LET US HAVE STRAIGHTFORWARD SPEAKING
December 24, 1918
Senator Lodge in his admirable speech has given the reasons why at least five of the famous fourteen points should not be considered in the peace negotiations proper. But the special merit of Senator Lodge’s statement lies in the fact that it is straightforward and clear. There is no need of a key to find out what he means. The men who represent, or assume to represent, the United States at the Peace Conference, should be equally clear with our allies and our enemies and also with the American people. Above all things we need some straightforward statement as to just what is proposed and as to just why it is proposed.
Take, for example, the very extraordinary conflict between that one of the fourteen points in which the Administration has demanded practically complete disarmament and the action of the Administration at the same moment demanding that we shall build the biggest navy in the world. Either one course or the other must necessarily be improper. In such a matter we especially need a straightforward statement of reasons and principles.
The worst thing we could do would be to build a spite navy, a navy built not to meet our own needs, but to spite some one else. I am speaking purely as an American. No man in this country who is both intelligent or informed has the slightest fear that Great Britain will ever invade us or try to go to war with us. The British navy is not in the slightest degree a menace to us. I can go a little further than this. There is in Great Britain a large pacifist and defeatist party which behaves exactly like our own pacifists, pro-Germans, Germanized Socialists, defeatists, and Bolsheviki. If this party had its way and Great Britain abandoned its fleet, I should feel, so far from the United States being freed from the necessity of building up a fleet, that it behooved us to build a much stronger one than is at present necessary. Our need is not as great as that of the vast scattered British Empire, for our domains are pretty much in a ring fence. We ought not to undertake the task of policing Europe, Asia, and Northern Africa. Neither ought we to permit any interference with the Monroe Doctrine or any attempt by Europe or Asia to police America. Mexico is our Balkan Peninsula. Some day we will have to deal with it. All the coasts and islands which in any way approach the Panama Canal must be dealt with by this Nation, and by this Nation alone, in accordance with the Monroe Doctrine. With this object in view our navy should be second to that of Great Britain and superior to that of any other power—and if Great Britain chooses to abolish its navy it would mean that we ought to build a larger navy than is now necessary.
A SQUARE DEAL FOR THE MEN AT THE FRONT
December 25, 1918
We should show our respect for the men at the front by more than mere adulation. They are the Americans who have done most and suffered most for this country. It was announced in the press that in many cases they and the families they have left behind have not for months received their full pay. This is an outrage. All civil officials are paid. The Secretary of War is paid, and he ought not to touch a dollar of his salary and no high official should touch a dollar of his salary until the enlisted men and junior officers are paid every cent that is owing to them, and this payment should be prompt. There is literally no excuse for even so much as three days’ delay in the payment.
Moreover, these men, at great cost to themselves in paying everything including, in fifty or sixty thousand cases, their lives, have gone to the front at a wage from one half to one fifth as great as that their companions who stayed behind have received during the same period. They enlisted to do a specific job. They made the sacrifice in order to do that job. We on our side should see that just as soon as the job is done the men are taken home, allowed to leave the army, and begin earning their livelihood and take care of the wives and children that the married ones among them have left behind.
Recently in the public press there have appeared various artless and chatty statements from the State, War, and Navy departments that our men might be kept in Europe to do general police work and might not be brought back here until the summer of 1920. There are three types of soldiers on the other side. There are the Regular Army men, who have entered the Regular Army as a profession, and to whom it is a matter of indifference whether they stay in Europe, come back here, go to the Philippines, or do anything else. That is a small proportion of our force on the other side. The bulk are divided between volunteers, who enlisted in the National Guard or sometimes in the regular regiments to fight this war through, and the drafted men who were put into the army under a law designed to meet this war and this war only. Not one in ten of the volunteers would have dreamed of volunteering to do police work in European squabbles. Not ten Congressmen would have voted for the Draft Law if it was to force selective men to do police duty after the war was over. All these men went in to fight this war through to a finish and then to come home. It is not a square deal to follow any other course as regards them. The minute that peace comes every American soldier on the other side should be brought home as speedily as possible save, of course, the regulars who make the Regular Army their life profession, and any other man who chose to volunteer to go over, or who can with entire propriety be used for gathering up the loose ends. The American fighting man at the front has given this country a square deal during the war. Now let the country give him a square deal by letting him get out of the army and go to his home as soon as the war is finished. The Red Cross has done wonderful work in taking care of the dependents of these men pending settlement by the Government, but the Government should not be content to rely on any outside organization to make up its own shortcomings.