James A. Reed

“ She has been following idealism. So far as I know, it has been nearly a thousand years since China ever undertook a war that could be called a war of conquest.
She has taught the doctrine that men ought not to fight even in defense of their own homes; that war is brutality. She has taught it so successfully that her civilization has gone backward; that her lands are being divided up, and that the most virtuous nations in the world, even Great Britain and France, join with the ancient enemy of China to divide her asunder. ”

“ But the cold truth of history is that when England embarked upon her career of imperialism under Disraeli, when she started to seize the helpless lands and helpless people of the world, Germany and Italy and France followed her example, and it became a race, not between nations seeking to defend themselves but by nations seeking to exploit the earth. Every man who looked at the facts as they were knew that those conditions were liable at any time to produce a clash, and that clash finally came. ”

“ There will not be anybody to recognize the millennium when it does come. There will not be anybody with enough idealism to know what it is when he sees it.
If it be true that we are the custodians of civilization, then it is our duty to preserve that civilization. If it be true that America saved civilization less than three years ago with the help of France and England, or that they saved it with our help—I make no quarrel about the way you state it—how did they save it? ”

“ I have not joined the merry crew of modern tories who can stand on the floor of the Senate and say that Great Britain has a better Government than the United States. She has not anything better than the United States except a navy, and that is better only because it is bigger, and I am not in favor of allowing her to retain that advantage any longer; but she is a great people. Next to ours, perhaps, except France, she has as good a Government as there is. We are not expecting war with England; we are not expecting war with anybody ”

“ A jingo is a man who proposes to stir up his people to war and to war against others. This, sir, is an attempt to preserve the integrity and independence of the United States, and to keep her at peace by certifying to all the world that we are prepared to defend ourselves. ”

“ A calm survey of the field, a calm reading of the issues must convince every candid man that the great issue decided by the American people was whether we would abandon the ancient policies of this Government, policies so well laid down by George Washington in his immortal farewell address, or whether we should adhere to those policies. The American people answered in thundering tones. Yet we find men standing on the floor of the Senate today, repeating upon this floor the speeches they made on the hustings when they were talking about the beauty of dreams and the glory of visions. ”

“ I am not suggesting war to get it. I do not mean that. I think the time has come to deal with all these questions as practical men, to recognize facts exactly as they are, to get our heads out of the clouds and our eyes upon the earth where we live; and let us try to make them see that our country is secure; and if our country is secure, civilization will be secure. If our country is ever unfortunately destroyed, then, in truth, will the flag of civilization have been furled. ”

“ We need not in any way reflect upon Great Britain. We must treat her, however, as a great rival, a friendly rival to-day in the world. May she always be friendly. I am unwilling that my country shall be in a position so that her ports can be blockaded, her commerce destroyed, and all the energies and all the resources of the world brought to bear upon us. ”

“ This League was formed for the purpose of crystallizing the fetters upon conquered people; of driving the nails into the coffin of the hopes of conquered masses upon penalty of being set upon, not by one nation but by the united powers of the earth. ”

“ We observed that at the close of the war, those countries that we had been told were to be the instrumentalities of the democratization of the world and the liberation of small nations, seized every foot of territory that was held by helpless people anywhere in the world. England seized more territory, as the result of the World War, than Rome occupied in the proudest days of the Caesars; France seized bodies of land many times larger than her own domain; Italy took all that she could get within her grasp; Greece is engaged in a war at this moment for the purpose of expanding her dominions. ”

“ Let us apply it now just as sensible men. Suppose a British ship were to commit some outrage upon our commerce to-morrow, or something we thought was an outrage. Suppose the vessel of some little South American country or North American country, let us say Mexico, were to commit a similar act against our commerce. Which of the two would we be most likely to send an ultimatum to? Every man who will be honest with himself on the question knows that we would be very careful, in dealing with Great Britain, to know that we were standing upon the absolute facts. ”

“ Why do they not agree among themselves to disarm? The answer is that there is not one of them that trusts the other, and there is not one of them that trusts the League of Nations, for the aggregate of 46 distrusts will not produce a confidence.
What is it that they want us in for? Why, they want us in for the same reason that they want us to cancel their debts to us. They want us to bear the expense. They want us in to guarantee that whenever they get a majority in the League that wants to do something, the tremendous force of the United States will be there to help accomplish it. ”

“ The markets of the world are the only answer to continued prosperity. We have expended hundreds of millions of dollars in building ships to trade with the world. If we are to trade with the world, and do it through the merchant fleet that we own, there must necessarily be a policing of that business. We can not send our commerce into every country and land and send it there with safety unless the nations of the world understand that we are prepared to protect our rights. ”

“ We were told there would be no war, notwithstanding those facts. Every man who said that there might be a war was condemned as a bloodthirsty villain. Accordingly, when the war broke out in Europe, every man who said that we might be dragged into that war and that there ought to be some preparation was denounced. The President of the United States declared that we were too proud to fight—and there was no preparation made. ”

