Of course you will not. It is inconceivable. Your patriotism is of the same self-denying stuff as the patriotism of the men dead or maimed on the fields of France, or else it is no patriotism at all. Let us never speak, then, of profits and of patriotism in the same sentence, but face facts and meet them. Let us do sound business, but not in the midst of a mist.
Many a grievous burden of taxation will be laid on this Nation, in this generation and in the next, to pay for this war; let us see to it that for every dollar that is taken from the people's pockets it shall be possible to obtain a dollar's worth of the sound stuffs they need.
HIGH FREIGHTS AID GERMANY
Let us for a moment turn to the ship-owners of the United States and the other ocean carriers whose example they have followed, and ask them if they realize what obstacles, what almost insuperable obstacles, they have been putting in the way of the successful prosecution of this war by the ocean freight rates they have been exacting.
They are doing everything that high freight charges can do to make the war a failure, to make it impossible. I do not say that they realize this or intend it.
The thing has happened naturally enough, because the commercial processes which we are content to see operate in ordinary times have without sufficient thought been continued into a period where they have no proper place. I am not questioning motives. I am merely stating a fact, and stating it in order that attention may be fixed upon it.
The fact is that those who have fixed war freight rates have taken the most effective means in their power to defeat the armies engaged against Germany. When they realize this we may, I take it for granted, count upon them to reconsider the whole matter. It is high time. Their extra hazards are covered by war-risk insurance.
THE LAW TO DEAL WITH OFFENDERS
I know, and you know, what response to this great challenge of duty and of opportunity the Nation will expect of you; and I know what response you will make. Those who do not respond, who do not respond in the spirit of those who have gone to give their lives for us on bloody fields far away, may safely be left to be dealt with by opinion and the law--for the law must, of course, command those things.
I am dealing with the matter thus publicly and frankly, not because I have any doubt or fear as to the result, but only in order that, in all our thinking and in all our dealings with one another we may move in a perfectly clear air of mutual understanding.