PUBLICATIONS OF THE ROOSEVELT MEMORIAL ASSOCIATION

II. ROOSEVELT IN THE KANSAS CITY STAR

COMMITTEE ON PUBLICATIONS

ROOSEVELT MEMORIAL ASSOCIATION INC.

R. J. Cuddihy
Arthur W. Page
Mark Sullivan
E. A. Van Valkenburg

ROOSEVELT
IN THE KANSAS CITY STAR

WAR-TIME EDITORIALS

BY

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY

RALPH STOUT
Managing Editor of The Star

BOSTON AND NEW YORK

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

The Riverside Press Cambridge

1921

COPYRIGHT, 1917, 1918, AND 1919, BY THE KANSAS CITY STAR

COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY RALPH STOUT

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

INTRODUCTION

I

The request, repeated and urgent, has come from many sources that the editorial articles, contributed by Colonel Theodore Roosevelt to The Kansas City Star during our country’s participation in the World War, be preserved for the future. It is in response to this request that this volume is published.

Newspaper publication is ephemeral. Newspaper files are short-lived. Anybody who has examined a newspaper of thirty years ago knows how flimsy it is, how it breaks and disintegrates to the touch. It lacks the enduring quality of the newspaper of sixty or seventy-five years ago when other elements entered into the composition of news-print paper. Newspaper publication is the thought of to-day; to-morrow, it is gone save for the impression left on the mind of the reader. That the recollection of Colonel Roosevelt’s articles may have something to appeal to aside from crumbling newspaper files is the aim of this book. And so these expressions on the events in a crisis in our national history—from the mind of a man whose intense love of country was the admiration of all who knew him, expressions which at the time of their publication stirred many to greater sacrifice for country, some to anger, even to rage—are here presented in enduring form.

Colonel Roosevelt’s contributions to The Star were his most frequent expressions on the war; they were the outpouring of a great soul deeply stirred by the country’s situation. There were more than one hundred articles from his pen. They covered the vital time of our part in the war from October, 1917, until his death January 6, 1919.

The reason he chose The Star as his medium of reaching the people, in a period when a large section of the American people sought and was guided by what he said, was that Colonel Roosevelt and The Star had known and understood each other for a long, long time. Their acquaintance dated back to the period of his service in the New York legislature. The Star saw behind his conduct then the qualities and the spirit which it was continually seeking to place at a premium in offices of public trust.

Later, in 1889, when President Harrison appointed him a civil service commissioner, The Star said:

The appointment of Theodore Roosevelt as one of the civil service commissioners is a hopeful sign that President Harrison desires to give civil service reform a fair representation in the government. Mr. Roosevelt is an accomplished gentleman, with sincere aspirations for reformed methods of administration, as shown by his career in the New York legislature when Grover Cleveland was governor. Mr. Roosevelt is too independent ever to serve as a party henchman, and his voice and influence will always be in favor of what he believes to be the most efficient and business-like administration of affairs.

Colonel Roosevelt and the founder and editor of The Star, the late William R. Nelson, had met, but they did not really know each other until after the war with Spain. In his canvass for the vice-presidency in 1900 Colonel Roosevelt was entertained at the Nelson home, Oak Hall, Kansas City. From this visit dated better acquaintance. They had much in common and were alike in many characteristics: frank, outspoken, impulsive, and passionately devoted to the same ideals of private life and public service.

I recall a story of an impulsive act of Colonel Roosevelt back in his ranchman days. A man of shady reputation had been appointed Indian Agent with the Sioux on a Dakota reservation. He put into effect many sharp practices with the Indians which would line his pockets with money. Roosevelt’s ranch was not far away and ranch affairs took him to the agency. One day he went to the agency and sought the agent.

“You are Mr. ——?” the ranchman asked.

“Yes,” was the reply.

“I have heard what you have been doing with the Indians. You are a thief! Good-day!”

The story, as told, was that the agent, aghast at the boldness of his visitor, turned and walked away.

The late Curtis Guild, Jr., of Boston, and Senator Beveridge, of Indiana, were with Colonel Roosevelt on the Oak Hall visit. They found delight in the paintings and books in Mr. Nelson’s home and Colonel Roosevelt gave proof of his wide range of knowledge by his instant recognition of the work of painters of long-established reputation. In his inspection of the library he asked to see what Mr. Nelson had on the Greek dramatists. “I always ask for them in a man’s library,” he remarked.

During this visit I was a listener at an argument between the two men on partisanship. Mr. Nelson had in his early days affiliated with the Democratic Party. In 1876 he was Mr. Tilden’s personal manager in Indiana. But with the party’s treatment of Tilden Mr. Nelson lost partisan zeal, and never after could he be considered a party man. He founded The Star in 1880 as an independent newspaper; it has remained an independent newspaper.

Colonel Roosevelt’s argument was, that to accomplish anything in public affairs a man or a newspaper had to belong to a party organization. He probably had in mind his experience in the Blaine campaign of 1884. His conclusion was that the American people were wedded to the two-party system and that one who aspired to do anything for the country could achieve only by working through a party organization.

Mr. Nelson granted what he said was true as to an individual, but not as to a newspaper of the right sort. It was perhaps true as to a newspaper which had as one of its aims the securing of political honor for its owner, but the newspaper sincerely devoted to the public interest could wield greater power by retaining its independence and in the end could accomplish more substantial achievements, a statement verified by his own conduct of The Star. Colonel Roosevelt saw the force of Mr. Nelson’s contention, but stuck to his point that, with an individual, accomplishment outside of party ranks was impossible.

It is interesting to look back over the growth of the mutual understanding and the fondness of the two men for each other dating from that visit in 1900. After leaving Kansas City, Colonel Roosevelt sent back a letter expressing his delight at the day spent at Oak Hall, closing with “How I do wish I could spend the week in your library instead of upon this infernal campaigning trip!”

When the assassin’s bullet struck down President McKinley, Mr. Nelson sent a telegram to Colonel Roosevelt expressing his horror at the deed and pledging the whole-hearted support of his newspaper in aiding him to carry the great burden which had been placed on his shoulders.

Mr. Nelson had no wish to be a distributor of federal patronage; he was concerned in higher things. When Colonel Roosevelt turned to him for advice on political matters, he was reluctant to give it, feeling his own lack of real knowledge of the politics of Kansas and Missouri and of the men who sought appointments. Late in 1901 Colonel Roosevelt, asking about conditions in Missouri, wrote, referring to St. Louis men, “I think they have been rather after the offices and not after success.... I should like to have some office-holder in Missouri to whom I could tie.”

Mr. Nelson asked the political writers of The Star to write their estimate of the men seeking office and leadership, and these were sent to the President with his endorsement. The President repeatedly followed the ideas of these letters, and it is a pleasure to record that in no instance was there subsequently cause for regret for any selection based on the letters.

In 1908 the President’s appointment of the Farm Life Commission received Mr. Nelson’s commendation, for he had long recognized the need of making farm life more attractive; indeed, he would have financed experiments along this line had he been younger. At the same time Mr. Nelson spoke approvingly of the President’s recent comment on the courts, adding, “Courts need such criticism the worst kind. They steadily undermine confidence in law and legal justice.”

“I am sick at heart,” the President replied, “over the way in which the courts have been prostituting justice in the last few years. The greatest trouble will follow if they do not alter their present attitude. I suppose I shall ‘pay’ myself in some way for what I have said about the courts, but I have got to take the risk.”

In 1909, in the closing days of the Roosevelt Administration the President issued an executive order looking to a quick settlement of a long-pending controversy over the channel of the Kaw River at Kansas City. It was unexpected; indeed, few in Kansas City knew that the President was considering the subject. The order cut straight to the heart of the controversy in true Roosevelt fashion. The same day Mr. Nelson sent this telegram to the President:

It is quite worth while to have a real President of the United States.

The next day this reply came from the President:

It is even better worth while to have a real editor of just the right kind of paper.

II

The Star supported Taft in the campaign of 1908 because it had faith that he would carry out the Roosevelt policies. Events early in the Taft Administration weakened that faith; the Winona speech withered it. Mr. Nelson had had no correspondence with Colonel Roosevelt while he was hunting in Africa. Two letters came from the ex-President, one March 12, 1910, from the White Nile saying he expected to return in June; another from Porto Maurizio, a month later, saying, “I know you will understand how delicate my position is,” and asking for an early conference with Mr. Nelson on his return to this country. Mr. Nelson’s final, open break with President Taft was “more in sorrow than in anger”; there was never bitterness of feeling, solely regret at a mistake in believing Mr. Taft stood for principles which events early in his administration showed convincingly he did not stand for.

Writing to Colonel Roosevelt, in 1910, after his return from Africa, Mr. Nelson referred to the Winona speech and the Ballinger case, concluding: “I have wondered whether sooner or later there would not have to be a new party of the Square Deal.”

The succeeding two years there were frequent conferences and interchange of letters between Colonel Roosevelt and Mr. Nelson. The latter had absolute confidence and abiding faith in Roosevelt. Late in 1910 the Colonel’s enemies were seeking to torment him from many angles. Mr. Nelson wrote him:

It has occurred to me that the opposition will constantly be prodding you and lying about you with the evident purpose of getting you angry and so putting you to a disadvantage. That is the only hope on earth they have of stopping you.

Your comment on Wm. Barnes was fine. It recalled to me an incident connected with Governor Tilden, who was the wisest politician I ever knew. As a young man I was his manager in Indiana. After the defeat of Lucius Robinson, whom he was backing for Governor of New York, I went East at his invitation to confer with him. He asked me to see Kelly, Clarkson, Potter, Dorsheimer, and Sam Cox, and some of the other men who had been fighting him, to get their views. “What shall I tell them about your position if they ask me?” I said. “Oh, tell them,” he said, “that I am very amiable.” In my adventures since that time I have often had occasion to remember that as sound advice. Amiability is a great weapon at times.

But my point is that you never need to defend yourself at all. The people will take care of your defense. Besides, it is always a bad policy, in my opinion, to get to talking about the past. You are a Progressive. Your nose is to the front. The past doesn’t interest you. So I hope you will ignore the critics, no matter how exasperating they may be. And if you can’t ignore them, laugh at them!

To this the Colonel replied:

I guess you are right; but it does make me flame with indignation when men who pretend to be especially the custodians of morals, and who sit in judgment from an Olympian height of virtue on the deeds of other men, themselves offend in a way that puts them on a level with the most corrupt scoundrel in a city government....

