. A world war's upheaval which ends au- tocracies and wipes out dynasties and multiplies cost of government, an upheaval which shifts the sacred ratio of 16 to 1 until silver is the more sacred, sweeps humanity beyond any return to precise pre-war condi- tions.
But there is a sane normalcy due under the new con* ditions, to be reached in deliberation and understand- ing. And all men must understand and join in reach- ing it. Certain fundamentals are unchangeable and everlasting. Life without toil never was and never can be. Ease and competence are not to be seized in frenzied envy; they are the reward of thrift and in- dustry and denial. There can be no excellence without great labor. There is no reward except as it is mer- ited. Lowered cost of living and increased cost of pro- duction are an economic fraud. Capital makes possi-
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ble while labor produces, and neither ever achieved without the other, and both of them together never wrought a success without genius and management. No one of them, through the power of great wealth, the force of knowledge, or the might of great numbers is above the law, and no one of them shall dominate a free people.
SUPREMACY OP LAW
There can be no liberty without security, and there can be no security without the supremacy of law and the majesty of just government. In the gleaming Americanism of the Constitution there is neither fear nor favor, but there are equal rights to all, equal op- portunities beckoning to every man, and justice un- trammeled. The government which surrenders to the conspiracies of an influential few or yields to the in- timidation of the organized many does justice to neither and none and dims the torch of Americanism which must light our way to safety.
Governmental policies change and laws are altered to meet the changed conditions which attend all human progress. There are orderly processes for these nec- essary changes. Let no one proclaim the Constitution unresponsive to the conscience of the republic. We have recently witnessed its amendment with less than eighteen months intervening between submission and ratification, with some manifestation of sorrow mark- ing the fundamental change. It promptly responds to American conviction and is the rock on which is builded the temple of orderly liberty and the guaran- teed freedom of the American republic.
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CIVIL LIBERTY AT STAKE
The insistent problem of the day, magnified in the madness of war and revealed in the extreme reaction from hateful and destroyed autocracy to misapplied and bolshevist democracy, like the pathos of impotent Russia, is the preservation of civil liberty and its guar- anties. Let Russia experiment in her fatuous folly until the world is warned anew by her colossal trag- edy. And let every clamorous advocate of the red regime go to Russia and revel in its crimsoned reign. This is law-abiding America !
Our American course is straight ahead, with liberty under the law, and freedom glorified in righteous re- straint. Reason illumines our onward path, and de- liberate, intelligent public opinion reveals every pit- fall and byway which must be avoided. America spurns every committal to the limits of mediocrity and bids every man to climb to the heights and rewards him as he merits it. This is the essence of liberty and made us what we are. Our system may be imperfect, but under it we have wrought to world astonishment, and we are only fairly begun.
HONEST LIVING IS SOLUTION
It would halt the great procession to time our steps with the indolent, the lazy, the incapable, or the sul- lenly envious. Nor can we risk the course sometimes suggested by excessive wealth and its ofttimes insolent assumption of power, but we can practise thrift and industry, we can live simply and commend righteous
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achievement, we can make honest success an inspira- tion to succeed, and march hopefully on to the chorus of liberty, opportunity and justice.
Sometimes we must go beneath the surface gulf stream to find the resistless currents of the great ocean. It little matters what a man proclaims in an ephem- eral outcry for fancied reformation, you get the true undercurrent when you learn his aspiration for his children and his children's children. He stands with his generation between yesterday and the morrow, eager to lift his children to a little higher plane than mediocrity can bridge and which socialism never reaches. He wants to hand on American freedom un- abridged ; he wants to bequeath the waters of Amer- ican political life unpolluted; he would bestow the quality of opportunity unaltered and the security of just government unendangered. The underwriting is in the complete and rejoicing Americanism of every citizen of the republic.
MUST PRESERVE NATIONALISM
Mr. Toastmaster, we have been hearing lately of the selfishness of nationality, and it has been urged that we must abandon it in order to perform our full duty to humanity and civilization. Let us hesitate before we surrender the nationality which is the very soul of highest Americanism. This republic has never failed humanity or endangered civilization. We have been tardy about it, like when we were proclaiming democ- racy and neutrality while we ignored our national rights, but the ultimate and helpful part we played in
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the great war will be the pride of Americans so long as the world recites the story.
We do not mean to hold aloof, we choose no isola- tion, we shun no duty. I like to rejoice in an American conscience and in a big conception of our obligations to liberty, justice and civilization. Aye, and more, I like to think of Columbia's helping hand to new re- publics which are seeking the blessings portrayed in our example. But I have a confidence in our America that requires no council of foreign powers to point the way of American duty. We wish to counsel, cooperate and contribute, but we arrogate to ourselves the keep- ing of the American conscience and every concept of our moral obligations. It is fine to idealize, but it is very practical to make sure our own house is in per- fect order before we attempt the miracle of the Old- World stabilization.
