I UC-NRLF iiir^" ^B 7M3 fl7M THE AMERICAN SPIRIT FRANKLIN K. LANE THE AMERICAN SPIRIT ADDRESSES IN WAR-TIME BY FRANKLIN K. LANE Secretary of the Interior NEW YORK FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY PUBLISHERS Copyright, 1918, by Frederick A. Stokes Company All rights reserved V'A TO MY SON IN FRANCE 381931 Digitized by tine Internet Arciiive in 2008 witii funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation littp://www.arcliive.org/details/americanspiritadOOIanericli FOREWORD Our pride is that America is playing a noble part in the life of the world. Not a little, selfish, shrewd part, nor even a strong and ambitious part, but a high-minded, generous, — a noble part. Our one fixed doctrine of international policy is founded in a fine chivalry, and all the resources of this conquered continent are the common property of all peoples. Indeed, it is not going beyond the truth to say that when we look deeply into the American heart we will surely and always find a living and growing sense of trusteeship underlying our rights of possession. We see superficialities which make for doubt sometimes. We swing off into eddies and by-currents and are led to believe that the main stream is a myth, that after all this is a world for getting, and getting any way one can, for doing and doing what at the time is profit- able. But this is a humor of growth. The mood does not last. Take from America the youthful belief in her- vi FOREWORD self as an evangel of the gospel of Freedom and this war means nothing to us ; we would not have made the venture and planted our standard beside those of France and England *' for better or for worse.'* And our strange Emersonian faith will not permit us to believe that it can be " for worse." Germany may think in terms of man power and gun power for forty years and yet we cannot fear the ultimate worst, because we sing The Battle Hymn of the Republic — " God's truth is march- ing on," and we believe it; it is a part of us; it is as real as our mountains and our rivers. The only real blow that we could suffer in this war, or any other, would be the destruction of this faith. It explains to us our history and those whom we call our leaders. Where it comes from or whither It will lead us we have not stopped to inquire. Like the salt that savors the sea it has washed in from all lands. Man's spirit everywhere calls out that Justice shall be his, and Justice means un- derstanding, and understanding means sympathy, and sympathy means brotherhood, and brother- hood means democracy, — and so we come to the meaning of the great movement a part of which we are. FOREWORD vii Democracy is as expansible a term as Chris- tianity. Some see in it a meaning no deeper than the securing of the right to vote, to choose our own officials, to make our own local and national policies. This is its political phase, the founda- tion of all others, without which none other could have been evolved. In essence, however, it is an attitude toward mankind and Its problems, politi- cal, social, economic, — a philosophy. The greatness of the American Revolution lay in this, that it was the culmination of centuries of struggling philosophy incorporated in a delib- erate and successful act. We gave form and sub- stance and actuality to the dreams of philosophers and statesmen. And when Russian and German meet on their borders to-day to discuss what they term the national right of " self-determination " they are taking the words out of the mouths of that little group of Americans who grounded their right of revolution on the doctrine that the " con- sent of the governed " is the foundation of liberty. We pulled down from the hazy heavens the divine rights of rulers and gave to man himself — weak, undeveloped, climbing man — this all powerful weapon of self-government. The outstanding viii FOREWORD world-figure which represents this phase of democ- racy is that of Washington. His monument is far more than an enduring and beautiful tribute to one who took the supreme risk for our sake, it is the arm of the nation raised in solemn pledge that here forevermore man shall be his own master. In these latter years, however, Lincoln's lank figure has come to be the symbol of a new expres- sion of democracy, the social as distinguished from the political interpretation. As the last century belonged to Washington, so it may be safely prophesied that this century will belong to Lincoln. He speaks the word of human sympathy, of con- cern for others, of deepest love for his kind, — yet surely saved from sentimentality by robust com- mon sense. He had feeling limited by judgment, a dynamic heart that sent out its currents by way of a sobering, checking brain. He saw his goal with his deep emotional nature and felt his way toward it, as nature feels her way toward her mys- terious ends, by transitions that always link the past with the future. In this way we shall walk; haltingly, perhaps, though I think not; stumbling often, of course. We must walk knowing that we will solve nothing. For there can be no finality to FOREWORD ix progress. " The best " is our aim, yet man, alas 1 never achieves more than a comparative. A mil- lennium is prophesied, but this same prophecy de- clares that before it comes there must appear the Perfect Man. How shall we translate democracy into terms of food for all who will pay the Biblical price, land for those alone who will use It, gold for those who can transmute it into wide-spread comfort, power for those who can lead wisely? These are among the questions this democracy must answer, and an- swer concretely, if we are to play further that noble part In the life of the world which we have set for ourselves. We are groping now in the search for the way best fitted to our natures, our traditions, our needs. Is it easier to give private business a social sense or to make government effi- cient? Property must answer this question, and not at Its leisure, or the alternative chance will be taken. The whole world at this, very moment is tense with importunlngs. ■"•^ Above all else we must cherish in our search this central glowing thought, that the goal is not to know how many men In mass live without fear of the morrow and without fear of their neighbor, X FOREWORD but how many individual men are challenged by circumstance and in spirit to reveal their full powers, and have opportunity to make the proof. For a true Democracy is not to be likened to a Milky Way of pale and even effulgence; it is rather a round heaven of striving stars, each vying with the other in glory. F. K. L. Washington, D. C, February 5, 19 18. CONTENTS CHAPTER I The American Spirit II The Unconquerable Soul III The American Pioneer . IV The Rights of Neighbors . V Fruits of Faith .... VI American Tradition . . VII Why do We Fight Germany VIII Foresight and Cooperation IX Three Flags in the Same Colors X Greater Than Making Money XI The Message of the West . XII A New and Greater America XIII Makers of the Flag . . . PAGE I 9 i6 23 27 32 46 55 65 69 85 104 128 v" THE AMERICAN SPIRIT THE AMERICAN SPIRIT Address delivered at the Commencement Exercises of Brown University, June 21, igi6. I do not know what better I can say to you this afternoon than to speak a simple word of cheer about that very mystical thing which we call the American spirit. It seems to have been lost or to be on the verge of being lost. I wouldn't have known this if I had not been reading some rather gloomy and anemic New England papers. My friends, if the American spirit gives any evidence of being in a state of decline or decadence in New England I beg that you will come with me to my Western country — " Out where the West be- gins." Spirit — What is the American spirit? Is it love of adventure? Two years ago Congress au- thorized the construction of a railroad in Alaska, — five hundred miles straight away from the sea i' " ' The AMERICAN SPIRIT to the Circle. We needed a thousand men, and within sixty days thirty-three thousand had made petition that they might take the hazards of that new country; — not idlers, the flotsam of the sea of civilization — but men of steady habit, em- ployed already but ready for a new adventure. There's something American about that. There is no sense in saying that the spirit has gone out of a people when Uncle Sam as a landed proprietor is selling twelve million acres of desert every year to people who earn it by living on it and turning it into farms. A few weeks ago we opened a tract of land in Northern Montana where the thermometer falls to forty below zero sometimes. There were twelve hundred farms to be sold, and there were twenty-seven thousand ap- plicants. Out of the first hundred and fifty names drawn from the box not one failed to accept his opportunity. We challenged him to go into the wilderness and make a home and he took the chal- lenge. There's something American about that. I have seen it stated that the American had for- gotten noble things and become a pampered draw- ing room darling, like some poodle, fat and ease- loving. Do you know that the average wage in THE AMERICAN SPIRIT 3 the United States is less than six hundred dollars a year, and that only three hundred thousand out of one hundred million pay income tax ? Yes, I hear it said, but will these men fight? There is the test Do they love anything but the pay envelope ? I ask you back : When did these men ever fail to fight? There stands at my door in Washington a man who went into the Civil War from Ohio, — he and his father and his two brothers and his two brothers-in-law — and after four years he alone came out alive. I asked him one day, " What did you go to war for? " ** To save the Union," he answered. Two millions of those boys, averaging but nineteen years of age, went into that war to save the Union. And if you had asked them what the Union was, few could have given a better answer than that it was the thing they were fighting for, — an idea not to be expressed in words, symbol- ized by a few stripes and stars. Has there ever been a time when we did not stand the test? The time when the American spirit came nearest to failing was a hundred and fifty years ago when New York would not join in signing the Declar- ation of Independence and Rhode Island refused ■'• 4*-* * THE 'American spirit for so long to ratify the Constitution. And when I read New York or Rhode Island papers criticiz- ing some of our Western States for lacking in spirit because they are not yet convinced that we need military training for our boys, I just turn back to the old school history and ask a few dis- agreeable questions about the past. r"" National spirit and martial spirit are not the same. There was a time when war was all of romance and of gallantry and of opportunity that the world offered. That time has gone. War now at its best is but one expression of the human I passion for adventure and achievement. The spirit of America is against war not be- cause we have grown cowardly and fear death, nor because we have grown flabby and love soft- ness; no, not even because we have become con- scious converts to the Prince of Peace. But we in America have something larger to do. We are discovering our country. Every tree is a challenge to us, and every pool of water and every foot of soil. The mountains are our enemies. We must pierce them and make them serve. The wilful rivers we must curb; and out of the seas and the air renew the life of the earth itself. We THE AMERICAN SPIRIT 5 have no time for war. We are doing something so much more important. We are at work. That is the greatest of all adventures. When war comes to a Democracy it comes because men are not allowed peacefully to work. What would we fight for? For what Roger Williams fought — to be let alone, to have the opportunity to show what man can do for man. A spirit is intangible. It defies definition or limitation. It can only be made comprehensible by acts. So let me illustrate my idea of the spirit of America by naming two men — both Californians — Theodore Judah and Herbert Hoover. All have heard of Huntington, Stanford, Hop- kins and Crocker, the builders of the Central Pacific railroad. The real builder of that road was a young Connecticut engineer named Judah. He had the vision, he made the surveys. He found the way across the mountains. Then he found Stanford, the grocer, and Huntington, the hardware man, and told his dream and showed his plans. They caught fire. Judah convinced them that Congress could be made to supply the money. He came to Washington, became the 6 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT clerk of the House Committee on Pacific Rail- roads, then the clerk of the Senate Committee, wrote both reports ; the bill was passed, and going home in triumph he died upon the Isthmus of Panama. The spirit of young Judah has been the making of America. The next man I name to you is Herbert Hoover, mining engineer — Hoover of Califor- nia, Hoover of Siberia, Hoover of Russia, Hoover of England, Hoover of Belgium, Hoover of the world, the head of the Belgian Relief Com- mittee. That young man comes to this country unnoticed and leaves unnoticed. But his admin- istrative mind has made possible the feeding of a nation. He has organized the financial system for Belgium. Through him the heart of the world has spoken to those suffering people. This young man is only a mining engineer from Stan- ford University who has drifted all round the world, and when the war broke out was living in England managing great industrial and mining properties in the Ural Mountains, India and the United States. A hundred thousand men were at work for him, and all the genius that he had was at once put to work to succor the unfortunate THE AMERICAN SPIRIT 7 Belgians. I never will forget the simple way In which he told me of his adventure in going to France and asking for help. He went to the Premier and said : " I have got to have some money for the relief of the Belgians and the in- vaded areas of France/' and the Premier said: *' But we have a war ourselves, we have destitute people of our own. Truly the Germans are in duty bound to support the people they invade! How much do you think you should have from us?" **And I said, * Well, I think we should have twenty-two million francs a month from you until the war is over.' And the Premier said, * Oh, my, we have not the money, hut I will see the banks, I will see what can be done.' And I went back to London with my heart sick. But the next day there came a letter, saying, ' Dear Mr. Hoover, please find order for twenty-two million francs. I beg you will acknowledge it,' signed by the Premier of France." And each month the same check has come, and no question has ever been asked as to how it was spent. He said to me with a glow: " Do not believe that the American flag is not respected abroad. If any one ever tells you that tell him to go to Brussels and stand in 8 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT front of the United States legation and see the Bel- gian as he passes take off his hat to the Stars and Stripes; no English flag, no French flag, no Rus- sian flag, no Spanish flag, no Japanese flag, no Chinese flag, but the Stars and Stripes, which never have been hauled down In Belgium ; and from sun- rise in the morning until sunset at night the Bel- gian peasants and Belgian artisans pass that house and as each passes takes his hat off to that flag.'* Judah — the Incarnation of the spirit of the American ambition to make hard places easy. Hoover — the Incarnation of the spirit of Amer- ican desire to help the world. Let us stand be- side the Belgian peasant before that flag in Brus- sels and take heart. THE UNCONQUERABLE SOUL Address delivered at Commencement Exercises of Gal- laudet College for the Deaf and Dumb, June 22, 1914, The bravest sight in all this world is a man fighting against odds. The swimmer with his head up stream, the climber facing the storm, the soldier with his back to the wall. The rich young man putting away the easy cup of pleasure which drugs into uselessness. Abraham Lincoln, the tired plow boy, making the cabin fire light his path to knowledge. Helen Keller, fighting her way up out of the lonesome darkness, slowly rising, step by step, on the golden runged ladder of imagination out of a voiceless, nameless, colorless, formless, thoughtless, hid- eous world into one of friendship, purpose and beauty. These are our heroes. We envy the gifted — the swift runner, the sweet singer, the burdenless — we call them the chosen of the gods. But our hearts go out to 9 lo THE AMERICAN SPIRIT those who are not started at the scratch, the ones who have a handicap, who know it and in whom rebelHous bitterness is transformed into resolu- tion. Their triumph makes us all proud. And that is why we are here to-day. To re- joice with you. You have triumphed and we wish a share in that triumph. Nature in one of her mysterious moods placed her hands upon your ears, and in so doing dared you to presume to play life's game as men and women. You took up that challenge. And now you have come home, not seeking honors, spurning sympathy, to lay the tribute of your affectionate appreciation at the feet of those who pointed out the way by which you foiled mischievous nature. Whatever your modesty we may be permitted in our pride to say: "You have made good." And those words are American for the ribbon of the Legion of Honor and the Victoria Cross. This I beheld, or dreamed it in a dream : — There spread a cloud of dust along a plain ; And underneath the cloud, or in it, raged A furious battle, and men yelled, and swords Shocked upon swords and shields. A prince's banner Wavered, then staggered backward, hemmed by foes. THE UNCONQUERABLE SOUL ii A craven hung along the battle's edge, And thought, " Had I a sword of keener steel — That blue blade that the king's son bears, — but this Blunt thing — ! '* he snapt and flung it from his hand, And lowering crept away and left the field. Then came the king's son, wounded, sore bestead, And weaponless, and saw the broken sword. Hilt-buried in the dry and trodden sand. And ran and snatched it, and with battle-shout Lifted afresh he hewed his enemy down. And saved a great cause that heroic day. Those lines are by E. R. Sill, who also wrote those exquisite lines " The Fool's Prayer " with which you are perhaps familiar — if not, you should be. The title given by Mr. Sill to his lines is " Opportunity " but that generalization does not fix the idea which It conveys to me; a more appropriate title would be " The Thoroughbred," for to the king's son that broken sword was a challenge. You, teachers and preachers, engi- neers and artists, mechanics and architects, who have by force of character linked yourselves to the world and refused to despair while there was so much as a broken sword to your hand are the ones to whom that poem In Its thought Is dedi- cated. 