Hill
 
 Friendship; HHl 
 
 a. '** 
 
 O.K.
 
 THE GREAT MENACE
 
 THE GREAT MENACE 
 
 AMERICANISM OR BOLSHEVISM? 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 
 1920
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1920, 
 Br DODD. MEAD AND COMPANY, INC. 
 
 VAIL-BALLOU COMPANY 
 (MAHTOM AMD HCW TO
 
 DEDICATED 
 
 IN GRATEFUL AFFECTION 
 TO 
 
 THE THREE COMPANIONS 
 OF MY HOME: 
 
 My wife, who inspires and makes it; 
 
 Our boys, who sometimes return 
 
 to gladden and undo it. 
 
 2137105
 
 FOREWORD 
 
 * 
 
 This book has been written in the belief 
 that it will help in an immediate nation- 
 wide campaign of publicity of the disaster 
 facing our country in the Great Menace. 
 
 The greatest peril of America is not 
 ultra-radicalism, but indifference to it, a 
 listless confidence that "it can't be done." 
 In referring to the present active policy 
 for "the confiscation of private property, 
 the assassination of public officers, the 
 burning of army barracks and police sta- 
 tions, the over-turn of the United States 
 Government, ' ' the New York Times 1 
 makes this pertinent comment, "How much 
 effect does this have on the 'ordinary 
 American citizen?' It is nonsense. 'They 
 can't do it?' Well, there are a good many 
 of these offensive people in the United 
 States; and they are not conscious that 
 they can't do it. ... They are endowed 
 
 i Editorial, Nov. 11, 1919, p. 12. 
 vii
 
 viii FOKEWORD 
 
 for their work of massacre and ruin by 
 wealthy half-baked Americans. ... As 
 solid American citizens, innocently believ- 
 ing that what has been will continue to be, 
 ... we are inclined to grin tolerantly at 
 the program, the energetic, fanatical, and 
 ferocious program, of world-revolution of 
 Russian adopters of Marxism." 
 
 The American Lumberman, in calling 
 attention to the Great Menace that imperils 
 our country and that * ' many are consoling 
 themselves with the thought that the good 
 sense of the average citizen will prevail 
 and that this danger will pass without any 
 effort on our part," declares that " THESE 
 
 CITIZENS NEED TO BE AWAKENED FROM THIS 
 SORT OF LETHARGY," AND SHOCKED "OUT OF 
 ANY FALSE SENSE OF SECURITY. ' ' 2 
 
 Hundreds of American newspapers and 
 magazines could be quoted, citing facts 
 which show that "outside of Russia the 
 storm-centre of Bolshevism is in the 
 United States," 3 and that Americans must 
 " awaken to the danger," and overthrow it 
 or be overthrown by it. 
 
 2 Issue of Oct. 18, 1919. 
 
 s Literary Digest, Nov. 8, 1919, p. 15.
 
 FOREWORD ix 
 
 When the American people are truly 
 aware of the extent of the work of the 
 Great Menace and of its real intent, they 
 will most surely do what needs to be done, 
 thoroughly and without delay. The imme- 
 diate need, therefore, is publicity : to make 
 the facts known, and to make known also 
 certain things which the new age decrees 
 must be done for the preservation of de- 
 mocracy and our home country with its 
 sacred institutions. To that work this 
 book is given. 
 
 GEORGE WHITEFIELD MEAD. 
 
 January, 1920.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PACK 
 
 FOREWORD . vii 
 
 I THE GREAT MENACE 
 
 II THE RELATION OF THE PEOPLE, LABOR, AND 
 
 CAPITAL IN THE IMPENDING REVOLUTION 48 
 
 III CONDITIONS FAVORING BOLSHEVISM THAT 
 
 Do NOT RIGHT THEMSELVES; AND REA- 
 SONS FOR FAITH IN THE PEOPLE ... 67 
 
 IV THE NEW PATRIOTISM 101 
 
 V VITAL MESSAGES OF RELIGION FOR TO-DAY . 129 
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 A CITIZEN'S WORKING CREED . . 155
 
 THE GREAT MENACE
 
 THE GREAT MENACE 
 
 THE GREAT MENACE 
 
 DURING the war our country was united 
 by a common task and a common danger. 
 Now that the war is over, a thousand 
 problems have arisen, diverting attention. 
 The way of readjustment to peace con- 
 ditions is strewn with the debris of war. 
 The great effort that is being made to 
 clinch the momentous moral gains ef- 
 fected is facing abnormalities and per- 
 plexities. 
 
 The "new age" is one of unrest and un- 
 certainties. The air is electric with 
 change. Human society is in the throes 
 of gropings and assertions, which are par- 
 ticularly noticeable with "capital" and 
 "labor." However, their interests are 
 not inimical. Controlled by reason and 
 conscience, they will find a way out for 
 
 conserving their common good and the in- 
 i
 
 2 THE GREAT MENACE 
 
 violable rights of society. The danger of 
 to-day lies deeper than their differences. 
 What is the Great Menace? 
 
 The Great Menace is a subtle deter- 
 mined movement for the complete over- 
 throw of the present social order and its 
 sacred institutions, including the Church, 
 and for the creation of an ''industrial re- 
 public ' ' through the ' ' conquest of the state 
 and the powers of government." The 
 class aiming to bring this to pass and put 
 themselves at the top, whose motive is not 
 justice, but to rule, now lifts its hand not 
 alone against capital but against every- 
 one who is not of the industrial labor 
 class. Their aim is to confiscate all prop- 
 erty, all lands, level all classes (not by 
 lifting up but by pulling down), and to 
 subordinate all classes, including the 
 agricultural-labor class, to their own 
 regime. 
 
 The Great Menace in the United States 
 appears under different names and in dif- 
 ferent forms, often in masquerade. 
 Sometimes it works openly; again, by 
 stealth worms its way into groups and 
 organizations of men for the winning of
 
 THE GREAT MENACE 3 
 
 converts and subversion of the group or 
 organization to the socialistic-bolshevist 
 program. 
 
 The Great Menace is popularly typified 
 by the names of socialism, sovietism, 
 syndicalism, communism, and bolshevism. 
 Sometimes the ism is presented in osten- 
 sible popular lectures from Lyceum plat- 
 forms and popular assemblies, with veiled 
 attempt to sow seed of dissension and in- 
 doctrinate an unsuspecting people. The 
 extent of that sort of propaganda is as- 
 toundingly large, eluding measure. 
 
 The Great Menace is now making ef- 
 fort, through taking advantage of trying 
 conditions incident to the close of a great 
 war, to sow the seed of unrest and effect 
 radical revolutionary changes; in other 
 words, to effect conditions in America 
 similar to those that prevail under Bol- 
 shevist rule in Eussia. I have chosen the 
 words of this statement with care, and 
 shall cite facts which bear their own 
 amazing disclosure of the Great Menace 
 in America. 
 
 The Bolshevist government in Russia has 
 accomplished this: the confiscation of
 
 4 THE GREAT MENACE 
 
 property and the socialization of society, 
 including the overthrow of sacred institu- 
 tions and the invasion of the sanctity of 
 the family. Divorce is granted for the 
 mere registering of intent of separation, 
 with no limit on the number of times that 
 one can be married and divorced. 
 
 Have the people of Russia benefitted 
 under sovietism? The radicals declared 
 that the socialization of industry and na- 
 tionalization of natural resources would, 
 through giving a personal interest in 
 things produced, bring to pass a type of 
 efficiency impossible under the old order, 
 resulting in increased output and adding 
 to the sum of national wealth, and that this 
 larger prosperity would benefit all the peo- 
 ple and particularly improve the condition 
 of those who are engaged in productive 
 pursuits. Such gains, socialists have de- 
 clared, would accrue to any nation under 
 the socialistic program. 
 
 The trial given to socialization in 
 Europe, however, has resulted in the op- 
 posite of things promised. Such is the re- 
 cent testimony of Mr. Herbert Hoover, who 
 had opportunity to personally study the
 
 THE GEEAT MENACE 5 
 
 working and economic effect of radical 
 forces in Russia, in Hungary, and in Ger- 
 many, the effect being "fatal to the hopes 
 of sincere Socialists." The socialization 
 regime has resulted in appalling loss of 
 production; and in Hungary and Eussia, 
 where the plan has had full sway, has re- 
 duced both countries to a starvation basis. 
 Eussia under the monarchy was able to 
 produce and export more surplus food- 
 stuffs than the United States, but now after 
 approximately two years under the social- 
 ization system is in a state of economic 
 collapse. Two-thirds of the railways and 
 three-fourths of the rolling stock are out 
 of operation. "The population is without 
 normal comforts and is plunged into the 
 most grievous famine of centuries. Its 
 people are dying at the rate of hundreds of 
 thousands monthly from starvation and 
 disease. Its capital city has diminished in 
 population from 2,000,000 to less than 
 600,000. The streets of every city and vil- 
 lage have run with the blood of execu- 
 tions." Continuing, Mr. Hoover said, 
 "My conclusion is that socialism, as a 
 philosophy of human application, has al-
 
 6 THE GREAT MENACE 
 
 ready bankrupted itself. It has proved 
 itself, with rivers of blood and suffering, 
 to be an economic and spiritual fallacy. 
 I believe it was necessary for the world to 
 have this demonstration. But it is not nec- 
 essary that we of the United States, now 
 that we have witnessed these results, 
 plunge our own population into these mis- 
 eries and into a laboratory for experiment 
 in foreign social diseases. ' ' 1 
 
 The hostility of the Bolshevist govern- 
 ment to the Christian religion is summar- 
 ized by the following excerpts from the re- 
 port of the United States Senate Judiciary 
 Committee on Bolshevism: 
 
 "It has confiscated all church prop- 
 erty, real and personal. 
 
 "It has established the right of anti- 
 religious propaganda as a constitution- 
 ally recognized institution. 
 
 "It has supprest Sunday-schools and 
 has expressly forbidden the teaching of 
 all religious doctrines in public, either 
 in schools or in educational institutions 
 of any kind. 
 
 i Address to American Institute of Mining and Metal- 
 lurgical Engineers in New York, Sept. 16, 1919.
 
 THE GREAT MENACE 7 
 
 "It prohibits religion from being 
 taught or studied except in private. 
 
 "It has abolished all recognition of a 
 supreme being in governmental and 
 judicial oaths. 
 
 1 'It has disfranchised expressly all 
 clergy and servants and employees of 
 church bodies and has deprived them of 
 all right to hold public positions. 
 
 " Under the old imperialistic regime 
 sinner that it was it became the prac- 
 tice by both custom and decree that every 
 newspaper and every periodical pub- 
 lished on Easter Sunday throughout the 
 Eussian Empire carried the commemora- 
 tive head-line, 'Christ is Risen.' On 
 Easter Sunday of 1918 the Bolshevist 
 publications substituted the legend: 
 
 ' * * One hundred years ago to-day Karl 
 Marx was born.' " 
 
 Must we not conclude, with the Senate 
 Judiciary Committee, that "Bolshevism 
 and the Christian religion cannot both sur- 
 vive"? 
 
 An examination of the Committee's re- 
 port, says the Minneapolis Tribune, will 
 convince the American Christian that ;
 
 8 THE GREAT MENACE 
 
 " Russian Bolshevism triumphant in 
 this country would be followed by the 
 confiscation of 203,432 church edifices; 
 by the suppression of all denominational 
 Sunday-schools, seminaries, and col- 
 leges ; and by atheist dictatorship domi- 
 nation over 41,926,854 church members." 
 Such is the sweep of the socialistic- 
 bolshevist program. Do we want it in 
 America? That very program we will 
 have, and have soon, if we close our ears 
 to the knocking at the gate. The Great 
 Menace must be met. The crisis promises 
 to strain v our country's strongest institu- 
 tions, to test our faith, and to try the hero- 
 ism of bravest and noblest souls. 
 
 Is the present order of society to be su- 
 perseded by one of class rule? Are reli- 
 gious institutions to cease to be? Must 
 their work suffer eclipse? 
 
 Nothing is easier than to dismiss such 
 questions with a shrug of the shoulder. 
 That is possible; it is also possible "to live 
 in a fool's paradise," that too when the 
 world is on fire. Surely, the way to over- 
 come dangers is not to close our eyes to 
 them, but to face them in their full
 
 THE GREAT MENACE 9 
 
 strength, and try to remedy what is wrong. 
 
 What attitude will the Church take to- 
 ward the Great Menace? I do not believe 
 it the function of the Church to preach 
 economics or to mix politics and religion. 
 But, surely, no one will deny that the 
 Church must have to do with the relation 
 of religion to society; that its work is to 
 save the world, not mere-individuals out 
 of the world. 
 
 Kaleidoscopic changes have been faced 
 by the great denominational bodies that 
 have sought to adapt their work to the 
 needs of the post-war times and in har- 
 mony with the new sentiment, assuming 
 ministries of amazing magnitude for the 
 succor of a suffering world. Now all loyal 
 Americans must face conditions as they 
 are. We cannot turn back. We must go 
 forward, or go under. 
 
 We appreciate the momentous words of 
 Clemenceau, spoken a few days after the 
 Armistice was signed to a group of French 
 senators. ' ( Gentlemen, " said Clemen- 
 ceau, "our difficult time is just approach- 
 ing. It is harder to win peace than to win 
 war. ' '
 
 10 THE GREAT MENACE 
 
 We share the vision of Milton: 
 
 "Peace hath her victories 
 No less renowned than war ; new foes arise, 
 Threatening tobind our souls with secular chains. ' ' 
 
 In the Great Menace we have to do with 
 subtle, hidden forces and powers. It is a 
 challenge to the continuance of every 
 sacred institution. 
 
 As we trace the evidences of the Great 
 Menace in America, let us keep in mind 
 that its purpose is the confiscation of prop- 
 erty, the socialization of society, and the 
 subjugation of agricultural and all other 
 classes to a group of the industrial class; 
 and that its avowed step for accomplishing 
 such end is to do away with all public 
 teaching or study of religion. 
 
 From the National Socialist party, 
 through their convention in Chicago, Sep- 
 tember, 1919, comes definite word as to its 
 spirit and purpose. It declared the party 
 in full harmony with the revolutionary 
 working class parties of all countries and 
 stands by the principles stated by the third 
 international program adopted at Moscow, 
 Russia. Other planks in the platform 
 read:
 
 THE GREAT MENACE 11 
 
 "We fully recognize the crying need 
 for an immediate change in the social 
 system. The time for parleying and 
 compromise has passed and now it is 
 only a question whether the full power 
 remains in the hands of the capitalist or 
 the working class. 
 
 "The Communist Labor party of 
 America has as its ultimate aim the 
 overthrow of the present system of pro- 
 duction, in which the working class is 
 mercilessly exploited, and the creation 
 of an industrial republic, wherein the 
 machinery of production shall be social- 
 ized so as to guarantee to the workers 
 the full social value of their toil. 
 
 "To this end we ask the workers to 
 unite with the Communist Labor party 
 of America industrially and politically 
 in the struggle for the conquest of the 
 state and the powers of government in 
 the establishment of a cooperative com- 
 monwealth. * ' 
 
 A more radical program, which with 
 other incendiary literature was recently 
 seized by our Department of Justice, is the 
 manifesto of the Federation of Unions of
 
 12 THE GREAT MENACE 
 
 Russian Workers of the United States and 
 Canada, which Attorney General Garvan 
 characterizes as ' ' the most dangerous piece 
 of propaganda ever disseminated by any 
 organization in the United States. ' ' Some 
 of the things advocated are : 
 
 Capture of all products and means of 
 production. Liberation of all political 
 prisoners. The blowing up of all barracks. 
 The murder of law-enforcing officials. The 
 burning of public records. Destruction of 
 fences and all property lines. The de- 
 struction of all instruments of indebted- 
 ness. 
 
 An accompanying plan that has been un- 
 covered is the inciting of United States 
 sailors to mutiny, the placing of officers in 
 irons, and the delivery of ships to the So- 
 viet government of Russia. 
 
 The work of the Great Menace is far out- 
 side the bounds of such methods, and in 
 sinister ways. The daring and subtle strat- 
 egy of the exponents of a "socialistic or- 
 der" is illustrated by their cloaked attempt 
 within the councils of the recent Atlantic 
 City convention of the American Federa- 
 tion of Labor. Colonel Theodore W. Mc- 
 Cullough, an eminent member of that or-
 
 THE GREAT MENACE 13 
 
 ganization, in a review of the proceedings 
 of the convention, said: "The labor 
 unions [at this convention] were sought 
 out by propagandists, coming with the al- 
 lurements of a new world into which the 
 workers would be moved by their own voli- 
 tion. All that was required to establish 
 the industrial millennium in America was 
 for the men and women in the workshops 
 and factories, mines and mills, offices and 
 elsewhere, to follow the example of the 
 workers of Russia and be free. . . . Bol- 
 shevism was presented in many guises, in 
 the resolutions submitted, ranging from a 
 proposal embodying the 'one big union' 
 idea to another that had for its object the 
 changing of the date for Labor Day from 
 September 1 to May 1. It was a little sig- 
 nificant that in all these resolutions, where 
 it was essential to name a date for future 
 action, May 1 was chosen. When the time 
 came to decide on the policy, an emphatic 
 negative was registered to each of the sev- 
 eral resolutions >on which the radicals had 
 pinned their hopes. . . . So, if the labor un- 
 ions of the United States turned a deaf ear 
 to the agitators, to the 'parlor coal dig-
 
 14 THE GREAT MENACE 
 
 gers,' the half-baked reformers in what- 
 ever guise they came, it was . . . because 
 their common sense and deeper under- 
 standing of the problem led them to decline 
 to take part in any movement to wreck the 
 institutions of our government by under- 
 taking to substitute any sort of experiment 
 for the true democracy under which they 
 exist." 1 
 
 It is fortunate for our country that the 
 Atlantic City convention of the American 
 Federation of Labor had delegates in 
 majority who could not be tricked, who 
 could recognize effort "to foment revolu- 
 tion," and who were determined that "or- 
 ganized labor of America shall go on 
 along its evolutionary course." But in 
 the short time since that convention, large 
 bodies of labor, ignoring the counsel of 
 their own leaders, have caused serious in- 
 dustrial troubles. 
 
 That the socialist-bolshevist advocates 
 adroitly planned and worked with energy 
 within the Atlantic City convention of the 
 American Federation of Labor, repre- 
 senting more than three millions of Ameri- 
 
 i New Era Magazine, September, 1919, pp. 498 ff.
 
 THE GREAT MENACE 15 
 
 can citizens, and that similar propagand- 
 ists have with the zeal of religious mania 
 carried their teaching into other organiza- 
 tions and into every possible nook and 
 corner of our land, evinces that, however 
 mistaken their philosophy, it is an organi- 
 zation of determination and subtle methods 
 that to ignore would be fatal. 
 
 Mr. W. E. Robinson, in a recent com- 
 munication to the Senate Committee on 
 Agriculture, tersely presented his judg- 
 ment of this revolutionary social force as 
 follows: "I want to say with all frank- 
 ness that unless you take immediate steps 
 to curb this socialistic tendency which is 
 now becoming so bold, I would not be sur- 
 prised if this country, in the near future, 
 were attacked just as Russia was attacked. 
 Remember, these men who are Bolshevists 
 are not all of the ignorant class; many of 
 them, indeed, are rather able men, but their 
 aim is Socialism. They believe that no 
 one man should have more than another; 
 that all should fare alike; and in order to 
 do this, it will be necessary to upset our 
 Government, overthrow our institutions, 
 destroy our great manufacturing interests,
 
 16 THE GREAT MENACE 
 
 confiscate lands, and permit the Bolshe- 
 vists to go rampant." 
 
 Those are not the words of an alarmist, 
 but of a sane and discerning man of af- 
 fairs, who is able to measure tendencies 
 and movements, and who has the good of 
 humankind in thought and heart. And 
 facts, appalling facts, bear out the correct- 
 ness of his judgment. 
 
 As emphatic a warning comes from a 
 spokesman of the "laboring classes," 
 Mr. John H. Ferguson, President of the 
 Baltimore Federation of Labor, which 
 has about 40,000 members. In a recent 
 address l on the industrial and economic 
 situation America is facing, Mr. Ferguson 
 referred to the newcomers of America, 
 "blinded by the glare of liberty," daring 
 to aspire, although blinded, "to force their 
 guidance upon Americans who for genera- 
 tions have walked in the light of liberty. ' ' 
 Mr. Ferguson then spoke a warning that 
 ought to awaken the most apathetic: 
 "When you once leave the level road of 
 Americanism to set foot upon the incline 
 of socialism, it is no longer in your power 
 
 i August 31, 1919.
 
 THE GREAT MENACE 17 
 
 to determine where you will stop. ... If 
 you tolerate grave infringement upon any 
 of these elements [of the established order 
 of civilization] all history shows that you 
 will have laid open to assault the founda- 
 tions of personal liberty, of orderly pro- 
 cesses of Government, of justice and toler- 
 ance, as well as the institution of marriage, 
 the sanctity of the home and the principles 
 and practices of religion. 
 