AMERICA FIRST
Call it the selfishness of nationality if you will, I think it an inspiration to patriotic devotion —
To safeguard America first.
To stabilize America first.
To prosper America first.
To think of America first.
To exalt America first.
To live for and revere America first.
We may do more than prove exemplars to the world of enduring, representative democracy where the Constitution and its liberties are unshaken. We may go on securely to the destined fulfillment and
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make a strong and generous nation's contribution to human progress, forceful in example, generous in con- tribution, helpful in all suffering, and fearless in all conflicts.
Let the internationalist dream and the Bolshevist de- stroy. God pity him "for whom no minstrel raptures swell." In the spirit of the republic we proclaim Americanism and acclaim America.
CHAPTER V THEODORE ROOSEVELT
Ohio Legislative Memorial Address Before a Joint Convention of the Eighty-third General As- sembly, January 29, iprp
GENTLEMEN OF THE GENERAL • ASSEMBLY — I stood before the flag-draped casket in the little church at Oyster Bay, amid simplicity so rigid that one could not help remarking it, and yielded to conflicting emo- tions. I wondered if by some fitting miracle an in- animate flag could mourn. One could not see the cas- ket— only its form — because the vision was filled with the flag, and it seemed to me the colors clung as though sorrowing at the loss of their most fearless defender. One little noted the floral tributes, one was little con- cerned about eminent statesmen and famous writers and military chieftains and high officials who had gathered with neighbors and friends — political and personal friends — in reverent sorrow for the long fare- well. My own ears were deaf to the reading of the ritual and the recital of his favorite hymn, I was think- ing of the flag and the soulless form it draped in jealous sorrow. Great citizens had passed before. Be- loved executives, heroic soldiers and far-seeing states- men— all had come to the inevitable, either too soon
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or in the fulness of distinguished lives — and the na- tion had mourned, and peoples sorrowed, and poten- tates had sympathized, but there was a distinct con- viction that the flag lost its bravest defender when Theodore Roosevelt passed from life to the eternal. A flaming spirit of American patriotism was gone. A great void had come, and there was none to fill it.
EMINENT AMERICAN
Measured from any view-point Colonel Roosevelt was one of the eminent Americans of all times, and history will write him one of the most conspicuous figures in all American history. I do not underrate the eminence which has gone before, nor doubt that great and distinguished Americans will follow, but in any appraisal Colonel Roosevelt's name will be in- separably linked with the finding of the American soul, with the great awakening and consecration. Now and hereafter let it be said : "Here was a great and coura- geous American, who called to the slumbering spirit of the republic and made it American in fact as well as in name."
I say it after full deliberation, and free from all in- clinations which characterize hero-worship, I believe Colonel Roosevelt to have been the most courageous American of all times. He not only believed, he pro- claimed and acted. He was not only American in his own heart and soul, but he believed every man who wore the habiliments should be an American in every heart-beat, and commit himself to simple and unfail- ing Americanism.
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EXALTED BY AMERICANISM
It was the mastering passion, the supreme end. Men thought of him first as a warrior, but it was his all- encompassing Americanism which made him one. His- torians rank him high as a statesman. It was his Americanism that exalted him. Many believed him to have become the consummate politician — and he was • — but he put his Americanism high above political plans and practises. Not a few careful observers be- lieve that Colonel Roosevelt lost the Republicans the election in 1916, and I have heard him say the conten- tion may be well founded. But he was battling for a bigger thing than party triumph, and he put that big- ger thing far above and beyond party success. He be- lieved our involvement in the world war was inevita- ble, and was seeking to awaken the republic. He saw the purpose to rend the loyal concord of American citizenship, and bore aloft the torch to lead us from the perils of pacificism and indecision. He never turned back. He never counted the political cost. Though he thought to submit his national leadership again in 1920, and knew the perils in criticism and truth-telling, he struck fearlessly at every menacing thing, regardless of numbers involved, and smote di- vided loyalty and hyphenated Americanism at every turn.
"Country first" was his supreme ideal, and "country first" was his unfailing practise. The words were em- blazoned in the oriflamme which enthused his follow- ers throughout a marvelously eventful career.
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SOUGHT FOREIGN SERVICE
I sensed the depths of his convictions when Con- gress made it lawful for him to take a volunteer army to France, shortly after our entry in the war. We did not write his name in the law, but the country knew. I think a major-generalship appealed to his ambition, but he stipulated no rank. He wanted to recruit and re- spond to the call of threatened civilization. His critics misconstrued. I am sure I knew. He wanted to save the morale of suffering France and awaken the morale in this slumbering republic. In the retrospect I believe he rendered a greater service with voice and pen at home than was possible to perform with his sword in France. And somehow I am glad he remained a colonel — nay, the colonel. How significant it is, and what a tribute, that he has made the title of loftiest rank, he is "The Colonel" to all America, and one needs only to mention the title without the name to have it understood that he is speaking of the most em- inent colonel of all time.