12 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT A group of bold adventurers — that's what you are; every one with a spirit that would dare to question the sphinx. Nature Intended that you should not know what I am saying. But here you are, reading my thoughts as soon as they touch my lips, and perhaps earlier still. Why this refusal to accept the decree of nature? What was the spirit that made you seek to master those secrets which It apparently had not been In- tended should be yours? What kind of a Colum- bus' voyage was this you took when you broke out into this new world and determined to make It your own? Ah, perhaps what you have done is after all what all have done who *' fought and tolled and ruled and loved and made this world." Your progress may be but the symbol of the progress of all civilization. , The " mystical hanker after something higher " drives the adventurous ones to go forth and find some way which nature had con- cealed and made most hard. If she will not let us hear, we will see, and If she lays her hands upon our eyes, we will make ten eyes out of our ten fingers. What a world of adventure we do live in — THE UNCONQUERABLE SOUL 13 everyday, Inside of ourselves, outside of our- selves, always making nature serve us willy-nllly; and all out of the intrepidity of our adventurous spirits. Doubtless many of you saw the first public flight of an aeroplane just across the Potomac, five or six years ago. Then we witnessed a triumph over the last of the three great powers. The earth was ours and the fulness thereof, the sea and all that dwelt therein. But this thin mys- terious gas which enveloped us was an eternal challenge, an ever present proof of our weak- ness; its softest zephyr was a word of defiance. But the air is ours now; ours to use; ours to bring closer together all men — which seems to be the resolute underlying purpose of this upward trend called civilization. Now we can play in the heavens and make sport with the birds of the air. Yet, is this capture of the air more of a grand adventure than the capture of the fleeting word — an adventure that each one of you went upon when he first sought to make the world his against the apparent mandate of nature? And what is civilization but the recording of all such adventures, gropings, searchings, reaching out of 14 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT hands? This life Is worth while because nature has issued her challenge to every one, to all man- kind. In Paris, on the boulevard which faces the tomb of Napoleon there Is a statue of Pasteur. The seated figure of the scientist crowns a marble column. On the sides of this column are four bas reHefs, — one a girl plucking grapes, another a boy tending sheep, the third a man driving oxen, — all testifying to the debt the world owes to this quiet student for the driving out of diseases which threatened the life of the grape, the sheep, and the cattle. On the front of the column Is a group which should make the name of Falgulere im- mortal. Half risen from her couch, with hag- gard face, an invalid girl is leaning against her mother who is looking up into the eyes of Pas- teur with supreme gratitude, while shrinking away from these two, with back toward them and turn- ing the corner of the pedestal Is the defeated figure of Death. The man does not live — or if he does I do not wish to know him — who can stand in the pres- ence of those two monuments and not say in his heart, " I had rather be that simple patient man THE UNCONQUERABLE SOUL 15 of science than the conqueror of Europe." And yet I believe Napoleon was almost as necessary to the world as he believed himself to be — a pitiless upturner of old things, who plowed the soil of nations for the upspringing of a new and stronger crop. Pasteur, however, typifies the spirit of our new day — wherein man*s mind triumphs over resist- ing, unwilling, terrorizing nature. Man has been dominated by his fears. His battles and his preachings and his politics have been based upon the dread of something worse that might befall him. But ours is a day of gladness, because it is the day of hope. We have shifted the fight. Instead of creating fear we are destroying fears. Instead of adding to the burdens of those afflicted, we are lifting those burdens. Instead of reject- ing those whom nature has handicapped as unfit, we are rejoicing together that none is unfit who has a stout heart. THE AMERICAN PIONEER Address delivered at the opening of the Panama-Pacific Exposition, San Francisco, February 20, 1915. The sculptors who have ennobled these build- ings with their work have surely given full wing to their fancy in seeking to symbolize the tale which this exposition tells. Among these figures I have sought for one which would represent to me the significance of this great enterprise. Prophets, priests, and kings are here, con- querors and mystical figures of ancient legend; but these do not speak the word I hear. My eye Is drawn to the least conspicuous of all — the modest figure of a man standing beside two oxen, which looks down upon the court of the nations, where Ea«st and West come face to face. Towering above his gaunt figure is the canopy of his prairie schooner. Gay conquistadores ride beside him, and one must look hard to see this simple, plodding figure. 16 THE AMERICAN PIONEER 17 Yet that man is to me the one hero of this day. Without him we would not be here. Without him banners would not fly, nor bands play. Without him San Francisco would not be to- day the gayest city of the globe. Shall I tell you who he is, this key figure in the arch of our enterprise? That slender, dauntless, plodding, modest fig- ure is the American pioneer. To me he is, indeed, far more; he is the ad- venturous spirit of our restless race. Long ago he set sail with Ulysses. But Ulysses turned back. He sailed again with Columbus for the Indies and heard with joy the quick command, " Sail on, sail on, and on." But the westward way was barred. He landed at Plymouth Rock and with his dull- eyed oxen has made the long, long journey across our continent. His way has been hard, slow, momentous. He made his path through soggy, sodden for- ests where the storms of a thousand years con- spired to block his way. i8 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT He drank with delight of the brackish water where the wild beasts wallowed. He trekked through the yielding, treacherous snows; forded swift-running waters; crept pain- fully through rocky gorges where Titans had been at play; clambered up mountain sides, the sport of avalanche and of slide; dared the limit- less land without horizon; ground his teeth upon the bitter dust of the desert; fainted beneath the flail of the raw and ruthless sun; starved, thirsted, fought; was cast down but never broken; and he never turned back. Here he stands at last beside this western sea, the incarnate soul of his insatiable race — the American pioneer. Pity? He scorns it. Glory? He does not ask it. His sons and his daughters are scattered along the path he has come. Each fence post tells where some one fell. Each farm, brightened now with the first smile of Spring, was once a battlefield, where men and women fought the choking horrors of starvation and isolation. THE AMERICAN PIONEER 19 His Is this one glory — he found the way ; his the adventure. It is life that he felt, life that compelled him. That strange, mysterious thing that lifted him out of the primeval muck and sent him climbing upward — that same strange thing has pressed him onward, held out new visions to his wonder- ing eyes, and sung new songs into his welcoming ears. And why? In his long wandering he has had time to think. He has talked with the stars, and they have taught him not to ask why. He is here. He has seated himself upon the golden sand of this distant shore and has said to himself that it is time for him to gather his sons about him that they may talk; that they may tell tales of things done. Here on this stretch of shore he has built the outermost camp fire of his race and has gathered his sons that they may tell each other of the progress they have made — utter man's prayers, things done for man. 20 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT His sons are they who have cut these continents In twain, who have slashed God's world as with a knife, who have gleefully made the rebellious seas to lift man's ship across the barrier mountains of Panama. This thing the sons of the pioneer have done — it is their prayer, a thing done for man. And here, too, these sons of the pioneer will tell of other things they do — how they fill the night with jeweled light conjured from the melt- ing snows of the far-off mountains; how they talk together across the world in their own voices; how they baffle the eagles in their flight through the air and make their way within the spectral gloom of the soundless sea; how they reach into the heavens and draw down food out of the air to replenish the wasted earth; how with the touch of a knife they convert the sinner and with the touch of a stone dissolve disease. These things and more have they done in these latter days, these sons of the pioneer. And in their honor he has fashioned this beau- tiful city of dreams come true. In their honor has he hung the heavens with flowers and added new stars to the night. THE AMERICAN PIONEER 2i In blue and gold, In scarlet and purple, in the green of the shallow sea and the burnt brown of the summer hillside, he has made the architecture of the centuries to march before their eyes in column, colonnade, and court. We have but to anchor his quaint covered wagon to the soil and soon it rises transformed into the vane of some mighty cathedral. For after all Rome and Rheims, Salisbury and Seville are not far memories to the pioneer. Here, too, in this city of the new nation the pioneer has called together all his neighbors that we may learn one of the other. We are to live together side by side for all time. The seas are but a highway between the door- ways of the nations. We are to know each other and to grow in mutual understanding. Perhaps strained nerves may sometimes fancy the gesture of the pioneer to be abrupt, and his voice we know has been hardened by the winter winds. But his neighbors will soon come to know that he has no hatred in his heart, for he is without 22 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT fear; that he is without envy, for none can add to his wealth. The long journey of this slight, modest figure that stands beside the oxen is at an end. The waste places of the earth have been found. But adventure is not to end. Here in his house will be taught the gospel of an advancing democracy — strong, valiant, con- fident, conquering — upborne and typified by the independent, venturesome spirit of that mystic materialist, the American pioneer. THE RIGHTS OF NEIGHBORS Remarks at a luncheon to the American-Mexican Joint Commission at the Hotel Biltmore, New York, September 4, 1916, We are here primarily to advise together as to the methods that shall be taken to protect that in- visible line which is drawn between the United States and Mexico and is known to us as the Mexi- can border. National boundaries are natural things when they stand for differences in people, in forms of government, in traditions and in as- pirations. They are unnatural when created alone by force. The border between our coun- tries is one that has its justification in the dis- tinctions that exist between your people and ours. This whole round world has been broken up and divided between the various families of men who make up mankind. You have your allotment, we have ours. And in the days of old there was no passing between. The one family was in hos- tility to all others, and nations in fencing them- 23 24 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT selves about not only protected themselves against intrusion from their enemies, but made it impos- sible to gain the many benefits which come from contact with different nationalities. This isola- tion is no longer possible. And nations to-day must learn and live by the standards of each other. That is the purpose of this conference, to let you know what lies this side of that border, — not the mere physical strength of the political organization that constitutes the United States, but the spirit of our people and their attitude to- ward you, and in turn to learn from you what lies behind those troubles which have disturbed you and which have given you such years of distress. We wish to learn your mind and your feeling, your purpose and your conception of yourselves in relation to us and all the world. For we are to live together side by side, as neighbors, for all time! It is inconceivable that the conditions which now prevail shall obtain indefinitely or for any period. You do not wish it and neither do we. That border must become once again what for many years it was, a line of division between two peoples, each of which was working its own way toward the realization of the principles which THE RIGHTS OF NEIGHBORS 25 we believe were laid down in that Declaration of Independence, which was the foundation of our Constitution and of yours. Mexico has sent you \ as among her most distinguished sons to treat with us on practical matters in practical fashion. I trust we shall talk not as theorists, but as men of affairs, of a large view, who wish for nothing but the honor and rights that are naturally ours by reason of the accepted principles which govern these great national families, and which ulti- mately come out of the consciences of fair-dealing men. Our people have gone among you in confidence, and entered into the development of your country with an enthusiasm as great as that they have shown in the United States. Their lives and their fortunes are sacred to us, and wrongs done to them would react against you even though the United States never raised its hand nor sent a man across your border; for you are to live be- side us always and the Mexican who does us wrong does a greater wrong to Mexico. y There is a large part of this country which has a traditional and sentimental attachment to Mexico. No name is more honored in our west- 26 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT ern history than that of Junlpero Serra, explorer, teacher, padre, who brought with him from Mexico the vine and the fig, who turned the In- dians into artisans and by irrigation first turned our deserts into fertile fields. You come fresh from a revolution not yet completed, which had its beginning long ago when the church bells of Dolores were rung by Hidalgo and the cry went up " Long live America and down with bad gov- ernment." Surely men of such tradition should meet with but one purpose — the welfare of the lands in which they live. My colleagues and I shall ask nothing from you save that which men can grant who respect the principles which you and your ancestors have fought for, and you can ask nothing from us for which your patriots fought that we will not be willing to grant. We say, let Mexico make herself in her own way. Let her people rise to the high dignity and power of which they are capable. As neighbors we will respect your rights. As neighbors we shall expect you to respect ours. Surely with those principles in their hearts six men can find a way to save the honor and interest of both Mexico and the United States. U- FRUITS OF FAITH Address at the opening of the Panama-California In- ternational Exposition at San Diego, California, March i8, 1916. I know that those of you who are Californlans will sympathize with the feeling of elation that I have in coming home and bringing to you the per- sonal greetings of the First Citizen of our coun- try. The time will surely come when the country will call to its first place a son of California, but until that time does come no greater honor can be given to a Californlan than to speak for the President. He asked me to give you his greet- ing; not a perfunctory word, formal and set, but a word of hearty cheer at the spirit, the confi- dence and the courage you have shown. He had Intended to make this trip himself; but circum- stances, some to the east of him and some to the south of him, made that an Impossibility. It is necessary now, above all times, that he should stay at the seat of government that the nations of the world may know that, while our Army may be 27 28 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT small, and our Navy rank but third in the world's calendar, the spirit of this Democraqr will not permit the invasion of her rights either upon the land or upon the sea. It is a great burden that we have cast upon our President. He must interpret to all other peo- ples the sense of dignity, of self respect, and of proper pride of a hundred million people whose voice he can not hear, but whose self-reliant will he must assert. Pitted against him are the trained and cunning intellects of the whole world outside our hemisphere, and no one can be more conscious than Is he that it is difficult to reconcile pride and patience. I give you his greeting, therefore, not out of a heart that is joyous and buoyant, but out of a heart that is grave and firm in its resolution that the future of our Republic and of all republics shall not be put in peril. It is a fine thing that you have done here. You are presenting to the world one of the greatest ex- positions ever seen. Not so great perhaps in the multiplicity of machines or fabrics or works of art; not so costly as some, but no exposition ever presented to the eyes of man gave proof of more daring and splendid spirit. And after all it is FRUITS OF FAITH 29 the spirit of the man or of the thing that he does which makes him noble or mean. If the Patron Saint of San Diego, the Padre Serra, could cross that bridge which steps the canyon like some grand dame in a minuet and mount the steps of that church and look out of the bell tower upon this city, upon those red roofs, those cloisters and arcades, those turrets and towers, and cast his eye over this land which so lately was desert and which now is the rarest of gardens, I believe that he would not think him- self demeaned were he to hear me say that the spirit which has built this thing of beauty was like to the spirit that brought him to this shore to win a people and a country for the glory of his God and his King. Men are the creatures of their times, and he was bold in his adventure of the eighteenth century as you are bold in your adventure of the twentieth century. If he heard men say this is an age of the grossest materialism when men worship only money and have souls for things no nobler than trading stamps, I believe he would point at what you have done and say: *' This is my answer to that charge. Here is the proof that men glory in beauty and in the work 30 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT of their hands. I taught my Indian boys to lay before the altar tributes of fruits and flowers. I taught them to lead the stream over the desert, to make it bring forth vine and fig. I taught them to model with their hands the cunning arches of our Holy Church. I taught them to have joy in the things that they did that their souls might be satisfied, and those things these men of a later day have done." You call this an international exposition, be- cause there are exhibited here the products of the minds and fingers of some thirty or more nations. They may show to us porcelains and silks, pic- tures and statues, carvings and carpets, finer than any that we can show; but in return we show to them a continent conquered and civilized in a century, a people more fertile in imagination per- haps than any that the world has heretofore known, and enterprises of greater magnitude than Caesar or Napoleon dreamed of. This is a fitting place for such an exposition. We stand upon the rim of the continent. The Aryan race which was born in the other hemi- sphere has encircled the globe and has come back to report to its wise and aged Mother the story FRUITS OF FAITH 31 of its great adventure. What has this Nation to say to those who lie before it and round