REDEDICATING AMERICA
Life and Recent Speeches of
WARREN G. HARDING
8,
FREDERICK E. SCHORTEMEIER
Formerly Private Secretary to United States
Senator Harry S. New; now Secretary
Indiana Republican State
Committee
WITH FOREWORD BY WILL H.
Republican National Chairman
INDIANAPOLIS
THE BO3BS-MERRILL COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
COPYRIGHT 1920
THE BOBBS- MERRILL COMPANY
Printed in the United States of America
PRESS or
BRAUNWORTH ft CO.
BOOK MANUFACTURERS
BROOKLYN, N. V.
FOREWORD
SENATOR HARDING possesses just those vital quali
ties of mind and heart necessary to-day and in the
time just ahead. His poise of mind, his soundness of
judgment, his hold on fundamentals, his appreciation
of the needs of to-day and of to-morrow, his love of
the people from whom he came and of whom he is
one, and his faith in them; his magnificent grasp of
large affairs, his great native ability and his training
in statesmanship, his regard for the opinion of others,
his experience and success in the handling of men, his
proper appreciation of his country s position as a re
sponsible factor in the world s future, but with the
fullest realization of the absolute importance of our
own supreme nationalism, his sterling Americanism,
his righteous character and manhood, and withal his
thorough humanness, all qualify him in the most ex
ceptional degree for the tremendous responsibilities
which will soon be his. He will make a splendid candi
date and a great president. The country will love him,
honor him, trust him and follow him, just as all who
know him love and trust him, and the world will honor
him.
WILL H. HAYS.
AUGUST 1, 1920
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I WARREN GAMALIEL HARDING 11
II SPEECH OF ACCEPTANCE. Address at Formal No
tification of His Nomination for the Presidency,
at Marion, Ohio, July 22, 1920 34
Constitution Charts the Way Popular Gov
ernment to Be Restored Republican Senators
Saved America Will Preserve American In
dependence To Restore Formal Peace In
dependent Aid to World Justice To Restore
Constitution Must Encourage Competition
Increased Production Great Need Industrial
Cooperation Urged Classism Decried De
liberate Readjustment Sought The Railroad
Problem Highway Development Advocated
Deflation of Finance Thrift and Economy
Essential Agricultural Cooperation Urged
Irrigation and Reclamation Specific Pro
posals Importance of Law Enforcement
Tribute to World War Veterans Woman
Suffrage Confidence in America.
Ill SAFEGUARDING AMERICA. Address on the League
of Nations in the United States Senate, Sep
tember 11, 1919 62
Nationality Is Paramount Involvements of
League America Essential Factor in War
Secret Bartering Unheeded America s Inter
ests Ignored Nothing Substantial Offered
Supergovernment Created Disarmament Not
Accomplished Arbitration Not Assured Ar
ticle Ten Mere Phantom Fought for Amer
ican Rights Many Peoples Not Heard
Avenue to Unending War To Preserve
Americanism Why America Entered War-
Proclamation of Neutrality Recalled Forced
to Declare War Our Task Completed Not
Committed to League Autocracy of Peace
Nationality Sacrificed American Conscience
Fixes Obligation Respect for American
CONTENTS Continued
CHAPTER PAGE
Rights Significance of Nationalism Amer
ican Safety at Stake Patriots Save America
Reservations Are Essential Righteousness
Is Goal Must Preserve Inheritance Must
Save Soul of America.
IV AMERICANISM. Address Delivered before the
Ohio Society of New York, at the Waldorf Ho
tel, New York City, January 10, 1920 ... 103
Birth of Americanism Constitution Is Sacred
Duty of Citizenship Must Practise Amer
icanism Devotion to Duty Back to Normal
Supremacy of Law Civil Liberty at Stake
Honest Living Is Solution Must Preserve
Nationalism America First.
V THEODORE ROOSEVELT. Ohio Legislative Memo
rial Address before a Joint Convention of the
Eighty-third General Assembly, January 29, 1919 115
Eminent American Exalted by Americanism
Sought Foreign Service Extraordinary
Manhood Man of Action Awakened Na
tional Conscience Made America Better.
VI RELATIONS WITH THEODORE ROOSEVELT. Public
Address at Topeka, Kansas, March 8, 1920 . . 123
WILLIAM McKiNLEY. Address at the McKin-
ley Memorial Dinner, Niles, Ohio, January 29,
1920 125
Pioneer of Expansion American Nationalist
A Partisan Republican Cooperated with
Congress Political Parties Essential Re
stored Prosperity in 1896 Apostle of Protect
ive Tariff His Leadership Is Inspiration
Memory Gives Confidence.
GEORGE WASHINGTON. Address Delivered Feb
ruary 22, 1918, at Washington s Birthday
Celebration before the Sons and Daughters of
the Revolution, at Washington, D. C. ... 136
Founders Divinely Inspired Developed Amer
ican Soul Duty to Preserve Republic Advice
of Washington Factionalism Decried To
Preserve National Rights.
IX ABRAHAM LINCOLN. Address before Lincoln
Club, Portland, Maine, February 13, 1920 . . 145
CONTENTS-~C0**fttt*d
CHAPTER PAGE
Duty of Citizenship Exponent of Nationality
America Affords Equal Opportunity.
X GENERAL GRANT S REPUBLICANISM. Address at
Grant Dinner, Middlesex Club, Boston, Massa
chusetts, 1916 149
Political Principles Important Equal Oppor
tunity Is Basis Republicanism Means Pros
perity Need Protective Policies Sane Pro-
gressivism Needed Renewed Consecration
Home Production Urged The Awakened
Conscience.
XI VOTE ON DECLARATION OF WAR WITH GERMANY.
Address in the Senate of the United States,
Wednesday, April 4, 1917 164
Not Fighting in Name of Democracy To
Maintain American Rights To Preserve
America Guarantee of Nationality.
XII AMERICA IN THE WAR. Address at the Ohio
Republican State Convention, Columbus, Ohio,
August 27, 1918 170
Partisanism Forgotten Republicans Sup
ported War New Birth of National Soul
Republicans Urge Concord Investigations
Prove Helpful Reconstruction Ahead Not
the President s War Internationalism Decried *~
Democratic Extravagance Attacked.
XIII THE REPUBLICAN PARTY AND AMERICA. Address
before the Republican Rally at Memorial Hall,
Columbus, Ohio, February 23, 1920 (Washing
ton s Birthday) 182
Civilization Never Stands Still We Were Neg
lectful Parties Government Agencies Dan
ger Mark Was Near Country Wants Formal "
Peace Why Meddle in Europe Need Judg
ment of the Many Has No Personal Ends
Seeks Stable Ways of Peace For American
Square Deal Dreamer Needs Awakening
Must Reiterate Wholesome Policies Believes
in Government Aid Ours Not Ungrateful Re
public.
XIV THE PROBLEMS OF BUSINESS. Address before
the Providence Chamber of Commerce, at Provi
dence, Rhode Island, February 25, 1920 ... 198
.CONTENTS Continued
CHAPTER PAGE
Evolution of Modern Business America
Greatest Producer Workmen Not Mere Ma
chines Humanism Should be Developed
Many Commissions Useless Too Much Reg
ulation Minimized Production Destructive
Collective Bargaining Favored Increased Pro
duction Needed.
XV THE EXCESS PROFITS TAX. Address in the
United States Senate, February 27, 1917 . . 206
Heavy Tax Burden Necessary What Consti
tutes Real Capital Looking Forward to Peace
Business Should Be Encouraged Foreign
Producer Should Assist Protective Tariff
v Needed Business Needs Encouragement
Washington s Advice Applicable Tax Is Pen
alty on Success.
XVI AUTO-INTOXICATION. Address before Baltimore
Press Club, at Baltimore, Maryland, February
5, 1920 218
Too Much High Living Back to the Constitu
tion Party Government Necessary Heart of
America Still Sound Government Ownership
Opposed.
XVII BACK TO NORMAL. Address before Home Mar
ket Club at Boston, Massachusetts, May 14, 1920 223
Normal Conditions Great Need Formal
Peace Sought Should Seek Understanding
Work Is Solution Supremacy of Law Pro
duction Is Great Need Sober Thinking
Urged Save America First
XVIII THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS. Address in the United
States Senate, Friday, January 28, 1916 ... 230
America Has Obligation Not Seeking Terri
tory No Oppression of Philippines McKin-
ley Not Selfish Honorable Withdrawal Im
possible Commercial Advantages Shown
Filipinos Need America American Progress
Must Continue.
XIX SOME SPECIFICATIONS. Delivered before the
Builders Exchange, Cleveland, Ohio .... 240
America Prodigal Gift of Creation Makers
of America Honest Building Essential Con
secration to Civic Duty.
CONTENTS Continued
CHAPTER PAGE
XX THE KNOX RESOLUTION. Address in the United
States Senate, May 11, 1920, on Resolution to
Declare State of War Ended 247
President Was Warned Congress Still Func
tions.
XXI THE PEACE TREATY. Address in the United
States Senate, November 18, 1919, \Vhen the
Final Vote on the Peace Treaty Was Taken . 250
Reservations Are Essential Majority Able to
Reach Agreement Treaty Negotiated upon
Misunderstanding Minority Did Not Seek
Agreement America Must Be Preserved .
Welcomes Decision of People.
Rededicating America
CHAPTER I
,WARREN GAMALIEL HARDING
NATIONALISM is the life theme of Warren Harding.
When the delegates to the Republican National Con
vention at Chicago called Senator Harding as the
party s leader for the campaign of 1920, they chose
a man whose controlling passion is, and has ever
been, a complete devotion to America, strong and free,
sovereign and supreme. As Senator Harding be
comes better known to the American people, he will
stand forth as the greatest nationalist of his day. Ever
since he entered public life as a member of the Ohio
legislature, he has thought in terms national. His de
votion to the national ideal is the composite of the
belief of William McKinley in representative govern
ment and the absolute Americanism of Theodore
Roosevelt.
The Hardings have always thought in terms of na
tionalism. For three centuries those of his family
who came before him were of the sturdy stock which
early made its way to our colonial shores and had
its part in the making of America as this country grew
to be the best expression of governmental individual-
11
1 2 >jH .KKDEDICATI^G AMERICA
ism and developed nationality. The name Harding is
as old as the Doomsday Book of 1086. Before America
had its birth as a nation, many Hardings had come to
cast their lot in the New England colony ; indeed, his
torical records show that at least six Hardings came to
America s shores a century before the Revolution.
Abraham Harding came to Massachusetts, his widow,
Elizabeth, settled in Boston ; George Harding to Salem,
John to Weymouth, Robert to Connecticut all before
1650. From the Connecticut line of Robert Harding
came Captain Stephen Harding, whose son, Abraham
Harding, was the father of Amos Harding. The latter
was the direct ancestor of Senator Harding. He
reared a family of fourteen boys, all of whom bore
Biblical names with the exception of George Tryon
Harding, who was the father of Charles Alexander
Harding and William Perry Harding. Charles Alex
ander left but one son, George Tryon Harding, father
of Senator Harding.
Warren and his mother were genuinely intimate and
affectionate. She was an ardent member of the Sev
enth Day Adventists and had the reputation of being
the best versed woman in Biblical literature in her
community. She was thoroughly cultured and had
read widely. Persons who knew her well have told
me that when Warren was a mere child, not over
seven years old, she said to him repeatedly, "Warren,
stay with your books and some day you will be presi
dent of the United States."
In after years Warren Harding moved to Marion,
while his parents continued to reside in Caledonia, a
small town ten miles to the east. For years it was
WARREN GAMALIEL HARDING 13
Warren s habit to go to his mother s home early every
Sunday morning and the Sundays he missed were very
few, indeed. By eight o clock he was usually on his
way to the old homestead armed with a handful of
flowers. For nineteen years he took or sent flowers
to her every week without fail. In the homecoming
celebration following his nomination, D. R. Cris-
singer, his fellow townsman who made the welcoming
address, referred graciously to this tender, weekly trib
ute which Senator Harding bestowed on his mother.
It touched Mr. Harding deeply and was probably the
most impressive moment of the celebration. The sen
ator worshiped his mother and he did not endeavor to
conceal his heart s regret that she was not here to be
present at the homecoming. A stately woman, always
of good cheer, she was universally loved. She was
devoutly religious and her love for the beautiful and
the true has made its eternal impress upon Warren s
character. She died in 1910.
Senator Harding s father has been granted more
than his three score and ten years, a kind Providence
giving him the privilege of celebrating his seventy-
sixth natal day on the very day his son was nominated
for the highest honor at the bestowal of the American
people. His father is a man of strong personality,
with a kindly good will toward all the world and with
a disposition characterized by tenderness and sym
pathy. He is still actively engaged in the practise of
medicine. Of course, he has always been proud of
Warren. In his modest way, however, he has en
deavored to conceal his deep satisfaction upon his
son s nomination. "I am not much excited," he said
14 REDEDICATING AMERICA
when Harding was nominated, but the truth is that he
did not eat anything that day, having forgotten his
meals altogether. He was just supremely happy and
nobody in Marion begrudges him the genuine delight
he so richly deserves. He sacrificed much in his ear
lier life that Warren might be thoroughly educated,
and his son s success is his just reward.
A typical farm homestead near Blooming Grove,
Morrow County, Ohio, was the birthplace of Warren
Gamaliel Harding, November 2, 1865. He will cele
brate his fifty-fifth anniversary on election day. This
American community had already come to fame as
the birthplace of Senator Calvin S. Brice and Albert
P. Morehouse, governor of Missouri, and his great
state, even before this time, had won its way into the
hearts of Americans as the "Mother of Presidents."
All that is good in citizenship and honest living is
the priceless possession of the Hardings. They lived
the typical life of the early Americans. They did not
suffer from an over-abundance of wealth, but without
exception they held the esteem of their neighbors and
were true to themselves. Warren, in turn, lived the
normal life of an American boy in the country districts
of the great Central West. He was early a leader of
his boyish crowd. As was the custom of his time, the
winter months of his early years were spent in the
country or village school, while the summers found
him hard at work on his father s farm, or seeking em
ployment in the village. Warren was naturally bright
in school. It would hardly be proper to say that he
was precocious, but his lessons came very easily and
he led his class without having to dig; moreover, he
WARREN GAMALIEL HARDING 15
was too hearty and healthy a boy to study much more
than was necessary to keep him ahead of his fellows.
He especially enjoyed grammar, and so it comes about
that he possesses a remarkable aptitude for the choice
of accurate and meaningful words.
As he came to his teens he did the work of the Ohio
pioneer, clearing the woodland and developing the
crops. At one time he worked in a sawmill. The
owner of this mill to this day insists that Warren was
such a good worker that it almost cost him his life.
He had been given the task of cleaning the floor near
a bandsaw and was warned not to clear away the
rubbish too near the saw. Warren was determined
to make a complete job of it ; he leaned over to brush
under the saw and in an instant the crown of his hat
was clipped by the buzzer and whirled to the ceiling.
The lad came within three inches of never having the
opportunity to lead his party to victory. Later he
worked as a laborer in building the Toledo and Ohio
Central Railroad which was laid through Morrow
County, and he followed such other pursuits as the
days might bring.
While a boy, young Harding is well remembered as
having ridden the family mule from Caledonia to
Marion, after the removal of the family from the vil
lage to the county-seat. The story is told that on the
trip he stopped a farmer to inquire how much of his
journey to Marion remained. The farmer looked at
him reproachfully and dolefully exclaimed, "Wai, it
taint so fur if you get off that there mule and walk,
but if you re goin to ride that beast, it s a purty durn
fur ways off !"
16 REDEDICATING AMERICA
Like most young men who were the leaders of their
set, young Harding took his turn at teaching elemen
tary school, mainly for the purpose of obtaining funds
to continue his education. He was a good teacher, due
partly to his genuine desire for learning plus his men
tal attainments, but more because of his executive abil
ity. He taught the fundamentals very successfully
and he held the respect and esteem of his pupils. But
what is even more important, he instilled into them the
spirit of thrift, of activity, of getting things done
and of patriotism.
When he was fourteen years of age, his parents were
able to send him to Ohio Central College at Iberia,
from which institution he was graduated with a very
good record in scholarship, and the degree of Bachelor
of Science. It was there, as editor of the college pa
per, that he found a liking and displayed a talent for
journalism. "If I have any faculty for the work I am
now doing," he said in later years, "I owe it most to
my training as editor of the college paper while a stu
dent." His college course was marked by varied va
cation employments, not because of poverty, but be
cause his parents had taught him the value of work.
He, therefore, engaged in cutting corn, painting houses
and grading roadbeds. He was an average farmer, a
very good house painter and a steady workman for
the railroad.
His favorite pastime during this period of life was
playing in the Caledonia and Marion bands. Despite
stories to the contrary regarding the instrument he
played, let it be said here in finality that Warren
Harding played a tenor horn as a beginner, sometimes
WARREN GAMALIEL HARDING 17
the tuba when a substitute was needed, and ultimately
the cornet. Since his nomination he has been made to
perform on almost every instrument known to a band,
but his fellow musicians told me that there need be no
doubt about it, for they all remember distinctly that
he was a very good musician, regular at practise, and
that he played the aforesaid horns. His band visited
the neighboring cities and took third prize in the state
wide band tournament at Findlay, Ohio, in 1882. Only
seven members of this organization now survive, and
to a man they declare that Warren Harding was a
jolly good fellow as a young man, modest, unassum
ing, industrious, full of fun, loyal to his friends and de
voted to his parents. "And what is more important/
declared Joe Mathews, who played in the celebrated
band with him, "is that Warren has never changed a
bit to this day."
The odor of printers* ink took hold of him when he
left college. He had become a hand typesetter as a
boy, and when the linotype was first introduced he
learned to operate the machine. He is a practical
pressman, job printer and make-up editor. To this
day he carries, as his "luck piece," the printer s rule
of his composing-room days. During the Elaine cam
paign he was employed on a Democratic newspaper and
when his Republicanism could no longer be held within
bounds and he joined a Blaine club and donned a
Blaine hat, he lost his job.
He turned to reportorial and editorial work on the
Marion Daily Star of Marion, Ohio. The supreme
desire of his early life was to own this newspaper and
so in time his father gave him the small financial as-
18 REDEDICATING AMERICA
sistance that permitted him to purchase it. The guiding
spirit of the Marion Star has been, and is, Senator
Harding himself. Always constructive, always fear
less, it has become known throughout the country as
a newspaper of prestige and power. Senator Harding
is justly proud of the fact that his paper has never had
a labor strike or even a threatened controversy with its
employees. As soon as he was able to put the Daily
Star on a firm financial foundation, he organized a
stock company with his employees, distributing shares
to his workmen so that now they, with him, own the
paper. Years ago he expressed his conception of the
relation between the newspaper and the public in this
creed, written in his office for his office staff:
"Remember there are two sides to every question.
Get both. Be truthful. Get the facts. Mistakes are
inevitable, but strive for accuracy. I would rather
have one story exactly right than a hundred half
wrong. Be decent ; be fair, be generous. Boost don t
knock. There s good in everybody. Bring out the
good in everybody, and never, needlessly, hurt the feel
ings of anybody. In reporting a political gathering,
give the facts ; tell the story as it is, not as you would
like to have it. Treat all parties alike. If there s any
politics to be played, we will play it in our editorial
columns. Treat all religious matters reverently. If
it can possibly be avoided never bring ignominy to an
innocent man or child in telling of the misdeeds or mis
fortune of a relative. Don t wait to be asked, but do it
without the asking, and, above all, be clean and never
let a dirty word or suggestive story get into type. I
want this paper so conducted that it can go into any
home without destroying the innocence of any child."
WARREN GAMALIEL HARDING 19
Senator Harding s general business ability soon be
came recognized and he was called to interest himself
in other commercial lines before he entered politics.
He became a director of the Marion County Bank of
Marion, Ohio ; a member of the board of directors of
the Marion Lumber Company, the Marion County
Telephone Company, the Marion Home Building and
Loan Association and numerous other concerns. He
gave financial support to several new industries which
came to Marion when these commercial organizations
sought his business counsel. He devoted much time to
civic affairs, and became a trustee of the Trinity Bap
tist Church, which he attends regularly when at home.
Warren Harding is essentially human. He has al
ways been interested in the charities of his town and
has done innumerable acts of helpfulness known only
to himself and the beneficiary of his kindness. He has
given financial assistance to more than one fellow
townsman who had met adversity and in whom many
people had lost faith. On one of his recent trips he
met an acquaintance whom he had not seen in many
months and who was threatened with total blindness.
Harding took his friend of earlier years with him to
Washington, placed him in the hands of an eminent
eye specialist, and was so sincerely happy when the
physician was able to restore the sight of one eye that
he confidentially told one or two of his neighbors
about it.
Harding s humanitarianism, simple, unheralded, al
ways behind closed doors, is one of his truly great
characteristics, and ranks in importance with his utter
2Q PEDEDICATING AMERICA
sincerity. When I asked a fellow member of the
United States Senate what he regarded as the senator s
greatest attribute, he replied instantly:
"Modesty and sincerity. Harding s modesty mani
fests itself at all times and sometimes to his disad
vantage through being mistaken for a lack of confi
dence in himself. I have always been impressed with
this quality in him. Both in committee meetings and
on the floor of the Senate he advances his views, not
with an air of finality, nor yet timidity, but with be
coming modesty, and seldom until he has listened pa
tiently to what others have to say, but he is tenacious
of his opinions and is not easily swayed from his con
clusions once they have been reached. He is as sincere
as a man can be. I have never yet known him to tem
porize. What he believes he says and he does not say
what he does not believe. I know of no other man
in public life so little given to dissembling; for better
or for worse, he is just what he appears to be."
No sketch of the Republican standard bearer is com
plete without tender and just tribute to Florence Kling
Harding, his devoted, enthusiastic and very able wife,
whom he married in 1891. She is his eternal inspira
tion and their relations are as near ideal as could b
on this mundane sphere. They are the best comrades,
sharing their problems in full together and finding
their happiness in their affection for each other. Mrs,
Harding is a woman of culture, sincere, genuine, and
always happy. She has lived her entire life in or near
her present home. Her father, Amos Kling, was 2
substantial business man of Marion, and she attended
the Marion schools. She is widely read and spends
much time with her books. As a young woman, her
WARREN GAMALIEL HARDING 21
Hobby was horseback riding; she was a clever rider
and now is an excellent judge of saddle horses. She
loves the great outdoors.
"I can not realize that Warren has been nominated
for the presidency," she said to me a month after the
nomination. "It hardly seems real to me." And her
attitude bespeaks the fact, for she is the same cordial,
lovable woman to-day that she was five years ago.
Fully able to bear the heavy tasks which now come to
her, she refuses absolutely to permit the tremendous
honor to change her one iota.
Senator Harding also is privileged to enjoy the com
radeship of three loyal sisters. Miss Abigail Harding
resides with her father in Marion and is a teacher of
English in the Marion High School. Another sister,
Mrs. Carolyn Votaw, is the wife of Doctor Herbert
Votaw, of Washington, D. C. She is deeply interested
in social problems and is a member of the Women s
Bureau of the Police Department of the capital city.
A third sister, Mrs. Charity M. Remsberg, resides in
California. His only brother, Doctor G. T. Harding, Jr.,
is an eminent physician of Columbus, Ohio.
While Senator Harding has always maintained his
numerous business connections, increasing them from
year to year, his interest in and ability for things gov
ernmental early turned him to an active participation
in public affairs. He was elected a member of the upper
chamber of the Seventy-fifth and Seventy-sixth Ohio
General Assemblies as senator from the Thirteenth
Ohio District, serving from 1899 to 1903. He had al
ready gained a state-wide reputation as a public speaker
and as editor of his forceful paper, whose editorials,
22 REDEDICATING AMERICA
written largely by the senator himself, were read and
valued throughout his state. He was now an Ohio fig
ure and the following year his leadership was recog
nized in his nomination and election as lieutenant-gov
ernor. Seven years later found him the Republican
candidate for governor, but, because of a party disaf
fection, he met his first political defeat. At that time
he said publicly that he would leave the political arena,
but in the short space of two years time he returned
actively to politics, supporting William Howard Taft
for renomination and reelection as president of the
United States. In another two years time he became
a candidate for the Republican nomination for senator
and in the first primary election held in his state he
defeated Senator Joseph B. Foraker. This was in the
spring of 1914. When the votes were counted at the
November election his fellow Ohioans sent him to the
United States Senate with a majority of 102,373 over
Timothy S. Hogan, his Democratic opponent, and with
73,000 more votes than the next highest candidate on
the Republican ticket.
When he reached Washington, Senator Harding
quickly won the respect and esteem of his fellow sen
ators. He had the happy fortune of making and hold
ing the genuine friendship of every member of that
body. From that time to the present it has been an
almost daily occurrence in the Republican senatorial
cloak-room for some senator, in the course of a confer
ence, to say, "Let s see what Warren thinks about this."
His judgment, abundance of common sense and
breadth of understanding are recognized as his most
valued assets. Senator Harding has a fine poise and
WARREN GAMALIEL HARDING 23
a deliberate and judicial manner. His friends say
they have never known him to lose his temper in vio
lent fashion and that he always has himself under per
fect command. His opinions and views on public
questions have met the almost universal approval of
the members on his side of the chamber. They wel
come his counsel and he invites theirs. If he removes
from Capitol Hill to the White House, Senator Har
ding can not do otherwise than understand Congress
and work with it to the expedition of legislation. And
his lifelong desire for counsel will unquestionably cause
him to call to his Cabinet strong, able, loyal Americans ;
to the eternal glory of the republic.
Warren Harding attends to his senatorial business.
Relying upon the ability and faithfulness of his sec
retary, George B. Christian, Jr., who is greatly de
voted to his chief, he has established a reputation
among his fellow senators for the efficient administra
tion of the varied lines of activity which United States
senators these days are called upon to perform. His
office has an atmosphere of hospitality ; his visitors feel
unconsciously that they are welcome ; he is always ac
cessible, generous with his time, ready to hear and to
help.
Senator Harding is in regular attendance at his com
mittee meetings. Several years before he was pub
licly considered for the presidency, I observed him in
committee sessions. In the course of an hour s meet
ing he invariably asks half a dozen pointed questions.
He calls bluntly for the opinions of other senators on
the committee and relies, to a considerable extent, upon
their combined judgments in reaching his own conclu-
24 REDEDICATING AMERICA
sions on the question tinder consideration. He does a
full day s work and is busy at his office from nine
o clock in the morning until Mrs. Harding comes for
him at six in the evening, and often then his day s work
is not yet completed. With Mrs. Harding and his
devoted secretary, he gathers up in his automobile one
or more other senators who are "going his way," shar
ing their comradeship and taking them to their homes.
Those acquainted with the official life of Washing
ton know that the work of the government is done
largely by congressional committees. It is in the com
mittee rooms that the innumerable vital questions are
considered in detail and committee conclusions reached
after many hours of discussion and deliberation. Since
his election to the Senate, Senator Harding has had
important committee assignments. During the last two
years he has served as chairman of the Committee on
the Philippines. His most important assignment has
been the Foreign Relations Committee, and next to that
the Committee on Commerce. His other committees
are : Territories ; Pacific Islands and Porto Rico ; Pub
lic Health and National Quarantine; Standards,
Weights and Measures, and Expenditures in the
Treasury Department.
In his busy career he has found time for three trips
abroad, devoted largely to a study of European gov
ernments and their economic problems, and because
of his travels his counsel has been much sought on
questions before the Philippines Committee, Pacific
Islands and Porto Rico and Territories. His extensive
business connections throughout Ohio, covering many
WARREN GAMALIEL HARDING 25
years, have made him an invaluable member of the
Committee on Commerce. His especial interest in this
committee relates to the merchant marine, and his ac
tivities were signally helpful in speeding up ship con
struction to meet war needs. He views the nation s
commercial problems from a business man s standpoint,
bringing to them practical considerations rather than
the theories of the professional economist.
His greatest usefulness, as well as his deepest satis
faction and genuine interest, is in his membership on
the Committee on Foreign Relations. This committee,
since the signing of the armistice, has been by far the
most important committee of Congress, and during the
war it ranked second only to the Committee on Mili
tary Affairs. The Senate Committee on Foreign Rela
tions has been charged with the gigantic task of consid
ering the peace treaty. The time will surely come when
the American historian will give just credit to those
members of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations
who held firm to the advocacy of an America free,
strong, untrammeled and supreme in her individualism.
In this little group of stout-hearted Americans, Warren
Harding deserves high rank. He was one of those
senators who maintained their calm and deliberation,
who kept their minds clear and their hearts strong in
the devotion to their country during the unsettled,
anxious and abnormal times of the war and in all the
subsequent and often acrid peace discussions. This
service has been his highest contribution to America
up to the present time. It is proper that Americans
judge him by his attitude toward our international re-
26 REDEDICATING AMERICA
lations in connection with the war and I am sure that
he would welcome all Americans in estimating his
worth on this basis.
Senator Harding has always been in favor of a
proper understanding among the nations of the world.
He does not underestimate the awful horrors of war
and he is willing to go far to prevent future conflicts.
But he has a consuming passion for his beloved coun
try, her safety and her preserved identity. "We do
not need, and we do not mean to live within and for
ourselves alone," he said on the floor of the Senate
during the league of nations debate, "but we mean to
hold our ideals safe from foreign incursion. It is eas
ily possible to hold the world s highest esteem through
> righteous relationships. We are willing to give, but we
resent demands. Let us have an America walking
erect, unafraid, concerned about its rights and ready
to defend them, sure of its ideals and strong to support
them. Out of the discovered soul of this republic and
through our preservative actions, we shall hold the
word * American* the proudest boast of citizenship in all
the world."
He could never bring himself to accept the involve
ments which he felt sure would come to America by
her membership in the league of nations as submitted
to the Senate by the peace conference. The privacy
and secrecy which he felt were so conspicuous in the
peace conference were abhorrent to him. In his
frank, sure manner of thought and action which has
characterized his senatorial service, sometimes to his
political disadvantage, he deeply resented the attitude
of the peace confreres in failing to take the peoples of
WARREN GAMALIEL HARDING 27
their respective countries into full confidence. He be
lieved sincerely that the result of the peace negotia
tions would be to create a supergovernment over this
country and, so believing, he declared his conviction
to the people of the United States that he regarded
this, though unconscious and unintended, a betrayal of
the country.
His devotion to America was not a new attitude with
him when the peace treaty was presented to the Senate.
In explaining his vote on the declaration of war in
the United States Senate, Wednesday, April 4, 1917, he
said, in his vigorous and deliberate way: "I want it
known to the people of my state and to the nation that
I am voting for war to-night for the maintenance of
just American rights, which is the first essential to the
preservation of the soul of this republic." That was
his view of America before the European war was
dreamed of ; it was his view of America when we en
tered the war and it was still his conception when the
conflict had ended. He could not do otherwise in
voting on the peace treaty than remain true to the faith
that was in him. He was ready to go to war because
America had been attacked, and he was willing to con
clude peace only on a basis which preserved his country
inviolate. He believed that our entrance into the war
was determined by the conscience of America and he
thought that the dictates of that conscience should de
termine the terms of peace, so far as the United States
was concerned.
His absolute candor, as exhibited in connection with 1
the peace treaty, has shown itself in his attitude on all
public questions. To some of his friends, and to some
28 REDEDICATING AMERICA
senators, it is almost uncanny. "Warren is making a
mistake which will hurt him politically" has been the
comment heard in Washington on numerous occasions
when he stated publicly his attitude on questions which
held the attention of the American people. This same
frankness was shown during the consideration of the
Cummins railroad bill. He voted for the anti-strike
clause in the railroad bill despite the protests and
threats that it would annihilate him politically. "If
the government representing all the people can not
guarantee transportation service under any and all
conditions, it fails utterly," he declared, and he squared
his public attitude with this conscientious belief. He
has always favored rational unionism and collective
bargaining, and has so stated publicly on many occa
sions ; for eleven years he has operated his newspaper
on the share-holding plan with the employees. But when
the question was squarely put up to him as to whether
he should vote to permit any one class to become
stronger than his government, he took his stand, and
this at a time when he contemplated becoming a candi
date for the presidency. Again his love for America
and his belief that she should be supreme overpowered
all other considerations, and he said so.
This passionate devotion to America caused him to
lay aside all partisan feeling during the war. He dis
agreed with many of the acts of the administration,
but he would not permit his disagreement to swerve
him in his course in support of a vigorous prosecution
of the war. He voted for the measure to arm mer
chant ships. He supported the espionage bill and the
selective draft measure. He voted for food control
WARREN GAMALIEL HARDING 29
legislation. He supported the administration war rev
enue bills, opposing several amendments for sixty to
seventy-five per cent, taxes on war profits in the be
lief that such taxes directly injured business, slowed
down production and thereby reacted to the detriment
of the American people. He supported the merchant
marine measure and has always been an ardent advo
cate of a powerful merchant marine. He voted for
the Sheppard resolution proposing national prohibition.
Having voted for the prohibition amendment, he sup
ported the Volstead enforcement law and again voted
to enact this measure over the president s veto. He
believed that the time had come when women should be
taken into participation in the political activities of the
country and he voted for the proposed suffrage amend
ment. He supported the resolution to withdraw
American troops from Russia because he felt that our
participation in Russian affairs was neither wise, nec
essary, nor American. When the measure requiring
publicity for campaign contributions was considered,
he voted in favor of it, against the protests of a cer
tain class of politicians. He is a strong protectionist,
although there has been little occasion for him to ex
hibit his attitude publicly in the Senate upon this ques
tion during the last five years. He believes strongly in
efficiency in government, just as he insists upon it in
his private business, and has long been an advocate of
the budget system as the proper basis for the business
affairs of our federal government.
That governmental legislation will not prove a cure-
all for the economic and social ills of the day is only
too well understood and appreciated by Harding,
30 REDEDICATING AMERICA
Proper legislation can do much to improve conditions,
but thrift, economy and simple living on the part of
the American people is of far more importance,
Harding knows. "Let us call to all the people for
thrift and economy, for denial and sacrifice; if need
be for a nation-wide drive against extravagance and
luxury, to a recommittal to simplicity of living, to that
prudent and normal plan of life which is the health
of the republic," he admonished in his address accept
ing the presidential nomination. More than any other
public man, Senator Harding has, during the last year,
urged his countrymen to counteract the fervid anxiety
of the war and its aftermath, to end the hysteria of
the day of the world conflict, and to "get back to
normal." War powers should have been rescinded
months ago in his belief, and Americans should re
turn to their normal activities of peace.
Harding s face is forward. He is in entire sym
pathy with well developed movements which make
better the lot of the American people. He has eagerly
supported such measures as that to impose a high rate
of duty on imports of child-labor-made goods. He
voted for the establishment of a minimum wage board
to fix wages for women and children in the District of
Columbia. He favored overtime pay for federal em
ployees when employed extra hours. He supported
those proposals which in his opinion were beneficial to
the American soldier and sailor. His kindly heart and
his clear, calm mind have given him an admirable grasp
on the social problems of the day.
Harding is distinctly a constructive statesman;
negatives are unknown to him. Constructive meas-
WARREN GAMALIEL HARDING 31
ures to receive his favor must be able to stand the test
of experience, must meet the requirements of an his
torical analysis and above all must be based upon good
common sense. When they can withstand these tests,
Harding is the first to advocate them. The assertion
is made, without contradiction, that every constructive,
progressive measure which has been voted upon in the
United States Senate since he was elected to that body
six years ago and which withstood the aforementioned
requirements, has had his vote and his voice.
His advocacy of American nationalism is analogous
to his belief in the Republican party as a party strong
in and of itself. He warmly admired William Mc-
Kinley, who was his good personal friend for many
.years, first as an American nationalist and secondly, as
a partisan Republican. Senator Harding is being pop
ularly likened to William McKinley these days and
there is much basis for the comparison. Harding be
lieves profoundly in the principles of the Republican
party as did William McKinley. Speaking of Mc
Kinley, he said : "He believed in party government
through the agency of political parties and believed in
his party as the agency of greatest good to the Amer
ican people. He was considerate, tolerant, courteous,
but ever a Republican. He did not believe his party had
a monopoly on all that was good or patriotic, but he
did believe it best capable of serving our common
country and its policies best suited to promoting our
common fortune." When Senator Harding spoke thus
of William McKinley, those who know him best are
sure that he was speaking his own firm belief in the
party of his choice. Harding believes that political
32 REDEDICATING AMERICA
parties are essential to the American form of represen
tative government and he is the true exponent of party
rather than personal government. The simple truth is
that the views of McKinley and Harding upon party
affairs and upon the basic principles of our govern
ment are, to a great extent, identical.
During the disaffection in the party which began in
the campaign of 1912, he could not entertain the be
lief that it was wise to disrupt the party organization
and he said so in vigorous fashion at every public op
portunity. Four years later, Colonel Roosevelt sent
for him and Senator Harding gladly accepted the in
vitation. They did not dwell long on the conditions of
1912. Both agreed that mistakes had been made and
that the greatest need of the country was the complete
unification of the Republican party. Colonel Roose
velt asked Senator Harding to champion a measure to
permit the former president to lead a volunteer detach
ment to France and the senator enthusiastically intro
duced such a bill in the United States Senate. He ob
tained its passage, but it fell under the presidential
veto. "If he had lived, Colonel Roosevelt would have
been our Republican nominee by acclamation in 1920,"
Senator Harding said but a few months before his own
nomination.
As Roosevelt was grim and resolute, so is Har
ding. The Republican nominee, often silent in his
determination, takes counsel in abundance, and, with
it all, reaches his own conclusions. With the com
bined thought of the best American minds, he will
show the way to the Constitution, to constructive
WARREN GAMALIEL HARDING 33
American development, to a virile nationalism. He will
rededicate America.
His admirers see in Senator Harding a composite of
Roosevelt and McKinley. "Colonel Roosevelt s name
will be inseparably linked with the finding of the
American soul, with the great awakening and consecra
tion/ he said, and of McKinley he declared, "If he
were alive to-day, William McKinley would be an
American nationalist." Harding s every public utter
ance has been based upon nationalism and American
ism. He estimates American leaders who have gone
before by these two standards. He has lived his life
thus far by them and he now goes before the American
people as a candidate for their highest honor submit
ting as his greatest asset his devotion to them. When
his work is done, of him the historian will say, "War
ren Harding, Nationalist and American."