But this does not alter the fact that, as you say, my business is to pay no heed to the slanders of the past, but to keep my face steadily turned toward the future. Here in New York the outlook is rather dark. There are a great multitude of men, some of them nominally respectable, but timid or misled, who do certainly, although rather feebly, object to the domination of Barnes and his fellow bosses; but who do sincerely, but rather feebly, prefer clean politics to corrupt politics; but who, nevertheless, dread any interference with what they regard as the rights of big business, any assault on what I regard as an improperly arranged tariff, any effort to work for the betterment of social conditions in the spirit of Abraham Lincoln; who regard all assaults and efforts of this nature as being worse than the rule of small bosses and the petty corruption of local politicians.

III

As the presidential campaign of 1912 developed, there were frequent exchanges of views. In May Colonel Roosevelt wrote that he was confident of victory in the Republican Convention in spite of all that was being done against him by the men in control of the party. Only those who were in the thick of the Republican Convention in Chicago in June realize how the fighting blood of the men on the progressive side, from the leader down, was aroused. Mr. Nelson was at Chicago during the Republican Convention. Colonel Roosevelt sought his advice throughout. The course which was ultimately followed had Mr. Nelson’s full approval. In a telegram to Colonel Roosevelt after the break from the Republican Party, Mr. Nelson said: “I am with you tooth and nail, to the limit and to the finish.”

Following those vivid days and nights of the Republican Convention—a period no active participant can ever erase from his memory—came the Orchestra Hall meeting, the first definite step to organize the Progressive Party, the National Progressive Party Convention in August, and then the memorable three-party campaign.

In the midst of the campaign Mr. Nelson and the Colonel had the time and inclination to carry on a correspondence on things not directly touching the issues on which the fight was made. In a letter from his summer home at Magnolia, Massachusetts, Mr. Nelson dropped into a discussion of what he called his two hobbies—to drive money out of the voting booth and out of the courthouse. His idea was that all legitimate expenses of candidates for office should be paid by the State, and that there should be a reform of the voting system which would avoid the necessity of party organization to get out the vote. Having the vote taken by letter carriers was one way that appealed to him. He would make justice free, “not for sale as it is to-day when the rich man gets the best lawyers.” Lawyers should be officers of the court in fact as well as in theory, and should be compensated for their work by the State, not by the litigants.

Replying to this letter late in July, Colonel Roosevelt said:

I am with you in principle on both the points you raise. I am with you on the question of the State paying the election expenses right away now. I have always stood for that course as the only one to give the poor man a fair chance in politics.

Your other idea is new, but I have long been feeling my way to the same conclusion. A lawyer is not like a doctor. No real good for the community comes from the development of legalism, from the development of that kind of ability shown by the great corporation lawyers who lead our bar; whereas good does come from medical development. The high-priced lawyer means, when reduced to his simplest expression, that justice tends to go to the man with the longest purse. But the proposal is such a radical one that I do not know how it would be greeted, and it is something we will have to fight for later.

Theodore Roosevelt

Late in September, during a campaign tour of the West, Colonel Roosevelt spent a Sunday evening at Oak Hall. The subject of campaign contributions came up, and the candidate became reminiscent, recounting his first experience as governor of New York with campaign contributions. It was an incident, he said, that might readily be misconstrued and so he had not discussed it publicly.

Soon after he was elected governor of New York, he had discovered that the street railways were paying almost no taxes. Accordingly he took steps to introduce a franchise tax bill into the legislature. Mr. Odell at once came to him and told him that he was following in the footsteps of Bryan and “Potato” Pingree, which was the most severe condemnation at that time. That warning having no effect, Mr. Platt came to him and said, “Governor, you can’t do this. Don’t you know that the Whitney-Ryan combination was one of the heaviest contributors to your campaign fund?”

“The deuce they were,” said Roosevelt; “I supposed they made their contributions to Tammany.”

“Of course,” Platt returned, “they contributed to Tammany, but they gave us just half as much as they did Tammany. If they hadn’t expected fair treatment from us they would have given it all to Tammany.”

“I told Platt they would get fair treatment from us,” Roosevelt said, in telling the story, “but if they expected immunity from taxation they were going to be left.”

At that time the Whitney-Ryan combination owned the New York street railways and so were going to be hard hit by the franchise tax. Mr. Roosevelt added that the franchise tax bill went through and created quite a scandal in high finance at that time. “Everybody was talking about it,” he said, “and all the big financiers knew about it. So I never could have any sympathy with the view that Harriman or the Standard Oil people—if they really contributed to my campaign fund—or any other interest of that sort gave any money for campaign purposes under a misapprehension. They knew from my deeds as well as my words that they could not buy immunity from me, and that the best they could expect was a square deal. I said one time to Bacon, ‘Bob, why is it that Morgan and all his crowd are against me? Don’t they know that they would get justice from me?’ Bacon smiled, hesitated, and then said, ‘Yes, I suppose they do.’”

In the Progressive campaign Mr. Nelson violated a personal rule of many years’ standing which forbade his personal participation in politics. Into this campaign he went with his whole soul. Then past seventy years of age, he was abundantly able to direct but not to give of his physical strength. He assumed responsibility for organizing the party in Missouri and lent his newspaper organization to that end. He thought day and night for the party’s candidate and the party’s principles, and at the end of the campaign he had left undone nothing which he could have done for the candidate who had his absolute and unqualified confidence. After the election Colonel Roosevelt wrote Mr. Nelson:

I can never overstate how much I appreciate all that you have done and been throughout this fight. My dear Sir, I am very grateful and I know that the only way I can show my gratitude is so to bear myself that you will feel no cause for regret at having stood by me.

After the campaign of 1912, which showed the remarkable strength of Colonel Roosevelt with the people and demonstrated that he was still a factor in American public life to be reckoned with, the tormenting by his political enemies continued. From many quarters darts had been hurled at “the old lion.” In July, 1914, after a libel suit for fifty thousand dollars had been started, Mr. Nelson telegraphed the Colonel at Oyster Bay:

Too bad so much of the burden should fall on you. Would gladly share it with you.

In a few days the message brought this letter:

When a man is under constant fire and begins to feel, now and then, as if he did not have very many friends, and as if the forces against him were perfectly overwhelming, then, even though he is prepared to battle alone absolutely to the end, he is profoundly appreciative of the support of those whose support is best worth having. Your telegram not only gave me real comfort, but touched and moved me profoundly.

Theodore Roosevelt

That was the end of the recorded correspondence between Colonel Roosevelt and Mr. Nelson. The former came West on a speaking tour in the fall of 1914 and during his stay in Kansas City was a guest again at Oak Hall. Mr. Nelson accompanied him to a campaign meeting in a skating rink packed with people in Kansas City, Kansas, where he spoke in a sweltering atmosphere for more than an hour preaching with all his old vigor and enthusiasm the doctrines of the Progressive Party.

There was the same display from great crowds of people, along the streets around the hall and everywhere he went, of the keen interest and personal admiration which Colonel Roosevelt’s presence in Kansas City territory always brought out. Kansas City and its vicinity had been Roosevelt ground since Kansas and Western Missouri became acquainted with him; indeed, any appearance by him was sufficient to fill Convention Hall in Kansas City to its capacity of fifteen thousand people.

Following Mr. Nelson’s death in April, 1915, there came from Colonel Roosevelt a sincere appreciation of his sorrow, ending, “We have lost literally one of the foremost citizens of the United States, one of the men whom our Republic could least afford to spare.”

IV

In the 1916 campaign Colonel Roosevelt and The Star were of the same mind. Deeply attached to the principles on which the battle of 1912 had been conducted by the Progressive Party, they were conscious of the futility of continuing the fight for those principles in a third party. The American devotion to the two-party system had been convincingly demonstrated again. The World War had been in progress two years, the Lusitania had been sunk without stirring the Administration to more than impotent words. Both thought that the Republican Party presented the only hope of accomplishment. Colonel Roosevelt was The Star’s choice for the nomination, but his nomination was too much to expect after the break of 1912, and it gave its support to Mr. Hughes.

Early in June, 1917, Mr. Irwin Kirkwood, Mr. Nelson’s son-in-law, on his way West from New York, chanced to meet Colonel Roosevelt on the train. A visit in the Colonel’s stateroom followed. The conversation turned to the seeming impossibility of a Roosevelt division for France, a subject in which Mr. Kirkwood was personally interested, for he had been assured service in France if the Colonel’s ambition were realized. The Colonel was discouraged over his failure to get active service and restless at the Administration’s slow preparation for war. Of the Nation’s whole-hearted support of the war he was certain, and the high thought with him at the time was to bring influences to bear on the Administration to speed up.

At this time Colonel Roosevelt was contributing a monthly article for The Metropolitan Magazine written long in advance of its publication. Daily, momentous problems of the war were coming up. Mr. Kirkwood felt strongly that the American people were eager to know what Theodore Roosevelt thought on these questions. If he could reach the public quickly, great good would result to this country’s cause. Recalling that Mr. Nelson had said, when there was criticism of the ex-President’s purpose to write for The Outlook, when it was first announced, he would be mighty glad to have him write for The Star, Mr. Kirkwood said:

“Colonel Roosevelt, wouldn’t it be fine if you could get your ideas on the war to the people before they were twenty-four hours old? The only way that could be done is through a newspaper.”

“By George!” said the Colonel, with emphasis, “I never thought of that: it sounds like a good idea.”

Mr. Kirkwood said if he would consider the suggestion, The Star would certainly welcome him.

“Such a proposition would not tempt me from many newspapers,” Colonel Roosevelt continued. “In fact I know of no others except The Kansas City Star and The Philadelphia North American from which I would consider it. The Star particularly appeals to me as being printed in the heart of the great progressive Middle Western country, and because, too, of my love and affection for Colonel Nelson.”

Colonel Roosevelt remarked that he would like to discuss the proposal with Mrs. Roosevelt and his daughter, Mrs. Nicholas Longworth, for he had great confidence in the judgment of both. On Mr. Kirkwood’s return to New York a fortnight later, Colonel Roosevelt said he was still “filled up” with the idea and asked Mr. and Mrs. Kirkwood out to dinner at Oyster Bay with Mrs. Roosevelt and himself. Mrs. Kirkwood was unable to go. Mr. Kirkwood again discussed the proposal. Colonel Roosevelt’s position was that if The Star was still unafraid, he was willing to start. The next time the Colonel came to New York he had tea with Mr. and Mrs. Kirkwood, and there was a further full and frank discussion.

“You, of course, know what you are doing,” Colonel Roosevelt said. “Many people do not like my ideas and probably many of your subscribers will be perfectly furious at The Star for printing my editorials.”