about it? We answer that we have come to know that this world is made not for the gratification of the de- sire of a few but for the benefit of the many. That power must be common capital. That na- ture, not man, is the enemy man must conquer, and that the world belongs to him who reclaims the desert, who bores the mountains, who most swiftly sails the sea and most surely masters the air; who with plow and microscope, furnace and blow-pipe, test tube and machine, makes this world serve mankind best. To conquer Nature man broke down the gates of the Garden of Eden and came forth to meet the challenge of an unordered world. For ten times ten thousand years he has been engaged in this conquest. Trench after trench he has taken, hilltop after hilltop, and no one can dare to say what shall be the limit of his progress. A thou- sand years hence I have no doubt the world will see another international exposition beside this very Bay and then will realize that the high pur- pose of Democracy is to prove it is the conqueror of the world by being its supreme servant. AMERICAN TRADITION Address delivered at the University of VirginiOj Feb* ruary 22, jgi2^ It has not been an easy task for me to decide upon a theme for discussion to-day. I know that I can tell you little of Washington that would be new, and the thought has come to me that per- haps you would be interested in what might be called a western view of American tradition, for I come from the other side of this continent where all of our traditions are as yet articles of trans- continental traffic, and you are here in the very heart of tradition, the sacred seat of our noblest memories. No doubt you sometimes think that we are reckless of the wisdom of our forebears ; while we at times have been heard to say that you live too securely in that passion for the past which makes men mellow but unmodern. When you see the West adopting or urging 1 Reprinted from the University of Virginia Alumni Bulletin, 32 AMERICAN TRADITION 33 such measures as presidential primaries, the elec- tion of United States Senators by popular vote, the initiative, the referendum and the recall as means supplementary to representative govern- ment, you shudder in your dignified way no doubt, at the audacity and irreverence of your crude countrymen. They must be in your eyes as far from grace as that American who visited one of the ancient temples of India. After a long jour- ney through winding corridors of marble, he was brought to a single flickering light set In a jeweled recess in the wall. " And what Is this? " said the tourist. " That, sir," replied the guide, *' is the sacred fire which was lighted 2,000 years ago and never has been out." " Never been out? What nonsense ! Poof I Well, the blamed thing's out now." This wild Westerner doubtless typifies those who without heed and in their hot-headed and fanatical worship of change would destroy the very light of our civilization. But let me remind you that all fanaticism is not radical. There Is a fanaticism that is conservative, a rever- ence for things as they are that is no less destruc- tive. Some years ago I visited a fishing village in Canada peopled by Scotchnien who had immi- 34 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT grated In the early part of the nineteenth century. It was a place named Ingonish in Cape Breton, a rugged spot that looks directly upon the Atlantic at its crudest point. One day I fell into talk with a fisherman — a very model of a tawny- haired viking. He told me that from his fishing and his farming he made some $300 a year. " Why not come over into my country," I said, "where you may make that in a month?" There came over his face a look of humiliation as he replied, " No, I could not." " Why not? " I asked. " Because," said he, brushing his hand across his sea-burnt beard, " because I can neither read nor write." *' And why," said I, " haven't you learned? There are schools here." *' Yes, there are schools, but my father could not read or write, and I would have felt that I was putting a shame upon the old man if I had learned to do something he could not do." Splendid, wasn't it! He would not do what his father could not do. Fine ! Fine as the spirit of any man with a sen- timent which holds him back from leading a full, rich life. Yet can you conceive a nation of such men — idolizing what has been, blind to the great vision of the future, fettered by the chains of the AxMERICAN TRADITION 35 past, gripped and held fast in the hand of the dead, a nation of traditionalists, unable to meet the needs of a new day, serene, no doubt self-suffi- cient, but coming how far short of realizing that ideal of those who praise their God for that they serve his world I I have given the two extremes; now let us re- turn to our point of departure, and the first ques- tion to be asked is, " What are the traditions of our people? '* This nation is not as it was one hundred and thirty-odd years ago when we as- serted the traditional right of Anglo-Saxons to rebel against injustice. We have traveled cen- turies and centuries since then — measured in events, in achievements, in depth of insight into the secrets of nature, in breadth of view, in sweep of sympathy, and in the rise of ennobling hope. Physically we are to-day nearer to China than we were then to Ohio. Socially, indus- trially, commercially the wide world is almost a unit. And these thirteen states have spread across a continent to which have been gathered the peoples of the earth. We are the " heirs of all the ages.'' Our Inheritance of tradition Is greater than that of any other people, for we ^ 36 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT trace back not alone to King John signing the Magna Charta in that little stone hut by the river side, but to Brutus standing beside the slain Cae- sar, to Charles Martel with his battle ax raised against the advancing horde of an old-world civilization, to Martin Luther declaring his square-jawed policy of religious liberty, to Colum- bus in the prow of his boat crying to his dis- heartened crew, *' Sail on, sail on, and on ! " Irishman, Greek, Slav, and Sicilian — all the na- tions of the world have poured their hopes and their history into this great melting pot, and the product will be — in fact, is — a civilization that is new in the sense that it is the blend of many, and yet is as old as the Egyptians. Surely the real tradition of such a people is not any one way of doing a certain thing; certainly not any set and unalterable plan of procedure in affairs, nor even any fixed phrase expressive of a general philosophy unless it comes from the uni- versal heart of this strange new people. Why are we here? What is our purpose? These questions will give you the tradition of the Amer- ican people, our supreme tradition — the one into which all others fall, and a part of which they are AMERICAN TRADITION 37 — the right of man to oppose injustice. There follow from this the right of man to govern him- i self, the right of property and to personal liberty, the right to freedom of speech, the right to make j of himself all that nature will permit, the right f to be one of many in creating a national life that { will realize those hopes which singly could notj be achieved. Is there any other tradition so sacred as this — so much a part of ourselves — this hatred of in- justice? It carries in its bosom all the past that inspires our people. Their spirit of unrest under wrong has lighted the way for the nations of the world. It is not seen alone in Kansas and in Cali- fornia, but in England, where a Liberal Ministry has made a beginning at the restoration of the land to the people ; in Germany, where the citizen Is fighting his way up to power; in Portugal, where a university professor sits in the chair a king so lately occupied; in Russia, emerging from the Middle Ages, with her groping Douma; in Per- sia, from which young Shuster was so recently driven for trying to give to a people a sense of national self-respect; in India, where an Emperor moves a national capital to pacify submerged dis- 38 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT content; and even in far Cathay, the mystery land of Marco Polo, immobile, phlegmatic, individ- ualistic China, men have been waging war for the philosophy incorporated in the first ten lines of our Declaration of Independence. Here is the effect of a tradition that is real, not a mere group of words or a well-fashioned bit of governmental machinery — real because it is ours; it has come out of our life; for the only real traditions a people have are those beliefs that have become a part of them, like the good man- ners of a gentleman. They are really our sympa- thies — sympathies born of experience. Subjec- tively they give standpoint; objectively they fur- nish background — a rich, deep background like that of some master of light and shade, some Rembrandt, whose picture is one great glowing mystery of darkness save in a central spot of radi- ant light where stands a single figure or group which holds the eye and enchants the imagination. History may give to us the one bright face to look upon, but in the deep mystery of the background the real story is told; for therein, to those who can see, are the groping multitudes feeling their way blindly toward the light of self-expression. AMERICAN TRADITION 39 Now, this Is a western view of tradition; It Is yours, too; it was yours first; it was your gift to us. And is it impertinent to ask, when your sen- sibilities are shocked at some departure from the conventional in our western law, that you search the tradition of your own history to know in what spirit and by what method the gods of the elder days met the wrongs they wished to right? It may be that we ask too many questions; that we are unwilling to accept anything as settled; that we are curious, distrustful, and as relentlessly logical as a child. For what are we but creatures of the night Led forth by day, Who needs must falter, and with stammering steps Spell out our paths in syllables of pain ? There are no grown-ups in this new world of democracy. We are trying an experiment such as the world has never seen. Here we are, so many million people at work making a living as best we can; 90,000,000 people covering half a continent — rich, respected, feared. Is that all we are? Is that why we are? To be rich, re- spected, feared? Or have we some part to play in working out the problems of this world? 40 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT Why should one man have so much and many so littie ? How may the many secure a larger share in the wealth which they create without destroy- ing individual initiative or blasting individual capacity and imagination? It was inevitable that these questions should be asked when this repub- lic was established. Man has been struggling to have the right to ask these questions for 4,000 years; and now that he has the right to ask any questions surely we may not with reason expect him to be silent. It is no answer to make that men were not asking these questions a hundred years ago. So great has been our physical en- dowment that until the most recent years we have been indifferent as to the share which each re- ceived of the wealth produced. We could then accept cheerfully the coldest and most logical of T economic theories. But now men are wondering as to the future. There may be much of envy and more of malice in current thought; but under- neath it all there is the feeling that if a nation Is to have a full life it must devise methods by which its citizens shall be Insured against monopoly of opportunity. This is the meaning of many policies the full philosophy of which is not gen- AMERICAN TRADITION 41 erally grasped — the regulation of railroads and other public service corporations, the conserva- tion of natural resources, the leasing of public lands and waterpowers, the control of great com- binations of wealth. How these movements will eventually express themselves none can foretell, but in the process there will be some who will dog- matically contend that " Whatever is, is right," and others who will march under the red flag of revenge and exspoliation. And in that day we must look for men to meet the false cry of both sides — *' gentlemen unafraid " who will neither be the money-hired butlers of the rich nor power- . loving panderers to the poor. _„J.,^ Assume the right of self-government and so- / ciety becomes the scene of an heroic struggle for { the realization of justice. Take from the one strong man the right to rule and make others serve, the right to take all and hold all, the power to grant or to withhold, and you have set all men to asking, " What should I have, and what should my children have?" and with this come all the perils of innovation and the hazards of revolu- . tion. ^^^;;;;^ To meet such a situation the traditionalist who l77 42 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT believes that the last word In politics or in eco- nomics was uttered a century ago is as far from the truth as he who holds that the temporary emotion of the public is the stone-carved word from Sinai. *^"' A railroad people are not to be controlled by ox-team theories, declaims the young enthusiast for change. An age that dares to tell of what the stars are made; that weighs the very suns in its balances; that mocks the birds in their flight through the air, and the fish in their dart through the sea; that transforms the falling stream into fire, light, and music; that embalms upon a piece of plate the tenderest tones of the human voice; that treats disease with disease; that supplies a new ear with the same facility that it replaces a blown-out tire; that reaches into the very grave itself and starts again the silent heart — surely such an age may be allowed to think for itself somewhat upon questions of politics. Yet with all our searchlngs and our problngs, who knows more of the human heart to-day than the old Psalmist? And what is the problem of government but one of human nature? What AMERICAN TRADITION 43 Burbank has as yet made grapes to grow on thorns or figs on thistles ? The riddle of the uni- verse is no nearer solution than it was when the sphinx first looked upon the Nile. The one con- stant and inconstant quantity with which man must deal is man. Human nature responds so far as we can see to the same magnetic pull and push that moved it in the days of Abraham and of Soc- rates. The foundation of government is man — * changing, inert, impulsive, limited, sympathetic, selfish man. His institutions, whether social or pohtical, must come out of his wants and out of his capacities. The problem of government, therefore, is not always what should be done but what can be done. We may not follow the su- preme tradition of the race to create a newer, sweeter world unless we give heed to its comple- mentary tradition that man's experience cautions him to make a new trail with care. He must curb courage with common-sense. He may lay his first bricks upon the twentieth story, but not until he has made sure of the solidity of the frame below. The real tradition of our people permits the mason to place brick upon brick wherever he b 44 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT finds it most convenient, safest and most econom- ical; but he must not mistake thin air for struc- tural steel. Let me illustrate the thought that I would leave with you by the description of one of our western railroads. Your train sweeps across the desert like some bold knight in a joust, and when about to drive recklessly into a sheer cliff it turns a graceful curve and follows up the wild meander- ings of a stream until it reaches a ridge along which it finds its flinty way for many miles. At length you come face to face with a great gulf, a canyon — yawning, resounding and purple in its depths. Before you lies a path, zigzagging down the canyon's side to the very bottom, and away beyond another slighter trail climbs up upon the opposite side. Which is our way? Shall we fol- low the old trail? The answer comes as the train shoots out across a bridge and into a tunnel on the opposite side, coming out again upon the highlands and looking into the Valley of Heart's Desire where the wistful Rasselas might have lived. When you or I look upon that stretch of steel we wonder at the daring of its builders. Great men they were who boldly built that road — great AMERICAN TRADITION 45 in imagination, greater in their deeds — for they were men so great that they did not build upon a line that was without tradition. The route they followed was made by the buffalo and the elk ten thousand years ago. The bear and the deer fol- lowed it generation after generation, and after them came the trapper, and then the pioneer. It was already a trail when the railroad engineer came with transit and chain seeking a path for the great black stallion of steel. Up beside the stream and along the ridge the track was laid. But there was no thought of fol- lowing the old trail downward into the canyon. Then the spirit of the new age broke through tra- dition, the canyon was leaped and the mountain's heart pierced, that man might have a swifter and safer way to the Valley of Heart's Desire. WHY DO WE FIGHT GERMANY? Address delivered before the Home Club, Interior Department, Washington, D, C, June 4, 1917. To-morrow is registration day. It is the duty of all, their legal as well as their patriotic duty, to register if within the class called. There are some who have not clearly seen the reason for that call. To these I would speak a word. Why are we fighting Germany? The brief answer is that ours is a war of self-defense. We did not wish to fight Germany. She made the attack upon us; not on our shores, but on our ships, our lives, our rights, our future. For two years and more we held to a neutrality that made us apologists for things which outraged man's common sense of fair play and humanity. At each new offense — the invasion of Belgium, the killing of civilian Belgians, the attacks on Scar- borough and other defenseless towns, the laying of mines in neutral waters, the fencing off of the seas — and on and on through the months we 46 WHY DO WE FIGHT GERMANY^ 47 said: "This is war — archaic, uncivilized war, but war! All rules have been thrown away; all nobility; man has come down to the primitive brute. And while we cannot justify we will not intervene. It is not our war." Then why are we in? Because we could not keep out. The invasion of Belgium, which opened the war, led to the invasion of the United States by slow, steady, logical steps. Our sym- pathies evolved into a conviction of self-interest. Our love of fair play ripened into alarm at our own peril. We talked in the language and in the spirit of good faith and sincerity, as honest men should talk, until we discovered that our talk was con- strued as cowardice. And Mexico was called upon to cow us I We talked as men would talk who cared alone for peace and the advancement of their own material interests, until we discov- ered that we were thought to be a nation of mere money makers, devoid of all character — until, indeed, we were told that we could not walk the highways of the world without permission of a Prussian soldier, that our ships might not sail without wearing a striped uniform of humiliation 48 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT ^ upon a narrow path of national subservience. We talked as men talk who hope for honest agree- ment, not for war, until we found that the treaty torn to pieces at Liege was but the symbol of a policy that made agreements worthless against a purpose that knew no word but success. And so we came into this war for ourselves. It is a war to save America — to preserve self- respect, to justify our right to live as we have lived, not as some one else wishes us to live. In the name of freedom we challenge with ships and men, money, and an undaunted spirit, that word " Verboten " which Germany has written upon the sea and upon the land. For America is not the name of so much territory. It is a living spirit, born in travail, grown in the rough school of bit- ter experiences, a living spirit which has purpose and pride and conscience — knows why it wishes to live and to what end, knows how it comes to be respected of the world, and hopes to retain that respect by living on with the light of Lincoln's love of man as its old and new testament. It is more precious that this America should live than that we Americans should live. And this Amer- ica as we now see has been challenged from the WHY DO WE FIGHT GERMANY *? 