 "I have said all this," continued this 
 spokesman for labor, " because I know 
 and you know that f omenters of unrest are 
 abroad in the land. The tragedy which 
 threatens to overwhelm this nation pro- 
 ceeds in regular fashion. Gradually, but 
 definitely, is unfolded the plot to bring 
 misery upon the people in the expectation 
 that misery may advance revolution and 
 exalt the demagogues who would become 
 autocrats. There has been the battle of 
 phrases, the avalanche of promises and the 
 sapping of moral fiber. To-day there is 
 the game of tactics between the revolution- 
 ists, who desire to control the American 
 labor movement, and the conservatives, 
 who would save it. To-morrow one may
 
 18 THE GREAT MENACE 
 
 confidently anticipate the outbreak. Cir- 
 cumstances follow each other with the 
 regularity, though not the harmony, of a 
 musical cadence. There has been prepa- 
 ration, now there is percussion, and to-mor- 
 row there will be revolution, and revolution 
 that may involve dissolution of the United 
 States." 
 
 Many parts of our country have recently 
 witnessed disturbances that had all the 
 symptoms of the Oreat Menace: strikes 
 without notice and without instruction or 
 counsel with labor leaders; bomb throw- 
 ing on May Day and June 2, 1919 ; attempts 
 to hold radical demonstrations;,. and the 
 appearing of a "miners' army." When 
 the miners' army spontaneously organ- 
 ized in West Virginia, Governor Cornwell 
 said that mysterious radical influence had 
 been working in that part of the State. 
 Added to this, is the crime of the I. W. W. 
 in deliberately shooting and killing, from 
 their Headquarters in Centralia, Washing- 
 ton, four American soldiers in uniform, 
 veterans of the World War, when in an 
 Armistice Day parade. 
 
 The great Northwest has been a center
 
 THE GEEAT MENACE 19 
 
 of virulent radicalism. In Idaho can be 
 seen miles upon miles of blackened area, 
 where forest fires destroyed more than 
 2,000,000 feet of magnificent timber, val- 
 ued at approximately $6,000,000, timber 
 sorely needed for the building of homes, 
 farm out-buildings, and manufacturing. 
 For this wanton destruction, the " direct 
 action" preaching of the Industrial Work- 
 ers of the World is held responsible. 
 Within the past year thirty-two lumber 
 camps, with their surrounding stands of 
 timber, have suffered the same fate due to 
 the same causes. That is the kind of sab- 
 otage the Industrial Workers of the World 
 agitator preaches as a means of attaining 
 his ends. "The forests in Northern Idaho 
 were fired because the lumberjacks were 
 not satisfied with what they were getting 
 and so gave ear to the apostles of 'direct 
 action.' To counteract this the big lumber 
 companies tried a new experiment. They 
 let out the cutting of timber to small 
 groups of lumberjacks, calling themselves 
 'jippos,' or small contractors, three men 
 working in a team, and agreed to pay them 
 so much a thousand feet of timber they
 
 20 THE GREAT MENACE 
 
 cut. In this way the lumber jacks have 
 been able to make individually from $10 to 
 $25 a day, and yet they are not altogether 
 satisfied. There is a complaint that the 
 hours are too long. ' ' * 
 
 In view of the shortage and high cost of 
 timber and coal, possibly the public can 
 learn to do without houses and to keep 
 warm by fireless cookers. 
 
 Shortly after the race riots in Washing- 
 ton and Chicago belief was expressed in 
 the House of Representatives that the I. 
 W. W. were using propaganda to inflame 
 the negroes. That belief is now confirmed 
 by incendiary propaganda in the hands of 
 the Department of Justice. Referring to 
 the seized literature which had been spread 
 to inflame the negroes, Ralph Bevin Smith 
 made this comment : * * If the I. W. W., the 
 American Federated Commune Soviets 
 and similar radical organizations have 
 their way the end lies in the Bolshevizing 
 of the American negro. Taking advantage 
 of every atrocity ascribed to black or 
 white, of every outbreak of race hatred, 
 the Bolshevist in this country is doing his 
 
 i S. M. Reynolds, Spokane, Wash., Staff Correspondent, 
 Baltimore Sun, September 14, 1919.
 
 THE GREAT MENACE 21 
 
 utmost by word of mouth and by written 
 propaganda to obtain control of the negro 
 workingman and to incite him to join with 
 the outlaws among white workers to plunge 
 the United States in the throes of a dis- 
 astrous social revolution. If Bolshevism 
 succeeds in making a tool of the American 
 negro workingman a new issue will be in- 
 jected among the complications of the na- 
 tion's problem, the peril of which cannot 
 be exaggerated. ' ' 1 
 
 Following is an excerpt from the Am- 
 erican Anarchist Federated Commune 
 Soviets "to you workers of America, col- 
 ored or white:" "By our united strength 
 we, the workers of all colors and creeds, 
 shall start the real worth-while war 
 for the overthrow of the entire capitalist 
 system and the taking over of all the in- 
 dustries, farms and warehouses of the 
 country, whereby we will produce for our- 
 selves, and where each one will have what 
 he needs without having to hunt or kill one 
 another in order to get a 'job.' If blood 
 will have to be spilled in order to enable 
 us to accomplish this, then let it never 
 
 i New York Herald, Oct. 12, 1919, p. 5.
 
 22 THE GREAT MENACE 
 
 again be the blood shed by worker against 
 workers, but let it be the blood of capital- 
 ism, its government, church and press, that 
 will attempt to prevent us, the workers, 
 from freeing ourselves of the present slav- 
 ery and our retaking of all the wealth we 
 have produced and been robbed of. If bat- 
 tles must be fought, if riots must take 
 place, if blood must be shed in order to de- 
 stroy the present slavery, then let us do it 
 and by our united strength start the real 
 war the social revolution. ' ' l 
 
 The success of inflammatory propaganda 
 in influencing negroes is suggested by the 
 Messenger, which calls itself "the only 
 radical negro magazine in America. " The 
 July number of the Messenger was ex- 
 cluded from the mails by the Postmaster 
 General. Its editorials contained such 
 statements as this : ' ' The agencies of law 
 and order and justice are, to the negro, 
 agencies of lawlessness, disorder and in- 
 justice. The flag for which he fought 
 mocks and deserts him while his life and 
 property are taken away. The press and 
 church are stirred more by Bolshevism in 
 
 ilbid.
 
 THE GREAT MENACE 23 
 
 Russia than by anarchism and murder in 
 Tennessee." 
 
 During the war America was proud of 
 the black man's loyalty. Greater is the 
 treason that "red" agencies in our country 
 have tried to implant rancor and hatred 
 in the minds of negroes and incite them to 
 violence. 
 
 Other facts evince the activity of radi- 
 cals for the overthrow of governmental in- 
 stitutions. Report from Washington re- 
 cently declared that there are thousands of 
 aliens now in this country agitating for the 
 confiscation of property and the overthrow 
 of the American system of constitutional 
 government; and that these agitators are 
 supported by many of the 3000 newspapers 
 published in foreign languages and cir- 
 culated in the great centers of industry. 1 
 
 Attorney General Charles D. Newton in 
 a recent statement made public that an 
 American, Daniel De Leon, was the first to 
 advocate the establishment of the Soviet 
 councils which have written the recent his- 
 tory of Russia "in the blood of innocents." 
 In speaking of the New York State Legisla- 
 
 i See New York Times, Oct. 17, 1919.
 
 24 THE GREAT MENACE 
 
 tive Committee Investigating Bolshevism, 
 Mr. Newton said, "As further proof that 
 the Soviet plan is of American conception, 
 I might point out that a majority of the 
 active workers aligned with Leon Trotsky, 
 the Bolshevist dictator of Russia, were ed- 
 ucated in radicalism in the slums of Bos- 
 ton, on the east side of New York, in the 
 slums of Chicago, and the dregs of other 
 large American cities. Documents seized 
 by the committee 's investigators bear out 
 this startling and lamentable fact. The 
 New York State Legislative Committee 
 discovered a direct connection between the 
 Bolshevists in Russia and the radicals in 
 the United States. This connection was 
 maintained by Ludwig C. A. K. Martens, 
 'envoy' of the Bolsheviki, who opened an 
 office in New York which the newspapers 
 were accustomed to style the 'Bolshevist 
 embassy. ' " * 
 
 In the United States Senate Oct. 13, 
 Senator Poindexter gave warning that 
 there is "real danger that the Government 
 will fall" if it continues its attitude of 
 "supine inaction" toward the radical ele- 
 
 i Ibid.
 
 THE GREAT MENACE 25 
 
 ments over the country. Three days later 
 the Executive Committee of the National 
 Security League issued a statement which 
 said : * * The time has arrived for the peo- 
 ple of America to wake up to a realization 
 of what is taking place. It is social evolu- 
 tion downward nothing else. The radi- 
 cal agitation which is menacing the found- 
 ations of our industrial life is not based 
 upon specific grievances, but is aimed at 
 the overthrow of American institutions 
 and ideals just as surely as if a Bolshevist 
 army was marching on Washington. The 
 American people are confronted with all 
 the destructive forces of minority class 
 rule which have made a waste of Russia. 
 The bloody method of the Bolshevist revo- 
 lution is the only condition lacking. In 
 fact, its absence is the sole reason for the 
 long blinding of our citizens ' eyes to what 
 is going on. Internationalism, syndical- 
 ism, communism, socialism, are the an- 
 titheses of Americanism. Americanism 
 means the best in the ideals of the peoples 
 of all the world, the best of human ideals 
 manhood. Manhood means ambition, 
 self-denial, thrift. These ideals can
 
 26 THE GREAT MENACE 
 
 spring only from the protection of personal 
 liberty and the right of property the 
 right of individual possession of property 
 as guaranteed by the Constitution. He 
 who does not believe this cannot be an 
 American. ' ' 
 
 Out of the press comments on the steel 
 strike the Literary Digest x had this con- 
 clusion: "As many observers see it, the 
 calling of the steel strike at this time re- 
 veals the purpose of certain revolutionary 
 radicals to wrest control from the hands of 
 moderate-minded leaders and place the 
 Reds in the saddle, thus making it ' the 
 first gun of the industrial revolution. ' 
 
 Speaking at a meeting of the Institute 
 of Arts and Sciences of Columbia Univers- 
 ity, President Nicholas Murray Butler re- 
 ferred to the steel strike, saying: "The 
 history of the beginnings of the steel strike 
 reads strangely like the beginnings of the 
 European war. The ultimatums of Mr. 
 Fitzpatrick and Mr. Foster might well 
 have been written by Count Berchtold, 
 Chancellor Bethman-Hollweg, or Minister 
 von Jagow. The published statements of 
 
 i October 11, 1919, p. 11.
 
 THE GREAT MENACE 27 
 
 these gentlemen are alike in that they make 
 no appeal whatsoever to right and justice, 
 but simply give notice of peremptory de- 
 mands and announce that when a fixed 
 limit of time expires force will be used to 
 support the demands. Yet few people re- 
 alize that the demands and ultimatums of 
 Mr. Foster and Mr. Fitzpatrick are just 
 as much contrary to our political princi- 
 ples as those of the Ministers of the Cen- 
 tral Powers." 
 
 Thinking is somewhat clarified by the 
 fact that the steel and iron workers who 
 went on strike were receiving $8, $18, 
 $22, and some as high as $30 a day. 
 
 At the meeting of the Institute of Arts 
 and Science of Columbia University Presi- 
 dent Butler also said: ' 'Recently the 
 startling doctrine has been taught and 
 practiced that the strike may be used to 
 enforce the views and wishes of a small 
 minority of the population in matters re- 
 lating not only to public transportation 
 and to other public utilities, but to political 
 and public acts of every sort. ... It must 
 be apparent that without complete loyalty 
 to the democratic principle, without re-
 
 28 THE GREAT MENACE 
 
 spect for law, without sincere devotion to 
 American ideals of government, and with- 
 out good will on the part of all elements 
 and groups of society, the economic and 
 political life of the nation can no longer 
 go forward, and that we are in imminent 
 danger of national shipwreck and of in- 
 calculable disaster." 
 
 Loyal Americans do not want to be made 
 " tools" for the undoing of American in- 
 stitutions. They ought to be forewarned 
 that they may not be misled by what they 
 read or hear, or by misplaced sympathy. 
 The Senate Labor Committee investigat- 
 ing the steel strike elicited the astounding 
 confession from Jacob Margolis, attorney 
 of the I. W. W. in the Pittsburg district, 
 an admitted advocate of social revolution, 
 of ultra-radical activities underlying the 
 nation-wide steel strike and of the sinister 
 purpose of the revolutionists to control the 
 American Federation of Labor and all 
 trade unions. Mr. Margolis declares he is 
 11 against God, government, and Church." 
 He "wants government to disappear." 
 He is for the confiscation of private prop- 
 erty. His confession reveals that the un-
 
 THE GREAT MENACE 29 
 
 deriving motive of the modern strike is 
 not for the redress of grievances but for 
 power through creating internal troubles 
 and unrest that will lead to revolution. 
 These facts ought to be weighed by Ameri- 
 can citizens. And no people will welcome 
 the facts more than the honest men of 
 labor. The ulterior revolutionary design 
 of modern strikes is stated by Mr. Mar- 
 golis in these words : "I favor all strikes. 
 I welcome the feeling of unrest. I believe 
 in production organization. The Plumb 
 Plan is a step in that direction. I want the 
 workers to conduct the industries. I view 
 capital as entitled to no reward." 
 
 The I. W. W., the anarchic syndicalists, 
 the Russian Union, are all for the strike, 
 not for grievances, but "to cripple in- 
 dustry," create "the feeling of unrest," 
 and so "help the revolutionary actions of 
 American workers," to the end that "pri- 
 vate property may be confiscated," "gov- 
 ernment disappear," that they may "con- 
 duct the industries," and as a class may 
 rule. 
 
 The ultra-radical methods to create 
 trouble and unrest may for the time create
 
 30 THE GREAT MENACE 
 
 trouble and unrest, for labor and for 
 others. But such trouble also defers the 
 better day for labor as for others. Amer- 
 ica is not Russia. In Russia 80 per cent, 
 of the people are illiterate, and they have 
 never been trained to rule. American de- 
 mocracy has a history of approximately 
 150 years and a people in the main who are 
 self-reliant, loyal and intelligent, and who 
 welcome and work for industrial and social 
 improvement, and who, therefore, will 
 never consent to plans that would despoil 
 society and destroy the American govern- 
 ment and institutions. 
 
 Free speech is not license for treason. 
 A strike for redress of grievances is one 
 thing ; a strike with underlying revolution- 
 ary intent, in a word for power, is quite 
 another thing. 
 
 Must our Federal Government, following 
 the laws of Australia and New Zealand, 
 declare a strike of employees, or a lockout 
 on the part of employers, a criminal of- 
 fense and punishable, and require that 
 every dispute be settled by compulsory 
 arbitration? That is possible. But there 
 is only one way to deal with the nihilist
 
 THE GREAT MENACE 31 
 
 movement and that is to crush it. This 
 much is certain: the American people in 
 united power stand for the maintenance 
 of law and order and sacred American in- 
 stitutions. 
 
 Has the time come for inviting certain 
 men and groups of men to leave the coun- 
 try? It would be better that the output of 
 industry be crippled for the want of work- 
 ers than that industry itself be crippled by 
 the presence of those workers. 
 
 One other word of warning ought to be 
 spoken by loyal leaders in our country, 
 a warning to be guarded against insidious 
 writings and lectures. Certain respecta- 
 ble appearing publications and certain ac- 
 credited auspices for lectures are being 
 used by sinister propagandists, who art- 
 fully weave in teachings that make for un- 
 rest, with revolutionary design. The 
 daring of the ultra-radicals is further con- 
 firmed by Senator Watson, who declared 
 in the United States Senate l that even the 
 Federal service is honeycombed with all 
 sorts of radical propaganda of the most 
 obnoxious kind. The disclosures by 
 
 i October 20, 1919.
 
 32 THE GREAT MENACE 
 
 Senator Watson have caused astonishment, 
 particularly the alleged socialist activi- 
 ties of Federal Commission employees with 
 the spread of Bolshevism, and the state- 
 ment that other Government officers are 
 "permeated with red flag socialism and 
 anarchism." The preamble to Senator 
 Watson's resolution for an. investigation 
 of the trade commission, reads in part: 
 "If Bolshevism, with all that it implies, is 
 to be met and overcome in this country it 
 must be done by first ousting all its ad- 
 herents and advocates from public office." 
 
 It is amazing that the "reds" have 
 worked their way into high places and that 
 they often sit in the seats of the innocents. 
 Our good fortune is that their work and 
 presence are known at last. For long we 
 slept, and the dragon crept upon us. Now 
 there is just one thing to do, and that is 
 to place our heels upon it. 
 
 With the avowed purpose of radicalism ; 
 with the warnings and protests against the 
 Great Menace by men of affairs and by 
 representatives of capital and representa- 
 tives of labor; with the seething unrest of 
 to-day that unless controlled promises to
 
 33 
 
 break out into flame ; and in the face of the 
 wide spread spirit of socialism under 
 varied names and in varied forms, but with 
 intent to confiscate property, to level all 
 classes, to cure all social ills by killing all 
 extant institutions, dare we stand by silent, 
 and indolent ? Is leadership to pass to un- 
 reasoning visionaries or proponents of 
 violence in effort to establish their dis- 
 torted image of free government? If so, 
 cataclysm will sweep our country and in- 
 volve the world. The leaders of both cap- 
 ital and labor are working to stay such 
 calamity. Can a loyal American do less? 
 When the Great Menace is known and its 
 plot exposed, it will be opposed by the loyal 
 of our country with .all the fervor of 
 moral passion. 
 
 The time is when sane leaders must lead. 
 The urgency is a summons to all good 
 citizens and their various organizations: 
 associations, boards of trade, lodges, 
 granges, women 's clubs, colleges, churches. 
 The people ought to be informed and 
 warned. The sinister design of socialism 
 or bolshevism is often presented with such 
 rose-colored philosophy that many men and
 
 34 THE GREAT MENACE 
 
 women who writhe under unjust social 
 conditions, and who, cut to the quick 
 by seeing the worn, emaciated and de- 
 spoiled victims of economic plutocracy, 
 have turned to socialism in the hope of re- 
 lief, not knowing that in so doing they 
 were following a mirage, as in Russia op- 
 pressed people looked to the socialist-bol- 
 shevist movement as to a savior, only to 
 find a despot sevenfold greater than the one 
 previously known or of which an outraged 
 people had ever dreamed. 
 
 In our country the socialists come with 
 sweet words and golden promises of an 
 immediate industrial millennium. I speak 
 whereof I know. I have attended their 
 meetings, talked with their leaders, read 
 their books, pamphlets and papers. 
 Should they accomplish their designs, 
 nothing for the time being could prevent 
 our country from becoming another de- 
 spoiled and bleeding Russia. Of course, 
 such conditions could not continue forever, 
 but continuing even for a time the price 
 that would be paid in added suffering and 
 human woe for the lesson would be appal- 
 ling.
 
 THE GREAT MENACE 35 
 
 Every society and church in our country 
 ought to make known that the socialist- 
 bolshevist movement is a menace, not a 
 Messiah, and so cooperate with the worthy 
 leaders of labor and capital for the pre- 
 servation of American institutions. This 
 is a work we ought to do, and we ought to 
 do it now. In doing it, let us make sure 
 that we keep our temper as well as our 
 loyalty. 
 
 It must be made plain that revolution 
 has no right in a democracy. Revolution 
 is inimical to the right of self-determina- 
 tion. One of the meanings of democracy 
 is that it is a government wholly by the 
 people. That is why we speak of the Ad- 
 ministration ; it administers the govern- 
 ment of sovereign citizens, who by major- 
 ity voice have sole authority to determine 
 national policy. In Europe for the most 
 part the right of people to govern them- 
 selves has been denied. Kings and emper- 
 ors have been rulers. Therefore, revolu- 
 tion has been advocated, and the people 
 have been in age long revolt against their 
 rulers. In America we are our own rulers ; 
 therefore, there is no room for revolution.
 
 36 THE GREAT MENACE 
 
 The right of revolt does not exist. How 
 can we revolt against ourselves ? Through 
 the hard school of experience we may 
 change our views, may reverse our judg- 
 ments, but in so doing we speak for our- 
 selves, determine our own destiny, which 
 is pleasant and prosperous when our deter- 
 mination is right, or unpleasant and dis- 
 astrous when our determination is wrong. 
 But we are willing to pay the price of mis- 
 takes for the privilege of ruling ourselves. 
 To a part of our people, however, particu- 
 larly to those who have come to us from 
 other countries we should make it clear 
 that in determining any internal policy we 
 have no right to use force or have recourse 
 to anything but public opinion and the 
 orderly processes of law as previously de- 
 termined by majority voice of the people, 
 of whom we are a part. 
 