Both Mr. and Mrs. Kirkwood assured him full consideration had been given to that phase, and while it was possible he and The Star might not always agree, that fact would not stand in the way of the arrangement.

So the agreement was there entered into. Colonel Roosevelt suggested that as 1920 was a presidential year the connection be for two years or until October, 1919, to which Mr. and Mrs. Kirkwood assented.

Colonel Roosevelt said he never pretended to be much of a business man, but a formal contract was the usual thing; he had one with The Metropolitan. Anyhow he would gladly sign it. He was asked if he desired a contract and answered he did not.

“You understand and we do—” said Mr. Kirkwood.

Without waiting for the sentence to be finished, Colonel Roosevelt said quickly, “That’s all I want to know. Let’s don’t bother with a contract.”

And on that basis the Colonel wrote for The Star until his death.

Early in September I was delegated to go to New York, as Managing Editor of The Star, to discuss with the Colonel the details of his work for the paper. I met him at a hotel in Fifty-Seventh Street where he went on the days he came in from Oyster Bay. Mrs. Roosevelt was with him. Roosevelt was in high spirits, which was no uncommon thing. I recall vividly my introduction to Mrs. Roosevelt.

“Edith,” he said, leading me into the room where Mrs. Roosevelt was, “here is my new boss!”

I didn’t say it, but the thought came to me that I would prefer the task of “bossing” a tornado.

The talk that followed was that The Star had no desire to guide what he wrote; that it desired him to write whatever was in him, and it would print it. The Colonel said that was exactly what he wanted; he could do nothing else. We discussed the distribution over the country of his writings, which he left entirely to The Star, with the request that they be not offered to certain newspapers which had long shown a spirit of personal animosity to him and of habitual hostility toward his principles, a suggestion which was wholly agreeable to The Star. He asked about the length and frequency of the articles he was to write. It was agreed that an editorial of around five hundred words was ideal, and at the start there would be two contributions a week. Later they were more frequent. The Colonel said he would probably find it difficult to keep down to five hundred words, but he recognized the limitations of newspaper space and would do his best.

“Now,” he said, “if I get too highbrow, don’t hesitate to tell me. I’m no tender flower; I can stand criticism.”

His secretary had come into the room to receive dictation from accumulated correspondence. I arose to go. “Stay with us,” the Colonel said, “until I finish this; you are a member of the family now.”

Short, crisp sentences came from him as he dictated, each with the animation of a face-to-face conversation with the writers of the letters.

It was arranged that the Colonel was to take up his duties the first of October, and a few days after this meeting announcement was made the country over that Theodore Roosevelt was to write for The Kansas City Star. Immediately applications for the right to print the articles poured in from newspapers throughout the country.

Colonel Roosevelt came West in September on a speaking tour which included Kansas City. So he came into the office of The Star on the morning of September 22, 1917, and went to a desk which had been assigned him, with the remark, “The cub reporter will now begin work.” He was fond of that designation and often in conversation referred to himself as “The Star’s cub reporter.” With pencil he wrote out on newspaper copy-paper, with much scratching and interlining, the editorial, “Blood, Iron, and Gold,” which appeared the following day. His first editorial, however, was, a short time before, written on suggestion of Mr. Kirkwood, a brief piece on the death of Dr. W. S. Fitzsimons, of Kansas City, who was killed by a bomb in an airplane attack on a hospital in France—the first American officer to fall in the war.

The same day Colonel Roosevelt wrote another editorial for later publication. He was good nature itself that Saturday morning in the office, joked and chatted with members of the staff, and seemed to be enjoying the novelty of his new connection.

The following Sunday there was a luncheon of The Star family at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Kirkwood, at which the “new cub reporter” made himself thoroughly at home. Editors, reporters, and men of the mechanical and circulation departments were there and had luncheon with the Colonel. He mingled with all and took delight in chatting with them of their work. During the afternoon he made an informal talk to “the family” out on the lawn, in which he commended the spirit of working together shown in the expression “The Star family.” He spoke, too, of his long acquaintance with the aims and purposes of Mr. Nelson which were the aims and purposes of The Star, and said, as he had said before, that The Star was one of two daily newspapers with which he would be proud of a connection.

The arrangement was that Colonel Roosevelt was to telegraph his editorials to The Star from Oyster Bay or wherever he was when he wrote them. They were put in type in The Star office and sent out from there for simultaneous publication in a selected list of about fifty newspapers. These included the best-known newspapers in the country and represented every section. The service was without charge beyond telegraph tolls, it being The Star’s wish to give the widest diffusion possible to Colonel Roosevelt’s ideas on the conduct of the war through the best channel in each city.

Frequently there were suggestions from The Star to the Colonel. Always he was gracious in his treatment of those suggestions, invariably writing along the lines indicated and often amplifying and bettering them. On the other hand—except in two instances—the Colonel’s editorials were printed just as they were written, and if any change in copy were considered advisable it was made only after he had been consulted by wire and had approved it.

From the start the country was much interested in the expressions from the Colonel. The newspapers which received them printed them faithfully and conspicuously. However, the service had been in operation not more than a fortnight before there came rumbles of disapproval and doubt, almost altogether from newspapers published south of Mason and Dixon’s Line.

One of the early editorials, entitled “Sam Weller and Mr. Snodgrass,” presented Uncle Sam, “eight months after Germany went to war with us, and we severed relations with Germany as the first move in our sixty days’ stern foremost drift into, not going to, war,” as the boastful Mr. Snodgrass, still taking off his coat and announcing in a loud voice what he was about to do. This drew from the mayor of Abilene, Texas, the following letter to The Star-Telegram, of Fort Worth, Texas, which was publishing the Roosevelt articles:

Abilene, Texas, October 3, 1917. Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Fort Worth, Tex. The Roosevelt article appearing in your paper of this date is nothing short of the expression of the thoughts of a seditious conspirator who should be shot dead, and, the Editor-in-Chief of your paper should be tarred and feathered for publishing it, and your paper should be excluded from the mails of the United States. You may publish this if you wish, and stop my paper.

E. N. Kirby
Mayor of Abilene

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram promptly published Mayor Kirby’s letter, under the caption “The Retort Courteous,” adding the following:

The Editor-in-Chief presents his compliments to the Mayor of Abilene and begs to say that should he conclude personally to conduct a tar and feather expedition in our direction, he will experience no great difficulty in locating the said Editor-in-Chief. Meanwhile we can assure him that his reception will not be lacking in hospitality or warmth.

The mayor of Abilene and the editor did not meet. Later, in an editorial devoted to apologists for the delay in making war who were saying, “Why cry over spilt milk?” Colonel Roosevelt referred to the incident, saying:

Recently the mayor of Abilene, Texas, expressed his disapproval of my pointing out that we, as a Nation, had wholly failed to prepare, by saying that I was “a seditious conspirator who ought to be shot dead,” and that the editor of the newspaper publishing the article “should be tarred and feathered.” Although differing in method of expression, this slight homicidal bleat of the gentle-souled (and doubtless entirely harmless) mayor of Abilene, Texas, is exactly similar in thought to the utterances of all these sheeplike creatures who raise quavering or incoherent protests against every honest and patriotic man who points out the damage done by our failure to prepare.

V

When the “cub reporter” came to take on his “new job,” he learned for the first time of the conditions at Camp Funston, in Kansas, the big national army training camp of the Middle West, to which his old friend, Major-General Leonard Wood, had been assigned. The drafted men were assembled there from the farms and towns of the Middle West before adequate provision had been made for their care or their training. They were trained with wooden cannon, and broomsticks served in place of rifles. Colonel Roosevelt wrote an editorial entitled “Broomstick Preparedness,” which touched mildly on the conditions at Funston. The expression “Broomstick Preparedness” caught popular fancy as typifying the Administration’s delay in many aspects of war preparation. It stuck in the public mind. It was widely used by newspapers and by speakers who thought the Government was not showing sufficient speed. An editorial, “Broomstick Apologists,” followed, directed at people who answered criticism of delay by making excuses for delay.

From the beginning Colonel Roosevelt had in the main devoted his articles to speeding up the preparations for making war. The boosting of Liberty bonds and the various war drives, the pacifists and hyphenated enemies on our own soil, were not overlooked by any means, but the thing that seared his soul was the lack of speed in making ready for actual warfare. When his connection with The Star began, we had been officially at war nearly six months, and how little the Government had accomplished toward equipping for actual warfare was continuously held up in his articles.

Colonel Roosevelt used the method, followed by newspaper writers who earnestly seek to achieve results, of pounding continually on a few things, dressing each article in different language, but keeping to the front all the time the central idea, presenting the same thoughts in article after article, but striving in each so to change the presentation that the ideas would finally enter the reader’s mind and stir him to action. Mr. Nelson used this method in the conduct of The Star. For many years, beginning with its first publication, The Star advocated parks and boulevards for Kansas City. It hammered away on the subject in nearly every issue. It took almost twenty years to do it, but at the end a splendid system of parks and boulevards stands as a monument to The Star’s persistence.

Article after article Colonel Roosevelt devoted to the slow speed in war-making until there was finally a response in Washington. It heard from public opinion. War-making was speeded up, although at the best and in the end there were many, many deficiencies in our war machine.

Colonel Roosevelt’s criticisms of the Administration were not widely popular. The Star never had any idea they would be popular, but it believed they were right and for the real good of the country. As he had foreseen when the connection was made, “Many of your subscribers will be perfectly furious at The Star for printing my editorials.” They were. They wrote to The Star to denounce the Colonel for writing the articles and The Star for printing them. In popular discussion in the Middle West forms of disapproval ranged from “He should stand by the President” to “He should be stood before a stone wall and shot.” Generally the user of the latter phrase added “at sunrise.” That was an expression often heard. It was used by political orators with effect. Colonel Roosevelt knew full well of the feeling in the West and South toward his articles. He wrote once asking what effect the storm was having on The Star. Never a word from him to show he cared one whit about himself. He knew he was doing the right thing for the country; he went ahead.

The frank truth is, there was a strong and active pacifist element in the territory in which The Star circulated. It had not been for preparedness. It had voted for President Wilson in 1916 largely “because he kept us out of war.” Undeniably that idea was popular. A candidate for governor in a neighboring state, running on the Republican ticket, had made a campaign identical with the Democratic slogan and had carried the state, which at the same time gave its vote to the Democratic presidential candidate. But once we were in war the people of this section responded nobly; they went to the limit, but for a long time after we were in war they did not approve the prodding-up of Washington. The hostility toward the Roosevelt articles in the South was more pronounced. At the beginning of the service ten Southern newspapers were taking it. Their statements about discontinuance ran from “We find further publication inadvisable in our territory” to an apology to their readers for ever having allowed the Roosevelt articles to enter their columns.