49 first of this war by the strong arm of a power that has no sympathy with our purpose, and will not hesitate to destroy us if the law that we respect, the rights that are to us sacred, or the spirit that we have, stand across her set will to make this world bow before her policies, backed by her or- ganized and scientific military system. The world of Christ — a neglected but not a rejected Christ — has come again face to face with the world of Mahomet, who willed to win by force. With this background of history and in this sense, then, we fight Germany — Because of Belgium — invaded, outraged, en- slaved, impoverished Belgium. We can not for- get Liege, Louvain, and Cardinal Mercier. Translated into terms of American history these names stand for Bunker Hill, Lexington, and Pat- rick Henry. Because of France — invaded, desecrated France, a million of whose heroic sons have died to save the land of Lafayette. Glorious golden France, the preserver of the arts, the land of noble spirit. The first land to follow our lead into re- publican liberty. Because of England — from whom came the 50 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT laws, traditions, standards of life, and inherent love of liberty which we call Anglo-Saxon civiliza- tion. We defeated her once upon the land and once upon the sea. But Australia, New Zealand, Africa, and Canada are free because of what we did. And they are with us in the fight for the freedom of the seas. Because of Russia — New Russia. She must not be overwhelmed now. Not now, surely, when she is just born into freedom. Her peas- ants must have their chance; they must go to school to Washington, to Jefferson, and to Lin- coln, until they know their way about in this new, strange world, of government by the popular will. Because of other peoples, with their rising hope that the world may be freed from govern- ment by the soldier. We are fighting Germany because she sought to terrorize us and then to fool us. We could not believe that Germany would do what she said she would do upon the seas. We still hear the piteous cries of children com- ing up out of the sea where the Lus'itania went down. And Germany has never asked forgive- ness of the world. WHY DO WE FIGHT GERMANY^ 51 We saw the Sussex sunk, crowded with the sons and daughters of neutral nations. We saw ship after ship sent to the bottom — ships of mercy bound out of America for the Bel- gian starving; ships carrying the Red Cross and laden with the wounded of all nations; ships car- rying food and clothing to friendly, harmless, terrorized peoples; ships flying the Stars and Stripes — sent to the bottom hundreds of miles from shore, manned by American seamen, mur- dered against all law, without warning. We believed Germany's promise that she would respect the neutral flag and the rights of neutrals, and we held our anger and outrage in check. But now we see that she was holding us off with fair promises until she could build her huge fleet of submarines. For when spring came she blew her promise into the air, just as at the beginning she had torn up that " scrap of paper." Then we saw clearly that there was but one law for Germany — her will to rule. We are fighting Germany because she vio- lated our confidence. Paid German spies filled our cities. Officials of her Government, received as the guests of this Nation, lived with us to bribe 52 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT and terrorize, defying our law and the law of nations. We are fighting Germany because while we were yet her friends — the only great power that still held hands off — she sent the Zimmermann note, calling to her aid Mexico, our southern neighbor, and hoping to lure Japan, our western neighbor, into war against this nation of peace. The nation that would do these things pro- claims the gospel that government has no con- science. And this doctrine can not live, or else democracy must die. For the nations of the world must keep faith. There can be no living for us in a world where the state has no con- science, no reverence for the things of the spirit, no respect for international law, no mercy for those who fall before its force. What an unor- dered world! Anarchy I The anarchy of rival wolf packs I We are fighting Germany because in this war feudalism is making its last stand against on- coming democracy. We see it now. This is a war against an old spirit, an ancient, outworn spirit. It is a war against feudalism — the right of the castle on the hill to rule the village below. WHY DO WE FIGHT GERMANY*? 53 It is a war for democracy — the right of all to be their own masters. Let Germany be feudal if she will, but she must not spread her system over a world that has outgrown it. Feudahsm plus science, thirteenth century plus twentieth — this is the religion of the mistaken Germany that has linked itself with the Turk, that has, too, adopted the method of Mahomet. " The state has no conscience." " The state can do no wrong." With the spirit of the fanatic she believes this gospel and that it is her duty to spread it by force. With poison gas that makes living a hell, with submarines that sneak through the seas slyly to murder noncombatants, with dirigibles that bom- bard men and women while they sleep, with a per- fected system of terrorization that the modern world first heard of when German troops entered China, German feudalism is making war upon mankind. Let this old spirit of evil have its way and no man will live in America without paying toll to it in manhood and in money. This spirit might demand Canada from a defeated, navyless England, and then our dream of peace on the north would be at an end. We would live, as France has lived for forty years, in haunting terror. 54 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT America speaks for the world in fighting Ger- many. Mark on a map those countries which are Germany's allies and you will mark but four, run- ning from the Baltic through Austria and Bul- garia to Turkey. All the other nations the whole globe around are in arms against her or are un- able to move. There is deep meaning in this. We fight with the world for an honest world in which nations keep their word, for a world in which nations do not live by swagger or by threat, for a world in which men think of the ways in which they can conquer the common cruelties of nature instead of inventing more horrible cruelties to Inflict upon the spirit and body of man, for a world in which the ambition or the philosophy of a few shall not make miserable all mankind, for a world in which the man is held more precious than the machine, the system, or the state. FORESIGHT AND COOPERATION Address at rneeting of State Councils of Defense, May 2, 1917, I have a department that deals with a great many phases of our national life, and has a great deal of human interest in it, as most of you know. Those, however, who come from the West are far more familiar with it than those from east of the Missouri River, though there are few families in the United States that in some way or another we do not touch. The Pension Department is an interesting one to the gentlemen who are interested in politics and all who are looking out for the future welfare of those who will be or who are the dependents of those who go to the front. There has been a great deal of fraud in our pension system, and that fraud has to a very considerable extent been due to the Government itself, to the lax methods pursued by the Government in gaining the facts. 55 56 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT that were necessary upon which to adjudicate the claims that were presented. We have in our department also the Patent Oince, and we are trying to summon to the sup- port of the United States at this time the inventive genius of the United States. You know perhaps the situation on the other side of the water with regard to the submarine. No one here knows the exact figure of loss the past ten days. It prob- ably ran up to four hundred thousand tons. That's a startling figure to us; it is a terrorizing figure to England and to France. If that figure should be kept up for any length of time, it would lay those countries prostrate, unless we could go to their support, or through the inventive mind of man some means could be discovered by which the submarine as a terrorizer and a destroyer could be put out of business. Our Civil War saw invention after invention created by the magic mind of man to offset some invention produced on the opposite side, or to bring some new method of destruction into play. It is my great hope that out of this war and per- haps before long, the rare genius that we have for producing new mechanical devices and laying hold FORESIGHT AND COOPERATION 57 upon new resources may discover a method by which the effectiveness of the submarine can be at any rate greatly diminished. I had a talk, for instance, the other day, with a group of inventors. This thought was thrown out, that possibly a force could be generated in the ship itself, an electrical wave of some kind that could surround the mov- ing ship and render the torpedo valueless either by diverting or by exploding it before it reaches the ship. Such things look like impossibilities, but we who are familiar with the wireless know that there is nothing now that can be called a miracle. The submarine itself is a miracle; the airship is a mira- cle ; the war is being conducted by two things that never were used before. It is not the land force now that is the great terrorizing force; it's the airships, which are new scouts, and it's the sub- marine which is the new horror; so that the mind of the American, directed upon this concrete proposition of how to overcome the evil influence of the submarine, may find a way to rescue us. I say deliberately rescue us — you men who come from all states of the Union ! I have a large cor- respondence with those sections of this country 58 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT which lie out toward my home, and I find that they do not yet realize and are not conscious of the fact that this is our war, just as really our war as it is England's war, or France's war, or Russia's war. The fact is that England and France are fighting for principles which we might almost say we invented. If it hadn't been for our War of the Revolution, the world would not have taken the lead toward democracy that it has in the last century. And when we say that England is the " Mother Country," we are saying something that is understandable to the mass. But in this situa- tion the United States Is the " Mother Country." In going into this war we are really standing by our own children who are fighting for the princi- ples that we first completely announced in the Declaration of Independence. And It's a humiliating thought, and one perhaps that should not be expressed, to think of the pos- sibility of our failing in this enterprise. There were a great many people in the United States who thought that all we had to do was to Issue a certain number of bonds, and announce that fact in the papers, and that Germany would bow her head In humiliation and ask for terms. Germany FORESIGHT AND COOPERATION 59 understands perfectly well the condition in which we are. We are three thousand miles removed from the battle front. And that battle front should never be brought to the Atlantic Coast! This war should be fought on the waters on the opposite side of the sea, and on the lands on the opposite side of the sea; but It will be fought on this side unless we beat them there, and to beat them there we have got to move quickly ! Yes, we are three thousand miles from the fighting line, and we have got to get there some- how. So we need ships. We are building wooden ships; we are going to build steel ships. The genius of the United States will not let us be satisfied with building a type of ship that Is fifty years old, valuable as it will prove in this hour. You can not tell me that those men who are run- ning the shipyards of the United States can not speed up and find new methods and produce steel ships to meet this demand. TheyVe simply got to do It, because we have got to have those ships to make this fight I And there is one thing too that I may say to you as representing various communities: At the beginning of every war there is dissatisfaction and 6o THE AMERICAN SPIRIT discontent with those who are running the war. I suppose — I hope you have all read Gideon Wells's ** Diary." Mr. Wells was the Secretary of the Navy under Lincoln, lived through his ad- ministration, and on into Johnson's administra- tion, and if you read that you will discover how much of dissatisfaction there was with the way in which Mr. Lincoln was conducting the war. At one time Lincoln said that he had but one man in the lower House of Congress who really was his champion. Every one of us is trying with all his might to do his best. He is properly subject to criticism if he is negligent. But make the test al- ways upon the basis of ascertained facts, and not upon the basis of idle rumor. You know there are a great many people in the United States who have been raised under the in- dividualistic system, which we are fighting to pre- serve — the right of a man to have his own thoughts and not to conform to the thoughts of those above him. We, in the United States, being raised under that philosophy, have a notion in our heads that we can do things somewhat bet- ter than the other fellow; that it's a part of almost every political creed, and almost every political FORESIGHT AND COOPERATION 61 platform, that the fellow who Is in and doing the job is wrong, but the fellow who is out and does not have the chance to do it, could do it much bet- ter. We are raised upon that kind of doctrine ! There was a great literary man in England named Matthew Arnold, who spent a long and very brilliant life in criticism of the philosophies, the institutions and the conduct of those who were around him. He had the gift of expression, and therefore was listened to by large audiences. When he died, the word was carried to Mr. An- drew Lang. Lang paused and said : " Poor Ar- nold! I am sorry for him. He won't like God I " So if you can carry that suggestion back home when you hear these people decry what the administration is doing, you will be rendering a great service to your government. I am putting in on my reclamation system a program that perhaps it is hard to make work at first, but for which I have high hopes, not merely as to the reclamation projects, but as to our general farming communities. I have sent to them an appeal that they should organize them- selves, and that they should organize themselves in the same way that men in the factory are organ- 62 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT ized. Each man should be organized around a machine, just as the men in the army are organ- ized around a gun. We find that some men are rich enough to have tractors; some men are rich enough to have gang plows ; and so I am trying to get the men on these projects to organize them- selves around these machines, and treat these ma- chines as common property, and have the farmers farm in companies, who will plow not only their own lands, but the lands of all their neighbors, and seed them, and then harvest the crops; they will move like a great flying squadron across a farming community, and do the work collectively that is now being individualistically done. That idea may not be limited to a reclamation project; it can be put into effect in every county and every farming district in the United States. The farmer has been more backward in organiz- ing than any one else in the country. He has been taught to believe that he was economically inde- pendent, and therefore he has felt that he might just as well have, and should have, all of his own implements and be entirely self-sufficing as an eco- nomic factor. The wise farmers are learning that that can't be done, that they must play the FORESIGHT AND COOPERATION 63 game together, that there is such a thing as a spirit of the gang which makes for effectiveness, that there is such a thing as farming in a wholesale way which makes for larger crops and ultimately for less work. And that brings me to this thought, that we must not look at this season alone. You and I do not know when this war is going to end. This may not be a one year's job. Whatever the size of the job, we have got to provide for it and be equal to it. For myself, I do not believe it's to be ended in this year. Germany has a food sup- ply, with a fair crop this year, that will last two years. She has an abundance of iron and plenty of coal. What her other internal conditions may be, I do not know; but she has put up the greatest fight that the world has ever seen. She has the easiest end of the fight now, because she is on the defensive, where she can hold her trenches with a comparatively small number of men against a larger force. She has the inner line of the circle. She has been preparing a long time; she has her railroad lines complete to care for her needs. So when you go home, I beg of you not to inspire your people with the belief that by immediate 64 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT action even they are going to bring this thing to an immediate end, but prepare your plans so that if you cannot sow this year and reap this year, you can sow next year more successfully and exten- sively, and reap a more abundant harvest next year. We cannot, we must not fail in this ven- ture. The pride that we have in our own ability won't let us even think of such a thing. But war rs now a matter of foresight, and not merely an expression, a gesture, and we must think, there- fore, of the crops of next year, of the mine output of next year, of the aeroplane output of next year. And there is no man from California to Maine who isn't involved in this work — not a single man who isn't a part of our social and industrial and military fabric, so tied up with the pushing of this great enterprise that he is not a soldier under that flag. And there is one line of work which you men can do far better than we can, and that is the in- spiring of your people. The hope that the French have is that the morale of the Germans will break down. The hope that we have is that the morale of the people of the United States will rise. THREE FLAGS IN THE SAME COLORS Remarks made, presenting