Cleveland Moffett

“ Would it not be better for the world if this strong, enlightened nation took possession of its backward neighbours, even by force of arms, and taught them how to live and how to make the best of their neglected resources and possibilities? Would not these weak nations be more prosperous and happier after incorporation with the strong nation? Is not Egypt better off and happier since the British occupation? Were not the wars that created united Italy and united Germany justified? Does any one regret our civil war? ”

“ Does any one doubt that a year of such military training would be of lasting benefit to the men of America? Would it not school them in much-needed habits of discipline and self-control, habits which must be learned sooner or later if a man is to succeed? Would not the open air life, the physical exercise, the regularity of hours tend to improve their health and make them better citizens?
Suppose that once every five years all American men up to fifty were required to go into military camp and freshen up on their defence duties for twenty or thirty days. ”

“ We must save from danger this land that we love, this great nation built by our fathers. We must have, what we now notoriously lack, a sufficient army, a satisfactory system of military training, battleships, aeroplanes, submarines, munition plants, all that is necessary to uphold the national honour so that when an unscrupulous enemy strikes at us and our children he will find us ready. If we are strong we shall, in all probability, avoid war, since the choice between war and arbitration will then be ours. ”

“ All the pure and noble arts of peace are founded on war. No great art ever rose on earth but among a nation of soldiers. There is no great art possible to a nation but that which is based on battle. When I tell you that war is the foundation of all the arts, I mean also that it is the foundation of all the high virtues and faculties of men. ”

“ Add to this a widespread spirit of disorder and disunion, strikes and rioting in many cities, dynamite outrages, violent addresses of demagogues and labour leaders, pleas for peace at any price by misguided fanatics who were ready to reap the whirlwind they had sown. These were days when men of brain and courage, patriots of the nation with the spirit of ‘76 in them, almost despaired of the future.
Through all this storm and darkness, amid dissension and violence, one man stood firm for the right, one wise big-souled man, the President of the United States. ”

“ In recognition of the service I had rendered in helping to save the great airship from German spies, I had been granted permission, at General Wood’s recommendation, to sail as a passenger aboard this dreadnought of the skies and to personally witness her novel attack with torpedoes lowered from the airship and steered from the height of a mile or two by radio control. Never before had a newspaper correspondent received such a privilege and I was greatly elated, not realising what extraordinary perils I was to face in this discharge of my duty. ”

“ Continents will be the last to join hands across the seas (having first waged vast inter-continental wars) and then, after the rise and fall of many sovereignties, there will be established on the earth the last great government, the United States of the World!
That is the logical limit of human activities. Are we not all citizens of the earth, descended from the same parents, born with the same needs and capacities? Why should there be fifty-three barriers dividing men into fifty-three nations? Why should there be any other patriotism than world patriotism? ”

“ It is not so easy to kill forty acres of human bodies, even with machine guns!
Endlessly the Americans came on, hundreds falling, thousands replacing them, until presently the Germans ceased firing, either in horror at this incredible sacrifice of life or because their ammunition was exhausted. What chance was there for German ammunition carts to force their way through that struggling human wall? What chance for the fifteen hundred German reserves in Franklin Park to bring relief to their comrades?
At eight o’clock that night Boston began her real Christmas eve celebration. ”

“ Why should we Americans hesitate to pay the trifling cost of insurance against war? Trifling? Yes. The annual cost of providing and maintaining an adequate army and navy would be far less than we spend every year on tobacco and alcohol. Less than fifty cents a month from every citizen would be sufficient. That amount, wisely expended, would enormously lessen the probability of war and would allow the United States, if war came, to face its enemies with absolute serenity. The Germans are willing to pay the cost of preparedness. ”

“ If this reasoning is sound, if war must be regarded, for centuries to come, as an inevitable part of human existence, then let us, as loyal Americans, realise that, hate war as we may, there is only way in which the United States can be insured against the horrors of armed invasion, with the shame of disastrous defeat and possible dismemberment, and that is by developing the strength and valiance to meet all probable assailants on land or sea. ”

“ Flattered and deftly lulled to sleep by British influence, public opinion in the United States will not wake up until the ‘yellow New England’ of the Orient, nurtured and deflected from Australia by England herself, knocks at the gates of the new world. Not a patient and meek China, but a warlike and conquest-bound Japan will be the aggressor when that day comes. Then America will be forced to fight under unfavourable conditions. ”

“ The successful burglar, who, an immense fortune amassed, has retired from business, and having broken every law, human and divine, violated every instinct of honour and fidelity on every sea and on every continent, desires now the protection of the police!... So long as England, the great robber-state, retains her booty, the spoils of a world, what right has she to expect peace from the nations? ”

“ Obviously there are cases where every noble sentiment would impel a nation to go to war. A solemn promise broken, a deliberate insult to the flag, an act of intolerable bullying, some wicked purpose of self-aggrandisement at the expense of weaker nations, anything, in short, that flaunted the national honour or imperilled the national integrity would be a call to war that must be heeded by valiant and high-souled citizens, in all lands. ”

