There are but two things that count now—to win the war for freedom, and, during the struggle to win the war, to maintain the standards of American life at home.
At the Railway Station with the train held fifteen minutes under special orders at Milwaukee, Wis., June 6th, 1918.
MEN and women of Milwaukee,—better and bigger and broader and higher—men and women of America, upon you and upon the citizenship of this Republic depends the future of the civilized world. Now is not the time for argument or quibbling. We are now, indeed, in the fight. If there were any doubt before, the demonstration of danger right in the heart of America and upon our own ground, for the waters adjacent to our country are as much the ground and possession of the liberty loving people of the United States as is the terra firma upon which we stand, would dispel it.
Must it come home to Milwaukee? Must it come home to Wisconsin? Must it come home to the interior part of our country? Must it come into our very hearts and souls and bodies before we are aroused to the danger which the democracies of the world are confronting?
I have no hate in my soul; but to me the time has come when every man who loves liberty, every woman who loves freedom, every man and woman the world over who understands what is hanging in the balance, must come to the realization, no matter what opinions may have been held heretofore, must now come to the realization, that there is nothing too ruthless, nothing too brutal, nothing too atrocious in the effort to dominate the world with imperialism and militarism.
There are but two things that count now: one, to win the war for freedom, and second, during the struggle to win the war, to maintain the standards of American life at home.
While we are fighting for freedom and democracy abroad, while our fighting boys in the trenches and on the ships are hazarding their all and possibly making the supreme sacrifice, you and you, and you and I and every mother's son and daughter of America, should stand true to the great cause of freedom, justice, democracy and humanity in every country on the face of the globe!
I have said that I have no hate in my soul and I trust that hate will never penetrate my being. I have nothing but sympathy for the men of labor of Germany and of Austria—sympathy for their lack of understanding and lack of courage to make their understanding vital in this contest; but until the people of Germany, until the men of labor of Germany, demonstrate their purpose to work and to do battle and make sacrifices, if necessary, for the undoing of Kaiserdom in Germany in order to establish democracy, we can have no dealings with them except to crush for them what they had not the courage to crush for themselves.
The world,—all Germany and Kaiserdom with all that it means—has its eyes riveted on America and particularly upon Wisconsin. Wisconsin must give a better account of herself than she has. I might say things that would sound pleasant to tickle your fancy and through you the fancy of the multitudes of Wisconsin's citizenship. I prefer to express the thoughts that are in my mind and that well up to my throat from my heart, to give expression to the duty devolving upon you and all of us as men and women in this Republic. The time is coming when the man who fails to support the Republic of the United States, and her Allies, is standing in the way of democracy, no matter how high-sounding may be his platitudes or pleadings. This is the great psychological hour in which democracy is hanging in the balance. Understanding to what great lengths this spirit and feeling of democracy may go, no one, whatever his partisanship may be, can foretell the outcome. It may mean the establishing of the great principles of democracy the world over. But whether it be the great aim and goal of universal democracy, or whether it is simply to batter back the hordes of those who would crush democracy, the tendency is in the direction of democracy and every man must do his utmost; every man loving liberty not only feels for himself and his fellows today, but for the children who are yet to come, the generations yet unborn, who will hold you and me to a strict accountability for the services we have rendered or failed to render in this great world struggle.
Now I have an abiding faith that the spirit of liberty cannot be crushed. I have an abiding faith that human progress and civilization will endure and that progress and that civilization will be founded upon human brotherhood. Still, though believing and hoping and striving for international brotherhood, there must be nationality in spirit and in action, and as national units we shall bring about the great dream of the poets, the ideal of the philosophers and the historians,—world brotherhood; but in the making of that time, in the making of that hope, in the effort to realize that aspiration, men must do and dare, and he who fails in that supreme duty is unworthy to enjoy the freedom and the spirit of freedom of our Republic and of our democracy.
I have not the time to address you at great length, the train is in the station and with others I am on my way to St. Paul to attend the convention of the American Federation of Labor and there to give expression of the duty and the loyalty of the workers of the United States.
I have no hesitancy in believing, and declaring the belief, that that convention will stand true, true to the labor movement of America, and to the fundamental principles of the labor movement of the civilized democratic world; it will be true to the Republic of the United States, true to the cause in which she is engaged, true to the cause of our Allies, and, under the leadership of the Greatest Democrat, the interpreter of the thought and the spirit of justice and freedom the world over, we will stand behind our government and behind Woodrow Wilson, the President of the United States.
Permit me to express to you my great appreciation of the honor you have done me to assemble here, even if it were only to look into each other's faces, to bid each other God speed, heartening each other in the great work before us. Men and women of Milwaukee, I convey to you the fraternal good will of all the workers of other states and an expression of our profound hope that Milwaukee, Wisconsin, will come into her own; that you will present a solid phalanx of united manhood and womanhood with the workers and the citizenship of the whole Republic of the United States and forever and ever kill the hope that was bred in the diseased mind of an autocracy, that it can, or ever will be, permitted to dominate the peoples of the world.