Hon, Myron Herrick, for- mer Ambassador to France, at Belasco Theater, New York, May J, 1917- The past week has been one of great signifi- cance. The nations that believe in government by the will of the people have clasped hands. They stand united in spirit and in purpose against those nations which represent government by force. The most dramatic and the most symbolic pic- ture which it has ever been my fortune to see was that presented in front of the tomb of Washing- ton on Sunday. As we came in front of that sim- ple shrine, the first things that the eye caught were the flags of the United States, England, and France, side by side, crowning the tomb of George Washington. As I looked at those flags, for the first time I really discovered that, after all, each had the same colors, each was a modification of the other. There is a bit of symbolism in the 66 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT position of those flags and in their common color- ing, which has its meaning. They speak for a common cause to-day. As we gathered around the door of the tomb, M. Viviani delivered a dis- cerning appreciation of the hero whose name is linked in history with those of Rochambeau and Lafayette. Then Mr. Balfour said a few simple words of the deepest moment. He was followed by Governor Stewart, of Virginia, who spoke with pride of the great Virginian. Mr. Balfour then laid a wreath of lilies upon the sarcophagus, while General Bridges stood at salute beside the door. Then Marshal Joffre laid a bronze palm leaf — just such as crown the graves of the heroes of France — upon the tomb, and as he saluted, his solemn, beautiful face looking down as if into the eyes of the great American, all bowed their heads as if in prayer. It has taken us a long time to learn the meaning of this war. We are a Christian and a kindly people. It was not in our hearts to believe that the gentle German folk whom we knew could, by their government, be forced into a position antag- onistic to all human sentiment and all the princi- ples which we call American. We could not be- THREE FLAGS 67 lieve that they intended to do what they did at Louvain and Rheims. We could not believe that they intended to do what they did to the Lusitania or to the Sussex, We could not believe that it was their purpose to turn Belgium into an orphan asylum and to turn beautiful France Into a desert. We could not believe that it was their purpose to sink hospital ships carrying the Red Cross. Or that while this was a neutral nation their government would negotiate with those whom she imagined were hostile to us in a vain effort to arouse them against us. But now we know that these things were but a manifestation of that principle of force which is the enemy of all mankind. Our President, in a message of un- equaled eloquence and simplicity, has told us the story of his long patience and of its exhaustion. He has called us to the colors. And America stands beside that tomb of Washington, pledging herself to her allies for the maintenance of civili- 'zatlon, for the preservation of the human con- science as against the mandates of a wilful power, for individual liberty against feudalism, for a free sea and a free land. I was talking with a member of Marshal Jof- 68 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT fre's staff. He told me of the imperturbable manner in which he received the news of the ad- vance on Paris. He sat in his room looking at the map, every few minutes an aide coming In and changing the flags, moving the French flag back toward the French capital, and on and on came the German flag. At last they reached the Marne, and then this soft spoken, sweet spirited gentle- man quietly took up his pencil saying, " This thing has gone far enough," and wrote an appeal to the French soldiers to stand firm and die before they yielded further. His men responded to him and drove the Germans back, and he Is the hero of the world's greatest battle in ten long centuries. " This thing has gone far enough." That is the spirit in which we meet the situation to-day. In that spirit we, too, can stand before the tomb of Washington and say with Joffre, as Washing- ton would have said, " This thing has gone far enough." GREATER THAN MAKING MONEY Address before the Convention of Coal Producers in Washington, June 26, 1917. I have just come from a meeting of the central committee of the Red Cross. You can recall how astonished you were when the request went out or the thought was suggested that we should raise $100,000,000 for the Red Cross. Some of us do not quite appreciate how big a thing this war is; some of us do not appreciate how big the United States is, and I am very glad to tell you, although the fact has not yet been made pub- lic, that the hundred million line will be crossed to-day. There are over ninety-nine millions now, and the prospect is that there will be an over- subscription for the Red Cross fund of perhaps five or six million dollars. These are days of big things. No one would have thought that the country which fifty years ago was able to float after the greatest difficulty a popular subscription of $800,000,000 during the 69 70 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT Civil War would be able to subscribe within thirty days three thousand million dollars, coming from 4,000,000 people. These are big days, when big things are being done in a big country by big men. And it is because the success of our national ven- ture rests upon you that you are here to-day. You are called into this game just as definitely as the Red Cross nurse or the soldier in the trench, or Pershing in France, or the President in the White House. This war is your game, and I am not going to mince words about it at all. It is being put up to you as a challenge. The burden, the present and immediate burden — because you con- trol the fundamental in industry — rests upon your shoulders, and the question is. How much vision have you got? Are you small, or are you big; are you the petty politicians of the country, or are you statesmen in a great time ? Now, that is the real challenge in the present situation, be- cause the country will not stand anything but a large policy from large men. You have been going on for years, many of you, under the greatest difficulties. Only you your- selves know better than I just what those difficul- ties have been, how close a margin of profit GREATER THAN MAKING MONEY 71 you made, and how you were many times withqijjt— . profit. I do not believe that the coal industry of I the country can continue upon the basis that it was prior to this war. I think that there must be some new adjustment by which the man who is in that industry will be more certainly insured against a cut-throat policy. I want to see this industry stabilized; I want to see your profits large, large because we are dealing with things in a large way, because I believe in rewarding men according to their imagination and their capacity and their daring when they are doing a service. But this war time, I say to you, eye to eye, when your boy and mine are going to the front, is no time in which to reap an advantage, even though it comes under the normal laws of trade. The law of supply and demand which regulates prices nor- mally is set aside when the life of the Nation is at stake. There are things greater than mak- ing money to-day, and when that thought gets into the soul of the people of the United States we can make short work of this war on the other side. And it is because we want to have it a short war that we want to have the people of the United States mobilize behind this administration, not 72 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT because it Is our administration but because it is your administration. Did you notice the speech that Mr. Root made a da,y or two .ago In Russia ? I want you to pic- ture him to yourself, standing before 5,000 peas- ants and workmen — men who, seventy-five years ago, were slaves, slaves as truly as the negro was a slave in the South at the same time, and to-day those men have come up through the crust and they are looking out upon the world with eyes that are new, unaccustomed to the light. They have heard of liberty, they have heard of justice, and they have heard it said that under democracy these great essentials to free development would come — and Mr. Root stands before those men saying: " We are fighting for you, and we want you to fight with us." What shall we say to Mr. Root? Is there a man In the United States that will say to him, " Tell the people of Russia that my purpose In this time of international struggle is to make money; that I look upon this as an opportunity to take to myself all the advantage that the market will give "? Is there a man who will say to me, *' You can send your boy to France while I stay GREATER THAN MAKING MONEY 73 here and coin his blood into dollars "? I know that that is not the spirit of the American man. For two months since this war began I have been overwhelmed with telegrams and letters from the greatest business men in this country, saying, " Let me come in and help ; I am anxious to do my share. I am too old to go to the front; I may not be able to do anything, I admit, In the training of soldiers; but I am not too old to come down and give the remainder of my life In support of the cause that I love and In support of the country that has given me the opportunity to make the money I have made." That Is the spirit of our people. That spirit will win this war; it Is your vision that will make this thing a success. If you say to the working people of the United States, " We have the Insight and the foresight to know that there will be no opportunity either for workmen or for capitalists unless we are able to establish firmly in this country the principle of lib- erty and stand united and forever against those who would break It down," then you can expect en- thusiasm from the man who has got to shoulder a musket and go across the water. But you cannot expect that spirit in the people at large if we who 74 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT have education, if we who read the newspapers and magazines, if we who come in contact with those people who have been on the other side in the war, if we who realize what this thing means, do not show by our acts of sacrifice that we do realize how critical this day is. I want to tell you of a little thing that happened In this city six or seven years ago when I was a member of the Interstate Commerce Commission. At that time there were complaints before the Interstate Commerce Commission against the ex- press rates of all the express carriers in the coun- try. It had several times been suggested to me that before we dealt with a large and intricate problem we should call in the men who had the primary responsibility for solving that problem, the presidents and the managers of these com- panies; and, inasmuch as I saw that it was neces- sary to reform the whole express-rate system and that this thing was not a local question but was a question that extended throughout the breadth of the land, I did what was suggested, and for two weeks I sat in my office with these gentlemen, say- ing to them, " It is necessary, gentlemen, that the rates upon small packages should be reduced; it is GREATER THAN MAKING MONEY 7^ necessary that we should have a basis of rates that will be intelligible to your own people, some of whom are under indictment for violating their tar- iffs; it is necessary that the rates that are made should be uniform throughout the great extent of our territory. I put it up to you to institute that system of rates; tell me the basis upon which the rates shall be made, tell me how they can be con- structed, and how they can be presented.'* What was the answer I got? With the exception of one, they replied, " As long as you leave us the amount of money we are making now we do not care what kind of a system you put Into effect." (I see a man here who knows that what I am tell- ing you Is true.) I replied to them, " You will never have that opportunity unless you do it now ; you will have a parcels post." They came back saying, " We understand from the Hill that the parcel-post bill cannot carry." At the end of the two weeks' conference I said, *' Gentlemen, this thing will have to rest with the commission. You have not taken up the chal- lenge that I have given to you. It Is a challenge that rests upon you not by virtue of anything I have said but by virtue of a condition that exists y 76 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT throughout the United States. We will proceed and make the rates and make new systems of stat- ing rates and make new classifications and so reform the entire express rates for all the express carriers of the United States." That was a challenge to their vision, and they did not have the vision. I am talking to you to-day, if you will let me say so, as one statesman to other statesmen. The difference between men in dealing with public affairs is that one man thinks of himself and his own narrow environment and another man looks broadly throughout the land and sees the condition of the masses of man- kind and feels what they are feeling. Statesman- ship is foresight, and the greatness of the Ameri- can business man has been that he has had fore- sight. We who have been in public office in the United States have had comparatively little to do with the growth of this country. The men who have charge of our industries, who have pushed our railroads, who have driven the tunnels and the shafts, who have laid out the roads, who have planted the farms, who have explored the country — those are the men that have made America, not the men who have been in political life. All we GREATER THAN MAKING MONEY 77 have ever had to do was to voice your sentiment and give you the opportunity. The statesman in industry is the man who thinks not of to-day, but ^ of to-morrow. And what is to-morrow to be for | us in pride, in self-respect, in good conscience, in fortune, in opportunity, unless we are successful in this war, unless we retain the right to make the kind of Government that we think this Govern- ment should be, unless we have the vision to see to-day that the people of the United States are not satisfied with the coal conditions, that they must have cheaper coal? And if the burden of making that coal cheaper rests upon you, then you must meet it and meet it as statesmen. If it rests upon the railroads in not delivering cars, then it must rest upon them. If it rests upon the work- ingmen, then the workingmen should know that responsibility and be challenged by it. I am not a demagogue, but I must here say that I have no confidence whatever in the feeling that the men who work in the mines are not as patri- otic as any of us and are not willing to work just as long hours and just as faithfully under these circumstances. If you put the challenge up to them they will take up that challenge. The thing 78 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT has to be done by faith. You cannot win this war in any other way than by faith — faith in each other, faith in your Government, faith in the men that are working for you. These are the very foundation stones of this Nation, and until you get this thought inside of you, you are constantly ask- ing, " Why is this war? " Unless you believe in men, that this world has not come to you simply as the opportunity for making so much money and getting so much out of it; unless you get into your soul the idea that man is given an opportunity in democracy that does not come to him under any other conditions, you cannot understand this war. But when we realize that there are two principles, one set up against another, and that those princi- ples must inevitably fight — yes, just as inevitably as slavery and freedom — and that one must tri- umph, one will bring liberty to the world and the other the autocratic soldier — when you believe that, you say, "These little things fade away; I will rise for the time being to the full dignity and stature of an American citizen," and to be an American citizen is not merely to have the chance to make a million dollars, but to have the chance GREATER THAN MAKING MONEY 79 to uphold the arm of the man who is making the fight for you and for your liberties. We stand right here in the presence of three great monuments. As you go out of this building you see them — the monument to Washington, the monument that is just being constructed to Lin- coln, and the monument across the river, Arling- ton. They all represent this immediate occasion — Lincoln and Washington the spirit of freedom, the spirit of independence; and across the river Arlington, where the men who fought for the per- petuation of this Union are buried. But there will be a greater graveyard than that along this coast two years from now. Do you realize that? — a greater graveyard than Arlington upon these shores two years from now, a graveyard that will represent more than that graveyard represents. That was a fight between two clashing causes within our country; this is a fight between two clashing causes the whole world round. What would Lincoln say was your duty at this time if he found discontent among the people be- cause they thought you men controlled a primary resource — the coal in the ground that belongs to 8o THE AMERICAN SPIRIT the people of the United States? Suppose Lin- coln were to look down upon you from that monu- ment, look out through those doors and look at this assemblage, and you were to say to him, " Mr. Lincoln, you have the great eye of the seer. Be- fore the war you saw truly what would come unless the Northern idea prevailed. What would you say to-day if you were the manager of a great coal property? " Or, if you asked that wise old man who lived at Mount Vernon and to whom that other superb monument has been erected, the like of which the world has never seen — if you asked George Washington, who built this canal up the river, who planned the city, who was above all things perhaps a representative of yourselves in that he was a great business man — if you asked George Washington to stand before you to- day and answer the question, '* What is my duty at this time? How can I allay discontent in this country? How can I make the man at the front feel that I am back of him, and that while I can not sacrifice my life I can make sacrifice of some- thing else on his behalf? I can stir up the indus- tries of the United States; I can build aeroplanes; I can build shells ; I can furnish the coal that will GREATER THAN MAKING MONEY 81 melt the iron that will go into the cannon that will fire the missiles across the line. This thing is up to me, Mr. Washington. What is my duty? " What would he say to you? He would say, " Gentlemen, that is a challenge that I had to meet more than a hundred and fifty years ago. I was the richest man in Virginia, the richest man in the South. All the associations that I had were with those who believed in comfort and prosperity. I had great dreams of extending my land holdings in the far, far West. I saw myself the master of a great system of canals uniting the coast and the Mississippi. But when the challenge was put up to me, I pledged not only my life, my sacred honor, but my fortune behind the cause of liberty." Now, gentlemen, this is a very concrete proposi- tion. You must not look at this thing in the terms of the dollar you can make. The law of ; supply and demand is a