W. J. Simmons

“ As an American, ardent alike for Americanism and the Americanization of our foreign born, I have often enough been accused of narrowness. I saw others burning with enthusiasm over the hope of the League of Nations, but I felt my own heart chilled by the sense of the shortcomings of my own country. With the majority I was hesitant. The map of the world to-day, in all its parts, strikes suffering into the heart that feels. The blood lines in every direction indicate that the world as a whole is drifting from failure unto failure. ”

“ But what we of the South assuredly know, because of our experience, is just this—to treat the Negro as the political equal of the white is to do grave injustice not only to the white, but to the Negro as well. We can not justly enforce the laws among children that we make for adults. To enforce the white man's law, in all cases, upon the Negro is an injustice so great that the effort often causes sorrow to every normal mind among us. Cared for and protected as a child, the Negro's better qualities are developed and made evident by his works. ”

“ Our American democracy, generally successful at first, has more recently left much to be desired. Even a hundred years ago, when we were a primitive, farming population, our victorious democracy had its seamy side. It brought with it every sort of inefficiency. It thrust upon the nation the diabolical spoils system, which is still so largely with us. Yet at that time democracy was saved by the very simplicities of our national life. To-day all is so different. It is time for democracy to tie up its loose ends and pull up the slack at every point. ”

“ Such is the world which our times have given so largely into our keeping. This world demands a leadership such as gave our country unity under the Constitution of 1787. The giants of those days—a full dozen strong, loom large over the succeeding generations, and like Titans of old, their deeds illuminate our whole history. Much accursed as we are to-day by petty minds and selfish hearts in high places, we read the history of our heroic period with deepest yearning that the mighty dead might rise up and speak to us the living words we need to hear. We feel so helpless, so lost, and gone astray. ”

“ Here was, at last, rich soil in abundance for any hand that could wield the axe or hold the plow. Under the leadership of men like Jefferson, Jackson and Lincoln there was finally builded a great nation upon the broad foundation of universal white male suffrage. Here came, with the nineteenth century, the realization of the democratic visions of twenty-five hundred years. Here our American vanguard of democracy, at last, placed the banner of its hope and its triumph upon the topmost pinnacle.
Sometimes we refer to these pioneer Americans as "common people." ”

“ Let us cleave even more firmly to those things of mind and character that have created us a nation. As a unified and democratic people, as a successful, happy and educated people, we can no doubt play a leading part in organizing the world for better things. All the world cries out for this leadership of America. But we are as yet unfit to lead. The nations, which are sinking, stretch out their hands to lay hold of ours, but we ourselves are falling into the pit. One who reaches down his hand to rescue a man falling into Niagara's current must first be sure of his own footing. ”

“ How difficult it is to make men so desirous of peace that they will consecrate their lives to secure its conditions! Are there none among us so devoted to our Union, so ardent in the cause of peace, that they are willing to rally around the principles which will make both peace and unity possible? I steadfastly maintain that, if properly led, a majority of Americans are willing to think and act in order to forestall anarchy and civil war. A vast majority of our farming people and middle classes are ready to demand, as Andrew Jackson demanded in 1830, that the nation do lawful justice to all. ”

“ It is not the blood of Philip, through Alexander, that pulses in the arteries of the world's civilization of to-day; but it is rather the thought of Aristotle, which, despite all the Alexanders of history, runs through the story of the world's civilization in all the lands and all the centuries. It is the idea possessing the spirit which vitalizes all our basic institutions and movements toward human freedom which animate the noblest endeavors of human life. ”

“ The deep, deep and terrible tragedy of our Nordic race in America! We have been decimated by fratricidal war. Our flesh and blood have been corrupted by industrialism. Now, however, we go to our destruction simply because we do not care to live. We go as blindly as a species of animals whose conditions of life have been completely upset by new forces with which they do not know how to deal. Sheep and swine, nay, the wild beasts of the field, could not act with such utter carelessness and immorality as we. All that we have done will perish with us. ”

“ The community protects and serves the home. It accomplishes what the single can not undertake.
Eventually there will come, if we learn to lead, a great world community. It will come slowly, growing through the centuries. Our own country, ever more positive of her individuality, of the deeper things of her own personality, of the true worth of her inmost soul, and with a realizing sense of the value she can so contribute, may yet aspire to the privilege and the honor of that world leadership which will make for the peace, unity and well-being of all. ”

“ We Americans are a perishing people, and the things we have inherited and hold dearest in our hearts are on the way to dissolution and total loss. Of all the greater people of history, we Americans least deserve even the pity which is the portion of those who fail. The glory of our rise, the large part that is ours in the present, the majestic hope of the nation which prophesies such a resplendent future—all this is our heritage. ”

“ A slave population in Europe, they become a slave population here. Politically they are the willing tools of every hidden and dangerous force at work in our public life.
It is no part of my purpose to arouse, in the slightest degree, hatred of these people. Many of them are kind, innocent, simple, unknowing creatures. As strangers in a strange land, they deserve every degree of consideration, every means of help at our hands, which it is in our power to give to them. ”

“ Right here appears what may be our supreme test in the building of a great nation, in the conservation of our democratic civilization. Are we Americans ready and willing to eat our bread by the sweat of our brow? If we are, we shall live and prosper as a people. If we are not, if we crave the importation of an ever larger servile class, then we shall perish, and we shall deserve to perish. Democracy is impossible in the presence of a class which holds common labor in disesteem. ”

“ The old America of our fathers is everywhere fading from sight. The new America is full upon us. And that new America is rapidly becoming a stench in the nostrils of the decent and intelligent minority. We Americans must change our ways. We need a great revival—a revival of common sense and healthy-mindedness. Our national life is starving for the want of fine, thoughtful, educated, young persons with the courage to wish themselves poor. ”

