OUR DUTY FOR THE NEW YEAR
January 1, 1918
In the papers there recently appeared a brief statement made by an unnamed young American major to his troops in the trenches in France. He said:
We have reached the top in training. If you need anything, come and tell me and I will get it for you if I can. If I do not get it, I do not want to hear about it again, for it means that I cannot get it. We will have three meals a day if we can get them. If we have to miss one meal, we will not be badly off, and if we miss two or three, it will not be much worse. We are expected to work from midnight of one day to midnight of the next day. If there is any chance to sleep between, all right. It will also be all right if there is no chance. Let everybody pitch in. While mud and water must be fought, it may be much worse. The hopes of the Nation are fixed on each man.
The ideal of duty thus set before our soldiers, before the Americans who at this time risk most and suffer most, is substantially the ideal of duty toward which all of the rest of us here in America should, in our turn, likewise strive. We must brace ourselves for effort and for endurance through a hard and dangerous year. High of heart and with unfaltering soul, we must do our part in the grim work of toiling and fighting to bring a little nearer the day when there shall be orderly liberty throughout the world and when justice and mercy and brotherly love shall obtain between man and man and among all the nations of mankind. We must show our faith by our works. We must prove our truth by our endeavor. We must scorn the baseness which uses high-sounding speech to cloak ignoble action and which seems to betray suffering right with the Judas kiss of the treacherous peace.
During the year that is opening we at home will suffer discomfort and privation and wearing anxiety. What of it? What we at home endure will be as nothing compared to that which is faced by the sons and brothers, by the husbands and fathers at the front, and what the fighting men of to-day face and bear will be no harder than what was faced and borne by Washington’s troops at Valley Forge and Trenton and by the soldiers of Grant and Lee when they wrestled in the Wilderness. We inherit as free men this fair and mighty land only because our fathers and forefathers had iron in their blood. We can leave our heritage undiminished to those who come after us only if we in our turn show a resolute and rugged manliness in the dark days of trial that have come upon us.
Let us all individually and collectively do our whole duty with brave hearts. Let us pay our taxes, subscribe to the government loans, work at our several tasks with all our strength, support all the agencies which take care of our troops, and accept the stinting in fuel or food as part of the price we pay. Let our prime care be the welfare and warlike efficiency of the men at the front and in the training camps. Let us hold to sharp account every public servant who in any way comes short of his duty in this respect. But let us also insist that the soldiers at the front and in the camps treat every shortcoming merely as an obstacle to be overcome or remedied or offset by their own energy and courage and resourcefulness. The one absolute essential for our people is to insist that this war be seen through at no matter what cost until it is crowned with the peace of overwhelming victory for the right.