“ They thrill and inspire us as they have thrilled and inspired millions before us, yet how little the world has seen of the actual carrying out of their beautiful message! The average individual in America still clings to whatever he has of material possessions with all the strength that law and custom give him. He keeps what he has and takes what he can honourably get, unconcerned by the fact that millions of his fellow men are in distress or by the knowledge that many of the rich whom he envies or honours may have gained their fortunes, privilege or power by unfair or dishonest means. ”

“ We must have a fleet in the Atlantic strong enough to resist any probable attack from the East, and another fleet in the Pacific strong enough to resist any probable attack from the West.
“But listen to this, think of this,” the veteran warrior leaned towards me, shaking an eager fore-finger. “At the present moment our entire fleet, if massed off Long Island, would be inferior to a fleet that Germany could send across the Atlantic against us by many ships, many submarines and many aeroplanes. And hopelessly inferior in men and ammunition, including torpedoes.” ”

“ I have said hard things about public men, especially about German-Americans, but I’m sorry.”
With a noble gesture he turned to Bernard Ridder, who sprang to meet him, his eyes blazing with loyalty.
“There are no German-Americans!” shouted Ridder. “We’re all Americans! Americans!”
He clasped Roosevelt’s hand while the audience shouted its delight.
Quick on his feet came Charles Edward Russell, fired with the same resistless patriotism.
“There are no more socialists!” he cried. “No more proletariat! We’re all Americans! We’ll all fight for the Union and the old flag! ”

“ Wars will never be abolished until the war-making power is taken from the few and jealously guarded by the whole people, and only exercised after public discussion of the matters at issue and a public understanding of inevitable consequences. At present it is evident that the pride, greed, madness of one irresponsible King, Emperor, Czar, Mikado or President may plunge the whole world into war-misery that will last for generations. ”

“ Why not cease to depend upon our absurd little standing army which, for its strength and organisation, is frightfully expensive and absolutely inadequate, and depend instead upon a citizenry trained and accustomed to arms, with a permanent body of competent officers, at least 50,000, whose lives would be spent in giving one year military training to the young men of this nation, all of them, say between the ages of eighteen and twenty-three, so that these young men could serve their country efficiently, if the need arose? ”

“ You are a race of money schemers, money grovellers, lacking in high ideals and genuine spiritual life without which patriotism is an empty word. Who ever heard of an American working for his country unless he was paid for it?
“Think what America did in the great war! Why was your president so wrought up in 1915 when he assailed Germany with fine phrases? Was it because we had violated Belgium? No! When that happened he had nothing to say, although the United States, equally with England, was a signatory of the Hague Conference that guaranteed Belgium’s integrity. ”

“ Women of America, I bring you greetings from the women of England, the women of France, the women of Germany, who have joined this great pacifist movement and whose voices sounding by millions can no longer be stifled. Let the men hear and heed our cry. ”

“ It was my privilege to hear the great speech which the President of the United States delivered in Chicago, November 29, 1921, a date which Theodore Roosevelt has called the most memorable in American history. The immense auditorium on the lake front, where once were the Michigan Central tracks, was packed to suffocation. It is estimated that 40,000 men and women, representing every state and organisation in the Union, heard this impassioned appeal for the nation, that will live in American history along with Lincoln’s Gettysburg address. ”

“ It is in the power of women to drive war’s hell from the earth and, whatever the cost, we are going to do it.’”
“No! No!” came a tumult of cries from all parts of the hall.
“We believe in fighting to the last for our national existence,” cried Mrs. John A. Logan, waving her hand, whereupon hundreds of women patriots, Daughters of the American Revolution, suffrage and anti-suffrage leaders, members of the Navy League, Red Cross workers, sprang to their feet and screamed their enthusiasm for righteous war. ”

“ We stumbled into the street, and were driven roughly by other German soldiers toward the open space of Madison Square. We fled over red and slippery pavements, strewn with the bodies of dead and wounded policemen and civilians—the hideous harvest of the machine-guns. At the corner of Madison Avenue and Twenty-fifth Street I saw an immense coal-carrying motor-truck with plates of iron covering its four sides, and through loopholes in the plates I saw murderous muzzles protruding. ”

“ He was too busy to talk to me, but from one of his aides I learned that the soldiers at the Madison Square Garden were not German-Americans and were not von Hindenburg’s men, but were part of that invisible army of German spies that invariably precedes the invading forces of the Kaiser. Arriving a few hundred at a time for a period of more than three years, 50,000 of these German spies, fully armed and equipped, now held New York at their mercy. More than that, they had in their actual physical possession the men who owned half the wealth of the nation. ”

“ Similarly it is better for the world that we fought and conquered the American Indians and took their land to use it, in accordance with our higher destiny, for greater and nobler purposes than they could either conceive of or execute. It is better for the world that by a revolution (even a disingenuous one) we took Panama from incompetent Colombians and, by our intelligence, our courage and our vast resources, changed a fever-ridden strip of jungle into a waterway that now joins two oceans and will save untold billions for the commerce of the earth. ”