The autocracy always hope to divide us, to make of us a Russia, torn by Maximalists and Minimalists, by Militarists and Bolsheviki and, consequently, impotent for war.
In travelling through the United States in August and September of 1917, although I was on private business, I made speeches in many cities, such as Minneapolis, and Helena, Billings, Butte and Missoula in Montana, Spokane, Seattle and Tacoma in Washington, Portland, Oregon, San Francisco and surrounding country, Los Angeles, San Diego and Pasadena and then Milwaukee, Chicago and Cleveland. In all this territory I found great enthusiasm, great patriotism and a sincere desire to learn about Germany and the war. But I found everywhere also the trail of Germany's poisonous propaganda.
The great majority of our citizens of German-American descent have been splendidly loyal to their country in this crisis of its history. But the fact must be faced that there are those who, for some unknown reason, still sympathise with the German Kaiser in his war of aggression.
More unfortunately there are politicians in America who seek the votes of those disaffected, and approach treason in doing so. In all the history of sordid politics, there is nothing more nauseating than the effort of these cheap politicians thus to gratify their personal ambitions.
Their shameful identity is known to all. A generation from now their own descendants will be applying to the courts for a change of name.
If, when the test comes, it is found that the votes of these disaffected citizens count for something in our elections, we must find some means to disenfranchise them rather than have our low politicians outbidding each other within the law in order to get these votes.
Have we not had examples enough from Russia of what the slimy bribe and the snaky propaganda can do?
In Chicago, where one Thompson is Mayor, there is a censorship of moving picture films. The chief censor is Major Funkhouser. When I was in Los Angeles, at the end of September, like all strangers there, I visited movie-land to see the pictures made.
At the house of my college chum, Dr. Walter J. Barlow, I met the beautiful and celebrated Mary Pickford.
In conversation she told me about Major Funkhouser, and how he had refused an exhibition permit for one of her films called "The Little American." Curious to see the film rejected by Chicago officialdom, I asked Miss Pickford if she would have it run off for my benefit. I could see nothing in the film that could hurt the susceptibilities of any except the Germans with whom we are now engaged in war!