It would be futile to attempt a life review within the limitations befitting this occasion. He was many sided, and his strenuous career was full of great accomplish- ment. What history will recite is fairly known. What biography contains will be more revealing. History records events, biography reveals the men who give events to history.
EXTRAORDINARY MANHOOD
Colonel Roosevelt's extraordinary manhood, his ap- pealing, vigorous, fearless, American manhood is an
THEODORE ROOSEVELT; 119
inseparable thing from his great public career. He re- vealed it as the ranchman in the freedom of the West. He revealed it as the soldier in the world's first war for humanity. He revealed it in an administrative and executive office, in his vaster responsibilities, and it was the conspicuous side of him in the retirement to which he could not retire. It was the big thing to those who knew him best, and no man ever had faster and firmer friends. "Better be faithful than famous" was an expressed conviction, and he was not only its exemplar but he inspired faithfulness. No other man could have enlisted the following which went with him to certain and foreseen political disaster in 1912. Or did they go with him ? Perhaps it is nearer the truth to say he went with them. I have heard it said he ad- vised against the political division in that year of bit- terness and defeat, that he yielded to the pressure and judgment of friends and chose to be "faithful rather than famous." The retrospect recalls two notable re- vealments: he lost or broke few friendships; he was ever as willing to be convinced as he was convincing. The popular impression had him often domineering and insistent, but there were few American presidents who sought advice more widely or were more ready to accept. My own impressions concerning him, gath- ered from press, platform and passing events, were largely altered by personal contact, and utterly changed by the revelations of those who knew him longer and better. Many thought the mighty hunter lacking in the general attributes, but he could be as gentle as he was strong, and as sympathetic as a mother touched by love.
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MAN OF ACTION
He was, first of all, a man of action, and delighted in strenuosity and confessed his fondness for hurrah and parade. But he was not always performing on a public stage. One of the very big events in his ca- reer was the least conspicuous and was barely known, until recited in the biography of the late John Hay, who had served in his inherited Cabinet as secretary of state. Germany threatened the seizure of a port in Venezuela to enforce some financial claims of Ger- man citizens. President Roosevelt called in the Ger- man ambassador, and in a quiet demeanor that was ominous in itself, told him to tell the kaiser that unless he agreed to arbitrate the German contention within ten days Admiral Dewey would sail an American fleet with sealed instructions to give armed resistance to any attempt at German seizure. That was a message the kaiser could understand. The kaiser agreed to arbitrate. President Roosevelt publicly praised him for the peaceful proposal which the president himself so quietly yet firmly demanded. The great criminal, who afterward set the world aflame in 1914, had yielded to the firm assertion of American purpose, and the Monroe Doctrine was emphasized anew in the esti- mate of Old- World diplomacy.
There was more of unparaded activity but no less effectiveness in dealing with the designing statesmen of Colombia in the establishment of a friendly republic in Panama, which left the money grabbers of the greater state begging for millions to this very hour, though the great interoceanic canal is long since a
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finished monument for all time to President Roose- velt's aggressive Americanism and our republic's ca- pacity to do big things. It is idle to speculate now, but I can not believe his stalwart Americanism would have ever sanctioned the surrender of its intended ad- vantages to American shipping.
AWAKENED NATIONAL CONSCIENCE
Perhaps his greatest work apart from his appeal- ing Americanism, and yet a vital part of it, was his crusade for a new order of things, a new conscience in the republic. We can appraise him now in the after- math of fuller understanding, and even those who most violently opposed him must confess his great part in an essential awakening. He did four years of arousing and uprooting. His far-seeing vision de- tected a dangerous drift. He cried out for govern- mental assertion of authority, lest government itself should be the governed. In his zest he was the rad- ical, as all crusaders are, but when he saw the business conscience of America awakened, he gladly welcomed constructive supersedure. He was really less the rad- ical than he ofttimes appeared, and sometimes spoke radically against his own judgment. The greatest blun- der of his career was made in this very chamber when he addressed the Constitutional Convention of 1912. He came against his own judgment and in yielding to insistent advice declared for the recall of judicial de- cisions. It is not surprising that one of his energy and courage should blunder, particularly in a period of tremendous conflict and crusading zeal. It was a mark of his greatness that he instantly recovered, and lost
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little of his hold and none of the respect of the Amer- ican people. He incurred violent enmities, but none ever called him an unfair opponent. He struck as he spoke, straight from the shoulder, and he practised as he preached. In his virile American manhood he was the surpassing and inspiring example. In the fulness of mental and physical vigor, he was the great patri- otic sentinel, pacing the parapet of the republic, alert to danger and every menace and in love with duty and service and always unafraid.