“ But if Americanism becomes a holy cause in which the souls of men are enlisted, in which service of our country and our country's service of the world is made first and foremost, then we shall build an empire indestructible; because, mingled with the cruder material there will be the elements that are everlasting. In such workmanship alone can there be security for those American institutions which we seek to save by the consecration of all we have and all we are. ”

“ The nation as a whole must be persuaded to take counsel in a quiet way. To those who shriek out upon us that "Might makes right," and that "Government is founded upon power and wealth alone," we must be able to reply that our Constitution and laws are still vitalized by the love of our American hearts, and by our willingness to sacrifice self for the sacred things of the Union. ”

“ Perhaps there is no patriotism in the world comparable to that of the Jew. His attachment to his ancient home-land and to his institutions has been through the ages a consuming passion. In the early history of his development, when defeated in war, reduced to slavery and crushed under mountainous oppression, his loyalty to his country and his creed never wavered. There is no picture in history more pathetic and, indeed, more inspiring than that of the Jew in bondage. ”

“ Civil war is the most terrible curse a nation can suffer. We do not propose to look idly upon the mischief of others until it rages all about us. We shall prevent war by planning for peace, by preparing for peace, and by knowing in our inmost hearts that peace can be maintained. The way to the peace we demand lies through justice, righteousness and affection. "The Federal Union, it must be preserved."
National unity, as we here understand it, is more than a means to an end. National unity is an ever enlarging result. ”

“ Grover Cleveland once declared that one American problem for which he saw no solution whatever was the problem of the Negro. If we were in The land of the beginning again, that country of our dreams, we should, of course, not bring the Negro to our shores. It is easy to idealize our American ancestors, but no doubt they made enough errors in their time. Their most gigantic blunder, one to make Providence himself almost despair of humanity, was the Afro-American slave trade. "Man's inhumanity to man" brings at last the greatest of all sorrows upon him who works the inhumanity. ”

“ We Americans are nothing if not humanitarian. We have in the United States many varieties of organization for the assistance of the various foreign racial and national groups upon our soil. We have also done not a little for the succor of the peoples of the old world who are now in such great distress. The larger humanitarian motive is as a guiding star to millions of Americans. It leads them and lights their way. To many such it may seem unnecessary, to some preposterous, for the organization of which I have the honor to be chief to be founded and developed. ”

“ We are what we are; and it so happens that we are forced by circumstances to guide the world. Let us lead wisely and well, winning for our children gratitude and esteem. Let us have done with all this sickening pose of Pecksniff and Uriah Heap, and do the great deeds to which our times call us as Cromwell and Washington would have done!
We need world vision to-day. "Without vision the people perish." But we need more than vision. ”

“ So distinctly American must the public school system be that the young life of the nation, without respect to race, color or creed, shall be brought into it and subjected to its moulding and developing process. National unity and integrity cannot be maintained if a part of the nation is taught and a part remains in ignorance. A democracy must have uniformity and universality in the elementary training of its young life. Neither can the nation maintain its existence and work out its destiny if in its early training its youth is broken up into sectional, racial and sectarian groups. ”

“ The four hundred millions of China, torn from without for a generation, lacerated by revolution and civil wars for ten years, have merely proven to us their incapacity for self-help. India is in revolution and Egypt cut adrift. All the world is more decadent to-day than when America entered the war. Again and again the nations come to us begging for the strong arm of leadership. Again and again they go from us, broken hearted and bowed down by the weak words of our indecision and failure. ”

“ To educate them and to fit them for useful work and public service, we must apply the first fruits of our nation's wealth. To offer to these young citizens, upon maturity, full opportunity for fruitful labor and self expression, we must be ready to reject much error that is ancient, and accept much truth that is new and sometimes startling.
America consists of and exists in the home. The home is America. To lose the [Pg 283] fight here is to lose all. To win at this point is to win for ourselves national salvation, and for the world our share in its ultimate redemption. ”

“ What, indeed, could be more appealing to the finer things in human nature than the fiery cross? "By that symbol we conquer." It carries the idea of illumination and sacrifice. It symbolizes a love that lights the way to the noblest service; it symbolizes a service that is impelled by a burning love. Here lies the only way forward. The world's amelioration is proclaimed by the glowing cross. ”

“ The Klan is neither anti-racial nor anti-sectarian. It is pro-American. We concede to every distinctive organization in race and religion the same rights of restricting and qualifying its membership that we claim for ourselves. If, in the light of all the past, and in view of the present, we are insisting upon an organization of native-born white American citizens, we do not, by stipulating the conditions of membership in the Ku Klux Klan, avow hostility to any one class or company who may not, for one reason or another, qualify for membership in our organization. ”

“ The American home, the home in which healthy, intelligent and characterful children are bred and reared, both for their own sakes and the nation's service—this home is the veritable rockbottom of our national well-being. Let the home fail, and all our wealth and material achievement is naught but poverty and trash. ”

“ Our labor problem can be solved only by winning the employers and workers alike to accept a common policy of justice and Americanism. The view that there is ever "more work in America than we can do ourselves" is the falsest of false economic theories. Why should we try to exploit our resources or develop new projects of any sort at the crazy and destructive rate of speed which has marked our industrialism during the past generation? Just the contrary is the correct policy. The unskilled labor of America must be done by Americans. ”

“ To my generation, as it grew up in the defeated, broken and impoverished South, the problems of life presented heavy tasks rather than stirring issues. We had to make all our beginnings as a people over again. Our mood was much like that of the Puritan founders of New England when they set themselves to struggle against the stern climate and the thin and unfruitful soil of their section. ”