 Because we are our own rulers we regard 
 as dangerous any group of men who would 
 usurp to themselves the prerogatives of 
 government that belong to the people, just 
 as we would regard as dangerous any ex- 
 ecutive who would arrogate to himself the 
 prerogatives that belong to the people.
 
 THE GEEAT MENACE 37 
 
 Rule by a group or an individual is autoc- 
 racy, which is diametrically the opposite of 
 democracy. And exactly that is the pur- 
 pose of those persons who would effect so- 
 cial changes by recourse to revolution. 
 The purpose is tyranny. And nothing is 
 to be gained, save more trouble, by falsify- 
 ing the fact. However, the condition is 
 not one to be faced in dismay, but with de- 
 cision and with definite steps for removing 
 the very roots of the trouble, which can be 
 done because it must be done. Dawdling 
 must give place to doing. 
 
 The Great Menace is not the only wrong 
 to be righted. The unfeeling employer 
 who has exploited labor, thereby inflict- 
 ing suffering that cries to heaven for judg- 
 ment, and also thereby reflecting on hon- 
 orable employers who are considerate and 
 just, deserves moral execration and our 
 demand for laws that will bring him to 
 justice. The profiteer who combines with 
 his competitor in making fictitious prices 
 should similarly be dealt with. Wicked- 
 ness in "high places" must be condemned, 
 just as wickedness is condemned in other 
 places. But the Great Menace must have
 
 38 THE GREAT MENACE 
 
 our immediate attention because it is our 
 immediate peril. 
 
 In all this, we ought to keep clearly in 
 mind that the movement typified by the 
 words "organized labor" is not to be 
 confused with the socialist movement. 
 Radicals have sought its control by "bor- 
 ing in" the Federation of Labor "from 
 within," but they do not represent the 
 majority nor the conscience of organized 
 labor. We ought also to keep clearly in 
 mind that men of wealth to-day have large 
 opportunity for constructive service in es- 
 tablishing a just social order. Upon them 
 is that solemn duty. Labor's rights and 
 capital 's rights are only the common rights 
 of society. They are not to be classified 
 and dealt with as separate from the rights 
 of all other classes. That sort of thing 
 will help neither labor nor capital nor 
 society at large. Let us do everything we 
 can to allay, not foment classism. 1 Class 
 rule of any sort is un-democratic, un-Amer- 
 ican and unsafe, be it of capital or labor, 
 noble or ignoble, learned or unlearned. 
 Opposed to this the socialists-bolshevists 
 
 J See New Era Magazine, September, 1919, p. 473.
 
 THE GREAT MENACE 39 
 
 aim at class rule, by themselves. Loyal 
 citizens will stand for true Americanism: 
 for government of, for and by the people; 
 for a spirit of moderation and restraint, 
 of justice and good will to all. That noble 
 spirit of idealism, that atmosphere of tra- 
 ditional Americanism, must be the soul and 
 breath of effective work. 
 
 Since the signing of the Armistice some- 
 thing fine seems to have gone out of the 
 world. Could such a war result otherwise? 
 Many men and women who during the war 
 worked and sacrificed and bought liberty 
 bonds, all as one big family together, are 
 now willing to knife one another, in a mad, 
 deadly game of beggar-my-neighbor, po- 
 licemen leaving cities to the pillaging of 
 the under-world, longshoremen and other 
 workmen letting food spoil on docks and in 
 warehouses while families suffer for want 
 of it, miners ready to jeopardize the health 
 and lives of little children and helpless 
 mothers through need of fuel, and clamor 
 widespread for more profit, wages, gain. 
 To go on at that pace is to follow a vicious 
 circle, one that has no end. That sort of 
 policy will injure the country worse than 
 did the war. Here again, must not sane
 
 40 THE GREAT MENACE 
 
 leaders lead by example and counsel! 
 Extravagance now is worse than bolshev- 
 ism for it is creative of that very thing. 
 
 "The men who toil with their hands, who 
 protect our persons and our property are 
 not vicious and cruel. They are simply 
 swept off their feet by a tide that is too 
 heavy for most of them. . . . Suddenly 
 made conscious of their power they forget 
 their obligations to other members of so- 
 ciety and insist only on what they think to 
 be their rights. Some great new ideas 
 must be instilled into their minds, ' ' * rea- 
 sons a recent writer. 
 
 Rather, must not some great old ideas 
 be instilled into all minds the ideas of 
 social justice and brotherhood, for which 
 millions of American men went to war? 
 
 The present particular task is large and 
 urgent. To underestimate or idly con- 
 template the Great Menace is to let the 
 ship of state go upon the rocks. 
 
 The Great Menace not only seeks the 
 overthrow of government and American 
 institutions but also the Church. It would 
 clean it out, root and branch. Its philoso- 
 
 i CongregationaUst and Advance, Sept. 4, 1919, p. 293.
 
 THE GREAT MENACE 41 
 
 phy has no room for any of the churches 
 of to-day; all must go; our country is to 
 be swept clean of them. This doctrine, 
 though long held and cogently formulated 
 (a notable exposition being that of the 
 well-known socialist George D. Herron a 
 few years ago), has been kept in the back- 
 ground of activities until recently. With 
 the success of the Bolshevist government 
 in Eussia in confiscating church properties 
 and prohibiting public teaching or study 
 of religion, the socialists of America, evi- 
 dently believing conditions ripe for their 
 full program, have made bold announce- 
 ment of opposition to the public teaching 
 or study of religion. An illustration of 
 the intent and determination to do away 
 with churches is a recent book of 315 pages 
 by a present-day exponent of socialism. 
 The author has culled history to show that 
 the Church is the enemy of progress ; that 
 the woes of mankind are to be traced to 
 its bigotry; that it kindled martyr fires 
 through the centuries for the burning of 
 saintly reformers, who dared to think ; that 
 it persecuted and imprisoned scientists who 
 were trying to lead the world in the way of
 
 42 THE GEEAT MENACE 
 
 light ; that churchmen have been more zeal- 
 ous for the orthodoxy of tradition than for 
 the heterodoxy of holy living. 
 
 The reason for the opposition of the so- 
 cialists-bolshevists to the Church, the 
 gravamen of their grievance, appears in 
 the clearly expressed belief that the Church 
 is "a shield to Privilege," and that the 
 Church keeps struggling people "in sub- 
 jection to the noble or wealthy." What 
 answer? Let us face the charge. 
 
 I would evade nothing. Give us facts, 
 though only a claw, a tooth, or a bone. It 
 is true that things horrible have been done 
 in the name of "religion." And things 
 more horrible have been done in the name 
 of "government," and of "law," and of 
 "labor," and "progress." Yet, no sane 
 person wants to do away with government, 
 with laws, with labor, and with progress. 
 
 Is it fair to judge nations of to-day by 
 their histories of even a hundred or more 
 years ago? France of to-day cannot be 
 judged by the times of Napoleon, nor Eng- 
 land of to-day by the history of George III, 
 or Henry VIII, nor Scotland of to-day by 
 the doings of the Stewarts.
 
 THE GREAT MENACE 43 
 
 Indeed, there is a way of reading history 
 as to make it appear that our own nation 
 is full of mistakes, that from beginning to 
 end we have been a lot of blunderers, try- 
 ing to build a democracy but making a 
 bungling job of it. Yet, despite mistakes, 
 progress has been made, our country has 
 advanced, and so largely advanced that 
 America has not only saved the world, but 
 is also the hope of the world. Why, then, 
 look only on that part of the history which 
 records mistakes, and go harping and 
 whining as forgetting that good is here, 
 so much good that millions of men and 
 women from across the seas have come 
 here to make America their home. 
 
 The Church too has made mistakes. 
 But why dwell only on that side of it? De- 
 spite the worst that can be said, the 
 Church has advanced, progress has been 
 made, and its merciful, beneficent work 
 has gone on, to the succor and help of mil- 
 lions. It has been the pioneer of civiliza- 
 tion in America and other lands. Had the 
 Church through its missionaries only 
 saved the mothers of India from the super- 
 stition which led them to sacrifice infant
 
 44 THE GREAT MENACE 
 
 children in the Ganges, or only saved in- 
 nocent child widows in India from being 
 burned alive at the time of the burial of 
 their husband, that work would have been 
 worthy of recognition as a great and nota- 
 ble work. But all this is ignored by the 
 Socialists, who are bent on the destruction 
 of the one beneficent institution that has 
 brought to pass such changed conditions. 
 And they likewise ignore the work of the 
 Church in the war, giving of its sons, giv- 
 ing of its healing help, giving of millions 
 of dollars 1 for the succor and comfort of 
 men regardless of creed or color, supply- 
 ing 3,000 chaplains and thousands of other 
 workers who counted life not dear that 
 they might serve the noble men who fought 
 our war, and giving to the full of its 
 strength that the world might be saved 
 from the ruthless rule of mad despots. 
 
 The socialists also overlook the contrib- 
 uting work of the Church for an enduring 
 world peace. They pride themselves on 
 being opposed to war. Is any sane person 
 not opposed to war? Was not the recent 
 great war "a war to end war"? That 
 cause was loyally supported by the
 
 THE GREAT MENACE 45 
 
 Church. How much did the socialists do? 
 Was any inspirational or material aid 
 given by them, except under constraint and 
 protest? 
 
 Through many years, particularly the 
 last century, the Church has been doing 
 practical work that is making for world 
 peace. V. Wellington Koo, the minister 
 from the Chinese Eepublic, said in 1916 
 that nothing "has more strongly impressed 
 Chinese minds as to the sincerity, the gen- 
 uineness, the altruism of American friend- 
 ship for China than the spirit of service 
 and sacrifice so beautifully demonstrated 
 by American missionaries." It is the 
 spirit of service and sacrifice that prevails 
 in the main in churches to-day. When 
 such spirit of moral and spiritual idealism, 
 which the Church is working to extend, 
 prevails among nations, war will be no 
 more, war will be impossible. 
 
 But what of the charge that the Church 
 is the "shield and armor of .predatory 
 economic might," and keeps struggling 
 people "in subjection to the noble or 
 wealthy"? 
 
 Could any belief be more mistaken? Is 
 the statement fair? Does it bespeak ac-
 
 46 THE GREAT MENACE 
 
 quaintance with the work of the Church? 
 Are the eyes of the men who make such 
 statement wholly closed to its manifold 
 ministries to every possible human need 
 and for the amelioration of social condi- 
 tions? Are their ears stopped to its out- 
 cry against social injustice and wrong? 
 tyranny and privilege? Have they not 
 heard its ever insistent voice for higher 
 consideration of the rights of the people? 
 Will they not admit that the Church has 
 inspired a mighty ethical impulse, and that 
 no one except bolshevists would want to 
 live in a country without it? 
 
 The Church is committed to the great 
 constructive statesmanship of the Christ, 
 and so is a great incomparable agency for 
 a purified democracy, for establishing 
 equity and justice among men. 
 
 "None are so blind as those who will not 
 see." Do the socialists object to the 
 teaching of justice? We must admit that 
 that means condemnation of an unjust 
 wage demand and condemnation of the con- 
 fiscation of property, as well as condem- 
 nation of economic plutocracy. It may not 
 be popular, but it is necessary, to teach the
 
 THE GREAT MENACE 47 
 
 moral law : * * Thou shalt not steal. ' ' And 
 that the Church doubtless will continue to 
 do, even as it will continue to teach of 
 righteousness, brotherhood, mercy, and 
 forgiveness. 
 
 Might cannot for long rule men; never 
 can it rule the world of souls. Progress 
 is possible only through conforming to 
 moral law. And no group of men, classes 
 or nations can secure permanent good for 
 themselves through despoiling or exploit- 
 ing others, or obtaining by force, fraud, 
 or unjust law that which belongs to others. 
 There is no short cut to Utopias or a bet- 
 ter order of society, no enduring road over 
 which men and nations can come save that 
 of righteousness and justice. The more 
 the men who walk that way, the nearer the 
 day of our common prosperity and com- 
 mon happiness in living together, and in 
 serving together humankind. To that end 
 the Great Menace must go.
 
 II 
 
 THE RELATION OF THE PEOPLE, LABOR, AND 
 CAPITAL IN THE IMPENDING REVOLUTION 
 
 THE present industrial and political crisis 
 directly concerns every man, woman and 
 child in America. All that we have, all 
 that is sacred for which our fathers spent 
 their lives is in jeopardy. If we value our 
 homes and our country we must face con- 
 ditions from all possible view-points, cour- 
 ageously, calmly and with resolute action. 
 Loyal Americans must get together. 
 Where laboring men believe that they 
 have grievances, we must try to see condi- 
 tions from their view-point, counseling 
 and working together with them sympa- 
 thetically and harmoniously. The ranks 
 of labor teem with men of intense patriot- 
 ism and with as high idealism as our own. 
 They have proved this again and again. 
 Now as loyal citizens, we must all get to- 
 gether and pull together to expose the plot- 
 tings of the ultra-radicals and to save 
 
 48
 
 PEOPLE, LABOR AND CAPITAL 49 
 
 credulous laborers and ourselves from 
 the disaster of mistaken and ruinous lead- 
 ership. 
 
 Every citizen knows in a general way 
 that the present is a period of unrest, that 
 the country is menaced by radicalism and 
 that continued strikes (about 300 at the 
 present time in the United States and 
 Canada) are resulting in wage losses of 
 hundreds of millions of dollars and in 
 losses to industries of hundreds of millions 
 of dollars, thereby adding to the high cost 
 of living. 1 All this is known. Is it as 
 clearly known that all this is mainly a re- 
 sult of a comprehensive, pre-conceived and 
 carefully laid plan? Do the patriotic men 
 of labor know of the effort to make them 
 a tool to promote unrest, and to effect in- 
 dustrial and political revolution? Do they 
 know that the hardships as a result of 
 strikes fall heavily on innocent people and 
 heaviest on poor mothers and children who 
 are least able to bear them? Do they 
 
 i In the recent Longshoremen's strike in New York 
 the wage losses to longshoremen have been estimated at 
 $8,000,000. Wage and salary losses of clerks, teamsters 
 and others made idle by the tie-up are figured at $4,000,- 
 000. Steamship interests suffered a loss estimated at 
 about $35,000,000. The wage losses to miners in the 
 recent coal strike are estimated at $50,000,000.
 
 50 THE GREAT MENACE 
 
 know that that suffering is part of the plot 
 and plan of the radical- strike leaders in 
 the hope that the sufferings will result in 
 uprising for the overthrow of the govern- 
 ment and the confiscation of lands and in- 
 dustries? Such continued unrest and 
 strikes will but make harder any hardships 
 of labor. Is it not time for labor in its 
 own interests to clean house? In times 
 past, organized labor for the most part 
 was a bulwark against any un-American 
 movement or propaganda. Now the ultra- 
 radicals, by their own confession, having 
 bored their way into the American Fed- 
 eration of Labor, are seeking to revolu- 
 tionize that body from within, with radical 
 direction and control. That is the crisis 
 of labor. Labor's rights are imperiled 
 from within. If labor hopes to retain the 
 popular sympathy which it has enjoyed, its 
 stand must be unequivocal for law and or- 
 der and the country's welfare. If organ- 
 ized labor cannot be purged of the 
 radicalism which advocates " direct ac- 
 tion," " sabotage" and "revolution," it 
 will ultimately be split in twain. 
 
 Even now the ultra-agitators boast that
 
 PEOPLE, LABOR AND CAPITAL 51 
 
 they control more than 30 per cent of all 
 organized labor in the country. The pa- 
 thetic and astounding part of such leader- 
 ship is that thousands upon thousands of 
 men who are following it do not know that 
 it is wrong, do not know that they are being 
 used, do not suspect the sinister purposes 
 of their leaders. Who are some of their 
 leaders? Jacob Margolis, an assistant in 
 organizing the Steel Strike, who by his own 
 confession is against "God, government 
 and Church." Another leader is William 
 N. Foster, Secretary of the National Com- 
 mittee that organized the Steel Strike. In 
 1912, a 47-page pamphlet on syndicalism 
 was published by him and L. C. Ford, from 
 which are the following condensed ex- 
 cerpts : 
 
 "The syndicalist knows that capital- 
 ism is organized robbery and he consis- 
 tently considers and treats capitalists as 
 thieves plying their trade. He knows 
 they have no more 'right' to the wealth 
 they have amassed than a burglar has to 
 his loot, and the idea of expropriating 
 them without remuneration seems as 
 natural to him as for the footpad's vie-
 
 52 THE GREAT MENACE 
 
 tim to take back his stolen property with- 
 out paying the footpad for it. From 
 long experience, he has learned that the 
 so-called legal and inalienable 'rights' 
 of man are but pretenses with which to 
 deceive working men; that in reality 
 'rights' are only enjoyed by those capa- 
 ble of enforcing them. He knows that 
 in modern society, as in all ages, might 
 is right, and that the capitalists hold the 
 industries they have stolen and daily 
 perpetrate the robbery of the wages sys- 
 tem simply because they have the eco- 
 nomic power to do so. He has fathomed 
 the current system of ethics and morals 
 and knows them to be just so many 
 auxilaries to the capitalist class. Con- 
 sequently, he has cast them aside and 
 has placed his relations with the capital- 
 ists upon a basis of naked power. In 
 his choice of weapons to fight his capital- 
 ist enemies, the syndicalist is no more 
 careful to select those that are 'fair' 
 'just' or 'civilized' than is a householder 
 attacked in the night by a burglar. He 
 proposes to bring about the revolution 
 by the general strike. By the term 'gen-
 
 PEOPLE, LABOR AND CAPITAL 53 
 
 eral strike,' used in a revolutionary 
 sense, is meant the period of more or less 
 general cessation of labor by the work- 
 ers, during which period, the workers, 
 by disorganizing the mechanism of cap- 
 italist society, will expose its weakness 
 and their own strength ; whereupon, per- 
 ceiving themselves possessed of the 
 power to do so, they will seize control 
 of the social means of production and 
 proceed to. operate them in their own in- 
 terest instead of in the interest of a 
 handful of parasites, as heretofore. 
 The general strike is the first stage of 
 the revolution proper." [From page 
 9.] 
 
 "The wealthy capitalists themselves 
 will also need generous guards. Syndi- 
 calists in every country are already ac- 
 tively preparing this disorganization of 
 the armed forces by carrying on a double 
 educational campaign among the work- 
 ers. On the one hand they are destroy- 
 ing their illusions about the sacredness 
 of capitalist property and encouraging 
 them to seize this property wherever 
 they have the opportunity. On the
 
 54 THE GREAT MENACE 
 
 other, they are teaching working class 
 soldiers not to shoot their brothers and 
 sisters who are in revolt, but, if need be, 
 to shoot their own officers and to desert 
 the army when the crucial moment ar- 
 rives. This double propaganda of con- 
 tempt for capitalist property 'rights' 
 and anti-militarism, are inseparable 
 from the propagation of the general 
 strike." [Page 11.] 
 
 " Another favorite objection of ultra 
 legal and peaceful socialists is that the 
 general strike would cause bloodshed. 
 This is probably true, as every great 
 strike is accompanied by violence. 
 Every forward pace humanity has taken 
 has been gained at the cost of untold 
 suffering and loss of life, and the accom- 
 plishment of the revolution will prob- 
 ably be no exception. But the prospect 
 of bloodshed does not frighten the syn- 
 dicalist worker as it does the parlor 
 socialist. He is too much accustomed to 
 risking himself in the murderous indus- 
 tries and on the hellish battlefields in the 
 niggardly service of his masters to set 
 much value on his life. He will gladly
 
 PEOPLE, LABOR AND CAPITAL 55 
 
 risk it once, if necessary, in his own be- 
 half. He has no sentimental regard for 
 what may happen to his enemies during 
 the general strike. He leaves them to 
 worry over that detail." [Page 13.] 
 
 1 'Next to the partial strike, the most 
 effective weapon used by syndicalists in 
 their daily warfare on capitalism is 
 sabotage. Sabotage is a very general 
 term. It is used to describe all those 
 tactics, save the boycott and the strike 
 proper, which are used by workers to 
 wring concessions from their employers 
 by inflicting losses on them through the 
 stopping or slowing down of industry, 
 turning out of poor product, etc. The 
 most widely known form of sabotage is 
 that known as putting the machinery on 
 strike thus temporarily disabling it. If 
 he is a railroader he cuts wires, puts 
 cement in switches, signals, etc., runs 
 locomotives into turntable pits, and tries 
 in every possible way temporarily to dis- 
 organize the delicately adjusted raUroad 
 system. If he is a machinist or factory 
 worker, and hasn't ready access to the 
 machinery he will hire out as a scab and
 
 56 THE GREAT MENACE 
 
 surreptitiously put emery dust in the 
 bearings of the machinery or otherwise 
 disable it. Oftentimes he takes time by 
 the forelock, and when going on strikes 
 'puts the machinery on strike' with him 
 by hiding, stealing or destroying some 
 small indispensable machine part which 
 is difficult to replace. Sabotage is 
 peculiarly a weapon of the rebel minor- 
 ity. Its successful application, unlike 
 the strike, does not require the coopera- 
 tion of all the workers interested. A 
 few rebels can, undetected, sabot and 
 demoralize an industry and force the 
 weak or timid majority to share in its 
 benefits. The syndicalists are not con- 
 cerned that the methods of sabotage may 
 be 'underhanded' or 'unmanly.' They 
 are very successful and that is all they 
 ask of them." [Pages 15, 17.] 
 