MADE AMERICA BETTER
It is little to say that the republic is bigger and bet- ter and mightily advanced by his part in its glorious history, more American for his call to patriotism and more secure for his warning of perils. It is more to say he inspired those who follow to nobler manhood and higher ideals.
It didn't seem quite in harmony with his untiring ac- tivity and unharnessed soul that its flame should fail in the quiet of slumber, but it was peace valiantly and triumphantly won, and the flames he lighted burned afresh and will light the way of a people whom he loved and who loved him as a great American.
CHAPTER VI
RELATIONS WITH THEODORE ROOSEVELT Public Address at Topeka, Kansas, March 8f 1920
THERE has been widely distributed from my own state some quotations of utterances carried in 1912 in the Marion (Ohio) Star, of which I have been the sole or principal owner for the past thirty years. These quotations are distributed to appeal to the opposition to me on the part of the friends of that great out- standing American, Theodore Roosevelt. I magnify no posthumous claims to an intimate friendship with Colonel Roosevelt, and could have no title to his politi- cal mantle, even if such bestowal were possible in this republic. On the other hand, I vigorously opposed him in 1912 just as he typically opposed the regular wing of the Republican party to which I adhered.
Theodore Roosevelt never did anything half-heart- edly. He preached the gospel of hitting and hitting hard for what he believed to be right. He expected his opponents to fight, and we were in a fight in 1912. I did my share of it in our newspaper and on the stump. Colonel Roosevelt and Mr. Taft were greatly es- tranged, but both were big enough to put aside their grief and bury their hostilities and make common ap- peal to the American people for a Republican victory in 1918. He and others came to new understanding.
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My concord with Theodore Roosevelt came shortly after our party's defeat in 1916. He invited me to a conference and I gladly responded. We did not dwell long on the differences of 1912. That was an old story, he thought his course was justified and we jointly deplored the result, but he did insist we must all get together and save the country through a Repub- lican restoration; that the Republican party was the one agency through which to give highest service, and the compact of our council and cooperation was made then and there, and in many conferences afterward I came to know how deeply he felt the necessity of all Republicans uniting to effect the party supremacy so essential to the nation's good. It was his personal, rather than his political, wish that I should stand sponsor for the amendment to the army bill that made it possible for him to take a volunteer division to France, and I rejoiced over the enactment, though President Wilson would not accept it. But the big thing was that Theodore Roosevelt was keen to wipe out the differences of 1912, now buried beneath eight years of regrets, and look with hope to party triumph through united endeavor in 1920.
If he had lived, he would have been our Republican nominee by acclamation. It is poor proof of devotion and poorer evidence of the inheritance of the political wisdom which marked his matchless career to parade the mistakes of 1912 to inspire a victory in 1920. More, it is not progressive. It is retrogressive. I choose a party and a leadership which appraises men and issues of to-day, and thinks not of the differences of yesterday, but the victory of to-morrow.
CHAPTER VII
jWlLLIAM McKlNLEY
Address at the McKinley Memorial Dinner, Niles, Ohio, January 29,
MR. TOASTMASTER AND GENTLEMEN - Much is being
said, properly and becomingly, in these anxious days of the republic, about a saving Americanism. No one better typified it than William McKinley. And he lived and preached and practised it, first as the cure for national disaster, and later for the guaranty of the greater good fortunes of the American people. His Americanism wrought the restoration in times of peace, and the very same Americanism revealed our unselfishness in war. More, he proved the republic's readiness for every becoming burden for humanity's sake, in war's aftermath.
Likewise, much has been said in the last three years about making war for humanity's sake. It is fitting to say on this occasion, in this memorial edifice, that America's first war for humanity's sake was com- manded by President William McKinley. Indeed, no one will dispute it : the first recorded war for human- ity's sake in all the world was when he unsheathed the sword in behalf of suffering and oppressed humanity in Cuba in 1898. And when it was won — quickly and magnificently won — he gave to th^ world the first
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example of national unselfishness and the first Amer- ican proof of loftier aims than territorial aggrandize- ment.
I thought then that Cuba rightfully ought to have a place under the American flag. I still believe that the American spirit, backed by the security of American protection, has lighted the way to notable Cuban prog- ress. But McKinley had the clearer vision and saw the value of the world's understanding and Cuba's con- fidence in our national unselfishness. He restored the flag which had been hauled down in Hawaii, then furled a triumphant flag in Cuba, in high honor, to proclaim the banner of kept faith and national right- eousness to all the world.