CHAPTER II
SPEECH OF ACCEPTANCE
Address at Formal Notification of His Nomination for
the Presidency, at Marion, Ohio, July 22, 1920
CHAIRMAN LODGE, MEMBERS OF THE NOTIFICATION
COMMITTEE, MEMBERS OF THE NATIONAL COMMITTEE,
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN The message which you
have formally conveyed brings to me a realization of
responsibility which is not underestimated. It is a
supreme task to interpret the covenant of a great po
litical party, the activities of which are so woven into
the history of this republic, and a very sacred and
solemn undertaking to utter the faith and aspirations
of the many millions who adhere to that party. The
party platform has charted the way, yet somehow we
have come to expect that interpretation which voices
the faith of nominees who must assume specific tasks.
Let me be understood clearly from the very begin
ning. I believe in party sponsorship in government. I
believe in party government as distinguished from per
sonal government, individual, dictatorial, autocratic or
what not. In a citizenship of more than a hundred
millions it is impossible to reach agreement upon all
questions. Parties are formed by those who reach a
consensus of opinion. It was the intent of the found
ing fathers to give to this republic a dependable and en-
34
SPEECH OF ACCEPTANCE 35
during popular government, representative in form,
and it was designed to make political parties not only
the preserving sponsors but also the effective agencies
through which hopes and aspirations and convictions
and conscience may be translated into public perform
ance.
CONSTITUTION CHARTS THE WAY
Popular government has been an inspiration of lib
erty since the dawn of civilization. Republics have
risen and fallen, and a transition from party to per
sonal government has preceded every failure since the
world began. Under the Constitution we have the
charted way to security and perpetuity. We know it
gave to us the safe path to a developing eminence
which no people in the world ever rivaled. It has
guaranteed the rule of intelligent, deliberate public
opinion expressed through parties. Under this plan a
masterful leadership becomingly may manifest its in
fluence, but a people s will still remains the supreme
authority.
The American achievement under the plan of the
fathers is nowhere disputed. On the contrary the
American example has been the model of every repub
lic which glorifies the progress of liberty, and is every
where the leaven of representative democracy which
has expanded human freedom. It has been wrought
through party government.
No man is big enough to run this great republic.
There never has been one. Such domination was
never intended. Tranquillity, stability, dependability
all are assured in party sponsorship, and we mean
36 REDEDICATING AMERICA
to renew the assurances which were rended in the
cataclysmal war.
POPULAR GOVERNMENT TO BE RESTORED
It was not surprising that we went far afield from
safe and prescribed paths amid the war anxieties.
There was the unfortunate tendency before ; there was
the surrender of Congress to the growing assumption
of the executive before the world war imperiled all
the practises we had learned to believe in ; and in the
war emergency every safeguard was swept away. In
the name of democracy we established autocracy. We
are not complaining at this extraordinary bestowal or
assumption in war, it seemed temporarily necessary ;
our alarm is over the failure to restore the constitu
tional methods when the war emergency ended.
Our first committal is the restoration of representa
tive popular government, under the Constitution,
through the agency of the Republican party. Our
vision includes more than a chief executive, we believe
in a Cabinet of highest capacity, equal to the responsi
bilities which our system contemplates, in whose coun
cils the vice-president, second official of the republic,
shall be asked to participate. The same vision includes
a cordial understanding and coordinated activities with
a house of Congress, fresh from the people, voicing the
convictions which members bring from direct contact
with the electorate, and cordial cooperation along with
the restored functions of the Senate, fit to be the great
est deliberative body of the world. Its members are
the designated sentinels on the towers of constitutional
government. The resumption of the Senate s authority
SPEECH OF ACCEPTANCE 37
Saved to this republic its independent nationality, when
autocracy misinterpreted the dream of a world experi
ment to be the vision of a world ideal.
REPUBLICAN SENATORS SAVED AMERICA
It Js not difficult, Chairman Lodge, to make our
selves clear on the question of international relation
ship. We Republicans of the Senate, conscious of our
solemn oaths and mindful of our constitutional obliga
tions, when we saw the structure of a world super-
government taking visionary form, joined in a becom
ing warning of our devotion to this republic. If the
torch of constitutionalism had not been dimmed, the
delayed peace of the world and the tragedy of disap
pointment and Europe s misunderstanding of America
easily might have been avoided. The Republicans of
the Senate halted the barter of independent American
eminence and influence which it was proposed to
exchange for an obscure and unequal place in the
merged government of the world. Our party means
to hold the heritage of American nationality unim
paired and unsurrendered.
The world will not misconstrue. We do not mean
to hold aloof. We do not mean to shun a single re
sponsibility of this republic to world civilization.
There is no hate in the American heart. We have no
envy, no suspicion, no aversion for any people in the
world. We hold to our rights, and means to defend,
aye, we mean to sustain the rights of this nation and
our citizens alike, everywhere under the shining sun.
Yet there is the concord of amity and sympathy and
fraternity in every resolution. There is a genuine as-
38 REDEDICATING AMERICA
piration in every American breast for a tranquil friend
ship with all the world.
WILL PRESERVE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE
More, we believe the unspeakable sorrows, the im
measurable sacrifices, the awakened convictions and
the aspiring conscience of human kind must commit
the nations of the earth to a new and better relation
ship. It need not be discussed now what motives
plunged the world into war, it need not be inquired
whether we asked the sons of this republic to defend
our national rights, as I believe we did, or to purge the
Old World of the accumulated ills of rivalry and greed,
the sacrifices will be in vain if we can not acclaim a
new order, with added security to civilization and peace
maintained.
One may readily sense the conscience of our Amer
ica. I am sure I understand the purpose of the dom
inant group of the Senate. We were not seeking to
defeat a world aspiration, we were resolved to safe
guard America. We were resolved then, even as we
are to-day, and will be to-morrow, to preserve this
free and independent republic. Let those now respon
sible, or seeking responsibility, propose the surrender,
whether with interpretations, apologies or reluctant
reservations from which our rights are to be omitted
we welcome the referendum to the American peo
ple on the preservation of America, and the Republican
party pledges its defense of the preserved inheritance
of national freedom.
SPEECH OF ACCEPTANCE 39
TO RESTORE FORMAL PEACE
In the call of the conscience of America is peace,
peace that closes the gaping wound of world war,
and silences the impassioned voices of international
envy and distrust. Heeding this call and knowing
as I do the disposition of the Congress, I promise you
formal and effective peace so quickly as a Republican
Congress can pass its declaration for a Republican ex
ecutive to sign. Then we may turn to our readjust
ment at home and proceed deliberately and reflectively
to that hoped-for world relationship which shall satisfy
both conscience and aspirations and still hold us free
from menacing involvement.
I can hear in the call of conscience an insistent voice
for the largely reduced armaments throughout the
world, with attending reduction of burdens upon
peace-loving humanity. We wish to give of American
influence and example ; we must give of American
leadership to that invaluable accomplishment.
I can speak unreservedly of the American aspiration
and the Republican committal for an association of na
tions, cooperating in sublime accord, to attain and pre
serve peace through justice rather than force, deter
mined to add to security through international law, so
clarified that no misconstruction can be possible with
out affronting w r orld honor.
This republic can never be unmindful of its power,
and must never forget the force of its example. Pos
sessor of might that admits no fear, America must
stand foremost for the right. If the mistaken voice
of America, spoken in unheeding haste, led Europe,
40 REDEDICATING AMERICA
in the hour of deepest anxiety, into a military alliance
which menaces peace and threatens all freedom, in
stead of adding to their security, then we must speak
the truth for America and express our hope for the
fraternized conscience of nations.
INDEPENDENT AID TO WORLD JUSTICE
It will avail nothing to discuss in detail the league
covenant, which was conceived for world supergov-
ernment, negotiated in misunderstanding, and intol
erantly urged and demanded by its administration
sponsors, who resisted every effort to safeguard Amer
ica, and who finally rejected when such safeguards
were inserted. If the supreme blunder has left Euro
pean relationships inextricably interwoven in the
league compact, our sympathy for Europe only mag
nifies our own good fortune in resisting involvement.
It is better to be the free and disinterested agent of
international justice and advancing civilization, with
the covenant of conscience, than be shackled by a writ
ten compact which surrenders our freedom of action
and gives to a military alliance the right to proclaim
America s duty to the world. No surrender of rights
to a world council or its military alliance, no assumed
mandatory, however appealing, ever shall summon the
sons of this republic to war. Their supreme sacrifice
shall only be asked for America and its call of honor.
There is a sanctity in that right we will not delegate.
When the compact was being written, I do not know
whether Europe asked or ambition insistently be
stowed. It was so good to rejoice in the world s confi
dence in our unselfishness that I can believe our evident
SPEECH OF ACCEPTANCE 41
disinterestedness inspired Europe s wish for our asso
ciation, quite as much as the selfish thought of enlisting
American power and resources. Ours is an outstand
ing, influential example to the world, whether we cloak
it in spoken modesty or magnify it in exaltation. We
want to help ; we mean to help ; but we hold to our own
interpretation of the American conscience as the very
soul of our nationality.
Disposed as we are, the way is very simple. Let the
failure attending assumption, obstinacy, impractica
bility and delay be recognized, and let us find the big,
practical, unselfish way to do our part, neither cov
etous because of ambition nor hesitant through fear,
but ready to serve ourselves, humanity and God. With
a Senate advising as the Constitution contemplates, I
would hopefully approach the nations of Europe and
of the earth, proposing that understanding which
makes us a willing participant in the consecration of
nations to a new relationship, to commit the moral
forces of the world, America included, to peace and in
ternational justice, still leaving America free, inde
pendent and self-reliant, but offering friendship to all
the world.
TO RESTORE CONSTITUTION
If men call for more specific details, I remind them
that moral committals are broad and all inclusive, and
we are contemplating peoples in the concord of hu
manity s advancement. From our own view-point the
program is specifically American, and we mean to be
Americans first, to all the world.
Appraising preserved nationality as the first essential
42 REDEDICATING AMERICA
to the continued progress of the republic, there is
linked with it the supreme necessity of the restoration
let us say the re-revealment of the Constitution,
and our reconstruction as an industrial nation.
Here is the transcending task. It concerns our
common weal at home and will decide our fu
ture eminence in the world. More than these, this
republic, under constitutional liberties, has given to
mankind the most fortunate conditions for human ac
tivity and attainment the world has ever noted, and
we are to-day the world s reserve force in the great
contest for liberty through security, and maintained
equality of opportunity and its righteous rewards.
It is folly to close our eyes to outstanding facts.
Humanity is restive, much of the world is in revolu
tion, the agents of discord and destruction have
wrought their tragedy in pathetic Russia, have lighted
their torches among other peoples, and hope to see
America as a part of the great red conflagration. Ours
is the temple of liberty under the law, and it is ours
to call the Sons of Opportunity to its defense. Amer
ica must not only save herself, but ours must be the ap
pealing voice to sober the world.
MUST ENCOURAGE COMPETITION
More than all else the present-day world needs un
derstanding. There can be no peace save through
composed differences, and the submission of the indi
vidual to the will and weal of the many. Any other
plan means anarchy and its rule of force.
It must be understood that toil alone makes for ac
complishment and advancement, and righteous posses-
SPEECH OF ACCEPTANCE 43
sion is the reward of toil, and its incentive. There is
no progress except in the stimulus of competition.
When competition natural, fair, impelling competi
tion is suppressed, whether by law, compact or con
spiracy, we halt the march of progress, silence the
voice of aspiration, and paralyze the will for achieve
ment. These are but common-sense truths of human
development.
The chief trouble to-day is that the world war
wrought the destruction of healthful competition, left
our storehouses empty, and there is a minimum pro
duction when our need is maximum. Maximums, not
minimums, is the call of America. It isn t a new story,
because war never fails to leave depleted storehouses
and always impairs the efficiency of production. War
also establishes its higher standards for wages, and
they abide. I wish the higher wage to abide, on one
explicit condition that the wage-earner will give full
return for the wage received. It is the best assurance
we can have for a reduced cost of living. Mark you,
I am ready to acclaim the highest standard of pay,
but I would be blind to the responsibilities that mark
this fateful hour if I did not caution the wage-earners
of America that mounting wages and decreased pro
duction can lead only to industrial and economic ruin.
INCREASED PRODUCTION GREAT NEED
I want, somehow, to appeal to the sons and daugh
ters of the republic, to every producer, to join hand
and brain in production, more production, honest pro
duction, patriotic production, because patriotic pro
duction is no less a defense of our best civilization than
44 REDEDICATING AMERICA
that of armed force. Profiteering is a crime of com
mission, under-production is a crime of omission. We
must work our most and best, else the destructive re
action will come. We must stabilize and strive for
normalcy, else the inevitable reaction will bring its
train of sufferings, disappointments and reversals. We
want to forestall such reaction, we want to hold all
advanced ground, and fortify it with general good-
fortune.
Let us return* for a moment to the necessity for Un
derstanding, particularly that understanding which
concerns ourselves at home. I decline to recognize any
conflict of interest among the participants in industry.
The destruction of one is the ruin of the other, the
suspicion or rebellion of one unavoidably involves the
other. In conflict is disaster, in understanding there
is triumph. There is no issue relating to the founda
tion on which industry is builded, because industry is
bigger than any element in its modern making. But
the insistent call is for labor, management and capital
to reach understanding.
INDUSTRIAL COOPERATION URGED
The human element comes first, and I want the em
ployers in industry to understand the aspirations, the
convictions, the yearnings of the millions of American
wage-earners, and I want the wage-earners to under
stand the problems, the anxieties, the obligations of
management and capital, and all of them must under
stand their relationship to the people and their obliga
tion to the republic. Out of this understanding will
come the unanimous committal to economic justice,
SPEECH OF ACCEPTANCE 45
and in economic justice lies that social justice which
is the highest essential to human happiness.
I am speaking as one who has counted the contents
of the pay envelope from the view-point of the earner
as well as the employer. No one pretends to deny the
inequalities which are manifest in modern industrial
life. They are less in fact than they were before or
ganization and grouping on either side revealed the
inequalities, and conscience has wrought more justice-
than statutes have compelled, but the ferment of the
world rivets our thoughts on the necessity of progres
sive solution, else our generation will suffer the experi
ment which means chaos for our day to reestablish
God s plan for the great to-morrow.
Speaking our sympathies, uttering the conscience of
all the people, mindful of our right to dwell amid the
good fortunes of rational, conscience-impelled ad
vancement, we hold the majesty of righteous govern
ment, with liberty under the law, to be our avoidance
of chaos, and we call upon every citizen of the republic
to hold fast to that which made us what we are, and
we will have orderly government safeguard the on
ward march to all we ought to be.
CLASSISM DECRIED
The menacing tendency of the present day is not
chargeable wholly to the unsettled and fevered condi
tions caused by the war. The manifest weakness in
popular government lies in the temptation to appeal to
grouped citizenship for political advantage. There is
no greater peril. The Constitution contemplates no
class and recognizes no group. It broadly includes all
46 REDEDICATING AMERICA
the people, with specific recognition for none, and the
highest consecration we can make to-day is a commit
tal of the Republican party to that saving constitution
alism which contemplates all America as one people,
and holds just government free from influence on the
one hand and unmoved by intimidation on the other.
It would be the blindness of folly to ignore the ac
tivities in our own country which are aimed to destroy
our economic system, and to commit us to the colossal
tragedy which has both destroyed all freedom and
made Russia impotent. This movement is not to be
halted in throttled liberties. We must not abridge the
freedom of speech, the freedom of press, or the free
dom of assembly, because there is no promise in re
pression. These liberties are as sacred as the freedom
of religious belief, as inviolable as the rights of life
and the pursuit of happiness. We do hold to the right
to crush sedition, to stifle a menacing contempt for
law, to stamp out a peril to the safety of the republic
or its people, when emergency calls, because security
and the majesty of the law are the first essentials of
liberty. He who threatens destruction of the govern
ment by force or flaunts his contempt for lawful au
thority ceases to be a loyal citizen and forfeits bis
rights to the freedom of the republic.
DELIBERATE READJUSTMENT SOUGHT
Let it be said to all of America that our plan of pop
ular government contemplates such orderly changes
as the crystallized intelligence of the majority of our
people think best. There can be no modification of
this underlying rule, but no majority shall abridge the
SPEECH OF ACCEPTANCE 47
rights of a minority. Men have a right to question our
system in fullest freedom, but they must always re
member that the rights of freedom impose the obliga
tions which maintain it. Our policy is not of re
pression, but we make appeal to-day to American
intelligence and patriotism, when the republic is men
aced from within, just as we trusted American pa
triotism when our rights were threatened from without.
We call on all America for steadiness, so that we
may proceed deliberately to the readjustment which
concerns all the people. Our party platform fairly ex
presses the conscience of Republicans on industrial re
lations. No party is indifferent to the welfare of the
wage-earner. To us his good fortune is of deepest
concern, and we seek to make that good fortune per
manent. We do not oppose but approve collective bar
gaining, because that is an outstanding right, but we
are unalterably insistent that its exercise must not de
stroy the equally sacred right of the individual, in his
necessary pursuit of livelihood. Any American has
the right to quit his employment, so has every Ameri
can the right to seek employment. The group must
not endanger the individual, and we must discourage
groups preying upon one another, and none shall be al
lowed to forget that government s obligations are
alike to all the people.
THE RAILROAD PROBLEM
I hope we may do more than merely discourage the
losses and sufferings attending industrial conflict. The
strike against the government is properly denied, for
government service involves none of the elements of
48 REDEDICATING AMERICA
profit which relate to competitive enterprise. There
is progress in the establishment of official revealment
of issues and conditions which lead to conflict, so that
unerring public sentiment may speed the adjustment,
but I hope for that concord of purpose, not forced but
inspired by the common weal, which will give a regu
lated public service the fullest guaranty of continuity.
I am thinking of the railroads. In modern life they
are the very base of all our activities and interchanges.
For public protection we have enacted laws providing
for a regulation of the charge for service, a limitation
on the capital invested and a limitation on capital s
earnings. There remains only competition of service
on which to base our hopes for an efficiency and ex
pansion which meet our modern requirements. The
railway workmen ought to be the best paid and know
the best working conditions in the world. Theirs is
an exceptional responsibility. They are not only es
sential to the life and health of all productive activities
of the people, but they are directly responsible for the
safety of traveling millions. The government which
has assumed so much authority for the public good
might well stamp railway employment with the sanc
tity of public service and guarantee to the railway em
ployees that justice which voices the American con
ception of righteousness on the one hand, and assure
continuity of service on the other.
The importance of the railway rehabilitation is so
obvious that reference seems uncalled for. We are so
confident that much of the present-day insufficiency
and inefficiency of transportation are due to the wither
ing hand of government operation that we emphasize
SPEECH OF ACCEPTANCE 49
anew our opposition to government ownership, we
want to expedite the reparation, and make sure the
mistake is not repeated.
It is little use to recite the story of development, ex
ploitation, government experiment and its neglect, gov
ernment operation and its failures. The inadequacy
of trackage and terminal facilities, the insufficiency of
equipment and the inefficiency of operation all bear
the blighting stamp of governmental incapacity during
federal operation. The work of rehabilitation under
the restoration of private ownership deserves our best
encouragement. Billions are needed in new equip
ment, not alone to meet the growing demand for serv
ice, but to restore the extraordinary depreciation due
to the strained service of war. With restricted earn
ings and with speculative profits removed, railway
activities have come to the realm of conservative and
constructive service, and the government which im
paired must play its part in restoration. Manifestly
the returns must be so gauged that necessary capital
may be enlisted, and we must foster as well as re
strain.
We have no more pressing problem. A state of in
adequate transportation facilities, mainly chargeable
to the failure of governmental experiment, is losing
millions to agriculture, it is hindering industry, it is
menacing the American people with a fuel shortage
little less than a peril. It emphasizes the present-day
problem and suggests that spirit of encouragement and
assistance which commits all America to relieve such
an emergency.
50 REDEDICATING AMERICA
HIGHWAY DEVELOPMENT ADVOCATED
The one compensation amid attending anxieties is
our new and needed realization of the vital part trans
portation plays in the complexities of modern life. We
are not to think of rails alone, but highways from
farm to market, from railway to farm, arteries of life-
blood to present-day life, the quickened ways to com
munication and exchange, the answer of our people
to the motor age. We believe in generous federal co
operation in construction, linked with assurances of
maintenance that will put an end to criminal waste of
public funds on the one hand arid give a guaranty of
upkept highways on the other.
Water transportation is inseparably linked with ad
equacy of facilities, and we favor American eminence
on the seas, the practical development of inland water
ways, the upbuilding and coordination of all to make
them equal to and ready for every call of developing
and widening American commerce. I like that recom
mittal to thoughts of America first which pledges the
Panama Canal, an American creation, to the free use
of American shipping. It will add to the American
reawakening.
One can not speak of industry and commerce, and
the transportation on which they are dependent, with
out an earnest thought of the abnormal cost of living
and the problems in its wake. It is easy to inveigh,
but that avails nothing. And it is far too serious to
dismiss with flaming but futile promise.
Eight years ago, in times of peace, the Democratic
party made it an issue, and when clothed with power
SPEECH OF ACCEPTANCE 51
that party came near to its accomplishment by destroy
ing the people s capacity to buy. But that was a cure
worse than the ailment. It is easy to understand the
real causes, after which the patient must help to effect
his own cure.
DEFLATION OF FINANCE
Gross expansion of currency and credit have de
preciated the dollar just as expansion and inflation
have discredited the coins of the world. We inflated
in haste, we must deflate in deliberation. We debased
the dollar in reckless finance, we must restore in hon
esty. Deflation on the one hand and restoration of the
one-hundred-cent dollar on the other ought to have
begun on the day after the armistice, but plans were
lacking or courage failed. The unpreparedness for
peace was little less costly than unpreparedness for
war.
We can promise no one remedy which will cure an
ill of such wide proportions, but we do pledge that ear
nest and consistent attack which the party platform
covenants. We will attempt intelligent and courageous
deflation, and strike at government borrowing which
enlarges the evil, and we will attack high cost of gov
ernment with every energy and facility which attend
Republican capacity. We promise that relief which will
attend the halting of waste and extravagance, and the
renewal of the practise of public economy, not alone
because it will relieve tax burdens but because it will
be an example to stimulate thrift and economy in pri
vate life.
I have already alluded to the necessity for the ful-
52 REDEDICATING AMERICA
ness of production, and we need the fulness of service
which attends the exchange of products. Let us speak
the irrefutable truth, high wages and reduced cost of
living are in utter contradiction unless we have the
height of efficiency for wages received.
In all sincerity we promise the prevention of un
reasonable profits, we challenge profiteering with all
the moral force and the legal powers of government
and people, but it is fair, aye, it is timely, to give re
minder that law is not the sole corrective of our eco
nomic ills.
THRIFT AND ECONOMY ESSENTIAL
Let us call to all the people for thrift and economy,
for denial and sacrifice if need be, for a nation-wide
drive against extravagance and luxury, ta a recommit
tal to simplicity of living, to that prudent and normal
plan of life which is the health of the republic. There
hasn t been a recovery from the waste and abnor
malities of war since the story of mankind was first
written, except through work and saving, through in
dustry and denial, while needless spending and heed
less extravagance have marked every decay in the his
tory of nations. Give the assurance of that rugged
simplicity of American life which marked the first cen
tury of amazing development and this generation may
underwrite a second century of surpassing accomplish
ment.
The Republican party was founded by farmers, with
the sensitive conscience born of their freedom and
their simple lives. These founders sprang from the
farms of the then Middle West. Our party has never
SPEECH OF ACCEPTANCE 53
failed in its realization that agriculture is essentially
the foundation of our very existence, and it has ever
been our policy, purpose and performance to protect
and promote that essential industry.
New conditions, which attend amazing growth and
Extraordinary industrial development, call for a new
and forward-looking program. The American farmer
had a hundred and twenty millions to feed in the home
market, and heard the cry of the world for food and
answered it, though he faced an appalling task amid
handicaps never encountered before.
AGRICULTURAL COOPERATION URGED
In the rise of price levels there have come increased
appraisals to his acres without adding to their value
in fact, but which do add to his taxes and expenses
without enhancing his returns. His helpers have
yielded to the lure of shop and city, until, almost alone,
he has met and borne the burden of the only insistent
attempts to force down prices. It challenges both the
wisdom and the justice of artificial drives on prices to
recall that they were effective almost solely against his
products in the hands of the producer and never
effective against the same products in passing to the
consumer. Contemplating the defenselessness of the
individual farmer to meet the organized buyers of his
products and the distributors of the things the farmer
buys, I hold that farmers should not only be permitted
but encouraged to join in cooperative association to
reap the just measure of reward merited by their ar
duous toil. Let us facilitate cooperation to insure
against the risks attending agriculture, which the urban
54 REDEDICATING AMERICA
world so little understands, and a like cooperation to
market their products as directly as possible with the
consumer, in the interests of all. Upon such associa
tion and cooperation should be laid only such restric
tions as will prevent arbitrary control of our food sup
ply and the fixing of extortionate price upon it.
Our platform is an earnest pledge of renewed con-
tern for this most essential and elemental industry,
and in both appreciation and interest we pledge effect
ive expression in law and practise. We will hail that
cooperation which again will make profitable and de
sirable the ownership and operation of comparatively
small farms intensively cultivated, and which will fa
cilitate the caring for the products of farm and orchard
without the lamentable waste under present conditions.
America would look with anxiety on the discourage
ment of farming activity either through the govern
ment s neglect or its paralysis by socialistic practises.
A Republican administration will be committed to re
newed regard for agriculture, and seek the participa
tion of farmers in curing the ills justly complained of,
and aim to place the American farm where it ought to
be highly ranked in American activities and fully
sharing the highest good fortunes of American life.
IRRIGATION AND RECLAMATION
Becomingly associated with this subject are the poli
cies of irrigation and reclamation, so essential to agri
cultural expansion, and the continued development of
the great and wonderful West. It is our purpose to
continue and enlarge federal aid, not in sectional par
tiality, but for the good of all America. We hold to
SPEECH OF ACCEPTANCE 55
that harmony of relationship between conservation and
development, which fittingly appraises our natural re
sources and makes them available to developing Amer
ica of to-day, and still holds to the conserving thought
for the*America of to-morrow.
The federal government s relation to reclamation
and development is too important to admit of ample
discussion to-day. Alaska, alone, is rich in resources
beyond all imagination, and needs only closer linking,
through the lines of transportation and a governmental
policy that both safeguards and encourages develop
ment, to speed it to a foremost position as a common
wealth, rugged in citizenship and rich in materialized
resources.
These things I can only mention. Within becoming
limits one can not say more. Indeed, for the present
many questions of vast importance must be hastily
passed, reserving a fuller discussion to suitable occa
sion as the campaign advances.
SPECIFIC PROPOSALS
I believe the budget system will effect a necessary,
helpful reformation, and reveal business methods to
government business.
I believe federal departments should be made more
businesslike and send back to productive effort thou
sands of federal employees who are either duplicating
work or not essential at all.
I believe in the protective tariff policy and know we
will be calling for its saving Americanism again.
I believe in a great merchant marine I would have
this republic the leading maritime nation of the world.
56 REDEDICATING AMERICA
I believe in a navy ample to protect it, and able to
assure us dependable defense.
I believe in a small army, but the best in the world,
with a mindfulness for preparedness which will avoid
the unutterable cost of our previous neglect.
I believe in our eminence in trade abroad, which the
government should aid in expanding, both in revealing
markets and speeding cargoes.
I believe in establishing standards for immigration,
which are concerned with the future citizenship of the
republic, not with mere man-power in industry.
I believe that every man who dons the garb of
American citizenship and walks in the light of Amer
ican opportunity must become American in heart and
soul.
I believe in holding fast to every forward step in
unshackling child labor and elevating conditions of
woman s employment.
I believe the federal government should stamp out
lynching and remove that stain from the fair name of
America.
I believe the federal government should give its ef
fective aid in solving the problem of ample and becom
ing housing of its citizenship.
I believe this government should make its Liberty
and Victory bonds worth all that its patriotic citizens
paid in purchasing them.
I believe the tax burdens imposed for the war emer
gency must be revised to the needs of peace, and in
the interest of equity in distribution of the burden.
I believe the negro citizens of America should be
guaranteed the enjoyment of all their rights, that they
SPEECH OF ACCEPTANCE 57
have earned the full measure of citizenship bestowed,
that their sacrifices in blood on the battlefields of the
republic have entitled them to all of freedom and op
portunity, all of sympathy and aid that the American
spirit of fairness and justice demands.
I believe there is an easy and open path to righteous
relationship with Mexico. It has seemed to me that
our undeveloped, uncertain and infirm policy has made
us a culpable party to the governmental misfortunes
in that land. Our relations ought to be both friendly
and sympathetic; we would like to acclaim a stable
government there, and offer a neighborly hand in point
ing the way to greater progress. It will be simple to
have a plain and neighborly understanding, merely an
understanding about respecting our borders, about pro
tecting the lives and possessions of American citizens
lawfully within the Mexican dominions. There must
be that understanding, else there can be no recognition,
and then the understanding must be faithfully kept.
Many of these declarations deserve a fuller expres
sion, with some suggestions of plans to emphasize the
faith. Such expression will follow, in due time, I
promise you.
IMPORTANCE OF LAW ENFORCEMENT
I believe in law enforcement. If elected I mean to
be a constitutional president, and it is impossible to ig
nore the Constitution, unthinkable to evade the law,
when our very committal is to orderly government.
People ever will differ about the wisdom of the enact
ment of a law there is divided opinion respecting the
^eighteenth amendment and the laws enacted to make it
58 REDEDICATING AMERICA
operative but there can be no difference of opinion
about honest law enforcement.
Neither government nor party can afford to cheat
the American people. The laws of Congress must har
monize with the Constitution, else they soon are ad
judged to be void; Congress enacts the laws, and the
executive branch of government is charged with en
forcement. We can not nullify because of divided
opinion, we can not jeopardize orderly government
with contempt for law enforcement. Modification or
repeal is the right of a free people, whenever the de
liberate and intelligent public sentiment commands, but
perversion and evasion mark the paths to the failure of
government itself.
TRIBUTE TO WORLD WAR VETERANS
Though not in any partisan sense, I must speak of
the services of the men and women who rallied to the
colors of the republic in the world war. America real
izes and appreciates the services rendered, the sacri
fices made and the sufferings endured. There shall be
no distinction between those who knew the perils and
glories of the battle front or the dangers of the sea,
and those who were compelled to serve behind the
lines, or those who constituted the great reserve of a
grand army which awaited the call in camps at home.
All were brave, all were sacrificing, all were sharers
of those ideals which sent our boys thrice-armed to
war. Worthy sons and daughters, these, fit successors
to those who christened our banners in the immortal
beginning, worthy sons of those who saved the Union
and nationality when civil war wiped the Ambiguity
SPEECH OF ACCEPTANCE 59
from the Constitution, ready sons of those who drew
the sword for humanity s sake the first time in the
world, in 1898.
The four million defenders on land and sea were
worthy of the best traditions of a people never war
like in peace and never pacifist in war. They com
manded our pride, they have our gratitude, which must
have genuine expression. It is not only a duty, it is a
privilege to see that the sacrifices made shall be re
quited, and that those still suffering from casualties
and disabilities shall be abundantly aided and restored
to the highest capabilities of citizenship and its enjoy
ment.
WOMAN SUFFRAGE
The womanhood of America, always its glory, its in
spiration and the potent, uplifting force in its social
and spiritual development, is about to be enfranchised.
Insofar as Congress can go, the fact is already accom
plished. By party edict, by my recorded vote, by per
sonal conviction I am committed to this measure of
justice. It is my earnest hope, my sincere desire that
the one needed state vote be quickly recorded in the
affirmation of the right of equal suffrage and that the
vote of every citizen shall be cast and counted in the
approaching election.
Let us not share the apprehensions of many men and
women as to the danger of this momentous extension
of the franchise. Women have never been without in
fluence in our political life. Enfranchisement will
bring to the polls the votes of citizens who have been
born upon our soil, or who have sought in faith and as-
60 REDEDICATING AMERICA
surance the freedom and opportunities of our land. It
will bring the women educated in our schools, trained
in our customs and habits of thought, and sharers of
our problems. It will bring the alert mind, the awak
ened conscience, the sure intuition, the abhorrence of
tyranny or oppression, the wide and tender sympathy
that distinguish the women of America. Surely there
can be no danger there.
And to the great number of noble women who havef
opposed in conviction the tremendous change in the
ancient relation of the sexes as applied to government,
I venture to plead that they will accept the full respon
sibility of enlarged citizenship and give to the best in
the republic their suffrage and support.
CONFIDENCE IN AMERICA
Much has been said of late about world ideals, but
I prefer to think of the ideal for America. I like to
think there is something more than the patriotism and
practical wisdom of the founding fathers. It is good
to believe that maybe destiny held this New-World re
public to be the supreme example of representative de
mocracy and orderly liberty by which humanity is in
spired to higher achievement. It is idle to think we
have attained perfection, but there is the satisfying
knowledge that we hold orderly processes for making
our government reflect the heart and mind of the re
public. Ours is not only a fortunate people but a very
common-sensical people, with vision high but their feet
on the earth, with belief in themselves and faith in
God. Whether enemies threaten from without or men
aces arise from within, there is some indefinable voice
SPEECH OF ACCEPTANCE 61
saying: "Have confidence in the republic! America
will go on !"
Here is a temple of liberty no storms may shake,
here are the altars of freedom no passions shall de
stroy. It was American in conception, American in
its building, it shall be American in the fulfillment.
Sectional once, we are all American now, and we mean
to be all Americans to all the world.
Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, my coun
trymen all : I would not be my natural self if I did not
utter my consciousness of my limited ability to meet
your full expectations, or to realize the aspirations
within my own breast, but I will gladly give all that is
in me, all of heart, soul and mind and abiding love of
country, to service in our common cause. I can only
pray to the omnipotent God that I may be as worthy
in service as I know myself to be faithful in thought
and purpose. One can not give more. Mindful of the
vast responsibilities I must be frankly humble, but I
have that confidence in the consideration and support
of all true Americans which makes me wholly unafraid.
With an unalterable faith and in a hopeful spirit, with
a hymn of service in my heart, I pledge fidelity to our
country and to God, and accept the nomination of the
Republican party for the presidency of the IJnited
States.
CHAPTER III
SAFEGUARDING AMERICA
Address on the League of Nations in the United States
Senate, September n, ipip
MR. PRESIDENT If it were not for seeming indif
ference in an hour of imperiled nationality, I believe I
should be content to rest my expression as to the pend
ing treaty wholly on the report of the Committee on
Foreign Relations. I say this with propriety, I think,
because I had no part in its writing, though I was a
participant in the conclusions reached. My judgment
is that it is one of the American documents well worthy
of preservation.
Mr. President, every day of discussion, presidential
utterances included, and every hour of study combine
to persuade me that the league of nations venture in
the form in which the covenant has been negotiated
is one of peril to the republic. To accept it unaltered
would be a betrayal of America. It is not for me to
consider constitutional inhibitions. There is probably
nothing to prevent a nation undertaking self-destruc
tion by indirection or otherwise if the treaty-making
powers are in accord about the desirability of such a
course. Nor is it for me to discuss the finer points
involved in international law and diplomatic niceties,
because once the league is established it becomes the
62
SAFEGUARDING AMERICA 63
maker of international law and diplomacy ends in
league autocracy.
NATIONALITY IS PARAMOUNT
Such impressions as I wish to offer are the very
simple ones of an American who is jealous of the re
public s nationality and fears paralysis in that inter-
nationality which is the league s loftiest aim. Sub
merged nationality and supreme internationality are
more to be expected than the proclaimed permanency
of peace, which first caught the sympathy and support
of a peace-loving world.
Mr. President, I know the natural aspirations of
civilized humanity and share them. I know how the
heart of the world, torn and bleeding and anguished
and palpitant in the cataclysmal war, throbs in hunger
for assured tranquillity. I pity him who has not felt
the yearnings within his own breast. No real Ameri
can is so bereft of feeling. There is no monopoly of
the love of peace, and there is no exclusiveness in
concern for humanity s sake. Neither is there a limited
circle of those who act in patriotic devotion nor
restricted groups in loving our common country. I
say these perfectly obvious things because it is time
to clear up some mistaken impressions. The pro
ponents of the Wilsonian league of nations have no
more claim to an exclusive desire for the peace of our
country and the world than the opponents of this
league have exclusive claim to patriotic devotion to our
own nation. And the considerable numbers who are
grieving that there is involved in the treaty-making
64 REDEDICATING AMERICA
power of a portion of the Senate which is impelled by
partisan bias ought to revise their judgment, because
it is as unfair and uncomplimentary to one side as the
other and challenges the wisdom of popular govern
ment. However, if disagreement with the executive,
now that the war is won, is to invite the charge of
narrow partisanship, I welcome it and am content to
let it go at that.
INVOLVEMENTS OF LEAGUE
It was the truth, last year, two years ago, three and
four years ago, the people of this country were heed
lessly and overwhelmingly for a league of nations,
or a society of nations, or a world court, or some inter
national association which should develop a fraternity
of action among civilized peoples and save humanity
not only from the sorrows and sufferings like those
which came with the war now ended, but from the in
volvements of which we are not yet emerged. Many
leaders of the party represented on this side of the
chamber were conspicuous in its advocacy, and thou
sands less notable joined the chorus. Among the
latter I joined in writing a favoring declaration in the
platform of the Republican party in Ohio, which I
think fairly voiced the aspirations of the people of that
state. In the popular thought was the wish to abolish
war and promote peace and make justice supreme,
and it was believed that the world, war wearied and
drenched with the blood of millions of devoted nation
alists, would be ready for the committal. Our people
were thinking of the thing desired, and never pondered
the method or the cost of its making. Nobody stopped
SAFEGUARDING AMERICA 65
to think of the involvements then. We are only learn
ing them now.
It would have been well to have counseled with
one another before the covenant was fashioned. The
people voted such a preference most emphatically last
November. Most people thought there would be coun
seling, and it ought to have been done. When the
armistice brought humanity s greatest sigh of relief
since fellowship engirdled the earth, it was the com
mon thought that sympathy would inspire and justice
would impel and safety would demand some created
agency of the conscience of the world that should
contribute to the furtherance of peace and maintained
tranquillity. But the immediate task was the settlement
of the war suspended by the armistice. The manifest
yearning was for recovery from madness and destruc
tion and waste and disorder, and the instincts of self-
preservation called for speedy restoration. No one
doubted that the measureless cost and unspeakable
suffering would awaken the consciences of nations to
take stock of their relationships and readjust them to
guard against recurrent horrors. But the pressing call
was for peace, peace among the belligerent powers,
peace for convalescence, peace for deliberation, peace
for that understanding which is the first essential in
undertaking a world- wide covenant which mankind
had never effected heretofore.