 "The syndicalist takes no cognizance 
 of society. He is interested only in the 
 welfare of the working class and con- 
 sistently defends it. He leaves the rag- 
 tag mass of parasites that make up the 
 non-working class part of society to 
 look after their own interests. It is im-
 
 PEOPLE, LABOR AND CAPITAL 57 
 
 material to him what becomes of them 
 so long as the working class advances. 
 The syndicalist is strictly an antistatist. 
 He considers the State a meddling capi- 
 talist institution. He is a radical op- 
 ponent of 'law and order,' as he knows 
 that for his unions to be 'legal' in their 
 tactics would be for them to become im- 
 potent." [Page 28.] 
 Such are the utterances of the Secretary 
 of the National Committee that organized 
 the Steel Strike! Such is the outspoken 
 movement that is under way in our coun- 
 try, at once wrong in its premises, reason- 
 ing and conclusions. But we must never 
 lose sight of the fact that many of its fol- 
 lowers do not know that it is wrong. They 
 must be disillusioned. That is the task of 
 loyal men of labor ; that now is their pecu- 
 liar responsibility. That also is the task 
 of all loyal Americans. 
 
 Mr. Foster's partial disavowal (when 
 under fire as a witness before the Senate 
 Committee authorized to investigate the 
 Steel Strike) of his former syndicalist doc- 
 trines will be accepted in the light of his 
 previous utterances in his brochure on syn-
 
 58 THE GREAT MENACE 
 
 dicalism "that the syndicalists are not 
 concerned that methods may be under- 
 handed or unmanly." 
 
 The time was when strikes were an in- 
 strument for the redress of grievances; 
 recently, under ultra-radical leaders they 
 have been perverted to a weapon of high- 
 waymen, and collective bargaining to col- 
 lective threatening. From such leader- 
 ship, organized labor ought for its own 
 sake to clear its skirts. 
 
 For protection of people and labor cer- 
 tain legal restraint and control is exercised 
 over organized capital. Why should not 
 certain legal restraint and control be ex- 
 ercised over organized labor? More ef- 
 fective than strikes would be labor's right 
 of appeal to a legalized Board of Investiga- 
 tion and Recommendation. Publicity and 
 punishment of tyrannous and unprincipled 
 employers would soon correct the wrongs 
 of employees, whose recourse to appeal 
 rather than to a strike would not work in- 
 justice to the remaining teeming millions 
 of their fellow countrymen. 
 
 With patience and honest purpose the 
 right and wrong of strikes will yet be de-
 
 PEOPLE, LABOR AND CAPITAL 59 
 
 termined. Just now the question is acute. 
 It is a time when patriotic labor can be 
 a bulwark against the madness of bolshev- 
 ism, which would bring suffering to all and 
 benefit none except the conscienceless ultra- 
 agitators, who aspire to rule, at any cost 
 of blood and treasure. Meantime, until 
 the strike question is settled both labor 
 and capital must consider the rights of the 
 peoplei In the recent coal strike, the 
 President made the terse statement from 
 Washington that it is a crime to plan a 
 strike to benefit half a million and injure 
 one hundred million people. In justice 
 and to their credit, it should be said, large 
 numbers of the Miners' Unions were not 
 in sympathy with that strike, though they 
 had sore grievances. It is more and more 
 apparent that a small percentage of work- 
 ers are making trouble for their fellow 
 workers and for our whole country. 
 
 It is probable that 3,000,000 would be a 
 liberal estimate of the number of persons 
 who are members of Labor Unions in the 
 United States, 1 or about 25 per cent, of the 
 industrial workers of the country, leaving 
 
 i The American Federation of Labor claims for 1918 
 an affiliated membership of 2,726,478.
 
 60 THE GREAT MENACE 
 
 about 75 per cent, non-union workers. 
 (In 1910 there were 11,490,944 persons in 
 the United States engaged in industrial 
 pursuits, 1 exclusive of those engaged in 
 agricultural, commercial and similar em- 
 ployment). 
 
 What right has a small ''rebel minor- 
 ity" (to use the very words of the ultra- 
 radicals) within the three million, or, to be 
 liberal in reasoning, what right has the 
 entire three million trade unionists to im- 
 pose revolutionary changes in the social 
 order without the consent of the remaining 
 ninety-seven million of the population? 
 In democracy we have long recognized that 
 the right to govern obtains only through 
 consent of the governed. No three million 
 people, of whatever name or class, have 
 right to dictate social changes or conditions 
 to the remaining ninety-seven million of 
 the population. Woe will surely come to 
 any workers whose policy is not based on 
 reason and justice. Also any men of 
 wealth who would exploit labor, withhold 
 the square deal, and impose suffering 
 
 i Lee Wolman, " Extent of Trade Unionism," Ameri- 
 can Academy of Political and Social Science, January, 
 1917, p. 120.
 
 PEOPLE, LABOR AND CAPITAL 61 
 
 through larger profits than are their right- 
 ful due, are sowing to the wind and will 
 surely reap the whirlwind. Do we not be- 
 lieve with Attorney General Palmer that 
 such men "ought to be rooted out and ex- 
 posed to public scorn, and, if necessary, 
 confined in public prison"? Just such 
 work must be done if America is to be 
 protected from conditions that to some 
 seemingly justify experiments of socialism 
 and the attacks of bolshevism. The peo- 
 ple at large cannot always stand the pres- 
 ent high cost of living and consequent suf- 
 ferings (which are exactly the conditions 
 for which the ultra-radicals have been 
 working). Long continued, burdensome 
 conditions of living might make the people 
 willing to try the alternative of the na- 
 tionalization of public utilities and indus- 
 tries. If so, such plan would be by a 
 people trained in democracy not by mad 
 bolshevists or inexperienced Russians. 
 But all would be an experiment, entailing 
 hardships through a period of re-adjust- 
 ment. Is not the better way the insistence 
 by citizens on all business being done in 
 honest ways and in justice to all? Labor,
 
 62 THE GREAT MENACE 
 
 capital and the people must learn how to 
 live on with one another. Idleness must 
 cease. Work must continue without inter- 
 ruption. Highest wages can be paid, 
 satisfying profits made, prosperity pre- 
 vail, on a basis of the square deal ; and in- 
 dustrial differences and grievances (griev- 
 ances that are real, not those of the wild 
 imaginings of the syndicalists) can be 
 settled by conciliation, "the basis of which 
 must be a revised attitude on the part of 
 the employers and employees," in the judg- 
 ment of Victor A. Olander, Secretary of 
 the Illinois Federation of Labor. This 
 can be done if both capital and labor will 
 play fair, if both sides will allow it to be 
 done. If they will not allow it of their own 
 accord, they may be obliged to do it 
 through adjudication by the people's ac- 
 cord, who represent probably more than 80 
 per cent, of the population ; the remaining 
 20 per cent, being those of labor and capital 
 in industrial pursuits (as distinguished 
 from commercial, professional and agri- 
 cultural pursuits). 
 
 The Chicago Tribune has remarked that 
 "there are the Capitalist Groups and the
 
 PEOPLE, LABOR AND CAPITAL 63 
 
 Labor Groups, and the rest of us are the 
 Goops." The ratio, however, of the latter 
 to the former is as four to one. But the 
 groups and the "goops" are inter-depend- 
 ent. Is not our need to get together as 
 Americans, all? to live and let live? 
 
 To the end of getting together, the 
 Forum should be encouraged in clubs, 
 associations, granges, churches. It opens 
 the way for acquaintance, for getting each 
 other's viewpoints, for mutual understand- 
 ing and for sympathetic, patriotic cooper- 
 ation against any common danger and for 
 our common interests and country's wel- 
 fare. The forum is not an experiment. 
 It has been tried out in country, village 
 and cities ; sometimes as a community meet- 
 ing; again, under the auspices of a club, 
 society, or a group of churches, or in cities 
 as a popular free meeting in a theater Sun- 
 day evenings, or as an afternoon folk-moot 
 in a church. This custom of community 
 discussion is here to stay. The benefits 
 are large. Let us talk things out, and let 
 some men get talked out! In any discus- 
 sion, however, in the forum or elsewhere, 
 we must discriminate between bolshevism
 
 64 THE GREAT MENACE 
 
 and the honestly aggrieved of industrial- 
 ism. Their wrongs and rights cannot be 
 crushed by being cried down as socialism 
 or bolshevism. That sort of method is 
 despicable, un-American, and defers just 
 settlement on which common welfare de- 
 pends. On the other hand, there is no 
 room in democratic America for the ad- 
 vocates of violence and revolution, or for 
 any propaganda other than that of appeal 
 to orderly process. 
 
 A noted economist, Mr. Glenn Frank, in 
 recently advocating the forum as ' ' the par- 
 liament of the people," said: 
 
 ''The average American vote is 
 prompted in part by hereditary opinion, 
 in part by mob psychology, and in part 
 by selfish interest. No small part of this 
 is due to the fact that many of us do not 
 have an information basis for under- 
 standing. 
 
 11 Government by discussion breaks 
 down the tyranny of fixed custom; con- 
 tinuous public debate on public problems 
 is the root of change and progress ; com- 
 munity discussion breeds tolerance; it
 
 makes for steady instead of intermittent 
 progress. 
 
 "In fact, common counsel, public de- 
 bate, community discussion, call it what 
 you will, underlies the constructive solu- 
 tion of all the vexed situations that a 
 nation faces in a time of readjustment 
 and change. 
 
 "Opinion arising from a hurried and 
 uncritical reading of head lines at the 
 breakfast table or en route to the office 
 is thin soil from which to expect con- 
 structive policies to spring. We must 
 set up 'The Parliament of the Peo- 
 ple.' "* 
 
 The broader vision can be gained only 
 through information, sympathetic rela- 
 tions, and consideration of one another's 
 problems instead of merely our own. 
 With the larger vision men will see worth 
 in one another, and that the common sense 
 and right way to do is to pull with and not 
 against one another. For after all, strifes 
 and strikes are much like dog fights in 
 flower gardens they settle nothing but the 
 flowers. 
 
 i The Century, July, 1919, pp. 401 ff.
 
 66 THE GKEAT MENACE 
 
 The time is here when all classes of 
 American citizens ought to say to one an- 
 other, "Come, and let us reason to- 
 gether. "
 
 Ill 
 
 CONDITIONS FAVOEING BOLSHEVISM THAT DO 
 
 NOT EIGHT THEMSELVES; AND SEASONS 
 
 FOE FAITH IN THE PEOPLE 
 
 THE growth of any movement has the sanc- 
 tion of certain favoring conditions ; other- 
 wise growth is impossible. 
 
 Mr. C. H. Parker bears the pertinent 
 reflection that "the I. W. W. can be prof- 
 itably viewed only as a psychological by- 
 product of the neglected childhood of 
 industrial America. ' ' J Whether or not 
 this is true, certain it is that the Great 
 Menace is the psychological by-product of 
 wrong somewhere ; it may be wrong judg- 
 ment, wrong thinking, wrong exactions in 
 making a living, the wrong of neglect or 
 training. Whatever the wrongs, can we 
 clear them up 1 In asking the question, we 
 are mindful of an answering echo : * ' Clear 
 them up?" 
 
 The words are hurled back by the soph- 
 
 i Atlantic Monthly, November, 1917, " The I. W. W.," 
 pp. 651 ff. 
 
 67
 
 68 THE GREAT MENACE 
 
 ists of the let-alone policy; the words of 
 men who in the teeth of palpable wrongs, 
 human miseries and appalling needs have 
 said, ''Things will right themselves." 
 
 Now, the Great Menace imperils all that 
 is sacred: home, Church, and State. 
 Ominous unrest is surging about our feet. 
 Disparity of opportunity is inflaming the 
 minds of men; and, wisely or unwisely, 
 they are saying that vast fortunes and dire 
 poverty are found side by side; that 90 
 per cent, of the wealth of the country is 
 in the hands of 10 per cent, of the popula- 
 tion; that two-thirds of the people of the 
 United States are under conditions of dis- 
 advantage ; that misery caused by the high 
 cost of living is becoming intolerable ; and 
 that discontent abounds. Murmurings, 
 criticisms, and threats are more and more 
 heard. We cannot blind our eyes to these 
 facts. Yet, in the face of disturbing con- 
 ditions and problems incident to new social 
 adjustments in these post-war times, the 
 at-ease men are saying, " Wrongs will right 
 themselves." 
 
 Strange it is that some people can never 
 see an automobile coming until it hits
 
 FAVORING BOLSHEVISM 69 
 
 them, nor believe a house is crumbling until 
 it has fallen on them. Such are the ones 
 who say, "It is true there is illiteracy, but 
 the country will outgrow it. It is true 
 there is injustice, but men will learn better. 
 It is true there are imperiling conditions, 
 but time cures all things." What reply? 
 This: time cures nothing; time confirms, 
 establishes, intensifies. Give a thistle time 
 and it becomes more thistle. Time cannot 
 change a serpent into a sheep; time will 
 strengthen the serpent life. With time, 
 thistles and tares in the garden of human- 
 kind choke out worthy life; the serpents 
 of unreason and injustice work death. 
 Wrongs do not right themselves. Passive 
 acquiescence with wrong conditions: pov- 
 erty or tyranny, profligacy or anarchy, is 
 sheer folly and fatal. 
 
 The ever increasing (until recently) 
 foreign-born population in our country has 
 been viewed by many with apprehension. 
 The suggestion of Americanization and 
 Christianization was greeted with the cry,,. 
 "America will assimilate them. Results 
 will take care of themselves." Results 
 have taken care of themselves! Through
 
 70 THE GREAT MENACE 
 
 letting alone our foreign-bom popula- 
 tion, we now mark our country's danger 
 zone by their various languages. True, 
 many have become good citizen, some have 
 become illustrious citizens, but many more 
 are as foreign to Americanism now as 
 when they first touched America's shores. 
 Where let alone, they have gone their own 
 way or have been an easy prey to the ignor- 
 ant preacher of radicalism. In American 
 cities, groups of these people have Sunday- 
 schools of their own, but Sunday-schools 
 which teach that there is no God, no future 
 life, no reward for patient well-doing ; that 
 property has no rights, labor created all, 
 therefore, all belongs to labor. Through 
 the let-alone policy unrest and unreason 
 have increasingly possessed this people, 
 and that spirit has ripened into bolshevism, 
 precipitating delicate and dangerous con- 
 ditions, and bringing our country to the 
 verge of cataclysm. For all of which our 
 acknowledgment is due to the learned and 
 possibly worldly advocates of the let- 
 alone policy. 
 
 At the present time there are in America 
 about thirteen million foreign born and
 
 thirty million not more than one genera- 
 tion removed from foreign nativity. As 
 these people came to America, all practi- 
 cally were segregated, and have remained 
 so, in large cities or by great industries, 
 living within themselves, their work and 
 limited experience. How could they sense 
 the American spirit and ideals and the 
 mutualism of responsibilities and benefits 
 of democracy 1 ? These newcomers have 
 come mainly out of poverty and intolerable 
 economic conditions, and with a feeling 
 often that every man's hand was against 
 them. Many were allured to America by 
 romantic stories of poor boys who had 
 amassed fortunes here, others by the 
 stories of wages such as were never 
 dreamed of in their home countries, and 
 possibly some came believing that bread 
 and butter grows on trees. Certain it is 
 that none of them knew the spirit of Amer- 
 ica, that our history has been one of work, 
 of struggle, of indomitable purpose and 
 united faith and optimism in the righteous- 
 ness of contest against undeveloped nature 
 and unsubdued foes. They did not know 
 that all that we possess, value and admire,
 
 72 THE GREAT MENACE 
 
 all that to us is precious, represents sacri- 
 fice, faith and works, idealism and a pull- 
 togetherness. That is the essence of 
 Americanism. But how were our foreign- 
 born people to know it? They could not 
 read our language. There was seldom any 
 one to interpret America to them in their 
 own language, nor, let us confess, was it 
 always interpreted to them in the terms of 
 fair play, the square deal, considerateness 
 and justice, which terms they might have 
 understood. Now, the seeds of neglect and 
 injustice have borne their harvest. 
 
 In speaking of the new comer to Amer- 
 ica, Hon. Franklin K. Lane, Secretary of 
 the Interior, said: "A scramble for a liv- 
 ing! Much to see, but no one to interpret 
 it all. So thought this new American. 
 Then the padrone came forward as a 
 savior. Life was not to go out anyway. 
 And, with others in like situation, possibly 
 from his own country, equally ignorant, 
 equally handicapped, the new American 
 starts his life. It takes a brave and a very 
 ambitious man to lift himself out of such 
 an environment. Easily he becomes a vic- 
 tim to the shrewd, predatory padrone or
 
 FAVORING BOLSHEVISM 73 
 
 boss. He falls into debt and becomes mort- 
 gaged to ignorance and squalor for years. 
 His ideal of America has suffered a 
 change. 'And is this freedom?' he says 
 to himself, as with tired back he bends to 
 his work, without hope that the burden will 
 be lighter to-morrow. He cannot read the 
 signs which warn him of danger. He can 
 not read of the opportunities which city 
 and country offer. In his own land per- 
 haps he had no chance to learn in his own 
 tongue. In this new land he is too tired, 
 too hesitant to learn this strange, difficult 
 tongue. Is it any wonder if to this dis- 
 satisfied stranger the voice of one who 
 speaks to him in the language of home has 
 authority and carries far? And if this 
 voice preaches discontent, and violent dis- 
 content, as the one sure path to better days, 
 is it strange that he should listen? Who 
 are the men who master this new world? 
 Plainly the ones he knows, from whom 
 he has suffered. Do these same men 
 control everything; are there no sweet 
 places of refuge? He can find no one to 
 make him see the greater America, The 
 whole of this continent is to him the
 
 74 THE GBEAT MENACE 
 
 cramped apartment, the dirty street, and 
 the sweatshop or the factory. To the 
 sweep of the great land and its many 
 beckonings his eyes are closed. And in 
 his isolation and ignorance and disap- 
 pointment there is a fruitful nesting place 
 for all the hurtful microbes that attack 
 society/' Continuing, Secretary Lane 
 spoke these momentous words: "This 
 man is our charge. He needs and deserves 
 care, solicitude, thoughtful consideration. 
 Ignobly put it will pay. More manfully 
 said it is our duty. Worthily it is our 
 opportunity. Economically that man is a 
 potential asset which we should not waste. 
 Give him a glimpse into the philosophy 
 which underlies our struggle and he will 
 turn into a cheerful, strong fellow worker 
 in the making of America, as have all the 
 rest who have preceded him. It is money 
 in our pockets that he should be able to care 
 for himself; that he should know our 
 language ; that his body shall be well nour- 
 ished and his mind hopeful." 1 
 
 Will we listen to the voice of an experi- 
 enced observer like Secretary Lane or to 
 
 i See annual report of Secretary of Interior, 1918.
 
 FAVORING BOLSHEVISM 75 
 
 that of the man who says: " Wrongs will 
 right themselves"? 
 
 Our task is not an easy one. In 1882 a 
 change commenced in the source of immi- 
 gration, rapidly growing, until now 71 per 
 cent of our immigration comes from the 
 Slavic and Iberic countries of Southern 
 and Eastern Europe: Italians, Sicilians, 
 Hungarians, Hebrews, Magyars, Bohe^ 
 mians, Moravians, Bulgarians, Servians, 
 Montenegrins, Croatians, Slovenians, 
 Dalmatians, Bosnians, Herzegovnians, 
 Slovaks, Poles, Lithuanians, Germans, 
 Russians. For guidance in reaching this 
 heterogeneous people, who came as 
 strangers to American institutions, it is 
 helpful to keep in mind that the steel and 
 iron manufacturers employ 58 per cent of 
 foreign-born helpers ; the slaughtering and 
 meat-packing trades, 61 per cent; bitu- 
 minous coal mining, 62 per cent; the silk 
 and dye trade 34 per cent; glass-making 
 enterprises, 38 per cent; woolen mills, 62 
 per cent ; cotton factories, 69 per cent ; the 
 clothing business, 72 per cent; boot and 
 shoe manufacturers, 27 per cent; leather 
 tanners, 57 per cent ; furniture factories, 59
 
 76 THE GREAT MENACE 
 
 per cent ; glove manufacturers, 33 per cent ; 
 cigar and tobacco trades, 33 per cent; oil 
 refiners, 67 per cent ; and sugar refiners, 85 
 per cent. 
 
