E. Alexander Powell

“ Even our national colors are the same: that red, white, and blue which—as some poetic Frenchman has said—symbolizes the rise of democracy from blood, through peace, to Heaven.
There has been much talk of France having been reborn through the agony of this war. Therein we are wrong. It is merely that we Americans [35] have known the French only superficially, and that, in thinking and speaking of them, we have indulged in the careless and inaccurate habit of generalization. We have subscribed to the tradition of the superficiality and frivolity of the French people. ”

“ The man who dodges taxes when his country is at war is more deserving of contempt than the soldier who shows the white feather on the firing-line, for whereas the one fears for his life the other fears only for his pocketbook. It is a duty to raise foodstuffs and to give every possible encouragement to others to do so. The householder who refuses to plough his yard and plant it to vegetables because it would spoil the looks of his place is as much a slacker [50] as the man who attempts to evade his military obligations. It is a duty to refrain from every form of extravagance. ”

“ The war has become, indeed, a race between ourselves and Germany. Can we build food-ships faster than Germany can sink them? Can we raise enough food to feed our allies as well as ourselves? Can we put more men and guns upon the Western Front than Germany can? ”

“ The Navy Yard, where the commissioners landed, was burned, with the rest of Washington, by the British in 1814, yet now, barely a century later, its foundries were roaring night and day in the manufacture of guns to aid Britain. Swinging from Seventh Street into Pennsylvania Avenue, there rose in the path of the visitors the splendid dome of the Capitol, and beneath that dome the representatives of eight-and-forty States were enacting into law the measures which would send to the aid of France millions of American soldiers and billions of American dollars. ”

“ We have not entered upon this war to avenge our murdered citizens; we have not gone into it for territorial aggrandizement or trade expansion, we have not gone into it to pay our debt to France; we have gone to war from the most unselfish motive that ever actuated a nation—the desire to serve mankind. ”

“ It is to destroy the monstrous system which permits and approves the execution of people “whether they are guilty or not” that we have gone to war. For if we don’t destroy it, it will most certainly destroy us. The trouble is that we stubbornly shut our eyes to the gravity of the situation which confronts us; we have not aroused ourselves to the colossal magnitude of our task. ”

“ No true American can read his words and not be thrilled by the sincerity and unselfishness breathed in every line:—
“We have come to this land to salute the American people and its government, to call to fresh vigor our life-long friendship, sweet and cordial in the ordinary course of our lives, but which these tragic hours have raised to all the ardor of a brotherly love—a brotherly love which, in these last years of suffering, has multiplied its most touching expressions. ”

“ It has taken us three years—three long and bitter years of agony for France—to recognize what she has known from the beginning: that the cause for which she is fighting is our cause, that not merely the future of France but our own future, the future of democracy, is at stake. We are late in acting, and some historians of the future will probably be unkind enough to say that we were almost too late ”

“ Don’t let us be deceived by the made-in-Germany talk of an early peace. In accepting it we are only playing the enemy’s game. In every possible way Germany is throwing out the idea that the end of the war is in sight. ”

“ But she is prepared to fight a long, long time yet before accepting the terms that we and our allies must insist upon in order to safeguard the future peace of the world. The mere appearance of American troops upon the battle-line is not going to end the war, as so many of our people seem to think. Not until America begins making war as though she was facing Germany alone will it be possible to predict with any certainty when the end will come.
The truth of the matter is that the American people utterly fail to realize the seriousness of our situation. ”

“ You have given help, not only in treasure, in every act of kindness and good-will; but for us your children have shed their blood, and the names of your sacred dead are inscribed forever in our hearts. ”

“ The woman who orders a gown which she does not need is not helping labor to find employment, as she likes to think; she is preventing a soldier from having a uniform—for how is labor to be had for making uniforms unless it is released from making [54] other clothes? Our soldiers must have blankets—but how are those blankets to be had unless the looms are released from something else? How is steel to be had for food-ships and field-guns and destroyers unless there is a prompt curtailment of its use for other purposes? ”

“ And that, turning into the main street, you see a row of bodies—the bodies of men some of whom you had known all your life, men with whom you had gone to college, men who were fellow lodge-members, men with whom you had played bridge at the club, the body of your father or your son or your brother perhaps among them—sprawled on the asphalt in grotesque and horrid attitudes amid a slowly widening lake of crimson. ”

“ And it is the duty of our merchants and business men to promptly cease their gloomy prophecies that an era of national economy will bring on a paralysis of trade and industry. As a matter of fact, it will do nothing of the sort. There is far more danger of there being a lack of workers than [51] there is of there being a lack of work. Already there is more work in sight than can possibly be done. ”

“ In fact, the Government itself did not realize its gravity until from [45] the lips of the French and British commissioners it learned the startling truth. Up to the moment of our entrance into the war the Allied Governments, controlling all the channels of information, had so successfully fostered the impression that they had the Germans on the run, that all of our people, save a handful who were in possession of the facts, looked to see the war end in a sweeping victory for the Allies before the close of the present year. ”

“ There is another form of sacrifice which the American people will inevitably be called upon to make, and that is to accept without complaint the heavy restrictions which the Government will find it necessary to put on their private activities. The Government must have the first call on coal, iron, steel, timber, chemicals, on supplies of every kind, and particularly on transportation and labor. ”

“ Though we are [40] warned with all earnestness by the men who are best qualified to know that peace is not in sight, and probably will not be in sight for many, many months to come, one nevertheless hears on every hand the confident assertion that Germany is on her last legs, that the morale of her armies is weakening, that her supply of men is almost exhausted, that her people are starving, and that American troops will never get within sound of the guns because the war will be over before they can be made ready to send to France. ”