“ France, as has been stated here on the floor, absolutely declined to reduce her army, even though Germany had been disarmed and had been limited to 100,000 men for a constabulary. I do not criticize France for this; I am just telling these dreamers that they need not any longer wonder whether their dreams come true. Dreams of that kind do not come true. When you dream that there is going to be no more sun in the skies, that there are going to be no more stars at night, your dream does not come true. It is only when you dream of facts that your dream is ever realized. ”

“ If by idealism is meant that a man is so exalted in his purposes that he disregards his own interests from any selfish standpoint and endeavors to benefit other people without trying to benefit himself, that kind of idealism is admirable in an individual. But if by idealism is meant that a man follows visions and dreams, that he does things that are impractical, that will not work out, then that kind of idealism is closely associated with insanity.
It seems nowadays that if a man undertakes to talk about the facts as they are he is at once condemned as being utterly sordid. ”

“ Suppose we sit down here and say to ourselves, "Some day, somewhere, in some remote century of time, people are going to be so good that they will not kill us, and therefore we will throw away our weapons and give them several thousand years in which to butcher us"; and suppose that in the meantime this race of men to which we belong, and which is all that represents real civilization in the world, is destroyed. ”

“ They saved it with mighty fleets that plowed the ocean. They saved it with metal, and they saved it with men who knew how to die, and perhaps they knew how to pray, too; but they fought as they prayed. So you have the problem now on the one hand of waiting for the millennium and taking a chance on being butchered in the meantime and your civilization destroyed, and on the other hand you have the problem of preserving that civilization. ”

“ For some hours I listened to a sermon here this afternoon that sounded almost as good to me as though I had heard it delivered by a professional preacher in a great temple devoted to the service of idealism. The orator said, "Is the world never to be better? Are we not some time to reach a condition where we will no longer slaughter each other?" ”

“ There was then a band of people, calling themselves idealists, who went up and down the country telling us that there would never be any more war, that Christian civilization would not permit it; that the instruments of destruction were so terrible and the advance of Christianity and of humanitarian ideas so pronounced that there would never be any danger of any war. They announced, practically, that the millennium had come. ”

“ We had a eulogy on dreams here a few minutes ago. Every time we use the illustration or speak of the futility of dreams, meaning to describe the impractical, we are immediately told that every great thing originated in a dream. I deny the proposition. Since the days of the prophets, nothing has ever originated in a dream that has been of any good to anyone. Things originate in ideas, and there are mighty few men who have any lucid intervals when they are sound asleep. An idea is not a dream. ”

“ They announced that in the face of some facts which the practical man observed all the time and for which he had regard all the time.
What were those facts? They were that Germany was increasing her armament; and she was not only increasing her armaments but she was doing it for a purpose. Great Britain was increasing her armament, and she was doing it for a purpose. France was increasing her armament, and she was doing it for a purpose. Fundamentally, that purpose was to outstrip the other nations of the world in a policy of imperialism. ”

“ President, if this League of Nations thing is what these gentlemen over here have been professing, even this afternoon while they stood tearfully beside its grave, why is it that it has not taken action to bring about disarmament? They proudly boast that they have in it now 46 nations, I believe, including Liberia. They tell us that they are so great and so powerful and so potential that we will ultimately be forced to join. ”

“ It is to pick one's course of conduct to suit the facts of life and not the dreams of life. It is to make one's ideas and one's plans so that they will work out. If they work out, they are practical. If they will not work out, they are impractical, and there is nothing in the world that is of the slightest value unless it will work out and bring direct results. If we could just get rid of the little oratorical vaporings and begin to talk with something of mathematical certainty, we would not have so much trouble to arrive at correct conclusions. ”

“ If there were mistakes made in the conduct of the war, they were mistakes made by our military or our naval chieftains, or they were mistakes made by that great body of civilians who came to the aid of the Government in its time of stress, and who came equally from both parties. ”

“ You will lose every State in the South as well as every State in the North. I said on this floor that the solid South would be broken in the last election, and it was. I am not a prophet, but I am not an idealist. ”

“ England to-day has command of the oceans, and let me just give you this one thought—not new perhaps to any of you, but it happens to fit in what I am saying just now. The command of the oceans was always important, but the command of the oceans to-day means the command practically of the world. Wars of a hundred years ago were fought by armies that marched over land ”

“ Our country has reached a point economically where it must manufacture vast quantities of goods and create vast quantities of provisions and supplies to sell all around the world. Fifty-one per cent of our people now live in cities. ”

“ The indefensible thought was put forward that six or seven kings, backed by six or seven aristocracies, were about to take the crowns off the heads of the monarchs of the world, including themselves, and turn the world into a great democracy. ”

“ So she will disregard our rights in the Pacific Ocean, and she proposes to hold it. Do you know that I have this idea, that she would not say that to Great Britain, and the reason she would not say it to Great Britain is that British guns are too numerous and too long and the British fleet sweeps too many seas.
Suppose Japan persists in that? I am not going to say or intimate that it will produce war, but it will produce an ugly feeling, and there are conditions which might arise out of it which might be very serious. Let me dismiss that line of argument. It is rather too delicate to pursue ”

“ Gentlemen may expend all of the time and energy they possess in seeking for other causes for this defeat, but he is blind indeed and deaf indeed who does not know that the Democratic ship went on the rocks because its captain was trying to steer us into the false harbor of internationalism. ”