 Of the above workers 25 per cent cannot 
 even read or write their own language. 
 This was a ripe field at one time for dema- 
 gogism, now it is the ripened field of bol- 
 shevism, that because as a people we 
 listened to the teaching that "time will 
 cure," or were indifferent as those that 
 are dumb to the appeals for educational 
 and religious work among our foreign-born 
 people. 
 
 I am not forgetful of the effective work 
 that is being done by many city churches 
 and by many denominational bodies among 
 our immigrant classes. Social settlement 
 workers have also rendered service of in- 
 calculable good. But all this work is piti- 
 fully small as compared with the great and 
 growing need. The fault is not with the 
 Church, which is doing practically all that 
 is being done in this work, but rather the 
 fault is with those who have, not responded 
 to appeals to help Americanize our foreign- 
 born population. In the teeth of history
 
 FAVORING BOLSHEVISM 77 
 
 and present peril, these proponents of 
 ostrich-logic could be heard in the land, 
 saying, "Don't talk about these things. 
 Conditions will right themselves." So 
 have they sown to the wind and we are 
 reaping the whirlwind. 
 
 The time-will-cure policy has in another 
 way put black spots all over our land, the 
 black spots of illiteracy. Facts brought 
 out through the draft have helped to cor- 
 rect the figures of the last census. The 
 native-born illiterates outnumber the for- 
 eign-born illiterates. And the problems 
 with drafted men have shown that illiter- 
 acy in America is a matter of national con- 
 cern. Out of the first 2,000,000 drafted 
 men 200,000 "could not read their orders 
 or understand them, or read the letters sent 
 them from home." These men had to be 
 held in camp for instruction in primary 
 education before they could be made sol- 
 diers, thus adding to the burden of our 
 country and entailing loss of time when 
 time was an important factor. 
 
 'There are eight and a half million per- 
 sons in the United States over ten years of 
 age who cannot read English, and five and
 
 78 THE GREAT MENACE 
 
 one half millions who can read nothing, not 
 a line in a newspaper, or from a message 
 of the President or from the acts of Con- 
 gress, nor a word of the Bible. How can 
 such people understand America or the 
 meaning of the momentous time in which 
 they are living? How can they discern the 
 sinister designs of the agents of disrup- 
 tion: to exploit them and to mislead them! 
 all because of our neglect to win them 
 to intelligent citizenship. The bolsheviki 
 have long had their personal workers 
 among them, inciting discontent and 
 preaching socialism as the panacea for 
 social ills. 
 
 Do we realize the vast influence and 
 power represented by our illiterate citi- 
 zenry? This people, whom the socialists 
 are working to control, outnumber Can- 
 ada's whole population, and exceed the 
 combined populations of Maine, Vermont, 
 New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecti- 
 cut, Maryland, Delaware, Florida. Idaho, 
 Nevada, Montana, Wyoming, Arizona, 
 North Dakota, South Dakota, and Colo- 
 rado. These unfortunate people are 
 human even as we are human, are suscepti-
 
 FAVORING BOLSHEVISM 79 
 
 ble just as we are susceptible to the per- 
 suasion of the man who gains personal 
 hearing. Are we to leave them a prey to 
 the intrigues of disguised revolutionists? 
 Mr. Van H. Manning, the Director of the 
 Bureau of Mines and Mining, referring to 
 "considerable unrest in the mining in- 
 dustry during the war,'' said, " Certain 
 radical elements, whose gospel is violence, 
 interfered considerably with the output at 
 a time when the country was in dire need 
 of their service. Outside of the leaders of 
 these men, whose intelligence consisted of 
 cunning and preying upon the ignorance of 
 other men, this movement obtained what- 
 ever prominence it had through the ignor- 
 ant, illiterate foreign-born, those who came 
 from the most oppressed sections of the 
 world and whose battles America was en- 
 deavoring to fight. ' ' l 
 
 The gospel of violence has also been 
 carried to our native-born illiterates, in 
 whatever industry they are found, also to 
 the hospitable and credulous people of the 
 mountains. The radicals, with the quiet of 
 
 i Statement to Committee on Education, House of Rep- 
 resentatives, Feb. 15, 1919.
 
 80 THE GREAT MENACE 
 
 ground moles, have burrowed their way to 
 our very homes, and now are telling us that 
 they have done so, and that the future is 
 theirs. But dense ignorance, the field of 
 their first success, does not secure the 
 future. The bolshevist Utopias do not 
 thrive in the light of intelligence. Here 
 then is a work that needs to be done, and 
 that needs to be done now. 
 
 The economic loss through illiteracy is 
 a consideration. The Secretary of the In- 
 terior estimates that if the productive 
 labor value of an illiterate is less by only 50 
 cents a day than that of an educated man or 
 woman, the country is losing $825,000,000 
 a year through illiteracy. The estimate by 
 Mr. Herbert Kaufman is that we can safely 
 figure the labor of an illiterate worth $5 
 a week less than that of a man who can 
 read; and that eight million informed peo- 
 ple would yield the nation $2,000,000,000 
 annually in excess of present earnings from 
 this class, "which $2,000,000,000 annually 
 would not only pay the interest on our war 
 debt, but will soon amortize it as well." 1 
 
 i Digest in re Smith-Bankhead Americanization Bill, 
 Committee on Education, House of Representatives, Feb- 
 ruary 15, 1919.
 
 FAVORING BOLSHEVISM 81 
 
 The economic loss appears in other ways. 
 Each year the Federal Government spends 
 millions of dollars in trying to give helpful 
 information to the people of the rural dis- 
 tricts about improved ways of farming, 
 stock-raising and home-making. Yet 10 
 per cent of the country f oik for whom these 
 millions are spent cannot read a word of 
 any communication sent to them, nor read 
 a word in a farm paper, or on a bulletin 
 placed at the road side. Certain it is also 
 that eight and a half million people never 
 read a line of any advertisement, and are 
 never in the market for anything in print, 
 however practically helpful and informing 
 it may be. 
 
 The annual accidents and fatalities in in- 
 dustries are attributed mainly to ignor- 
 ance and lack of training. Reports show 
 that the non-English speaking miners suf- 
 fer twice the fatalities that the English- 
 speaking miners do, resulting in 930 more 
 killed and 69,750 more injured annually, 
 which represents a wage loss of $1,743,750; 
 or through including the State compensa- 
 tion for deaths of an average $3,000 
 each, represents an economic loss each year
 
 82 
 
 of $4,533,750 in one industry. This esti- 
 mate does not include the loss to the in- 
 dustry in added cost of production. Here 
 is something to think about when the 
 winter's fire is low and we are bewailing 
 the high price of coal. Such excess of acci- 
 dents and deaths among the non-English 
 speaking miners may seem unnecessary 
 and almost unthinkable but the fact 
 stands, the record is recurrent. 
 
 This is not an hour for the time-will- 
 cure philosophy. Illiteracy with its cer- 
 tain attendant sufferings, economic loss, 
 perils and handicap ought to be removed, 
 both for the welfare of State and for the 
 salvation and human interests of these 
 people. Day schools ought to be strength- 
 ened. Mission schools of churches ought 
 to be multiplied. And the moonlight 
 school, the night school, and the shop 
 school whatever will meet the need 
 ought to be supported. Sympathy too is 
 needed; the touch of the man or woman 
 having the true American spirit, and in 
 whose feelings and friendship, ideals and 
 ideas, the unlettered will find light, and 
 leading, and inspiration. That is a work
 
 FAVORING BOLSHEVISM 83 
 
 that will make for an enduring democracy. 
 These people, often soul starved, need to 
 receive of our hearts as well of our heads, 
 not patronage, not "for the unco' bad by 
 the unco ' good, ' ' but as from fellow human- 
 kind, fellow Americans and fellow children 
 of God. Must we not also enlarge national 
 and state plans for education? To that 
 end, indeed if the present (inadequate) 
 educational force is to be maintained, 
 teachers must be meted justice. Teachers 
 in the main are not self-seeking, and are 
 satisfied with teaching as their reward, but 
 they must receive a living wage. Any 
 other policy is short sighted, and dire re- 
 sults will attend it. 
 
 The statistics cited from the last census 
 on illiteracy unquestionably understate the 
 condition of to-day. The Surgeon-General 
 of the Army only recently made public the 
 results of the test applied for literacy, the 
 test being a simple one : merely the reading 
 of an American newspaper and the writing 
 of a letter home. Yet 24.9 per cent or one 
 in every four of our fine American men 
 failed to pass the test. The number of ill- 
 iterates has increased since the last census
 
 84 THE GREAT MENACE 
 
 by natural increase in population and by 
 influx of immigration. Here the bolshe- 
 viki find soil suited to the seed of their 
 sowing. The question now is not what can 
 be said in defense of a world-leading de- 
 mocracy wherein 10 to 24 per cent of its 
 people cannot read its laws, but what 
 can be done for preserving that democracy! 
 The futility of the let-alone policy is also 
 shown by what it has not accomplished with 
 the negro population. Since the franchise 
 was given negroes, whose training for that 
 trust was a century of ignorance, lust and 
 superstition, what has happened? Did the 
 gift of the ballot, which they could not read, 
 qualify them as citizens! Has time 
 evolved the needed qualities? Has time 
 solved the negro problem? Instead, time 
 has intensified it. The negroes have grown 
 in number more rapidly than their white 
 neighbors. Whenever negroes held politi- 
 cal supremacy, ruin and bankruptcy fol- 
 lowed. They have not fulfilled the pro- 
 phecy that they would rise as a race to 
 great mentality. Under the let-alone 
 policy they have developed criminal pos- 
 sibilities and qualified as dangerous classes.
 
 FAVORING BOLSHEVISM 85 
 
 "In 1913 Chicago 's 2 per cent negro popu- 
 lation furnished 6.9 per cent of the total 
 arrests, 14.6 per cent of the arrests for 
 larceny, 27.8 per cent of the arrests for 
 assault with deadly weapons, 9.3 per cent 
 of the convictions for felonies and 14 per 
 cent for misdemeanors. In Cincinnati, in 
 1912, the 5 per cent negro population furn- 
 ished 19.5 per cent of the deaths from pul- 
 monary tuberculosis, 9.54 per cent of the 
 total mortality, 33.27 per cent of the work- 
 house inmates, 22 per cent of all city hos- 
 pital admissions, 19.88 per cent of the de- 
 pendent children handled, 33 per cent of 
 delinquent children handled and, in 1913, 
 35 per cent of the registered prostitutes. 
 . . . Another fact of great importance 
 should be considered. The negro as a race 
 has not the loyalty to our national institu- 
 tions which he had forty years ago. This 
 is not strange. It is due to disappointed 
 hopes and expectations/' 1 
 
 The National Security League recently 
 issued a report, 2 which is the result of a 
 two-year investigation in the South by 
 
 1 See Editorial Page, Chicago Daily News, February 
 19, 1919. 
 
 2 August, 1919.
 
 86 THE GREAT MENACE 
 
 Dean L. B. Moore, who says: "The 
 Southern States, with their seething mil- 
 lions of restless negro population, are be- 
 coming potential volcanoes. The recent 
 action of the American Federation of 
 Labor in admitting colored men to its 
 organization was taken because the blacks 
 are being organized by the Industrial 
 Workers of the World. Never before have 
 I known such sensitiveness in a situation as 
 I now discern in the racial relations in the 
 South. I have found a suspicious and 
 latent hostility that seems amazingly im- 
 possible. Any blind man, knowing the 
 conditions in the South, could plainly see 
 what is likely to result in a few years un- 
 less educational conditions are bettered. 
 The confusion following the Civil War will 
 be nothing compared with what we shall 
 have here. Frankly, we are in danger of 
 having a little Russia in many sections of 
 the Southland. The false teachers to-day 
 who are encouraging lawlessness are in a 
 large measure responsible for the exodus of 
 negro labor to the North. The race riots 
 are the products of a spirit of contempt for 
 law joined to ignorance."
 
 FAVORING BOLSHEVISM 87 
 
 The "negro problem" is the white man's 
 problem, and is now in the North just as 
 it has long been in the South and the great 
 Middle West. 1 The clashes in northern 
 cities, illy concealed antagonism, demands 
 for separate schools in those centers where 
 negro migration has largely increased the 
 negro population all these show that the 
 negro problem is no longer sectional, but 
 is national and demands attention as of 
 common concern. 
 
 Emotional, mainly illiterate, grievances 
 both real and imagined, the negroes have 
 been easily moved to suspicion, indifference 
 and antagonism by the teachers of violence 
 who seek the overthrow of the present so- 
 cial order that the bolshevist class may 
 rule. 
 
 It is no longer merely a question of help- 
 ing the negroes but also of helping our 
 country and saving ourselves. Here again 
 time has not cured. Lynchings have not 
 cured, but have added fuel to flame. By 
 that method, the innocent frequently pay 
 penalty for the guilty. Then the negroes, 
 moved by resentment and fear, reason, 
 
 i Of the 1 1 million negroes in the United States, one- 
 fourth live in the North.
 
 88 THE GREAT MENACE 
 
 "Honesty doesn't protect. Who will be 
 the next!" 
 
 Education and religion are the only 
 means of taking the negroes out of the 
 range of criminal possibilities, and of mak- 
 ing them loyal and industrious citizens. 
 Dr. A. Eugene Thomson, Principal of the 
 Lincoln Institute of Kentucky, made a 
 study of ten prominent colored schools in 
 the South. Some had been graduating 
 classes for thiry-five years. Altogether 
 they had graduated 7,769 students. Ask- 
 ing how many of their graduates had ever 
 been convicted of a criminal offense that 
 is, anything involving a penalty from a jail 
 sentence upward he found that seven of 
 the ten schools had a clean record. The 
 reports showed ten out of 7,769, or less 
 than one-eighth of 1 per cent, convicted. 
 
 Lincoln, Hampton, Tuskegee and similar 
 schools have demonstrated the value of 
 vocational training of negroes, under 
 Christian auspices. Through many years 
 these schools have turned out large num- 
 bers of men and women who have "made 
 good" as industrious, law-abiding Christian 
 citizens. This is a work that pays many-
 
 FAVORING BOLSHEVISM 89 
 
 fold. To quote Edward T. Leach, Editor 
 of the Memphis Press, " Leaving out all 
 sentiment, if you want to look at it in a 
 cold blooded way, which is the more valu- 
 able to the community in dollars and cents, 
 which will cost the State less, a good negro 
 or a bad one?" 
 
 Is it not the indisputable conclusion that 
 the solution of the negro problem is Chris- 
 tian education and vocational training? 
 Various church Boards of Freedmen are 
 doing just such work. The United States 
 Bureau of Education reports 6,258 schools 
 for the higher education of negroes, mainly 
 supported by Northern churches and phi- 
 lanthropy at a cost of $3,000,000. Many 
 of the schools are known as " colleges," 
 but 75 per cent of the 87,000 pupils are in 
 elementary grades, 11,500 in secondary 
 departments and only 1,500 are real college 
 students. 
 
 The Southern states are doing a large 
 work, spending often a larger percentage 
 of State income than do other states; and 
 spending yearly about one-third of a mil- 
 lion dollars on industrial and normal 
 schools for negroes. Yet, all told, school
 
 90 THE GREAT MENACE 
 
 provision is not adequate to the needs. 
 About 43 per cent of negro children be- 
 tween the ages of six and fourteen are 
 unprovided for. Southern states report 
 that 50 per cent of all negro public school 
 teachers had less than six elementary 
 grades of schooling, and that in the rural 
 districts, where 75 per cent of the race 
 live, the number of poorly prepared 
 teachers is much larger. Under such con- 
 ditions, is it surprising that negroes com- 
 prise 40 per cent of the illiterates of the 
 United States? 
 
 Another particular evidence of the need 
 of Christian education for these people is 
 their clergy. Every year calls for 1500 
 new negro pastors to fill vacancies caused 
 by death and old age. But all the schools 
 and colleges of our country, South, North, 
 East, and West can not supply a full 300 
 educated men, which means that 1200 un- 
 educated "ministers" take their places as 
 negro leaders. Too often this means "the 
 blind leading the blind," inflammatory 
 speeches, the exciting of race prejudice, in- 
 dolence, moral laxness, and economic loss, 
 all of which make favoring conditions
 
 FAVORING BOLSHEVISM 91 
 
 for bolshevist propaganda. Ex-President 
 Taft recently deplored such leadership and 
 also referred to another class of negro 
 leaders who "are wiser," and who "see 
 that the way to ameliorate conditions is not 
 by direct frontal attacks of resentment or 
 revenge but by the education of their 
 people and a stimulation of them to 
 greater industry and economic success." * 
 
 To educate negro leaders teachers and 
 ministers who will lead their people in or- 
 derly, industrious and Christian ways is an 
 urgent need of the hour. Certain it is that 
 the let-alone policy with the negro popula- 
 tion will get us nowhere except into 
 trouble. 
 
 The negroes must be taught how to work 
 with their hands and that work is honor- 
 able. They must be given Christian edu- 
 cation and vocational training. And too 
 the negro must be given a square deal, and 
 recognized as a human being and an au- 
 thenticated child of God. We must inter- 
 pret America in the terms of fair play, 
 justice and humanity, insisting on return 
 in kind. That is Americanization in the 
 
 i Cincinnati Enquirer, June 2, 1919.
 
 92 THE GREAT MENACE 
 
 concrete; that is Christianity practically 
 applied. And in this particular there is 
 no other way out. 
 
 In these illustrations which show that 
 time does not cure, we directly face certain 
 conditions that foster the Great Menace, 
 and that must be changed if that peril is to 
 be removed. Our foreign-born citizenry, 
 illiterates, and negroes, however, are not 
 the only ones who have been seduced by 
 socialism. Many sincere, noble-minded 
 people have been enticed to its pale by as- 
 surances of an immediate golden age, not 
 knowing that instead of a golden age it 
 means an age washed urith blood, a 
 despotism of the most ruthless order. 
 These innocent converts to socialism have 
 believed it a creed of peace, and so it 
 once was, and now is with men of peace. 
 But other leaders have usurped control; 
 socialism has been perverted to the tool of 
 a self-seeking group of a class and advo- 
 cates of violence. Socialism as a peace- 
 ful proposal for economic or other re- 
 forms has right to speak and right to be 
 heard in a free country. In that event 
 we have only to point out that wherever it
 
 FAVORING BOLSHEVISM 93 
 
 has been tried it has added to the miseries 
 of humankind, instead of mitigating them. 
 But now if socialism comes to us with 
 peaceful proposals, it also comes with 
 blood upon its hands and with sinister pur- 
 poses in its thoughts. Even the "parlor 
 socialists" are despised by the proletarian 
 socialists who alone expect to rule. Any 
 persons who are a little educated are ab- 
 horred as intellectuals. Parts of Russia 
 are mortuaries for slaughtered intelli- 
 gentsia. It is not necessary to substanti- 
 ate this statement. No truth of what has 
 happened in Russia under bolshevism is 
 more conspicuous. However, I wish to 
 make reference to one recent publication, 
 "Under the Bolshevik Reign of Terror," * 
 by a young Englishwoman, Miss Rhoda 
 Power, who relates her experiences in the 
 south-Russian town of Rostof, where she 
 lived from early in the war until after the 
 Bolsheviki came into power. She tells of 
 what she personally knew, and describes at 
 length the excesses of the Red Guard. A 
 part of the story is in the form of a diary, 
 from which are the following excerpts: 
 
 i McBride & Co., publishers, New York.
 
 94 THE GREAT MENACE 
 
 ' March 3. Blood, blood, blood. March 5. 
 On the other side of the road a student was 
 walking. ' Ha, ' cried a tovarish, another of 
 the intelligentsia. 'So you will educate 
 yourself above the people, will you? 
 There.' And he shot him through the 
 head. The boy fell with a little cry, and 
 before he was quite dead his clothes were 
 taken off and sold to a passing peasant." 
 The unreasoning prejudice against the ' * in- 
 tellectuals ' ' which prevails in Russia pre- 
 vails also with the bolsheviki in America. 
 
 When the spirit of this movement in 
 America is uncovered, we find that its pur- 
 pose is autocracy, rule by a group of a 
 class. Once in power, would any man's 
 blood be held dear? Even the farmers 
 here, as in Russia, would be classed among 
 the intellectuals, denied equal voice in 
 government, and would be ruled by despots. 
 But such regime cannot be when the Amer- 
 ican people are fully aroused to what the 
 radicals are trying to bring to pass. 
 