AMERICA ESSENTIAL FACTOR IN WAR
No one can doubt the advantageous position of this
republic when the armistice was signed. We had
proyen our unselfishness. We alone had not won the
66 REDEDICATING AMERICA
war, but our entrance into the conflict in April, 1917,
saved the waning morale of allied nations which bore
the brunt of German attack, and our first expedition
ary forces in the summer of 1917 revived the droopftig
spirits of the fighting forces of France and England,
and in 1918 the sons of this republic turned the sweep
ing tide of battle backward. It is not unseemly to say
our forces were an absolutely essential factor in the
winning, though our 2,000,000 of fighting and ir
resistible Americans were only a partial expression of
our resources and our resolution that Germany and
her allies must be brought to terms. It is a glorious
record which calls for no recital here. I am trying only
to call to mind our advantageous position the grati
tude of the powers with whom we were associated,
the belated realization and respect of the Central Pow
ers, the tardy awakening of Germany, who learned
the lesson that Americans could and would fight, and
the world s understanding of our unselfishness in the
defense of our national rights.
The loftiness of our position was correctly and
creditably appraised, notwithstanding the excessive
proclamation of democracy and humanity. The latter
was mainly for home consumption. It may be taken
as one of the inevitable things in popular government,
it was distinctly a symptom of our neglect of the
American spirit. Those who stop to analyze know,
of course, that if the German assault had been aimed
at the world s democracy our defense of democracy
ought to have answered with every American gun
when Belgium was invaded. And the same analytical
thought must have persuaded the thinking American
N
SAFEGUARDING AMERICA 67;
that if it was our duty to make war for humanity s
sake, duty called loudly above the horrified exclama
tion of the world when the Lusitania was sunk without
pity for dying humanity on her unsuspecting decks.
I am not indulging in belated complaint, because I
knew the tremendous seriousness of plunging the re
public in war, and I knew then our unreadiness of
spirit for such a committal. The point I am aiming at
is to clarify our purpose in entering the war in order
to emphasize our favorable position when it came to
an end. The everlasting truth is that we were lashed
by German ruthlessness to a defense of our national
rights, and we did defend them, until Germany s power
for ruthlessness has been destroyed beyond recovery
for generations to come. We defended only our rights,
and we know now, if we did not realize before, that
the nation which does not defend its national rights
does not deserve to survive. We did not ask more,
except to help in righteous restoration, and the world
correctly appraised the unselfishness which marked
our efforts.
COUNSEL NEEDED AT PEACE CONFERENCE
It was a very simple course to have taken. Ours
was a commanding voice in the adjustments of peace,
willingly and gladly heeded. It was ours to pass judg
ment on the terms of peace and speed their conclusion.
I must confess, Senators, I could find no fault with the
president going to the peace table. The world had
never seen before such an opportunity for service, and
I thought it fitting that the first citizen of the republic
should Q_ and utter the unbiased advice of America
68 REDEDICATING AMERICA
amid the embitterments and prejudices that had grown
out of twenty centuries of European conflict. I do
not share the criticism that he invited no members
of this body, which must approve every treaty to which
the republic is committed. I do complain that in
this most extraordinary and unparalleled wreck in the
wake of world-wide war he consented to counsel and
advise with none who have sworn duties to perform,
and devoted, essentially alone, his talents and his
supreme influence to reformations and restitutions,
and the establishment of governments and the realiza
tions of ambitions and the fulfillment of dreams which
human struggles and battling peoples and heroic sacri
fices have not effected since the world began, and never
will be realized until that millennial day that marks
the beginning of heaven on earth. The situation pre
sented intensely practical problems, and he clung mainly
to lofty theories.
Sometimes I think a very capable writer of history
is very much spoiled for the making of it. I can recall
now my reverent regard for Julius Caesar when I
struggled with his recital of the wars in Gaul. It re
quired a wider reading before I realized that the
great commoner of that day was making history and
recording it for the effect it might and did have south
of the Rubicon. It is easy to understand the perfectly
natural and laudable ambition to do the superlative
thing which history is waiting to record, which super
lative thing was in the historian s mind, but it needed
penetrating vision to meet the pressing, practical prob
lems which were awaiting solution, by very practical
men.
SAFEGUARDING AMERICA 69
9BCRKT BAKTSRllfC UNHEBDBB
One can conceive the idealist who is blind to the bald
realities of secret covenants and selfish bartering inci
dent to the alliances wrought amid the anxieties and
necessities of so stupendous a war. Nations were
battling for their very existence, and they made pledges
with little reckoning of the future. It was as
sumed our government knew the details, but the as
sumption was a mistaken one. The president frankly
said he did not know. Merely fighting in our own
defense, it was excusable for us not to know, for we
should have given to our utmost of lives and treasure
regardless of the aftermath. But in joining the strug
gle professedly for democracy s sake, we ought to
have had some forecast of democracy s fate in the
pregnant aftermath. More, to meddle effectively in
the affairs of the world, we ought to have known the
world s promises. Herein lies the weakness of our
whole part at the peace table.
The war had its inception in German ambition, ex
panded domain, if not world domination, all conceived
in drunkenness with power. It was met in self-defense
righteous self-defense but there was inevitable con
sideration of the spoils of victory. They became the
inspiration and considerations of alliances, and there
were understandings, written and unwritten. We
should be blind not to recognize the necessity and
naturalness of it. The pity is that we did not recog
nize the evident truth and speak with the confident
voice of justice, and hold ourselves aloof from any
committal which savored of unrighteousness. If
70 REDEDICATING AMERICA
Europe, in the stress of war or out of it, will barter
in territories and peoples, we can not hinder, but we
need not approve and surely we must not guarantee.
Whether the president knew the details of negoti
ated selfishness while the war was raging, it was in~
evitable that he soon learned when he made his tri
umphant landing on the friendly soil of France. It
was not then too late to hold aloof. We were seeking
only peace. We sought no territory, no mandatory,
no reparation nothing was asked. Our unselfishness
was genuine, to the everlasting honor of this republic.
But the glory of the league of nations an appealing
conception filled the American commission s vision,
while distinctly American interests aye, sacred Ameri
can interests were ignored and forgotten in a new
and consuming concern for the world.
Empires and sovereign states, autocratic, imperial,
or democratic, had fought and sacrificed and bargained
and covenanted and we had fought with them and
they craved peace and we craved peace. But they
wanted annexations and extensions and creations, and
they wanted this republic, with its resources with its
wealth of men and materials to guarantee the changes
they had wrought, and wanted the United States of
America in their unselfishness to guarantee in per
petuity the selfishness of the Old World.
NOTHING SUBSTANTIAL OFFERED
They had nothing to offer us but the phantasmal
thing, taking the elusory shape of the image of peace.
SAFEGUARDING AMERICA 71
a promise deeply appealing to the aspirations of our
selves and the world, for tranquillity and the banish
ment of war. And we bargained for it, and then they
fashioned it into a reality, suited to serve Europe and
the Orient as the seal of righteousness on all to which
the allied powers had agreed.
Mr. President, I grant the worthiness, the loftiness
of the ideal when we look above and beyond the im
morality which it cloaks. One must concede the good
which is aimed at. No one who is sincere can question
the desirability of closer fraternity among the nations
of the earth. No thoughtful citizen of any country
will dispute the need of the clarification and codifica
tion of international law. Such a thing might have
saved us from involvement in the European war, un
less Germany was madly determined to effect her own
destruction.
SUPERGOVERNMENT CREATED
International arbitration and a world court for jus
ticiable disputes appeal to all who think justice is sus
tained in reason rather than in armed dispute. The
establishment of an agency for the revelation of the
moral judgment of the world can never be amiss.
These things might well have come out of the com
bined consciences of the nations awakened to new
ideals amid the sufferings of war, and they will yet
come. But it does not require a supergovernment to
effect them, nor the surrender of nationality and inde
pendence of action to sanction them.
It is my deliberate conviction that the league of
nations covenant, as negotiated at Paris and signed at
72 REDEDICATING AMERICA
Versailles, either creates a supergovernment of the
nations which enter it or it will prove the colossal
disappointment of the ages. Though it would be vastly
more serious as the former, I can not believe this re
public ought to sanction it in either case. Why pro
claim a promise that will embitter the world s disap
pointment ?
DISARMAMENT NOT ACCOMPLISHED
Let us note, first, the probability of disappointment.
Does it effect disarmament? The member nations
decide for themselves the necessary size of their armed
forces, which are not to be increased except with the
league s approval. Of course there is to be studied
recommendation for reduction, but any two powers
in concerted action may reject the entire program.
Who has heard of a proposal to diminish the great
British navy, which holds Great Britain undisputed
mistress of the world s seas ? Few will question Great
Britain s wisdom in her well-known attitude. Surely
no British subject will question it. She has an empire
to defend and a commerce to guard, without which
England s glory is at an end.
Only a few days ago the cabled news told us that
France will maintain a larger army than that republic
possessed when she entered the world war. Doubtless
France s security demands it, in spite of the negotiated
alliance which calls the United States and Great
Britain to her aid in case of a renewed German assault.
We know little about Japan, but we do know that
Japan may fix her own limitations as to army and
SAFEGUARDING AMERICA 73
navy, "taking into account geographical conditions
and national safety," until under this treaty we give
our sons and our resources to the enforcement of
international agreements by common action under
articles 8 and 10.
Is disarmament looming as a hope realized? Look
for an instant at home. With the league confidently
expected, with all its blessings of peace, limited only
by "interpretations," we are contemplating an army
of half a million, seven times our previous establish
ment in peace, and the men, in Congress or out, who
would cut our program for an expanded navy are few
and far between. More, the man who would suggest
it would be unmindful of our security. Verily, he
who sees world disarmament in this league covenant
has a faith which surpasses understanding.
ARBITRATION NOT ASSURED
Will nations arbitrate their differences under the
league covenant ? They will if both parties to the dis
pute are agreed, and they can not do that without it.
Under the covenant one party may decline, then the
council takes the case, and we have recently come to
know the recommendations of the council constitute
its judgment only as to a "moral" obligation.
We have heard much lately about "moral" obliga
tions. When a thing is covenanted it is difficult for
me to distinguish between moral and legal obligation.
For this republic either or both ought to be solemnly
binding. The nation which ignores either is losing
the conscience which is essential to self-respect and
74 REDEDICATING AMERICA
respect among nations. It was Germany s contempt
for a "scrap of paper" that made her an outcast in
the eyes of the civilized world.
There has been a curious conflict of meaning in the
use of the word "moral." When senators, speaking
in this chamber in defense of the league covenant,
found opposition developing to the powers conveyed
in article 10, they hastened to say the council s call to
war, armed or economic, in defense of any member
was not binding "only a moral obligation." I
have heard the term quoted again and again and in the
recorded conference between members of the Foreign
Relations Committee and the president it was declared
by the president that we were not bound to go to war
on recommendation of the council, that there was
"only a moral obligation," on which we should have
to pass judgment for ourselves. Later on, in the
record of the meeting, the president emphatically de
clared a moral obligation the most binding of all. Let
every man make the distinction that he prefers. A
contract is a contract, a covenant is a covenant, and
if this republic does not mean to do as it promises,
it has no business to make the promise.
ARTICLE TEN MERE PHANTOM
There is no language in the covenant more plain
than article 10. Either it means what it says, and obli
gates the member nations to go to war in defense of a
member nation, or it means nothing at all. If it leaves
any member nation free to exercise its own judgment
as to the merits of any attack, it does not guarantee
the territorial integrity or peace of any nation. It is
SAFEGUARDING AMERICA 75
worse than phantom ; it is the mirage that lures nations
thirsting for peace to the very desert of cruel destruc
tion. The pity of it is that no reservation will cure
the ill. Without the power, which is clearly expressed,
"the league is a rope of sand," as the senator from
Connecticut described it, and with the power estab
lished, as it must be to make the league effective, we
have surrendered our own freedom of action to a
council whose members will represent the prejudices,
ambitions, hatreds, and jealousies of the Old World, or
to the assembly, where we are outvoted six to one by
Great Britain and her colonies, and we still remain a
party to the racial, geographical, and inherited enmities
of Europe and the Orient.
Many have written me, and senators have spoken
and the president has argued, that we are no longer
isolated from the Old World, that we have a duty to
humanity, and we can not escape our manifest duty
to world civilization. It is urged that we struck down
the barriers when we sent the sons of the republic
to war, and there can be no withdrawal now. One
can not dispute our ever-widening influence; none
would narrow it. It began when we unsheathed the
sword literally in behalf of humanity for the first time
in the world. That was when we went to war to
liberate Cuba and expanded to the Philippines. It is
easy to recall the outcry against imperialism then by
the very adherents of world sponsorship to-day aye,
by those who only three years ago would have furled
the flag there, and promise it now, after our contri
bution to one defenseless people s progress unmatched
in all history.
76 REDEDICATING AMERICA
FOUOfTT FOR AMBRI6AN SIGHTS
Ours is truly an expanded influence and a world
interest, but there is yet for us a splendid isolation.
The sons of America, 2,000,000 of them, crossed the
seas in spite of submarine ruthlessness and every
danger Germany could devise, and 2,000,000 more were
ready, and 5,000,000 more would have prepared if
needed, and they heroically fought and effectively
taught arrogant Germany to respect American rights
and left a wholesome impress on the remainder of
the world. The soldiers have in the main returned,
and, having accomplished our righteous purpose, it
was vastly more easy to have severed our involvement
than it was to bring the boys home and turn to the
pursuits of peace again. The people of this republic
were not concerned with governing the universe. Their
interests, their hearts, their hopes, their ambitions,
their weal or woe all of these are in the United
States of America. We wanted nothing abroad but
respect for our just rights, and that we mean to have,
in peace or war, no matter who threatens.
It would have been so easy, if our commission had
thought of America first, to have said to the allied
powers, "Look here, friends and allies yes, and to
enemies as well we came over and helped you bring
an outlaw to terms, because he trespassed our rights
beyond endurance. He is humbled now, and it is
yours to restore order and make a just and abiding
peace. We want peace, and we want to go to work
and replace the waste of war. We will advise, if we
can and you wish it, but we are asking nothing, and
SAFEGUARDING AMERICA 77
we will go back home and see to our own affairs. We
do not mean to mix in again, unless some bully in
making a row infringes our rights and murders our
citizens and destroys our lawful property. In that
event we will be forced to come back, but we will come
more promptly the next time." That would have left
a good impression, and we would have been at peace,
and so would Europe, months ago.
Mr. President, the first official of our government
is touring the country to invite the people of the re
public, the great mass whose heart is ever right in ulti
mate decision, to the support of this untouchable and
unamendable and supposedly sacred document. He
visited the capital of the state which I have the honor
to represent, and was received with the respect be
coming his great office, and was applauded, as often
happens to appealing speech, of which he is the master.
He has spoken and is speaking elsewhere, and the
people of our state are reading, in common with the
reading people of America. I am not finding fault
with the tour, even if it is not wholly purposed to
promote the league covenant. One may not assume
that it involves a feeling of the political pulse of the
country, but if it is, if it is to test popular feeling about
putting the presidency permanently in the hands of
one equipped to direct the world aright and at the
same time merge this republic in a supergovernment
of the world, my partisan prejudices would be rejoic
ing. But the president told the reverent people of
Ohio that he had only to report to them in a broad
sense, the people and it so happens that I, too, as
insignificant as my position is, relatively, have to report
78 REDEDICATING AMERICA
to the same people, and I want them to have not only
the truth but all the truth; not only fine generalities
but illuminating details.
MANY PEOPLES NOT HEARD
Mr. President, the treaty is being expounded by its
chief author to the people with vastly more freedom
of utterance than this body has known, notwithstand
ing our solemn responsibility in making it a binding
covenant on the part of this republic. Perhaps it does
not matter, because we have before us the treaty itself,
and we know what it says, though we do not have
all the collateral covenants and do not know all to
which we are pledged or to what ratification commits
us. Yet we have had the advantage, or disadvantage,
if you prefer, of hearing also from others of the peace
commission, from experts who drafted many of its
articles, and alas, we have heard from many who
spoke for those who pleaded for their rights at Paris
and who declared they were not heard, no matter what
is said now about this being the first consecration of
international conscience to the rights of helpless peoples
and small nations.
Let me digress for a moment to suggest some of
my own impressions gathered during the hearings
granted to the American representatives of the as
piring peoples of Europe and Asia and Egypt, whose
aspirations and long-deferred hopes of liberty and
nationality are alleged to have been safeguarded in
this supercreation of humanity. It was futile, of
course, for a Senate committee to assume to answer
prayers or comply with protest, for our function is not
SAFEGUARDING AMERICA" 79
one of negotiation. However, there were citizens cry
ing to be heard, after a denial at the fount of justice
in Europe, and we listened. They begged amendment
or rejection to save their liberties or to preserve their
nationalities or to maintain their homogeneous peoples.
Spokesmen for China cried out against the rape of the
first great democracy of the Orient, and the plea was
eloquent with recited sacrifices and noble assistance
in the winning of the war. We uttered our chagrin
that the spokesmen for the American conscience aye,
for the "conscience of civilization" had sanctioned
the confessed immorality of the Shantung award to
satisfy a secret covenant against which we righteously
proclaimed, and we did all we can do to right the
wrong.
We heard the Americans speaking for their kinsmen
of Greece, our allies in war, protesting the award of
Thrace and its Greek peoples to Bulgaria who fought
for German domination. We listened to those who
were Croats or Slovenes or Serbs utter their despair
over "the rectifications of history" under territorial
awards arrived at for Jugo-Slavia, and Americans of
Italian origin or ancestry presented the appeals of
Italians for unsevered relationship from the mother
land. More, Americans who originated in Egypt,
with its traditions and ancient civilization, begged that
we shall not sanction their transfer from Turkey and
Germany to Great Britain, but save them their in
herited freedom and their right to becoming aspira
tions. Hungarians prayed for restored enfranchise
ment amid the racial inspiration of the Magyars ; and
the irrepressible advocates of Irish freedom made the
80 REDEDICATING AMERICA
plea before the Senate Committee which could not be
heard at Paris. I have not named them all, but enough
to reveal the utter futility, the hopeless impracticability
of this republic attempting to right the cumulative
wrongs of history and satisfy the perfectly natural
ambitions and aspirations of races and peoples. One
can not wave the wand of democracy, even of exces
sively proclaimed American democracy, and do for
Poland in a day or a year or a generation what cen
turies of sacrifice and warfare and self-determination
have not done.
AVENUE TO UNENDING WAR
Does any thinking man stop to measure the colossal
and endless involvement before which the sublimest
unselfishness and most confident altruism must falter ?
Contemplate for a moment only the mandatory for
Armenia. It is very appealing to portray the woes,
the outrages, the massacres, the awakening hopes of
Armenia, and visualize the doubts and distresses and
sacrificed lives while "the Senate waits." I know the
appeal that touches the heart of Christian America
in its concern and sympathy for Armenia. It easily
may be made to seem as if the sympathetic Son of God
had turned to the omnipotent Father to send this
twentieth-century defender of the New Testament
to succor those stricken believers in the great Trinity.
But the big, warning truth is little proclaimed. Our
armies sons of this republic, the youths from Ameri
can homes are wanted there. Armenia calls and
Great Britain is urging, insisting. A hundred thou
sand oldien arc needed. More American toldieri for
SAFEGUARDING AMERICA 81
Armenia than we heretofore maintained under the
flag in any of the years of peace. Answer the call,
and we station this American army at the gateway
between Orient and Occident, to become involved in
every conflict in the Old World, and our splendid isola
tion becomes a memory and our boasted peace a mock
ery. This is not the way to peace. This is the avenue
to unending war.
Mr. President, I am not insensible to the sufferings
of Armenia, nor am I deaf to the wails forced by the
cruelties of barbarity wherever our ideals of civiliza
tion are not maintained. But I am thinking of America
first. Safety, as well as charity, begins at home. Self
ishness? No. It is self-preservation. Measureless
as our resources are, large as our man power is, and
chivalrous as our purposes may be, we are not strong
enough to assume sponsorship for all the oppressed of
the world. No people, no nation is strong enough
for such a supreme responsibility. We in America
have the republic to preserve. And in this very pro
gram of meddlesome assumption, in some instances
bordering on presumption, we are endangering our
own republic. It is not alone the abandonment of
security, so much warned against by the founding
fathers, which suggests alarm. I am thinking of di
vided citizenship at home that must attend our at
tempted reorganization of the world.
Turn back for a moment to the appealing citizens
who appeared before the Foreign Relations Committee
in prayer or protest. They fairly represented a large
proportion of American citizenship. We have no racial
entity in this republic. >Ve are polyglot of tongue,
82 REDEDICATING AMERICA
which generations will not wholly change. The in
volvement in the world war found us divided in spirit.
The founding fathers were eager to share their free
dom and speed development of our incalculable re
sources, and they asked the world to come, and the
world did come the oppressed, the adventurous, the
industrious; but there was neglected consecration of
citizenship.
TO PRESERVE AMERICANISM
In the travail of war the American soul was born,
and we have preached and practised Americanization
ever since, and we mean to go on and make this repub
lic American in fact as well as in name. No republic
can endure half loyal and half disloyal ; no citizenship
is of permanent value whose heart is not in America.
I had thought the war worth all it cost, in spite of its
unutterable expenditure in lives and treasure, to have
found ourselves. It was an inspiration to find the
adopted sons of the republic consecrated to the com
mon cause. Yet, sirs, the unhappy aftermath is resur
recting the old lines of divided citizenship. We are
restoring hyphenism under internationalism.
One can not complain at the revealment, but I am
lamenting the cause. It is all directly traceable to our
assumption of world sponsorship. One can little blame
the American of Italian origin for being concerned
about the affairs of those bound by ties of blood,
or find fault with the American of Greek origin for
deep feelings about the fate of those of kin in Thrace,
or criticize the American son of the old sod who finds
in his heart an undying echo of the Irish cry for free-
SAFEGUARDING AMERICA 83
dom. Instead of effacing the native interest, instead
of merging the inherited soul in exclusive American
ism, we have already embarked on a program that
awakens every racial pride, every Old-World prejudice,
every inherited aspiration, and are rending the con
cord of American spirit which once promised to be
the great compensation for all our sacrifices. This is
no idle fancy. Justice, only simple justice, and liberty,
God s own bequest of liberty, were on every lip, and
there was no perfunctory utterances among those who
appealed to the Senate through our committee. There
was deep feeling no words could belie and that sin
cerity for which men die, and as I listened I deplored
the eloquence of speech unperformed, which leads
hope to flame high, then die in disappointment. And,
sirs, I doubly deplored the proposals and pretenses
that open anew the cleavage in the consecration of our
adopted American citizenship.
WHY AMERICA ENTERED WAR
Senators, it is a great thing to be eloquent and per
suasive in speech, but it is also a very dangerous thing.
I mean to be quite as respectful as I am sincere when
I say that our present involvement and our further
entanglement and most of the world s restlessness
and revolution and threatened revolution are largely
traceable to pre-war utterances and war-time pro
nouncements. Once before in this chamber I chal
lenged some of the statements as to why we went to
war. I speak of it again now, because the president
told the people of my state that our soldiers were
"drafted for the very purpose of ending war," and
84 REDEDICATING AMERICA
this league as negotiated is the only thing that will
do it. It does not seem to have occurred to any one
that we might appeal to the pride of the peoples of
the earth. Still more recently a very eminent authority
has proclaimed all opponents of the covenant as "con
temptible quitters if they do not see the game through."
Mr. President, I turned to the Record of Congress
for that fateful 6th of April, 1917, when this body
voted the declaration of war against Germany. It
had occurred to me that perhaps the resolution itself
would give the official reason for going to war, as
Congress would prefer history to record it. I turned
to the preamble to the official declaration, and there
is given the reason in the simplest language that words
can express :
"Whereas the Imperial German Government has
committed repeated acts of war against the Govern
ment and the people of the United States of America,
therefore be it resolved/
And so forth.
There is the whole story. Nothing there especially
proclaiming democracy or humanity, because both
had been fighting, sacrificing, and dying for more than
two and a half years and we neither saw nor heard.
PROCLAMATION OF NEUTRALITY RECALLED
Let me clarify by further quotation from the presi
dent. I omit the official proclamation of neutrality in
August of 1914, but want to reveal the conscience of
America as spoken by him in the following January,
when Belgium was devastated and France was bleed-
SAFEGUARDING AMERICA 85
ing, and Britain was sacrificing her volunteer defend
ers. I quote from a speech made at Indianapolis,
scene of the more recent admonition to "put up or shut
up." Search the quotation for democracy, humanity,
"the end of all war," or "the rectified wrongs of
history":
"Only America at peace! Among all the great
powers of the world only America saving her power
for her own people. Do you not think it likely that
the world will some time turn to America and say,
You were right and we were wrong. You kept your
head when we lost ours. " The President, Indian
apolis, January 8, 1915.
More than three months passed, and still the con
science of the republic was unchanged. I quote from
the New York speech of the chief executive, delivered
on April 20, 1915:
"I am interested in neutrality because there is some
thing so much greater to do than fight ; there is a dis
tinction waiting for this nation that no nation ever got.
That is the distinction of absolute self-control and self-
mastery."
Let us as an act of courtesy, pass the Philadelphia
address, delivered three days after the Lusitania sink
ing, when humanity s cry was muffled by the ocean s
depths and democracy was too shocked to speak. In
December we still "stood apart, studiously neutral it
was our manifest duty." Thus the president spoke.
But it is especially interesting to quote from an address
delivered at Des Moines, Iowa, on February 1, 1916,
86 REDEDICATING AMERICA
at the same place where the "quitters" were so recently
gibbeted :
"There are actually men in America who are preach
ing war, who are preaching the duty of the United
States to do what it never would before seek en
tanglements in the controversies which have arisen
on the other side of the water abandon its habitual
and traditional policy and deliberately engage in the
conflict which is engulfing the rest of the world. I do
not know what the standards of citizenship of these
gentlemen may be. I only know that I for one can
not subscribe to those standards."
It was an unspeakable thing to abandon our "habitual
and traditional policy" and seek entanglements in Old-
World controversies then, when actual conflict was
threatening our very safety, but "only the selfishness
or ignorance or a spirit of Bolshevism" is debating it
now. Surely the American people will not compare
jvithout understanding.
FORCED TO DECLARE WAR
We went to war precisely for the reason uttered in
the preamble which I quoted, forced to action by the
conscience and self-respect of the American people.
Perhaps the people were greater than their govern
ment in conscience and self-respect, but they were not
great enough to overcome the costly months of delay.
But once we were committed it was unalterable.
"Quitters" in Congress? They were trampled deep
beneath the forward march. Congress submerged
Itself, abdicated, to give limitless power to the com-
SAFEGUARDING AMERICA 87
mander in chief. No finer surrender of power is
recorded in history, no lawful dictatorship offers paral
lel in the story of free government. I am not com
plaining, I am commending ! It was necessary to speed
the winning.
"Quitters" among the people? Not one among the
millions of patriotic Americans. We pledged all we
had, our wealth, our lives, our sacred honor. It was
the committal unalterable. Germany was making war
on us, and had to be brought to terms. Let me record
it for all time the unquitting resolution of these
United States. Suppose poor, weak but proud and
brave Serbia had been trampled to earth and utterly
destroyed; suppose brave heroic Belgium had been
driven wholly into the sea and none but her enslaved
people remained to cherish the story of her opening
guns of defense ; suppose Italy, resolute and courage
ous, in spite of her difficulties, had been brought to
terms ; suppose Russia in her betrayal had joined her
German masters and sought to destroy the world s
civilization as she did her own ; suppose noble, heroic,
self-sacrificing, respiritualized France had been brought
to her knees, wounded unto death ; suppose determined,
fearless and powerful Great Britain had been starved
and brought to terms as the Central Powers had
planned; suppose all these disasters had attended,
then, even then, this republic would have gone on and
on and on until Germany was brought to terms, be
cause without established American rights there could
be no American nation, and we had rather perish than
fail to maintain them.
88 REDEDICATING AMERICA
OUR TASK COMPLETED
No, Senators, there were no "quitters" after the
task was once assumed. We finished in triumph. An
arrogant, offending military Germany is no more.
That job was well done. But after it was done, having
no concern for Europe s affairs, seeking nothing of
territory, nothing of reparation and getting none,
let it be said the sons of the republic wanted to
come home, and the people of the United States
wanted them home, and it was in the great heart of the
republic to turn to the restoration, reestablish our nor
mal pursuits, and make the earliest recovery possible
from the ravages and extravagances and wastes and
sorrows of war.
That is not a "quitter s" program. That was dis
tinctly and becomingly the American policy, the wish
of highest American devotion. We had never entered
any alliances. The treaty speaks again and again
of the "principal allied and associated powers." We
were the "associated power," because when Germany
committed her acts of war against us, we joined the
warfare of the Allies against her and made common
cause against the common enemy. We had no com
pacts, no covenants, no secret arrangements. Alas!
We did not even know the secret agreements the Allies
had. It would have little mattered, perhaps, had we
not proclaimed overmuch against secret agreements
and proposed a new birth for all the world.
We did cooperate. We fought under French com
mand, and our soldiers were comrades to French,
to Italian, to Belgian, and to British, because we were
SAFEGUARDING AMERICA 89
battling for the defeat of a common enemy. We paid
our own way to the last farthing. We gave of treasure
without reckoning, and Americans died not as allies
but as Americans. That was the one supreme con
solation in every hero s last living thought. Crusaders,
seeking a human relationship that God Himself hath
not wrought? No! They were heroic defenders of
these United States.
NOT COMMITTED TO LEAGUE
It may be recorded, Senators, that America finished
the task for which her sons were sent to Europe, and
the unfinished work which is now alleged is an after
thought, to which America was never committed, about
which our people were never consulted, concerning
which our very peace commissioners were not advised.
No one questions the lofty aims of President Wilson,
no one would hinder consistent endeavor for all desir
able attainment. No one opposes because the Ameri
can participation is exclusively Wilsonian, or because
the covenant is of British conception. It is the cov
enant itself and the effect of our committal which
calls for consideration.
It is appropriate, however, to dispel some of the
illusions about it being the expressed hope and guaran
teed security of small nations and struggling peoples.
They had no voice in its making. Their protests were
stifled at the moment of its adoption. Eyewitnesses to
the submission of this super-concept to the peace com
missioners testify that this "covenant is a perversion
of what men who really favored a league of nations
intended and wished for." I quote Mr. Frank P.
90 REDEDICATING AMERICA
Walsh, once its ardent supporter, now protesting its
adoption. When Mr. Walsh appeared before our
committee he was asked if the assembled peace com
missioners, representing nations, great or small, ex
pressed any surprise when the covenant was presented.
Mr. Walsh replied:
"Oh, it was very marked. They jumped up all over
the place to make protests. Man after man got up.
You know there was an awful censorship upon this
whole business."
AUTOCRACY OF PEACE
There was no debate. It was the offering of tKe
big four, the autocracy of peace, not submitted to de
bate by the commissioners signing, and is now too
sacred for modification by this body which must speak
for America. I believe it designed to establish super-
government, and no explanation nor apology has al
tered my opinion. It may consider any questions affect
ing the affairs of the world, and the council s decision
is a binding thing, else language has no dependable
meaning. Supergovernment was the great dream,
and the very essentials of supergovernment were in
corporated. If one believes in surrendered nationality,
if one prefers world citizenship to American citizen
ship, which I delight to boast, the covenant is ideal.
But it ends democracy instead of promoting it, and
it means international autocracy for all who accept it
without specific reservations.
The authority, as written, is limitless. Any national
sovereignty may be invaded. The authority which can
prevent war can make it, and it will. The president
SAFEGUARDING AMERICA 91
has said the council may even consider internal con
troversies which threaten world peace, and he holds
out the promise that the league will correct the in
justices of the peace commission which created it.
If that does not mean the assumption of power to
extend to limitless authority, the promise is not sincere.
On the other hand, it means abandoned self-determi
nation for every member nation, and unending inter
ference and invited conflict with nations outside the
autocratic circle.
NATIONALITY SACRIFICED
No one has made the venture to estimate our possible
obligations. Only last Saturday the cable told us how
a member of the French chamber of deputies had ad
vocated that the league of nations should assume a
proportion of the French war debt. It does not matter
that we renounced all reparation ourselves, it does not
matter that we expended without measure, it neverthe
less appears that in the new idealism there is a "touch"
of the practical. Europe is calling for our soldiers and
we are sending, though our task was ended last No
vember. Europe wants our sponsorship, to enforce
the new alignments, and wants our treasure to lighten
her own burdens. Involvement piles upon involve
ment and responsibility upon responsibility, until inde
pendence of action fades into precious memory and
nationality becomes a lost inheritance.
Senators, no one in all the land has greater pride
than I feel in having this nation and our people exert
a becoming influence on the progressive march of civ
ilization. We can not hope to remain utterly aloof,
92 REDEDICATING AMERICA
and would not choose a complete isolation if such at
course were possible. We are the exemplars of rep
resentative democracy, and we have seemingly devel
oped the most dependable popular government in the
world. We know that no pure democracy ever sur
vived, and we know that republics have failed before.
We ought and do realize that the fundamentals of the
United States are not of new discovery, and we are
yet but a child among the nations in point of years,
though our achievement would glorify centuries of de
velopment. My point is that civilization is not ex
clusively ours, or justice solely an American conception,
or righteousness wholly a New- World development.
We are committed to them all, and we are the best
exemplars of unselfishness in the world.
AMERICAN CONSCIENCE FIXES OBLIGATION
Our merits are appraised and our weaknesses are
known. We have power and wealth and conscience;
we do have lofty sentiments and high ideals. We
would have ours the best example of national right
eousness in all the world, and influence the world ac
cording to the confidence and respect we command.
We do not need Europe or Asia to define our moral
obligations, we do not need the Old World to quicken
the American conscience. The obligations to civiliza
tion are not designated by men, they are written by
the hand of divinity which records the onward march.
No league, no council of any league, no assembly of
any league can ever appeal to the American conscience
as will the voice of intelligent and deliberate public
SAFEGUARDING AMERICA 93
opini@n. Aye, and if we proclaim democracy to the
world, we must not crush it at its hearthstone.
Must we have this particular covenant to save us
from European broils and Old-World conflicts, as the
president asserts? In a hundred years of American
development and growing influence no war involved
us, though one hundred and twenty-six wars are re
corded in that period. We were not involved in 1898 ;
we went because conscience was impelling. I quite
agree that Germany might have preferred to respect
our rights than to involve us in the late world war if
she had believed we would answer affront with armed
defense, but the president was too busy then keeping
us out of war to utter a vigorous American warning.
Germany held us in a contempt which one militant
American voice in authority might have dissolved, but
we delayed until two million fighting sons of the re
public shot Germany to respectful understanding.
RESPECT FOR AMERICAN RIGHTS
We have settled it for all time, league or no league^
peace or no peace, war or no war, the rights of this na
tion and the rights of our citizens must and will be
respected at home or abroad, on land or sea, every
where an American may go on a lawful and righteous
mission under the shining sun. To adopt any other
policy, to call an international council to destroy the
American spirit, would rend the life of the republic.
It may be very old-fashioned, sirs, it may be reaction
ary, it may be shocking to pacifist and dreamer alike,
but I choose for our own people, a hundred millions or
94 REDEDICATING AMERICA
more, the right to search the American conscience and
prescribe our own obligations to ourselves and the
world s civilization.
Let us pause for a moment to note the tendency of
the propagandists of the hour and the proponents of
the league. There is a drive to nationalize industry,
to denationalize governments, and internationalize the
world. All are contrary to everything that made us
what we are, all stamp failure on all we have wrought,
and propose paralysis instead of the virile activity
which sped us on to achievement.
SIGNIFICANCE OF NATIONALISM
Nationalism was the vital force that turned the
dearly wrought freedom of the republic to a living,
impelling power. Nationalism inspired, assured, up-
builded. In nationalism was centered all the hopes, all
the confidence, all the aspirations of a developing peo
ple. Nationalism has turned the retreating processions
of the earth to the onward march to accomplishment,
and has been the very shield of democracy wherever
its banners were unfurled. Why, Senators, nationality
was the hope of every appealing delegation which came
to our committee in the name of democracy. It was
nationality that conceived the emergence of new na
tions and the revival of old ones out of the ashes of
consuming warfare. Nationality is the call of the
heart of liberated peoples, and the dream of those to
whom freedom becomes an undying cause. It was the
guiding light, the song, the prayer, the consummation
for our own people, although we were never assured
SAFEGUARDING AMERICA 95
indissoluble union until the Civil War was fought.
Can any red-blooded American consent now, when we
have come to understand its priceless value, to merge
our nationality into internationality, merely because
brotherhood and fraternity and fellowship and peace
are soothing and appealing terms ?
Oh, sirs, I know it is denied. I can understand the
indignant denial. I will not challenge its sincerity. It
would be very disheartening to believe that any Amer
ican in official position, or who donned the garb of an
armed defender, knowingly assents to surrendered
nationality. I may be wrong, but I elect to take no
chances. If this league as negotiated can do all that its
proponents have promised, it can tighten its grip on
the destiny of nations and make our inspiring nation
ality only a memory. Extravagant utterance? Well,
establish the council without strong reservations pro
tecting our freedom of action, and establish the as
sembly with its powers unhindered by reservations,
and no man can foresee the exercise of authority by
the league of great powers, against whom small nations
will protest in vain. Suppose it proves all that is
claimed in discouraging war, which many honestly
doubt. Let me say in passing that an able and experi
enced officer of the army, stalwart in his Americanism
and his love of country, whose devotion has been
proven again and again, and who not only fought in
the late war but is a student of European affairs, said
to me not a month ago : "Senator, as a military man, I
ought to favor this league because it means war after
war and constant activity in the work for which I am
& REDEDICATING AMERICA
trained. But I pray in my American heart you will
never commit us to it, because I can see involvements
and regrets unending."
AMERICAN SAFETY AT STAKE
But suppose it makes for the promised peace, I still
prefer, and the great majority of Americans still pre
fer, to be the keepers of our national conscience and
let Europe pass upon its moral obligations while we
righteously meet our own.
