If a nation is to exist at all, certain basic principles and forms of procedure must be generally accepted by all its citizens. As regards these essential things we cannot afford to differ at all and yet try to live side by side. In English-speaking countries, for instance, we must needs all accept and support the constitutional bill of rights. Without freedom of speech, of the press and religious worship, to mention three of the more important guaranteed constitutional rights, any English-speaking country would very quickly find itself in the throes of revolution and civil war. We must agree, also, to be subject to the same general principles of morality. If a citizen argues, for instance, that the crimes of robbery and murder are sound and correct modes of political procedure, he thereby rejects his citizenship. We must all agree to live peaceably and lawfully under the same constitutional and legal system. Finally, to attain national unity and national peace we must not only accept, but unitedly support, with affection and enthusiasm, the prevailing system of law and social order. That great poet of democracy, Walt Whitman, expresses this thought so exquisitely:
"To hold men together by paper and seal, or by compulsion, is no account;
That only holds men together which aggregates all in a living principle, as the hold of the limbs of the body, or the fibres of plants."
Our American people, if we are to be perfected in unity, must come to be a sort of family.
Differences of personality among individuals, differences of opinions among groups, differences which show themselves in a variety of religious beliefs and political policies, all these are not only natural but necessary to civilization and progress. Absolute unity in thought and action can be attained only among a tribe of savages. The political unity of an absolute monarchy is a leftover from savagery. Above all, these valuable and desirable differences show in all the interesting variations to be discovered in our cultural life. In the education of children these differences of personality should be not only tolerated but purposely developed. The growth of this quality of personality is one of the most precious results of our democratic civilization. Yet it can not be too much emphasized that all these differences must work themselves out and perform all their desirable functions within the restricted bounds of a generally accepted law and custom. Otherwise nationality is impossible; and this is but another way of saying that human society is impossible.
Imagine a group of relatives and friends sitting down to break bread together. They differ in age, in appearance, in understanding, and in almost every purpose of life. Some will reject soup, and others fish. As the dinner proceeds sharp differences of opinion lend interest to the conversation. In our present day society any two members of this group may well belong to two different political parties and two different religious organizations. Yet if there is to be a true companionship in this place, how dominating must be the things that unify! This group, to get on well, must speak the same language and abide by the same established forms of social manners. In all the deepest things there must be the same regard for essentials, the same attitude toward life. In the mind of each, unity with all the others must be truly desired as a spiritual attainment. How seldom do we pause to reflect upon how many such principles and forms are taken for granted, every day and all day, in ordinary business and social intercourse. If people are to live together happily they must not only tolerate one another. They must enjoy companionship, one with the other.
On the same soil you can not have, permanently, two systems of law. Two basic forms of moral conduct can not function side by side. If there are two groups of people in any society, one of which totally rejects the other, trouble is sure to come. Given two groups of people with such a gulf fixed between as is never crossed, for instance, by intermarriages, and it is time to hoist the danger signal. Civil strife lurks in the offing.
That generation of Americans which grew up under the shadow of the Civil War, and in the terrible period of Reconstruction, has had occasion to have burned in its inmost consciousness, as by intense religious conviction, this necessity of national unity. Such a complete sense of unity, such a practice of solidarity, I have visualized for my country. It is the disunity of the present which, with "Hope deferred, maketh the heart sick." About us on every hand are discordant voices, clashing interests, screaming recriminations and blazing hatreds. Our republic cannot continue unless we re-establish, and that very soon, a status of civil peace in the minds and hearts of all our people.
Everybody who reads the newspapers or talks with his neighbors knows that the conflict between labor and capital is drifting us into another civil war. We can already reach ahead in imagination and fix our eyes upon the dreadful moment when the forces of class revolution will raise their standards and move to the attack. Among thousands it is being openly advocated. Among great numbers of quieter citizens of all classes it is accepted as a sort of grim necessity. Men seem always to be ready enough to fight. However, a sound national life can not be maintained by crushing down the masses, any more than freedom and progress can be secured for anybody through a Bolshevistic revolution. And how much more deadly is disunity between classes than between sections!
How difficult it is to make men so desirous of peace that they will consecrate their lives to secure its conditions! Are there none among us so devoted to our Union, so ardent in the cause of peace, that they are willing to rally around the principles which will make both peace and unity possible? I steadfastly maintain that, if properly led, a majority of Americans are willing to think and act in order to forestall anarchy and civil war. A vast majority of our farming people and middle classes are ready to demand, as Andrew Jackson demanded in 1830, that the nation do lawful justice to all. We who still constitute the solid body of the nation wish to urge upon the wage-working people with all our hearts that America and Americanism can solve their great problem without rebellion and bloodshed. And we are just as ready to assure those who own and direct capital, even those who are so often hated because of their great riches, that no penny shall ever be taken away from them without due process of law. Surely a majority of us have not yet lost faith in the very foundations of our democratic union. The recent stupendous events in revolutionary Europe should cause every thoughtful American mind to re-examine most carefully the principles of our government and of our democracy. We stoutly maintain that these principles and the constitution based upon them furnish a peaceful means, even a brotherly means, for the solution of the labor problem. But if, under the dangerous conditions which impend, our Federal Union is to be preserved, our love for it must draw us ever closer together in its service. Every principle of the bill of rights must be steadfastly defended. Embittered hatreds and suspicions must be allayed. The nation as a whole must be persuaded to take counsel in a quiet way. To those who shriek out upon us that "Might makes right," and that "Government is founded upon power and wealth alone," we must be able to reply that our Constitution and laws are still vitalized by the love of our American hearts, and by our willingness to sacrifice self for the sacred things of the Union. May we not still reply, also, that freedom is only curtailment of power—power to rule over others—and that true freedom can be experienced only in a nation whose citizens highly resolve to protect the freedom, the rights and interests of all.