Colonel Roosevelt was not without defenders; many of them thought and said he was rendering the greatest service to the country in all his career. But in the excited state of mind in the spring of 1918, when the Germans were driving toward Paris, it required courage to defend the articles. Many, however, spoke out boldly; others did not. Party lines were not followed strictly. Republicans were not so bitter as men of the President’s party. “We must stand by the President” had a popular appeal regardless of whether the Government was functioning efficiently or not. The view was widely held that it was unpatriotic to criticize the President. Frequently it was charged that Colonel Roosevelt’s purposes were political, not patriotic. The articles were often decried as pro-German propaganda and The Star was branded as pro-German for publishing them.

In April, 1918, when this feeling was at its height, when the people in Kansas City’s territory were in a highly inflamed state of feeling toward criticism of the Government, Colonel Roosevelt sent a ringing editorial, “Freedom Stands with her Back to the Wall,” which The Star did not consider it advisable to publish. It had no doubt of the entire righteousness of the criticism passed on the officials at Washington, for the fruition of their slowness was shown in the poor showing America was making in these critical days, but it could see no good to come from the publication: in its opinion the article would only further inflame Colonel Roosevelt’s enemies and irritate his friends. Colonel Roosevelt was informed of the office opinion of this article as he was on a later article (“How Not to Adjourn Politics,” June 25) which was not published. He acquiesced in the decision, saying that he could readily conceive of local conditions which made their publication ill-advised. He asked that they be telegraphed to two other newspapers, which was done. The Star was willing to go as far as it could go without, in its judgment, lessening the effectiveness of the articles in accomplishing the speeding-up of the war, but it would not go beyond this point.

In July, when criticism had caused the removal of many inefficients at Washington and when American troops were beginning to reach France, The Star was barred from the Public Library at Fulton, Missouri, an intensely Democratic town in Central Missouri, “for disloyalty to the present Administration.” The notice read:

Dear Sir: By order from the library board of the Public Library I am advised to have you discontinue our subscription to The Daily Star and The Times. Disloyalty to the present Administration is the reason given for the action taken.

Yours sincerely
FRANCES F. WATSON
Librarian

Answering this editorially, The Star said that throughout the war it had taken the course of calling attention to the mistakes of the Government rather than remaining silent on its mistakes; that it did not believe in saying the country was doing finely when it was not; that it believed in exposing inefficiency and rooting it out. It directed attention to results already accomplished by criticism in bringing into the war preparations men like Schwab, Goethals, Stettinius, March, Baruch, and others, adding: “The Star is proud to belong to the little group of constructive critics, including preëminently Colonel Roosevelt, who worked to get wrong conditions changed and to contribute to the present result, which to-day is the salvation of the cause we fight for. For it to have done anything else would have been faithlessness to its trust.”

When at last the stirring-up of the Administration had borne fruit and American troops were in France and on the way in considerable, though disappointing, numbers, Colonel Roosevelt slowed down his bombardment of the Washington authorities. His campaign had produced results. He was right in doing all he could to speed up war preparations, and he stood his ground in the face of widespread censure in the way he always did. Hostile newspapers had demanded that the Postmaster-General suppress the circulation of the Roosevelt articles; indeed, a post-office inspector had visited Kansas City with the idea of denying The Star admission to the mails, but the Administration made no further move in this direction.

Even when the turning of the tide had set in, Roosevelt’s demand was for men, more men, and then more men for France. He would have in all six or seven million men in training, and four million American soldiers in France in the spring of 1919. In the first article he sent after the news of Quentin’s death, he said:

Now and always afterwards we of this country will walk with our heads high because of the men who face death and wounds, and so many of whom have given their lives for this nation and for the great ideals of humanity across the sea. But we must not let our pride and our admiration evaporate in mere pride, in mere admiration of what others have done. We must put the whole strength of this nation back of the fighting men at the front. We owe it to them.

Later on the good effect of Colonel Roosevelt’s criticism was widely recognized. The Nation, one of the Colonel’s bitterest opponents, in general a strong supporter of the Administration, said of his editorials: “It is largely to him that we owe our ability to discuss peace terms and to criticize at all.”

Summing up the effect of Colonel Roosevelt’s campaign to speed up our part in the war, The Star said editorially:

There were periods of intolerance when neither Mr. Roosevelt nor The Star was under any illusions as to the reception that would be given frank criticism. But it was essential that such criticism be made in order to correct evils that were really threatening the outcome of the war....

The selective draft was the big achievement of the Administration in 1917. But having prepared this, the Government proceeded in most leisurely fashion, apparently not getting the slightest comprehension of the danger to the Allied cause resulting from Russia’s collapse.

The War Department continued to be run, as it had been in the past, by amiable old gentlemen who were wholly unfit for the task. Although airplanes had become an essential feature of modern warfare, it was not until weeks after war had been declared that the department sent a commission to Europe to learn what a military airplane was. Rifles are usually regarded as a part of the military equipment of troops. But it was two months after the declaration of war before the War Department decided what type of rifle to make. An army of millions of men was certain to need uniforms, but the easy-going quartermaster-general turned down the offer of the wool manufacturers’ association for the entire output of the country and the result was that the soldiers went into the winter without warm clothing or overcoats. As for artillery, the incapacity was complete.

Meanwhile we sent a small expeditionary force to France, and in the autumn began sending troops across in a leisurely way, at the rate of ten thousand a week.

Then suddenly, late in March, with the German army driving straight on Paris and the Allied defenses giving way, under the appeal of Lloyd George we suddenly woke to the fact that we had been playing with the war. From that time on we acted as if we had a man’s job, and we got into the line just in time to save the situation.

All through the fall and winter of last year what Mr. Roosevelt and the other outspoken critics were trying to do was to arouse the country and the Administration to the magnitude of the task and to the danger from delay. They succeeded only partly. But they did succeed to the extent of forcing the removal of incompetent departmental chiefs, and the substitution of efficient men who were able to handle the emergency when the Administration finally discovered that the emergency existed.

Looking back over the events of the last eighteen months, we believe no fair-minded American can fail to perceive the patriotic service done by Mr. Roosevelt and other critics, who were seeking to awaken the Government from a lethargy that just missed proving fatal to the Allied cause.

VI

Colonel Roosevelt’s last visit to his desk in the editorial rooms of The Star was early in October, 1918. It struck those who had been associated with him that he was not quite as fit as usual. I asked him if it were true the physicians had placed him on a diet. He said it was, but, to be frank, he had not given much heed to their recommendations. In a discussion at his desk with men of the editorial force a recent article about Roosevelt by George Creel came up. “I must admit,” said Colonel Roosevelt, laughing, “he took a rather jaundiced view of me.”

Mr. Kirkwood was away in the army, but Mrs. Kirkwood was in Kansas City and the Colonel stayed at their home during his visit. At this time a subject was brought up which had been talked over along in the summer—a visit from him to the battle front to write at first hand of the American forces. Newspapers which were receiving the service and others which had heard of the suggestion were eager for Roosevelt articles from France, but from the first the Colonel had demurred and now said a final “No.” His reason was that he could not go as a private citizen, as he had been denied permission to go as a soldier; it would not only be unbecoming for a former president of the United States to go in any newspaper capacity, but how to treat him would be an embarrassing question to France.

The tide had turned toward the Allies, and the country was certain the defeat of the enemy was a question of a short time. Colonel Roosevelt’s articles turned to a discussion of the kind of peace there should be and examinations of the President’s “Fourteen Points” and his notes to Austria. On November 11—the day the armistice was signed—it was considered necessary for Colonel Roosevelt to go to a hospital in New York. From his hospital room he telegraphed that day an editorial joining in the general rejoicing over peace and appraising tersely our part in the war.

A few days later there came an editorial prompted by a letter from a woman friend in California. Visiting this friend was another woman whose son had died of influenza in the navy. That mother had said she had given her boy proudly to her country, “but if only he could have died with a gun in his hand—a little glory for him and a thought for me that my sacrifice had not been useless.” The California friend had written: “There must be other mothers who feel they have laid their sacrifices on cold altars. You have written much that will comfort the mothers whose sons have paid with their bodies in battle. Isn’t there something you can say to comfort these other mothers?”

The letter touched Colonel Roosevelt deeply. “I felt a real pang when I received this letter,” he wrote, “because the thought suggested had been in my mind and yet I had failed to express it.” The editorial, “Sacrifices on Cold Altars,” which he wrote in response, gave consolation from the heart. It made it clear that all who had given their lives in the country’s service, whether in action or from disease, stood on “an exact level of service and sacrifice and honor and glory.” It concluded:

The mother or wife whose son or husband has died, whether in battle or by fever or in the accident inevitable in hurriedly preparing a modern army for war, must never feel that the sacrifice has been laid on “a cold altar.” There is no gradation of honor among these gallant men and no essential gradation of service. They all died that we might live; our debt is to all of them, and we can pay it even personally only by striving so to live as to bring a little nearer the day when justice and mercy shall rule in our own homes and among the nations of the world.

From his entrance to the hospital until his departure on Christmas day, the editorials were less frequent. The Peace Conference, the Congressional elections, and the League of Nations were uppermost in public thought, and on these subjects the Colonel wrote several editorials. Both Colonel Roosevelt and The Star were anxious to find some means to lessen the chance of war through international organization. Both feared, from President Wilson’s addresses, that he had in view some grandiose plan that would be impractical. In December a member of The Star’s staff visited the Colonel in Roosevelt Hospital, New York. At that time he had written one or two editorials discussing the subject in a tentative way. He was asked if he did not think he could say something more positive.

“I doubt it,” he said. “I feel there is so little that really can be done by any form of treaty to prevent war that it would be disappointing for me to point it out. Any treaty adopted under the influence of war emotions would be like the good resolutions adopted at a mass meeting. We have an anti-vice crusade. Everybody is aroused. The movement culminates in a big meeting and we adopt resolutions abolishing vice. But vice isn’t abolished that way.”

Correspondence on the subject followed, and December 28, 1918, he wrote this letter to the member of the staff who had been talking with him:

In substance, or, as our friends the diplomats say, in principle, I am in hearty accord with you. But do you really think we ought to guarantee to stand with France and Italy in all future continental wars? It’s a pretty big guarantee and I don’t know whether it would be made good. Indeed, I don’t know whether it ought to be made good. I am most heartily with France and England now, but I certainly would not have been with France fifty years ago or with England sixty years ago, and our clear duty to antagonize Germany has slowly become apparent during the last thirty or forty years. Remember that you are freer to write unsigned editorials than I am when I use my signature. If you propose a little more than can be carried out, no harm comes, but if I do so it may hamper me for years. However, I will do my best to write you such an article as you suggest: and then probably one on what I regard as infinitely more important, namely, our business to prepare for our own self-defense.

