Otto H. Kahn

“ All statesmanship worthy of the name is strategic—all other statesmanship is but a glittering bubble, floating in an empty void. If the moral and ideals of a people be not deep-rooted in vigour capable of defending those ideals, that people is doomed.
I am proud to know that Otto Kahn sees eye to eye with me. The utter degradation of the fine old Germany by Prussia was a bitter disillusion of my young manhood. What must it have been to Otto Kahn? He loved the old Germany to which he was "linked by ties of blood, by fond memories and cherished sentiments." ”

“ We are engaged in a war, an "irrepressible conflict," a most just and righteous war for a cause as high and noble as ever inspired a people to put forth its utmost of sacrifice and valour. To attain the end for which this peace-loving nation unsheathed its sword, to lay low and make powerless the accursed spirit which brought all this unspeakable misery, sorrow and ruin upon the world, is our one and supreme and unshakable purpose. ”

“ If I have expressed myself freely, in some respects even bluntly, I hope you will make allowance for the honest and deep anger and grief that move me when I see how, through a needless war wantonly started, Germany and England-France, the three countries of Europe whom the world most needs, the three races from whom humanity has most to expect, are engaged in tearing one another to pieces in senseless fury. ”

“ The spirit which animates Germany is indeed a great and mighty one. It is a spirit of unity and brotherhood among her people, of willing sacrifice and heroic striving, coupled with the passionate conviction and faith that her cause is just and righteous, that it must and will win, and that not only is victory a necessity for national existence, but that in its train it will bring blessings to the whole of the universe. ”

“ Against foes within no less than against enemies without they will know how to preserve and protect the splendid structure of light and order which is the great and treasured inheritance of all those who rightly bear the name Americans, of which the stewardship is entrusted to them and which, God willing, they will hand on to their children sound and wholesome, unshaken and undefiled.
The time is ripe and over-ripe to call a halt upon these spreaders of outlandish and pernicious doctrines. The American is indulgent to a fault and slow to wrath. ”

“ If ever a nation entered a war after having maintained infinite forbearance in the face of grave menace and dangers and the most intolerable affronts, and from motives as pure and high as the great blue dome of heaven, America is that nation. ”

“ If, as is fortunately the case, America is now in the war by our side, unanimous, enthusiastic, undivided; if the people, East and West, realize the abominable doctrines and actions of modern Germany and the necessity at whatever cost in blood and treasure of defeating that abomination utterly, then no man is more entitled to a high place of honour among those who have brought about this happy achievement than Otto Kahn. ”

“ To that spirit and to those doctrines, we, citizens of America and servants, as such, of humanity, will oppose our solemn and unshakable resolution "to make the world safe for democracy," and we will say, with a clear conscience, in the noble words which more than five hundred years ago were uttered by the Parliament of Scotland:
"It is not for glory, or for riches, or for honour that we fight, but for liberty alone which no good man loses but with his life." ”

“ And when this war broke out in Europe I knew that the issue had been joined between the powers of brutal might and insensate ambition on the one side and the forces of humanity and liberty on the other; between darkness and light. ”

“ We must bridge the gulf which now separates the employer and the employee, the business man and the farmer, if the existing order of civilization is to persist. We must welcome progress and seek to further social justice. We must translate into effective action our sympathy for and our recognition of the rights of those whose life, in too many cases, is now a hard and weary struggle to make both ends meet, and who too often are oppressed by the gnawing care of how to find the wherewithal to provide for themselves and their families. ”

“ They are the things of humanity, liberty, justice and mercy, for which the best men amongst all the nations—including the German nation—have fought and bled these many generations past, which were the ideals of Luther, Goethe, Schiller, Kant, and a host of others who had made the name of Germany great and beloved until Prussianism came to make its deeds a byword and a hissing. ”

“ Liberty in the wild and freakish hands of fanatics has once more, as frequently in the past, proved the effective helpmate of autocracy and the twin brother of tyranny.
Out-czaring the czar, its votaries are filling the prisons with their political opponents, are practising ruthless spoliation and savage oppression, and are maintaining their self-constituted rule by the force of bayonets. Riot, robbery, famine, fratricidal strife are stalking through the land.
The deadliest foe of democracy is not autocracy but liberty frenzied. ”

“ When I speak of the militant Bolsheviki in our midst as foes of national unity I mean to include those of American stock who are their allies, comrades or followers—those who put a narrow class interest and a sloppy internationalism above patriotism, with whom class hatred and envy have become a consuming passion, whom visionary obsessions and a false conception of equality have inflamed to the point of irresponsibility. But I am far from meaning to reflect upon those who, while determined Socialists, are patriotic Americans. ”

“ I am far from meaning to compare the loss of income or profits with the risk of life or health to which men in the firing line are exposed, or to compare financial sacrifices to those willingly and proudly borne by the youth of our land and shared by those near and dear to them. But I do believe it to be a just contention—not in the interest of the individual, but of the welfare of the community—that the same principle which is applied in the case of the conscription of men should hold good for the conscription of income or profits ”