“ If millions of our young men are prepared to give up their lives for their country, is it too much to ask the rest of us to give up for a time our comforts and our pleasures?
[49] The civilian must do his duty no less than the man in khaki. And “duty,” at this time, has many meanings. It is a duty to pay taxes. These will, without doubt, be increased again and again and yet again before this war is over, and in many cases they will be directly felt. ”

“ It has been a fallacy, and nearly a fatal one for the Allies, this underestimating the power of Germany. She has, as some one has truthfully said, made of war “a national industry.” She is a professional, while the rest of us are, after all, but amateurs, and she has repeatedly shown, moreover, that she has not the slightest intention of adhering to the rules laid down by civilized nations for the conduct of the game. She has spikes on her boots and brass knuckles on her fingers, and she will not hesitate to gouge or kick or strike below the belt. ”

“ The money that we have furnished France is not given, but loaned, just as a bank loans money to an individual of known responsibility, and, moreover, every dollar of it is to be expended in the United States, thus providing employment for millions of our people. ”

“ The sooner the public gets over the idea that we must have “business as usual,” the better. The country must immediately awake to [53] the fact that we cannot carry on a war like this with one hand and continue to do all the business we did before with the other. We can no more expect to change from peace conditions to war conditions without business inconvenience and loss than we can expect to send an army into battle without having killed and wounded. ”

“ He does not dazzle us with the glamour of Napoleon; he does not pique our curiosity like Kitchener; he does not appeal to our sympathies like King Albert; the appeal that he makes is to our hearts and our imaginations. ”

“ There are doubtless those who sometimes ask themselves, though they may deem it the part of wisdom not to ask others, “Even if the Germans were to win this war, what difference would it make anyway?” Well, just for the sake of argument, suppose that our European allies had been forced to sign a separate peace and that Germany, thus left free to give us her undivided attention, had landed an army on these shores (which she could do with comparatively little trouble, the military [57] experts agree) and held a portion of our Eastern seaboard. ”

“ I would that every man and woman in these United States might show the spirit which led the third-year cadets at West Point, who were this summer entitled by law and custom to the one furlough a cadet has in four years, to unite in waiving their right to these two months to which they had looked forward so long and so eagerly and for the spending of which they had made so many plans, and to offer their services to the Secretary of War in any work for which he thinks them fitted. ”

“ That we, who sent Franklin to implore the aid of the French king, we who accepted from France a loan which we have never repaid, we who owe our very existence as a nation to French soldiers, French ships, and French money, should presume to criticize France for eagerly accepting what we freely offered, is but to show a lack of gratitude and of good taste. ”

“ By this I do not mean to imply that people should suddenly stop buying, but only that they should stop buying things that they do not need or that they can get along without. For how, pray, are we to place some seven billion dollars of purchasing power at the disposal of the Government unless we curtail our individual expenditures? ”

“ Upon the answers to these questions depends the duration and decision of the war.
If we are to win this war it will be necessary for us to practise self-denials, [48] to endure hardships, perhaps to know sorrows of which we have never dreamed. We must hold back nothing. Our sheltered, ordered, comfortable lives will be turned topsy-turvy. There will be no man, woman, or child between the oceans which this war will not in some way affect. It will impose burdens alike on the rich and the poor, on the old no less than on the young, on women as well as on men. ”

“ It was not the cheering throngs that lined it, or the thousands of flags that fluttered from the buildings on either side, but the silent statues and the dumb reminders of those who had gone before, who had created this nation and had laid down their lives [14] that this nation might live, and who had come back this day to charge the route with their unseen presence. ”

“ A great struggle still lies before us, and I cannot put it before you more forcibly than by stating that at the commencement of this spring’s campaign Germany put into the field a million more men than she put into the field last spring. ”

“ Though the coming of these men stirs our souls and grips our imagination, we are still too close to the picture to perceive its full beauty and grandeur. Real appreciation of its significance to ourselves and to the [5] world can come only with the years. When time grants it the justice of perspective, the visit of the French envoys to our shores will be recognized as one of the turning-points in our history. ”

“ There is no surer way to prolong the war than to indulge in such talk as this. Why deceive ourselves? Let us look the facts in the face. Germany is not starving, nor is there any prospect of her being brought to that point for [41] a long time to come, if, indeed, at all. Her man-power, though greatly depleted, is not giving out. ”

“ If one of your pet trains is suddenly discontinued, don’t grumble, but just stop to remember that the Government needs that train and its crew for the purpose of moving troops and munitions. If your favorite restaurant curtails its menu, bear in mind that it has been done by order of the Government, which recognizes the imperative necessity for food control. It is a stupendous task that we have undertaken, and it will require every particle of grit and staying [55] power that we possess to see it through. ”

“ I believe that we are at heart a people of high ideals. Critics have said of us that our finer sensibilities have been blunted by our extraordinary commercial success, that our earlier ideals have been lost sight of in the business of growing rich, that we prefer the dollar mark to the laurel wreath. ”

“ Should the Russian Republic be betrayed into making a separate peace—and, at the moment of writing, the Russian prospect is anything but cheering—the Central Powers would have released for use upon the Western Front not less than two million veterans. ”

“ We must be prepared to accept without grumbling the imposition of very burdensome taxes. We must be prepared to make countless personal sacrifices, to submit to innumerable annoying restrictions. We must expect months of discouragement and heart-breaking anxiety and gloom. ”