As for Wilson having with him the bulk of the people who are taken in by this name [The League of Nations], I attach less importance to this than you do. He is a conscienceless rhetorician and he will always get the well-meaning, foolish creatures who are misled by names. At present anything he says about the World League is in the domain of empty and windy eloquence. The important point will be reached when he has to make definite the thing for which he stands.

The article written in response to the promise in this letter was Colonel Roosevelt’s last contribution to The Star. It was dictated at his home at Oyster Bay, January 3, which was Friday. His secretary expected to take it to him for correction the following Monday. Instead an early call on the telephone that morning told of his passing away in his sleep.

Ralph Stout

ROOSEVELT IN THE KANSAS CITY STAR

DR. FITZSIMONS’S DEATH[1]

September 17, 1917

The first name on the casualty list of the American army in France is that of Dr. William T. Fitzsimons, of Kansas City, killed in a German air raid on our hospitals. Dr. Fitzsimons had already served for some time in a French hospital. As soon as this Nation went to war he volunteered for service abroad.

There is sometimes a symbolic significance in the first death in a war. It is so in this case. To the mother he leaves, the personal grief must in some degree be relieved by the pride in the fine and gallant life which has been crowned by the great sacrifice. We, his fellow countrymen, share this pride and sympathize with this sorrow. But his death should cause us more than pride or sorrow; for in striking fashion it illustrates the two lessons this war should especially teach us—German brutality and American unpreparedness.

The first lesson is the horror of Germany’s calculated brutality. As part of her deliberate policy of frightfulness she has carried on a systematic campaign of murder against hospitals and hospital ships. The first American in our army to die was killed in one of these typical raids. We should feel stern indignation against Germany for the brutality of which this was merely one among innumerable instances. But we should feel even sterner indignation towards—and fathomless contempt for—the base or unthinking folly of those Americans who aid and abet the authors of such foul wickedness; and these include all men and women who in any way apologize for or uphold Germany, who assail any of our allies, who oppose our taking active part in the war, or who desire an inconclusive peace.

The second lesson is our unpreparedness. We are in the eighth month since Germany went to war against us; and we are still only at the receiving end of the game. We have not in France a single man on the fighting line. The first American killed was a doctor. No German soldier is yet in jeopardy from anything we have done.

The military work we are now doing is work of preparation. It should have been done just three years ago. Nine tenths of wisdom is being wise in time.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Although Colonel Roosevelt did not begin his regular contributions to The Star until October 1, the death of Dr. W. T. Fitzsimons, of Kansas City, moved him to send this article.

BLOOD, IRON, AND GOLD

September 23, 1917

Bismarck announced that his policy for Germany was one of blood and iron. The men who now guide, and for some decades have guided, German international policy have added gold as the third weapon in Germany’s armory.

A PAGE OF THE MANUSCRIPT OF ONE OF ROOSEVELT’S EDITORIALS

To a policy based on callous disregard of death and suffering, and the brutal use of force, they have added the habitual and extensive employment of corruption as a means for weakening their foes and bending other nations to their service.

The Administration at Washington recently made public the proof that Ambassador Bernstorff, on behalf of the German Government, was, up to the very last moment of his stay, engaged in efforts to bribe with German money American organizations or individuals who could be used to further Germany’s purpose by protesting against war, demanding peace at any price, opposing the measures necessary for war, denouncing the Allied nations, praising unpreparedness, or by some other of the methods habitual with pro-German Senators, Congressmen, editors, heads of peace societies and the like.

No well-informed man was surprised at the revelation. Every reasonably well-informed man, who has known about matters at Washington, has known that for nearly three years German money and governmental power has been used for the corruption of American newspapers and pacifist organizations and for the pay of German, and the bribery of native, scoundrels to wreck our industries with dynamite and in all ways debauch our political life. The Government, from the highest official down, knew all these facts over two years ago. The New York World published the names of some of the editors and other individuals who had received money, and the amounts received. The Austrian Ambassador, Dumba, and two of the German attachés, Boy-Ed and Von Papen, were dismissed for inspiring and countenancing the intrigues. It was absolutely impossible that what they did was not ordered and supervised by Bernstorff, under the direction of the Berlin Government. It was deeply to our discredit that we did not then show the courage and manliness to break at once with Germany, instead of hiding our heads in the sand so as to avoid seeing the guilt of the German Government, and punishing the minor instruments of wrongdoing who, under no conceivable circumstances, would or could have acted save as their superiors bade them act. Germany has hitherto been able to do but little against us with blood and iron; gold has been her weapon, and her agents have been the foes of our own household.

Every man in this country who is now playing the pro-German game should be made to feel that he must overcome a presumption of guilty motive. There are misguided pro-Germans who are uninfluenced by corrupt motives, just as there were in the Civil War copperheads who were merely misguided and not conscious wrongdoers. But these men are in mighty unpleasant company!

The pacifist, the man who wishes a peace without victory, the supporter of Senator La Follette or Senator Stone, the man who in any way now aids Germany, may be honest; but he stands cheek by jowl with hired traitors, and he is serving the cause of the malignant and unscrupulous enemies of his country.

THE GHOST DANCE OF THE SHADOW HUNS

October 1, 1917

Ten days ago a ghost dance was held in St. Paul under the auspices of the Non-Partisan League, with Senator La Follette as the star performer. We have the authority of the German Kaiser for the use of the word Hun in a descriptive sense, as representing the ideal to which he wished his soldiers in their actions to approximate. It is therefore fair to use the word descriptively as a substitute for the German in this war. It is also fair to use it descriptively of the German sympathizer in this country, of the man who aids and abets Germany by condoning the German offenses against us, by seeking to raise class division in this country, with, of course, the attendant benefit to Germany; by screaming against the war, or in favor of an inconclusive peace; or by belittling or sneering at or declaring inopportune the effort to arouse the spirit of Americanism. The Americans who thus serve Germany deserve the title of Shadow Huns.

It was to me a matter of sincere regret to have the Non-Partisan League play the part it did at St. Paul in connection with the meeting which Senator La Follette addressed. They held what was in effect a disloyalty day festival. When the Non-Partisan League movement was first started, I was inclined to hail it, because I am exceedingly anxious to do everything in my power to grapple with and remedy every injustice or wrong or mere failure to give ample opportunity to the farmer. With most of the avowed objects and with some of the methods of the Non-Partisan League I was in entire sympathy, although there were certain things it did which I felt should be condemned, and certain ways of achieving its objects which I believed to be mischievous. But when the League, on the disloyalty day in question, ranged itself on the side of the allies of Germany and the enemies of this country, it became necessary for every loyal American severely to condemn it. Morally, although doubtless not legally, it thereby came perilously near ranging itself beside the I.W.W., the German-American Alliance, and the German Socialist party machine in America.

When I spoke in Minneapolis three men spoke from the same platform with me. One was that fine and loyal American, Governor Burnquist, of Swedish ancestry. One was a blacksmith, born in Sweden, a former member of the Socialist party, who left the party within the last six months when he became convinced that it was the tool or ally of German autocracy. The third was another working-man, of German birth.

At the meeting in Wisconsin I was on the platform with the Mayor of Racine, an American citizen of German birth. My companions throughout the trip were Judge Harry Olson, of Swedish parentage, and Mr. Otto Butz, of German parentage, both of whom represent that kind of Americanism to which we all must subscribe if we are to be good Americans.

The Americanism of all these men is the Americanism I profess, and it is the exact antithesis of the attitude of the Shadow Huns, who, under the lead of native-born Americans like Messrs. La Follette and Townley, by their utterances, stir dissensions among our own people and weaken us in the prosecution of the war.

The two working-men of whom I speak, the man born in Sweden and the man born in Germany, spoke with rugged emphasis of their devotion to this country, and of their sense of the duty of every man fit to be called an American in this crisis. They emphasized the fact that Germany’s social system was based upon the duty of the average man to cringe before the insolence of his superiors and his right himself to behave with insolence to his inferiors. It is for this system of cringing abasement before the powerful, and of brutal insolence to the weak for which the Shadow Huns in this country stand when they directly or indirectly talk against our Government for going to war or talk against any step which it takes for the efficient waging of the war; and, above all, when they directly or indirectly apologize for or champion Germany.

It is the duty of every American citizen fearlessly, but truthfully, to criticize not only his Government but his people, for wrongdoing, or for failure to do what is right. It is his duty to obey the injunction of President Wilson by insisting upon pitiless publicity of inefficiency, of subordination of public to private considerations, or of any other form of governmental failure to perform duty. Such criticism is absolutely indispensable if we are to do our duty in this war, and if we are to adopt a permanent policy of preparedness which will make this Nation safe. But the men who oppose the war; who fail to support the Government in every measure which really tends to the efficient prosecution of the war; and above all who in any shape or way champion the cause and the actions of Germany, show themselves to be the Huns within our own gates and the allies of the men whom our sons and brothers are crossing the ocean to fight.

I do not admire these Shadow Huns. But least of all do I admire those among them, whether Senators, Congressmen, or public officials of any other kind who, although on Uncle Sam’s pay-roll, nevertheless seek to stab Uncle Sam in the back.

SAM WELLER AND MR. SNODGRASS

October 2, 1917

Readers of “Pickwick,” if such there still be, will recall the time when Mr. Pickwick was arrested and some of his followers resisted arrest. Sam Weller made no boasts; but he spoiled the looks of various opponents. Mr. Snodgrass began ostentatiously to take off his coat, announcing in a loud voice that he was going to begin. But he gave no further trouble.

Over eight months have elapsed since Germany went to war with us, and we severed relations with Germany as the first move in our sixty days’ stern foremost drift into, not going to, war, but admitting that we were already at war. During those eight months we have paid the penalty for our criminally complete failure to prepare during the previous three years by not having yet to our credit one single piece of completed achievement. The Administration has unwisely striven to cover this past failure to prepare, and present failure to achieve, by occasional grandiloquent pronunciamentos as to the wonderful things we are going to do in the future; and usually the language used is designed to convince ignorant people that these things have already been done.

