Because England has been fighting our battle for two and a half years, we are now not only fighting our own battle, but trying to repay in part our immeasurable debt to the motherland. Great Britain has been the mother of many republics; all the harvest of our liberty came from seed corn gathered in England's harvest fields. Among Pilgrim Fathers who founded New England were men educated in Cambridge. We had our revolt against the autocracy of George the Third from the inspirations of Oliver Cromwell, John Pym and John Hampden. Boston owes a great debt to Sir Harry Vane, whose statue stands at the entrance of her Public Library. We borrowed our freedom of the press from John Milton's noble argument. Our Declaration and our Constitution are nothing other than the restatement, in legal form, of the noble visions that pursued the soul of John Milton all his life long.
And now that England is steadily winning and gaining six battles and attacks out of seven, during the fourth year of the war, the time has come for the American people and government to ask themselves this question,—Shall we not do in the first year of our war the things that England did in the third year and the fourth?—thus assuring our winning six times out of seven. At the beginning of this war, Britain's ammunition was provided by three government factories and a few auxiliary firms. "The first 100,000 men," sneered at by the Kaiser as "Kitchener's contemptible little army," were pounded by fifty German shells for every one shell with which they could reply. Now England has over 5,000 factories turning out munitions. Her capacity for producing high explosives in October, 1917, was twenty-five times as great as in the autumn of 1915, while the expense is one-third. She is now producing 25,000 tons of projectiles every week, and each new arsenal factory is built with the thought of turning them over to productive industrial companies when the war is over. Her cannons are roaring upon every front in Europe, as well as in the Balkans, in Palestine, in Persia and in Africa.
She now has 400,000 automobile trucks, or lorries, in France and Belgium, and will turn out 20,000 airplanes during the next year. Her fleet has increased from 136,000 sailors to 400,000; and at last, thanks to the deep-sea bomb, for every slow and old ship Germany sinks, she has to lose a far more costly submarine. To-day England has 4,000,000 men on six fronts and three continents. She has not simply mobilized her army, but mobilized the entire nation, and is only beginning to exert her full power.
The lesson for us, from England's experience, is this: that every factory in the United States, now turning out luxuries, should be taken over by the government to turn out munitions; that every loom and lathe, forge and hammer, every mine and forest and shipyard should be dedicated to this one task—of winning this war for humanity and liberty. History will doubtless say that during the first two and a half years of this war America was like the priest and the Levite who passed by on the other side, leaving Belgium like the wounded man lying among thieves, while England was the Good Samaritan, glorious forever through her service, self-sacrifice and loyalty to her written pledges. We owe Great Britain and her colonies a debt of service because she placed her army and her navy between us and our enemy and preserved us. When, therefore, an occasional pro-German, who does not dare defend the Kaiser, stands on the street, and in his harangue vilifies Great Britain, we should remember that the Allied cause has three armies, Haig's, Petain's and Pershing's. Whoever vilifies one of the hosts is the enemy of all three. When General Grant found one of his aids chuckling over the news of a defeat of Sheridan, Grant court-martialed the man, found him guilty, shot him at daybreak,—an example to be commended with reference to any man who vilifies Great Britain or France with his lips or pen. In this crisis there are no German-Americans,—there are only Americans and traitors. The first duty of our government is to defend our transports, our soldiers and sailors, from all spies, American with their lips, but with hearts full of hatred for our Allies and our country.
We Are Also Fighting to Pay Our Debt to France
Fighting to protect the institutions of our fathers and to safeguard democracy for our children, we are also fighting to expel invaders from France, as once France helped Washington expel thousands of German invaders from America. How black the sin of ingratitude! What if some youth, poor and obscure, coming up to the great city to make his fortune, should gain his opportunity to climb at the hands of some noble merchant. And what if this benefactor, taking the orphan into his home, shares his treasure with the youth, builds manhood in the poor boy, opens to him the door to fortune and to fame. And what if, when the poor boy finally has a mansion of his own, with wealth, and honours, news should come that his now aged benefactor has fallen on evil days and been attacked by cruel enemies. Can any crime be blacker than for this strong man to send word to the one upon whose shoulders he had climbed up to place, saying, "I do not wish to enter into any entangling alliances with you in your distress, for I have learned neither to borrow nor to lend"?
In 1781 France, a kingdom rich and powerful, found the handful of American colonists in the condition of a boy, poor, friendless, obscure, and threatened by a powerful enemy. Washington had no money, no guns, no powder, no shoes for his soldiers in the winter. At the moment when our fortunes were at the lowest ebb, France sent us her greatest admiral, with a fleet of two battle-ships, three destroyers, thirty-eight transports, and seven thousand soldiers, with muskets, powder, shot, shoes, clothing and medical supplies. She sent us Lafayette, heir to rich estates, with one of the largest private incomes in Europe, who, with his fellow officers, joined the troops of Washington. He saw his Frenchmen fall side by side with the troops of Washington. When at length Cornwallis surrendered his sword to the Commander of our army, Lafayette shared in the ceremony. What treasure of lives and fortune France lavished upon this republic more than one hundred years ago! We owe France our generals, our admirals, our soldiers and sailors, our munitions, our physicians, our nurses, our admiration, our love, our lives and our sacred honour.
The World's Love for France
If Germany is the best hated nation in the world, so France is the most dearly loved country. From France we have our painting at the hands of her artists, from France we have our sculpture at the hands of Rodin. From France we have fine literature and music; from France we have the beautiful, organized into the clothes the people wear. But above all, France has given us the enduring things of the spirit. The whole history of heroism holds nothing finer than the tales of French soldiers struggling unto blood and death to secure happiness and liberty for others. Where will you find a more glorious sentiment than this, that fell from the lips of the poilu in the trenches,—"We sleep in mud, we bathe in blood, but our souls, they dwell among the stars." Here is that young French girl, going to the station, the Garde du Nord, to meet her wounded husband, who had never seen his new-born babe. But the young fellow died while they lifted him out of the car. Putting the little babe down to the cheek that was becoming cold, the girl lifted her eyes unto God, and with streaming eyes exclaimed, "I am only his wife! France is his mother!" And here is that poilu home for his eight days' rest, who saw the broken-down hearse, with a poor little woman hidden under crêpe, marching as the sole mourner; the soldier sprang up, rushed to the hearse, saw a crippled comrade who had been killed at the battle of the Somme, and turned to bid all the men and women on the sidewalk fall into line, because a soldier of France was sleeping, and all Frenchmen were his lovers, and who carried the poor man in triumphal procession in the midst of sorrowing hundreds to his final resting place. The French have added a new chapter to the history of heroism. The Hun will never conquer France. Should a time ever come when the butchers have killed all save one French boy and girl, when the weapon is lifted against them, they will stand against the wall of the Pyrenees, and the last Frenchman might die, but he will never be conquered by the Huns.