PIONEER OF EXPANSION
In the story of the eventful year so recently brought: to a close more has been said about lofty ideals and the assumed burdens of civilization than in all history before, but I like to recall that William McKinley was a pioneer who blazed the trail to the realm of en- nobled nations. He wrought our first expansion, he was its first official sponsor, and the party now in power, seeking all the entanglements which the fathers warned against, then proclaimed it imperialism. Mr. Bryan paramounted it eloquently, without influencing the popular or electoral vote, and sixteen years later, while Europe was torn with stupendous conflict, we were still so concerned about our own safety that President Wilson and a sympathetic majority in both houses of Congress sought to cast the Philippines Adrift. That was before supergovernment was
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dreamed of, that was before the contemplated merger of this republic in a supreme government of the world. No matter how the future fates may revolve, no matter how the premature grants of self-government may impair the good that was previously wrought, no matter how the logic of theory when practically ap- plied may end the glory of our flag in the Orient, we must credit the first helpfulness of this republic to a struggling people in distant lands to the sympathy and courage of William McKinley, and to American spon- sorship in the Philippines will be accredited one of the splendid pages of modern history.
AMERICAN NATIONALIST
I do not venture to apply too intimately the views he held or the lessons he taught to the mighty problems incident to our foreign relations of to-day. But my acquaintance was sufficient and my recollections are clear enough to be very sure that, in spite of his sym- pathy and generosity, he would be an American na- tionalist. His very soul was consecrated to the up- building and safeguarding of this republic. He wanted the superb and supreme America. He wished a patri- otic and a prosperous people. In all his public life his first concern was for these United States.
He fought with the sons of the North to preserve union and nationality. Not for a material advantage, but to preserve the inheritance of the fathers and hold sacred the great Constitution on which the republic is founded. It was a strange fate, armed defender that he was, that he should be the first of all our presidents really to understand the South, and make it understand
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him; and then, in sympathy and understanding, he healed the old wounds of war and won the new con- cord of union so vital to our greater development. In the greatness of his soul and with the tact that charac- terized his public life, William McKinley began the most essential of all preparedness for national defense by restoring the confidence in union twenty years be- fore a world war put us to the supreme test.
I am very sure that if William McKinley were alive to-day and charged with the trusted leadership we so gladly accorded him, he would be deeply sympathetic with the troubled world ; he would be keen to be help- ful to anxious peoples, but his deeper concern would be for our own welfare; and in his capacity to bring people together he would have all in authority work- ing to that common end.
A PARTISAN REPUBLICAN
He was notably a partisan, a partisan Republican. He was the most representative Republican of his day. He believed in popular government through the agency of political parties, and believed in his party as the agency of greatest good to 'the American people. He was considerate, tolerant, courteous, but ever a par- tisan Republican. He did not believe his party had a monopoly on all that was good or patriotic, but he did believe it capable of best serving our common country, and its policies best suited to promote our common good fortune. His was an outstanding perso::r.!/;y, lovable and admirable, but his strength was that of a party spokesman, and his great decisions came of Re- publican counsel.
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Whether it was the solution of a pressing problem at home, whether it was maintained honor and fully met obligations in our foreign relations, whether it was the continued elevation of the standards of Amer- ican life and the continued advancement of all our people, William McKinley was ever found committed to a sane and workable plan. It is not unbecoming to say that when anarchy struck him down and Theodore Roosevelt took up his burdens, he instantly announced he would continue the policies of his illustrious prede- cessor, and won the confidence and affection of Amer- ica in doing so. It dims the glory of neither to re- call it. They differed in type, ofttimes in methods, but accomplished greatly because they voiced the dominant party in the republic.
COOPERATED WITH CONGRESS
No one could imagine William McKinley belittling Congress, or berating a "pygmy-minded Senate," be- cause that would have been unlike him. He had served in Congress, respected it as a coordinate branch of the government and worked with it — not in oppo- sition to it, not in domination over it. The success of his legislative and executive career had its foundation in his ability to understand and to be understood, and in understanding commit all the forces of government to seek the desired achievement.
It is a faddish practise, sometimes an assumed su- periority, to cry out against political parties, and pro- claim the super-man who is free from party shackles. It is more a fraud than it is a reformation. If the super-man is available, he is still a partisan — a per-
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sonal partisan if not political. In spite of the tardy call to Republicans for a patriotic service for war, de- layed until the supreme emergency broke down the barriers, when the perils of inefficiency and inactivity aroused the country, the present administration has been as partisan as Jackson's, and the super-man be- came very human after contact with mortals in the councils at Paris, and a brush with a Senate which has resumed its constitutional functions. It would have been better to have cooperated and coordinated with Congress than to have disappointed America and broken the heart of the world with superlative ob- stinacy.