law that works, except' in the case of a monopoly, or except in the case of a national emergency. If I know anything / about the coal business I know something about your costs. I have had some of you to testify before me that you made nothing out of your coal, that you made your money out of your stores, and 82 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT out of the houses that you rented. I have heard your tales of distress many times, and I have not doubted them, and I do not doubt you now. I could not doubt because I have faith in you, and I come to you to say that this is a concrete per- sonal proposition. There shall be no opportu- nity to sneer at you. Your boy shall not after this war is over be asked the question, " What did your father do during the war?" and be com- pelled to say, " He stayed at home and stood for the highest prices he could get on his coal, and the limousine I am using to-day is the product of that action of his." That boy would rather walk, would he not, than have that said by any one of his father? You are not living for to-day, and you are not living for yourselves. You are living for the peo- ple of the United States — indeed you are living for the people of the world. What right have you to take advantage of the necessities of a na- tion, to put its future at peril in order to make a great fortune out of it? Have you not yet the social idea? Do you realize the relation between the individual and society? What right have you, I ask, to take advantage of the shortness of GREATER THAN MAKING MONEY 83 our supply of coal and the greatness of the de- mand to ask a single cent more than you think is reasonable? Where is the moral sense of a man who would make such a demand at such a time ? Now, these are stern words, but they come from stern facts. We are up against a situation that is real. We want boats and we have got to have iron to get those boats, and we have got to have coal to melt that iron. This war cannot be won without boats, and you people have got to furnish the coal. What is the word that is going to be sent throughout the world regarding the American business man and his attitude ? Has he lost his vision; has he become puerile? No, no! I know that it will not be so, and I say to you — the practical thing, the wise thing, the farsighted thing, the sensible thing, the thing that you will be proud of tomorrow and next year and twenty years from now, the best thing to do, the American thing to do, is for you to put into the hands of some one or some small group the fixing of a low price upon coal and let the word go out that so far as the coal operator is concerned he is as much a patriot as any other man and he will make a sac- rifice; he will not ask all the traffic will bear, he 84 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT will not compel the Government to put Its strong hand upon him and cause him to bring down the price, but he will rise up in the full dignity of his manhood and say, " Gentlemen, the coal mines of the United States are at your service. I ask you to leave me the opportunity to operate those mines and let me deal with the people of the United States, and I will prove that I can be fair." THE MESSAGE OF THE WEST Speech at Philadelphia, October i8, 1917, I have just returned from a three weeks' trip throughout the West. I went from Louisiana through Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Idaho to Oregon. My journey was one of curiosity. I had been told that somewhere in the far distant reaches of the continent the men and women of our country were disloyal to their flag, or at least that they did not think enough of it to fight for it. Washington, as some of you know, is a strange place. It is a cup, a valley surrounded by a horseshoe of mountains into which, by some strange law, the miasmic vapors of the country drop and set up strange states of mind. I was told in Washington that the only section of this country which was enlightened and patriotic enough to understand the deep significance of this war and to be willing to sacrifice for it was that fortunate section which borders on the Atlantic Ocean; that out beyond the hills to 8s 86 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT the westward were to be found limitless plains upon which lived those who, like some Bud- dhist monks of whom I have read, sat through- out the days in silent and solemn contemplation, their eyes centered on the pits of their stomachs, never looking up at the sky nor out upon the fields, and never hearing the voice of the world as it passed by — self-centered, flabby, spiritless. And so I went out beyond these western hills to find these strange creatures at this time. There are many hills between the Atlantic and the Pa- cific, and as I crossed one range after another I was told ** if there are any such people they are beyond the other range," until I came to the sea that looks out upon China. And I did not find those for whom I sought. I came back with the feeling that it is a good thing to leave Washington once in a while. This is a very great country that we live in. To know how great it is and to know Its spirit one must not rest too long in any one spot. I I went to Oklahoma. There I had been told /that I would find the very seat and center of hos- tility to the Government. I found that a few misled tenant farmers had objected to the draft. THE MESSAGE OF THE WEST 87 When I asked what reason they gave they said 7 New York had brought on the war, and New York should make the fight. But that was not the spirit of Oklahoma, not nearly so much the spirit of Oklahoma as the draft riots were the spirit of New York in ^G^- There is one town of 5,000 people in Oklahoma who bought $275,000 worth of Liberty Bonds, more than one fifty-dollar bond for each inhabitant, man, woman and child, and who raised $18,000 for the Red Cross, more than three dollars and a half for each inhabitant of the town. That does not look like slacking. After a ; meeting In Tusla a man came to me, dressed In a blue jumper and overalls, and said: ** Mr. Lane, I am doing my bit. I have six children, four boys and two girls. The four boys are in the Army and the two girls are Red Cross nurses, and I am saving to buy a Liberty Bond." That does not look like slacking, either. In Salt Lake City I reviewed the newly organized troops, and the grandson of Brigham Young, who is a colonel of one of the regiments, pointed with justifiable pride to one of the companies that passed and said: " Every boy In that company has bought a Liberty Bond. They are not only willing to fight but they 88 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT are willing to pay for their own support while they are fighting." In Idaho, ex-Governor Hawley took me into his library and showed me the pic- ture of four boys upon the wall, his sons, and said : " I am left all alone. All those boys have gone into the war." In Portland, Oregon, they told me that not one man had been drafted from that county, because the full quota of the county had been filled by men who volunteered for the regular army or militia. That is the spirit of the West. Kipling says that " East Is East and West is West," but I say to you that there is neither East nor West to this country. It Is one, bound by a common determination to win this war. Another thing I found was that the people of the United States have entire confidence in President Woodrow Wilson, the Commander-in- Chief of the Army and the Navy. They believe that the President knows how to make war and when to make peace. They know that he Is hon- est and that their money will not be wasted. They know that In the conduct of the war he has arisen above partisanship, above politics, into the high, clear air of patriotic statesmanship. The men that he asks for and the money that he asks THE MESSAGE OF THE WEST 89 for they will give. They may not know the in- tricacies of international law or the fine points of national pride, and may not even realize the sig- nificance to themselves and to the world of this momentous contest, but they know that President Wilson endured with patience, and came to his judgment solemnly and slowly. And they will follow wherever he leads and at the pace he wishes to go. They have seen moving pictures of the President marching at the head of the parade when the men from Washington marched to Fort Myer, and they like his stride. We are an Impatient people. There are some who cannot understand why we do not have a million men in France at this moment. And when we ask them: " How would you get them there? Where are the ships to carry them? Where are the ships to munition them? Where are the ships to support them? " they have no answer. " We should have had the ships," they say. I re- member that Secretary McAdoo three years ago, within a month after the war broke out In Europe, advocated the construction of a great fleet of merchant ships by the Government or under Gov- ernment guarantee. And if there was a voice 90 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT raised In this city In favor of that program I failed to hear it. But we are going to have those ships. By next spring we will have one million tons of new shipping. By then we are promised the equivalent of two 5,000-ton steamships per day, to continue indefinitely. And after the war we will restore the American flag to the seven seas of the world and enter into a generous rivalry with all Europe to sell our goods stamped " Made in America." We are a critical people. Each one of us knows best how a thing should be done. Now I have no doubt that we have made mistakes and will make mistakes in preparation for and In the conduct of this war. There never yet was a rail- road laid in the United States that did not have to have its line changed after construction. Let me say this bluntly to you, that if this huge and un- paralleled job cannot be done it will be because there are not men in the United States who can do it, for we have not hesitated to call upon those men who have proved themselves in the conduct of the greatest enterprises on this continent, — railroad presidents, engineers, chemists, con- tractors, manufacturers, inventors. The brains THE MESSAGE OF THE WEST 91 of the United States are involved in the conduct of this war. We have asked no man whether he is a Republican or a Democrat. We have not sought to know whether he was rich or poor. If he could serve the Nation at this time he was our man. And it is a matter of the profoundest pride to me and to every one who knows the facts that the business men of this country have not waited for the call but have volunteered in overwhelming numbers to give of their time and their capacity, without compensation, in this hour of the Govern- ment's need. There is no thought throughout the country that we will not succeed either in raising the money or the men that we need. This country has no doubt of itself. It is the creature of faith. It is greater than any one man and greater than any group of men. It is a great adventurous spirit. No man can look as I have done during the last three weeks on the enterprise and the industry and the wealth of this country and think for one mo- ment that we can fail. I have passed through mile after mile of blazing forges. I have seen a solid mountain of the richest copper handled with a steam shovel. I have seen land that yielded 92 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT sixty bushels of wheat to the acre and more land that yielded four hundred bushels of potatoes to the acre. We will not let our allies starve. We will not let them go without shot for their guns. This task upon which we are engaged, it must be remembered, is the greatest enterprise that any nation has ever undertaken. For we have not only had to create an army, house it, equip it, transport it, and supply it, but we have had to help in the financing of four of the greatest na- tions of the world, to aid in the reconstruction of their railroads, in supplying them with munitions and with food, and this at a distance of more than three thousand miles. We have had to stimulate our own industries and our own agriculture. We have had to make plans for saving food and sav- ing money, for the protection of our own people as well as others against profiteering. Each day there have been prophesies of failure, but our Navy patrols the sea, not a man has been lost on his way to France, our Army is housed, clothed, and is in the field drilling, and we are getting rifles for them at the rate of fifteen thousand a day. The message that the West sends to you is this : Have faith in your country, have faith in your THE MESSAGE OF THE WEST 93 Government, remember that prophesies of evil al- ways fail in the United States. Whatever the temporary condition may be, the man who is the thoroughbred wins out. We are but beginning to learn the art of cooperation in the United States. We have not exercised the powers as a Government that can be exercised for the support and maintenance of the great enterprises and in- dustries of the country which are its arteries, its hands and its feet. Go out over the western hills and you will come back, as I have come back, without depression, with a heart full of confidence in the robust spirit, the manly determination and the fine idealism of our people, as well as in their ability to put at the service of the world the un- ending resources of this great continent. The stock ticker is not a stalwart boy in khaki, filled with courage and proud to do his bit for a country that he loves — no, the stock ticker is a nervous old man who sometimes thinks himself the master of the world and again fears his own shadow. It has not conscience, courage or vision. It may be a thermometer but it is not a seer. I am here to ask your help in the name of the President and the Secretary of the Treasury in the 94 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT sale of the new issue of liberty bonds. Our ap- peal on behalf of the nation Is to the people of the nation. This Is a fight for Democracy, and we are following democratic methods. A war for Democracy should be supported by the money of Democracy. We have drafted our young men into our army. The son of the millionaire stands to-day in the ranks alongside the son of the drayman, the law- yer alongside his own baker. We have made no preference and drawn no line of distinction, and when these same men '* go over the top " the guns of the enemy will show no preference and draw no distinctions. This nation has been summoned to arms in a cause that Is right, and every man and every woman will serve their country In this con- test. There Is not so much credit In giving our money as In giving our lives, but in a war which is the organized industrialism of all nations the giving of life will be idle without the guns, the food, the aeroplanes, the trains, the ships, the fac- tories — all those resources which money can com- mand. One-half of the men now in camp are vol- unteers, militia or regular army men; the other half of them drafted. And this same method, a THE MESSAGE OF THE WEST 95 combination of compulsion and voluntary offer- ing, we are following as to our finances. Some of our revenues we take by the stern mandate of the law In the form of taxes, the rest we ask for as a loan from our people. This war Is costing not less than one hundred million dollars a day, but this is the least of its cost. There are five million hospital beds in Eu- rope. Those beds have been filled three times since this war began. Fifteen million men, the stalwarts of Europe, have passed over them, and ten millions blind, armless,or shattered wrecks and remnants of men will live in Europe for years to come to testify to the horrors of this war. Nine million men, three times the number of men the North and South sent into our Civil War, have been killed. And all because a few men who are masters of Germany determined that Germany was to be the master of the world. This is to be a grim time for us. Let us not delude ourselves or carry any false illusions that the righteousness of our cause, the injustice done to us, the vastness of our resources, or the great- ness of our man-power will so touch or overawe the enemy as to make them seek a peace that will 96 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT make this world safe for Democracy until those who have forced this fight realize that with the world against them they cannot win. Lloyd George said the other day that the United States had never fought 2 war that it had not won. He might have added that we never fought a war In which we did not know that we were right. This war, however, is to be a supreme test. We are to test the fiber of our people; we are to test our ability to cooperate; we are to test our sense of nationalism; we are to test our loyalty to Democ- racy; we are to test to the ultimate the resources of our nation, the capacity of our mines and min- ers, of our farms and farmers, of our mills and millhands. We are to test our own vision and the greatness of our own minds — whether we are worthy of a large future or wedded to a little life; we are to test our own conception of this country and its relation to the world. What is to be the future of the United States? It was not in the nature of things that we could remain isolated. It was our hope that this might be so, but seas have been narrowed and interests have been so twisted and intertwined, and our rights are so identical with the rights of others, THE MESSAGE OF THE WEST 97 that the world had become before this war a great Brotherhood. We made rules to control this re- lationship. Each people was to determine for itself what its own internal policy should be. It was not for us to say that the form of gov- ernment which best pleased us should be adopted by others. But it was for us to say that, notwith- standing we were a democracy, notwithstanding our isolated position, removed from the European and Asiatic world of struggle, we must be treated with full national honors and rights. The first condition of that Brotherhood was that each mem- ber of it should regard his given word as a pledge upon which turned his right to recognition and fraternity. Upon entering into this war Ger- many violated that pledge by the invasion of Bel- gium. She tore her treaty up and gave notice to the world that her war necessities were superior to her national word. That was a shock to the conscience of every people. But we stood neutral because we did not realize then, as we did later, that this act was but an evidence of a policy which must sooner or later affect rights in which we were vitally interested. We saw the German army march to within fifty miles of Paris, until old 98 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT Marshal Joffre stood on the Marne and said: " This has gone far enough." We made no pro- test at the invasion of the country which had followed our lead into democracy. Then Ger- many turned to the seas. She sank our boats loaded with American grain, and we contented ourselves with a protest. She sank the Lusitania carrying American civilians. We protested that the seas belonged to us as much as to her; that for a thousand years the lives of civilians had been regarded as sacred, even though on an enemy ship. And no apology came. One after another our ships went down and the ships of other neutral nations. Lives by the hundred were lost. She promised to respect our rights, but after a time, when she had become ready to carry on in more ruthless fashion her predatory war upon the seas, we found that this promise was as worthless to us as her promise to Belgium had been to her. Then, by the power vested in it by the Constitution, Congress declared that war had been made upon us and accepted the challenge which Germany had thrown down. We were no longer to be regarded as a nation of cowards who would not enforce recognition of what all nations had conceded to be THE MESSAGE OF THE WEST 99 our rights. There is no appeal from that deci- sion. It is idle to argue to-day as to the cause of the war. It is equally idle to argue that we should not have entered the war. We have made our decision and we are going forward. We know that we are right. Our conscience would have convicted us of cowardice if we had longer withheld the assertion of our power. But this war has grown away from a mere in- vasion of our rights. It is to-day a contest be- tween the principle of empire and the principle of democracy — a contest between the few who be- lieve in government by the soldier and the many who believe in government by the people. It is a contest between those who believe that men are made to serve the government and those who believe that government is made to serve the peo- ple. It is a contest between those who believe that the purpose of government is to enrich itself by extending its boundaries through the use of force, and those who believe that the purpose of government is to insure to the people life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Two systems are in conflict here. The one has come down to us from Caesar. It believes in mastery, in fear, in power. 