Only the other day the president called upon the op
ponents of this league to "Put up or shut up." Among
opponents he classes reservationists as well as those
who would destroy it all. A good many people have
been "putting up" in this country. Perhaps they have
a right to speak. But in modified terms the president
is uttering that very familiar demand, "If you won t
have this, what have you to offer?" It is the well-
known call for constructive proposals in place of ob
structive discussion. There are times when obstruction
justifies the call for something constructive. But this
situation, Senators, calls for action preservative. When
some one proposes an impossible thing it is not fit chal
lenge to demand a constructive substitute. The pres
ervation of American safety is the main thing. A safe
guarded inheritance is infinitely better than the wasted
riches of nationality.
Nobody is going to "shut up." Democracy does not
demand such a surrender. Men in this body have a
sworn duty to perform, no less important to ratifica
tion than presidential authority is to negotiation. A
senator may be as jealous of his constitutional duty
SAFEGUARDING AMERICA 97
as the president is jealous of an international con
coction, especially if we cling to the substance as well
as the form of representative democracy. The dic
tatorship was for the war only, and does not abide in
the aftermath.
PATRIOTS SAVE AMERICA
Members of this body are not insensible to the criti
cism of their actions, official criticism, and the com
plaints of constituents. There are expressions of ap
proval, too. Men have not been blind to the unusual
mail from home ; they have appraised letters inspired,
letters perfunctory, letters from the heart, letters urg
ing support, letters breathing deep alarm. I have
heard the charge of partisanship and the threat of de
stroyed party and the prophecy of individual political
ignominy. But I record it now, because it ought to be
recorded; the soul of this discussion is splendidly pa
triotic. It is not confined to one side of the chamber
nor to one side of the pending issue. I yield the be
lief in sincerity even to those who do not grant it.
More, the radical, the unalterable opponents of the
league and the treaty have rendered a real service to
this country. I do not agree to all they urge in oppo
sition, but I credit them with the awakening of Amer
ica, without which the republic might have been un
consciously betrayed.
To what conclusion am I leading ? Speaking for my
self alone, voicing no faction, no group, no party, I
do not see how any senator can decide upon his final
vote till the disputed amendments and proposed reser
vations shall have the stamp of the decision of a Sen-
98 REDEDICATING AMERICA
ate majority. I can never vote to ratify without safe
guards. I am not yet persuaded to cast a ratifying vote
without amendments. I have listened to the commit
tee s earnest discussions. I bear witness that there
was no fixed program of action in advance. I have
sought to retain a fairly open mind, withholding un
alterable utterance in the face of the charge of wab
bling indecision.
RESERVATIONS ARE ESSENTIAL
I mean to vote for the amendments proposed by the
committee. They ought to be accepted. If the presi
dent is correct in declaring the proposed reservations
will send the treaty back, then amendments will not un
duly delay. Suppose there is delay? Civilized peo
ples are not supposed to move unthinkingly in creating
the surpassing covenant of all the ages. This is an
epoch-making treaty, no matter what its terms pre
scribe.
America need not fear the ill-will of our allied cov
enanters. Their need for cooperation is not so crit
ical as when the German armies were battering the
western battle fronts, but Europe needs us infinitely
more than we need Europe. The aftermath is little
less difficult than the problems of war itself. We can
carry the banners of America to the new Elysium,
even though we have to furl them before we enter.
RIGHTEOUSNESS IS GOAL 1
It is well to do any job right. It is imperative to do
a mighty job right, especially when it involves the fate
of all civilization. If the world is to start all over, it
SAFEGUARDING AMERICA 99
fought to start with the square deal. The treaty has not
written it; the square deal was reserved for informal
promises not uttered in the supreme document.
Though we performed a great service in armed battling
for a preserved civilization, we have yet a greater
service to render to the same civilization by making
the covenant of peace everlastingly righteous.
All fair men realize the embarrassment incident to
the Shantung award. Perhaps we can not change it.
No one believes we mean to go to war to restore to
China what Germany looted and Japan traded for.
But we need not be a party to an international im
morality that challenges our every utterance about lofty
purposes and the reign of justice. I want it recorded,
for all the world to read, that America esteems her
unarmed friend no less than she respects her armed
associate.
If reservations are to send the German treaty and
league covenant back, we ought to amend fully, we
ought to write into the text the things which America
is thinking. There has been inclination to yield some
points rather than necessitate prolonged delay. We
now know there are to be reservations, unmistakable
reservations, else there will be no treaty. They must
speak in clearest terms. The covenant is unthinkable
without them. These reservations must be strong and
unmistakable. I could no more support "mild reser
vations" than I could sanction mild Americanism.
These reservations come of a purpose to protect Amer
ica first, and still save a framework on which to build
intelligent cooperation. These reservations come of
a desire to offer opportunity for a clearing house for;
100 REDEDICATING AMERICA
the consciences of peoples. These reservations declare
that we hold for ourselves the right to maintain our
own peace, and are willing to encourage Europe s
effort toward the great desideratum. But in these
reservations there must be no surrender of the basic
things on which this nation was builded to the present-
day height of world eminence.
Without the amendments we shall be remiss in utter
ing the conscience of the republic ; without any reser
vations we shall be recreant to duty. This is not the
universal thought. There is dispute about it being the
majority thought of the American millions, but I be
lieve it will become the deliberate judgment of Amer
ica.
MUST PRESERVE INHERITANCE
If such a course delays reconstruction, let recon
struction wait. It awaited the long negotiation at
Paris, it waited amid barter, it can await correction
where the blunder was made. You have heard the call
of finance, voicing its impatience. Let finance recall
that fundamental Americanism transcends its impor
tance for to-day and the morrow, too. Industry calls
for normal conditions of formal peace. Let industry
remember that nationalism is its fostering influence,
and internationalism means to merge its interests with
the industries of the world. Momentous achievements
are not wrought in impatience.
Out of the ferment, the turmoil, the debts, and echo
ing sorrows ; out of the appalling waste and far-reach
ing disorder; out of the threats against orderly
government and the assaults on our present-day civil-
SAFEGUARDING AMERICA fCl
ization, I think I can see the opening way for America.
We must preserve the inheritance and hold sensitive
the conscience which has guided our national life. We
must cling to just government and hold to intelligent
and deliberate public opinion as shield and buckler to
representative democracy. We must hold to civil lib
erty, no matter who assails or in what garb he appears,
and we must hold equal opportunity and the reward
of merit no less vital to a living republic than liberty
itself.
We do not need and we do not mean to live within
and for ourselves alone, but we do mean to hold our
ideals safe from foreign incursion. We have com
manded respect and confidence, commanded them in
friendship and the associations of peace, commanded
them in the conflicts and comradeships of war. It is
easily possible to hold the world s high estimate
through righteous relationships. If our ideals of civ
ilization are the best in the world, and I proudly be
lieve that they are, then we ought to send the American
torch-bearers leading on to fulfillment. America aided
in saving civilization ; Americans will not fail civiliza
tion in the deliberate advancements of peace. We are
willing to give, but we resent demands.
MUST SAVE SOUL OF AMERICA
I do not believe, Senators, that it is going "to break
the heart of the world" to make this covenant right, or
at least free from perils which would endanger our
own independence. But it were better to witness this
rhetorical tragedy than destroy the soul of this great
republic.
102 REDEDICATING AMERICA
It is a very alluring thing, Mr. President, to do what
the world has never done before. No republic has
permanently survived. They have flashed, illumined,
and advanced the world, and faded or crumbled. I
want to be a contributor to the abiding republic. None
of us to-day can be sure that it shall abide for gen
erations to come, but we may hold it unshaken for our
day, and pass it on to the next generation preserved in
its integrity. This is the unending call of duty to men
of every civilization ; it is distinctly the American call
to duty of every man who believes we have come the
nearest to dependable popular government the world
has yet witnessed.
Let us have an America walking erect, unafraid,
concerned about its rights and ready to defend them,
proud of its citizens and committed to defend them,
and sure of its ideals and strong to support them. We
are a hundred millions and more to-day, and if the
miracle of the first century of national life may be re
peated in the second the millions of to-day will be the
myriads of the future. I like to think, sirs, that out
of the discovered soul of this republic and through
our preservative actions in this supreme moment of
human progress we shall hold the word American the
proudest boast of citizenship in all the world.
CHAPTER IV
AMERICANISM
Address Delivered before the Ohio Society of New
York, at the Waldorf Hotel, New York
City, January 10,
MR. TOASTMASTER, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN - The
topic of the evening makes it befitting to allude to the
contemporaneousness of the birth of Ohio and the be
ginning of Americanism. Ohio became a definite part
of the Northwest Territory in 1787, and the first flam
ing torch of Americanism was lighted in framing the
Federal Constitution in that momentous year. Every
thing else American is preliminary or subsidiary.
The Pilgrims signed their simple and majestic cov
enant a full century and a half before, and set aflame
their beacon of liberty on the coast of Massachusetts,
and other pioneers of New- World freedom were rear
ing their new standards of liberty from Jamestown to
Plymouth for five generations before Lexington and
Concord heralded a new era ; and it was all American
in the destined result, yet all of it lacked the soul of
nationality. In simple truth, there was no thought
of nationality in the revolution for American independ
ence. The colonists were resisting a wrong and free
dom was their solace. Once it was achieved, nation
ality was the only agency suited to its preservation.
103
104 REDEDICATING AMERICA
Ours was the physically incomparable America, so
enriched by God s bounty and so incalculable in its
possibilities that adventurous Spaniard and developing
Englishman stood only at the gateway and marveled.
Ours were American colonies in name, but the col
onists were still echoing the prejudices and aspirations
of the lands from which they came. There were con
flicting ideas, varying conditions, and contending jeal
ousies, but no common confidence, no universal pride,
no illuminating spirit. These essentials came with the
adoption of the Federal Constitution and the riveting
of union, and the star of the American republic was set
aglow in the world firmament on the day that ratifica
tion was effected.
BIRTH OF AMERICANISM
On that day Americanism began, robed in nation
ality. On that day the American republic began the
blazed trail of representative popular government. On
that day representative democracy was proclaimed the
safe agency of highest human freedom. On that day
America headed the forward procession of civil, hu
man and religious liberty, which ultimately will effect
the liberation of all mankind.
I am not thinking to magnify its comparative excel
lence, its charm of simplicity, or its exalted place
among the written fundamental laws. I am recalling
the Federal Constitution as the very base of all Amer
icanism, as the ark of the covenant of American lib
erty, as the very temple of equal rights, as the very
foundation of all our worthy aspirations. More, it
was the supreme pledge of coordinate government by
AMERICANISM 105
law, with the sponsorship of majorities, the protected
rights of minorities, and freedom from usurpation of
power the people to rule.
Men ofttimes sneer nowadays like it were some
useless relic of the formative period, seemingly unmind
ful that on its guaranties rests the liberty which per
mits ungrateful sneering. Others pronounce it time-
worn and antiquated and unsuited to modern liberty,
but they forget that the world s orderly freedom has
come of its inspiration. Perhaps its very simplicity,
its utter naturalness for a popular government under
majority rule, has led to scant appreciation if not un-
mindf ulness. But it does abide and ever will so long
as the republic survives.
CONSTITUTION IS SACRED
The trouble is that its sacredness, if not forgotten,
has been too little proclaimed. Most of us think it too
righteous to assail and too essential to ignore, and we
have held the superstructure so nearly ideal that for
more than a hundred years we have had no peace-time
statute to make seditious utterance a crime. Appar
ently we have held the freedom of speech which the
Constitution guarantees more sacred than the guaran
teeing instrument. I have come to think it is funda
mentally and patriotically American to say there isn t
room anywhere in these United States for any one who
preaches destruction of the government which is within
the Constitution.
This patriotically, if not divinely, inspired funda
mental law fits every real American citizen, and the
man who can not fit himself to it is not fit for Amer-
106 REDEDICATING AMERICA
lean citizenship nor deserving of our hospitality. It
fully covers all classes and masses in its guaranteed
liberties, and any class or mass that opposes the Con
stitution is against the country and the flag.
DUTY OF CITIZENSHIP
This republic has never feared an enemy from with
out. It no longer intends to be menaced by enemies
from within. If any man seeks the advantages of
American citizenship, let him assume the duties of that
citizenship. If he wishes the freedom of America,
let him subscribe to freedom s protection. If he craves
our hospitality, let him not abuse it. If he wishes to
profit by American opportunity, let him join in making
the same opportunity open to others. One can not be
half American and half European or half something
else. This is the day for the all-American.
Nor can the foreigner hereafter be a prolonged vis
itor or resident alien, gathering the fruits of Amer
ican opportunity, assuming the privileges of a citizen
without whole-heartedly plighting his faith of citizen
ship. I do not mean the mere perfunctory declaration
and legal naturalization. I mean renounced allegiance
to the land from which he came and a heart and soul
consecration to this republic. It were better to leave
some of our industrial work undone than to have the
government undermined in its doing.
But we must not accept the overwrought impression
that the assault on stable American government is
chargeable wholly or mainly to those of foreign birth
who have not sworn American allegiance. The worst
disloyalists and most effective conspirators wear the
AMERICANISM 107
garb of full-fledged American citizenship, and many
of them inherited American opportunity at their birth
and turned liberty into license. The ignorant for
eigner is more a victim than a conspirator, because he
has heard the gospel of revolution when no one
preached the blessings of orderly government and the
rewards of American opportunity. Agitator and revo
lutionist found profit in agitation. They learned the
foreigner s language and thought his thoughts and
reached his sympathies, and lied to his ignorant preju
dices, while the captains of American industry were
counting dividends without concern for the human ele
ment in their making. There were exceptions to this
crime of negligence, but in most instances the Amer
icans who invited and enlisted foreign activities to
swell the man power of industry have neglected to
teach the American language, failed to utter American
sympathies, forgot to extend American fellowship,
and omitted the revealment of the loftier ideals of
American citizenship. The grind of the workshop
alone is poor culture for that citizenship which makes
the ideal republic.
MUST PRACTISE AMERICANISM
It is well enough to preach Americanism, and we
ought. It is more important to practise it, and we
must. In truth, my countrymen, we need practical
Americanism in business as well as proclaimed Amer
icanism in politics. It is superb to lead in commerce
and excel in industry and no nation ever filled a bril
liant page in history until it reached industrial and
commercial eminence but the distinction is too costly
108 REDEDICATING AMERICA
if wrought in the neglected qualities of citizenship and
attending unrest and ultimate revolution.
It is well enough to be concerned about the quantity
and quality of our wares, but it is better to be sure of
the spirit of the workers who make them. We must
be thinking of men as well as materials and the condi
tions of making as well as marketing. The enhance
ment of conditions in twenty years is tribute to awak
ened American conscience, but the neglect of education
is the warning to American heedlessness.
DEVOTION TO DUTY
^There must be concern about devotion to duty as
well as dividends. There must be a thought of the
jeventful morrow as well as the golden day. It is of
no avail merely to preach contentment. Content never
lighted a furnace nor turned a wheel in all creation.
It doesn t exist in the human being who is really worth
while. Mere subsistence does not make a citizen, and
generous compensation without thrift blasts every hope
of acquirement.
iWhat humanity most needs just now is understand
ing. The present-day situation is more acute because
we are in the ferment that came of war and war s
aftermath. Ours was a fevered world, sometimes
flighty, as we used to say in the village, to suggest
fever s fancies or delirium. I forbear specification.
But we are slow getting normal again, and the world
needs sanity as it seldom needed it before.
Many have thought the ratification of the peace
treaty and its league of nations would make us normal,
AMERICANISM 109
but that is the plea of the patent-medicine fakir,
whose one remedy will marvelously cure every ill.
Undoubtedly formal peace will help, and I would
gladly speed the day, if we sacrifice nothing vitally
American. Yet as a matter of fact actual peace pre
vails and commerce has resumed its wonted way.
BACK TO NORMAL
Normal thinking will help more. And normal liv
ing will have the effect of a magician s wand, para
doxical as the statement seems. The world does deeply
need to get normal, and liberal doses of mental science
freely mixed with resolution will help mightily. I do
not mean the old order will be restored. It will never
come again. A world war s upheaval which ends au
tocracies and wipes out dynasties and multiplies cost
of government, an upheaval which shifts the sacred
ratio of 16 to 1 until silver is the more sacred, sweeps
humanity beyond any return to precise pre-war condi
tions.
But there is a sane normalcy due under the new con-
ditions, to be reached in deliberation and understand
ing. And all men must understand and join in reach
ing it. Certain fundamentals are unchangeable and
everlasting. Life without toil never was and never
can be. Ease and competence are not to be seized in
frenzied envy; they are the reward of thrift and in
dustry and denial. There can be no excellence without
great labor. There is no reward except as it is mer
ited. Lowered cost of living and increased cost of pro
duction are an economic fraud. Capital majces possi-
110 REDEDI GATING AMERICA
ble while labor produces, and neither ever achieved
without the other, and both of them together never
wrought a success without genius and management.
No one of them, through the power of great wealth,
the force of knowledge, or the might of great numbers
is above the law, and no one of them shall dominate
a free people.
SUPREMACY OF LAW
There can be no liberty without security, and there
can be no security without the supremacy of law and
the majesty of just government. In the gleaming
Americanism of the Constitution there is neither fear
nor favor, but there are equal rights to all, equal op
portunities beckoning to every man, and justice un-
trammeled. The government which surrenders to the
conspiracies of an influential few or yields to the in
timidation of the organized many does justice to
neither and none and dims the torch of Americanism
which must light our way to safety.
Governmental policies change and laws are altered
to meet the changed conditions which attend all human
progress. There are orderly processes for these nec
essary changes. Let no one proclaim the Constitution
unresponsive to the conscience of the republic. We
have recently witnessed its amendment with less than
eighteen months intervening between submission and
ratification, with some manifestation of sorrow mark
ing the fundamental change. It promptly responds to
American conviction and is the rock on which is
builded the temple of orderly liberty and the guaran
teed freedom of the American republic.
AMERICANISM 111
CIVIL LIBERTY AT STAKE
The insistent problem of the day, magnified in the
madness of war and revealed in the extreme reaction
from hateful and destroyed autocracy to misapplied
and bolshevist democracy, like the pathos of impotent
Russia, is the preservation of civil liberty and its guar
anties. Let Russia experiment in her fatuous folly
until the world is warned anew by her colossal trag
edy. And let every clamorous advocate of the red
regime go to Russia and revel in its crimsoned reign.
This is law-abiding America !
Our American course is straight ahead, with liberty
under the law, and freedom glorified in righteous re
straint. Reason illumines our onward path, and de
liberate, intelligent public opinion reveals every pit
fall and byway which must be avoided. America
spurns every committal to the limits of mediocrity and
bids every man to climb to the heights and rewards
him as he merits it. This is the essence of liberty and
made us what we are. Our system may be imperfect,
but under it we have wrought to world astonishment,
and we are only fairly begun.
HONEST LIVING IS SOLUTION
It would halt the great procession to time our steps
with the indolent, the lazy, the incapable, or the sul
lenly envious. Nor can we risk the course sometimes
suggested by excessive wealth and its ofttimes insolent
assumption of power, but we can practise thrift and
industry, we can live simply and commend righteous
112 REDEDICATING AMERICA
achievement, we can make honest success an inspira
tion to succeed, and march hopefully on to the chorus
of liberty, opportunity and justice.
Sometimes we must go beneath the surface gulf
stream to find the resistless currents of the great ocean.
It little matters what a man proclaims in an ephem
eral outcry for fancied reformation, you get the true
undercurrent when you learn his aspiration for his
children and his children s children. He stands with
his generation between yesterday and the morrow,
eager to lift his children to a little higher plane than
mediocrity can bridge and which socialism never
reaches. He wants to hand on American freedom un
abridged ; he wants to bequeath the waters of Amer
ican political life unpolluted; he would bestow the
quality of opportunity unaltered and the security of
just government unendangered. The underwriting is
in the complete and rejoicing Americanism of every
citizen of the republic.
MUST PRESERVE NATIONALISM
Mr. Toastmaster, we have been hearing lately of the
selfishness of nationality, and it has been urged that
we must abandon it in order to perform our full duty
to humanity and civilization. Let us hesitate before
we surrender the nationality which is the very soul of
highest Americanism. This republic has never failed
humanity or endangered civilization. We have been
tardy about it, like when we were proclaiming democ
racy and neutrality while we ignored our national
rights, but the ultimate and helpful part we played in
AMERICANISM 113
the great war will be the pride of Americans so long
as the world recites the story.
We do not mean to hold aloof, we choose no isola
tion, we shun no duty. I like to rejoice in an American
conscience and in a big conception of our obligations
to liberty, justice and civilization. Aye, and more,
I like to think of Columbia s helping hand to new re
publics which are seeking the blessings portrayed in
our example. But I have a confidence in our America
that requires no council of foreign powers to point the
way of American duty. We wish to counsel, cooperate
and contribute, but we arrogate to ourselves the keep
ing of the American conscience and every concept of
our moral obligations. It is fine to idealize, but it is
very practical to make sure our own house is in per
fect order before we attempt the miracle of the Old-
World stabilization.
AMERICA FIRST
Call it the selfishness of nationality if you will, I
think it an inspiration to patriotic devotion
To safeguard America first.
To stabilize America first.
To prosper America first.
To think of America first.
To exalt America first.
To live for and revere America first.
We may do more than prove exemplars to the
world of enduring, representative democracy where
the Constitution and its liberties are unshaken. We
may go on securely to the destined fulfillment and
114 REDEDICATING AMERICA
make a strong and generous nation s contribution to
human progress, forceful in example, generous in con
tribution, helpful in all suffering, and fearless in all
conflicts.
Let the internationalist dream and the Bolshevist de
stroy. God pity him "for whom no minstrel raptures
swell." In the spirit of the republic we proclaim
Americanism and acclaim America.
CHAPTER V
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
Ohio Legislative Memorial Address Before a Joint
Convention of the Eighty-third General As
sembly, January 29,
GENTLEMEN OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY I stood
before the flag-draped casket in the little church at
Oyster Bay, amid simplicity so rigid that one could
not help remarking it, and yielded to conflicting emo
tions. I wondered if by some fitting miracle an in
animate flag could mourn. One could not see the cas
ket only its form because the vision was filled with
the flag, and it seemed to me the colors clung as though
sorrowing at the loss of their most fearless defender.
One little noted the floral tributes, one was little con
cerned about eminent statesmen and famous writers
and military chieftains and high officials who had
gathered with neighbors and friends political and
personal friends in reverent sorrow for the long fare
well. My own ears were deaf to the reading of the
ritual and the recital of his favorite hymn, I was think
ing of the flag and the soulless form it draped in
jealous sorrow. Great citizens had passed before. Be
loved executives, heroic soldiers and far-seeing states
men all had come to the inevitable, either too soon
115
116 REDEDICATING AMERICA
or in the fulness of distinguished lives and the na
tion had mourned, and peoples sorrowed, and poten
tates had sympathized, but there was a distinct con
viction that the flag lost its bravest defender when
Theodore Roosevelt passed from life to the eternal. A
flaming spirit of American patriotism was gone. A
great void had come, and there was none to fill it.
EMINENT AMERICAN
Measured from any view-point Colonel Roosevelt
was one of the eminent Americans of all times, and
history will write him one of the most conspicuous
figures in all American history. I do not underrate
the eminence which has gone before, nor doubt that
great and distinguished Americans will follow, but in
any appraisal Colonel Roosevelt s name will be in
separably linked with the finding of the American soul,
with the great awakening and consecration. Now and
hereafter let it be said : "Here was a great and coura
geous American, who called to the slumbering spirit
of the republic and made it American in fact as well
as in name."
I say it after full deliberation, and free from all in
clinations which characterize hero-worship, I believe
Colonel Roosevelt to have been the most courageous
American of all times. He not only believed, he pro
claimed and acted. He was not only American in his
own heart and soul, but he believed every man who
wore the habiliments should be an American in every
heart -beat, and commit himself to simple and unfail
ing Americanism.
THEODORE ROOSEVELT 117
EXALTED BY AMERICANISM
It was the mastering passion, the supreme end. Men
thought of him first as a warrior, but it was his all-
encompassing Americanism which made him one. His
torians rank him high as a statesman. It was his
Americanism that exalted him. Many believed him
to have become the consummate politician and he was
but he put his Americanism high above political
plans and practises. Not a few careful observers be
lieve that Colonel Roosevelt lost the Republicans the
election in 1916, and I have heard him say the conten
tion may be well founded. But he was battling for a
bigger thing than party triumph, and he put that big
ger thing far above and beyond party success. He be
lieved our involvement in the world war was inevita
ble, and was seeking to awaken the republic. He saw
the purpose to rend the loyal concord of American
citizenship, and bore aloft the torch to lead us from
the perils of pacificism and indecision. He never
turned back. He never counted the political cost.
Though he thought to submit his national leadership
again in 1920, and knew the perils in criticism and
truth-telling, he struck fearlessly at every menacing
thing, regardless of numbers involved, and smote di
vided loyalty and hyphenated Americanism at every
turn.
"Country first" was his supreme ideal, and "country
first" was his unfailing practise. The words were em
blazoned in the oriflamme which enthused his follow
ers throughout a marvelously eventful career.
118 REDEDICATING AMERICA
SOUGHT FOREIGN SERVICE
I sensed the depths of his convictions when Con
gress made it lawful for him to take a volunteer army
to France, shortly after our entry in the war. We did
not write his name in the law, but the country knew. I
think a major-generalship appealed to his ambition, but
he stipulated no rank. He wanted to recruit and re
spond to the call of threatened civilization. His critics
misconstrued. I am sure I knew. He wanted to save
the morale of suffering France and awaken the morale
in this slumbering republic. In the retrospect I believe
he rendered a greater service with voice and pen at
home than was possible to perform with his sword in
France. And somehow I am glad he remained a
colonel nay, the colonel. How significant it is, and
what a tribute, that he has made the title of loftiest
rank, he is "The Colonel" to all America, and one
needs only to mention the title without the name to
have it understood that he is speaking of the most em
inent colonel of all time.
It would be futile to attempt a life review within the
limitations befitting this occasion. He was many sided,
and his strenuous career was full of great accomplish
ment. What history will recite is fairly known. What
biography contains will be more revealing. History
records events, biography reveals the men who give
events to history.
EXTRAORDINARY MANHOOD
Colonel Roosevelt s extraordinary manhood, his ap
pealing, vigorous, fearless, American manhood is an
THEODORE ROOSEVELT 119
inseparable thing from his great public career. He re
vealed it as the ranchman in the freedom of the West.
He revealed it as the soldier in the world s first war
for humanity. He revealed it in an administrative and
executive office, in his vaster responsibilities, and it
was the conspicuous side of him in the retirement to
which he could not retire. It was the big thing to those
who knew him best, and no man ever had faster and
firmer friends. "Better be faithful than famous" was
an expressed conviction, and he was not only its
exemplaf but he inspired faithfulness. No other man
could have enlisted the following which went with him
to certain and foreseen political disaster in 1912. Or
did they go with him ? Perhaps it is nearer the truth
to say he went with them. I have heard it said he ad
vised against the political division in that year of bit
terness and defeat, that he yielded to the pressure and
judgment of friends and chose to be "faithful rather
than famous." The retrospect recalls two notable re-
vealments: he lost or broke few friendships; he was
ever as willing to be convinced as he was convincing.
The popular impression had him often domineering
and insistent, but there were few American presidents
who sought advice more widely or were more ready
to accept. My own impressions concerning him, gath
ered from press, platform and passing events, were
largely altered by personal contact, and utterly changed
by the revelations of those who knew him longer and
better. Many thought the mighty hunter lacking in
the general attributes, but he could be as gentle as he
was strong, and as sympathetic as a mother touched by
love.
120 REDEDICATING AMERICA
MAN OF ACTION
He was, first of all, a man of action, and delighted
in strenuosity and confessed his fondness for hurrah
and parade. But he was not always performing on
a public stage. One of the very big events in his ca
reer was the least conspicuous and was barely known,
until recited in the biography of the late John Hay,
who had served in his inherited Cabinet as secretary
of state. Germany threatened the seizure of a port
in Venezuela to enforce some financial claims of Ger
man citizens. President Roosevelt called in the Ger
man ambassador, and in a quiet demeanor that was
ominous in itself, told him to tell the kaiser that unless
he agreed to arbitrate the German contention within
ten days Admiral Dewey would sail an American fleet
with sealed instructions to give armed resistance to
any attempt at German seizure. That was a message
the kaiser could understand. The kaiser agreed to
arbitrate. President Roosevelt publicly praised him
for the peaceful proposal which the president himself
so quietly yet firmly demanded. The great criminal,
who afterward set the world aflame in 1914, had
yielded to the firm assertion of American purpose, and
the Monroe Doctrine was emphasized anew in the esti
mate of Old- World diplomacy.
There was more of unparaded activity but no less
effectiveness in dealing with the designing statesmen of
Colombia in the establishment of a friendly republic
in Panama, which left the money grabbers of the
greater state begging for millions to this very hour,
though the great interoceanic canal is long since a
THEODORE ROOSEVELT 121
finished monument for all time to President Roose
velt s aggressive Americanism and our republic s ca
pacity to do big things. It is idle to speculate now, but
I can not believe his stalwart Americanism would
have ever sanctioned the surrender of its intended ad
vantages to American shipping.
AWAKENED NATIONAL CONSCIENCE
Perhaps his greatest work apart from his appeal
ing Americanism, and yet a vital part of it, was his
crusade for a new order of things, a new conscience in
the republic. We can appraise him now in the after
math of fuller understanding, and even those who
most violently opposed him must confess his great part
in an essential awakening. He did four years of
arousing and uprooting. His far-seeing vision de
tected a dangerous drift. He cried out for govern
mental assertion of authority, lest government itself
should be the governed. In his zest he was the rad
ical, as all crusaders are, but when he saw the business
conscience of America awakened, he gladly welcomed
constructive supersedure. He was really less the rad
ical than he ofttimes appeared, and sometimes spoke
radically against his own judgment. The greatest blun
der of his career was made in this very chamber when
he addressed the Constitutional Convention of 1912.
He came against his own judgment and in yielding to
insistent advice declared for the recall of judicial de
cisions. It is not surprising that one of his energy and
courage should blunder, particularly in a period of
tremendous conflict and crusading zeal. It was a mark
of his greatness that he instantly recovered, and lost
122 REDEDICATING AMERICA
little of his hold and none of the respect of the Amer
ican people. He incurred violent enmities, but none
ever called him an unfair opponent. He struck as he
spoke, straight from the shoulder, and he practised as
he preached. In his virile American manhood he was
the surpassing and inspiring example. In the fulness
of mental and physical vigor, he was the great patri
otic sentinel, pacing the parapet of the republic, alert
to danger and every menace and in love with duty and
service and always unafraid.
MADE AMERICA BETTER
It is little to say that the republic is bigger and bet
ter and mightily advanced by his part in its glorious
history, more American for his call to patriotism and
more secure for his warning of perils. It is more to
say he inspired those who follow to nobler manhood
and higher ideals.
It didn t seem quite in harmony with his untiring ac
tivity and unharnessed soul that its flame should fail
in the quiet of slumber, but it was peace valiantly and
triumphantly won, and the flames he lighted burned
afresh and will light the way of a people whom he
loved and who loved him as a great American.
CHAPTER VI
RELATIONS WITH THEODORE ROOSEVELT
Public Address at Topeka, Kansas, March 8, 1920
THERE has been widely distributed from my own
state some quotations of utterances carried in 1912 in
the Marion (Ohio) Star, of which I have been the
sole or principal owner for the past thirty years. These
quotations are distributed to appeal to the opposition
to me on the part of the friends of that great out
standing American, Theodore Roosevelt. I magnify
no posthumous claims to an intimate friendship with
Colonel Roosevelt, and could have no title to his politi
cal mantle, even if such bestowal were possible in
this republic. On the other hand, I vigorously opposed
him in 1912 just as he typically opposed the regular
wing of the Republican party to which I adhered.
Theodore Roosevelt never did anything half-heart
edly. He preached the gospel of hitting and hitting
hard for what he believed to be right. He expected his
opponents to fight, and we were in a fight in 1912. I
did my share of it in our newspaper and on the stump.
Colonel Roosevelt and Mr. Taft were greatly es
tranged, but both were big enough to put aside their
grief and bury their hostilities and make common ap
peal to the American people for a Republican victory
in 1918. He and others came to new understanding.
123
124 REDEDICATING AMERICA
My concord with Theodore Roosevelt came shortly
after our party s defeat in 1916. He invited me to a
conference and I gladly responded. We did not dwell
long on the differences of 1912. That was an old
story, he thought his course was justified and we
jointly deplored the result, but he did insist we must
all get together and save the country through a Repub
lican restoration; that the Republican party was the
one agency through which to give highest service, and
the compact of our council and cooperation was made
then and there, and in many conferences afterward I
came to know how deeply he felt the necessity of all
Republicans uniting to effect the party supremacy so
essential to the nation s good. It was his personal,
rather than his political, wish that I should stand
sponsor for the amendment to the army bill that made
it possible for him to take a volunteer division to
France, and I rejoiced over the enactment, though
President Wilson would not accept it. But the big
thing was that Theodore Roosevelt was keen to wipe
out the differences of 1912, now buried beneath eight
years of regrets, and look with hope to party triumph
through united endeavor in 1920.
If he had lived, he would have been our Republican
nominee by acclamation. It is poor proof of devotion
and poorer evidence of the inheritance of the political
wisdom which marked his matchless career to parade
the mistakes of 1912 to inspire a victory in 1920.
More, it is not progressive. It is retrogressive. I
choose a party and a leadership which appraises men
and issues of to-day, and thinks not of the differences
of yesterday, but the victory of to-morrow.
CHAPTER VII
[WILLIAM McKiNLEY
Address at the McKinley Memorial Dinner, Niles,
Ohio, January 29, 1920
MR. TOASTMASTER AND GENTLEMEN Much IS being
said, properly and becomingly, in these anxious days
of the republic, about a saving Americanism. No one
better typified it than William McKinley. And he
lived and preached and practised it, first as the cure
for national disaster, and later for the guaranty of
the greater good fortunes of the American people. His
Americanism wrought the restoration in times of
peace, and the very same Americanism revealed our
unselfishness in war. More, he proved the republic s
readiness for every becoming burden for humanity s
sake, in war s aftermath.
Likewise, much has been said in the last three years
about making war for humanity s sake. It is fitting to
say on this occasion, in this memorial edifice, that
America s first war for humanity s sake was com
manded by President William McKinley. Indeed, no
one will dispute it : the first recorded war for human
ity s sake in all the world was when he unsheathed the
sword in behalf of suffering and oppressed humanity
in Cuba in 1898. And when it was won quickly and
magnificently won he gave to tb^ world the first
125
126 REDEDICATING AMERICA
example of national unselfishness and the first Amer
ican proof of loftier aims than territorial aggrandize
ment.
I thought then that Cuba rightfully ought to have a
place under the American flag. I still believe that the
American spirit, backed by the security of American
protection, has lighted the way to notable Cuban prog
ress. But McKinley had the clearer vision and saw
the value of the world s understanding and Cuba s con
fidence in our national unselfishness. He restored the
flag which had been hauled down in Hawaii, then
furled a triumphant flag in Cuba, in high honor, to
proclaim the banner of kept faith and national right
eousness to all the world.
PIONEER OF EXPANSION
In the story of the eventful year so recently brought:
to a close more has been said about lofty ideals and
the assumed burdens of civilization than in all history
before, but I like to recall that William McKinley
was a pioneer who blazed the trail to the realm of en
nobled nations. He wrought our first expansion, he
was its first official sponsor, and the party now in
power, seeking all the entanglements which the fathers
warned against, then proclaimed it imperialism. Mr.
Bryan paramounted it eloquently, without influencing
the popular or electoral vote, and sixteen years later,
while Europe was torn with stupendous conflict, we
were still so concerned about our own safety that
President Wilson and a sympathetic majority in both
houses of Congress sought to cast the Philippines
adrift That was before supergovernment was
WILLIAM McKINLEY 127
dreamed of, that was before the contemplated merger
of this republic in a supreme government of the world.
No matter how the future fates may revolve, no
matter how the premature grants of self-government
may impair the good that was previously wrought, no
matter how the logic of theory when practically ap
plied may end the glory of our flag in the Orient, we
must credit the first helpfulness of this republic to a
struggling people in distant lands to the sympathy and
courage of William McKinley, and to American spon
sorship in the Philippines will be accredited one of the
splendid pages of modern history.
AMERICAN NATIONALIST
I do not venture to apply too intimately the views he
held or the lessons he taught to the mighty problems
incident to our foreign relations of to-day. But my
acquaintance was sufficient and my recollections are
clear enough to be very sure that, in spite of his sym
pathy and generosity, he would be an American na
tionalist. His very soul was consecrated to the up
building and safeguarding of this republic. He wanted
the superb and supreme America. He wished a patri
otic and a prosperous people. In all his public life his
first concern was for these United States.
He fought with the sons of the North to preserve
union and nationality. Not for a material advantage,
but to preserve the inheritance of the fathers and hold
sacred the great Constitution on which the republic is
founded. It was a strange fate, armed defender that
he was, that he should be the first of all our presidents
really to understand the South, and make it understand
128 REDEDICATING AMERICA
him; and then, in sympathy and understanding, he
healed the old wounds of war and won the new con
cord of union so vital to our greater development. In
the greatness of his soul and with the tact that charac
terized his public life, William McKinley began the
most essential of all preparedness for national defense
by restoring the confidence in union twenty years be
fore a world war put us to the supreme test.
I am very sure that if William McKinley were alive
to-day and charged with the trusted leadership we so
gladly accorded him, he would be deeply sympathetic
with the troubled world ; he would be keen to be help
ful to anxious peoples, but his deeper concern would
be for our own welfare; and in his capacity to bring
people together he would have all in authority work
ing to that common end.
A PARTISAN REPUBLICAN
He was notably a partisan, a partisan Republican.
He was the most representative Republican of his day.
He believed in popular government through the agency
of political parties, and believed in his party as the
agency of greatest good to the American people. He
was considerate, tolerant, courteous, but ever a par
tisan Republican. He did not believe his party had a
monopoly on all that was good or patriotic, but he did
believe it capable of best serving our common country,
and its policies best suited to promote our common
good fortune. His was an outstanding personality,
lovable and admirable, but his strength was that of a
party spokesman, and his great decisions came of Re
publican counsel.