POLITICAL PARTIES ESSENTIAL
Perhaps it is old-fashioned, maybe it seems to be re- actionary, but I voice a deliberate conviction that the abandonment of government through political parties means the same instability for us which characterizes many Central American and South American states, or it means an autocracy or dictatorship which spells the end of our boasted republic. No one will deny abuses and disappointments in our established polit- ical system, but it made us what we are, and all the world has yet to match the record of American de- velopment and accomplishment. We had better cor- rect the abuses than to risk the abandonment of the system.
We approached autocracy during the war. Con- gress submerged itself, and surrendered many of its functions. I am not complaining. It seemed neces- sary, because of our gigantic task of national defense,
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and the supreme emergency called for a supreme com- mand. I do not think William McKinley would have asked it or accepted it, but practical humanity deals with situations as they have to be met. We escaped with only a temporary perversion, but the inclination now to forsake party sponsorship is only another form of opposition to constitutional government, more to be feared than those who preach destruction by force. To be sure, strong men are needed, but we need stronger parties back of them. You can't have stable government at the hands of a political party or a po- litical leadership which will barter proven principles for temporary success, or yield to the intimidation of any group threatening to assert its strength at the polls. Parties must be held as the agencies for the expressed conscience of the majority, and they must prevail or fail as they merit it. In popular govern- ment they are the agencies of education in matters po- litical.
RESTORED PROSPERITY IN 1896
An incident from the career of William McKinley affords a striking illustration. In 1896 the nation was in deep distress. The industrial disaster was wide- spread. It seems like a breath of changed air to recall now that our national grief was low prices. The farm- ers in Kansas burned corn for fuel, because it didn't pay to haul it to market. A dime looked as big as the moon, full-orbed, and a dollar was ample for a boasted balance in the bank. I can recall the wide-spread an- guish over the downward trend. The eminent Ne- braskan preached his famous cure-all in the free coin- age of silver. McKinley had another remedy, though
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personally he thought kindly of the double standard of coinage as a palliative to help reduce the patient's pain. Like the Republican that he was, like every Re- publican ought to be, he surrendered his personal views to the judgment of the party majority, and we turned to the education of the American voter. In August the country was ready for the wrong medicine, in No- vember it voted for the real cure, and there was re- corded a victory for the conviction of the Republican party and the intelligence of the American people. And there was instant restoration.
APOSTLE OF PROTECTIVE TARIFF
Conditions change, new problems arise, new policies are necessary. I had rather trust the majority in any party, even the Democratic party, than rely on any outstanding personality in any party, super-man or otherwise. This decision by the majority is the un- derlying theory of representative popular government and makes our government sanely responsive to de- liberate and dependable public opinion. If there is failure of our party to-day to meet the fullest expecta- tions of the American people, it is due in the main to the fact that we have so-called Republicans in our ranks and some of them in authority who seek to make the party policy, and failing in that, assume a superiority to party judgment. Such a course not only endangers party success at the polls, but destroys party ef- fectiveness in official performance. I commend inde- pendence and fearlessness of thought, but I invite the party devotion of McKinley as the highest guaranty of kept pledges and helpful accomplishment.
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Certain fundamentals always abide. The supremacy of government is one. The inspiration in nationality is another. The necessity of successful business is still another. Perhaps no public man in all our Ameri- can development clung to that belief more tenaciously than William McKinley. It made him the apostle of the protective tariff. Men sneer at it nowadays, as though we had outgrown the coddling period, and are ready to match our wits with the world. We tried it in 1914, and sneers turned to sadness then, until Europe's tragedy cured our psychological grief. Let it be called narrow, provincial, selfish, contrary to all theory, whatever you like, in the industries coddled under protection we were independent, and in these unprotected and undeveloped the war found us help- less, until American genius turned to production under war's necessity, and war's barriers of tragic protection. We know now the value of American self-dependence, and I speak for one who believes it sane Americanism how to safeguard the industries developed in war to add to our eminence and independence in peace, and to hold all American industry as of first concern and of first importance in guaranteeing the good fortunes of the American people.
It is utterly wrong to assume we have reached the heights of American development. There is an inter- esting analogy between pioneering in settlement and pioneering in developing industry. Under the westward march of the star of empire, the stalwart men who were bent on achievement took advantage of produc- tive resources, and built temporarily and speeded to production amid waste, because production was neces-
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sary to subsistence and essential to permanence. One may fairly trace the developing stage across the con- tinent, with improvement and permanency superseding the hurried things of the hopeful beginning. It is a fair criticism of American industry that our first con- cern was quantity. I want to hail the day when we can do more than boast America as the greatest producer, I want our country the best producer in all the world.