One day it is announced that we have discovered an infallible remedy against submarine attacks; and the next day it is announced that the toll by submarines is heavier than during any previous month. We read that the British drive is successful, but stubbornly resisted; that some thousands of prisoners have been taken; and that the losses have been terribly heavy. We read at the same time that we are going to have an immense army of aircraft—some time next spring. And actually there is less boasting over the former statement than over the latter! We read of the valor and suffering of the French in some heroic assault; and the Administration proudly announces that, after eight months, the drafted men are beginning to assemble in their camps—and omits to mention that they have neither guns nor uniforms, are short of blankets and sweaters.

So far the Sam Wellers who have done things are our allies. Uncle Sam is still complacently engaged in taking off his coat, like Mr. Snodgrass. Under such circumstances it is unwise for him to announce overloudly what he is going to do when at last he begins. Let him wait until he has done it; and meanwhile bend all his energies to doing it, and doing it soon. Brag is a good dog. But Holdfast is a better.

BROOMSTICK PREPAREDNESS

October 4, 1917

At present we Americans have two prime duties.

The first is to make the best of actual conditions; to prepare our army, navy, merchant marine, air service, munition plants, agriculture, food conservation, and everything else as speedily as possible, so as to fight this war to a completely victorious conclusion.

The second is not to fool ourselves, but to face the fact of our complete and lamentable unpreparedness. And to inaugurate a policy of permanent preparedness which will prevent our ever again being caught in such a humiliating condition.

The men of the national guard and of the drafted army are of admirable type. I do not believe that any other great nation can produce quite their equals on such a scale as we can; the zeal, energy, and adaptable intelligence with which they are doing all they can in the various camps must be a matter of pride for all Americans. There is all the more reason why such first-class material should be given a first-class chance for speedy and efficient action. It has not been given that chance. The steps we as a nation are now taking ought to have been taken three years ago. Failure to take them then has meant broomstick preparedness now. Failure to take them as a permanent policy now means broomstick preparedness in some future vital crisis when we may not have allies willing and able to protect us while we slowly prepare to meet the enemy.

The Ordnance Bureau of the War Department admits that we have not rifles for our national army, but attempts to excuse matters by saying that it is of no consequence because we shall have rifles a few months hence when our men are ready to go abroad. The admission is correct. The excuse is not. Even for training, it is better to arm infantrymen each with the weapon he is to use rather than to give each man a broomstick or to give every four men an antiquated rifle which cannot be used in service, and most of our artillery regiments at present either have no guns or wooden guns or, in rather rare cases, old-style guns which cannot be matched against any present-day artillery. Moreover, and this is the vital point, we now have the time to prepare only because the English and French fleets and armies protect us. Eight months have passed since Germany openly went to war with us. As yet we have not rifles for our infantry. As yet we have not guns for our artillery. It will be at least a year after we were dragged into the war before our army will have received the weapons with which we are to wage the war.

This is broomstick preparedness, and there is not the slightest use in trying to justify or excuse broomstick preparedness.

THE BONDHOLDERS AND THE PEOPLE

October 7, 1917

Not many years ago one of the favorite cries of those who wished to exploit for their own advantage the often justifiable popular unrest and discontent was that “the people were oppressed in the interest of the bondholders.” The more ardent souls of this type wished to repudiate the national debt, to “wipe it out as with a sponge,” in order to remove the “oppression.” The bondholders were always held up as greedy creatures who had obtained an unfair advantage of the people as a whole.

Well, the Liberty Loan now offers the chance to make the people and the bondholders interchangeable terms. The bonds are issued in such a way that the farmer and the wage-worker have exactly the same chance as the banker to purchase and hold as many or as few as they wish. No matter how small a man’s means, he can get some part of a bond if he wishes. The Government and the big financiers are doing all they can to make the sale as widely distributed as possible. Some bankers are serving without pay in the effort to put all the facts before the people as a whole, and so make the loan in very truth a people’s loan. It rests with the people themselves to decide whether it shall be such.

The Government must have the money. It is a patriotic duty to purchase the bonds. And they offer an absolutely safe investment. The money invested is invested on the best security in the world—that of the United States; of the American Nation itself. The money cannot be lost unless the United States is destroyed, and in that case we would all of us be smashed anyhow, so that it would not make any difference. The people can, if they choose, now make themselves the bondholders. If they do not so choose, and if they force Wall Street to become the largest purchaser of the bonds, which must be bought somehow, then they will have no right in the future to grumble about the bondholders as a special class. We can now, all of us, join that class if we wish.

FACTORIES OF GOOD CITIZENSHIP

October 10, 1917

The training camps for the drafted men of the national army are huge factories for turning out first-class American citizens. Not only are they fitting our people for war; they are fitting them for the work of peace. They are making patriotism, love of country, devotion to the flag, and a sense of duty to others living facts, instead of unreal phrases. The public schools are laboratories of Americanism for our children; the training camps are laboratories of Americanism for our young men.

I have just seen a party of drafted men from the East Side of New York City start for Camp Upton with a band playing, an American flag flying. And two of their number in front, one dressed as Uncle Sam, and the other as the Kaiser, dragged along in manacles. There is no fifty-fifty Americanism in men with such spirit. A captain at this camp, a Plattsburg man, told me that his company of East Side New Yorkers showed all the intelligence and the zealous desire to learn which the fine young college graduates at Plattsburg have shown. Another captain told me that one of his men, a young Jew, had come to him and said that at first the East Siders had hated coming, not knowing what was ahead of them, but that now they felt that they were in a University of American Citizenship. A surgeon in the camp told me that men also, proved physically lacking after a week’s trial, were in most cases bitterly chagrined at being sent away. A colonel from a Southern camp has reported that already his country boys from the remote farms are straightening and broadening morally, mentally, and physically, and that the improvement is really incalculable. From every camp we hear of the eagerness with which the men are doing their duty, of their resourcefulness and of the real patriotism which is being rapidly learned. All this means not merely good soldiers in war, but good citizens in peace; it means an immense growth in the spirit of Americanism.

The young men are learning to be efficient, alert, self-respectful and respectful of others; they are learning to scorn laziness, slackness, and cowardice. All are serving on a precise equality of privilege and of duty and are judged each only on his merits. The sons of the foreign-born learn that they are exactly as good Americans as any one else, and when they return to their home their families will learn it, too.

Let all good Americans insist that now, without delay, we make this state of affairs our permanent national policy by law. We have built the camp, we have encountered the failures to provide army uniforms and blankets and all the other exasperating delays which are inevitable when a nation like ours has foolishly trusted to broomstick preparedness. We shall avoid all these things for the future if we continue these camps, as permanent features of the life of all our young men, and change the selective draft unto a system of universal obligatory military training for all our young men of nineteen and twenty, it being understood that they are not to go to war until they are twenty-one. We are now suffering, and the whole world is now suffering, from the effects of our broomstick preparedness. Let us do away with broomstick preparedness for the future and substitute real preparedness.

PILLAR-OF-SALT CITIZENSHIP

October 12, 1917

When Lot’s wife was journeying to safety, she could not resist looking back to the land she had left and was thereupon turned to a pillar of salt. The men from the Old World who, instead of adopting an attitude of hearty and exclusive loyalty to their land, try also to look backward to their old countries, become pillars-of-salt citizens, who are not merely useless, but mischievous members of our commonwealth.

The dispatches of the German Government, just published by the State Department, give us an illuminating glimpse, not only of German methods and of German conduct towards this country, but also of certain phases of our own citizenship. The German Government proposed to use this country as a basis of operations for wrecking the Canadian railway. It also proposed to use and pay its agents and certain of our citizens for “sabotage in every kind of American factory for supplying munitions of war,” and for “a vigorous campaign to secure a majority in both houses favorable to Germany.” The German staff, in issuing these directions and in naming certain American citizens as tools for the treacherous work, insisted that the embassy should not be compromised and that “similar precautions must be taken in regard to Irish pro-German propaganda.”

Good citizens who have been misled by false counsel must now clearly see that the campaign of dynamite against our industries, with the attendant wreckage and murder, was a deliberate act of secret war by the German Government; that the attempt by Americans to secure an embargo on sending munitions to the Allies was an effort to aid Germany in thus making war on the United States; that the Irish pro-German movement in this country was financed and guided from Germany, and that our citizens, whether of foreign or native birth, whether of native American or German or Irish origin, who took part in pushing these movements, were doing substantially the same kind of work that Benedict Arnold once tried to do.

Some of them were doubtless paid, others were doubtless not paid, but the paid and the unpaid alike were serving Germany against the United States. These matters are now all of public record. The excuse of ignorance can no longer avail any one. Henceforth the citizens of German or Irish birth who take part in such activities as those of most of the German-American alliances and the like, are at best standing in the position of pillar-of-salt citizenship; at worst they, and above all their native American associates, who now indulge in pacifist movements or demand a peace without overwhelming victory or ask for a referendum on the war, or in any other way serve the brutal and conscienceless ambition of Germany, stand unpleasantly near the lonely eminence occupied by Benedict Arnold.

BROOMSTICK APOLOGISTS

October 14, 1917

The chief of the Ordnance Bureau of the army, in commenting on the shortage of rifles, has said that it is of no consequence, because “every soldier will be supplied a rifle when he starts for France.”

Of course he will, otherwise he cannot start. One of the leading papers of New York backs up the statement by saying that the “drilling in the camps without rifles is ended now” and that “General Crozier delayed the work so as to get rifles with the same ammunition our allies are using.”

Neither statement is correct. The last is the reverse of truth. On October 2 in one camp there were still only one hundred rifles for twenty thousand men and other camps were scarcely better off, and the delay in getting rifles during the last eight months has been due primarily to the refusal of the Ordnance Department to get rifles using the ammunition of our allies.

If during the two years preceding our entry into the war the Government factories had been run full speed, we would have had over two million of Springfield rifles instead of under one million. Our shortage was due solely to our policy of dawdle. Our factories produced a mere dribble of rifles and no big field guns until the inevitable happened.

War came. Having no rifles of our own for the new army, the War Department decided to adopt the English rifle, the Enfield, which was being built in this country at the rate of nearly nine thousand a day in private plants, and by speeding them up the number could have been immediately increased to fourteen thousand a day. But the authorities insisted that the Enfields should be changed to take our ammunition, and that certain parts should be standardized and made interchangeable. As regards this excuse, it is sufficient to point out that in the first place it was a very grave error, while making the parts of our Enfields interchangeable, at the same time to make their ammunition not interchangeable with that of the British Enfields, for the number of Springfields on hand was negligible compared to the millions of rifles we would ultimately need, and in the second place the delay even for this purpose was wholly inexcusable. The German submarine note came on January 31. An alert War Department would have had its rifle programme minutely mapped out within two weeks. The delay in furnishing final specifications to the factories was such that they could not begin on the complete rifle until the latter part of August. Six months is a “perfectly endurable delay” only if we are content to accept the speed standards in war of Tiglath-Pileser and Pharaoh Necho. The United States must learn to adopt the war speed standards of the Twentieth Century, A.D., instead of those of the Seventh Century, B.C.