WILLIAM McKINLEY 129
Whether it was the solution of a pressing problem
at home, whether it was maintained honor and fully
met obligations in our foreign relations, whether it
was the continued elevation of the standards of Amer
ican life and the continued advancement of all our
people, William McKinley was ever found committed
to a sane and workable plan. It is not unbecoming to
say that when anarchy struck him down and Theodore
Roosevelt took up his burdens, he instantly announced
he would continue the policies of his illustrious prede
cessor, and won the confidence and affection of Amer
ica in doing so. It dims the glory of neither to re
call it. They differed in type, of ttimes in methods, but
accomplished greatly because they voiced the dominant
party in the republic.
COOPERATED WITH CONGRESS
No one could imagine William McKinley belittling
Congress, or berating a "pygmy-minded Senate," be
cause that would have been unlike him. He had
served in Congress, respected it as a coordinate branch
of the government and worked with it not in oppo
sition to it, not in domination over it. The success of
his legislative and executive career had its foundation
in his ability to understand and to be understood, and
in understanding commit all the forces of government
to seek the desired achievement.
It is a faddish practise, sometimes an assumed su
periority, to cry out against political parties, and pro
claim the super-man who is free from party shackles.
It is more a fraud than it is a reformation. If the
super-man is available, he is still a partisan a per-
130 &EDEDICATING AMERICA
sonal partisan if not political. In spite of the tardy
call to Republicans for a patriotic service for war, de
layed until the supreme emergency broke down the
barriers, when the perils of inefficiency and inactivity
aroused the country, the present administration has
been as partisan as Jackson s, and the super-man be
came very human after contact with mortals in the
councils at Paris, and a brush with a Senate which
has resumed its constitutional functions. It would
have been better to have cooperated and coordinated
with Congress than to have disappointed America and
broken the heart of the world with superlative ob
stinacy.
POLITICAL PARTIES ESSENTIAL
Perhaps it is old-fashioned, maybe it seems to be re
actionary, but I voice a deliberate conviction that the
abandonment of government through political parties
means the same instability for us which characterizes
many Central American and South American states,
or it means an autocracy or dictatorship which spells
the end of our boasted republic. No one will deny
abuses and disappointments in our established polit
ical system, but it made us what we are, and all the
world has yet to match the record of American de
velopment and accomplishment. We had better cor
rect the abuses than to risk the abandonment of the
system.
We approached autocracy during the war. Con
gress submerged itself, and surrendered many of its
functions. I am not complaining. It seemed neces
sary, because of our gigantic task of national defense,
WILLIAM McKINLEY 131
and the supreme emergency called for a supreme com
mand. I do not think William McKinley would have
asked it or accepted it, but practical humanity deals
with situations as they have to be met. We escaped
with only a temporary perversion, but the inclination
now to forsake party sponsorship is only another form
of opposition to constitutional government, more to
be feared than those who preach destruction by force.
To be sure, strong men are needed, but we need
stronger parties back of them. You can t have stable
government at the hands of a political party or a po
litical leadership which will barter proven principles
for temporary success, or yield to the intimidation of
any group threatening to assert its strength at the
polls. Parties must be held as the agencies for the
expressed conscience of the majority, and they must
prevail or fail as they merit it. In popular govern
ment they are the agencies of education in matters po
litical.
RESTORED PROSPERITY IN 1896
An incident from the career of William McKinley
affords a striking illustration. In 1896 the nation was
in deep distress. The industrial disaster was wide
spread. It seems like a breath of changed air to recall
now that our national grief was low prices. The farm
ers in Kansas burned corn for fuel, because it didn t
pay to haul it to market. A dime looked as big as the
moon, full-orbed, and a dollar was ample for a boasted
balance in the bank. I can recall the wide-spread an
guish over the downward trend. The eminent Ne-
braskan preached his famous cure-all in the free coin
age of silver. McKinley had another remedy, though
132 REDEDICATING AMERICA
personally he thought kindly of the double standard
of coinage as a palliative to help reduce the patient s
pain. Like the Republican that he was, like every Re
publican ought to be, he surrendered his personal views
to the judgment of the party majority, and we turned
to the education of the American voter. In August
the country was ready for the wrong medicine, in No
vember it voted for the real cure, and there was re
corded a victory for the conviction of the Republican
party and the intelligence of the American people.
And there was instant restoration.
APOSTLE OF PROTECTIVE TARIFF
Conditions change, new problems arise, new policies
are necessary. I had rather trust the majority in any
party, even the Democratic party, than rely on any
outstanding personality in any party, super-man or
otherwise. This decision by the majority is the un
derlying theory of representative popular government
and makes our government sanely responsive to de
liberate and dependable public opinion. If there is
failure of our party to-day to meet the fullest expecta
tions of the American people, it is due in the main to
the fact that we have so-called Republicans in our ranks
and some of them in authority who seek to make the
party policy, and failing in that, assume a superiority
to party judgment. Such a course not only endangers
party success at the polls, but destroys party ef
fectiveness in official performance. I commend inde
pendence and fearlessness of thought, but I invite the
party devotion of McKinley as the highest guaranty
of kept pledges and helpful accomplishment.
WILLIAM McKINLEY 133
Certain fundamentals always abide. The supremacy
of government is one. The inspiration in nationality
is another. The necessity of successful business is
still another. Perhaps no public man in all our Ameri
can development clung to that belief more tenaciously
than William McKinley. It made him the apostle of
the protective tariff. Men sneer at it nowadays, as
though we had outgrown the coddling period, and are
ready to match our wits with the world. We tried
it in 1914, and sneers turned to sadness then, until
Europe s tragedy cured our psychological grief. Let
it be called narrow, provincial, selfish, contrary to all
theory, whatever you like, in the industries coddled
under protection we were independent, and in these
unprotected and undeveloped the war found us help
less, until American genius turned to production under
war s necessity, and war s barriers of tragic protection.
We know now the value of American self-dependence,
and I speak for one who believes it sane Americanism
now to safeguard the industries developed in war to
add to our eminence and independence in peace, and
to hold all American industry as of first concern and
of first importance in guaranteeing the good fortunes
of the American people.
It is utterly wrong to assume we have reached the
heights of American development. There is an inter
esting analogy between pioneering in settlement and
pioneering in developing industry. Under the westward
march of the star of empire, the stalwart men who
were bent on achievement took advantage of produc
tive resources, and built temporarily and speeded to
production amid waste, because production was neces-
134 REDEDICATING AMERICA
sary to subsistence and essential to permanence. One
may fairly trace the developing stage across the con
tinent, with improvement and permanency superseding
the hurried things of the hopeful beginning. It is a
fair criticism of American industry that our first con
cern was quantity. I want to hail the day when we can
do more than boast America as the greatest producer,
I want our country the best producer in all the world.
HIS LEADERSHIP IS INSPIRATION
In some things we do excel. I remember a very
great pride, during a European visit some years ago,
to see American shoes exhibited in the show windows
of the great cities as the "best in the world." Prob
ably we shall never excel in all production ; that would
be the attainment of the miraculous, but I want to live
to see the day when an American buyer asks for the
best he will not be shown something imported. It
is a desirable attainment for a greater reason than
pride of country. It must be the inspiration of the
American worker. There isn t much impelling a work
man in mere quantity production, in the mere grind
for wage, but there is soul in doing a thing best. If
one thing is needed more than another in the ranks
of industry, it is pride in production and the spirit
of attainment.
In the McKinley policy there is every possibility
and every encouragement. We have the higher stand
ards of living, and mean to maintain them. World
wages haven t been leveled, and never will be until
Old- World standards are raised to ours.
WILLIAM McKINLEY 135
MEMORY GIVES CONFIDENCE
We shall never know the pre-war level of wage
again, never the old-time proportions of wages and
profits. I have been engaged in business in a modest
way for thirty-five years and have never known a re
duction of wages. The tendency is ever higher, and
ought to be. Nothing avails, however, if living cost
is kept apace with the mounting wage. Thrift will
help. More production and less extravagance will
help. A sober thought of the morrow will aid still
more.
Business must and will yield more of its profits to
those participating in their production, but business
must be given its meed of just consideration. It can t
sustain a government which is drunken in expenditure
and keeps step to the Bolshevist anthem at the same
time, and still perform its functions in health and
sanity. There is a finer conscience in business in
America to-day than has ever been revealed, in spite
of the continued profiteering amid a saturnalia of ex
penditure, and we are sure to get right because the
heart of America is right.
I like to look forward with the confidence and hope
of him whose memory we honor to-night. I know
how he believed in the republic, how sure he was of
the deliberate good sense of the American people. I
krtow what his admonition would be "Americans,
frlht face, march on; let us make this republic the
cor 1 summation of freedom and freedom s hopes and
aspirations !"
CHAPTER VIII
GEORGE WASHINGTON
Address Delivered February 22, ipi8, at Washington s
Birthday Celebration before the Sons and
Daughters of the Revolution, at
Washington, D. C.
MR. PRESIDENT, MADAM PRESIDENT, YOUR EXCEL
LENCIES, SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF THE REVOLUTION,
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, MY COUNTRYMEN I have
been sensing the atmosphere of this patriotic occasion
and the significance of this celebration.
It is good to meet and drink at the fountains of
wisdom inherited from the founding fathers of the
republic. It is a fitting time for retrospection and in
trospection when we face a problem to-day even greater
than the miracle they wrought. The comparison does
not belittle their accomplishment. Nothing in all his
tory surpasses their achievement. The miracle was
not the victory for independence. The stupendous
thing was the successful establishment of the republic.
There they were, spent and bleeding, in the very chaos
of newly found freedom; there they were, with ideas
conflicting, interests varied, jealousies threatening,
and selfishness impelling; there they were, without
having visualized nationality. They had contended
136
GEORGE WASHINGTON 137
only for liberty, and when it was obtained they found
a nation to be the necessary means of its preservation.
FOUNDERS DIVINELY INSPIRED
With commanding patriotism and lofty statesman
ship, with heroic sacrifice and deep-penetrating fore
sight, they founded what we had come to believe the
first seemingly dependable popular government on the
face of the earth. I can believe they were divinely
inspired. In the reverent retrospection I can believe
that destiny impelled. Surely there was the guiding
hand of divinity itself, conscious of sublime purpose.
They not only wrought union and concord out of
division and discord, but they established a represent
ative democracy, and for the first time in the history
of the world wrote civil liberty into the fundamental
law. On this civil liberty is builded the temple of
human liberty, and through this representative govern
ment we Americans have wrought to the astonishment
of the world. More, on the unfailing foundation of
civil liberty they established orderly government, the
most precious possession of all civilization, and made
justice its highest purpose.
DEVELOPED AMERICAN SOUL
Mark you, they were not reforming the world. They
had dearly bought the freedom of a new people; they
reared new standards of liberty; they consecrated
themselves to equal rights, then sought to establish
the highest guaranty of them all. They had the vision
to realize that no dependable government could be
founded on ephemeral popular opinion. They knew
138 REDEDICATING AMERICA
that thinking, intelligent, deliberate, public opinion
in due time would write any statute that justice in
spired. They knew that no pure democracy, with
political power measured by physical might, ever had
endured; that neither the autocrat with usurped or
granted power, nor the mass in impassioned committal
could maintain liberty and justice or bestow their
limitless blessings. So they fashioned their triumphs,
their hopes, their aspirations, and their convictions
into the Constitution of the representative republic;
they made justice the crowning figure on the surpassing
temple, and stationed beckoning opportunity at the
door equal opportunity, let me say and bade the
world to come and be welcome ; and the world came
the down-trodden and the oppressed, the adventurous
and ambitious and they drank freely of the waters
of our political life, and stood erect and achieved, each
according to his merits or his industry, his talents or
his genius. Generous in their rejoicing, the fathers
neglected to establish the altars of consecration at
the threshold. Eager to develop our measureless re
sources, anxious to have humanity come and partake
freely of New- World liberty, they asked no dedication
at the portals. They developed an American soul in
their own sacrifices for liberty, but neglected to de
mand soul consecration before participation on the
part of those who came to share their triumphs.
We have come to realize the oversight now. We
have come to find our boasted popular government
put to the crucial test in defending its national rights.
We met with no such problem in the Civil War. That
was a destined conflict between Americans of the two
GEORGE WASHINGTON 139
Schools of political thought, which was the final test
in maintaining nationality. There was like passion for
country on either side of that great struggle, but the
dross in the misdirected passion for disunion was
burned away in the crucible of fire and blood, and the
pure gold turned into shining stars in dear Old Glory
again. We settled rights to nationality among our
selves. We are fighting to-day for the unalterable
rights which are inherent in nationality, without which
no self-respecting nation could hope to survive, and
for which any nation refusing to fight does not de
serve to survive.
DUTY TO PRESERVE REPUBLIC
We have the duty to preserve the inherited covenant
of the fathers; we have the obligation to hand on to
succeeding generations the very republic which we in
herited. If this generation will not sacrifice and suffer
in this crisis of the world, the republic is doomed.
If this fortunate people can not prove popular govern
ment capable of defense in a war for national rights,
popular government fails. If the impudent assumption
of world domination is not thwarted by the entente
allies and this people, then civilization itself is de
feated. Never since the world began has any nation
been able to dominate the world. A mighty, righteous
people may influence and help mankind, and I have
wished that noble task for this republic, but domina
tion is for God alone, and His agency is the universal
brotherhood of man.
There is one compensation in the very beginning.
We are finding ourselves. From this day henceforth
140 REDEDICATING AMERICA
we are to be an American people in fact as well as
name. Consecration to America is the deliberate and
unalterable decree. The dedicating altars are erected
and are free as liberty itself. Now and hereafter the
individual, no matter who he is or whence he comes,
who proclaims himself an American and fattens his
existence on American opportunity, must be an Ameri
can in his heart and soul. More, the American of
to-day, to-morrow, and so long as the republic endures
and triumphs, must be schooled to the duties of citizen
ship which go with the privileges and advantages
thereof, and men and women of America are to find
what they can do for orderly government instead of
seeking what it can do for them.
ADVICE OF WASHINGTON
Solemnly, my countrymen, this is an epoch in human
affairs. The world is in upheaval. There is more
than war and its measureless cost. Civilization is in a
fluid state. All existent forms of government are being
tested, and the very fundamentals of human achieve
ment are in question. In this hour of reverent mem
ory for the beloved father of our country, in this whole
some retrospection of the miracle wrought by the
founders, in the hurried contemplation of the marvel
ous achievements of our people to whom they gave
an immortal beginning, let us strive to appreciate their
wisdom and our good fortune and commit ourselves
anew to the essential preservation.
I wonder what the great Washington would utter
in warning, in his passionate love of the republic and
his deep concern about future welfare, if he could
GEORGE WASHINGTON 141
know the drift of to-day? In his undying farewell
address his repeated anxiety was concerning jealousies
and heart-burnings which spring from distrust and
factional misrepresentations "they tend to rend alien
to each other those who ought to be bound together
by fraternal affection."
And he warned us that "respect for authority, com
pliance with its laws, acquiescence in its measures
are duties enjoined by the fundamental maxims of
true liberty." "Liberty itself will find in such a
government, with powers properly distributed and ad
justed, its surest guardian. It is, indeed, little less
than a name where the government is too feeble to
withstand the enterprises of faction . . . and to
maintain all in the secure and tranquil enjoyment
of rights and property."
Alluding to parties more comparable to factions in
our citizenship of the present day he warned against
"the spirit having its root in the strongest passions
of the human mind. It exists in all governments,
more or less stifled, controlled or repressed, but in
those of popular form it is seen in its greatest rankness,
and is truly their worst enemy."
FACTIONALISM DECRIED
In our mighty development we have added to the
perils of which Washington warned. The danger has
not been in party association, but in party appeal or
surrender to faction. There has been no partisan
politics in our war preparation. On the contrary, par
tisan lines have been effaced to close up the ranks in
patriotic devotion. But factions have grown more
142 REDEDICATING AMERICA
menacing and hold their factional designs more neces
sary than patriotic consecration.
It is characteristic of popular government, and its
weakness, that there is more appeal to popularity than
concern for the common weal. Too many men in
public life are more concerned about ballots than the
bulwarks of free institutions. Our growth, our diver
sification, our nation-wide communication, our profit-
bearing selfishness these have filled the land with
organized factions, not geographical, as Washington
so much feared, but commercial, industrial, agri
cultural and professional, each seeking to promote
the interests of its own, not without justification at
times, but often a menace in exacting privilege or
favor through the utterance of political threats. If
popular government is to survive it must grant exact
justice to all men and fear none. If law is to be
respected and government remain supreme, legislation
must be for all the people, not for the few of vast
fortune or its influences, or the few of commanding
activity and their assumptions, or the many who may
assert political power in accordance with numerical
strength. The republic is of all the people, equal in
their claims to civil liberty and the grant of oppor
tunity, aye, and its righteous rewards. The anxieties
of world conflict and the inevitable alterations must
not blind us to the tasks of preservation.
If the war is to make of us, or of any national
votary of modified democracy, an impotent people,
paralyzed by revolutionary reform, it is not worth the
winning. If this world tumult is to leave wrecked
hopes like that of chaotic Russia to prove that autpc-r
GEORGE WASHINGTON 143
racy and unintelligent democracy have a common
infamy, then civilization must have its purification in a
penitence of failure and wrecked hopes and unspeak
able sacrifices, until God in His mercy and wisdom
restores sanity to mankind and admonishes men to
achievement over the proven paths of human progress.
No thinking man can ignore the changes which war
is working. But surely there is a righteous mean
between the extremes of the expiring adherents of
autocracy and the intoxicated radicals of deceived and
demoralized democracy. Let s prove the republic the
highest agency of humanity s just aspirations.
TO PRESERVE NATIONAL RIGHTS
My countrymen, I am not crying out in a wilderness
of pessimism, I am uttering a warning that comes of
love for the republic. Let us go on, no matter what be
tides, to the dependable establishment of our national
rights and the safety of our peoples ; yes, and the sus
tained hands of justice among the peoples of the
earth. We are no longer able to hold aloof, and the
world must be made safe to live in. Let us prove our
unity the common purpose and the unalterable pur
pose of all Americans to do that and then let us dedi
cate ourselves in unity and concord and the same un
alterable resolution to the preservation of the inherited
republic. I could utter a prayer for an American
benediction, to bestow on us the wisdom, the devotion,
the faith, and the willingness to sacrifice, which
strengthened the fathers in their mighty tasks. I wish
we might dwell in their simplicity and frugality and
the freedom from envy which attended. I wish I
144 REDEDICATING AMERICA
might end the extravagance of government and of indi
vidual life which adds to unrest and rends our strength.
It is our besetting sin. We need as much sober
thought about what we spend as we need agitation
about what we earn in every walk of life. No people
shod in $18 shoes is equipped for the conquering march
of civilization.
JVe do not proclaim ours the perfect republic, nor
yet the ideal popular government, but we do maintain
it is the best and the freest that the world has ever
known, and under it mankind has advanced and
achieved as under none other since civilization dawned,
and in good conscience and consecrated citizenship
and abiding faith and high hope we mean, with God s
good guidance, to go on to the fulfillment of the
highest American destiny.
CHAPTER IX
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
Addrtss before Lincoln Club, Portland, Main&
February 13, 1920
DESTINY made Lincoln the agency 6f the fulfillment,
held the inherited covenant inviolate and gave him to
the ages. No words can magnify or worship glorify.
We are recalling him to-night to bring ourselves to
a fuller understanding and a keener appreciation of
the legacy of his martyrdom. I like to recall him as
a Republican. In the majesty of his memory, men of
all parties quote him, but no American ever lived
who believed more in his party, or who had stronger
convictions of the necessity of political parties as the
agencies of popular government. He believed our
government to rest in public opinion, but looked to
his party as the vehicle for expressing that opinion.
He did not value the ephemeral opinions of a day,
nor the clamor of haste; he clung to the convictions
which could appeal to the judgment of posterity. He
was neither opportunist nor advocate of expediency.
He was mighty in conviction and clung to the Consti
tution and the supremacy of law as sole assurance of
maintained civilization and national life.
145
146 REDEDICATING AMERICA v
DUTY OF CITIZENSHIP
In his day there was unrevealed the modern prob
lem of the foreign born. In his day the emigrant
voyaged to citizenship, and came to participate, and
was promptly received into the accepted responsibil
ities of citizenship. If he lived to-day, with his great
heart athrob for the future stability of the republic,
I can fancy him crying out that there are no privileges
of American citizenship except for those who assume
its duties, and there is no room anywhere in free
America except for those who subscribe to orderly
government under the law.
Lincoln the nationalist could never have been an
internationalist. Through four years of an imperiled
republic he maintained the foreign relations inspired
by the fathers. No one questions his towering great
ness, no one challenges that he was astep with highest
human progress, yet he revered Washington and held
his teachings to be sacredly important. He would
dim no light of experience to fix his course by a light
he knew not of. Perhaps we never shall know all of
the tact and all the wisdom employed in preserving
uninvolved relations when the world found it difficult
to adjust commercial selfishness to seeming neutrality.
How practical he was to arrange for the impressive
visit of the Russian fleet in an hour of growing peril,
and end the obligation promptly by paying the ex
penses in the added price paid for the purchase of
Alaska! He believed in the people, but he cloaked
that transaction because its revealment would have
added to war s complications.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 147
EXPONENT OF NATIONALITY
I do not believe Lincoln would have this expanded
and enriched republic of more than a hundred millions
hold aloof from the world, or avoid a single duty in
furthering world civilization. His heart would have
rejoiced at our part in halting the military autocracy
of Germany in its ruthless pursuit of world domina
tion. I think he would have speeded the righteous
resistance of the abridgment of our national rights.
I am sure the distressed condition of the Old World
to-day would touch his great heart, as it has all
humanity s, but I am very certain he would never sur
render the nationality for which he sacrificed and
fought to any supergovernment of the world, no
matter what its title or its purposes might be. He
would cling to the American conscience as the guiding
light of a confident republic.
He was a believer in opportunity as the highest of
fering of free America. It was his belief that "every
American should have a fair start and an unfettered
chance in the race for life." That was the doctrine
of Jefferson in his proclaimed equal rights, that was
the policy of Hamilton who demanded a government
strong enough to guarantee them. That was the
"square deal" of Theodore Roosevelt. That was the
Golden Rule of the "Man of Nazareth."
AMERICA AFFORDS EQUAL OPPORTUNITY
It is America s supreme offering to-day equal op
portunity to all men and reward as they merit it. Civil
liberty protects them in righteous acquirement. Any-
148 REDEDICATING AMERICA *
thing less is an abridgment of liberty. Men must
achieve according to their talents, according to the
metal that is in them, else there is no human progress.
The adopted standards of mediocrity would halt all
human progress.
Class legislation is likewise a perversion of liberty
and class domination puts an end to liber ty s justice.
Let us hold our America the republic that Lincoln
preserved for posterity, freedom under the Constitu
tion, security under the law, and stability under the
law s unchallenged supremacy.
CHAPTER X
PENERAL GRANT S REPUBLICANISM
Address at Grant Dinner, Middlesex Club, Boston,
Massachusetts, 1916
GENTLEMEN OF THE MIDDLESEX CLUB When Gen
eral Grant was at Spottsylvania, facing obstacles and
discouragements which would have halted any other
commander of Union forces, he took note of his, ap
palling losses of general officers and men in the ranks
observed anew his surroundings, saw the horrifying
conflicts yet to come, assured himself of certainty of
ultimate triumph, then penned his letter to General
Halleck, which proclaimed the Union ultimately re
stored. It was typical of the simplicity and the unal
terable determination of this rugged, silent leader to
say that "I propose to fight it out on this line if it takes
all summer." It did take all summer, but he knew he
was right, and pushed on and on, irresistibly on until
disunion at Bull Run was turned to reunion at Appo-
mattox. There is no finer instance of conscientious
conviction and unswerving purpose in all the making
of American history, and I would have the great po
litical party to which General Grant belonged, and with
which he served, gather inspiration and assurance
from his memory and example.
We were everlastingly right in the principles for
149
150" " REDEMCATINGT AMERICA
which we contended when disunion rended our useful
ness in 1912. We believed in the fundamental prin
ciples then for which we stand to-day, and we purpose
to hold the charter of Republicanism inviolate, just
as Grant fought to preserve the ark of the American
political covenant. We stand to-day, as in the party s
beginning, committed to the fundamental principle of
representative democracy and the American policy of
tariff protection, and we mean to fight it out on these
lines "if it takes all summer," this year and next.
Millions of volunteer enlistments are awaiting the
call, and everywhere, north, south, east and west, is
manifest eagerness to see the Republican reunion, con
fident that Republican victory means the country s
restoration.
No sign above the political horizon was ever so con
spicuous the Republican party is coming back in a
sweeping national victory. Mark you, there is no doubt
about the ultimate result. The Republican party is
coming back because it is once more proved to be
right, because the country needs Republican policies
and attending good fortune, because Republican ca
pacity to construct and administer to the highest ad
vantage of the American people has been magnified
anew by the chastening which always attends a Demo
cratic administration.
POLITICAL PRINCIPLES IMPORTANT
Political whims and popular personalities will come
and go, but a political principle stands everlastingly
true; sometimes it is obscured by the passing storm,
but it stands like a beacon unchanging, to guide the
GRANT S REPUBLICANISM 151
pilots of nations. It is consistent devotion to principle
which holds the Republican party as the hope and
promise of the American people to-day. Thoughtful
observers believed they saw the end in 1912. But
when the atmosphere was cleared of the conflicts of
personalities and the resort to expediencies and sur
render to exigencies and appeals to prejudices, there
loomed the monuments of Republican constructive-
ness, there stood the foundations on which to rebuild.
The Republican party endures because of its unal
terable faith in our representative form of govern
ment, as conceived by the inspired fathers, upon whose
foundation we have builded to surpassing national
glory. We believe in representative democracy as
adopted in the Federal Constitution, and proclaim it to
be the highest and best form and plan of a people s
rule ever fashioned by mankind for the commonweal.
We believe that upon this principle we have made
orderly progress and unequaled advancement, until
the record of that progress is the greatest heritage of
American citizenship. We believe sincerely in the rule
of the people, not through unthinkingly broadened re
sponsibilities, but through the conscience-driven, rea
soning exercise of a citizenship made sovereign from
the beginning.
EQUAL OPPORTUNITY IS BASIS
Equal rights and equal opportunity were proclaimed
at the very start Liberty s first contributions to the
federal foundation they have been sacredly main
tained, and in their exercise our people have wrought
to the astonishment of all the nations of civilization.
152 REDEDICATING AMERICA
Though Jefferson was their conspicuous advocate, he
was no more influential in their establishment than
Franklin, who insisted on safeguarding by constitu
tional provision, and Hamilton, who demanded a na
tionality ample to guarantee them. Thus was the Re
publican party consecrated to these indestructible
principles by its Federalist forebears, and reconse
crated by that martyred hero who saved the nation
Abraham Lincoln. He said we are for "a fair start
and an unfettered chance in the race of life," and the
Republican party holds to the same doctrine, unalter
ably to-day. Turn specifically to the birth of the Re
publican party, and the record recites its committal to
the cause of human rights at the altar of its christ
ening; it has been consistent and sincere in every re
iteration ; points to performance to prove the wisdom
of its promises; may always cite its pledges kept as an
index to party conscience, and finds the reflex of its
unwavering progression in the American standard of
living and the matchless story of American accom
plishment. We opened to equal rights and equal op
portunities the avenues of reward. Our party exalted
human rights by providing conditions for higher at
tainment. We could not revise human nature nor
abolish greed ; we could not stamp out envy nor elimi
nate selfishness, nor eradicate jealousy; we could not
establish the equality of capacity or reward. But we
did apply the best of thought and honest intent to the
solutions of problems that attend exceptional growth,
and mean to go on, deliberately, orderly, conscien
tiously, yielding not to prejudice nor passion, but
strengthening the weak in the supremacy of law, al-
GRANT S REPUBLICANISM 153
ways avoiding destruction, where possible, seeking to
cure and preserve, always advancing to the ideal over
safe and proven paths.
Looking back now, when the reflective vision is un
impaired, I venture to say that the country and our
political parties need a new baptism of truth. We
were aware of mistaken attitudes and unapproved
practises in our party in 1912, not without extenuating
circumstances, however, but we were too wrought up
by conflict to cure in needed deliberation. We had
keener vision for national perils than for party weak
ness. We endangered our party system by the abuse
of it, and we needed awakening to the truth to effect
a cure. Inspired by the country s call for a Republi
can return, we shall be strongly equipped in a new
consecration to everlasting truth, and let the Demo
cratic party revel in expediency and new paramounts
which invariably lead to disappointment. There was
the double lure of expediency in 1912, and the con
fusion of double opposition. The combination put the
Democratic party in power, and routed the Republican
forces, but the ultimate result is the awakening of the
country to a realization of the indissoluble relation be
tween Republican policies and a people s good fortune.
REPUBLICANISM MEANS PROSPERITY
It seems characteristic of our American life that we
must have periodical Democratic paralysis to bring us
to appreciation of the healthful glow of Republican
activity. I am thinking of 1892 and 1896. After that
visitation of Democratic disaster and depression,
wrought in the name of cheapness and the freedom of
REDEDICATING AMERICA
buying in the markets of the world, there came a
fevered frenzy to banish a symptom rather than re
move a cause. The people believed we needed more
and cheaper money. Mr. Bryan s cross of gold loomed
up like a flaming comet and harbinger of destruction.
But the Republican party clung to the truth, it pro
claimed the cause and offered a cure, and an under
standing people went to the ballot-box and took Mr.
Bryan s crown of thorns and transformed it into a
wreath of bloom, redolent of the perfume of abundant
prosperity, and placed it on the brow of that greatest
of all apostles of protection, the revered and trusted
William McKinley.
The situation is analogous to-day, and the Repub
lican party will cling to a great, saving truth. If we
have one distinguishing characteristic above all others,
ours is the party of protection. Under its banner our
party has achieved its most notable triumphs and
wrought the greatest good fortune to the American
people. Any surrender or apologetic modification will
dim our most glorious identity. Not all the country
wanted the abandonment of a protective tariff. Owing
to the mutterings of selfishness, which can not be
escaped, no matter how loftily we aim, part of the
people thought we ought to "sharpen our wits in com
petition with the world," but it was a minority which
voted for the new freedom which soon became an old
and unhappy idleness. But Democracy delivered and
a nation was distressed.
But Democracy did not deliver the expected lower
ing of prices, because sixteen years of Republican
GRANT S REPUBLICANISM 155
good fortune had established a higher standard of
living, and with it a higher capacity to live, and the
fulness of Democratic destruction was averted by the
cataclysm of European war, which saved us from the
competition against which the Democratic party would
not protect us. Last year, when the situation was
new and little understood, President Wilson shifted
the responsibility for retarded activities from psycho
logical depression to the effects of war. The actual
truth challenges contradiction the European war has
given the only impetus that has marked production in
the United States since the passage of the Underwood
tariff, and it is said without rejoicing. Our people
do not want to prosper at the bloody sacrifice of the
brave men in Europe, locked in the conflict of horrify
ing war ; our aspirations are in the triumphs of peace.
We want the good fortunes that come of American
markets for Americans, with our higher wages, higher
standards and larger capacity to buy. We have proven
again and again the beneficence of protection, and our
people, again awakened to appreciation, want the pol
icy restored. Nobody pretends that any Republican
tariff law has been perfect, but none has ever been
destructive. I choose a tariff law like Methodist liber
ality in baptism sprinkling at least, pouring if one
believes that way, immersion if necessary, and re
demption under one of the three. The party which be
lieves in protection must look to its perfection. Our
party was progressing in that direction when it was
distracted by the contest over candidates which ended
in our undoing. It is not to be said that Republican
J56 REDEDICATING AMERICA
protection has made for unvarying good fortune, bu?
it is political history that Democratic revision invari
ably makes for depression and holds it uninterrupted
until we apply Republican relief.
NEED PROTECTIVE POLICIES
Henceforth we must look above and beyond the un
ceasing and selfish wrangle about schedules, and com
prehend from the broader view. Under Republican
protective policies we have the larger and a general
prosperity ; we have doubled or trebled wage scale and
abundance of employment; we have the higher stand
ard of living and the larger capacity to buy. It is not
what the consumer pays, it is the consumer s ability
to buy that counts. Democracy s error lies in thinking
only of the consumer, but a Republican knows it is the
producer that counts. One must produce before he
can consume, and American eminence is the reflex of
a well-paid, fully-employed nation of producers. If
protection and its alleged robbery are leading to op
pression, as Democracy asserts, let some knowing
Democrat tell us why the incoming tide of immigration
always floods our shores when Republican good for
tune obtains. It is so true that opponents have urged
that we protect our products, but do not protect the
laborer. Every experience refutes the charge. When
the tide of Republican good fortune is at the flood we
need every newcomer to perform our tasks; common
labor would be left undone without them. They do
not lower the wage, they ascend to the American
heights. And they do not come to seek a new ex
istence in oppression or industrial slavery, but pour
GRANT S REPUBLICANISM 157
into this New- World haven of liberty and hope to find
equal rights, the reward of industry and merit and
opportunity, and mount the plane of exalted American
citizenship.
I am not blind to the admonition that the Repub
lican party must take advanced ground to win popular
favor. It may be noted, too, that those most insistently
urging this, are declaring for the effacement of the
men who have been conspicuous in the past. Let me
warn you, fellow Republicans, the way to victory and
the country s restoration is not in recrimination, but
reconsecration. To efface the old guard, so-called,
really a term of honor rather than opprobrium, which
saved us from utter dissolution and gave us a party
around which to rally, would be like effacing the vet
erans who turned the tide of rebellion at Gettysburg
in 63. Nay, more, it would be like discrediting Grant s
irresistible army which moved unfalteringly on, despite
the discouraging losses, from the Wilderness to Appo-
mattox and melted their swords and bayonets in the
fires of conflict to rivet anew the ties of a saved and
henceforth and forever indissoluble nation. At the
same time let it be understood that there need be
neither foreswearing nor apology on the part of those
who enlisted in the Progressive cause of 1912. I can
utter a cordial and sincere welcome to the reenlist-
ment of any or all. The country is calling, the cause
is a people s need, and the glory of things to be will
make trivial the bitterness that came of things which
could not be. Let us turn from the unhappy wreck of
1912 and look to relieving the country of the mis
fortune which attended. The party has proved its
i58 REDEDICATING AMERICA
capacity to survive; let us work together to make it
the instrumentality of highest usefulness under popu
lar government through political parties.
SANE PROGRESSIVISM NEEDED
It is well, however, to ponder the tendency to break
away from some of our old-fashioned moorings. Ours
is intended to be a representative government, and
has grown to gratifying eminence after nearly a cen
tury and a half of trials and storms and passing pas
sions and prejudice. It was never intended to be ex
cessively paternal nor socialistically fraternal. Yet
there is a drift to both, and there is only a step be
tween. Plunder and greed on the one hand, and ap
peal to prejudice and hate on the other are swelling the
throngs of Socialism, which will turn our genius and
talent and industry into paralyzed efficiency. Surely
there is a path of political righteousness aloof from
these threatening dangers. With conscience awakened,
let us make it more sensitive; with men heeding, let
us weave new strength into the moral fiber of indi
vidual American manhood ; with public interest awak
ened, let us make honesty the first requisite of men
and political parties, and apply it as the surest cure
of all social and political and economic ills. Mean
while, remembering that subsistence is the essential
foundation on which man must stand to reach for the
ideal, let us think of the upkeep as well as the uplift,
and assure our millions the subsistence from which
they may aspire.
We wish our party to be sanely, safely, genuinely
progressive. We want its reflective of the best thought
GRANT S REPUBLICANISM 159
of our most helpful activities. But we must remember
that material progress and human rights are not in
compatible, but are inseparable, and any policy which
hinders legitimate business halts the onward proces
sion. We have suffered from that tendency because
there has been a disposition to make political declara
tions more designed to enlist votes than advance the
people. Some times there is stronger inclination to
exploit than to exalt. We have made stronger appeal
to expectation than to realization. It is not enough,
to be sure, to live in the past, but it must stir the Re
publican heart to realize that our surpassing American
progress has come largely through Republican policies,
and chiefly under Republican administration. It is no
disparagement of the best interests of any political
party to say the Republican party reflects the best
conscience of the best civilization the world has ever
witnessed. Our party represents that conscience be
cause we are political sponsors for things accom
plished. We have not dreamed, we have realized.
We have not obstructed, we have constructed. We
have not pretended, we have performed. We have not
halted or faltered, we have attained and sustained.
We have pride in things done the highest reward of
worthy endeavor, and we have the faith that sustains
every national hope of the future. For the things for
which we have not been, because conditions were not
ready, for the things which ought to be, we may strive
together, making the conscience and the judgment of
the majority the will of the party. Any other plan
spells the failure of government of the people through
political parties.
160 REDEDICATING AMERICA
RENEWED CONSECRATION
The things most needed are not new ideas, but new
Sincerity and a new consecration to truth already ut
tered. With McKinley, Roosevelt and Taft our party
declared for a restored merchant marine, and were
hindered not alone by the Democratic party, but by
Republicans recreant to the party s pledges. They
were deterred by the clamor about special privilege
and government favoritism, things which never halted
the triumphant fathers. They provided subsidies and
subventions and discriminating tonnage taxes and
preferential tariffs on cargoes shipped in American
bottoms, and they whitened the seas with American
sails and acquainted the world with the American flag.
The preservation of their policies would have main
tained our prestige as carriers by seas, but we aban
doned our upbuilding and it heralded our undoing.
Finally war brought us to realization. Except in a
limited sense, war paralyzed the carriers of our com
petitors, and blocked their shipping lines which we
builded for them, out of our freights, to aid them in
defeating our commercial expansion. Then when the
unsupplied markets of the world turned to us, and
trade beckoned as never before, and opportunity
awaited as opportunity rarely does await, we found
ourselves unable to respond, and missed the oppor
tunity for the miracle of expansion. Democracy awoke
to the error of its persistent opposition, declined to
confess its mistaken attitude and turned to substitute
federal ownership for the subsidy it condemned.
We build the Panama Canal at fortv millions out-
GRANT S REPUBLICANISM 161
lay, and say to world shipping : "Here is an American
gift to further your fortunes." I think the time has
come to do something for American shipping, to add
to our conquest of world markets, while enhancing
our prosperity at home. This policy has been the wish
of Republican majorities, but we failed to write the
wish of the majority into party and national law.
But we can do it now, and we will; a restored and
triumphant American merchant marine shall be the
first contribution of returned Republicanism to greater
national glory.
HOME PRODUCTION URGED
We have heard something lately of a slogan
"Made in the U. S. A." No other political party can
so becomingly adopt it. We like "made in the U. S.