HIS LEADERSHIP IS INSPIRATION
In some things we do excel. I remember a very great pride, during a European visit some years ago, to see American shoes exhibited in the show windows of the great cities as the "best in the world." Prob- ably we shall never excel in all production ; that would be the attainment of the miraculous, but I want to live to see the day when an American buyer asks for the best he will not be shown something imported. It is a desirable attainment for a greater reason than pride of country. It must be the inspiration of the American worker. There isn't much impelling a work- man in mere quantity production, in the mere grind for wage, but there is soul in doing a thing best. If one thing is needed more than another in the ranks of industry, it is pride in production and the spirit of attainment.
In the McKinley policy there is every possibility and every encouragement. We have the higher stand- ards of living, and mean to maintain them. World wages haven't been leveled, and never will be until Old- World standards are raised to ours.
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MEMORY GIVES CONFIDENCE
We shall never know the pre-war level of wage again, never the old-time proportions of wages and profits. I have been engaged in business in a modest way for thirty-five years and have never known a re- duction of wages. The tendency is ever higher, and ought to be. Nothing avails, however, if living cost is kept apace with the mounting wage. Thrift will help. More production and less extravagance will help. A sober thought of the morrow will aid still more.
Business must and will yield more of its profits to those participating in their production, but business must be given its meed of just consideration. It can't sustain a government which is drunken in expenditure and keeps step to the Bolshevist anthem at the same time, and still perform its functions in health and sanity. There is a finer conscience in business in America to-day than has ever been revealed, in spite of the continued profiteering amid a saturnalia of ex- penditure, and we are sure to get right because the heart of America is right.
I like to look forward with. the confidence and hope of him whose memory we honor to-night. I know how he believed in the republic, how sure he was of the deliberate good sense of the American people. I know what his admonition would be — "Americans, front face, march on; let us make this republic the consilhimation of freedom and freedom's hopes and aspirations !"
CHAPTER VIII GEORGE WASHINGTON
'Address Delivered February 22, 1918, at Washington's
Birthday Celebration before the Sons and
Daughters of the Revolution, at
Washington, D. C.
MR. PRESIDENT, MADAM PRESIDENT, YOUR EXCEL- LENCIES, SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF THE REVOLUTION, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, MY COUNTRYMEN — I have been sensing the atmosphere of this patriotic occasion and the significance of this celebration.
It is good to meet and drink at the fountains of wisdom inherited from the founding fathers of the republic. It is a fitting time for retrospection and in- trospection when we face a problem to-day even greater than the miracle they wrought. The comparison does not belittle their accomplishment. Nothing in all his- tory surpasses their achievement. The miracle was not the victory for independence. The stupendous thing was the successful establishment of the republic. There they were, spent and bleeding, in the very chaos of newly found freedom; there they were, with ideas conflicting, interests varied, jealousies threatening, and selfishness impelling; there they were, without having visualized nationality. They had contended
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only for liberty, and when it was obtained they found a nation to be the necessary means of its preservation.
FOUNDERS DIVINELY INSPIRED
With commanding patriotism and lofty statesman- ship, with heroic sacrifice and deep-penetrating fore- sight, they founded what we had come to believe the first seemingly dependable popular government on the face of the earth. I can believe they were divinely inspired. In the reverent retrospection I can believe that destiny impelled. Surely there was the guiding Jiand of divinity itself, conscious of sublime purpose.
They not only wrought union and concord out of division and discord, but they established a represent- ative democracy, and for the first time in the history of the world wrote civil liberty into the fundamental law. On this civil liberty is builded the temple of human liberty, and through this representative govern- ment we Americans have wrought to the astonishment of the world. More, on the unfailing foundation of civil liberty they established orderly government, the most precious possession of all civilization, and made justice its highest purpose.
DEVELOPED AMERICAN SOUL
Mark you, they were not reforming the world. They had dearly bought the freedom of a new people ; they reared new standards of liberty; they consecrated themselves to equal rights, then sought to establish the highest guaranty of them all. They had the vision to realize that no dependable government could be founded on ephemeral popular opinion. They knew
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that thinking, intelligent, deliberate, public opinion in due time would write any statute that justice in- spired. They knew that no pure democracy, with political power measured by physical might, ever had endured; that neither the autocrat with usurped or granted power, nor the mass in impassioned committal could maintain liberty and justice or bestow their limitless blessings. So they fashioned their triumphs, their hopes, their aspirations, and their convictions into the Constitution of the representative republic; they made justice the crowning figure on the surpassing temple, and stationed beckoning opportunity at the door — equal opportunity, let me say — and bade the world to come and be welcome ; and the world came — the down-trodden and the oppressed, the adventurous and ambitious — and they drank freely of the waters of our political life, and stood erect and achieved, each according to his merits or his industry, his talents or his genius. Generous in their rejoicing, the fathers neglected to establish the altars of consecration at the threshold. Eager to develop our measureless re- sources, anxious to have humanity come and partake freely of New- World liberty, they asked no dedication at the portals. They developed an American soul in their own sacrifices for liberty, but neglected to de- mand soul consecration before participation on the part of those who came to share their triumphs.
