LET UNCLE SAM GET INTO THE GAME
February 5, 1918
No one can tell how long this war will last. It may last three years more, and we should prepare accordingly. But it may close this year, and it is unpardonable of us not to act with such speed as to make our help available in substantial form at once. Uncle Sam must not be put in the position of the sub, who only gets into the game just before the whistle blows. Above all, he must not so act as to rouse suspicion that this attitude is due to deliberate shirking on his part.
The prime aid in getting Uncle Sam into the game has come from the men who, in order to achieve this object, have truthfully set forth the unpleasant facts about our delay, military inefficiency, and total unpreparedness. The critics of these men have been either unwise or insincere. The most fatuous form of objection to such truth-telling is the assertion that it tends to prolong the war. It is the only thing that will shorten the war. Suppression of the truth as the habitual governmental policy has been successful in preventing our people from realizing our mistakes and even more successful in preventing their remedy.
An excellent example of this policy of falsehood is furnished in a letter from a news agency offering to various newspapers cartoons assailing me because I had “criticized our unpreparedness and urged an immediate movement toward universal obligatory military training,” the cartoonist saying that I had said that I had seen artillerymen drilling with “wooden guns made from pieces of telegraph poles.” The writer admitted this, but stated that “these wooden imitations were as efficient for the purposes of learning as the real guns.” I suppose that this particular Champion of military inefficiency would believe that a rifle team could train for a championship match with dummy rifles of wood.
Every important criticism made of our military unpreparedness and inefficiency during the past six months, and indeed during the preceding three years, has been proved true and in no case has there been correction of the abuse until it was exposed. General Pershing has just written home a scathing indictment of the military shortcomings of our higher officers abroad. This is after we have been at war a year, and it is directly due to the character of both the civilian and the military control that has been exercised from the swivel chairs of the War Department during this year.
Our duty is solely to the country and to every official high or low precisely to the extent to which he loyally, disinterestedly, and efficiently serves the country. Let us get behind the United States. Let us think only of our patriotic duty. I care not a rap for politics at such a time as this. I supported Senator Chamberlain, my political and to some extent my personal opponent in the past, because on the great issue now up he served the country. I supported General Crowder, of whose politics I know nothing and care less, because he served the country. Stand behind America.