James M. Cox

“ The supreme issue of the century is before us, and the nation that halts and delays is playing with fire. The finest impulses of humanity, rising above national lines, merely seek to make another horrible war impossible. ”

“ Our view is toward the sunrise with its progress and its eternal promise of better things. The opposition stands in the skyline of the setting sun looking backwards, backwards to the old days of reaction. ”

“ Under the old order of international anarchy, war came overnight, and the world was on fire before we knew it. It sickens our senses to think of another. We saw one conflict into which modern science brought new forms of destruction in great guns, submarines, airships, and poison gases. ”

“ Republican leaders who have taken charge of their party and nominated its candidate, are no more possessed of the spirit of the hour than they were in 1912 when they precipitated a revolution within the rank and file of a great organization. ”

“ Our people have passed through a trying experience. The European war, before it engulfed us, aroused every racial throb in a nation of composite citizenship. The conflict in which we participated carried anxieties into every community, and thousands upon thousands of homes were touched by tragedy. ”

“ It is known of all men. History will acclaim it. Poets will find it an inspiration throughout the ages. And yet, there is not a line in the Republican platform that breathes an emotion of pride or recites our national achievement. In fact, if a man from Mars were to depend upon the Republican platform, or its spoken interpretations by the candidate of that party, as his first means of information, he would not find a syllable telling him that the war had been won and that America had saved the world. ”

“ The natural impulse is to forget the past, to develop new interests, to create a [refreshened] and refreshing atmosphere in life. We want to forget war, and to be free from the troubling thought of its possibility in the future. ”

“ We desire industrial peace. We want our people to have an abiding confidence in government. But no readjustment made under reactionary auspices will carry with it the confidence of the country. If we were asked to name in these trying days the first essential overshadowing every other consideration, the response would be — confidence in government. ”

“ The public prints are filled with the opinions of military men that in future wars the methods, more effective than gas or bombs, will be the employment of germs of diseases, carrying pestilence and destruction. Any nation prepared under these conditions, as Germany was equipped in 1914, could conquer the world in a year. ”

“ Not a constructive law can be cited. Money and time were wasted in seeking to make a military triumph an odious chapter in history. Yet it is significant that after two years of fruitful inquiry, there was nothing revealed in that vast enterprise carrying billions of dollars in defense, upon which they could base even a whisper of dishonesty. ”

“ The leaders opposed to democracy promise to put the country back to normal. This can only mean the so-called normal of former reactionary administrations, the outstanding feature of which was a pittance for farm produce and a small wage for a long day of toil. My vision does not turn backwards to the normal desires of the senatorial oligarchy, but to a future in which all shall have a normal opportunity to cultivate a higher stature amidst better environments than that of the past. ”

“ One leads to a higher citizenship, a freer expression of the individual and a fuller life for all. The other leads to reaction, the rule of the few over the many, and the restriction of the average man's chances to grow upward. ”