 The encouragement in the crisis of the 
 present time is our faith in the people, the 
 vast majority of whom desire to know the 
 right and to do right. We should disillu-
 
 FAITH IN THE PEOPLE 95 
 
 sion those who have been misled. And we 
 should do our work in the mighty confi- 
 dence that the moral sense and common 
 sense of the people can be depended on to 
 do right and to defend the right. Though 
 faith in individuals and in groups of men 
 is tried, we yet must have faith in human- 
 kind. Now, a word as to our ground for 
 this belief. Man is a being with a dual 
 nature. Do we not all confess to a down- 
 ward pull, to a tendency to indulgence, and 
 to yield to lusts and passion, selfish ambi- 
 tion, personal aggrandizement and power? 
 Every one who has dared to choose the 
 good as the goal of life, knows only too well 
 that evil is present with him. Why do 
 we not also acknowledge that in every one 
 is the upward impulse, aspiring for things 
 noble, pure, beautiful and true, for the ex- 
 perience of service and the expression of 
 kindness, love and selfless devotion? In 
 all is the good, and no one is so bad as not 
 to have impulses to follow it. This is a 
 teaching that needs to be emphasized in 
 present-day thinking, for it is a truth that 
 in certain places has suffered eclipse. 
 There is good even in "bad people" to
 
 96 THE GREAT MENACE 
 
 which one can make successful appeal. 
 Various fields of moral and religious ac- 
 tivity in recent years bear testimony to 
 this fact. The work with juvenile delin- 
 quents in Boy Republics and Parental Re- 
 publics, and of Judge Lindsey in Denver 
 shows that appeal to the good in "bad 
 boys" is often successful. Dr. Bernardo or- 
 ganized the system for taking boy criminals 
 out of the slums of the great cities of Eng- 
 land, and sending them to farms in Aus- 
 tralia, South Africa, and Canada. Out of 
 50,000 such boys who were given a new 
 chance through the farm environment less 
 than two per cent, according to Dr. Ber- 
 nardo, have shown any tendency to revert 
 to their earlier criminal practices. 
 
 The testimony that comes from the field 
 of criminology is further illustration of the 
 fact of good in "bad people," even in the 
 criminal classes. Prison reform and new 
 methods of penology have converted prison 
 places of torture into moral hospitals. 
 Outstanding is the work of Lombroso in 
 Italy, of Thomas Mott Osborne and Maud 
 Ballington Booth in America, in reclaiming 
 many mature criminals, who in time past
 
 FAITH IN THE PEOPLE 97 
 
 would have been regarded as hopelessly 
 hardened. And too the experiences of 
 thousands of ministers in the conversion 
 of "hopeless cases," morally speaking, 
 also testifies to the good in "bad folks." 
 Much more then is our ground for faith 
 in the people, the law abiding of our land! 
 History shows that they always could be 
 trusted, that they always could be depended 
 on. The people are our confidence in the 
 crisis of the present, and our assurance for 
 a continued orderly society in the future. 
 When the purpose of the Great Menace is 
 fully known it will meet their united op- 
 position. The people will not tolerate the 
 red flag, nor allow any hyphenated flag. 
 Americans love dearer than life the Amer- 
 ican flag. They have sung: 
 
 "Flag of the brave! thy folds shall fly, 
 The sign of hope and triumph high." x 
 
 If necessary the American people will 
 again fight to keep Old Glory waving high. 
 
 It would be unfortunate for "labor" 
 and for our country if the radicals of labor 
 are permitted to effect strained relations 
 
 i Joseph Rodman Drake, The American Flag.
 
 98 THE GREAT MENACE 
 
 and suffering conditions that ultimately 
 must precipitate trouble. As a people we 
 wish to avoid bloodshed ; but we will main- 
 tain at any cost our country's honor and 
 an orderly society for the sake of our chil- 
 dren and the common good. 
 
 The sane and major part of "labor" is 
 not in sympathy with soviet radicals, this 
 we must keep in mind. The following ex- 
 cerpt from an editorial in the Labor 
 Herald 1 is typical, I believe, of the sound, 
 good sense of labor people in the main: 
 "The soviet fanatics nowadays seek to 
 superimpose the soviet idea in every situa- 
 tion where there is a conflict between 
 workers and employers. . . Democracy 
 offers the best chance for the most people 
 to have a say about how things are run. 
 That is the reason why the soviet is a 
 dead duck in America. The soviet fanat- 
 ics who think they can put over their idea 
 in America have it in their heads that if 
 they can do that then their little group 
 can run things. Whatever may be the true 
 definition of a soviet, the definition that is 
 in the minds of its supporters on this side 
 
 i Newport, Ky., July 10, 1919.
 
 FAITH IN THE PEOPLE 99 
 
 of the Atlantic is a machine that will bring 
 about a 'dictatorship of the proletariat,' 
 which means by a small group of workers 
 who happen to agree upon the idea. . . 
 Democracy is a winner against anything 
 the world knows about in the way of gov- 
 ernments. It gives the most people a 
 chance for a say. The thing that Lenine 
 and Trotsky dare not do is to give the most 
 people a say. Only if democratic peoples 
 let their democracy slip away from them 
 is there any need to fear for them. And 
 they haven't done that yet! Some day 
 we'll look at soviet propaganda through 
 glass cases in long marble corridors in 
 buildings, over the doors of which we will 
 read the word 'museums.' " 
 
 The dependableness of the people gives 
 ground for confidence. At the same time 
 we acknowledge that wrongs do not right 
 themselves. Time does not cure. The 
 people look to the leaders to lead. We 
 must make known the intent of socialism, 
 which will languish and perish in the sun- 
 light of truth. Before us too is the impera- 
 tive need of removing illiteracy, of Amer- 
 icanizing our foreign-born population, and
 
 100 THE GREAT MENACE 
 
 of providing Christian education and voca- 
 tional training for the negroes ; so shall we 
 dig out the big roots of the Great Menace, 
 which has got to go. Otherwise democracy 
 ciannot live.
 
 IV 
 
 THE NEW PATRIOTISM 
 
 ' ' Work or starve. 
 Save or want. 
 
 Play together or you'll play hell. 
 Be a good American or get out. ' ' 1 
 
 IN the light of world changes and menacing 
 internal conditions in our country, certain 
 great ideas and principles have suddenly 
 assumed profound significance. These 
 ideas and principles, if not new, appeal to 
 loyal Americans with a new emphasis, and, 
 therefore, may concisely be called the new 
 patriotism. What are the great convic- 
 tions that suddenly have forced themselves 
 in upon the minds of men with such pro- 
 found significance? 
 
 I. We can best approach the question by 
 stating first what the new patriotism is not. 
 
 1. At the outset of this part of the dis- 
 cussion we may affirm that the new patriot- 
 ism is not internationalism. Unless a man 
 is first loyal to his own home, he is not loyal 
 
 i Saturday Evening Post, October 4, 1919, p. ?9. 
 J01
 
 102 THE GEEAT MENACE 
 
 to the community. Similarly with nations. 
 How can any country be worthy of a place 
 in the council of nations except by a worthy 
 and law-abiding citizenry? The urgency 
 of world peace requires fidelity to one's 
 country. That fidelity does not overlook 
 the burning hope of men that the vision of 
 Tennyson in Locksley Hall may be re- 
 alized : 
 
 ' ' The war-drum throbb 'd no longer, and the bat- 
 tle-flags were furl'd 
 
 In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the 
 world." 
 
 We cannot forget the appalling cost of 
 maintaining the free governments of peo- 
 ple: 26 million casualties, 11 million men 
 killed, and 221 billion dollars. All this 
 must not have been in vain. The Ameri- 
 can people ask as the fruit of victory that 
 the world shall be protected against the 
 repetition of such a catastrophe. And we 
 honor nations of like mind and purpose, 
 but that is not reason for foolish talk of 
 an impossible internationalism where our 
 thought for other nations holds equal place 
 as for our own. ' ' To say that one can love
 
 THE NEW PATRIOTISM 103 
 
 other nations as well as one's own is like 
 saying," to quote words spoken by Colonel 
 Roosevelt shortly before he died, "that a 
 man can love other women equally as well 
 as he loves his wife." 
 
 2. In the second place the new patriotism 
 is not materialism. In Germany material 
 forces had outgrown spiritual forces. 
 Science placed great physical powers in the 
 hands of the German nation, but conscience 
 and judgment did not keep pace with its 
 intelligence. Moral and spiritual control 
 were lost, and the wonderful physical 
 forces, the gift of science to the German 
 people, were turned into an engine of de- 
 struction, under the name of Kultur. The 
 American people cannot live alone on 
 things material any better than the German 
 people could so live. "Without spiritual 
 guidance and moral control we would come 
 to grief just as they have come to grief. 
 This does not belittle science. Science is a 
 friend, and daily brings material marvels 
 for the health and comfort of men and the 
 advancement of civilization. But the new 
 physical powers can wield permanent good 
 and build a nation in enduring strength
 
 104 THE GREAT MENACE 
 
 only as controlled by enduring principles. 
 All this has been demonstrated, a demon- 
 stration forced by Germany, and for which 
 the world has paid the price. Our present 
 concern is to apply the principle, that man 
 cannot live by the material alone, to our 
 several affairs and national life. Do we 
 place the common good above personal 
 gain? Do we value spiritual possession 
 more than material possessions? Is 
 America's satisfaction in the quality of 
 men that it breeds or in the material wealth 
 of its industries and material splendor of 
 its institutions? Do we honor men for 
 what they are or what they have? What 
 are the motives that impel young men and 
 women in choice of education or vocation f 
 Do we serve God or Mammon? Germany 
 stood for materialism. That was her 
 faith, law and life. Materialism is with 
 other people exactly what it was with the 
 German people : cruel, selfish, and criminal. 
 Suffering and ruin always attend it. The 
 new patriotism is not materialism. 
 
 3. It must also be said that the new pa- 
 triotism is not partisan. It affirms that 
 America belongs to the people; that we do
 
 THE NEW PATRIOTISM 105 
 
 not have and must not have class rule or 
 class preferment; that ours is a Land of 
 Opportunity for all, that that is its glory 
 and one of the things that has made it the 
 greatest nation of all time. 
 
 Greenville, Tenn., is a little town two 
 miles long and one street wide. Two 
 signs, one at either end of that street, tell 
 a story of opportunity that lies before the 
 feet of every American citizen. At one end 
 of the street is a sign over a tumbledown 
 one-story frame shack which reads "A. 
 Johnson, Tailor. ' ' At the other end of the 
 street, shining and towering high, is a 
 marble monument on which is the inscrip- 
 tion "A. Johnson, President of the United 
 States. " From an ignorant tailor unable 
 to read or write A. Johnson became the na- 
 tion 's chief executive. Where such a thing 
 is possible, there can be no class. True, 
 not every boy can become President, but 
 there is the chance for every young Amer- 
 ican to make his way up the street to any 
 worthy goal he sets for himself if he has 
 the will to win. But he cannot reach it 
 through idleness or waste, or if disheart- 
 ened by difficulties. Emerson said, " Dif- 
 ficulties make a bright boy climb." Long-
 
 106 THE GREAT MENACE 
 
 fellow voiced the American sentiment in 
 saying : 
 
 ' ' The heights by great men reached and kept 
 Were not attained by sudden flight, 
 But they, while their companions slept, 
 Were toiling upward in the night." * 
 
 The new patriotism is not partisan. 
 It does not leave us in the dark, though 
 we are in the throes of great problems. 
 Our methods for the settling of problems 
 are the methods of democracy, the meth- 
 ods which were established when the Con- 
 stitution of the United States was framed. 
 At that time, our American fathers who 
 framed it were in the thick of problems and 
 could not visualize the future, its tremen- 
 dous changes, expansion of country, in- 
 dustrial development, the effect of inven- 
 tions, influx of immigration, and increasing 
 complexities and perplexities in social rela- 
 tions. They could not forecast all that. 
 But they were united in the conviction that 
 free men could retain the powers of self- 
 government only through acceptance of the 
 responsibilities of self-government and ad- 
 
 i"The Ladder of St. Augustine."
 
 THE NEW PATRIOTISM 107 
 
 herence to the methods of democracy, 
 (8]/>s people -f- Kparetv to rule) the rule of 
 the people. By those methods the great 
 problems that have arisen in our nation 
 have been adjusted. And the great prob- 
 lems in our country to-day will be settled in 
 the same satisfactory way. "The Ameri- 
 can people," declares John P. Frey, who 
 was a member of the American Labor 
 Mission in Europe last year, "are so de- 
 voted to these democratic institutions, so 
 jealous of the benefits which they convey, 
 that they had already placed 2,000,000 
 Americans on French soil and were pre- 
 pared to place millions more, so that the 
 free institutions which they believed in 
 could not be jeopardized by the success of 
 the autocratic, militaristic Central Pow- 
 ers.*' 1 That observation by a leader of 
 labor voices the sentiment of loyal Amer- 
 icans. They will stand four-square for 
 democracy which does not admit domi- 
 nance of a class. 
 
 The new patriotism is not international- 
 ism, not materialism, not the favoritism 
 of, or rule by, a class. 
 
 i Labor Herald, October 2, 1919, pp. 1, 2.
 
 108 THE GREAT MENACE 
 
 H. This brings us directly to our main 
 thought : what the new patriotism is. 
 
 1. In the first place the new patriotism 
 affirms the principle of interdependence. 
 Our lives are inter-related, mutually de- 
 pendent, bound up together. We must 
 learn, if we have not, how to live on with 
 one another, each considering his particu- 
 lar interests in the light of the good of all. 
 Labor has its rights, capital has rights, 
 and the people have their rights. And the 
 rights of one can be promoted in ways of 
 lasting value only in harmony with the 
 common rights of all. Policy or conduct 
 must be governed by its effect on all the 
 people. Any other policy is ruthless ma- 
 terialism. 
 
 2. The new patriotism also stands for 
 constructive liberalism. Impatience with 
 the methods and aims of socialism, and 
 sometimes with the unrest and unreasona- 
 ble demands of certain groups of labor 
 has had a tendency to make many persons 
 become reactionary. But that would be 
 fatal to progress. Reactionary policy, re- 
 sort to the old methods of industrial des- 
 potism, would make converts to bolshevism.
 
 A democracy cannot consent to the dic- 
 tatorship of capital or of the proletariat. 
 The extremists on both sides are headed 
 for trouble. They too are making trouble 
 for others, resulting in discordant condi- 
 tions. That is the sure way of crystallizing 
 public sentiment for drastic action, if not 
 experiment, and taking in hand the trouble 
 makers. That very thing will be done if it 
 needs to be done, but the energy thus di- 
 verted would defer the day of the common 
 well-being and happiness of all. The sane 
 way is to face problems in a spirit of con- 
 structive liberalism, working for solution 
 in recognition of the rights of all. That 
 will mean often a tremendous task, but big 
 undertakings have summoned the Ameri- 
 can people before, and will inspire them 
 again. Anything can be done that ought 
 to be done. Surely the problems of our 
 social order ought to be solved, to the end 
 of justice, brotherhood, and good-will. 
 Can one be loyal to country and not con- 
 tribute by sympathy or suggestion to the 
 solution? 
 
 3. The new patriotism also includes 
 merciful helpfulness, when help is needed
 
 110 THE GREAT MENACE 
 
 and ought to be meted. The bountiful 
 gifts from men and women through the 
 war, best of all the merciful giving of them- 
 selves without stint, was a beautiful touch 
 that helped to mitigate the horrors, and 
 gave us heart to bear the burdens, of those 
 dark hours. Noble inner natures came 
 into view. In the light of that merciful 
 helpfulness, we also saw selfishness as a 
 thing hideous and loathsome, selfishness 
 that yet skulks in the dark or masquerades 
 in honest dress but always with murder in 
 its thought. However, merciful helpful- 
 ness is the breath and soul of America, and 
 the glory of the new patriotism. 
 
 4. This brings us to another most im- 
 portant point in regard to the new patriot- 
 ism, one with which at first hearing some 
 persons will not agree. Yet, no word is 
 more urgently needed in this time of un- 
 rest largely awakened and fostered by the 
 Great Menace and no one word in the 
 light of glaring facts is more transparently 
 true than the statement that if one is to 
 be a loyal American to-day one must sup- 
 port and promote the moral and spiritual 
 life of the nation.
 
 THE NEW PATRIOTISM 111 
 
 When William N, Foster, Secretary of 
 the National Committee that organized the 
 strike of the steel and iron workers, was a 
 witness before the Senate Committee which 
 was investigating the strike, 1 Senator Mc- 
 Kellar, in addressing the witness, said: 
 
 "I now call your attention to page 18 
 of your book on Syndicalism, where you 
 say: 'The Syndicalist is as unscrupu- 
 lous in his choice of weapons to fight his 
 every-day battles as for his final strug- 
 gle with capitalism. He allows no con- 
 sideration of 'legality' 'religion' 'pa- 
 triotism,' 'honor,' 'duty,' and so forth, 
 to stand in the way of his adoption of 
 effective tactics. The only sentiment he 
 knows is loyalty to the interests of the 
 working class. He is in utter revolt 
 against capitalism in all its phases. 
 His lawless course often lands him in 
 jail, but he is so fired by revolutionary 
 enthusiasm that jails, or even death, 
 have no terrors for him. He glories in 
 martyrdom, consoling himself with the 
 knowledge that he is a terror to his 
 enemies, and that his movements, to-day 
 
 i October 2, 1919.
 
 112 THE GREAT MENACE 
 
 sending chills along the spines of interna- 
 tional capitalism, to-morrow will put an 
 end to this monstrosity.' Is that your 
 belief now?" 
 
 Foster answered: "If you put all 
 those terms in quotation marks, that 
 stands. ' ' 
 
 Think of it! Here is a leader of labor, 
 a member of a national committee repre- 
 senting several hundred thousand work- 
 ers in the steel and iron industry 
 and that organized its recent strike, 
 confessing that he believes it his duty and 
 the duty of all syndicalists to allow no con- 
 siderations of ' ' legality, " ' ' religion, " ' ' pa- 
 triotism," "honor" or "duty" to stand 
 in the way of the adoption of effective 
 tactics to secure their ends. When groups 
 of labor are indoctrinated with that sort 
 of teaching, is it surprising that sovietism 
 has spread? or that the followers of that 
 doctrine are opposed to religion? For 
 that condition, those persons who believe 
 otherwise, but who do nothing to promote 
 the moral and spiritual life of the nation 
 are heavily responsible. The Church has 
 proclaimed the laws of God, without which
 
 THE NEW PATRIOTISM 113 
 
 a nation cannot stand, and which now are 
 openly defied, but that work has not been 
 reasonably sustained. To the call for re- 
 pentance and religious cooperation vast 
 multitudes of intelligent people have been 
 indifferent, regardless alike of the perils 
 of country, the sufferings of their fellows, 
 and the reasonable claims of the Holy God. 
 The poor, benighted foreign-born in Amer- 
 ica, who yielded to bolshevist teaching 
 were misled, that is their excusing. But 
 vast multitudes, too self-absorbed in the 
 pursuit of gain or pleasure to thoughtfully 
 consider the moral and spiritual need of 
 the nation or ever to read a labor paper, 
 knew better. Possibly they did not realize 
 that dire consequences would follow their 
 conduct, that may be their excusing. 
 Will they retrieve the past by helping to 
 meet the moral and spiritual need of 
 America now? 
 
 I am not pleading for any particular 
 church or synagogue or ism but for 
 spiritual witness and service somewhere. 
 If there is a better agency than the Church 
 for doing this particular work, many of us 
 would like to know it. Until other agency
 
 114 THE GREAT MENACE 
 
 is found, why not support and promote 
 what we have? 
 
 The teaching of the syndicalists that 
 they are to be " unscrupulous in their 
 choice of weapons," and that it is their 
 duty to allow "no consideration of legality, 
 religion, patriotism," etc. to stand in the 
 way of their * ' adoption of effective tactics ' ' 
 in obtaining their ends, evinces that our 
 fundamental need is religion, the recovery 
 of the ten commandments, a revival of the 
 things of God, which may and may not 
 mean a revival of revivalism. It does 
 mean a revival of religion. Other con- 
 ditions to-day than those effected by the 
 socialists and syndicalists show that this is 
 true : the prevalence and open insolence of 
 evil, profiteers, hoarding of goods for ef- 
 fecting fictitious prices, unjust wage and 
 unjust wage demands, the "coal scandal," 
 the selfish seizure by certain persons of 
 every possible advantage for gain in ruth- 
 less disregard of the sufferings of one's 
 fellows, and the effort to fatten upon a 
 great national calamity like the last war 
 that too when loyal American sons were 
 sacrificing business, home and all things 
 that democracy might not perish from the
 
 THE NEW PATRIOTISM 115 
 
 earth, all this shows the imperative need 
 in this our country of ' ' a pure and undefiled 
 religion. ' ' That fact stands out in letters 
 of light over against the thick darkness of 
 present conditions and the history of re- 
 cent years. 
 
