We must now help the army as a whole by straining every nerve without a day’s delay immensely to increase our strength, our numbers, and our resources at the front. We should provide now, and as a matter of fact we ought to have provided six months ago, for an army of six or seven million men, so that when next spring opens we may have at least four million fighting men at the front. We are more populous than Germany, or France and Great Britain combined, and we should provide so that two years after we entered the war our army shall be as large as Germany’s or as the combined forces of our allies in France. We should speed to the limit the work of the ships, guns, and airplanes. At present our army is in France mainly because of the aid of British ships, and it is able to fight mainly because of the field cannon and even airplanes it has received from the French. The draft limit should be immensely increased and the exceptions immensely decreased.
To stand by the army is to stand by the Nation, and therefore to stand by the Allies to whom our national faith is plighted. This war will be won by the fighting men at the front. All other work is merely auxiliary and is entirely subordinate to theirs. Let us provide for the army instantly, and let us provide for the Nation’s future permanently by at once introducing the policy of universal obligatory military training for all our young men.
The fighting men at the front are the men most worthy of honor. Let every American lad hereafter be trained so that in time of need he can fill this most honorable of all positions.
SOUND NATIONALISM AND SOUND INTERNATIONALISM
August 4, 1918
The glorious victory of the Allies in the second battle of the Marne, a victory in which the hard-fighting soldiers of the American army have borne so distinguished and honorable a part, may mean the failure of the German military offensive for this year. Therefore it may mean a renewal of the German peace offensive. No man can prophesy in these matters, but the Germans may continue the war for a long time; and therefore we should prepare to have in France an army of four million fighting men for the battle front next spring. But the Germans may try to make peace instead of continuing the war, and may seek to cover their retention of some of their ill-gotten substantial gains by nominal and theoretical support of some glittering proposal about a league of nations to end all war. They will thereby hope to keep part of their booty by appealing to what is vaguely called internationalism and getting the support not only of sentimentalists who do not like to look unpleasant facts in the face, but also of the good people who are appalled and puzzled and panic-struck by the horror Germany has brought on the world, and who, instead of bracing themselves to put down this horror by their own hardened strength and iron will, clutch at any quack remedy which false prophets hold out as offering a substitute for such action.
Therefore it is well at this time for sober and resolute men and women to apply that excellent variety of wisdom colloquially known as “horse sense” to the problems of nationalism and internationalism. These problems will not be solved by rhetoric. Least of all will they be solved by competitive rhetoric. Masters of phrase-making may win immense, although evanescent, applause by outvying one another in words that glitter, but these glittering words will not have one shred of lasting effect on the outcome except in so far as they may have a very mischievous effect if they persuade people to abandon the possible real good in the fantastic effort to achieve an impossible, unreal perfection. Let honest men and women remember that this kind of phrase-mongering does not represent idealism. The only idealism worth considering in the workaday business of this world is applied idealism. This is merely another way of saying that permanent good to humanity only comes from actually trying to reduce ideals to practice, and this means that the ideals must be substantially or at least measurably realizable.
The professed internationalist usually sneers at nationalism, at patriotism, and at what we call Americanism. He bids us forswear our love of country in the name of love of the world at large. We nationalists answer that he has begun at the wrong end; we say that as the world now is, it is only the man who ardently loves his country first who in actual practice can help any other country at all. The internationalist bids us promise to abandon the idea of keeping America permanently ready to defend her rights by her strength, and to trust, instead, to scraps of paper, to written agreements by which all nations form a league, and agree to disarm and agree each to treat all other nations, big or little, on an exact equality. We nationalists answer that we are ready to join any league to enforce peace or similar organization which offers a likelihood of in some measure lessening the number and the area of future wars, but only on condition that in the first place we do not promise what will not or ought not to be performed, or be guilty of proclaiming a sham, and that in the second place we do not surrender our right and duty to prepare our own strength for our own defense instead of trusting to the above-mentioned scraps of paper. In justification we point to certain very obvious facts which ought to be patent to every man of common sense.
Any such league of nations must, of course, include the nine nations which have the greatest military strength or it will be utterly impotent. These nine nations include Germany, Austria, Turkey, and Russia. The first three have abundantly shown during the last four years that no written or other promise of the most binding kind has even the slightest effect upon their actions. The fourth, Russia, under the lead and dominion of the Bolsheviki, has just been guilty of the grossest possible betrayal of her allies and of the small kindred Slavonic peoples and of world democracy. This betrayal was in the interest of a military and despotic autocracy and included the direct violation of Russia’s plighted faith. Under such conditions it is unnecessary to say that Russia’s signature to any future league to enforce peace will not be worth the paper on which it is written. Therefore the creation of any such league for the future will simply mean a pledge by the present Allies to make their alliance perpetual and all to go to war again whenever one of them is attacked. This may become necessary, but it certainly does not imply future disarmament.
Nor is this all. The United States must come into court with clean hands. She must not pledge herself without reservation to the right of “self-determination” for each people while she has behaved toward Haiti and San Domingo as she is now behaving. It is not possible for me to say whether our action in these two cases has been right or wrong, because the Administration, with its usual horror of publicity, whether pitiless or otherwise, and its inveterate predilection for secret and furtive diplomacy, has kept most of the facts hidden. I believe that there was no possible excuse for such secret diplomacy in these cases and that the same course should have been followed as was followed in the case of the Panama revolution, where every fact was immediately laid without reservation before Congress. But even if I am wrong in my belief in the general principle of open diplomacy, and even if the Administration is right in its consistent policy of secret diplomacy as regards the mass of questions which I think ought to be made public, the fact remains that we have with armed force invaded, made war upon, and conquered the two small republics, have upset their governments, have denied them the right of self-determination, and have made democracy within their limits not merely unsafe but non-existent. As we have no published facts to go on, I cannot say whether their misconduct did or did not warrant such drastic action on our part, but on the assumption that the Administration acted properly, we are committed to the principle that some nations are not fit for self-determination, that democracy within their limits is a sham, and that their offenses against justice and right are such as to render interference by their more powerful and more civilized neighbors imperative. I do not doubt that this principle is true in some cases, whether or not it ought to be applied in these two particular cases. In any event, our continuing action in San Domingo and Haiti makes it hypocritical for us to lay down any universal rules about self-determination for all nations.