“ We will wear as a badge of honour the abuse and spite of those who place another cause, whatever it be, above the Nation's cause and who see hypocrisy or hidden motives behind the plain profession of unconditional loyalty on the part of the American of foreign birth, because unconditional American loyalty is not in them.
Yet, it is not enough for us Americans of German descent to do our duty by our country and fellow-citizens, however fully and unreservedly, if we do it in resigned and oppressed silence. I believe we should speak out. ”

“ Enslaved, immersed in greed and hate, Where are the things which made you great?"
The things which made Germany great are not dead, and the world cannot afford to allow them to die. They belong to the immortal possessions of the human race. ”

“ Would they repudiate a percentage of the National Debt? Repudiation is no less dishonourable in a people than in an individual, and the penalty for failure to respect the sanctity of obligations is no different for a nation than for an individual.
The fact is that the Government would gain nothing in the process of capital conscription and the country would be thrown into chaos for the time being. The man who has saved would be penalized; he who has wasted would be favoured. ”

“ They are now in the keeping of that minority, not, perhaps, very great as yet, but growing steadily, of men in Germany itself from whose eyes the scales have begun to fall. They are in the keeping of all the nations who appreciate and cherish and are determined to maintain those great and high things which the civilized world has attained through the toil, sacrifice and suffering of its best in the course of many centuries. And, above all, they are in the keeping of the ten or fifteen millions of Americans of German descent. ”

“ And to the extent that Socialism is an antidote to and a check upon excessive individualism and holds up to a busy and self-centred and far from perfect world, grievances to be remedied, wrongs to be righted, ideals to be striven for, it is a force distinctly for good.
Still less do I mean to reflect upon the labour union movement, which I regard as an absolutely necessary element in the scheme of our economic life. Its leaders have acted with admirable patriotism in this crisis of the Nation, and on the whole have been a factor against extreme tendencies and irrational aspirations. ”

“ There is abundant evidence that the overwhelming majority, indeed all but an insignificant minority, meant what they said when they swore full and sole allegiance to America, that they will prove themselves wholly worthy of the high privilege of citizenship and of the generous [Pg 34] trust of their native fellow-citizens, and that they will not fail or falter under any test whatsoever.
We will not permit the blood in our veins to drown the conscience in our breast. We will heed the call of honour beyond the call of race. ”

“ I do not hesitate to state it as my solemn conviction that the more unmistakably and whole-heartedly Americans of German origin throw themselves into the struggle which this country has entered in order to rescue Germany, no less than America and the rest of the world, from those sinister forces that are, in President Wilson's language, the enemy of all mankind, the better they protect and serve the repute of the old German name and the true advantage of the German people. ”

“ Some politicians there may be, here and elsewhere, so obsessed by the issues which heretofore were good election assets and so unable to shake off the inveterate habits and the formulas and calculations of a lifetime, that they are unable to recognize and to share in the sudden flaming manifestations springing from the deep of the people's soul—and after a while, looking around for their usual followers, find themselves in chilly loneliness. ”

“ And, in a very real sense, does not our national life, aye, our [Pg 10] individual life depend on the outcome of this war?
Would life be tolerable if the power of Prussianism, run mad and murderous, held the world by the throat, if the primacy of the earth belonged to a government steeped in the doctrines of a barbarous past and supported by a ruling caste which preaches the deification of sheer might, which despises liberty, hates democracy and would destroy both if it could? ”

“ In the gloomy and accusing procession of infinite sorrow and pain which was started on that thrice accursed day of July, 1914, the hurt inflicted on Americans of German descent takes its tragically rightful place.
The iron has entered our souls. We have been wantonly robbed of invaluable possessions which have come down to us through the centuries; we have been rendered ashamed of that in which we took pride; we have been made the enemies of those of our own blood ”

“ While this war lasts we have a right to demand of every man, whether capitalist, or labourer, or farmer, that his prime effort and motive be to win the war, for this is the people's war, America's war—the war of all of us. The Government should see that every man does his full part. ”

“ These people with many hundreds of thousands of their countrymen came to our free shores after centuries of oppression and persecution. America gave them everything she had to give—the great gift of the rights and liberties of citizenship, free education in our schools and universities, free treatment in our clinics and hospitals, our boundless opportunities for social and material advancement. ”

“ You have so incontestably vindicated the prowess of your arms, and so impressively demonstrated the power, courage, self-sacrificing patriotism and high ability of your nation, that no possible suspicion can attach to you of yielding under compulsion, should you rise to the moral heroism of taking the first step towards dispelling the dreadful misery which weighs upon Europe through this appalling war. ”

“ He who shirks the full measure of his duty and allegiance in that noblest of causes, be he German-American, Irish-American, or any other hyphenated American, be he I.W.W. or Socialist or whatever the appellation, does not deserve to stand amongst Americans or, indeed, amongst free men anywhere.
He who tries, secretly or overtly, to thwart the declared will and aim of the Nation in this holy war is a traitor, and a traitor's fate should be his. ”

“ The difference in the degree of guilt as between the German people and their Prussian or Prussianized rulers and leaders for the monstrous crime of this war and the atrocious barbarism of its conduct is the difference between the man who, acting under the influence of a poisonous drug, runs amuck in mad frenzy and the unspeakable malefactor who administered that drug, well knowing and fully intending the ghastly consequences which were bound to follow.
The world fervently longs for peace. ”