100 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT The other Is the outgrowth of a Christian civiliza- tion. It believes that no man or set of men have been created by God to master all men. Why Is the world against Germany? Germany does not know that the time of empires and em- perors is past. She does not know that the day of arbitrary might has gone by. She will not play the Twentieth Century game under Twentieth Century rules. She asks for friendship, but she dishonors her friends by asking them to do things which they should not do. There was no country more willing to remain neutral than the Argentine Republic. Yet Germany's minister asks the Swed- ish minister to convey messages to Germany which outline a policy of ruthlessness upon the sea against that Republic which offends the sensibili- ties of mankind. You say to me that Germany was not hostile to the United States. How can any such statement be made in the face of the Zlm- mermann note, In which Germany, while we were still at peace with her, called upon Mexico as her friend to Invade our territory, promising her as reward part of our own lands and attempting to induce her to involve Japan with her in war against us ! ^ THE MESSAGE OF7HE WJEST loi Is a nation at peace with us whose ambassador asks from his country money with which to influ- ence our Congress, as was shown by the recent Bernstorli cable to his government? With what contempt must the government of Germany look upon the American people when they think that our Congress can be made to do as she wills and not as our people will? Government by fear is not to be the master of this earth. If Germany suc- ceeds, that is the only kind of government we will know. We will sail the seas by her consent, car- rying our goods where she permits it. We will live with a country filled with spies and with our national capital undermined by foreign intrigue. We will never be sure of the loyalty of our neigh- bors. We will never be sure of the word that nations give to us. We will endure life with the horrors of another such war constantly in our minds. We will pay taxes unending and huge to support an army which we do not want but must have. Our sons will be raised with the constant thought in their minds that theirs is not the mis- sion to reclaim the land, to dig the mine, to carry out the experiment, to lay the railroad, to lead the minds of men, to master the forces of unwill- i62 ' THE AMERICAN SPIRIT ing nature; for, from this hope, this dream of use- fulness, they may any day be turned aside by the stern necessity of self-protection; and their wives may be raised with the picture continually before their eyes of what has befallen the Belgian women. This is not a life for a self-respecting people. We must know where we are and what our standing is and what our future may be. We must know that we have rights upon this world — rights that do not depend upon sufferance, rights that we can assert. And we must know that while we observe the common laws that govern mankind and keep our pledged word, no nation has in its mind the purpose to make us subject to a govern- ment that is not of our own making. This is the foundation stone of Americanism. I ask you, as volunteers in the service of your country, to help in the successful prosecution of this war. I know no people more capable of con- tributing in small amounts and large to the re- plenishing of our national treasury. We do not ask for gifts; we are not giving money to our for- eign friends — we are making loans to them, and you are making loans to yourselves. I ask you to do this in the name of our Com- THE MESSAGE OF THE WEST 103 mander-In-Chief, who sits In the White House, meeting from day to day the problems of conduct- ing the greatest enterprise upon which this Nation has ever been engaged. His is the master mind of our world; he is the leader of liberal thought the world around. We need your money ! Give to your President your silver and gold that he may fashion it into a great spear, and with it overthrow the champion of the Divine Right of Kings, the principle which enables the few to enslave the many. Let Phila- delphia be true to her past, and her future is as- sured I A NEW AND GREATER AMERICA Report as Secretary of the Interior for igij This has been a year of adjustment and expan- sion within this department as within the Nation. The acceptance of Germany's challenge and the realization that the national life was now at stake brought at once a new sense of the relative importance of what we did, what we had, and how we used it. Things fell away as of little value which had hitherto been accepted without questioning as worth while, and ideas, resources, powers which had hitherto been slightingly re- garded rose in their stead into matters of prime national concern. Unless we could transmute gold and silver into coal and iron they could no longer be called the precious metals, and unless men had the power to convert skill, strength, and imagination into some form of shield or spear they could not play in the great game. There- fore we made new appraisal of ourselves in terms 104 A NEW AND GREATER AMERICA 105 of ability to do something that would hasten the great day of peace. We judged each othef by primal standards of proved capacity, not by the standards of a superficial social system. For this is the curse and the glory of war — that it has but a single scale of measurement, it puts but one sim- ple question: "What can you do to serve me? — for now I am the nation." It is the directness and the fulness of this challenge that gives war its spell and likewise gives birth to its horrors. "What can you do to serve me?'* To that question each individual and each department of the Government must ^ve answer. The answer of this department is that it has put every agency and activity which it has at the service of those departments more directly concerned with war making. Our men of scientific knowledge — metallurgists, chemists, engineers, topographers — have found new work at their hands. The homesteaders and the miners on the public lands have been released from their obligations if they go into the Army or show themselves to be of greater service off their lands than on them. A stalwart westerner came in early in May to say that he would like to enter the Army, but if he io6 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT did he could not hold his mining claims. He was a typical prospector, of steel-frame construction, without a superfluous pound of flesh, and the long- range eye of the»man who lives in the wild open — the very stuff of which the best soldier is made. But the fruit of his life's work was all to be found in a few holes in the ground and a few pieces of paper tacked on trees or posts in the mountains of the West. He was willing to take his chances of returning if the Government which wished him to go would be good enough to hold his property until his return without exacting the yearly labor which the law required. His visit was soon fol- lowed by letters from homesteaders and from other miners, making tender of their lives in the country's cause if they could be preserved in the right to that bit of the soil they had accepted on terms which they could only meet by staying at home. I quote from one of these letters, which came from a " dry farmer " in New Mexico: " I expect the President will need some of us and we don't want to be considered slow in coming forward. You tell him we are with him. But say to him that some other chap can grab our homestead claims if we go to the war. Now, this isn't fair. A man ought to have a place to come back to if he gets a chance to come back. So we hope you will get Congress A NEW AND GREATER AMERICA 107 to let things stand pat, just as they are, until we come home again. We don't ask you to give us anything, only just a chance to keep what we've got." It required little urging upon Congress, as may be surmised, to have the law so changed that the status of these pioneers could be preserved while they were absent " on duty." The Reclamation Service on a million and a quarter acres of irrigated lands and the Indians on a hundred reservations joined in the campaign for more meat and more wheat. The Patent Office has been searched for new devices that could be brought into use to kill the submarine or limit its destructiveness, for the plans of heretofore un- used lethal weapons, and for the formulas of im- proved or unknown sources of power. Before war actually came this department had compiled the data which showed the power of the Nation in mineral and chemical resources, our possible needs, and how they could be met at home or where abroad. Prepared lists of those men who had special knowledge or were of skill along the lines of our own activities enabled us to expand as the call was made. Under the imperative mandate of war that all io8 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT things shall become subject to a new classification according to their usefulness In carrying on the Nation's struggle, certain phases of our work have fallen Into the background, while others have been, brought Into the high light of national Im- portance. We are thinking less, for instance, of the amount of public lands that are being taken by homesteaders and are absorbed deeply in the scientific work of more recently established' branches of the service. Yet if we search for the foundation of our strength, the reason that Amer- ica is an invaluable ally to the western powers, it will be found In the adventuresome spirit and the exploiting energies of those who pushed their way into the wilderness and " took up " Govern- ment lands. On these the nations rely for the foods and the minerals which make possible the war's continuance. All others who work on what these produce — the manufacturer, inventor, even the soldier — are impotent without the coal oper- ator, the oil driller, the iron master, the farmer, and the miner, on whom this " war between re- sources " ultimately rests. And these have been enabled to place themselves In this crisis at the world's service by reason of the generous policy A NEW AND GREATER AMERICA 109 of this Government in the disposal of its lands. The attitude of the homesteader toward the Government at this time can not be better pre- sented than by a letter sent by a man in Oregon to a firm of land lawyers in this city : "I have yours inclosing contract relative to the claim of my father for the return of $150 overpaid the Government upon the entry of public land. " As I view the condition of this Government at this time it is no time for such items to be taken up and harassing the depart- ments. You and your partner ought to be trying to do some- thing to help the Government and yourselves. " I have given personally months of my time, and I venture it is worth as much to me as yours and your partner's is to yourselves, paid all my expenses, donated $500 to the Red Cross, purchased several hundred dollars' worth of Liberty Bonds, and was one of a party that raised $33,000 in donations for the Red Cross from a population of 3,300. " The reason I have been able to do this small amount is di- rectly attributed to the fact that my father got title to the very 160 acres of land that you now seek to have the Government pay us back $75 and put $75 in your pocket. " I have lived in a very small community, and there is an old saying that men do not get bigger than the community they live in. Washington is a large community and there is a num- ber of the largest men we have in the United States reside there during their term of office, such as the President and the Senators. You have the advantage of growing and becoming very large. But I feel bigger than the whole bunch of lawyers sticking around the various departments and trying to suck something out of the ill-advised citizenry of the isolated dis- tricts. "Trusting that you will take this in the spirit I write and that I will some time in the future hear of your firm doing something worth while." 110 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT The homesteader, with his covered wagon, was indeed the pioneer in preparedness for this war, and that his work has been well done is testified to by such figures as these: This year the United States will produce roughly five hundred and fifty million tons of coal, three hundred million barrels of petroleum, seventy million tons of iron ore, and over three billion bushels of corn, an increase of over six hundred million bushels over last year. But the making of war to-day is far more than a test of primal resources; it tests the full powers of the Nation in every resource and capacity and especially along lines of scientific knowledge. And here again we find the ways of peace have given something in the way of preparation for war. The scientific bureaus of the Government found themselves converted over night into ad- juncts and auxiliaries in the great international contest. Men who had regarded themselves as modestly useful only In the discovering and re- vealing of new sources of material strength found that their years of experience in the moun- tains and on the desert. In laboratories and In mines, called them at once into the thick of the European struggle. A NEW AND GREATER AMERICA in It was not long after our entrance into the war that one of our geologists came into my office, proudly dressed in an Army uniform. The last time I had seen him he had come to make report on the tungsten fields in Alaska, almost within the Arctic Circle. He had spent over twenty sum- mers in that distant Territory, taking here and there a sample of rock, studying the peculiar up- standing and twisted beds of coal in the Mata- nuska and Bering fields, rushing from one placer gold field to another, reporting on each new find of metal, until he had become identified with the rise of Alaska and was the embodiment of its hopeful spirit. " I have come to say good-by,'' he said. " My next address will be somewhere in France as a member of General Pershing's stafi." I naturally asked the kind of work that an Alaskan geologist would be called upon to do with an army. His answer illustrates how much of science has gone into war. " My work,'' he replied, " is to be concerned with the location of trenches and dugouts. We must have trenches into which the country will not drain. These slashes in the earth can be 112 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT made so that they will do their own draining. Mud, mud, mud ! That is the trench curse which brings on trench feet and puts the soldier out of business.'' And then on a sheet of paper he drew the slope of a hill and explained how if located in one place, because of the peculiar stratification of the earth, the trench would act as a cesspool or reservoir, gathering in all the waters of the neighboring terrain, while if placed elsewhere it would be im- mune from this disadvantage and through certain strata furnish a natural waste pipe for the super- ficial waters. So was the American soldier to be given a healthier place in which to live and work and be more efficient. A short time later came a group of topogra- phers, chief of whom was another of General Pershing's staff. They, too, were in full khaki and bound for Europe. Theirs was to be the game of surveying, platting, and most vividly and accu- rately presenting to the eye the land over which the new railroads would run, the railroads that would carry men, supplies and munitions to the front, and carry back the wounded. From their maps the artillery officers could determine the A NEW AND GREATER AMERICA 113 heights and the hollows where the big guns would be placed, the rivers that must be crossed, their fords and banks and bridges, the roads, the ferries and forests, and all the details of a landscape that changes from day to day under the pressing ad- vance or the forced retreat. For now they fire guns " unsight and unseen " and men by the mil- lion move by the map. The major who led this squad of scientific men had spent most of his life upon the rivers and in the mountains of the far West. He and his men had been for years platting the lands of the United States, showing drainage and elevations, what the farmer calls " the lay of the land; " and these modest American map makers were on their way to join a force for the remaking, possibly, of the map of Europe. Out of the work of building our great dams upon the Rio Grande and the Colorado Rivers there also came a by-product for war making. To be sure, no large dams were needed to im- pound the waters of France, but the engineers who build such dams know the newly discovered art of mixing concrete as few men do. There is not so much difference, after all, between a 114 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT trench and an Irrigation ditch, and hundreds of miles of such smooth-surfaced, water-conserving ditches have been built upon our reclamation proj- ects. For the construction of the dugout and the bomb proof, the gun foundation and the trench, there was need for these men of expert experience, and so to the Yakima Valley and that of the Colorado went the call of the war. Another curious illustration of the war use of peace machinery was brought to light when a group of chemists, representing the gathered gen- ius of the country in this science met in this office to discuss the problem of toxic poisoning by gases. When the Bureau of Mines was created by Congress five years ago, it was hardly to have been imagined that the methods used for the sav- ing of Hfe in the coal mines of the United States would become of vital use in the problem of sav- ing lives and destroying lives in a world war; yet this is just what has happened. Germany, which has been foremost for some years In the science of chemistry, and out of its extensive experience