If in April we had been ready to proceed with the Enfield rifle, we would now have about two million of the new rifles instead of about one-fiftieth of that number. General Crozier says that we have only had to wait “two or three months—a perfectly endurable delay.” Surely if there is anything this war teaches it is the vital importance of time. Two or three months’ waiting in order to get a rifle which does not carry the ammunition of our allies represents not merely an undesirable delay but grave unwisdom.

General Crowder handled the draft to perfection because he appreciated that the difference between sending a telegram at 5 or at 4:45 might be of momentous consequence. General Crozier has bungled the rifle situation because of the attitude which makes him regard two or three months as “a perfectly endurable delay.”

For two years and a half before entering the war we relied upon broomstick preparedness. For the first eight months of the war we have followed the same policy as regards the vital matter of rifles for our troops.

THE LIBERTY LOAN AND THE PRO-GERMANS

October 16, 1917

Mr. Victor Berger, the Socialist leader of Milwaukee, is reported in the press as sneering at the Liberty bonds, berating the Administration for, as he says, appointing thirty-three wealthy capitalists on the National Council of Defense, and in effect seeming to persuade his hearers that they ought, at this crisis of foreign war, to be hostile to those of their countrymen who are “capitalists” instead of the Kaiser.

This is natural. The Socialist party machine in this country is run by Germans. Socialists, who were sincerely desirous of social betterment and who were sincere in this hatred of tyranny and wrongdoing, have left the Socialist party. Those who remain in it have turned it into a mere tool of the brutal militaristic autocracy which now threatens the world. These men are completely dominated by the Germans, and German Socialists in America have shown in this crisis that they are Germans first, Socialists a long way second, and not Americans at all. In fact, they are venomously hostile to the country in which they dwell and claim citizenship, and are eagerly ready to sacrifice Socialism itself to the interests of the Germany of the Hohenzollerns. They stand well to the front among the Shadow Huns who, within our gates, are the allies of the Huns without our gates.

While in Wisconsin I was told that the German-American Alliance, in its efforts to persuade American citizens to betray their citizenship in the interests of Germany, had relatively as many adherents among the Socialists as among the two great parties.

When the Socialists under such leadership oppose or sneer at the Liberty Loan, it is proof positive that all patriotic citizens should buy Liberty bonds up to the limit of their ability. The Socialists attack the Liberty Loan in order to hurt America and help Germany. The domination of “American capitalism” is a mere blind to obscure the service they are trying to render to the capitalists and militarists of Germany.

For the composition of the National Council of Defense, I am sorry that more labor men and farmers are not on it, but I wish they could be put on in addition to, not as substitutes for, the men of means who are on it, for these men of means, taken as a whole, have at much cost to themselves rendered devoted and invaluable service to the Nation. Their absence would be a general calamity to America and a great aid to Germany, and all true lovers of America should recognize this fact. I know some of these men personally, and those whom I know have sacrificed time, effort, and money in order to be of help to the Nation at this juncture. In fact, I have never known more devoted public service than that they rendered at this crisis.

It is unpatriotic at this time to attack good Americans because they have capital and are trying to make this capital of service in the war. Capital is necessary to business and industry, and in this war industrial efficiency is almost as necessary as military skill. The factories at home are almost as important as the armies in the field. Wise war taxation of capital and profits is eminently necessary, but it must not go to an extent that will interfere with production and the forward movement of business, or widespread calamity would result.

We are a great Nation, engaged in a stupendous war. Let us use dollars as we use the loaded shells, and each can do its best work only under the leadership of the ablest man: the business man in one case, the military man in the other. By all means let the people be masters of the capital of the country at the present time. The surest way to do this is for the people themselves to buy the Liberty bonds and not leave them to Wall Street. They are the one absolutely safe investment, both for men of small means and men of large means.

A DIFFICULT QUESTION TO ANSWER

October 18, 1917

A correspondent in Pueblo, Colorado, writes me as follows:

By what logic are we “at peace” with Austria, when she is furnishing troops or artillery to Germany to fight and kill our soldiers on the western front? The same question might apply to Turkey. Remember, too, that we are furnishing money and supplies to Italy, our ally, in her struggle with Austria. The Western folks are looking to you to answer hard questions of this sort for us which we don’t understand.

Neither I nor any one else can satisfactorily answer the question. A limited liability war in which we fight Germany ourselves and pay money to Italy and Russia to enable them to fight Austria and Turkey, with whom we are at peace, savors of sharp practice and not of statesmanship. It is a good rule either to stay out of war or to go into it, but not to try to do both things at once.

Moreover, this matter squarely tests our sincerity when we announced that we went to war to make the world safe for democracy. The phrase must have been used in a somewhat oratorical fashion, anyhow, because we have ourselves within the last year or two made the world entirely unsafe for democracy in the two small and weak republics of Haiti and San Domingo. Therefore, the phrase must have meant that we intended to make the world safe for well-behaved nations, great or small, to enjoy their liberty and govern themselves as they wished. If it did not mean this, the phrase was much worse than an empty flourish, for it was deliberately deceitful. If it did mean this, then we are recreant to our promise unless we at once go to war with Austria and Turkey.

Both these nations are racial conglomerates, in which one or two nationalities tyrannize over other subject nationalities. The world will not and cannot be safe for democracy until the Armenians, the Syrian Christians, and the Arabs are freed from Turkish tyranny, and until the Poles, Bohemians, and Southern Slavs, now under the Austrian yoke, are made into separate, independent nations, and until the Italians of Southwest Austria are restored to Italy and the Rumanians of Eastern Hungary to Rumania.

Unless we propose in good faith to carry out this programme, we have been guilty of a rhetorical sham when we pledged ourselves to make the world safe for democracy. The United States must not make promises which it has no intention of performing. We are breaking this promise and incidentally are acting absurdly every day that we continue at nominal peace with Germany’s fellow tyrants and subject allies, Austria and Turkey.

NOW HELP THE LIBERTY LOAN

October 20, 1917

The concrete services to the United States which every decent American not fortunate enough to be a soldier can now render, is to buy as many Liberty bonds as he can afford.

The Treasury Department has set forth in the public press the facts about the campaign which the pro-Germans in the United States are waging against the Liberty Loan. The campaign is being waged by trying to prevent banks from handling the Liberty Loan, and by the publication in certain newspapers of articles tending to discourage people from investing in the bonds. Senator La Follette’s speeches, which are to the same effect, are also being circulated with a view to check popular subscriptions. Senator La Follette, by the way, represents exactly the type which tries to prevent the people from owning the bonds and, nevertheless, will in the future probably rail at the purchasers of the bonds as having, somehow or other, obtained an improper and excessive profit.

Inasmuch as the enemies of the Liberty Loan are of this type, all patriotic Americans should strain every nerve to make the sale a success. Moreover, this happens to be one of those rare cases where the performance of a patriotic duty is a first-class financial investment. The patriot is rendering a great service to the Nation while he is also making a capital investment for himself. If the people do not take the bonds, they will be taken by the big capitalists. The people have the first call, and while it is desirable in the interest of everybody to make this a people’s loan, it is more desirable from the standpoint of the people themselves. The investment is absolutely safe. The men and women who fail to take advantage of it are not standing by the country and they are not standing by their own interests. Every man, from the day laborer to the bank president, should, according to his means, invest in the Liberty bonds.

A SQUARE DEAL FOR THE TRAINING CAMPS

October 21, 1917

The Playgrounds and Recreation Association of America has undertaken a capital work in pushing the War Camp Community Committee, of which Mr. John N. Willys, of Toledo, is chairman. The War Camp Committee work for Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, and Colorado has made Mr. I. R. Kirkwood chairman, and has begun an active drive to get the three-quarter of a million dollars allotted to this district out of the total of four million to be raised in the country.

The movement should receive the heartiest backing. It represents much more even than the very important work of providing amusements for the hundreds of thousands of enlisted men in the various camps, for it also has to deal with the moral and sanitary surroundings, not only in camps, but in the neighboring towns and cities. In former wars the number of men incapacitated by diseases contracted in the camps often surpassed the number incapacitated by the sickness due to the hardships and exposure at the front. This was because of lax supervision of the neighborhood moral and sanitary conditions, and also from failure to instruct the soldiers that it is a shameful and unsoldierly thing to expose themselves to disease due to indulgence in vice.

The committee is working not only in the interests of national morality and decency. It is also working in the interest of military efficiency, for it will save scores of thousands of soldiers from being shamefully incapacitated before reaching the front, and the gain to the Nation from the economical as well as the moral standpoint, after the war, will be very great.

The work of the committee will be carried on outside the camps in the adjacent communities acting in coöperation with churches, clubs, and organizations of public-spirited men and women. It will be wholly different from the work inside the camps, which is done by the Y.M.C.A., the Knights of Columbus, the Y.M.H.A., and similar bodies. In many places the local authorities already have done much work along the lines sketched by the national committee, and wherever this is the case, the national committee will surely aid the local bodies.

All good and patriotic men and women should heartily back this work to keep Uncle Sam’s soldiers clean, decent, and self-respecting; to make them better citizens and more formidable fighting men.

THE PASSING OF THE CRIPPLE

October 23, 1917

If men are alert, resolute, and energetic, they can usually secure some compensation from any calamity. This dreadful war, attended by the killing and crippling of men on a scale hitherto unknown, has brought as a compensation a determined move to do away with the cripple; that is, to cease the mere effort to keep a crippled man alive and, instead, to endeavor by reconstructive surgery to restore him to himself and to the community as an economic asset.

Surgeon-General Gorgas and his associates have worked out, and are ready practically to test, an organized system under which any seemingly crippled man is to be kept under the guidance of the medical branch of the army until either the usefulness of the damaged part has been restored or else until he has been trained in other ways so as to enable him measurably to overcome the handicap. In almost every case something will be done to make the cripple less of a burden to himself and others, and in most cases, the army medical service confidently believes, the cripple will once more become a useful and therefore a happy citizen. In all our special hospitals that are now being planned, the curative workshop is part of the plant. The effort is to be not only for the physical development and physical reëducation of the wounded part, but also for any intellectual training necessary to produce new forms of effective ability which will offset any loss in physical ability. The aim is not merely to save the life of, and then turn loose, a crippled pensioner who can be little but a burden on the community; it is to take care of the wounded man until the very best of which he is capable has been developed, so that when once more in the outside world he will be a real asset to the Nation. This is a fine thing for the Nation, and is of incalculable consequence from the standpoint of the self-respect and happiness of the man.