A.," and mean to protect the making and the makers.
And we mean to be consistent by buying in the U. S.
A., and not only commend the policy to American
citizens, but demand the practise by the American
government. It was lacking in patriotism for the
government to buy abroad the million-dollar cranes
for the completed Panama Canal, because European
toilers worked for less, when our own workmen needed
the employment. It shows a lack of mutuality of in
terest to have American railroads go to Canada for
thousands of tons of steel rails, and reveals the weak
ness of our system which gives our markets to Cana
dians when they have none of their own and we need
ours most at home. "Made in the U. S. A." is the
making of the U. S. A., and the Republican party
would make it a glad reality, an assurance of accom-
162 REDEDICATING AMERICA
plishment at home and a herald of American superi
ority abroad. There is little use to make if we do not
buy. And little use to make if we do not sell, and we
need our own ocean carriers to deliver.
While honoring Grant to-night, let us recall his ad
vice on this subject, written in the deliberation of his
reflections when he penned his memoirs thirty years
ago. The great commander wrote ;
"Now scarcely twenty years after the war, we seem
to have forgotten the lessons it taught, and we are
going on as if in the greatest security, without the
power to resist invasion. . . . We should have a
good navy, and our seacoast defenses should be put
in the finest possible condition. . . . Money ex
pended in a fine navy not only adds to our security and
tends to prevent war, but is a material aid to our
commerce."
The truth is more apparent to-day. Naval prepared
ness for defense is not preparation for invasion. Safe
guarding tranquillity is not eagerness for conquest.
The United States has no such purpose. Our terri
tory is ample. Texas alone has as many square miles
and as many fertile acres as the German empire,
which holds the Allies of Europe at bay. We are so
large, so seemingly measureless, so physically beyond
comparison, that I think, sometimes, Democratic
failure is due to lack of realization of our greatness,
and the requisites of greatness in solving its own
problem. Where European coast lines count hundreds,
ours measure thousands, and we require for "safety
first," not only the best of coast defenses, but we ought
to have the first and best navy in the world. It will
guard our commerce, our sea, and guarantee our tran-
GRANT S REPUBLICANISM 163
quillity at home. It will cheer Missouri as it comforts
Massachusetts, and make the American voice for peace
more an argument and less an appeal.
THE AWAKENED CONSCIENCE
Mr. Toastmaster, no Republican, no American can
be blind to the agitation and the strife for reformation
which marked our political activity during the past
half dozen years. If in the contest between radicalism
and conservatism the pendulum was far-swung to the
former, let us hold to all the good which was wrought
and guard against the excessive backward swing.
In that retrospection which makes for inspiration,
there grows the conviction that Republican progress,
written in half a century of Republican accomplish
ment, seems more like the miracle of a national destiny
than the story of a political party and its tasks in state
craft. But the truth abides, incomparable and incontro
vertible. We have not only made a nation, rough-hewn
and popularly governed, the marvel of development
among great nations; we have contributed to the up
lift, emphasized human rights and elevated the stand
ard of living; we have not only become leaders in
finance and industry ; we have not only become equals
in education and rivals in art, but we are the inspira
tion and example of other republics, and ought to be,
could be, influencing the idealization of the government
of the earth. Thus runs the epitome of Republican
accomplishment. It justifies our pride in the past,
explains the nation-wide turning to the party for the
country s restoration, and gives every assurance of
glorious triumphs in the future.
CHAPTER XI
VOTE ON DECLARATION OF WAR WITH GERMANY
Address in the Senate of the United States,
Wednesday, April 4,
The Senate, as in Committee of the Whole, had under con
sideration the joint resolution (S. J. Res. 1) declaring that a
state of war exists between the Imperial German Government
and the Government and the people of the United States, and
making provision to prosecute the same.
MR. PRESIDENT I am conscious of the impatience
of the Senate to reach a vote on the pending joint reso
lution, and I do not find myself impelled to enter into
any extended discussion of the matter pending; but I
do realize the gravity of the moment, and I want to say
for myself at least a few things that will help to avoid
a wrong impression coming from the action to be
taken by this body.
I want those whom I am seeking to represent in this
body to understand that I am not voting for war in re
sponse to the alleged hysteria of a subsidized or Eng
lish-owned press. I want to take this opportunity of
resenting the charge that the press of the United States
is either owned or subsidized by any foreign power.
I do not hesitate to say that I think the American press
is the best safeguard we have to the American spirit,
and the best advocate we have of our American lib
erties.
164
VOTE ON WAR WITH GERMANY 165
I want it known also that I am not voting for war
in response to the campaign of the munition makers,
for there has been none.
NOT FIGHTING IN NAME OF DEMOCRACY
I want especially to say, Mr. President, that I am
not voting for war in the name of democracy. I want
to emphasize that fact for a moment, because much has
been said upon that subject on this floor. It is my
deliberate judgment that it is none of our business
what type of government any nation on this earth may
choose to have ; and one can not be entirely just unless
he makes the admission in this trying hour that the
German people evidently are pretty well satisfied with
their government, because I could not ask a better
thing for this popular government of the United States
of America than the same loyal devotion on the part
of every American that the German gives to his
government.
I am not unmindful, Senators, that the great Julius
Caesar fought the battles of the Roman republic, and
his assassins saw him bequeath an empire to Augustus.
I am not unmindful that the great Bonaparte fought
his battles in the name of the first French republic, and
his ambition left an empire that faded at St. Helena.
It does not matter so much, Senators, what the form
of government may be if the people existing under
that government are content therewith. More depends
on the human agency that administers the government ;
and it is my deliberate judgment to-night that it is up
to us to demonstrate the permanency of a republic
before we enter upon a world-wide war to establish
166 REDEDICATING AMERICA
democracy. We may well leave that to the other
nations concerned.
TO MAINTAIN AMERICAN RIGHTS
I want it known to the people of my state and to
the nation that I am voting for war to-night for the
maintenance of just American rights, which is the
first essential to the preservation of the soul of this
republic. Why, Senators, perhaps it has been an ob
session with me, but in watching the trend of events
since the outbreak of the European war and the en
deavor to influence popular sentiment in this republic
I reached a stage where I doubted if we had that
unanimity of sentiment which is necessary for the
preservation of this free government. We had reached
a stage where seemingly we were without a soul.
Somehow or other we had deadened the fires under
the American melting pot, and it looked as though we
were a divided people. On the floor of this
Senate, where above all else we ought to preach Ameri
can unity and the maintenance of American rights, I
have heard doctrines preached which indicated divi
sions and selfish interests, which suggested that these
United States of America, instead of going on to the
fulfillment of the splendid destiny that the fathers
must have had in mind, were becoming a mere colloca
tion of states rather preferring to live in ease and
comfort and selfish attainments than to know the spirit
that becomes this boasted, popular government
VOTE ON WAR WITH GERMANY 167
TO PRESERVE AMERICA
And so, Mr. President, to-night, in the grave situ
ation that I full well realize, with the understanding
of every responsibility that goes with the vote, I vote
for this joint resolution to make war not a war
thrust upon us, if I could choose the language of the
resolution, but a war declared in response to affronts ;
a war that will at least put a soul into our American
life ; a war not for the cause of the Allies of Europe ; a
war not for France, beautiful as the sentiment may
be in reviving at least our gratitude to the French
people; not precisely a war for civilization, worthy
and inspiring as that would be ; but a war that speaks
for the majesty of a people popularly governed, who
finally are brought to the crucial test where they are
resolved to get together and wage a conflict for the
maintenance of their rights and the preservation of
the covenant inherited from the fathers.
Why, Mr. President, not so very long ago, in the
mail which comes to me as it does to every member
of this body, a constituent wrote me asking: "Why
seek to preserve American rights? There is no dis
tinctly American nationality," said he. "We are a
mixture or a blend or an aggregation of all the peoples
of the world, and we have been surrendering our
rights, notably in Mexico. Why insist upon them
now ?" I said to him, as I say to the Senate now :
"The momentary suspension of American rights, or
the temporary toleration of an attack on American
rights, does not mean their surrender." I said to him
further : "If there is no one who is distinctly Ameri-
168 REDEDICATING AMERICA
can, then, in the name of the republic, it is time that
we find one." I hope that out of this great tumult
of the world, and our part therein, there will spring
from Columbia s loins the real American, believing in
popular government, and willing to suffer and sacrifice,
if need be, to maintain the rights of that government
and the people thereunder. I believe that this is the
great essential to the perpetuity of the American re
public the maintenance of rights in confidence, abso
lutely without selfish interest.
GUARANTEE OF NATIONALITY
We have given to the world a spectacle of a great
nation that could make war without selfish intent. We
unsheathed the sword some eighteen years ago, for the
first time in the history of the world, in the name of
humanity, and we gave proof to the world at that
time of an unselfish nation. Now, whether it is fate
or fortune or the travail of destiny, it has come to us
to unsheathe the sword again, not alone for humanity s
sake though that splendid inspiration will be involved
but to unsheathe the sword against a great power in
the maintenance of the rights of the republic, in that
maintenance which will give to us a new guaranty of
nationality. That is the great thing, and I want it
known, Mr. President and Senators, that this is the
impelling thought with me for one when I cast my
vote.
I have been told, and the senator from Wisconsin
(Mr. LaFollette), who stood here to-day, gave us the
warning that we were taking up a perilous cause. He
made the argument that the nation which was willing
VOTE ON WAR WITH GERMANY 169
to follow the submarine warfare could probably assert
itself against the combined powers of the globe. Mr.
President, not since the world began, not since civili
zation wrote its first page in history, has it been given
to any one nation to dominate the earth. World
domination is not of man. That is of God, the Cre
ator. It has become the fortune of this republic to
cry "halt!" to a maddened power casting aside the
obligations of civilization and the limitations of that
which we look upon as highest humanity. I know that
the task will be undertaken by the American people
not originally committed to the cause of war, but a
people who will understand that when the Congress
speaks after due deliberation, after the patience which
this body and this government have exercised, the voice
of the United States Congress is the voice of the nation,
and one hundred millions of people will commit them
selves to the great cause of the maintenance of just
American rights a thing for which the nation can
well afford to fight, and while fighting for it put a new
soul into a race of American people who can enthusi
astically call themselves truly and spiritually and
abidingly an American people.
CHAPTER XII
AMERICA IN THE WAR
Address at the Ohio Republican State Convention,
Columbus, Ohio, August 27, 1918
GENTLEMEN OF THE CONVENTION The statement
that "politics is adjourned" needs revision. Disloyalty
and indifference are adjourned, and patriotism flames
high above and beyond party lines for the winning of
the war. The first and foremost thought of every real
American is the armed triumph of America and her
allies, with Germany brought to kneel at the altar of
international pentinence. Minority hampering of the
government in prosecuting the war has not been ad
journed, because there was none to adjourn. The few
obstructionists, long since shamed into obscurity, bore
no party credentials, but were disavowed by the party
to which they previously adhered. No party worthy
of trust in peace or war invites or accepts the fellow
ship of any who is not one hundred per cent. American
in the hour of the republic s peril.
And "politics is adjourned" never can be true of a
nation popularly governed through the instrumentality
of political parties. These parties are inseparable from
every vital step in national life. Abolish them and
170
AMERICA IN THE WAR 171
personal government becomes the substitute, and abso
lute, and violates every conception of representative
popular government.
PARTISANISM FORGOTTEtf
The strife for partisan advantage amid the anxieties
6f war, partisan opposition designed to delay and
hinder these have been discountenanced by the Re
publican minority since the day the Congress com
mitted the country to defend national rights and the
safety of civilization. We submerged partisan lines
for the concord of the republic, and in Congress and
out the present minority party has given to the presi
dent the most cordial and whole-hearted and abiding
support ever given to any federal executive by a mi
nority party since the republic began. To be Americans
first rivets our devotion as Republicans. We must save
the republic which we aim to exalt.
It is the simple truth, not spoken in disparagement
of any one, the patriotic conscience of the republic,
wounded and suffering through affront and outrage
before we declared war, the war declaration and the
consecration of the human and material energies of
republic to its winning, have been more cordially and
effectively sustained by the Republican minority than
by the dominant party in control of the government.
REPUBLICANS SUPPORTED WAR
It is not said to boast. It was a patriotic duty, read
ily and gladly performed. It hastened the spiritual
preparedness of our people. It speeded all America
to unalterable committal and undivided support. It
172 REDEDICATING AMERICA
developed a national soul aflame. It gave notice to
the world, and Germany in particular, that this great
free people, in spite of partisan lines and sectional
differences and varied interests and conflicting opin
ions, even with sedition taught and tolerated, we could
be one people, heart and soul, to give to our last
dollar and our last heart-beat to maintain national
rights and the freedom of the world.
There will be, there can be no limitations to our un
alterable committal. Patient, tolerable, forbearing,
more than forgiving, we humbled our pride and held
aloof when an earlier entry would have answered the
call of a righteous self-respect, but we are committed
to the task now, and nothing will satisfy but an un
conditional triumph. This conscience-awakened gen
eration will not turn slacker and pass on to another
the conflict between might and frightfulness on the
one hand and humanity and justice on the other.
I do not know how long it will last. I do not know
what the cost in lives and treasure will be. I can not
estimate the measure of sacrifice and suffering and
sorrow. I do know the unalterableness of our con
science-driven committal.
NEW BIRTH OF NATIONAL SOUL
This is an epoch in the world. We have witnessed
the new birth of the national soul. We are all Ameri
can from this time on. No prefixes, no apologies, no
limitations, simply unalloyed, unconditional, unalter
able, all-American.
When Congress had before it the question of arming
our merchant shipping for self-defense, an Ohio citi-
AMERICA IN THE WAR 173
zen of foreign birth wrote me in protest against the
proposed arming, admonishing me not to be too con
cerned about American rights, because, said he, "there
is no distinctly American citizen." In my amazement
I made reply and said : "If it be true, as you urge, that
there is to-day no distinctly American citizen, then in
God s name, out of this turmoil of the world, out of
this travail of civilization, let us have a real and dis
tinct American spring from Columbia s loins, to leave
a race of real Americans hereafter." And from this
day on he who chooses existence on American soil and
profits on beckoning American opportunity, and wears
the garb of American citizenship, must be American in
his heart and soul. No republic can endure half loyal,
half disloyal. The protection and advantages of citi
zenship demand the duties and obligations of that
citizenship. We are to be right at home and righteous
in world relationship to make the republic worthy its
best aspirations and prove exemplar to the world that
orderly, popular government is a diviner thing than
divinity of kings.
I recognize with utter frankness the difficulty and
embarrassment in formulating a minority party policy
in a time so fraught with anxiety, when the winning of
the war transcends all else. Under a party government
ours is not the direct responsibility, but no party
sponsorship marks patriotic devotion. Country first!
Win the war ! Speed a peace with overwhelming vic
tory ! Conscious of a loyal minority s part, we pledge
our all. A proclaiming Republican who is not heart
and soul for American and allied triumph can have no
yoke in our councils to-day and can not appraise the
174 REDEDICATING AMERICA
pricelessness of our achievement sufficiently to have
a helpful say in the aftermath to come.
REPUBLICANS URGE CONCORD
Our most trusted leaders in public life, those best
equipped to know and speak the aspirations of party
and nation, have put concord of American spirit and
unity of endeavor far above and beyond partisan ends,
party policy and personal convictions. There is re
pressed outcry about unending instances of discour
aging incompetency, distressing errors, and shocking
incapacity, but it has been better to press remedial at
tention than to rend our concord and mar the con
fidence of a trusting people.
Much of disappointment, much of delay, much of
shocking wastefulness would come of unpreparedness,
where a people dwelling in fancied security are sud
denly drawn unexpectedly and unwillingly into the sur
passing conflict of all civilization. It is little use now
to grieve over the costly inactivity during the precious
days when we saw the world-war flames mounting
higher and higher and men in authority knew aye,
they knew we were sure to be involved. It is little
use now to recite the regrettable story of our first
wasted year in the war. It is better to fix our eager
gaze on the million and a half irresistible American
fighting men, whom we speeded to Europe far in ad
vance of early intentions, because imperiled freedom
and civilization stirred us to the republic s best en
deavor. Let us satisfy our hunger for achievement in
the indisputable evidence that the armed sons of the
republic have turned the tide of war.
AMERICA IN THE WAR 175
The Republican party, in the position of opposition,
after the glorious years of constructive responsibility
doesn t mean to turn to nagging faultfinding in Con
gress or on the stump while the flag is imperiled. We
will await our return to power and correct the errors
bf a party unfitted by teaching and unsuited because
of its dominant elements for the best advancement of
our great republic.
INVESTIGATIONS PROVE
We have supported the cause, we have striven to
Speed this mighty people to the performance of a real
man s part in the engrossing struggle. Not a few
thought and some in high places proclaimed that the
several investigations in Congress were designed to
embarrass or discredit the work of the administration.
Nothing was further from the truth. Congress, feeling
the impelling conscience of the country, was seeking
to produce, not hinder. That there was minority
insistence need not be surprising in our era of drift
on the majority s part toward congressional abdica
tion. But the purpose was patriotic and helpful beyond
measure. These investigations turned failure into de
veloped might. I can speak of one instance with per
sonal knowledge.
For thirty years the Republican party had been de
claring for and striving for a restored merchant marine.
We wanted it for commercial eminence in peace and a
military and naval auxiliary in war. We urged only
few millions from the federal treasury to aid Ameri
can genius and industry to restore the prestige taken
from us by a like policy. But the party now in power
176 REDEDICATING AMERICA
maintained its abiding opposition and the war found
us without the shipping necessary to carry on war
across the broad Atlantic. We hurriedly appropriated
hundreds of millions, and yet more hundreds of mil
lions, to do what private enterprises would have ac
complished with a relative pittance of encouragement.
But there was delay and dispute and well-grounded
alarm, with Germany destroying the allied carriers and
our own at sea. Finally, by calling the attention of
Congress to the growing menace I unintentionally be
came sponsor for a resolution to investigate. Partisan
intent was charged, but we did investigate, and we
stirred to endeavor, and we corrected colossal blunders.
My point is that we helped instead of hampered.
RECONSTRUCTION AHEAD
I think there is courage, practicability, lofty patriot
ism and highly unselfish partisanship to consecrate the
minority party energies to the supreme task at hand.
We will call for the big accounting when the fitting
time comes, and such a time will come.
We can not define the constructive and obstructive
policies which will be pressing on the morrow of
peace. We shall only claim the conscience and capac
ity, already proven, to work out the best solution. We
are free from committal to the fundamental changes
made in the name of war.
There are to come the tremendous problems of recon
struction and restoration. To make popular govern
ment capable of self-defense we have swung far in
granting excess power to the executive. It was seem
ingly necessary, and most of the astounding grants are
AMERICA IN THE WAR 177
for the war period alone. They would be intolerable
in peace would be a perversion of every ideal of
representative popular government. We have a right to
assume the automatic resumption of the normal state,
but power is seldom surrendered with the same will
ingness with which it is granted in the hour of great
emergency. But I think the conscience and conviction
of the republic will demand the restored inheritances
of the founding fathers. I know the Republican party
will stand for only the modifications which are decided
upon in the deliberate reflection of peace, not the en
forced and destroying changes wrought in the exigen
cies and anxieties of war.
Some powers are exercised without specific grant,
contrary to all we boast in the rule of democracy. The
leadership of the president is never to be disputed in
the disposition of patriotic endeavor against a foreign
foe, but the interference of the president in domestic
affairs far removed from executive authority reveals
a tendency toward usurpation which we must and do
oppose in our devotion to the cherished inheritance of
political freedom.
A political leader, proclaiming politics adjourned,
poorly sustains the pronouncement when he tells any
state, Republican or Democrat, whom to send to the
Senate. Party leadership does justify partisan council,
but executive sponsorship or presidential branding,
whether it is the Okeh on an opulent Ford or the
brand of disapproval on a Republican or Democrat
v/ho rejects the rubber-stamp service, savors more of
autocracy than representative democracy. It was re
sented in Wisconsin and will be resented in Michigan,
178 " REDEDICATING AMERICA
and patriotism will be exalted. Parties and peoples in
the several states of the Union are still capable of
choosing their spokesmen in Congress in peace or war,
else we acknowledge the failure of the very institutions
which we commend to the world.
NOT THE PRESIDENT S WAR
This isn t exclusively the president s war. See the
campaign bulletin boards of 1916 for the disavowal.
This isn t a party war, because the majority party in
Congress was too divided to declare it and too divided
to prosecute it. This is the war of the American peo
ple, answering an offended people s resolution to de
fend the nation s rights. The president is official
leader and recognized commander-in-chief, and we
mean to back him up to the limit of our energies and
resources, but as leader of the Democratic party we
challenge his unwarranted assumption of autocratic
political authority.
Democratic party politics hasn t been adjourned for
one hour in the control of the government by the ad
ministration now in power. I do not presume to say
our party would have been less vigilant in strengthen
ing the party hold on the reins of government. It is
inopportune now to audit the account, and note the
sacrifices of a nation s interests for partisan advantage,
but peace will call for the revealing story.
Nor can we survive the appeal to mass against class,
nor surrender proven policies to organized might.
Thoughtful students of human progress recognize the
great changes war is working. There are changes
economical, changes sociological, changes political.
" AMERICA IN THE WAR, 179
The world must change in such a tumult. And we
ought to advance, we must grow better, else all the
sacrificed lives will be spent in vain.
We are far adrift toward the socialized state. The
seizure of the railroads did not proclaim it, because
that action was an apparent necessity. The seizure of
the communication lines was more revealing. Authority
was asked on the plea that it was needed for a possible
emergency, and the intention to take them over was
emphatically disclaimed. In two weeks after the grant
of authority was passed, without an emergency arising,
without a proclaimed necessity, the seizure was made.
Another step taken ! Others will follow. No man can
mark the halting place. War authority is almost limit
less, and while the sons of the republic are battling
to make the world safe for democracy, the radicals at
home are making the republic the realm of state social
ism. If it were only for the war there would be less
concern. Any one who looks to complete restoration
after peace comes again is blind to the speeding cur
rent in our national life.
There are, indeed, tasks to come. We achieved under
representative democracy, and we ought to preserve it.
We boasted civil liberty, human liberty and religious
liberty, the triune of American freedom, and we ought
to hold them inviolate. We developed the republic to
world eminence, literally to supreme eminence in this
surpassing trial of civilization, through the absolute
equality of opportunity to all men and unalterable law
of regarding merit, but the socialize4 state will blight
it all.
180 REDEDICATING AMERICA
INTERNATIONALISM DECRIED
We gloried in nationality, now we are contemplating
internationality. Modern conditions, eliminated dis
tances, banished aloofness all put human kind in
closer touch. Many of the new obligations we can not
escape. We do not mean to shirk them.
No one need to be surprised if old issues are given
new life. I look to see favorite Republican policies
take on renewed importance. Addressing Congress
last winter the president declared for the removal of
all barriers of trade. This is the tenet of the inter
national faith. The Socialists demand it. But it can
not be now. America will never lower her standards,
but they can not be maintained without trade barriers.
Let the world advance to ours.
The theory of banished barriers is beautiful, the
practise is destroying. American labor will never con
sent. We must have protection to hold us what we are,
and send us on to greater eminence.
DEMOCRATIC EXTRAVAGANCE ATTACKED
The theorists often modify their pet notions when
challenged by unalterable conditions. The government
is building the mightiest merchant fleet of the world,
but the anti-subventionists now openly admit we can t
operate it in open world competition, except through
governmental assumption of the higher cost that goes
with American standards of labor and wage. The
treasury will pay the bill, but the people must supply
the treasury.
One hesitates to speak of taxation in this day of in-
AMERICA IN THE WAR 181
conceivable expenditure and saturnalia of extrava
gance. The grumbling is suppressed because the
patriotic resolution of the country is steeled to sacrifice
and outlay, and denial and burdens. There is ever
waste in war, and attending abuses inseparable from
war and war s destruction. Ours is the heavier be
cause we have paid for speed, and spent vainly in in
competence. The non-partisan report on this aircraft
failure is proof enough. I will not yield to specify.
An aggrieved and disappointed nation knows. The
popular notion of the hour that it is good to dissipate
the resources of the country will become an emphasized
folly in the tedious days of liquidated debts when the
fever of war has subsided. We ought to have accom
plished vastly more at half the cost, but cost is little
reckoned now. The present majority will never limit it.
Let none mistake the simple solemn truth; there is
great work for any party ahead, a great work for the
Republican party. There is no call to cast aside party
organization, or diminish party endeavor. No party
has had a monopoly on patriotism or loyalty since the
republic began, else the republic had failed long ago.
We have proven our devotion in every great test. We
are best fitted to solve the problems to come, because
the errors are not ours, and we are neither called to
apologize nor defend. The presidency isn t at issue this
year. President Wilson will see the war s end in that
period allotted to him by the traditions of American
politics, meanwhile we mean to support him cordially,
whole-heartedly and patriotically as the republic s
commander-in-chief.
CHAPTER XIII
Tnfi REPUBLICAN PARTY AND AMERICA
Address before the Republican Rally at Memorial
Hall, Columbut, Ohio, February 23, 1920
(Washington s Birthday)
FELLOW REPUBLICANS It is good to touch elbows
again, and breathe the spirit of confident Republican
ism. It is gratifying to feel a full fellowship in a great
political party, which has left such an impress of help
fulness to the republic that all the United States of
America are turning to the Republicans for the res
toration hoped for in every American heart. So strik
ing is this truth that there is a confident belief that the
sectional lines which have heretofore marked the limits
of Republican majorities are certain to be broken, and
the solid South, Democratic for two generations, hence
forth will be no more than a political memory.
Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia and Louisiana are
encouraging Republican hopes, and Texas, if not so
promising as the others, is demanding the reorganiza
tion of the Democratic party, with restored Jefferso-
nianism, and while it is at it, progressive, ambitious,
magnificent Texas may go the whole route to redemp
tion, and turn to confident Republicanism for the reali
zation of its higher aspirations.
The explanation is not difficult. The South is in-
182
THE PARTY AND AMERICA 183
tensely American. It has come to a full realization of
the advantages of American nationality, and though
its representatives in Congress largely acquiesced in
the proposed surrender of nationality, as negotiated in
the peace treaty, her people are in outspoken opposi
tion. More, the states of the South, during the world
war, came into the glow of fuller American activities,
and understand the economics and agencies of their
continuance, and wish for the things which were urged
and supported in fifty years of notable Republican con
tribution to American progress. If the expectation of
new political alignments in many states of the Union is
too optimistic, I would still cherish the hope. In the
new Americanism which is the supreme compensation
for the sorrows and sacrifices which attended our part
in the world war, we want no sectional lines, no North,
no South, no East, no West. Let the imaginary lines of
old prejudices be forgotten; let mountains divide and
rivers separate; let conditions vary and methods
change; these United States, with one pride, one con
fidence, one flag and only one, henceforth and forever
constitute one common country.
CIVILIZATION NEVER STANDS STILL
War s frightful upheaval has done more than turn
world civilization into a fluid state and leave us won
dering what the new crystallization is to be. It did
more than threaten the world civilization, first with the
domination of autocracy, then in the crash of autoc
racy it revealed the other extremes, and the eastern
continent faces the menace of a destroying democracy.
Civilization never stands still. It is decadent or pro-
184 REDEDICATING AMERICA
gressive. In Russia the trend is backward, to the
primitive law of force. There is less of liberty in Rus
sia to-day than ever complained of under the czar.
Many a European state is sorely menaced, through
distorted visions which come of warfare and its ele
mental brutalities and unspeakable licenses. But here
in America an overwhelming majority still thinks
straight, and we mean to go on to higher and better
things.
War brought home to us a new appreciation and a
new realization of the things which made us what we
are, and a new understanding of the essentials of self-
dependence and the securities of national defense. It
gave us a new impression of the utter necessity of the
unchallenged supremacy of the law. It reminded us of
the existence of a Federal Constitution through the
tendency to get away from it. It warned us that fan
cied isolation and righteous intent and insistent neu
trality afford no guaranty against involvement. Aye,
and it assured us of the power, the majesty, the un-
conquerableness of a great, free people, patriotically
aroused and conscientiously committed.
WE WERE NEGLECTFUL
It cautioned us, also, concerning a weakness in popu
lar government. Amid proclaimed neutrality and ut
tered wonder at what the war was about, and insisted
"peace without victory," we were supine and neglect
ful about a possible defense while millions were sanc
tioning "He kept us out of war." And during every
hour and every day of all that false proclamation the
inner administration circles at Washington knew that
JHE PARTY AND AMERICA 185
our involvement was inevitable, and we wasted many
precious months of preparation, which might have
commanded peace, and spared us inestimable expendi
ture and thousands of sacrificed lives. I am not com
plaining about the campaign slogan in the false appeal,
I am lamenting the neglect of the republic to win an
election. Popular government will never be depend
ably secure until its political agencies and its spokes
men think more of the common weal than of results
at the ballot-box. I choose the political party which
had rather be right than be victorious, and want the
Republican party so committed in this critical period in
human progress.
PARTIES GOVERNMENT AGENCIES
Parties are the agencies through which representa
tive popular government is administered. The found
ing fathers so intended and the practise has given to
us the most nearly dependable popular government the
world has ever witnessed, and it made us what we are,
no matter what the faddists say, about abandoning
political parties. The same fathers gave us the par
ties of Hamilton and Jefferson, so opposed in prin
ciple and so firmly founded that, in spite of new con
ditions and the changing order, they run true to form
in the present day. Hamilton s solid financial plans
might help cure the threatening ills of unduly ex
panded currency, and his economic ideas gave us the
industrial development which saved the allied nations
in war and aided our own belated preparations on a
gigantic scale which had much to do with the turned
tide of world conflict. On the other hand Jefferson
186 REDEDICATING AMERICA
ever opposed a strong federal power and attending na^
tionality, and his most eminent successor and his fol
lowers in the present day have sought insistently,
almost obstinately, to rend our nationality and merge
us as a compliant or suppliant state in a supergovern-
ment of the world.
DANGER MARK WAS NEAR
I think I can assure you the plot has failed. If the
people had voted in 1918 as the White House edict
commanded, in the most astounding official document
ever uttered, we might to-day be Democratic subjects
of the autocratic council of nine, with the Old World
passing on the obligations of this republic; but since
the Senate has resumed its constitutional functions, so
long surrendered in order to marshal all our forces for
national defense, there will be no betrayal of American
nationality.
The war was not partisan, even though it had that
aspect in the disappointing days of our earlier com
mittal. There was not a place for the inspiring Roose
velt, though he stood on the ramparts crying out for
defended Americanism. It was my fortune to stand
sponsor for an amendment to the army bill which
would permit him to go with a division of volunteers
while we were getting the machinery of universal
service in operation, and France was calling for him
and wondering that he did not come, yet his offer was
ignored. In spite of the early contradictions the war
was not partisan, it was consecrated patriotism, shared
in by all parties believing in orderly government, and
peace might and ought to have been patriotic and the
JHE PARTY AND AMERICA 187
treaty disposed of without partisan division. But the
president insisted on making it partisan, personally if
not politically partisan, and held a Senate with its
"pygmy minds" but with constitutional powers in
contempt. Essentially alone he negotiated the surren
der of American nationality, and still essentially alone,
One in a hundred million, he blocks its final disposition.
COUNTRY WANTS FORMAL PEACE
Many of us, nearly all of us, are for early final ac
tion. We want formal peace. It could be brought
about in a single day except for the president, who in
sists the Senate and the country must do his bidding.
Europe calls with her assent, the allied nations have
spoken approval, all America is eager for the ultimate
decision, yet the president, and the president alone,
blocks the way. If any one in America wants to make
a campaign issue of such obstinacy, let it be so. The
Republican party will welcome the responsibility of
Americanizing the treaty and recording a preference
for things American.
If you would contrast party government and per
sonal government, contemplate threatened pocketing
of the treaty if the Senate does not bow to the presi
dential will, or the threatened withdrawal of the treaty
if the council of foreign powers doesn t revise the
Italian and Jugo-Slavic boundaries to the Wilsonian
committal dictatorially withdrawing the sacred cove
nant, which the Senate s failure to sanction was going
to break the heart of the world !
It has not been a partisan conflict in the ordinary
sense, it has been the measured test of constitutional
188 REDEDICATING AMERICA
authority, attended by many irritations and a lofty re
gard for duty. Since our party has been conspicuous
in the defense of safeguarded America, let us rejoice
as Republicans that we have played our big part in
maintaining the soul of American nationality.
We want this great, strong republic to play a big
nation s part in contributing and counseling and par
ticipating in the promotion and preservation of peace,
and advancement of humanity and furthering of world
civilization. But I like the old-fashioned Americanism
which arrogates to ourselves the keeping of the Amer
ican conscience in all our foreign relations, and pre
scribes our own duty to ourselves and the world.
WHY MEDDLE IN EUROPE
We love and commend justice everywhere on earth,
but why meddle and mess things up in Europe, four
thousand miles away, when there is plenty to attract
our attention on our very own borders? Mexico af
fronts us, kidnaps our citizens and murders when we
do not ransom, holds American property rights in con
tempt, and "watchful waiting" aggravates the trouble
across the border and humbles our pride at home. I
would rather make Mexico safe and set it aglow with
the light of New- World righteousness than menace
the health of the republic in Old- World contagion.
But I started to speak of party sponsorship and have
drifted far afield. Government with party sponsor
ship brings us closer to the Constitution, and saves us
the instability that characterizes personal government.
Our weakness in the republic to-day lies in personal in
sistence over and above party conviction. No man
[THE PARTY AND AMERICA 189
ought to be greater than his party. Let the individual
make his party great, let him stamp his leadership on
party progress, but the party must still remain the
voice of the majority.
NEED JUDGMENT OF THE MANY
No man, no official, no authority ever lived who
could not profit in council and advice. Men really
worth while ever welcome it. We are a hundred mil
lions, and the men with capacity and fitness for public
service are not limited to the few who edge into the
limelight in candidatorial array. We need the judg
ment of the thousands of representative men who
think understandingly, and in the combined judgment
of unselfishness we escape the dangers which come of
political selfishness. I want the Republican platform to
represent the convictions, the conscience, the aspira
tions of the thinking Republicans of America, let its
utterances be the covenant of Republican faith and the
chart for a Republican administration. Then we shall
have no makeshift of expediency, no insincerity, no
hopeless experiment, no false appeal for support.
Above all else, let it be a covenant wrought in good
conscience, and then pledge all who call themselves
Republicans to its sincere support.
For such failure to meet the people s expectations
as our party must answer to-day, I answer an insuf
ficient party sponsorship. Nominally we control the
Senate by two, but we number a few who profess Re
publican affiliation but hold themselves above party
conviction. I cherish the hope of a cohesive and con
fident Republican majority in Congress, with a party
190 REDEDICATING AMERICA
committal, where majority rule abides, and then co
ordination and cooperation with Congress arid the ex
ecutive which shall translate party promises into re
corded accomplishment.
HAS NO PERSONAL ENDS
I am not unmindful of current criticism that I have
no specific platform. It is the truth. I have no per
sonal ends to serve in platform making. It is an easy
matter to say what I think the party ought to stand
for, and I should like a part in uttering the judgment
of the party.
We ought to resolve to cling everlastingly to Amer
ican nationality and hold unabridged every inheritance
of constitutional American liberty.
We ought to favor not only the perfected American
ization of the republic, but to hold it wholly and re
joicingly American hereafter. We ought to have it
understood from this time on this is no mere colloca
tion of peoples calling themselves Americans, but one
people, with one spirit, one soul, one allegiance, one
language and one flag.
We might well pledge ourselves never again to be so
unmindful of our national defense. We ought to have
an ample navy, as our first line of defense, We ought
more than to keep apace we ought to lead the world
in the development of aviation and be stronger in the
air than we are on the sea. We ought to have a stronger
army than we have ever known in peace heretofore,
and we ought to have all the young manhood of the re
public know the benefits of discipline and physical bet-;
terment that come of military training, but it ouglit to
THE PARTY AND AMERICA 191
be voluntary, not compulsory; supported by the gov
ernment in camp, in the national guard, in schools and
colleges. It ought to be made so popular and so help
ful that young America would seek it as a privilege
rather than accept it as a duty of compulsory require
ment.
SEEK STABLE WAYS OF PEACE
We ought to resolve to do every consistent thing to
get away from abnormal conditions of war, and seek
the stable ways of peace. We ought to declare for un
shackling both of business and citizenship, and restore
our boasted freedom under the Constitution. Every
extraordinary war statute ought to be promptly re
pealed.
We ought to declare an end to bureaucracy, crowned
with autocracy, all excessively commissioned, and turn
again to government by law and free activities of a
law-abiding people.
We ought to declare the Republican party unalter
ably opposed to government ownership and national
ization of industry or any other compromise with in
sistent socialism which proposes to fix our goal within
the limits of mediocrity. We have seen the experi
ment made in the name of war, not for war efficiency
or to meet a war emergency, but demanded in an hour
of peril when our people were thinking only of dangers
from without, and unheeding of menaces developing
within. The failure has been convincing.
We ought to about face on war s extravagant expen
diture, and get to thinking in millions again, instead of
incomprehensible billions. War-time burdens in time
of peace show scant consideration of uncomplaining
192 REDEDICATING AMERICA
patriotism, and high cost of government is the first
cause of the high cost of living about which we all so
earnestly complain. We must become sane in expen
diture to recover our poise, and government itself must
be an example of economy to its citizenship and hark
back to thrift as the security of good fortune.
FOR AMERICAN SQUARE DEAL
We must pause to reflect that the American square
deal, which is the essence of all just government, must
apply to all American citizenship alike and is the due
of righteous business without which we do not pros
per, is the right of the American farmer without
whom we can not subsist, is our pledge to the American
workman whose good fortune is essential to both tran
quillity and continued advance. We must consult them
all, and be dominated by none. I do not think a man s
business success makes him ineligible to advise or par
ticipate in government. I do not believe the farmer s
uncomplaining patriotism in war will be fittingly re
warded until he comes into closer and more influential
council in seeking the highest good fortune of all the
American people, and must himself fully share the
fruits of our achievement.
For the American wage-earner the problem is more
pressing, because there is the attempted development
of class consciousness, which is always a peril to pop
ular government. We ought to have no class antago
nism in this republic, because the fundamental law con
templates every man precisely alike and grants equal
rights to all. Special privilege belongs to no man, no
body of men, whether their might is wealth or knowl-
THE PARTY AND AMERICA 193
edge or in weight of numbers. And influence isn t
government, but a perversion of it.