has developed a form of warfare which had not before been known, a modern expression of those diabolical inventions such as the cervl and stimuli A NEW AND GREATER AMERICA 115 which made Caesar's campaign In Gaul to be char- acterized as a war of science. To meet this new method of attack by deadly gases, the western powers promptly provided gas masks which con- tained chemical absorbents or other agents that would negative the effects of the gases sent adrift by their enemies. The soldier's kit, which was so simple a thing In other wars, had to be Increased by a gas mask not unlike the helmet of a deep-sea diver, with a box of chemicals adapted for off- setting the effect of the various kinds of gas the enemy was known to use; and for special use In dugouts and saps filled with concentrated gas, an oxygen supply was furnished. These outfits were not new to the world. For some years there has been keen rivalry between the great mining na- tions as to the one which provided the best. pThey were put on by those who went into the mine where poisonous gases from explosions or fires were known or supposed to exist. Every rescue gang wore them. This country claimed that it had improved upon the English, German, and French in the mask which it provided. At any rate, when we came into the war we found ourselves prepared with the knowledge, the ii6 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT machinery, and the men to meet promptly the need of gas masks In great quantity and of a su- perior type. Thus the men who had been on this work of meeting the gases compounded in na- ture's laboratory were found to have a reserve of knowledge as to what gases will kill and what will choke and what will burn and what will has- ten disease, which In a war of cumulative fright- fulness would make the United States modestly distinguished If it wished to so shine. As one of the group said, " We chemists In America have never turned our minds to the destruction of hu- man life. Our work has been constructive — the chemistry of the soil, of cement, of printers' ink, of the by-products from petroleum and tar, of countless things which will make for a longer, a happier life for man. But if the world is to be turned upside down and Instead of staying death and disease, and making new things that man can use for his own ennoblement, we are wanted to push forward the work of the destruction of man and all his works, we can become rivals of the worst In such enterprise." This Is not the time to present the things done and the things doing by these men of the necro- A NEW AND GREATER AMERICA 117 mantle science, but when the day comes for cast- ing up accounts and giving credit, their work will not go unrecognized. In this department we have during the past year had a glimpse of the expanding romance of chemical study. We have found adventure in the search for the hidden secrets of petroleum, natural gas, and coal tar, of coal smoke and the refuse from a hundred furnaces and smokestacks. We appear to have suddenly driven into a chem- ical age, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that we have suddenly realized that we are in such an age. New explosives, new fertilizers, new sources of power, of food, new materials for construction and destruction, new preservatives of life and new agencies for the sweetening and wholesoming of life — these are to the credit of the modern chemist, and as a by-product of this war we are to have a higher appreciation of this branch of science, and our genius for discovery which has so greatly been applied to problems of mechanics will find In analytic and synthetic chem- istry a field of opportunity subject to almost in- finite expansion. America has been a wholesaler in raw materials. ii8 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT Our boast has been In the millions of tons of steel or coal or barrels of oil or of feet of lumber that we could produce. We dealt in things of magnitude, that we took greatly as they came out of nature's storehouse, not thinking or not caring how much of any mysterious value they concealed. The chemist finds that nothing is simple; he tears all things apart to find things that are not patent to the eye, and out of the infinitely little and obscure creates a new world of things useful and beautiful. This is the conversion that is going on in America in all fields. We are en- tering upon the quest for the minor metals, our rarer woods, our select places of beauty and of exceptional climate or fertility. In all the domain of this great country extending from the semi- tropics across the desert and the most forbidding wastes into the far Arctic we have come to believe that there is no land that is entirely valueless. War forces a nation to an intensive study of what it can do. Thought and work — these are the answers to the problems of material insuf- ficiency. We of America have had no little to boast of through the quick century of our march across a continent. And without doubt our abil- A NEW AND GREATER AMERICA 119 ity to stand alone, depending on ourselves for the things that make a modern industrial nation, is something of which we may be proud, not so much because we have this land as because we have found out its worth and made it ours by putting it to use. But we soon realize when, thrown into such a struggle as this war how far removed from entire Independence we are. Cof- fee, rubber, and manganese from Brazil, chrome from South Africa, tea from the Orient, sugar from Cuba, sisal from Mexico, nitrates from Chile, hides and meat from the Argentine, wool from Australia, pyrites from Spain — these are of the raw materials we need and for which the ocean must be kept open, unless our dependent Industries are to weaken. Yet it Is hardly an overstatement to say that we could live alone with some substitution for a few of these things. For we do not know or have not developed what we have. One illustration will make this clear. We have great use for sulphuric acid and our devel- oped sulphur mines have not furnished a full sup- ply. Certain of our Industries largely depend on the sulphur that we can roast out of pyrite ore that comes from Spain. The ships that have car- ;i2o THE AMERICAN SPIRIT rieJ our wheat abroad have loaded back with Spanish pyrite. But ships, as we have found, are not to be created by rubbing Aladdin's lamp, so our pyrite supply fell short of the demand foF the sulphuric acid that cuts the phosphate rock into fertilizer for southern cotton. In studying a map of southern ore deposits with relation to the placing of a nitrate plant it became evident that pyrite was to be found in a stretch of the mountains running from northern Georgia to central Alabama. And just when this was found there came into the office one of the most forceful of southern manufacturers, who entered with a statement that he was looking for a place — '' not under the spotlight,'* *' I'm not a prima donna; just a man's job; something some- body else would shy at." ** Why not find the pyrite ore in your southern hills?" I asked. " Never heard of the stuff, but if it's there and you say we need it for the war I'll get it." That was almost literally the conversation that has led to the opening of Rve mines yielding 400 tons a day, which it is promised before the win- A NEW AND GREATER AMERICA 121 ter IS over will be increased to a thousand tons a day; and 30,000 tons a month is more than fif- teen ships could bring from Spain to our coast if kept in a continuous circle. These straggling incidents will suggest the pic- ture of a people struggling to equip itself for war. Other departments of this Government will doubtless reveal to you more completely the extent to which this Nation has proved itself ade- quate to the imperious needs of this time, and yet I feel no hesitancy in saying that out of the ex- periences of this department might be gathered the material that would illustrate the strength and the weakness of democracy making war. For we have the strength that comes from the vital, dy- namic force released under free institutions where personal initiative has free play, and we have, too, the weakness that comes from a lack of the reali- zation of the necessity for coordinated, purpose- ful effort. A democracy making war Is never an agreeable sight, for it is not in its normal line of life. And those who sneer or jeer because it does not play the game as well as might be, pay an unconscious 122 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT compliment to the merits of free institutions. It takes time to accustom men to the short, hard words of command, and to the surrender of per- sonal judgment. It is not easy, either, for a na- tion to turn its back upon the conception of a world where justice works out its ends by quiet processes, and In its stead come to the stern be- lief that the ultimate court is a battle field. So if there is wrenching and side-slipping and con- fusion there should be no surprise. [The surprise to me has been with what comparative ease the transition has been made, and how much uncon- scious preparation for the new work had been al- ready made. Now, that our problem is to produce more than ever before, it is clearly to be seen that the physi- cal resources of the United States are to-day almost completely at the command of the world's needs. If, indeed, for the past forty years this Nation had been planning to make war upon its neighbors, and so seize the continent for itself, what more would have been done to make our re- sources available for such an adventure? This is, perhaps, the hardest test to which the problem A NEW AND GREATER AMERICA 123 of our internal development could be put. Yet the answer must be that very little more could have been done or would have been done by a people necessarily doing so much. Modern industrialism may be epitomized as power plus iron. We lack neither. It is the un- precedented and the not-to-be-anticipated burden of providing not alone for ourselves, but for nearly all of western Europe and part of Asia and Russia which makes the great demand. For our own needs we have coal and iron and nearly all the rich line of less common minerals in abun- dance. It sounds most boastful to say that the most paternal of governments, intent upon a dy- nastic purpose, would hardly have found ways to supply itself more liberally with the fundamentals of the great war industries than has been effected by the quiet searching and working of this free people. And what is true as to minerals is equally true as to the products of the soil. The large liberty of life and the casting of responsi- bility upon the individual, allowing personal am- bition to be a substitute for direct command, and curiosity to be the spur to knowledge — these 124 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT have put under crop the greater part of the con- tinent and made this the relief depot of starving nations. Of one thing, however, we may be sure, that a nation intent upon its own self-sufficiency would not be holding under what is tantamount to Gov- ernment withdrawal the two newest sources of power — substitutes for that coal which costs the labor of a million men and is the greatest of all the burdens of our railroads — water power and petroleum. It may be expected surely that Con- gress in its coming session will release these re- sources by passing those leasing bills which have so long been pending in both Houses. But this war is not to be won by the measuring of resources, for if wars were to be so won China possibly would be our only rival. The spirit of the people is the making of the Nation, in war as in peace. The extent to which a people can co- operate marks the point of civilization they have reached. Now, the greatest outstanding fact of the past year, as clearly shown in the work of this department alone, is that under the crystallizing influence of a common danger and under the in- spiring impulse of a common purpose, Americans i A NEW AND GREATER AMERICA 125 are quick to come together. The very rush made Upon Washington at the beginning of war by those who wished to help in any form of war work was evidence of the consciousness that life and its con- duct were no longer matters of individual concern but preeminently of communal value. Industry itself, which has been thought to have no soul above the selfish acquisition of money, was fore- most in its willingness to serve when shown how it could. And whenever men come to perceive something better and bigger than they are them- selves, they are in the way of coming into the full light of a new sun, under the influence of which changes that are miraculous take place — in re- ligion they call it regeneration, in industry social- ization, the gaining of a new sense, a social as dis- tinguished from a personal sense. It is all a matter of vision, of seeing clearly, clearly enough to convert speculation into conduct. Men are already thinking of the greater Amer- ica that they believe to be coming when the war is done. We are in this war as the trustees of social and political ideals, most of them unformed, even embryonic, and these we hope to realize through the strength of the Nation. Our nation- 126 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT allsm, intense, virile, and of the fighting kind, is a part of the machinery through which we are working to make all men our debtors. Our na- tional purpose is to transmute days of dreary work into happier lives — for ourselves first and for all others in their time. This is the large view, the idealistic view, if you please, of America's mis- sion. It is the subconscious philosophy of all our history — our wars, our public-school system, our conservation schemes, our enterprise. This greater America is not to be the filmy product of a nation s fancy, the day dream of a monumental national ego. It is to be as substan- tial as hard thought and hard work can make it, a thing of good roads, ships, and railroads, well- fertilized farms and well-organized industry, reg- ulated rivers put to use, and schools and schools and schools, and laboratories and more labora- tories! War has taught England and France much, one thing perhaps above all others, how all important in this day is the man who has the new kind of savoir faire. If we are to meet the full rivalry of the world, we must rest chance for success upon our ability to produce men who. In character, in trained capacities, and in radioactive A NEW AND GREATER AMERICA 127 imagination will outmatch those whom they are to meet. This new America, as the old, will con- tribute to the world raw products with most gen- erous hand. But the ultimate resource of the Nation is not that which lies within the ground but that which vibrates in man's brain. There- fore out of the struggle and torture that we shall pass through, and the reverses and triumph that we shall meet, there should evolve the conception of America as the center of the world's thought, an America that will give that leadership and di- rection to the scientific, literary, and social thought of the world that we pride ourselves we have re- cently given to its political thought. Our status in this war gives us a place of moral ascendency from which if we are great enough to be humble we can become real masters of men, conquerors of the invisible kingdom of man's mind. MAKERS OF THE FLAG Address delivered on Flag Day, 1914, before the em- ployees of the Department of the Interior, Washington, D.C, This morning, as I passed into the Land Office, The Flag dropped me a most cordial salutation, and from its rippling folds I heard it say: ** Good morning, Mr. Flag Maker/* " I beg your pardon. Old Glory," I said, ** aren't you mistaken? I am not the President of the United States, nor a member of Congress, nor even a general in the army. I am only a Govern- ment clerk." " I greet you again, Mr. Flag Maker," replied the gay voice, " I know you well. You are the man who worked in the swelter of yesterday straightening out the tangle of that farmer's homestead in Idaho, or perhaps you found the mistake in that Incfian contract in Oklahoma, or helped to clear that patent for the hopeful in- ventor in New York, or pushed the opening of that new ditch in Colorado, or made that mine in 128 MAKERS OF THE FLAG 129 Illinois more safe, or brought relief to the old soldier In Wyoming. No matter; whichever one of these beneficent individuals you may happen to be, I give you greeting, Mr. Flag Maker." {I was about to pass on, when The Flag stopped m'C' with these words : *' Yesterday the President spoke a word that made happier the future of ten million peons in Mexico; but that act looms no larger on the flag than the struggle which the boy In Georgia is mak- ing to win the Corn Club prize this summer. " Yesterday the Congress spoke a word which will open the door of Alaska; but a mother In Michigan worked from sunrise until far Into the night, to give her boy an education. She, too, is making the flag. '* Yesterday we made a new law to prevent financial panics, and yesterday, maybe, a school teacher in Ohio taught his first letters to a boy who will one day write a song that will give cheer to the millions of our race. We are all making the flag.';) " But,'' (I said Impatiently, J these people were only working I " Then came a great shout from The Flag: 130 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT ** The work that we do Is the making of the flag. " I am not the flag; not at all. I am but Its shadow. *' I am whatever you make me, nothing more. (* I am your belief in yourself, your dream of what a People may become. " I live a changing life, a life of moods and passions, of heart breaks and tired muscles. " Sometimes I am strong with pride, when men do an honest work, fitting the rails together truly. " Sometimes I droop, for then purpose has gone from me, and cynically I play the coward. *' Sometimes I am loud, garish, and full of that ego that blasts judgment. *' But always, I am all that you hope to be, and have the courage to try for. ^ I am song and fear, struggle and panic, and ennobling hope. *' I am the day's work of the weakest man, and the largest dream of the most daring. *' I am the Constitution and the courts, statutes and the statute makers, soldier and dreadnaught, drayman and street sweep, cook, counselor, and clerk. MAKERS OF THE FLAG 131 *' I am the battle of yesterday, and the mistake of to-morrow. r I am the mystery of the men who do without knowing why. ** I am the clutch of an idea, and the reasoned purpose of resolution. - " I am no more than what you believe me to be and I am all that you believe I can be. " I am what you make me, notking more.} " I swing before your eyes as a bright gleam of color, a symbol of yourself, the pictured sug- gestion of that big thing which makes this nation. My stars and my stripes are your dream and your labors. They are bright with cheer, brilliant with courage, firm with faith, because you have made them so out of your hearts. For you are the makers of the flag and it is well that you glory in the making.'* THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE STAMPED BELOW AN INITIAL PINE OF 25 CENTS WILU BE ASSESSED FOR FAILURE TO RETURN THIS BOOK ON THE DATE DUE. THE PENALTY WILL INCREASE TO SO CENTS ON THE FOURTH DAY AND TO $I.OO ON THE SEVENTH DAY OVERDUE. W UV / V I ^m z -w^ JUN 21 m^ 10 -^ ^^fC6lW0 rv 'CO j n :AyiA'B4-;p|.i %^ "NrtR-LfBRARY LOAN i LD 21-100m-7,'40 (6936s) iJNIVEl^ITY OF CAUFORNIA UBRARY f rf*'A ■' -iV?-^ *«*' *m