This represents the complete reversal of the old point of view, which was that the cripple was turned loose with a pension for less than what if sound in body he would have earned, and a burden on the community. The purpose of Surgeon-General Gorgas and his associates is that the Government shall stand behind the man and invest money in him so as to develop all his latent resources, fitting him to make good as a citizen and expecting him thus to make good. There will be, where necessary, a money compensation for the injury, but the great compensation will be the return to useful life of the man himself.

The far-reaching effect of such a policy is evident. The purpose is to insist that every man, no matter how maimed, shall be made of further use in the world. If once the army acts on this theory, the great industries will follow suit. The cripple, in the sense of being a helpless or useless cripple, will largely be eliminated, and out of this war will have come another step in the slow march of mankind towards a better and more just life.

THE PEACE OF COMPLETE VICTORY

October 23, 1917

It is stated in a press report from Washington that the Allies wish the United States to stop sending men abroad and use its ships for food and munitions instead, but that the Administration will not agree to the plan, and furthermore that the Administration is determined that there shall be no peace until Germany is completely beaten. If the report is correct, the Administration is absolutely right on both points.

As to the first point, we can well understand, in view of the steady U-boat campaign, how greatly the Allies desire food and munitions, and we regret with bitter shame the folly of our Government in dawdling and delaying for six vital months after the German note of January 31 last before seriously beginning the work of building big, swift cargo boats. But this cannot alter the fact that for the sake of our honor and our future world usefulness we must ourselves fight and not merely hire others to fight for us. If we do not follow this course, our children’s heads will be bowed with humiliation. With proper energy we could already have had some hundreds of thousands of men in the firing line, and we should send our troops over as rapidly as possible, with the purpose to put at least two million men against the German lines next year, an entirely possible programme if the Government will lend its energies with a single mind to the task.

As regards the second point, every decent citizen should make the pacifist and the home Hun realize that agitation for a premature peace, for a peace without victory, is seditious. Shame on every man, and above all on every public servant and every leader of public opinion, who endeavors to weaken the determination of America to see the war through and at all costs secure an overwhelming triumph for the principles for which we contend. If Germany is left unbeaten, the Western Hemisphere will stand in cowering dread of an assault by Germany’s ruthless and barbarous autocracy. The liberties of the free peoples of the world are at stake.

We must now fight with all our might on European soil beside our allies or else fear the day when we will have to fight without allies beside our burning homes. While this war lasts, the cause of our allies is our cause, their defeat would be our defeat, and whoever assails them or defends Germany is a traitor to the United States. There must be no negotiated peace. Belgium is entitled to an enormous indemnity and France to annexation of Alsace and Lorraine. By her marine murders and her shore raids and her utter treachery and abominable cruelty, Germany has made herself the outlaw among nations, and with her we should negotiate only through the mouths of our cannon. All who now advocate a negotiated peace with her are seeking to betray civilization in the interest of brute force and international outrage. The United States owes her entrance into this war almost as much to the American pacifist as to the German militarist, and now the former is meanly eager once more to serve the latter by securing an unjust peace. Let every brave and patriotic American spurn the base counsels of the pro-Germans and pacifists, and insist that this country, at whatever cost, fight steadfastly until the war closes with Germany’s complete overthrow.

FIGHTING WORK FOR THE MAN OF FIGHTING AGE

October 25, 1917

The Y.M.C.A. is one of the most powerful agencies for good in our military camps here at home and with our armies abroad. It would be a veritable calamity not to have it do this work. The women and the elderly men who have gone abroad under present conditions are rendering a patriotic service of high value, but every young man of fighting age who has gone abroad for the Y.M.C.A. at this time is a positive damage to the work and should be instantly sent home. It is an ignoble thing for an able-bodied man to be in such a position of bodily safety where his example must naturally excite contempt and resentment among the men who, unlike him, are risking their lives and have left their families for the sake of a great ideal. Of course, no man of draft age should be sent over, but this is not enough. The draft represents merely the minimum performance of duty. No man of age to permit his entering the army abroad or at home should be sent over. If any such man is not in the army, it should be either because he has been turned down by the army authorities for physical reasons or because his work at home either for his family or for the Government imperatively demands his presence here. If he is able to go abroad at all, he should go abroad in the army. The fact that he is abroad for the Y.M.C.A. is proof positive that he has no business to be there.

An officer in high command in France recently wrote home a letter, which I have seen, describing the experiences of the junior officers of his command with some of the young able-bodied Y.M.C.A. representatives. He began by an emphatic testimony to the admirable work the Y.M.C.A. had done and to its great importance, and by an emphatic statement that it had a thoroughly bad effect on the enlisted men to see a young man of their own age engaged in such work. He then illustrated its effect on the young officers with whom these Y.M.C.A. men messed, writing:

Two young Y.M.C.A. men have been at two of the battalion messes. They are of the age whose presence here is an annoyance to the army because they seem to have been exempted from the draft. They have obtained bullet-proof jobs and their presence here is a bad example to all the young men in the army. Last night at one mess the officers were so disgusted with the Y.M.C.A., who was actually wearing a uniform with an officer’s belt on, that they began to chaff him, telling him that they were married men and were entitled to play safety first themselves and thought they would apply for jobs in the Salvation Army. The Y.M.C.A. had to stand for this because he was the only unmarried man there, and it is said that his mother persuaded him that he owed her a duty not to go in a dangerous place. He evidently feels his duty keenly. The other young fellow from the Y.M.C.A. was a real man and he left the soft job and has enlisted as a private.

The Y.M.C.A. is so very useful an organization that it is profoundly to be regretted that it should in any way damage its usefulness. Its work with the armies abroad should be done exclusively by women and elderly men. No able-bodied man under forty-five should represent the Y.M.C.A. in the war zone or with the army camps.

WISE WOMEN AND FOOLISH WOMEN

October 27, 1917

There are wise and foolish women just as there are wise and foolish men, and in any great crisis the welfare of this country depends upon the extent to which the wise and patriotic men and the wise and patriotic women can offset or overcome the folly of the foolish.

The woman who bravely and cheerfully sends her men to battle when the country calls takes her place high on the national honor roll. She stands beside the mothers and wives of the men of ’76 and of the men who wore the blue and the gray in the Civil War. Where would this country now be if Washington’s mother had not raised her boy to be a soldier for the right?

But the women who do not raise their boys to be soldiers when the country needs them are unfit to live in this republic. The women who at this time try to dissuade their husbands or sons who are of military age from entering the army or navy are thoroughly unworthy citizens. The kind of affection which shows itself by refusing to allow the boy to face hard work when it is his duty to do so, the mother who brings up her boy to be a worthless idler, because she is too fond of him to see him suffer the discomfort of hard work, and the mother who desires her boy to play the coward or the shirk, in time of war, are not merely foolish; they are poor citizens. They are the real enemies of their sons, for there can be no more dangerous enemy than the human being, man or woman, who teaches another human being to lose his soul in order to save his body. The wise mother is the best of all good citizens and the foolish mother stands almost at the other end of the scale. I wish every mother in the land could read Theodosia Garrison’s poem, recently sent out by that stirring body of patriots, the Vigilantes. It describes the youth of twenty years, eager to play a manly part while his mother seeks to hold him from the post of danger and duty, and two of the verses run:

Mother of his twenty years, who holds against his will
The eager heart, the quick blood, and bids them to be still,
What of the young untrammeled soul you seek to blunt and kill?
You would save the body stainless and complete,
Fetters on the hands of it, shackles on the feet;
And in the crippling of them make soul and body meet.

WHY CRY OVER SPILT MILK?

October 28, 1917

Nice, short-sighted persons, when the evil effects of our folly in failing to prepare are pointed out, sometimes ask, “Why cry over spilt milk?” The answer is that we wish to be sure that we do not spill it again, and, unfortunately, the nice persons who bleat against any one who points out our shortcomings in preparedness or who excuse and champion those responsible for this unpreparedness, are doing all they can to invite future disaster for the Nation.

The bleat assumes different expressions in different localities. Recently the Mayor of Abilene, Texas, expressed his disapproval of my pointing out that we, as a Nation, had wholly failed to prepare, by saying that I was “a seditious conspirator who ought to be shot dead,” and that the editor of the newspaper publishing the article “should be tarred and feathered.” Although differing in method of expression, this slightly homicidal bleat of the gentle-souled (and doubtless entirely harmless) Mayor of Abilene, Texas, is exactly similar in thought to the utterances of all these sheeplike creatures who raise quavering or incoherent protests against every honest and patriotic man who points out the damage done by our failure to prepare.

These persons cannot deny one fact I state. Nine months have passed since, on January 31, Germany sent us a note which was practically a declaration of war. We have only just put troops in the trenches; many of the troops of our draft army training at home have until recently only had broomsticks, and now only have one old Spanish War rifle for every eight soldiers; most of the artillery regiments in these camps either have no guns or wooden guns. After nine months we are still wholly unable to defend ourselves or to render efficient military aid to our allies, and we owe safety from invasion only to the protection of the fleets and armies of the war-worn and weary nations to whose help we nominally came. No man can truthfully deny these statements, no man can seriously regard this situation as satisfactory. To try to cover up the truth by bluster and brag and downright falsehoods may possibly deceive ourselves, but will deceive no one else, whether friend or foe. Is such foolish deceit worth while?

Nine tenths of wisdom is being wise in time. We were not wise in time. Let us learn from our past folly future wisdom. Our first duty is to win this war, and therefore the Shadow Hun within our gates is our worst internal foe. Our next and equally important duty is to prepare against disaster in the future, and therefore our next worst internal foe is the sheeplike creature who invites national disaster for the future by bleating against the telling of the truth in the present.

SAVE THE FOODSTUFF

October 30, 1917

Mr. Hoover has been appointed as the man to lead us of this Nation in the vitally important matter of producing and saving as much food as we possibly can in order that we can send abroad the largest possible amount for the use of our suffering allies and for the use of our own gallant soldiers. Mr. Hoover’s preëminent services in Belgium pointed him out as of all the men in this country the man most fit for the very position to which he has been appointed. Let us give him our most hearty and loyal support.

In this great and terrible war the slaughter, starvation, and exhaustion are on a scale never before known. They are nation-wide. Therefore every individual of every nation engaged must do his full part or else must be held to have failed in his duty. The man of fighting age must fight. The man with especial business capacity or mechanical skill must produce arms or equipment or ammunition. And every man, woman, or child must help produce food if possible, and in any event must help economize it.