The surest index to advancing civilization is the ele
vated scale of life and higher rewards of the men who
toil. War has left new levels, and we shall never re
turn to the old. It is just as certain as anything can
be that a new proportion has come in the division of
the profits of production, and labor s share will never
grow less. I do not know that the war scale of wages
will abide, but wages in themselves do not constitute
the true measure of compensation. If wages are dou
bled and the cost of living is more than doubled, labor
has lost rather than gained. The real test of compen
sation is what remains between the sale of a day s
work and the cost in making it, which is the balance of
trade underlying all acquirement.
DREAMER NEEDS AWAKENING
The dreamer who expects an old-time cost of living
and present-day wages is in need of waking. But in
creased efficiency, added pride in production and ear
nest endeavor for a better order will contribute toward
reduction, and still the restlessness with which the
world is threatened.
The world needs production. It needs work, more
work, and still more work. Production will stabilize
the world s exchanges. Production will challenge the
lie about freedom in seizure by force and government
founded on physical might. Seizure is the destruction
of civil liberty, and ends all justice and destroys old
order.
America has no problem transcending in importance
194 REDEDICATING AMERICA
the establishment of agencies to secure our industrial
peace. No man can ever be made to work against his
will in free America, and the student of modern de
velopments in industry who thinks to destroy unionism
and collective bargaining little understands the new or
der. Unionism has liberated, it must not enslave. Col
lective strength has wrought great progress, but it must
not assume dictation. The thoughtful wage-earners of
America would not have it so. They want a square
deal, and it is their due. They ask justice, no one ought
proffer less. But government fails if it does not find
the agency for ministering that justice, and it must ;
and it fails worse if it does not prohibit the conspiracy
which may halt any public service or in any way im
peril the health and lives of the people through par
alyzed production and transportation of life s necessi
ties. The problem can not be ignored. It demands the
conscience and the courage and the intelligence of par
ties and men and the government which they constitute.
Let the square deal illumine the way a square deal
that gives a thought to all the people and the common
good aft well as those who dwell in class consciousness.
MUST REITERATE WHOLESOME POLICIES
The Republican party may reiterate a score of poli
cies which have stood the test of developing years, and
are still orthodox and wholesome. That is because
they are convictions, not paramountings to meet mo
mentary conditions.
Let some one jog a dependable memory and recall
a paramount issue of the Democratic party that ever
grew to the ripe age of ten years. It can t be done. I
THE PARTY AND AMERICA" 195
did think anti-imperialism and anti-expansion of two
decades ago were going to have a comeback, but De
mocracy forgot its apprehensions in its visions of Co
lumbia presiding at the world s tea party, held in Ge
neva.
^The menace of a treasury surplus (blessed mem
ory !) and the crime of demonetization have gone jaz
zing down the corridors of time, to give place to pro
posed government ownership in the heroic hour of its
proven failure.
Republicans may renew every expression ever made
relating to an American merchant marine, and events
will approve and aspirations will acclaim. War found
us almost helpless, because of our dependence on Eu
rope for shipping, and the submarine threat to destroy
all shipping. We turned to building in great haste and
appalling extravagance.
We know now that we can not operate profitably un
der the inefficiency of government ownership and con
trol. Any big and real development must come of
the initiative and inspiration of private enterprise. I
would sell the vessels, rapidly as we can find buyers, at
what they are fairly worth, but buyers who are Amer
icans and pledge American operation under the Amer
ican flag.
I would not sacrifice the selling cost to cloak a gi
gantic subsidy. Suppose these ships have cost two
and a half billions it will be more and suppose we
sold at forty per cent, off, there would be a hidden sub
sidy of a billion dollars. That would be burdening ex
cessively the people of to-day to pay for a development
that must bless the next generation. No subsidy ever
proposed exceeded eight millions a year.
196 REDEDICATING AMERICA
BELIEVES IN GOVERNMENT AID
I believe in government aid, in subsidy or subven
tion. But I want it in the open, and on the square.
We have the LaFollette seaman s act, providing work
ing conditions and attending wages which no other
seamen in all the world enjoy. Let us accept it as the
conscience of America, and frankly admit that it han
dicaps American shipping in world competition. No
use to dodge the issue. To deal fairly then we must
extend a fostering government aid to make up the dis
advantage. There isn t any sentiment in world compe
tition. If we fix standards for Americans on the sea,
it is our business to help maintain them.
A few years ago, the Senate Committee on Com
merce was conferring with the distinguished Democrat
who then headed the shipping board. The problem, of
maintaining our merchant ships on the Pacific was un
der consideration, and I asked this opponent of Re
publican policies what chance our ships had of outrid
ing Oriental competition. "None in the world, without
federal aid," he replied, "and in saying it I contra
dict all I have said in thirty years opposition to any
subsidy plan."
We may speak sincerely in favoring a reformed sys
tem of conducting the government s business affairs.
Call it the budget system or call it applied common
sense, we need the change which either contemplates.
Perhaps we might call a budget commission the federal
treasury guard, and it does need guarding, my coun
trymen. Everybody wants a pull at the seemingly in
exhaustible abundance in Uncle Sam s strong box, and
THE PARTY AND AMERICA 197
the revelation of the possible returns from excess
profits taxes and income surtaxes has excited genius
to new ways of expenditure. We must call a halt. We
prostitute with profligacy on the one hand and burden
to paralysis on the other. The whole scheme of fed
eral taxation and expenditure needs intelligent and
businesslike revision, and waste must stop for de
cency s sake and extravagance must end for the coun
try s sake*
OURS NOT UNGRATEFUL REPUBLIC
I have not thought to cover all the points in a Re
publican covenant for 1920. There will, of course, be
a grateful and conscientious mind fulness for the vet
erans of the world war. Ours shall be no ungrateful
republic. We shall go on, not alone promising the
government s full part in the uplift of humanity at
home, but perform in good conscience. We mean to
progress and be progressive. Nobody thinks of reac
tion, but it is good to keep our feet on earth and cling
to the wisdom of experience as well as quaff the cup
of experiment. We have proven the capacity of the
Republican party to restore, to preserve, to advance,
to exalt. The country has turned to us before, and
never appealed in vain. I know our answer in the con
test before us will be a new reverence for the Constitu
tion, a new consecration to one hundred per cent.
Americanism, renewed assurance of American oppor
tunity, renewed pledges of representative popular gov
ernment, and guaranteed preservation of nationality,
held secure under the supremacy of law and depend
able American public opinion.
CHAPTER XIV
PROBLEMS OF BUSINESS
Address before the Providence Chamber of Commerce.
at Providence, Rhode Island, February 2$, 1920
NOTHING surpasses the romance in the evolution of
American manufacturing. I am thinking of farm man
ufacturing as well as the shop. The farmer who turns
soil and moisture and sunshine into food is no less a
manufacturer than he who turns wool or cotton into
fabrics or iron ore into a steel watch spring. And
their interests are mutual, no matter how their methods
may vary, and the good fortune of both is highly es
sential to the welfare of our common country.
Farm production and the manufacture of products
by skilled artisans were relatively simple in earlier
days. The age of machinery and quantity production
wrought the transformation in both. It wrought com
plexity and inter-dependence, and inevitably govern
ment became involved.
EVOLUTION OF MODERN BUSINESS
There was an independence when the farmer spun
his own cloth, and tanned his own hides, and made his
own soap and packed his own meats, an independence
no longer experienced except in communities far re
moved from trade.
198
THE PROBLEMS OF BUSINESS 199
There was a phase to the activities of the individual
and self-reliant craftsman, with a soul in his work,
which has been lost in the evolution. There are, of
course, compensations for the losses involved, but the
inspirations of fifty years ago might well be recalled.
Some few years ago, in a far-off fishing village in Can
ada, I called on the boot-maker, who was the one con
spicuous manufacturer of his community. The foot
wear of quantity production had not found favor in
that primitive spot. He told me he made boots for
customers thirty miles away, and I liked his boast that
he "made the best boots in all Canada." He had pride
in his workmanship.
I delight to recall the village days when the local
blacksmith, often a philosopher and ever interesting as
a gossip, turned out his own make of wagon or car
riage, and the fame of his excellence was his chief
compensation. We have lost much of that spirit in
these modern days. Specialized skill of to-day un
doubtedly surpasses all previous attainment, but the
spirit of superior endeavor is lost to the mass of work
men in modern complexity.
It is not true that we have wholly sacrificed quality
for quantity, but we have sacrificed much of pride in
individual endeavor. One of the supreme compensa
tions in life is pride in a thing done. We never shall
know again the wide-spread individual pride in the
work wrought, but we shall have a new spirit and
more of contentment in America if somehow we can
add the compensation of pride to the wage that is paid.
200 ^DEDICATING AMERICA
AMERICA GREATEST PRODUCER
It is gratifying to say American manufacture pro
duces most largely in all the world. But we never
shall know the supreme heights until we can boast
truly that American manufacture is the best in the
world. In many lines we do excel, and we rejoice
thereat. But it is still a very common experience to
ask for the best in shop or salesroom, and find our
selves pricing an imported product. I want to hail
the day when any purchaser seeks the best he is sure
to be offered an American product.
N Not so very far from Providence, a few months ago,
I visited a factory in a line of production in which my
own state of Ohio is conspicuous, and in which line
France and England are famous for their excellence.
There was a most unusual spirit in this American plant,
and I talked with workmen to get its meaning. "Oh,
sir," said one employee, "this is a fine shop in which
to work. We are resolved to surpass the world, and
we are doing it." Later on I caught the reflex from
the directing head. I had seen the wares and paid my
tribute of admiration. When I remarked that we had
seemingly larger plants in my own state, he said simply
but with inspiriting pride : "Oh, yes ! Immensity is not
our goal. I felt America ought to rival if not excel
Old- World production, and we are proving it. That s
our glory."
WORKMEN NOT MERE MACHINES
My point is that the workmen in that shop were not
mere cogs in a great wheel of industry, but were liv
ing, vital, aspiring agencies in an American triumph,
who shared the pride in the achievement wrought.
[THE PROBLEMS OF BUSINESS 201.
I have cited it before, but am tempted to repeat in
the very midst of appeals to our treasury for generous
loans, one appealing nation in Europe was proposing
to loan thirty millions to a South American state, with
the avowed purpose of favoring the trade relations. I
do not criticize the European state, I cite the instance
to remind ourselves of the importance now and ever of
thinking of America first.
I would like to drive home the truth of the larger
sponsorship of the captain of industry of to-day for
the weal or woe of every community. In the com
plexity of modern development we have the x grouped
activity, and the inter-dependence of the many in col
lective endeavor. In olden days a producer could stop
without halting the great procession. Nowadays the
paralysis of one group hinders the whole.
HUMANISM SHOULD BE DEVELOPED
Conditions have been evolved where the tendency is
to get away from the human side, when it ought to be
more intimately considered. That is why business has
been brought into closer contact with government,
though business itself has inherited a freedom from
the very beginning of civilization.
Government has been called to halt monopoly, and
strike at assumed privilege, and end exploitation.
Some times it has gone too far in interference, but
there had to be a commanding voice in opposition to
greed and greed s unmindfulness. The disappointment
has been in the tendency to punish the offending while
seeking out those who really offended. And into the
202 REDEDICATING AMERICA
well-meant effort to effect through government what
individual conscience refused to do, has come the in
trusion of socialist and revolutionist in government
interference, until government itself has come to need
reformation to rid it of reformers. The greatest men
ace in America to-day comes from those who have
crept into service in the name of patriotism and seek
in positions of authority to undermine the system
which has made us what we are. I believe the repub
lic is more endangered by the invasion of public service
by the peaceful socialist than it is threatened by the
radical who seeks destruction by force.
MANY COMMISSIONS USELESS
Countless inspections and endless reports, and ex
pert interference are not so much designed to improve
as they are calculated to destroy. It is my observation
that a righteous law is more effective and far less
costly than a score of commissions, and no factor in
American life is so responsive to law s requirements
as industry and commerce.
No one is so menacing to material success and its at
tending human progress as the fine theorist who never
trimmed a lamp of experience. No man has a good
right to criticize business until he knows something
about it. No theorizing agent of government or prog
ress is fitted to prescribed rules of manufacture until
he has learned the ways of production from experi
ence and trod the paths of pay rolls and paid other ob
ligations. If government is to be insistent on direct
ing business, it must have somebody connected with its
activities who knows about business.
THE PROBLEMS OF BUSINESS. 203
I do not mean that business should dominate gov
ernment. No class, no group in the republic shall
dominate the government. Nor need business expect
special privilege. It deserves a square deal, no more,
no less, and that is the inviolable right of everybody
under the Constitution. But I know of no reason why
business or manufacturing success should make a man
ineligible to advise or to serve in a befitting govern
ment capacity. On the other hand, a success in one
endeavor doesn t prove a man s infallible capacity.
Many a dollar-a-year man came to government aid in
patriotic fervor, and wasn t worth one-half his cost.
TOO MUCH REGULATION
We shackled, regulated, restrained, reproved and
revised during the war, and it was accepted as a war
necessity, but now we are at peace, actual peace if not
formal peace, and it is time to unshackle. We need
vastly more production than we do regulation, and we
need the restored freedom of business and men.
There will be no return to pre-war conditions in in
dustry or commerce. The world has been in upheaval.
For us the rutted paths of trade have been wiped out
and new avenues await. Old industrial proportions
have been effaced, and capital and workmen are facing
a new order. The larger wage will abide it has been
the legacy of war since our republic began. If there
comes with the larger compensation to workmen not
only restored but enhanced efficiency, it will mark a
splendid advancement. Without the added efficiency
it will prove a backward step.
204 REDEDICATING AMERICA
MINIMIZED PRODUCTION DESTRUCTIVE
Minimized production is only a little less destructive
than acquirement through force and seizure, and the
heresy of life and ease, without work, challenges the
very fundamentals of human life and achievement.
Let Russia make her experiment in soviet democracy.
The tragedy is deepened by the abridgement of liberty,
and the end of security, but her masses are driven so
hard and for such long hours that they haven t the
time to realize it. Her great experiment has failed in
every attempt in all recorded history, and will fail
again, because it ignores the gift of genius, the might
of industry and the power of thrift.
Meanwhile it is ours to cling to that which has made
us what we are. We mean to preserve liberty, and lib
erty s highest gift is opportunity. Ours is equal op
portunity to all men and reward according to merit.
It is the underlying foundation of industrial America.
Its inspiration led us in outstripping the world in in
dustrial development and founded a commerce which
America may becomingly boast.
I want the government to preserve it, and bid the
sons of this republic to go on to achievement. Oppor
tunity and protection in righteous acquirement was a
covenant of the fathers, and I want the nation to pre
serve the contract made in the American beginning.
Keeping contracts is one of the higher functions of
government and men. Kept contracts between nations
would have made the world war impossible. Kept con
tracts ought to be the guaranty of industrial peace.
THE PROBLEMS OF BUSINESS 205
COLLECTIVE BARGAINING FAVORED
I believe in the collective bargaining of workmen,
so long as it does not deny any American the fulness
of his freedom. But the bargain must be binding on
all parties to the contract. In the evolution of indus
trial conditions that must be established. More, the
government which thinks of America first will seek
the establishment of some great and just tribunal at
home which will end all conflict in production and
distribution, which will make sure of full justice and
make paralysis impossible, and that act alone will con
tribute more to world peace and world advancement
than any dream of internationalism and attending
American sponsorship for Old- World troubles.
INCREASED PRODUCTION NEEDED
Production is the call of the world to-day. It is
the one, and only one agency, of world restoration.
Out of production in the fields and farms, out of
manufacture in the workshop, out of wealth in the
mines must come the correction of empty purses and
depleted treasuries of European peoples. It will be
the supreme conflict of peace for the needed recovery.
Self-preservation will impel. There is no need to re
strict or destroy at home. We shall play the big Amer
ican part by adding to our power and widening our in
fluence and continuing our development, under the se
curities of representative popular government, and
prove to the world that liberty lies in the supremacy
of law, and orderly government is humanity s best in
heritance.
CHAPTER XV
THE EXCESS PROFITS TAX
Address in the United States Senate, Feb
ruary 27, 19 if
IT has not been my thought at any time, Mr. Presi
dent, to cry out against placing the just burdens of
taxation on the wealth of the land, I do not know that
wealth, corporate or individual, has been more clamor
ous in the cause of preparedness than any other ele
ment in our American life. I do not think it has more
at stake. I do know from personal observation that
those who represent both corporate and individual
wealth are ever ready to bear their just burdens of tax
ation ; and it goes without the saying that corporate
wealth is the most available we have to reach in the
normal processes of taxation, particularly by the state
or local subdivision. Its tangible property is as readily
reached as any other, and in the modern processes of
reporting corporate possessions its tangible holdings
are made more evident than that of any individual
holder. So, then, in the normal processes of collecting
taxes wealth encounters its just burdens under the
ordinary procedure.
HEAVY TAX BURDEN NECESSARY
In recent years there has grown up a process of
adding extra tax burdens, some of which I have no
desire to complain against. I think most of them have
206
THE EXCESS PROFITS TAX 207
been accepted without complaint, and if it were neces
sary to provide for the national defense, or if it were
necessary in a time of emergency to meet the vast
extraordinary expenditures incident to war, I believe
there would be no serious complaint at the most
extraordinary proposal made in the pending bill.
But I am objecting to it, Mr. President, as I stated
yesterday, first, because it is unnecessary; second,
because it is class taxation, and very unfair and danger
ous as well; and third, because it is utterly imprac
ticable to make a just imposition and collection of the
taxes.
WHAT CONSTITUTES REAL CAPITAL
For the moment, that section which has been passed
over in the consideration of the Committee of the
Whole I want to revert to. I refer to the conflict made
manifest in our legislation regarding what constitutes
the real capital of a corporation. Last September,
when we passed a revenue act levying corporations
throughout the land, we provided not only in the law,
but in the administration of it, since, that a fair value
of capital stock should be the value of the stock itself,
and the surplus and undivided profits. The Inter
nal Revenue Department, in securing the necessary
statements for the levying of this tax, has passed a
rule that certain intangibles shall be included in the
assets of the corporations in order to fix the value on
which it must pay this tax.
I alluded yesterday to the fact that the statement
required of a corporation calls for monthly quotations
208 REDEDICATING AMERICA
of the market value of the stock. I think it is manifest
to such senators as are interested in the subject that
one can not dependably fix the value of a stock by the
market quotations. There are sometimes outside in
fluences that give a momentary value to capital stock
that is quite out of proportion to its real value. I
need not enumerate the various influences which may
bring about such a situation, and it would be very diffi
cult for any government agency to undertake to assess
or fix a valuation on the various stocks of the cor
porate organizations of this land by means of market
quotations, and any process of valuation would be even
more difficult.
Noting that perfectly impossible undertaking, I have
wished to suggest to the sponsors for this bill that
they provide an amendment and say if we are to have
this eight per cent, tax on the profits in excess of eight
per cent, on the capital stock, the amount of capital of
the institution shall be accepted in accordance with the
representation of its value made under the revenue act
of last September. Surely the government does not
expect one line of reporting putting a high valuation
on the assets of a corporation for the purpose of col
lecting a tax on the stock issued, and then reverse its
policy and put a low valuation on the capital stock
in order to minimize the exemption from the excess
profits tax.
I am repeating this point which I hope in some way
unknown to me will reach the ears of the sponsors
for this bill. It would be a fair and perfectly logical
thing to do, and would eliminate from the proposed
THE EXCESS PROFITS TAX 209
law the uncertainties and the unending conflict of
fixing a value upon which there shall be exemptions
from the proposed tax.
LOOKING FORWARD TO PEACE
Mr. President, I do not mean to revert again fo A
thing that is so much in my mind, namely, the avoid
ance of a measure like this if the party to which I
belong were able to write the revenue laws. I am
very well aware that neither Congress nor the public
is deeply interested just now in a tariff discussion.
About the only thing that awakens our lively interest
is something relating to the great world conflict which
is now raging, and the possible involvement of our
own nation. It is a rather prosy thing to discuss so
selfish and materialistic a proposition as the industrial
and business interests of our own country. But never
theless, Mr. President, unless the world has gone hope
lessly mad there must soon come an end to this conflict,
and whatever may be the result in the adjustment of
peace, there must come the after-conflict which grows
out of the ambitions and rivalries of commercial and
industrial nations.
Marked as must be the anxiety of the allied powers
on whose commerce the submarine warfare is now
being waged without mercy or consideration, anxious
as must be the European nations which are involved
in this unspeakable conflict, it is a fact nevertheless,
Mr. President, that throughout the anxieties and trials
there is being given serious thought to what must be
the industrial and commercial aftermath.
I was very much interested to read, not very long
210 REDEDICATING AMERICA
since, a statement by Lloyd George that no matter how
enormous must be the figures which represent the cost
of the conflict to Great Britain, the people of England
were in a large part compensated by the industrial
awakening which has come through the war, that they
had scrapped their antiquated methods, they had in
stilled a new spirit and developed new strength in
their industrial enterprises, and that they were better
prepared on that account to enter the conflicts of the
peace of the world which are to come, much better
fitted to reestablish themselves than they were to hold
their own before the war came.
BUSINESS SHOULD BE ENCOURAGED
Only within a day or two I was very much interested
to read that aside from the spiritual awakening of
France and a rebirth of patriotism in that country,
there was compensation in the war in that it had
brought new application, new concern, and new de
velopment in the industrial resources of France, so
that France, too, is looking forward hopefully to its
part in the conflicts or the contests of peace which are
to come after the war.
I need not speak of the policy of the industrial pre
paredness of the Imperial Government, or the land
rather, of Germany. The wonderful development
of Germany has made it the most formidable com
mercial rival of the United States that we had, and I
think it is not unfair to say that the formidable char
acter of the German development had its part in bring
ing about the war which is now waging.
These contemplations, Mr. President, lead me to
JHE EXCESS PROFITS TAX 211
the point I am seeking to make, namely, that instead
of penalizing organized efforts in the United States
under corporate form, instead of levying an unjust
burden on success in this country, it would be well
for these United States even now, when the mind of
the world is focused on war, to give a thought to the
promotion of our own preparedness for the contests
which are soon to follow.
It is not possible, of course, in a short session of
Congress, and would not be possible in the long session
with the present majority in control, to rewrite the
tariff laws of this country. I shall not be greatly sur
prised, however, if in the providence of political ma
jorities the dominant party continues in control, that
its representatives may be forced to rewrite the tariff
laws of the country. But I recognize the impossibility
at this session of securing a revision. I regret that the
party to which I belong can offer nothing constructive
at this time as a substitute for the pending measure.
FOREIGN PRODUCER SHOULD ASSIST
But I have said the essential thing, Mr. President,
that under the Republican policy of protection along
lines of duties which existed under the last Republican
protective measure we would be collecting on the
present imports of the United States of America
essentially a quarter of a billion dollars more than we
collect under existing laws. In my judgment it would
be a wise policy to put that burden of a quarter of a
billion on the foreign producer who seeks the Ameri
can market and take off, or rather hold from, the
American producer the quarter of a biUion that is
212 REDEDICATING AMERICA
proposed to be put on him as a class tax under the
enactment of this law.
Mr. President, I was very much interested when I
first came to the Senate, some fifteen months ago, to
hear the discussion which took place at the time re
lating to the extension of the so-called war emergency
tax. I was very greatly impressed by a^ remark made
by the junior senator from Alabama (Mr. Under
wood), whom I esteem so highly that I do not quote
him in any contentious mood.
I heard the senator say, Mr. President, last Decem
ber, in defense of the tariff measure which bears his
name, that we, meaning the Democratic party or the
majority in Congress, had enacted a bit of legislation
which has taken the burdens of taxation from the
backs of the people who are less able to bear them, and
have put those burdens on those who are best fitted to
bear them. I assume that the latter statement makes
reference to the income tax, with which, I may empha
size, I am finding no fault, Mr. President, but I do not
accept the statement of the senator from Alabama that
he took the burdens from those less able to bear them,
because experience, which is proof beyond all dispute,
shows that the burdens were not removed, and whether
war be altogether to blame or not, there has been a
constant increase in the cost of the necessities of life,
not only during the pending war but for many months
prior to its outbreak.
PROTECTIVE TARIFF NEEDED
I do not believe, Mr. President, that it is within the
genius of any statesman who ever lived to reduce the
[THE EXCESS PROFITS TAX 213
Cos? of living by any reduction of the tariff. You can
never reduce the cost of living except as you reduce
capacity to live. So, then, if I may bring myself back
to the theme which I have in mind, I wish it were pos
sible to turn from the policy of putting a perfectly
needless and unjustifiable burden on the corporate and
partnership industries of the country, and collect it,
as we have from almost time immemorial under Re
publican policies, from those who enter into competi
tion for our American prosperity.
However, Mr. President, that alone is nof my point.
There is pending in this body a measure known as the
Webb Bill, recommended by the chief executive, de
signed to encourage the cooperation of the markets of
the world. I will be very glad to vote for that measure
myself. I can see the necessity for it. We have
reached an age of big things in the world. We have
gotten away from the time when the individual is the
chief factor in our productive and commercial life. If
you want to find the individual with a small undertak
ing, who is accomplishing even a little in the world,
you must go to the very outskirts of civilization.
I remember last year, or the year before, I was trav
eling in northern Canada on a fishing trip, and away
up on the outskirts of civilization I found an old-
fashioned shoemaker who was taking orders and indi
vidual measurements and making boots and shoes after
the method that prevailed in this country about forty
years ago. That would not be possible in the state of
Maryland or Pennsylvania or New Jersey. He had
gotten away beyond the contacts of active civilization,
and there the individual was still thriving with its lit-
214 REDEDICATING AMERICA
tie industry ; but in our greater American activities we
have come to the age of great things, and these great
accomplishments have been wrought by the association
of capital and men.
I think, Mr. President, that that process, if we mean
to hold America in its eminence, ought to be encour
aged, and not penalized, as the pending bill proposes,
and I can not understand why Congress will propose
such a thing. If there were any avoidance of payment
of the burdens which properly belong to these organ
izations, if they were a hurt or a hindrance to our
American progress, instead of being a contributing
agency, then such a course might well be justified ; but
these institutions are the things which make us what
we are.
BUSINESS NEEDS ENCOURAGEMENT
There is not a community in the United States, Mr.
President, to-day that would not hold a jollification
meeting if some one were able to announce the coming
of a new corporate organization that would establish
an industry in that community. I have heard the la
mentation in the city of Washington, this great capital,
in the press and in certain circles, that one of the draw
backs to the capital city, and one of the difficulties in
finding sufficient tax values to make the District s treas
ury show as it ought, lies in the fact that it has not any
industrial institutions. I have never grieved at that
myself. I have thought perhaps the capital city would
answer the aspirations of the American people better
if it were distinctly a capital city rather than a typical
American industrial city.
THE EXCESS PROFITS TAX 215
The point I am trying to get at is that the Congress
of the United States, instead of adding this excessive
class burden, ought to reverse the policy absolutely,
and seek to find means for the encouragement and the
upholding of the arms of American industry at a time
when we are soon to face the new competition of the
world.
That is not alone, Mr. President, because we have
held a distinctly peculiar position ; it is more partic
ularly because, through the fortunes of the world in
volvement and our being thus far able to hold our
selves aloof, we have accumulated the great bulk of the
gold of the world; and the nation that is able to buy
offers the inviting market. The contending nations of
Europe, no matter what the terms of peace may be,
must rehabilitate themselves, and they are going to seek
this market, and the ingenuity and the methods long
since proven and the desperation of the situation are
going to give Europe a hold on American markets. I
had rather vote for a revenue system, Mr. President,
that will hold American markets for Americans, first,
rather than add unfair burdens to those who are seek
ing to hold these markets with their own activities.
Let us aim to hold them our very own rather than open
them up to the assaults of the competition of the earth.
WASHINGTON S ADVICE APPLICABLE
It is only a day or two since we were reading the
farewell address of the father of our country. I won
der how many of you caught the significance of a
phrase in that farewell address. I think it applies to
the thing of which I am speaking. Washington said,
216 REDEDICATING AMERICA
in substance: "Our people must ever be on guard
against the misrepresentations which come of envy and
jealousy, for these tend to render alien to one another
those who ought to be bound in the ties of fraternity/
I wonder if he did not mean those who preached the
gospel of envy and hate ; those who appealed to class
prejudice; those who make their appeals to the less
successful, who are inevitably and ever will be in the
majority. There is no help for that. I do not know
whether you want to question the wisdom of God Al
mighty; I will not: but He did not create men with
equal ability, and He did not endow men alike with
enterprise and industry and thrift. There ever will be
these differences, and I had rather do something to
compose them, so far as I can, than to make an utter
ance or to vote for a class of legislation which tends to
magnify those differences.
TAX IS PENALTY ON SUCCESS
Why object to the proposed tax? This eight per
cent, tax on excess profits is a penalty on success, and
I make bold to say, Mr. President, that eight per cent,
profit on a man s investment is not sufficient if you ex
pect to have any further American development. Mr.
President, I am myself an advocate of a fairer division
of the profits of production in these United States, and
if I knew how to do it, I would be standing here now
advocating some system which would result in a fairer
division between capital and labor of the profits of
their cooperation. That is an entirely different ques
tion, however, from a government penalty on success,
and I make bold to say that if eight per cent, is to be.
THE EXCESS PROFITS TAX 217
the limitation of profits for developing capital in this
country, American development will soon come to a
standstill. Eight per cent, money never lighted a fur
nace fire in these United States ; eight per cent, money
never laid a rail or stretched a wire or opened a mine.
Eight per cent, return is big for conservative capital
which is in the greater abundance, but conservative
capital is of the type that picks out a demonstrated
possibility, and then invests in the thing that is already
developed, sometimes adding to its increment through
increased efficiency that may well be applied; but
American development has been wrought by capital
which makes its venture in the hope of a larger earn
ing than eight per cent.
Look at the banker. The average American banker
is well satisfied with six per cent, on his capital and a
guaranty against loss; but, Senators, American de
velopment has its chance to take; there is the ad
venture of business, and our remarkable development
in the last sixty years, which is ten times that of any
other nation on the face of the earth, is due to this
spirit of gambling in the human being whereby a man
is willing to take his capital and add to it his energies
and his genius and his pluck and determination in the
hope that the combination of these things will result in
a profitable achievement. That is what has made us
what we are.
CHAPTER XVI
AUTO-INTOXICATION
Address before Baltimore Press Club at Baltimore,
Maryland, February $, 1920
THE doctors of medicine frequently diagnose a very
common human ill as auto-intoxication. The symp
toms are restlessness, irritability, often a disturbed
circulation, sometimes a temperature, and always an
incapacity to do things. Auto-intoxication is poison ab
sorbed from within. Incorrect or excessive diet prob
ably contributes, impaired elimination magnifies the
ailment. Prognosis is not difficult. The trouble is
seldom fatal, but it is distressing.
Sometimes I think our country has a bad case of
auto-intoxication. Many people urge that our ills are
largely traceable to the influence of the foreigner.
The major troubles do not come from that source,
and never will unless we attempt to digest supergovern-
ment of the world, and there is no danger of that since
the Senate has resumed its constitutional functions.
TOO MUCH HIGH LIVING
The poison which disturbs the nerves and makes
restless and irritable the American body politic doesn t
originate in the foreigner who has come among us,
but you can trace that ailment to the American-born
218
AUTO-INTOXICATION 219<
revolutionist or the agitator cloaked in adopted citizen
ship who plays upon the credulity or the ignorance of
his foreign victim.
Our auto-intoxication is due in the main to the high
living and the excesses and abnormal indulgences inci
dent to war, when there was little repose and impaired
elimination. I do not know that I can prescribe the
cure, but I know a way to remove the cause. Stop
the excesses, omit the indigestible things, get to the
healthful exercise of honest toil, give nature a change
with pure air and physical activity and take a stimulant
to aid elimination, along with a bit of practical mental
science which all doctors agree is helpful in curing all
bodily ills.
Break the shackles of war-time legislation for
both business and citizens, because the war is actually
ended, no matter how much delayed is the formal
declaration of peace. Cut out the extravagance of
government and individuals, give us the normal ways
of government and of men, and the cure will be
effected.
BACK TO THE CONSTITUTION
It will speed the restoration to get back to the Con
stitution, and stand on it immovably. This great funda
mental law of the United States of America is un
matched in all constructive effort to establish popular
government since the world began. It made us what
we are. No one has proposed a substitute that has
any guaranty of liberty. No one disputes that it and
its guaranties apply to every man precisely alike, and
every man in America who doesn t subscribe heartily
220 REDEDICATING AMERICA
and loyally to the Constitution ought to go to Russia
or some other land of tragic experiment. In the ful
ness of our liberty he has the freedom to choose, but
if he stays to enjoy American advantages he must
subscribe to the fundamental law on which our orderly
government is founded.
No one proposes to modify our representative de
mocracy. No pure democracy has survived since civi
lization dawned. Ours is representative, where de
pendable and intelligent public opinion is crystallized
into law, and political parties are the agencies through
which public opinion is expressed, and are the spon
sors for the kept pledges of public utterance. Ours
is a government by party, and he who advocates the
abandonment of the system proposes a departure from
the Constitution and invites the instability of personal
government which has been destructive to every re
public since popular government was first conceived.
PARTY GOVERNMENT NECESSARY
Those who complain at the inefficiency of party
government are really criticizing the substitute which
they propose, because every weakness of the present
day is chargeable to the impaired party system.
Partisanship can be put aside for a great national
emergency, when the menace comes from without,
as the great war has proven, but party sponsorship
is the guaranty of accomplishment in meeting the
problems of peace. In the things which were heralded
as reforms, we have impaired party effectiveness, and
Washington reveals it to-day as never before. Wash
ington and Jefferson were believers in parties, so was
AUTO-INTOXICATION 221
Hamilton the genius of the formative period. Lincoln
was a partisan in the extreme, and it helped rather
than hindered the mighty achievement which pre
served union and nationality. Grover Cleveland was a
staunch believer in party government and left the
stamp of the greatest Democrat of his time on the
progress of his day. McKinley was a notable advocate
of party sponsorship, and wrought his great achieve
ments through party councils and attending responsi
bility. Roosevelt was no less an advocate of party
agency, and when he challenged the course of his
party he led the organization of another, because party
is essential to translate public opinion into the laws and
policies of the republic. When failure attended, he
instantly recommitted himself to the Republican party,
resolved to cure its weaknesses, because there was
no other course to the accomplishment he sought.
HEART OF AMERICA STILL SOUND
To alter our political system now, after the marvel
of American achievement, would be the abandonment
of that which made us what we are, and endangers
the republic more than the threat of destruction by
force. Of course, it will not succeed. The Constitu
tion abides. The heart of the republic is right. Let
the world reveal its restlessness, and experiment as it
will. These United States will cling to the liberties
which are magnified in restraint, and hold fast to the
inheritance of the inspired fathers. Having wrought
to the astonishment and admiration of the world and
the matchless advancement of our own people in less
than a century and a half, we will move confidently
222 REDEDICATING AMERICA
on, unafraid, to a greater and more glorious fulfill
ment.
It is ours to excel our shipping of the early days
of the republic. We ought to have possessed a mer
chant marine when war involved us. Ample shipping
then would have shortened the conflict a year and
saved millions of lives and billions in treasure. We
must have a great merchant marine for the future.
In war s anxiety and unavoidable extravagance we
builded millions of tons of shipping. It isn t worth
all it cost, but it is the greatest physical asset the war
preparation has left us. We must make it the agency
of greater commercial prestige, the prestige of a right
eous commerce. We must take these ships out of the
inefficiency of government ownership and let them be
come the instruments of widened American activities
and influence in the hands of private enterprise.
GOVERNMENT OWNERSHIP OPPOSED
We may as well settle the issue of government
ownership. It is poor compromise with paralyzing
socialism, and America will not have it. We must not
only have the initiative and efficiency of private opera
tion, fittingly subject to governmental needs, but we
need the inspiration as well, and government aid in
the successful inauguration of the needed lines for
trade. A government that has expended billions with
out heed for shipping need never hesitate a helping
government hand in giving us a merchant marine
which will be the highest agency of good fortune in
peace and is a proven necessity amid the perils of war.
Let our ship be the bearer of the American message
of peace and amity to all the world.
CHAPTER XVII
BACK TO NORMAL
Address before Home Market Club at Boston,
Massachusetts, May 14,
THERE isn t anything the matter with world civiliza
tion, except that humanity is viewing it through a
vision impaired in a cataclysmal war. Poise has been
disturbed and nerves have been racked, and fever has
rendered men irrational; sometimes there have been
draughts upon the dangerous cup of barbarity and
men have wandered far from safe paths, but the hu
man procession still marches in the right direction.
Here, in the United States, we feel the reflex, rather
than the hurting wound, but we still think straight,
and we mean to act straight, and mean to hold firmly
to all that was ours when war involved us, and seek
the higher attainments which are the only compensa
tions that so supreme a tragedy may give mankind.
NORMAL CONDITIONS GREAT NEED
America s present need is not heroics, but healing;
not nostrums but normalcy ; not revolution, but restor
ation ; not agitation, but adjustment ; not surgery, but
serenity ; not the dramatic, but the dispassionate ; not
experiment, but equipoise; not submergence in inter-
nationality, but sustainment in triumphant nationality.
223
224 REDEDICATING AMERICA
It is one thing to battle successfully against world
domination by military autocracy, because the infinite
God never intended such a program, but it is quite
another thing to revise human nature and suspend
the fundamental laws of life and all of life s acquire
ments.
FORMAL PEACE SOUGHT
The world called for peace, and has its precarious
variety. America demands peace, formal as well as
actual, and means to have it, regardless of political
exigencies and campaign issues. If it must be a
campaign issue, we shall have peace and discuss it
afterward, because the actuality is imperative, and the
theory is only illusive. Then we may set our own
house in order. We challenged the proposal that an
armed autocrat should dominate the world; it ill be
comes us to assume that a rhetorical autocrat shall
direct all humanity.
This republic has its ample tasks. If we put an end
to false economics which lure humanity to utter chaos,
ours will be the commanding example of world leader
ship to-day. If we can prove a representative popular
government under which a citizenship seeks what
it may do for the government rather than what the
government may do for individuals, we shall do more
to make democracy safe for the world than all armed
conflict ever recorded. The world needs to be re
minded that all human ills are not curable by legisla
tion, and that quantity of statutory enactment and ex
cess of government offer no substitute for quality of
citizenship.