 We have come to a parting of the ways. 
 Shall America be the home of a lived re- 
 ligion or of bolshevismf that is the ques- 
 tion. By promoting or not promoting the 
 moral and spiritual life of the nation, one 's 
 answer is given. It is a point of honor 
 now; not sentiment but patriotism. No- 
 tice is served that the ten commandments 
 and all religion have been ruled out. 
 If the ruling extends and remains, democ- 
 racy will end, the way will be open to vio- 
 lence and mob rule. The time has come 
 for an alignment of those people who be- 
 lieve that the laws: "Thou shalt not 
 kill," "Thou shalt not steal," "Thou shalt 
 have no other gods before me" are funda- 
 mental to civilization. 
 
 That America requires before anything 
 else an applied religion for the crisis of 
 to-day, is the thought recently and inde- 
 pendently expressed by three American
 
 116 THE GREAT MENACE 
 
 business men, nationally known and whose 
 judgments are valued as observers of na- 
 tional conditions and world movements. 
 Robert W. Babson, editor of Babson's 
 Barometer Letter to Merchants, Bankers 
 and Investors, Boston, in a signed edi- 
 torial, 1 said, ' * The need of the hour is not 
 more legislation. The need of the hour is 
 more religion. More religion is needed 
 everywhere, from the halls of Congress at 
 Washington, to the factories, mines, fields 
 and forests. It is one thing to talk about 
 plans and policies, but a plan and policy 
 without a religious motive is like a watch 
 without a spring, or a body without the 
 breath of life. The trouble to-day is that 
 we are trying to hatch chickens from 
 sterile eggs. We may have the finest in- 
 cubator in the world and operate it accord- 
 ing to the most approved regulations; 
 moreover, the eggs may appear perfect 
 specimens, but unless they have the germ 
 of life in them, all of our efforts are of no 
 avail. . . . The solving of the Labor situ- 
 ation is wholly a question of religion. The 
 wage worker will never be satisfied with 
 
 i September 2, 1919.
 
 THE NEW PATRIOTISM 117 
 
 higher wages and shorter hours, any more 
 than you and I are satisfied with more 
 profits and a bigger house. Things never 
 did satisfy any one and never will. Satis- 
 faction and contentment are matters of 
 religion. Communities and industries, 
 where right motives are paramount, have 
 no serious labor problems. When both 
 employer and wage worker honestly be- 
 lieve that we are here in this world to serve 
 others, the Labor problem will be solved, 
 but not until then. We employers should 
 learn to give up, and labor should wake 
 up. However, neither of us will do it ex- 
 cept as we are actuated by religious mo- 
 tives. Both groups are largely actuated 
 by selfish motives at the present time. 
 Moreover, this is tremendously short- 
 sighted selfishness. During the scramble 
 over a division of what is already produced, 
 we overlook the great importance of in- 
 creasing production, thereby cutting down 
 the tree to get the cherries. We all need 
 a new outlook of life, a new political policy, 
 a new industrial policy, and a new social 
 policy. The old politics founded upon 
 fear and striving only for protection has
 
 118 THE GREAT MENACE 
 
 fulfilled its usefulness. We need a new 
 politics based upon faith and striving for 
 production. Meanwhile, what is happen- 
 ing to our churches? They are going to 
 seed. They are already deserted by the 
 working classes, and are being deserted by 
 the children of the employing classes. 
 Great capital investments in land and 
 buildings are being utilized only a few 
 hours a week. The ministers are being 
 paid starvation wages, and the whole 
 church industry lacks pep and imagination. 
 And yet, the Church is the only organiza- 
 tion in existence for generating right mo- 
 tives in man. Schools develop intellect, 
 theaters and novels foster passion, but the 
 Church is the sole organization which de- 
 velops those good motives of love, sym- 
 pathy, hope and inspiration, upon which 
 the industrial salvation of the world de- 
 pends. . . . But that great organization 
 which has the machinery and opportunity 
 to develop the constructive motives of love, 
 sympathy and hope, is asleep. . . . When 
 Jesus told His disciples to 'give to him 
 that asketh of thee' He did not mean that 
 they should die of starvation. He simply
 
 THE NEW PATRIOTISM 119 
 
 tried to emphasize the great fundamental 
 truth that life consists not in hoarding or 
 living on what is hoarded ; but life consists 
 in working and using what one produces. 
 It was Jesus' method of calling the world's 
 attention to the fact that the things which 
 exist are temporary, and at best would 
 keep the world alive only a few months. 
 He wished to impress upon us that our 
 future depends not upon hoarding what we 
 have, but rather on producing more. He 
 wished to direct mankind's attention to- 
 ward Faith and away from Fear; toward 
 Production and away from Protection. 
 Politics and industries need to get Jesus' 
 point of view, which is both economically 
 and psychologically sound. Labor trou- 
 bles would soon cease, and the Cost of Liv- 
 ing would be cut in halves. Once more I 
 say, the need of the hour is religion." 
 
 Mr. Richard H. Edmonds, editor of the 
 Manufacturers' Record, Baltimore, in a 
 signed editorial, 1 expressed as strong con- 
 victions, saying: 
 
 " Above all else this country needs a na- 
 tion-wide revival of old-fashioned prayer 
 
 i August 28, 1919.
 
 120 THE GREAT MENACE 
 
 meeting religion a religion that makes 
 men realize that if there is a heaven, there 
 must also of necessity be a hell a religion 
 that makes a man realize that every act is 
 recorded on his own conscience and that 
 though it may slumber it can never die a 
 religion that makes an employer under- 
 stand that if he is unfair to his employees 
 and pays them less than fair wages, meas- 
 ured by his ability and their efficiency and 
 zeal, he is a robber a religion that makes 
 an employee know that if he does not give 
 full and efficient service, he too is a robber 
 a religion that makes a man realize that 
 by driving too hard a bargain with his 
 servant, his employee, his merchant, he can 
 be just as much a profiteer as the seller or 
 producer who swindles by false weight, 
 false packing or false charges a religion 
 that will teach church members to con- 
 tribute to the extent of their ability to the 
 support of religion and that compels them 
 to recognize that if they are paying their 
 pastor less than a living salary, they are 
 robbing God and man alike. In short we 
 need a revival of religion which will make 
 every man and woman strive in every act
 
 THE NEW PATRIOTISM 121 
 
 of life to do that which on the great judg- 
 ment day they will wish that they had done, 
 as with soul uncovered they stand before 
 the judgment seat of the Eternal. In the 
 Golden Rule followed in the fullness of the 
 spirit of this kind of religion, there would 
 be found a solution for every business trou- 
 ble; there would be created friendship be- 
 tween employer and employee ; capital and 
 labor would work in harmony and with 
 efficiency, efficiency for the capital and effi- 
 ciency for the labor, with profit to both. 
 It is not merely in the chanting of hymns 
 here or in the world to come, but it 
 is in the recognition and full application 
 by rich and poor, by learned and unlearned, 
 that each is indeed his brother's keeper, 
 that we can bring this country and the 
 world back to safety. A nation-wide ac- 
 ceptance of this, the only true religion in 
 action, would bring business peace and 
 world peace where there is now turmoil, 
 and men would then cease to seek to gain 
 their ends by lawless immorality." 
 
 Mr. Herbert C. Hoover recently spoke 
 a word of similar meaning. "What is 
 needed," he said, "is what for want of a
 
 122 THE GREAT MENACE 
 
 better term I would call a spiritual revival. 
 Somehow and by some means the sense of 
 service that dominated the allied peoples 
 must be revived. ' ' l 
 
 Can any one, seeing the world as it is to- 
 day, read such words and not be stirred in 
 mind and heart? Here are the profound 
 convictions from men in the world a 
 world in trouble that the present-day 
 need is religion, and that the Church ought 
 to meet the need. But how can it measure 
 to the magnitude of the demand if people 
 who believe in religion only wish the 
 Church well and do not help it by their 
 presence to do well? 
 
 What a chance to serve the nation! 
 What a challenge for the spiritual slacker ! 
 If not aroused now, who can forecast the 
 future? Has he regard for his own chil- 
 dren? Religion is the great need of to- 
 day. 
 
 5. The new patriotism not only includes 
 support and promotion of morality and re- 
 ligion, but also stands for economy. It 
 ought to be a badge of honor to-day to wear 
 
 i Congregationctiist and Advance, October 16, 1919, 
 . 521.
 
 THE NEW PATRIOTISM 123 
 
 old clothes, and to live simply rather 
 than extravagantly. When James Russell 
 Lowell was married economy was a stern 
 necessity with him as with many others of 
 that time. Men of vision believed economy 
 necessary also for the general welfare. 
 "A Do Without Club" was organized, of 
 which Mr. and Mrs. Lowell were members. 
 To keep a dinner engagement one evening 
 shortly after they were married, they 
 walked four miles across the city of Bos- 
 ton that they might save the cost of car- 
 riage hire. 
 
 With the present under production and 
 high cost of living ought we to have another 
 "Do Without Club"? One pathway to 
 improved conditions is self-denial, saving 
 and thrift. 
 
 "Extravagance and display have been 
 prime causes of unrest of the less fortu- 
 nate. Reckless spending on self-indulg- 
 ence has too often fanned the flames of 
 discontent. The constitutional right to 
 private property is often so abused as to 
 be inconsistent with that other constitu- 
 tional provision, ' the general welfare. ' It 
 is possible to stand firmly on the right to
 
 124 THE GREAT MENACE 
 
 private property and at the same time in- 
 terpret that right for the benefit of others 
 as well as self. If we are to rescue our- 
 selves from our present state we must prac- 
 tice economy both personally and publicly. 
 The national Congress must set the ex- 
 ample and the people must follow. Al- 
 ready there is talk of another bond issue 
 on top of the $24,000,000,000 already issued 
 between April, 1917, and October, 1919. A 
 deficit of more than $3,000,000,000 at the 
 end of this fiscal year stares the federal 
 government in the face. How is this deficit 
 to be met except by bonds or by higher 
 taxes? Already the people have been un- 
 able to absorb the war bonds issued. The 
 banks are carrying several billions partly 
 paid for, while the Federal Reserve banks 
 are understood to be carrying war paper 
 amounting to $1,380,000,000. Prices are 
 abnormal largely because of excessive is- 
 sues of credit money and the issue of im- 
 mense quantities of government bonds. 
 Both paper money and bonds are in the 
 last analysis debts liabilities of the peo- 
 ple which the people must pay. How does
 
 THE NEW PATRIOTISM 125 
 
 a private citizen in a financial hole manage 
 to settle ? By economy, by saving. If the 
 people ever expect to pay their public debts 
 they must practice thrift and return to the 
 old-fashioned rule of economy. If we 
 would escape being called a nation of 
 'spendthrifts' and * extravagant wasters' 
 we must restore to our vocabulary and our 
 practical activity the word 'economy.' 
 Let that word be written on the door of 
 every palace as well as of every more 
 humble abode. It is the key to industrial 
 content and financial safety. ' ' 1 
 
 6. Present-day patriotism must also be 
 intelligent. This fact has been too clearly 
 demonstrated to require word of confirma- 
 tion. But we must remember the fact! 
 * * The ultimate foundation of every State, ' ' 
 says Seeley, ' ' is a way of thinking. ' ' Sus- 
 picion and distrust within a nation lead to 
 division, suffering conditions, and often to 
 violence. And suspicion and distrust of 
 one another among nations usually lead to 
 war. For enduring peace among men and 
 nations there must be enlightenment, and 
 
 York Herald, editorial, Oct. 12, 1919.
 
 126 THE GREAT MENACE 
 
 the implanting in the minds of men right 
 ideas and principles as a foundation on 
 which to build the new social order of jus- 
 tice. 
 
 7. Present-day patriotism must also 
 stand for 1000 per cent pure Americanism. 
 There must be no divided allegiance. 
 This is not selfish. ''A house divided 
 against itself cannot stand. ' ' And only as 
 we make America strong, can it serve the 
 world. Insistence on absolute loyalty to 
 our country, however, must not prejudice 
 against naturalized citizens or citizens of 
 "foreign" descent. It is a glory of Amer- 
 ica that it has had welcome for people of 
 almost every tongue and land of the known 
 world, who have here lived and worked 
 harmoniously side by side, an example of 
 brotherhood and democracy to all human- 
 kind. But certain disloyal have been 
 found within our gate, and certain others 
 such as the bolshevists and syndicalists are 
 seeking to foment unrest and incite to vio- 
 lence. Either one stands for 1000 per cent 
 pure Americanism or one does not. Either 
 one is wholly for the stars and stripes or 
 one is not. Loyalty admits no compromise.
 
 THE NEW PATRIOTISM 127 
 
 Such, I believe, is the new patriotism. 
 It is not internationalism, not materialism, 
 not the favoritism of, OT rule by, a class. 
 The new patriotism first of all affirms the 
 principle of interdependence, which means 
 that our lives are mutually dependent, 
 bound up together. Second, it stands for 
 constructive liberalism, which works for 
 the common well-being and happiness of all 
 as opposed to reactionary policy or the 
 methods of bolshevism. Third, it stands 
 for merciful helpfulness when help is 
 needed and ought to be given. Fourth, it 
 affirms that truly loyal Americans in these 
 crucial post-war times must support and 
 promote the moral and spiritual life of the 
 nation. Fifth, it stands for economy, be- 
 lieving that one inescapable pathway to 
 improved economic conditions is self- 
 denial, saving, and thrift. Sixth, it de- 
 clares that present-day patriotism must be 
 intelligent ; and, lastly, the new patriotism 
 stands for 1000 per cent pure American- 
 ism, with undivided devotion to one flag 
 
 ' ' Flag of the free heart 's hope and home ! 
 Forever float that Standard Sheet !
 
 128 THE GREAT MENACE 
 
 Where breathes the foe but falls before us, 
 
 "With Freedom 's soil beneath our feet, 
 
 And Freedom 's banner streaming o 'er us ? " * 
 
 I have called this the new patriotism. In 
 the highest and truest sense it is also the 
 old patriotism, for it includes that which 
 is fundamental to American democracy, 
 and is the patriotism that will continue so 
 long as democracy endures. 
 
 i Joseph Rodman Drake, The American Flag.
 
 V 
 
 VITAL MESSAGES OF BELIGION FOB TO-DAY 
 
 WITH recent great world changes new ideas 
 have come rushing into the minds of men 
 like a loosened flood, looking to radical 
 changes even in the field of religious 
 thought and work. 
 
 When that returned Y worker, a clergy- 
 man, stood in an American pulpit, and de- 
 clared his hope that the whole program of 
 Church work and preaching would be 
 changed, what did he mean I I do not 
 know. I heard the remark, spoken with 
 intensity and evident sincerity. But along 
 with accompanying criticisms, I did not 
 hear a single constructive conclusion. Is 
 not this typical of much similar comment 
 on religion and the Church? positive, 
 helpful suggestion is wanting. Criticisms 
 have been so numerous that multitudes of 
 people are bewildered, and thousands are 
 asking: ''What has been the effect of 
 the war on the attitude of men toward 
 churches, creeds, and religion? What 
 
 129
 
 130 THE GREAT MENACE 
 
 messages are vital to the needs of the pres- 
 ent hour?" 
 
 Undoubtedly, this is a time when the 
 Church must take account of the things of 
 which men are thinking and of the new 
 world in which they are living, only so 
 can it gain "the point of contact" with 
 them. Undoubtedly, this is a time when 
 the religious teacher ought to bring "forth 
 out of his treasure things new and old," 
 only so can he speak to present needs. 
 Certain apparent facts light the way. 
 Our age in these post-war times is marked 
 by the resultant of a world cataclysm, 
 political changes and social upheavals. 
 How far the changes will go and their full 
 influence upon religion, no man can say. 
 But certain large characteristics of the 
 ethical and religious life of to-day and of 
 the attitude of the minds of men toward 
 religion have come into view, just as great 
 continents that once lifted themselves from 
 the seas "took form and content." Must 
 not these characteristics determine the em- 
 phasis in religious teaching, if the Church 
 is to fulfill its ministry to this age ? What 
 are those characteristics?
 
 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY 131 
 
 First of all, I believe we may affirm that 
 the people of to-day are thinking in the 
 terms of reality. Men in the trenches 
 have had to do with reality, with the hor- 
 rors of war and the ravages of death, and 
 some of the men have had to do with suffer- 
 ings seven-fold worse than death. Men in 
 the camps at home and abroad looked for- 
 ward to like experiences. In imagination 
 and in dedication they had literally given 
 their bodies to the cross of service and, if 
 need be, to the agonies of supreme sacri- 
 fice. They were part of a real war and 
 had to do with a real world. When in 
 Church, the Y hut, or religious service out 
 under the stars in battle torn fields or on 
 quiet hillsides beneath waving branches of 
 over-shadowing forests, they had heart 
 only for the realities of religion. Speak- 
 ers who unwittingly tried substitutes: 
 humorous stories, platitudes, vapid an- 
 ecdotes, or philosophy, could not obtain 
 hearing. Under such preaching, men 
 would withdraw from a service. On the 
 other hand, the story of the cross, the life 
 and teaching of Jesus of Nazareth, and 
 other great vital messages interested the
 
 132 THE GREAT MENACE 
 
 men and held their attention. Such is the 
 testimony that has come to me from scores 
 of sources in my effort to obtain first-hand 
 information on the results of religious 
 work in the war. 
 
 The experiences in religious war work 
 at home has been practically the same. 
 Mr. Bernard Iddings Bell has given valua- 
 ble data obtained by him when acting as 
 civilian aide to the Senior Chaplain at 
 Great Lakes Naval Training Station. For 
 a year of his time, he superintended all 
 chaplains' work in "Detention," where the 
 men spent the first three weeks of their 
 stay, and took a religion registration of 
 nearly every man who came in. Mr. Bell's 
 records show that he gave the chaplains' 
 instruction on religion and morals two 
 hundred and forty-seven times to groups 
 composed of eighty-one thousand men. 
 Mr. Bell "looked up" men of his own com- 
 munion, and too knew of the experiences 
 of other workers, pastors and chaplains, in 
 conversation with large numbers of men. 
 In speaking of this personal touch with 
 "our boys," Mr. Bell says: "It is inter- 
 esting to note what are some of the things
 
 RELIGION FOB TO-DAY 133 
 
 which they do not mention as alienating 
 young men [from Churches]. Rarely does 
 one hear that the ancient creeds are diffi- 
 cult to believe. Apparently the healthy, 
 simple man in the street shares little of the 
 intellectual doubtings of the musty browser 
 among books. Few cite the selfish inad- 
 equacy of a faith which bids men save 
 themselves from hell. That quaint and 
 fearsome Calvinistic motive, so bothersome 
 to Mr. Wells and Judge Lindsey, has, ap- 
 parently, save in a few rural neighbor- 
 hoods of the Southwest, never been pre- 
 sented to most young men of this genera- 
 tion. The disunity of Christendom bothers 
 almost no one. Partly with regret it must 
 be said that apparently the need for a re- 
 united Church is felt at present chiefly 
 by the clergy. Most of these young men 
 had no fault whatever to find with the 
 churches as such. All their criticism was 
 leveled at church members. They had a 
 notion that they did rather like Christian- 
 ity little as they know of it. ... They 
 were not irreligious. They were patheti- 
 cally ready for spiritual leadership. They 
 threw no bitter slurs at the faith that has
 
 134 THE GREAT MENACE 
 
 made saints and heroes of men like them 
 in the ages past. One could not help but 
 feel that many of them might become 
 simple and happy Christian men, and that 
 their younger brothers might never drift 
 away at all, if only Christians might with 
 penitence reconsecrate themselves, clergy- 
 men and people, to definite preaching of 
 the fundamental faith, social worship of an 
 objective Jesus, quiet fellowship in devo- 
 tion, humble seeking to live a Christlike 
 life, and unaffected utterance of the faith 
 that is in them." x 
 
 Testimony could be multiplied showing 
 that the men in the war, at home and 
 abroad, having to do with stern reality, 
 could, in the matter of religion, be inter- 
 ested only by the vital things of religion. 
 Their temper, I believe, is the temper of 
 the present age. A people who have been 
 in the throes of a world war, and who now 
 are undergoing consequent sufferings, and 
 who, often bewildered, are facing intricate 
 social and world problems, are not ready 
 to give hearing to philosophy of rational- 
 
 i Atlantic Monthly, September, 1919, pp. 402 ff.
 