We have come to realize the oversight now. We have come to find our boasted popular government put to the crucial test in defending its national rights. We met with no such problem in the Civil War. That was a destined conflict between Americans of the two
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schools of political thought, which was the final test in maintaining nationality. There was like passion for country on either side of that great struggle, but the dross in the misdirected passion for disunion was burned away in the crucible of fire and blood, and the pure gold turned into shining stars in dear Old Glory again. We settled rights to nationality among our- selves. We are fighting to-day for the unalterable rights which are inherent in nationality, without which no self-respecting nation could hope to survive, and for which any nation refusing to fight does not de- serve to survive.
DUTY TO PRESERVE REPUBLIC
We have the duty to preserve the inherited covenant of the fathers; we have the obligation to hand on to succeeding generations the very republic which we in- herited. If this generation will not sacrifice and suffer in this crisis of the world, the republic is doomed. If this fortunate people can not prove popular govern- ment capable of defense in a war for national rights, popular government fails. If the impudent assumption of world domination is not thwarted by the entente allies and this people, then civilization itself is de-^ feated. Never since the world began has any nation been able to dominate the world. A mighty, righteous people may influence and help mankind, and I have wished that noble task for this republic, but domina- tion is for God alone, and His agency is the universal brotherhood of man.
There is one compensation in the very beginning. We are finding ourselves. From this day henceforth
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xve are to be an American people in fact as well as name. Consecration to America is the deliberate and unalterable decree. The dedicating altars are erected and are free as liberty itself. Now and hereafter the individual, no matter who he is or whence he conies, who proclaims himself an American and fattens his Existence on American opportunity, must be an Ameri- can in his heart and soul. More, the American of to-day, to-morrow, and so long as the republic endures and triumphs, must be schooled to the duties of citizen- ship which go with the privileges and advantages thereof, and men and women of America are to find what they can do for orderly government instead of seeking what it can do for them.
ADVICE OF WASHINGTON
Solemnly, my countrymen, this is an epoch in human affairs. The world is in upheaval. There is more than war and its measureless cost. Civilization is in a fluid state. All existent forms of government are being tested, and the very fundamentals of human achieve- ment are in question. In this hour of reverent mem- ory for the beloved father of our country, in this whole- some retrospection of the miracle wrought by the founders, in the hurried contemplation of the marvel- ous achievements of our people to whom they gave an immortal beginning, let us strive to appreciate their wisdom and our good fortune and commit ourselves anew to the essential preservation.
I wonder what the great Washington would utter in warning, in his passionate love of the republic and his deep concern about future welfare, if he could
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know the drift of to-day? In his undying farewell address his repeated anxiety was concerning jealousies and heart-burnings which spring from distrust and factional misrepresentations — "they tend to rend alien to each other those who ought to be bound together by fraternal affection."
And he warned us that "respect for authority, com- pliance with its laws, acquiescence in its measures are duties enjoined by the fundamental maxims of true liberty." "Liberty itself will find in such a government, with powers properly distributed and ad- justed, its surest guardian. It is, indeed, little less than a name where the government is too feeble to withstand the enterprises of faction . . . and to maintain all in the secure and tranquil enjoyment of rights and property."
Alluding to parties more comparable to factions in our citizenship of the present day he warned against "the spirit having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind. It exists in all governments, more or less stifled, controlled or repressed, but in those of popular form it is seen in its greatest rankness, and is truly their worst enemy."
FACTIONALISM DECRIED
In our mighty development we have added to the perils of which Washington warned. The danger has not been in party association, but in party appeal or surrender to faction. There has been no partisan politics in our war preparation. On the contrary, par- tisan lines have been effaced to close up the ranks in patriotic devotion. But factions have grown more
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menacing and hold their factional designs more neces-« sary than patriotic consecration.
It is characteristic of popular government, and its weakness, that there is more appeal to popularity than concern for the common weal. Too many men in public life are more concerned about ballots than the bulwarks of free institutions. Our growth, our diver- sification, our nation-wide communication, our profit- bearing selfishness — these have filled the land with organized factions, not geographical, as Washington so much feared, but commercial, industrial, agri- cultural and professional, each seeking to promote the interests of its own, not without justification at times, but often a menace in exacting privilege or favor through the utterance of political threats. If popular government is to survive it must grant exact justice to all men and fear none. If law is to be respected and government remain supreme, legislation