BACK TO NORMAL 225
SHOULD SEEK UNDERSTANDING
The problems of maintained civilization are not to
be solved by a transfer of responsibility from citizen
ship to government, and no eminent page in history
was ever drafted by the standards of mediocrity.
More, no government is worthy of the name which
is directed by influence on the one hand, or moved by
intimidation on the other.
Nothing is more vital to this republic to-day than
clear and intelligent understanding. Men must under
stand one another, and government and men must
understand each other. For emergence from the
wreckage of war, for the clarification of fevered minds,
we must all give and take, we must both sympathize
and inspire, but must learn griefs and aspirations,
we must seek the common grounds of mutuality.
WORK IS SOLUTION
There can be no disguising everlasting truths.
Speak it plainly, no people ever recovered from the
distressing waste of war except through work and
denial. There is no other way. We shall make no
recovery in seeking how little men can do, our restora
tion lies in doing the most which is reasonably possible
for individuals to do. Under production and hateful
profiteering are both morally criminal, and must be
combated. America can not be content with minimums
of production to-day, the crying need is maximums.
If we may have maximums of production we shall
have minimums of cost, and profiteering will be
speeded to its deserved punishment. Money values
226 REDEDICATING AMERICA
are not destroyed, they are temporarily distorted. War
wasted hundreds of billions, and depleted world store
houses, and cultivated new demands, and it hardened
selfishness and gave awakening touch to elemental
greed. Humanity needs renewed consecrations to
what we call fellow citizenship.
Out of the supreme tragedy must come a new order
and a higher order, and I gladly acclaim it. But war
has not abolished work, has not established the pro
cesses of seizure or the rule of physical might. Nor
has it provided a governmental panacea for human ills,
or the magic touch that makes failure a success. In
deed, it has revealed no new reward for idleness, no
substitute for the sweat of a man s face in the contest
for subsistence and acquirement.
SUPREMACY OF LAW
There is no new appraisal for the supremacy of law.
That is a thing surpassing and eternal. A contempt
for international law wrought the supreme tragedy,
contempt for our national and state laws will rend
the glory of the republic, and failure to abide the
proven, laws of to-day s civilization will lead to tem
porary chaos.
No one need doubt the ultimate result, because im
mutable laws have challenged the madness of all ex
periment. But we are living to-day, and it is ours to
save ourselves from colossal blunder and its excessive
penalty.
BACK TO NORMAL 227
PRODUCTION IS GREAT NEED
My best judgment of America s needs is to steady
down, to get squarely on our feet, to make sure of the
right path. Let s get out of the fevered delirium of
war, with the hallucination that all the money in
the world is to be made in the madness of war and
the wildness of its aftermath. Let us stop to consider
that tranquillity at home is more precious than peace
abroad, and that both our good fortune and our emi
nence are dependent on the normal forward stride of
all the American people.
Nothing is so imperative to-day as efficient produc
tion and efficient transportation, to adjust the balances
in our own transactions and to hold our place in the
activities of the world. The relation of real values is
little altered by the varying coins of exchange, and
that American is blind to actualities who thinks we can
add to cost of production without impairing our hold
in world markets. Our part is more than to hold, we
must add to what we have.
It is utter folly to talk about reducing the cost of liv
ing without restored and increased efficiency or produc
tion on the one hand and more prudent consumption on
the other. No law will work the miracle. Only the
American people themselves can solve the situation.
There must be the conscience of capital in omitting
profiteering, there must be the conscience of labor in
efficiently producing, there must be a public con
science in restricting outlay and promoting thrift.
Sober capital must make appeal to intoxicated
wealth, and thoughtful labor must appeal to the radical
228 REDEDICATING AMERICA
who has no thought of the morrow, to effect the
needed understanding. Exacted profits, because the
golden stream is flooding, and pyramided wages to
meet a mounting cost that must be halted, will speed
us to disaster just as sure as the morrow comes, and
we ought to think soberly and avoid it. We ought to
dwell in the heights of good fortune for a generation
to come, and I pray that we will, but we need a bene
diction of wholesome common sense to give us that
assurance.
SOBER THINKING URGED
I pray for sober thinking in behalf of the future
of America. No worth-while republic ever went the
tragic way to destruction, which did not begin the
downward course through luxury of life and extrava
gance of living. More, the simple living and thrifty
people will be the first to recover from a war s waste
and all its burdens, and our people ought to be the first
recovered. Herein is greater opportunity than lies in
alliance, compact or supergovernment. It is America s
chance to lead in example and prove to the world the
reign of reason in representative popular government
where people think who assume to rule.
No overall fad will quicken our thoughtfulness.
We might try repairs on the old clothes and simplicity
for the new. I know the tendency to wish the thing
denied, I know the human hunger for a new thrill,
but denial enhances the ultimate satisfaction, and
stabilizes our indulgence. A blase people 13 the un-
happiest in all the world.
BACK TO NORMAL;" 229
It seems to me singularly appropriate to address
this membership an additional word about production.
I believe most cordially in the home market first for
the American product. There is no other way to
assure our prosperity. I rejoice in our normal ca
pacity to consume our rational, healthful consumption.
SAVE AMERICA FIRST*
We have protected our home market with war s
barrage. But the barrage has lifted with the passing of
the war. The American people will not heed to-day,
because world competition is not yet restored, but
the morrow will soon come when the world will seek
our markets and our trade balances, and we must
think of America first or surrender our eminence.
The thought is not selfish. We want to share with
the world in seeking becoming restoration. But
peoples will trade and seek wealth in their exchanges,
and every conflict in the adjustment of peace was
founded on the hope of promoting trade conditions.
I heard expressed, before the Foreign Relations Com
mittee of the Senate, the aspirations of nationality and
the hope of commerce to develop and expand aspiring
peoples. Knowing that those two thoughts are in
spiring all humanity, as they have since civilization
began, I can only marvel at the American who consents
to surrender either. There may be conscience, hu
manity and justice in both, and without them the
glory of the republic is done. I want to go on, secure
and unafraid, holding fast to the American inheritance
and confident of the supreme American fulfillment.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS
Address in the United States Senate Friday,
January 28, 1916.
MR. PRESIDENT I have felt, naturally, the diffidence
of a new member in undertaking to participate in
the debate on the pending measure relating to the
Philippine Islands. I have listened with that reverence
which must come to one who is new in this chamber
to the progress of the debate with rather conflicting
emotions, until I have finally reached the conclusion
that one from Ohio ought at least to give a reason for
his vote, that one who comes from the state of him
who led in placing our flag in the Philippines, and
from the state of him who laid the foundation of our
American civilization there, ought at least to voice
his protest against the proposed bill.
We are not moved in Ohio by that fear of the greed
of the East, as suggested by the senator from Arkan
sas, nor is the undercurrent of our dependable thought
materially changed by the clamorous call for radical
reformation. I think the current of thought in the
great Middle West goes unerringly on, uninfluenced by
either. Our judgment, as I have seen it attested in
Ohio, is that the United States of America has no
right and has no reason to extend a benevolent pro-
230
THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS 231
tectorate over the Philippine Islands without control,
and I, for one, Mr. President and Senators, mean to
vote against the pending bill.
There is a very familiar expression, Mr. President,
originally uttered by a very distinguished member of
this body long since gone. I think he was at the time
troubled with the problem of the resumption of specie
payments. In the course of his discussion of the
problem in an administrative capacity, he uttered that
famous dictum, "The way to resume is to resume";
and I want to say that the way to grant Philippine
independence is to grant it. If I should use the
language sometimes used on the streets, I would say
the practical way to grant the Philippine Islands their
independence is to let them work out their own des
tiny.
AMERICA HAS OBLIGATION
When the pending measure of the senator from
Nebraska was first under discussion in the Senate,
the debate took rather a curious turn. I was very
much interested in the persistent use of the word "self-
government." Well, Mr. President, self-government
is one thing and popular self-government is quite
another thing. If we mean to grant the Philippine
Islands their independence, it is none of our business
what kind of government they have. It may well be
an autocracy ; it may be a despotism ; they may prefer
a dictatorship; or they may, and most likely will,
attempt a republic like that of China, which recently
flashed a moment on the firmament of republics as a
sort of triumph of rational over dollar diplomacy,
232 REDEDICATING AMERICA
and then again faded from the firmament. What
business is it of ours if the Filipino people have the
inalienable right of independence what kind of govern
ment they may choose to have? We accepted the
sponsorship ; and if that is binding, we have no right to
set them adrift. If it is not binding, the majority in
this chamber ought to vote unanimously to set them
adrift at the earliest possible day; and I warn you,
Senators on the opposite side of the house, that you
are breeding trouble for the United States of America
every day you delay doing so under the promises of
the Democratic party.
But, Mr. President, the question now on the amend
ment pending is not one on the character of govern
ment in the Philippine Islands ; it is not what sort of a
basic law or fundamental government we shall pre
scribe for them ; it has come to be the great question of
Philippine independence, and I am opposed to it, Mr.
President, for two striking reasons. In the first place,
the granting of Philippine independence changes the
policy of the government of the United States of
America from the very beginning. In the second
place, it alters a policy of the United States of America
for the last seventeen years, under which we have
made the most magnificent contribution to the history
of unselfish nationality or the unselfishness of nations
that has ever been written.
NOT SEEKING TERRITORY
There is this to say of the United States of America :
We are the first nation on the face of the earth that
ever unsheathed the sword on behalf of suffering hu-
THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS 233
manity. We did that in Cuba in 1898. Perhaps
some one will question the statement. I grant that
Congress in making its declaration of war had more
in mind an act of revenge for the destruction of the
battleship Maine; but the great kindly soul that was at
the head of this republic at that time put it on a higher
plane. He disavowed any intention of the acquirement
of territory, and literally went to war for humanity s
sake. Then, out of the fortunes of that war, we ac
quired the Philippine Islands.
Whatever else may be said and it has been wonder
fully emphasized in this debate our work in the
Philippine Islands in education, in sanitation, in ele
vation and civilization, has been the most magnificent
contribution of a nation s unselfishness ever recorded
in the history of the world. If it be true that in seven
teen years we have schooled the Filipino people until
they are quite fit for self-government, then we have
made more advance for that people in seventeen years
than they acquired in three centuries under the Spanish
occupation. But this splendid achievement, Mr. Presi
dent, has been lost sight of in the debate in this cham
ber amid a lot of fine phrases about "inalienable right"
and "God-given liberty" and "government without
the consent of the governed" until I have come to the
conclusion that the bronze statues of American Indians
that make ornate some portions of this Capitol,
would turn their stoical stares to sardonic smiles if
they could only know.
234 REDEDICATING AMERICA
NO OPPRESSION OF PHILIPPINES
Why, we have never heretofore been seriously con
cerned about the "consent of the governed." We have
not been speaking of it in a century and a third of
American progress. There has been much recalling
of the spirit of the American founding fathers. Mr.
President, the man who likens the Philippine situation
to that of the American colonies can find no real
analogy. Independence was not the inspiration of the
War of the Revolution. Nationality was not the im
pelling force back of the War of the Revolution. It
was the means of the preservation of independence
when once we had achieved it. Note the difference,
if you please. There is no ground for outcry about
oppression in the Philippines. We were grieving against
the mother country because of unjust taxation; we
were grieving because of a denial of our participation
in the commerce of the world. In the Philippine case,
if the debates on this floor have stated the facts, we
have not only kept aloof from unjust taxation, but
we have been prodigal in the expenditure of federal
funds in their behalf.
Mr. President, I somehow believe that the destiny
of this New- World republic was written by an infinite
hand in the consciousness of some divine purpose. I
can explain to myself our phenomenal progress in
no other way. I can not understand our very victory
for independence itself unless some master hand was
directing, yet we have lost sight of that important fact
in much of the discussion on this floor.
THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS 235
Mr. President, the covenant of nationality led to the
great Civil War. There is a strange significance to me
in the fact that our sovereignty in the Philippines was
instituted by that admirable, that kind, that loving, that
sympathetic American who first revealed the recon-
secration of the South to the concord of American
union. It is significant because it affirms what I be
lieve to be the course of our American destiny. Those
of you who knew him, those of you who lived as you
all did in his time, know that there was nothing
selfish, there was nothing oppressive, there was noth
ing crushing about William McKinley, and no govern
ment under him and no government of ours devoted
to his memory could have such an influence.
HONORABLE WITHDRAWAL IMPOSSIBLE
Mr. President, the debate on the Philippine bill has
served to develop the infinite difficulty of making an
honorable retirement. I think it is impossible for us
honorably to withdraw. I think it is impossible, first,
because of our obligations to the Filipino nation, so
much interested in the last quarter of a century in up
lift work, so deeply interested in the uplifting of a
downtrodden people that our unfortunate Mexican
policy of "watchful waiting" was founded on such a
design. I should dislike to think that we are anxious
to cast the Philippines adrift because of the mere fact,
if you please, that they would endanger us or add to
our responsibilities in time of war.
236 REDEDICATING AMERICA
COMMERCIAL ADVANTAGES SHOWNT
In the next place, without going further into the
discussion, I think we can not retire because of the
obligations to ourselves and to the other nations of the
earth. I do not wish to discuss, Mr. President, this
question from what seems to be a selfish view-point,
but one can not be in this chamber without catching
the aspirations of the American people. I know what
is in our hearts. It is in every official message ; some
how or other it is the desire of every patriotic Ameri
can. Here is a nation with limitless resources; here
is a nation excelling in genius; here is a nation un
matched in industry ; and everything that is proposed
in this body is designed to aid and encourage the
widening of American influence and make us a dom
inant commercial and industrial nation. Well, if
that be true, I want to ask what field, other than
South America, offers greater attractions than the
Orient? And if we are to go into the Orient for an
expansion of commerce and trade, I fancy that the
possession of these rich islands, the Philippine Archi
pelago, will be very much to our advantage.
Mr. President, there is another phase of this sub
ject which I desire to touch upon, and then I shall not
detain the Senate longer. There is not only the view
point of our covenant to the world and to civilization,
but at this particular moment this reversal of the
American policy, to my mind, would be the most un
fortunate thing that could happen to the United States
of America. I do not want it said that this great
nation, aspiring to a place in the councils of the world,
THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS 237
that this great nation, which to-day is the only one
whose voice is heard above the din of conflict in a
continental war, is so miserably afraid that it wants
to cast aside some of its possessions to avoid some of
the dangers of war. I had rather stand erect as an
American and be unafraid, and particularly at this
time when, in some way or other, most unfortu
nately, Americanism is very much derided in the Old
World. Contempt is shown for it in Mexico ; disregard
is shown for American rights on the seas. Why not,
Mr. President, reassert ourselves, not only confident
in the possession of the territory which is righteously
ours, but make it ornate with an assertion of American
ism that is befitting so great a nation.
Mr. President, I have been very much interested
in another phase of this subject. Much has been said
in the current debates relating to the dangers of co
lonial possessions. I venture to make reply that there
is not an instance in history where a colonial posses
sion proved unfortunate to the mother power, if I may
call it so, where the national heart was right.
FILIPINOS NEED AMERICA
One more phase. I do not believe that it disparages
the citizenship of the Philippine Islands to question
their capacity for self-government. I am not always
sure that we have that capacity ourselves in these
boasted United States. But whether we have or not,
the Filipino people have been accustomed to our spirit
of civilization for only seventeen years. I grant that
the islands have their college graduates; I grant that
they have their brave men, their brilliant leaders ; but
238 REDEDICATING AMERICA
Manila is not the Philippine Islands. I grant, Mr.
President, that there are 600,000 children in the schools
of the islands, rollicking in a laughter that is the echo
of our own in these United States, and walking in the
light of opening opportunity. But 600,000 in the
schools out of a population of 8,000,000 is a mighty
poor guarantee of a dependable autonomy. Before
we think of such a thing, let us not only have 600,000
children in the schools of the Philippine Islands, but,
under American education and occupation, and spon
sorship, let us have 2,000,000 Philippine children in
the schools. Then the pathway will open for a higher
civilization, and with it a devotion to the nation that
led the way.
Mr. President, in the determination of this question
of Philippine independence, we do one of two things :
We determine to call in the outposts and narrow, if
we can, the influences of American civilization to our
own shores ; or we determine to go courageously and
unfalteringly on, spreading our boasted American
civilization throughout the world.
I have sometimes wondered what the impelling in
fluence has been. I know very well that a nation lead
ing in civilization and in that uplifting work which
contributes to the weal of humanity can no more
limit its influence to its territorial or coast-bound
sphere than can the man who stands high in his com
munity, and has the character and the attributes that
make him an influence in the activities of the world.
THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS 239
AMERICAN PROGRESS MUST CONTINUE
Mr. President, we have boasted heretofore that we
have seemingly founded the ideal republic. I do not
know whether we have or not. A century and a third
is only a very little while in the history of the world !
But we have seemingly founded the first dependable
popular self-government on the face of the earth, be
cause the fathers had the inspiration to write civil
liberty into our organic law.
It seems to me, if it has been our privilege and our
boast that we have established and developed the best
popular government on the face of the earth, that we
ought to go on with the same thought that impelled
Him who brought a plan of salvation to the earth.
Rather than confine it to the limitations of the Holy
Land alone, He gathered His disciples about Him and
said, "Go ye and preach the gospel to all the nations
of the earth."
Let us stop and think before we alter the policy of
these United States. Let us not think about the selfish
side of commerce and industry alone. Let us ask our
selves if the time has not come when it is befitting
to return a vigorous, persistent, conscience-founded
determined Americanism; and clad in our convictions
of conscientiousness and righteousness, let us go on,
Mr. President and Senators, in our efforts to fulfill
the destinies of what I believe to be the best republic
on earth.
CHAPTER XIX
SOME SPECIFICATIONS
Delivered before the Builders Exchange,
Cleveland, Ohio
IT is a very great pleasure to meet with the mem
bers of the Builders Exchange. From experience of
my own I know that trade and professional association
brings together the best individual factors in the as
sociated lines, and the association is helpful to every
participant. The one who acknowledges no benefits
in the exchange of ideas, and sees no strength in
righteous cooperation, is too exalted to be of any
earthly use, or too feeble to add an atom of strength
to any undertaking.
It is especially pleasing to greet this body of live
factors in the constructive world. I doff my hat to the
men engaged in constructive pursuits. The world
always has its tribute ready for the builders. There
have been a hundred classifications of men. Some
one with keen appreciation said, men are three con
structive, obstructive, destructive. There may be an
obstructionist here to-day, but it is fair to assume this
is a constructive company. You belong there literally,
turning human energies to building, to the fashioning
of material for the enhancement of the human habita
tions of the earth. It is the most important factor in
240
SOME SPECIFICATIONS 241
the human uplift, in which we Americans are distanc
ing the world.
This is a wonderful land of ours. It is so vast, so
rich, so inestimable in possibilities that there is no full
understanding. We were blessed so generously by
God s bounty that we were and are now prodigal in
expenditure thereof, but there has come an awakening
to needed conservation a conservation of men and
material. Without discussing, I venture to say that
conservation is a problem for the builders. We should
halt the procession, if we discouraged development,
therefore conservation becomes a practical question
to solve in the capable hands of builders.
AMERICA PRODIGAL GIFT OF CREATOR
A recent trip to the Pacific coast has magnified my
belief that ours is a land physically incomparable, the
prodigal gift of the Creator. With our mountains
and plains, rivers and lakes, fertile valleys and golden
stretches, north, south, east or west, it is a seemingly
measureless expanse, unmatchable. There are en
chanting wonders in the mountainous West, where one
breathes a new reverence for God and feels a new
love of country. One seems to have gone beyond
man s helplessness, where his handiwork is triviality.
It is like a great throne of purple and gold, from
which nature thundered its contempt for man s feeble
ness and reared its monuments in mountains as tributes
to the Creator, wrote its acknowledgments in the
canyons, attuned its praises to the music of rippling
waters, then crowned it all with beauty indescribable.
No tongue can portray the grandeur, and yet, after
242 REDEDICATING AMERICA
all, in analytical reflection, the miracle is little more
nay, it is even less than man has wrought in his
genius and his strength, where he has builded of the
materials left by creation into works and wonders
and habitations and habiliments. San Francisco,
builded anew from the ruins of earthquake and fire,
is a greater marvel than the Grand Canyon of the
Colorado, and the superb Panama-Pacific Exposition,
which is a revelry of conceit and construction, is more
fascinating than famed Yellowstone. One is nature s
work in the whimsicalities of varied moods, the other
is man s construction, directed by enlightenment, work
ing to a fixed and exalted purpose.
What wonders have not the builders wrought ? The
vehicles of transportation, from a Ford to a Vater-
land, are the moving tributes to constructive triumph.
In the cities we pile the sky-scrapers high, teeming
with living, building souls, and transport the millions
safely beside or beneath them. We more than span
the great rivers, we speed the quickened American
procession by dashing through tunnels underneath
their waters. Builders have wrought the incompre
hensible marvels of electricity, until we make the
mummy-makers of ancient civilization, though they
builded the Pyramids, seem like imbeciles at gruesome
play. This marvelous building age, confident of itself,
bequeaths its living voice and its strains of music
divine to the distant posterity we know not of, and we
live amid the triumphs of American genius, construct
ing, which surpasses all previous human under
standing.
SOME SPECIFICATIONS 243
MAKERS OF AMERICA
And the builders have done more than achieve mere
material triumph. Just as the trade guilds contributed
to Roman glory ; just as the trade guilds of the Nether
lands broke the Norman yoke and builded for Flem
ish liberty, so are the builders, broadening the term
to its wider sense, the makers of the American nation.
No reference to the builders is fittingly comprehensive
which does not include the toilers, from the humblest
burden-bearer to the most highly skilled mechanic.
There can be no limitation of deference to the mind
which conceives; there must be unstinted tribute to
the master who executes, but there must be no de
nial of rightful dues to the man who drives a nail or
spreads the mortar or rivets a bolt. There is glory
enough for all.
This statement may be applied with added emphasis
to the builders of the village, the city, the state and
nation. A nation s laws are its specifications, and they
ought to represent the best thought and highest intent
of both architects and builders, but the test of a nation
is its citizenship. We can not measure by a towering
figure here and there, but judgment will rest on the
great rank and file.
The fathers laid a foundation in the work for
which they were seemingly inspired, yet theirs was a
limited vision. There was no Cleveland in their vision,
because they could not see beyond the ridges of the
Alleghanies. But they builded in good courage, in
high purpose and commanding honesty and Time and
Patriotism have joined in development and expansion,
244 REDEDICATING AMERICA
until to-day their temple is the marvel of nations.
Contemplating this splendid temple of American na
tional life, in the exaltation and exultation of partici
pation in its making, what glory could be greater than
the consciousness of a builder s part ?
HONEST BUILDING ESSENTIAL
One hardly needs to advise a company of experi
enced and practical builders how to build for highest
usefulness and endurance. You know that the great
essentials are to plan intelligently and build honestly.
The greatest menace in the busy activities of modern
life lies in dodging the specifications. No one thing
will contribute more to twentieth-century uplift and
progress than the universal and unswerving fidelity
to contract. In other words, builders of the edifice,
weavers of the social woof, participants in the political
performance must be abidingly honest. Keeping the
faith, holding to the specifications, fulfilling the con
tract these are essentials to universal confidence and
unquestioned satisfaction.
Sometimes I think we Americans, as nation builders,
get too careless of specifications. The fathers began
the world-astounding temple of a representative gov
ernment, with the guaranty of equal rights for all.
A heroic genius of a later generation uttered their
specifications in simple words which none can mis
construe namely, "a government of the people, by
the people, for the people." Such is still the thought
ful intent, but there ofttimes is a violation of speci
fications in the assumption of improving them. In
other words, we weaken the structure whenever there
SOME SPECIFICATIONS 245
is taken away the constitutional safeguards which
have guaranteed stability, and we ignore the plans
when we seek to substitute pure Democracy for repre
sentative reason and deliberate righteousness.
I do not argue that we are building to universal ap
proval, even among ourselves, much less among ob
servers abroad. That would be the surpassing miracle.
Never a creation that some one did not think he could
improve; never a structure that some one would not
change. One must not deny the growth of wisdom
through experience, but only the builder comes to the
full appreciation of the thing constructed. My thought
Is that we ought to go on building, along the lines on
which we so notably, thus far, have triumphed.
CONSECRATION TO CIVIC DUTY
I can not and will not subscribe to the doctrine that
all that is, is wrong, and all that is to be will be divine.
We are a wonderful people, our weakness lies in not
always holding high the individual standard of citizen
ship. If we build to endure, the citizenship must be
right. It requires upkeep as well as uplift. It re
quires consecration to civic duty on the part of every
man, not politicians alone ; not place-hunters alone ; not
agitators alone, agitating for compensation ; it requires
the joint consecration of contractor and wage-earner,
of directing brain and brawn and muscle.
I prefer optimists to pessimists, and like boosters
better than knockers. And I like to differentiate be
tween fair warning and righteous demand, on the one
hand, and loud pessimism and hypercritical outcry on
the other. Of course, we have evils to correct, always
246 REDEDICATING AMERICA
will have. There will be weak places to cure, and we
must do it, and such bodies as this ought to be the
first to bend to the task. But let us keep our vision
straight. A flimsy scaffold betokens no tottering wall.
Stamp out the impression that we are enslaved by
commercialism or besmirched by corruption. Let us
get back to the understanding that business is honest
and honorable, and success is worth applauding. No
nation ever has written a triumphant page in history
which has not been eminent in commerce and industry.
Our own astonishing progress as a nation is the reflex
of industrial and commercial development, just as this
great sixth city is a reflex of factories, offices and
mercantile channels. Let us understand this fact and
be for a square deal for the man who does big things,
never forgetting that the humblest man must have his
square deal, too, and the big man is biggest who best
bestows the fair treatment which he rightfully expects
for himself.
Insistent fairness and persistent honesty will make
for harmony of effort toward continued and greater
achievement. We must dissipate a lot of folderol.
Perhaps there is big business and there are big con
tractors who are not always working to specifications.
Then we ought all join to insist on fulfillment.
We are all builders, with the obligations of con
tractors to work to the specifications. Men like you
are more responsible for the outcome than others of
mere individual responsibility. It is your function to
construct and preserve, and I am confident fidelity to
specifications will guarantee a progress in which all
will share and in which all may greatly rejoice.
CHAPTER XX
THE KNOX RESOLUTION
Address in the United States Senate, May n, 1920, on
Resolution to Declare State of War Ended
I KNOW nothing in this republic so valuable in the
promise of influence for a popular representative gov
ernment as the proof of the capacity of Congress to
function. Mr. President, we surrendered that capacity
very largely during the war. I voted for that surren
der. We were willing to give unlimited authority to
the chief executive in time of anxiety and stress ; but
while we gave during the war, we are going to be just
as insistent in refusing to give in time of peace. I
think America s greatest contribution to the world lies
in the fact that it has furnished the best example of
representative popular government the world has ever
seen, and I rather rejoice in the manifestation we
made of the willingness of Congress to submerge itself
in the hour of extreme anxiety. I am only sorry that
the chief executive of this republic, because of Con
gress* willingness to surrender at that time, has gone
on to assume continued powers for peace.
It is a very easy thing, Senators, to become intoxi
cated with power; aye, and it is a very easy thing to
be carried away with a consuming ambition. I can
247
248 REDEDICATING AMERICA
sympathize, to a reasonable degree, with the ambition
of the president to write for himself the most eminent
page in the history of the world. It would have been
a very remarkable thing to have committed thirty na
tions of present-day civilization to a supergovernment
of the world, and I can see how the historian was led
far afield by a very natural ambition.
PRESIDENT WAS WARNED
But the president was warned when he went abroad.
I found no fault with his going. He was not only
warned before he went by a referendum to the Amer
ican people on his own appeal in the elections of 1918,
but he was specifically and formally warned by mem
bers of this body after he went abroad, when notice
was given that the Senate of the United States of
America had no thought to surrender American in
dependence of action. But in spite of these things
warnings from the people on the one hand and warn
ings from the Senate on the other the president in
sisted : "My will or none."
Senators on the other side of the chamber know
just as well as I do that the league of nations would
have been disposed of months ago, and this republic
would have been enjoying formal peace, if it had not
been for the insistent obstinacy of the chief executive
of this republic. And so, Mr. President, I want to
call attention to the fact, more for the Record than
anything else, that in the passage of this joint resolu
tion we are demonstrating to the people of the United
States of America and giving notice to the world that
the chief executive alone does not run the republic of
THE KNOX RESOLUTION 249
the United States of America ; that this is still a rep
resentative popular government under the Constitution ;
that the Senate has equal and coordinate power with
the president in the making of treaties, and that neither
to-day nor to-morrow shall there ever be a chief exec
utive of this republic who, in the lure of ambition or
the intoxication of power, can barter away anything
essential to the welfare of this republic.
CONGRESS STILL FUNCTIONS
This joint resolution will establish the fact, and
that a Congress willing to submerge in war is once
more functioning in peace. It will be the most whole
some message that can be sent to the world, and it will
be the most reassuring message that can be given to the
people of the United States of America.
I agree in one respect with the senator from New
Mexico I was one who believed in some new inter
national relationship. I am sorry that we could not
go into it on our own terms, as we ought, when the
league covenant first came back. But we frittered
away our day of opportunity to dictate the terms on
which we might enter. It ought to have been done in
the beginning.
Now we witness the world at peace, and here is the
United States of America at formal war with Ger
many, and there is no necessity for it. There is no
sense in it. It ought not to be for a single moment.
We are literally at peace. Why not say so ; and if the
president of the United States in his obstinacy refuses
to say so, then let the Congress assert itself and say
that war no longer abides.
CHAPTER XXI
THE PEACE TREATY;
Address in the United States Senate, November 18,
1919, When the Final Vote on the Peace
Treaty Was Taken
MR. PRESIDENT, I have been content to allow the
final disposition of the pending measure without any
further remarks, but I could not well be content to per
mit the statement of the senator from Alabama (Mr.
Underwood) to go unchallenged. I quite agree with
him that no one can fool the country; and, in order
that we may make the situation clear to the country to
night, when all of the United States is watching the
action of this body no less intently than are those who
honor us with their presence and when all the world
is watching to see what this great republic will do, I
am in favor of doing what may be expressed in a well-
understood sporting term as "laying all the cards on
the table, face up."
We have been witnesses, Senators, to many months
of discussion and debate, and delay in dealing with
this treaty ; and it ill becomes any senator of the minor
ity to say that there has been no opportunity for com
promise or accommodation or adjustment. I was per
sonally a witness to the long-drawn-out discussion of
reservations in the Foreign Relations Committee when
250
THE PEACE TREATY 251
we sought in a more intimate study of the treaty to
accommodate our differences there, because there was
not a member of the Senate and there was but one man
in the United States of America who did not know that
this treaty could never be ratified without reservations.
With that perfectly plain understanding of the situa
tion, the committee set itself to work out reservations
which would safeguard the interests of the United
States of America and make ratification possible.
RESERVATIONS ARE ESSENTIAL
I speak, Mr. President, for one who has maintained
that position. I have not liked this treaty; I think,
as originally negotiated, it is the colossal blunder of
all time ; but, recognizing the aspirations of our own
people and the people of the world to do something
toward international cooperation for the promotion
and preservation of peace and a more intimate and bet
ter understanding between nations, I have wished to
make it possible to accept this covenant. I could, how
ever, no more vote to ratify this treaty without reser
vations which make sure America s independence of
action, which make sure the preservation of American
traditions, which make sure and certain our freedom
in choosing our course of action, than I could partici
pate in a knowing betrayal of this republic.
Mr. President, in letting the public understand let
us review the situation. In the Senate there are four
distinct schools of thought in dealing with this treaty :
One is the unconditional-ratification school, those who,
either through their own conscientious convictions or
the lash of the executive choose as you will want
252 REDEDICATING AMERICA
this treaty ratified without a single modification or
ervation. That is group No. 1.
In direct opposition is the so-called irreconcilable
group, those who are unalterably opposed to any rati
fication. That is group No. 2. The third is the group
to which I choose to belong, if I may, who are agreed
to bring about the ratification of this treaty if they are
convinced that reservations have been adopted which
are sufficient to safeguard the interests of the United
States of America. There still remains another group
: or, rather a group within a group popularly known
as the "mild reservationists" those who are anxious
to ratify, who are anxious to safeguard, the interests
of this republic, but at the same time desire to make
the reservations as little offensive as possible to those
who assumed to negotiate the treaty in contempt of the
Senate.
MAJORITY ABLE TO REACH AGREEMENT
We have had the four groups to deal with, and in
the progress of the debate and after much discussion
we have finally come to an understanding on this side
alone because on the other side there were those who
took the position that there could be no reservations
at all and have accommodated our differences to the
extent that the majority has agreed upon a program
of reservations.
TREATY NEGOTIATED UPON MISUNDERSTANDING
That leads me, if you please, to indulge in a little re
flection. The whole trouble with the treaty, Senators,
is that it was negotiated upon a misunderstanding upon
THE PEACE TREATY 253
the part of the executive. No one doubts for a mo
ment that the president, in that disregard for the Sen
ate which grew out of war conditions, in that little
consideration for this body which followed a state of
submergence, undertook to negotiate a treaty which
was his towering ambition, notwithstanding he knew
the opposition of a majority and in defiance of the ex
pressed wish or the expressed opinion of a sufficient
number to defeat ratification, under the executive im
pression that no modification or alteration could be ef
fected except by a two-thirds majority vote of the
Senate.
He himself not only so stated, but those who have
been students of the whole negotiation and the after
math have clearly seen that the executive proceeded
on that theory. But it develops, Mr. President, that
there is still a United States Senate and a majority,
of course, in the Senate which is determined to reassert
itself.
It was all right, Senators, to submerge ourselves as
members of the government commissioned by the peo
ple, as we did submerge ourselves during the period of
the war ; I was a participant in the submerge, but when
the war ended and the greatest document in importance
ever negotiated in the world came to this body for con
sideration, then it was becoming, indeed, for the
United States Senate again to assume its constitutional
authority.
It is in that assumption of authority that senators
on this side in the majority not all in accord, let it be
said, but senators on this side in the majority deter-
254 REDEDICATING AMERICA
mined, with practical unanimity, that there could be no
ratification without ample American reservations.
MINORITY DID NOT SEEK AGREEMENT
The members of the minority have known of the
processes employed in framing the reservations.
There have been weeks and months of opportunity to
accommodate any differences and to meet us on com
mon ground and negotiate acceptable reservations ; but,
in spite of that existent opportunity and in spite of the
waste of time, when you on the other side have been
clamoring about delay, never a single effort has been
made until the majority has demonstrated its deter
mination to submit reservations which must be aor
cepted.
Now, you who talk about peace through our atti
tude in dealing with the treaty, which dealing has
little to do with the peace already established you who
are anxious to get this document out of the way, why
not recognize a situation that can not possibly be
changed ?
AMERICA MUST BE PRESERVED
We are content to give you your league of nations,
doubtful as we are about the wisdom of the great ex
periment. We recognize that we are not giving it to
you in the fulness of the ambitions of the chief execu
tive who negotiated it; we realize and regret that it
must be reported to the nations of the world with some
thing a very kin to humiliation. That is not the fault
of the Senate ; that is the fault of him who negotiated
it without recognizing that there is a Senate. It is a
THE PEACE TREATY 255
very great misfortune, and I am sorry about it; but
I tell you, Senators, the independence of action and the
preserved inheritance of this republic are infinitely
more important than the wounded feelings of him who
negotiated it without admitting the existence of the
Senate. So we in the majority are agreed to preserve
American freedom of action and enter upon a league
of nations, a league with such reservations that leave
us our choice of action, the exercise of American con
science, the determination to do that which we think
is our part in the promotion and preservation of civi
lization and peace without the surrender of things es
sentially American.
If this ratification is made with the reservations
which have been adopted, there remains the skeleton
of a league on which the United States can, if it deems
it prudent, proceed in deliberation and calm reflection
toward the building of an international relationship
which shall be effective in the future. The trouble
with the whole league covenant is that it was hastily
negotiated to be made the foundation of a treaty of
peace, when there ought to have been a treaty of peace
negotiated with a league of nations created in the de
liberate aftermath.
WELCOMES DECISION OF PEOPLE
Under these circumstances, recognizing conditions,
without discussing the partisan phase of it or any po
litical advantage, we have this arrangement, and we
must meet it as it exists, and those on the majority
side, those against it irreconcilably, and those for the
league want these reservations to go to the nations of
256 REDEDICATING AMERICA
the Old World to assert and make certain America s
freedom of action in the future, and leave a semblance
of a league on which to build.
If those on the other side of the chamber are agreed
to accept such a thing as that, well and good. If you
are determined that a minority of the Senate shall fol
low the same blind insistence that characterized the
action of the executive in negotiating, I warn you now,
you are certain to go to defeat; and if I can speak
for one, in accepting the challenge of the senator from
Alabama, I welcome the moment we can go to the peo
ple of the United States on the issue as to who is re
sponsible therefor.
I know, Mr. President, that in this covenant, we
have originally bartered American independence in
order to create a league. We have traded away Amer
ica s freedom of action in order to establish a super-
government of the world, and it was never intended to
be any less. I speak for one who is old-fashioned
enough to believe that the government of the United
States is good enough for me. In speaking my rev
erence for the government of the United States of
America, I want the preservation of those coordinate
branches of government which were conceived and
instituted by the fathers ; and if there is nothing else
significant in the action of this day, you can tell to the
people of the United States of America and to the
world that the Senate of the United States has once
more reasserted its authority, and representative gov
ernment abides.
THE END
14 DAY USE
RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED
LOAN DEPT.
RENEWALS ONLY TEL. NO. 642-3405
This book is due on the last date stamped below, or
on the date to which renewed.
Renewed books are subject to immediate recall.
RETURNED TO
DEC 8 196863
0?;<i 68-ilAR
1 O AN A H C
LOAN DEPT.
MAR 17 1970
-> \
CJ ^*
RECEIVED
MAR 9 70 -4 PM
AUG R 1^71
J.OAN DEPT.
MUU O Iwl J
MAY 1 2 in?n 3 p
REC D LD MAY
1 2 70 -1 PM 4
REC D LD NOtf 1
i72 -7 FM80
ij^ i/\/\~^
6^987
,. ., - .- r A
t v^ i U L-Jlv?^-
~^&
t r \\s i >^ -
nro rv r> 1UU /
^^HjeVerVl Library
/T?l7Sn\2fii? University of California
Berkeley
U.C. BERKELEY LIBRARIES
BDD3D5D77M
466232
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY
TVNews
OpenLibrary