 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY 135 
 
 ism or the philosophy of religion, much 
 less to the trappings of denominationalism. 
 It is not that the people believe or that 
 others of us believe that the millennium 
 was effected by the war or that hearts were 
 greatly purified thereby. The war may 
 have had a good spiritual effect on those 
 men who were " baptized with fire," which 
 seems to have been the impression of ob- 
 servers like Donald Hankey and Ian Hay. 
 But all testimony is that in the main our 
 boys remained essentially as they were. 
 However, the striking characteristic 
 brought to light is that this present age 
 which has had to do with grim, stern real- 
 ity will give hearing in matters of religion, 
 if at all, only to the real, vital things of 
 religion. Truth has chance for a hearing, 
 the truth that is fundamental and es- 
 sential to meeting the needs of the souls of 
 men, where they are and as they are. The 
 world is not large enough now even for re- 
 ligion and science to quarrel. 
 
 The lesson is of inestimable value. The 
 discussions of theology (which are not to 
 be despised), the affirming of a creed, or
 
 136 THE GREAT MENACE 
 
 the assertion that the Book of Jonah is his- 
 tory or that it is a parable will have no 
 more weight in reaching the people of the 
 present age than the one time discussion 
 of how many angels can dance on the end 
 of a needle or how many buttons ought to 
 be placed on an ecclesiastical garment. 
 The present age of reality can be reached 
 only by the vital messages of religion, in- 
 terpreted in terms of present life. If the 
 Book of Jonah has such a message and it 
 has why not give the message? declare its 
 truth, not waste time quibbling about the 
 vehicle of truth, be it history or parable. 
 I cite this illustration of the Book of 
 Jonah, as I believe the illustration sugges- 
 tive of the thinking of men and women 
 whose attitude is not that of indifference to 
 vital piety but rather impatience with other 
 than the vital things of Christianity. 
 Truth is fundamental. Truth is essential. 
 Truth is the great eternal changeless real- 
 ity, and bears its own ear marks. Truth 
 does not need to be labeled " theological, " 
 or "denominational." It can stand on its 
 own legs, and make its own way if not 
 clogged by platitudes and "vain repeti-
 
 EELIGION FOR TO-DAY 137 
 
 tions." Truth is power. "Ye shall know 
 the truth, and the truth shall make you 
 free." 1 
 
 Bigotry, dogmatism, denominationalism, 
 cannot feed the souls of men. If a man ask 
 bread, why give him a stone? This is no 
 wild outcry against creeds and denomina- 
 tions. Everybody has his creed of some 
 sort. The word credo, i BELIEVE, is 
 significant. Creeds, which are but the sys- 
 tematized statements of religious beliefs, 
 will doubtless have continued place in as- 
 sociations of religious people. And for 
 such groups denominations will have value 
 for convenience in worship and work. All 
 persons in going into a place of worship 
 prefer to know that they are going into one 
 place rather than into another: into a 
 ^Christian church, Mohammedan mosque, 
 or Jewish temple. But once there, they 
 can be influenced only by uplifting 
 worship and a vital spiritualizing service. 
 If that does not mean a "meeting" funda- 
 mentally dry, does it imply the sensational? 
 Believing that it does, certain speakers 
 have copied Eev. "Billy" Sunday's oddi- 
 
 i John VIII. 32.
 
 138 THE GREAT MENACE 
 
 ties: one leg gestures, grimaces, and ex- 
 travagant utterances, but so have copied 
 only the accidentals of Mr. Sunday, whose 
 power is his spirit and message. The 
 most sensational thing that certain speak- 
 ers could do, would be to say something, to 
 speak a message instead of platitudes, to 
 declare real things out of a real spiritual 
 experience instead of repeating fables and 
 insipid anecdotes. 
 
 The real message to the real world must 
 have, at least, flashes of inspiration : utter- 
 ances that come with freshness and force, 
 when hearers instinctively feel "Thus 
 saith the Lord." Inspiration is closed 
 only to the life that is closed to it. The 
 Christ said, "I have yet many things to 
 say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now. 
 Howbeit when he the Spirit of truth, is 
 come, he will guide you into all truth. ' ' * 
 Living on the high plane of religion-reality 
 where the voice of God is audible one will 
 have courage to be one's self, to trust one's 
 own thinking as enlightened by the Spirit 
 of truth, which, I believe, is the divine 
 method for a teacher in bringing "forth 
 
 i John XVI. 12-13.
 
 RELIGION FOE TO-DAY 139 
 
 out of his treasure things new and old." 
 So will one minister of the vital things of 
 religion to the people of the present age 
 who are thinking in the terms of reality. 
 It follows. I believe, that any man who 
 hopes that the whole preaching program of 
 the Church will be changed, overlooks the 
 fact that the fundamentals of the Christian 
 religion do not change ; overlooks that God 
 in the nature of His being and man in 
 the nature of his being remain the same. 
 
 We cannot conceive of God as other than 
 a " constant quantity" and a constant qual- 
 ity. * ' He is the same yesterday, to-day and 
 forever," 1 constant in His love, wisdom, 
 mercy and power. No man can think 
 otherwise ; nor would any one be satisfied 
 with a changeable Infinite Being, or pay 
 homage to Him as Creator, God over all. 
 
 Those persons who urge a complete 
 change in religious teaching must have 
 overlooked also that man is even yet body 
 and spirit; and too must have overlooked 
 the constancy of the constituent elements 
 of his spiritual nature, variously mentioned 
 as emotions, will, intellect, purpose, or 
 
 i Heb. XIII. 8.
 
 140 THE GREAT MENACE 
 
 again, by the words heart, soul, mind. 
 The terms or words are those of conveni- 
 ence to represent, the psychologist would 
 say, " different aspects of one substantive 
 entity." Of the facts of the inner spirit- 
 ual man: thought, desires, feelings, striv- 
 ings, and yearning to know God and to 
 come into right relations with God, we all 
 do know. The constituent spiritual ele- 
 ments, though varying in degree of de- 
 velopment, are characteristic of man, and 
 by them he is differentiated and rec- 
 ognized ; and these same spiritual elements 
 plainly show why "man is incurably re- 
 ligious," a statement that is substan- 
 tiated by observation, consciousness, and 
 experience. The great quest of men has 
 been to know God, to love and be loved by 
 Him, and to serve Him. And such will be 
 the endeavor of men in the future. True, 
 the finer, nobler part of one 's spiritual na- 
 ture, the attempt of the finite to hold com- 
 munion with the Infinite, may be dwarfed 
 through abuse or disuse by individuals, 
 groups, or generations, who may fall into 
 thick darkness like that of the tenth cen- 
 tury, yet the fact remains that man is man,
 
 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY 141 
 
 with a spiritual nature, spiritual needs, 
 and, at least at times, with yearnings for 
 God. Sin to men is not a theory, but a 
 fact ; and all who think cry out for redemp- 
 tion. The need, therefore, for certain vital 
 religious truths continues. 
 
 It may be a little old fashioned to speak 
 of "a world of sin," but men and nations 
 have had a new awakening to the import 
 of that fact. And the hope of the world is 
 not in the Church becoming worldly not 
 so can it "overcome the world" but a 
 spiritual ministry. Nothing can do the 
 work of religion but religion. If ever the 
 ideals and habits of people are to be spirit- 
 ualized, it must be by spiritual means. 
 Therefore, the supreme mission of the 
 Church is spiritual. With that mission 
 there ought to be ability and sufficient gen- 
 erosity to recognize the reality of religion 
 in men whose lives are religious, though 
 deterred by modesty or imposed ecclesiasti- 
 cal difficulty from acknowledging it. Dr. 
 Henry C. King, President of Oberlin Col- 
 lege, is credited with having said, "If we 
 take the witness of the life against the wit- 
 ness of the lips when the witness of the
 
 142 THE GREAT MENACE 
 
 life is wrong and the witness of the lips is 
 right, we ought to take the witness of the 
 life against the witness of the lips when the 
 witness of the life is right and the witness 
 of the lips is wrong. ' ' This is but another 
 way of saying that if we disregard a man 's 
 religious confession when he is living an 
 irreligious life, we ought to disregard a 
 man's failure of religious confession when 
 he is living a positively religious life. 
 Surely, much will have been gained when 
 in the spirit of the age emphasis is placed 
 on religious reality, as well as on the real- 
 ity of religion. 
 
 A second characteristic of the life of to- 
 day is a spirit of service. Our country was 
 united in war work. There was a passion 
 for service. All insisted on doing some- 
 thing. Aged men would knit, when with 
 but a spark of life they could do nothing 
 else. Children caught the enthusiasm and 
 saved pennies for liberty bonds and war 
 saving stamps. Canteens multiplied. 
 The Eed Cross reached out its hand of help 
 everywhere. Our noble women responded 
 to every need, giving of themselves, as fa- 
 thers and brothers gave of themselves
 
 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY 143 
 
 without stint. We all were thinking of 
 "our boys" in the war and of the im- 
 periled cause of democracy. All felt the 
 joy and saw the beauty of service. And 
 therein was disclosed the glory of Jesus, 
 who said, "I am among you as he that 
 serveth." * A church that does not serve, 
 that does not minister to the needs of the 
 present age, will have no vital touch with 
 its people, nor can it interpret the Christ 
 to their understanding. The ministry of 
 the Church must be to the whole-man: 
 body, mind and spirit ; and must look to the 
 betterment of his environment and make 
 secure his opportunities for self realiza- 
 tion and improvement. Therefore, its ef- 
 fort will be not alone to save drunkards, 
 paupers, and prostitutes, but as well to 
 abolish institutions of infamy and the 
 cruel conditions of living and of labor 
 that produce a helpless and degenerate 
 class. 
 
 Good things must be put in place of the 
 bad. Such work in cities is on its way. 
 The country has its needs. Fifty million 
 people in the United States, one half of its 
 
 iLuke XXII. 27.
 
 144 THE GREAT MENACE 
 
 population, live in communities of less than 
 2,500 inhabitants. 1 Preventable diseases 
 exact heavy toll in many country districts. 
 Churches through reasonable cooperation 
 with Red Cross workers could ultimately 
 effect hygienic and sanitary conditions that 
 would eliminate much suffering and largely 
 reduce rural mortality. 
 
 The merciful work of Juvenile Courts, 
 a county usually being the geographical 
 unit of a Court, for dependent, neglected, 
 and delinquent children, ought to be under- 
 stood and helped by all who love the little 
 child. And such work ought to be ad- 
 vocated and instituted in those States that 
 have not yet undertaken it. The Juvenile 
 Court laws of Maryland have been widely 
 commended and drawn upon as ideal laws. 
 
 Live people demand an occasional good 
 time. Here is opportunity for churches to 
 provide recreation that is re-creation. 
 The work can be started with a place for 
 meeting and planned entertainment, plac- 
 ing as large responsibility as possible on 
 various individuals. This is something 
 practical for keeping young people from 
 
 i M. Katherine Bennett, The Path of Labor, p. 4.
 
 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY 145 
 
 questionable places, companionships, and 
 amusements. Children should be simi- 
 larly provided for. To this end why not 
 utilize school-houses and school grounds? 
 
 There are many things that churches can 
 do in community service, yet in the face of 
 crying needs hundreds of country churches 
 are doing little or nothing. * ' Son of man, 
 can these bones live?" To be in harmony 
 with the spirit of the present age, churches 
 must preach the message and have the 
 spirit of service. 
 
 As a third characteristic of the times, I 
 would mention its high value of personal 
 worth of character. The world honors its 
 heroes. We bow in tribute before the 
 graves of our American sons in our own 
 home land, or where 
 
 "In Flanders fields the poppies grow 
 Between the crosses, row on row. ' ' 
 
 And our boys who have returned home, 
 we would crown with the immortelles of 
 gratitude and love. 
 
 There has gone out through all the land 
 a new appreciation of character. Some of 
 the boys may not be saints, but they have
 
 their opinions of a people who profess one 
 thing and do another. * * The people of the 
 world" have only contempt for a people 
 who do the things which they ought not to 
 do, and leave undone the things which they 
 ought to do. That sort of thing brings dis- 
 repute on the Church. To again quote 
 Mr. Bell, though "our boys" had the no- 
 tion that they did rather like Christianity, 
 "they were sure that they did not like 
 Christians at all. Their feeling came to 
 this in most cases that, if Christian peo- 
 ple would only endeavor to be Christians, 
 the ordinary young fellow would like noth- 
 ing better than to come along and try it 
 with them; and that, if Christians wanted 
 them to be interested, those Christians 
 might well stop criticizing the Church and 
 start criticizing themselves. ' ' * 
 
 If any fact is plain, it is that emphasis in 
 Christian teaching to-day must be on char- 
 acter rather than on ritual, on obedience to 
 moral law rather than on confession of a 
 creed. Not what a man professes or does 
 not profess, but rather what a man is at 
 heart, in "the purity of his private life, the 
 
 . 404.
 
 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY 147 
 
 justice and generosity of his relations with 
 his fellows, the quickness of his sympa- 
 thies, the sincerity of his convictions, the 
 integrity of his word and bond this is the 
 true test of religion. ' ' x And this must be 
 the reiterated message of the Church if it 
 is to strengthen its hold upon the people 
 of to-day who have learned to value men for 
 what they are. 
 
 A fourth characteristic of the present age 
 is a growing sense of brotherhood. We 
 are awakening to the fact that as a people 
 and as nations we are bound up together, 
 "and whether one member suffer, all the 
 members suffer with it; or one member 
 be honored, all the members rejoice with 
 it." 2 There is "one God and Father of 
 all, who is above all, and through all, and 
 in you all. ' ' 3 And God ' ' hath made of 
 one blood all nations of men for to dwell 
 on all the face of the earth. " 4 Is it pos- 
 sible for one great spiritual kinship to bind 
 together men and nations in the one great 
 family! Is it possible to see in every crea- 
 
 1 John Haynes Holmes, Religion for To-day, pp. 14-15. 
 
 2 I Cor. XII. 26. 
 s Eph. VI. 6. 
 
 * Acts XVII. 26.
 
 148 THE GREAT MENACE 
 
 ture, whatever his race or language, an ac- 
 credited child of this "one God and Fa- 
 ther of all"? Unless the Church believes 
 this, and works in the Spirit of it, then 
 verily the end of things draweth nigh. 
 
 Men will differ and be different, with 
 varying interests and varying ways of ex- 
 pressing what verily they believe. And 
 those ways constantly affirm or deny that 
 "one is your Master, even Christ, and all 
 ye are brethren. ' ' * Other men feel as we 
 feel, love as we love, hope as we hope, have 
 aspirations, failures, sins, yearnings after 
 God and the redeemed life, just like our- 
 selves. If some do not, then greater 
 should be our concern for "the one that is 
 lost." The welcome of the members of 
 a true church is to all, whom we hail as 
 kin, brothers, and comrades. Such is the 
 spirit that the Church must exemplify, if 
 it would win the people of to-day, who have 
 awakened to a growing sense of the bond 
 of brotherhood. 
 
 A fifth characteristic of the present age 
 is a deepening conviction of the necessity 
 of justice. The very havoc wrought by in- 
 
 i Matt. xxni. 8.
 
 BELIGION FOE TO-DAY 149 
 
 justice is making the world see with ever 
 more clearness that justice must prevail 
 or an orderly human society cannot endure. 
 And this the Church must declare, must 
 continually declare. In an atmosphere of 
 justice the Great Menace cannot live. 
 
 One more characteristic which may be 
 affirmed of the present age is a spirit of 
 tolerance. Many things suggest other- 
 wise. Intemperate speeches have been 
 made on temperance. The ' ' song of hate, ' ' 
 first sung in Germany, has been heard in 
 America. Protests of intolerance have 
 greeted the effort toward unity of the 
 Protestant Episcopal Church and other 
 Protestant churches in America. Such 
 phrases as "ecclesiastical Junkers," 
 "spiritual bastards," "the heel of an 
 Episcopal bishop," etc., are the amazing 
 utterances that have been heard. I am not 
 an Episcopalian, and, therefore, cannot be 
 charged with prejudice when I say that the 
 men who have used such language would 
 find stinging rebuke in observing the spirit 
 of the men who fought our war. Not of 
 them was the song of hate ; that is or was 
 the song of the Hun. Not of them is
 
 150 THE GREAT MENACE 
 
 the calumny of one's own who happens to 
 differ in the formal expression of what 
 fundamentally we all believe. English sol- 
 diers repaired a shell torn German ceme- 
 tery. On a cross in that cemetery the 
 English soldiers lettered the words: 
 * ' Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive 
 those who trespass against us. ' ' A French 
 officer said to Rev. Dr. Crane of Boston 
 when in France on war work "Unless we 
 are fighting for International spirit 
 ( brotherhood ) , let 's quit. ' ' Cardinal Mer- 
 cier of Belgium who remained by his 
 suffering countrymen, sheltering, comfort- 
 ing and helping them, had reason, if any 
 one had, for feelings of intolerance and 
 hate. His simple narration of the things 
 that were done under German occupancy, 
 is an awful, damning indictment of Ger- 
 man rule. He had seen his churches de- 
 stroyed, the University of Louvain burned, 
 his country ravaged, its people outraged, 
 his priests shot; and he himself was im- 
 prisoned for days and threatened with 
 death. Yet Cardinal Mercier, though 
 bearing unspeakable sufferings with and 
 for his people, said, "Whatever may be our
 
 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY 151 
 
 sufferings, we must not show hatred to- 
 ward those who have inflicted them." 
 
 A like chivalrous spirit is characteristic 
 of our boys who passed through the fires of 
 combat. It is not that they condone 
 wrong. They hate, as do all of us, the 
 atrocities, cruelties, and all things repre- 
 hensible practiced by the Germans and 
 other enemy powers. Yet, our men who 
 fought the hardest and suffered the most 
 have returned with charity in their hearts 
 and with no words of hate upon their lips. 
 That fine virile example, as every standard 
 of ethics known to man, confirms the prin- 
 ciple that man has no right to harbor 
 hatred toward any man, however great an 
 offender. If people at large have not said 
 this, they have felt this and have largely 
 lived it. Expression of intolerance or 
 spirit of hatred is coup sur sporadic. 
 
 When our country went to war, people 
 at once began to work together and to pull 
 together. As time went on the spirit of 
 oneness in heart and purpose deepened. 
 So too in the army and navy. Gentile and 
 Jew, learned and unlearned, the rich and 
 not-rich, were together in camp and trench,
 
 152 THE GREAT MENACE 
 
 Soldiers, sailors, marines, and civilians 
 felt the bond of spiritual kinship, we were 
 Americans ! Then, any mention of differ- 
 ences in creed or church was simply un- 
 thinkable! The religion of intolerance 
 was dead, and is dead now. Some men are 
 slow in taking this in, slow to respect 
 others' opinions and ways; and are cor- 
 respondingly free to hurl anathemas upon 
 persons with whom they do not agree. 
 What else can we expect when certain 
 mountain and rural sections of our coun- 
 try are filled with ' ' ministers ' ' who cannot 
 read, who do not travel, and who know lit- 
 tle of the war or of the times, and whose 
 conception of religion is the ism of an in- 
 stitution. How can such ''ministers" in- 
 fluence returning soldiers who have been 
 touched by a tolerant spirit, and who have 
 had glimpses of the vital things of a spirit- 
 ual religion? In parentheses, I would re- 
 mark that the great need of the mountains 
 and certain other rural sections is religious 
 education. As for now, we will take heart 
 because of the spirit of tolerance in the 
 present age. We will hail one another 
 as comrades and brothers, whose work is
 
 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY 153 
 
 one: for the kingdom of God; and whose 
 hope is one in this "one God." 
 
 Such, I believe, are the great character- 
 istics of the present age : first, its thinking 
 in the terms of reality, and demanding, 
 therefore, the vital realities of religion; 
 second, a spirit of service, requiring for 
 harmony therewith a ministering message 
 and work; third, a high value of personal 
 worth or character, calling for emphasis on 
 "truth in the inward parts"; fourth, a 
 growing sense of brotherhood, which spirit 
 religious people and people if decent 
 must exemplify; fifth, a deepening convic- 
 tion of the necessity of justice, which we 
 must continue to declare; and, sixth, a 
 spirit of tolerance that has deepened into 
 a bond of kinship, which opens the way for 
 the Church to speak in like spirit to the 
 very soul of the present age.
 
 APPENDIX 
 A CITIZEN'S WORKING CREED 
 
 1. I believe in the Constitution of the United 
 States; and pledge loyalty to it. 
 
 2. I believe in my country's flag and all that 
 it symbolizes of home and love, freedom and 
 patriotism, opportunity and fraternity, honor 
 and justice; and will defend it as strongly as I 
 can against enemies at home and abroad. 
 
 3. I believe in law and order; and will seek 
 to effect social or economic changes, and promote 
 the common welfare only in harmony with the 
 orderly processes of law. 
 
 4. I believe in Government of, for and by 
 the people; and will oppose the effort of labor, 
 capital, or any other class for the domination 
 of the people. 
 
 5. I believe in man's "unalienable rights of 
 life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" ; and I 
 will firmly oppose all revolutionary movements 
 such as Bolshevism, Syndicalism, I. W. W-ism 
 or any other movement that would impair those 
 rights or otherwise subvert the Constitution of 
 the United States.
 
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