A SQUARE DEAL FOR ALL AMERICANS
April 27, 1918
There is no room in this country for the man who tries to be both an American and something else. There can be no such thing as a fifty-fifty loyalty between America and Germany. Either a man is whole-hearted in his support of America and her allies, and in his hostility to Germany and her allies, or he is not loyal to America at all. In such case he should be at once interned or sent out of the country. But if he is whole-hearted in his loyal support of America, then no matter what his birthplace or parentage he is entitled to stand on a full and exact equality with every other American.
Therefore the obligation is twofold, and one side is just as important as the other. Every American of German birth or parentage must act as an American and nothing else, and if he does not so act he should be treated as an alien enemy. But if he acts exactly as other good Americans act, then it is a shame and a disgrace not to treat him absolutely like these other good Americans. The immense majority of Americans who are in whole or in part of German blood are as stanch Americans as are to be found in the land. They are serving in our armies precisely as other Americans serve. They are exactly as fit as any other American to fill the highest positions anywhere in our armies or in civil life. Any discrimination against them, active or passive, military or political, social or industrial, is an intolerable outrage. Moreover, such a discrimination is itself profoundly anti-American in its effects, for it not only cruelly wounds brave and upright and loyal Americans, but tends to drive them back into segregation, away from the mass of American citizenship.
America is a Nation and not a mosaic of nationalities. The various nationalities that come here are not to remain separate, but to blend into the one American nationality—the nationality of Washington and Lincoln, of Muhlenberg and Sheridan. Therefore, we must have but one language, the English language. Every immigrant who comes here should be required within five years to learn English or to leave the country, for hereafter every immigrant should be treated as a future fellow citizen and not merely as a labor unit. English should be the only language taught or used in the primary schools. We should provide by law so that after a reasonable interval every newspaper in this country should be published in English.
A square deal for all Americans means relentless attack on all men in this country who are not straight-out Americans and nothing else. It just as emphatically means to stand by every good American of German blood exactly as much as by every other good American. In every loyalty organization a special effort should be made to see that in the leadership and in the ranks the Americans of German blood come in on precisely the same basis as every one else. And the straight-out Americans, in whole or in part of German blood, should themselves insist on this, not as a favor which they request, but as a right which they demand, a right predicated on their fervid and militant Americanism. I wish we could see such an organization formed, an uncompromisingly straight-out American organization, including Americans of all our different blood strains, but with as large a proportion of Americans in whole or in part of German blood as possible, and then let this organization take the lead in aggressively loyal Americanism, in the demand to fight this war with all speed and efficiency, until it is crowned by the peace of complete victory and in the purpose to make this peace mark the glorious rebirth, the purification and the giant growth of the American spirit—the spirit of an intense and unified American nationalism.
We Americans must be loyal first to our own Nation and to our own national ideals, and we must develop to the utmost the virile hardihood of body, mind, and soul without which there can be no real greatness. And our devotion to America shall in part show itself in the unswerving effort to make this great democratic Republic both strong for self-defense and strong for wise and brotherly help to other nations, to make it both the leader and the servant of all mankind.
THE GERMAN HORROR
May 2, 1918
The Hague conferences laid down a number of rules which the signatory powers, including Germany, agreed to observe in order to mitigate the horrors of war. Germany has with equal cynicism and brutality violated every one of these rules. She has waged war as it was waged in the Dark Ages. She has shown revolting cruelty toward soldiers and especially toward non-combatants, including women and children.