The cause of labor is so closely entwined with the cause of all the allied countries and our own that we could not separate ourselves from it even if we would, and we would not if we could.
Mass Meeting at Madison Square Garden, New York, conducted by the Committee on Allied Tribute to France, July 14th, 1918.
It is but fitting that the toilers of our country should join with you and the representatives of the other allied countries to pay a tribute of affection and recognition and obligation to the men of La Belle France. We, if I may speak in the name of the wage earners of America, are loyal to the United States and he Allies, not blindly, but for a cause. The cause of Labor throughout the centuries has been a struggle against tyranny and oppression. It is therefore fitting that the men and the women of toil in our country should be, heart and soul, with the United States in this fight.
What hope is there for freedom, if it were possible for Kaiserism to win? What hope for emancipation of the toiling masses, if Germany could win What opportunity for free assemblage, free press or free speech, if Germany could win? What right of free association among the toilers, for their expression, if Germany could win in this contest? The cause of Labor is so closely entwined with the cause of the allied countries and our own, that we â– could not separate ourselves from it even if we would, and we would not if we could.
When in the scheme of things which generated in the mind of the Imperial German Hierarchy—the autocracy to dominate the world—the gauntlet was thrown down, the challenge was given to every man and woman the world over who believed in freedom. Yes, wonderful, gallant France, the gentleman among the nations of the world, with heroism and sacrifice, halted the Hun on the onward march upon Paris, to give the other allied countries an opportunity for a breathing spell, an opportunity to gather themselves together. It seems that the guilty conscience of wrongdoing always omits one particular, essential feature. It does not count upon the human equation. The military machine of Germany had been in the course of preparation for half a century. The world was unprepared to meet such a military onslaught.
Democratic countries were regarded as inefficient, incapable of defense, incapable of concerted and concentrated effort. But, this thought was lost sight of,—that once the democracy of the world is aroused, once the conscience and the spirit of the people are touched, neither Kaiserism nor militarism can withstand the uprising of the people. It was a war which Germany thrust upon us. It is no longer a war. With the allied democracies of the world now fighting for the great concepts of freedom and justice and liberty and peace, it is a crusade for mankind. I may at least in part speak for the men of Labor, the great mass of our people who, after all, are physically the largest sufferers of all the groups of our people. I want, even with the responsibility which the words carry and the thought conveys, to ally myself with the great President of the United States in his declaration, on the Fourth of July, that there can be no compromise between autocracy and democracy. The quarrel is not of our seeking, it was thrust upon us, but it has come, and now is the time from which we cannot escape, autocracy must come to an end now, the end must not be postponed to some other time.
There is no man in all the world to whom I could take second position before the outbreak of this titanic struggle as an advocate of international peace, but when a marauder comes on your street, or a gang of them, you cannot proclaim yourself a pacifist; you must defend your home and yourself, if you have any spirit or any red blood coursing in your veins. And from an ultra-pacifist I have become transformed into somewhat of a fighting man, yearning and hoping for peace, for a just peace, for a peace that shall bring hope and light into the lives of peoples all the world over. Not only are we fighting for our own freedom, for our own existence, for our own concepts of justice, but we are fighting for the freedom of the heart and the conscience of the true German people. If through mm-education, if through stunting the brain or misdirecting it, the people of Germany have permitted their course to be diverted, all the greater pity that we must fight them, but come what may out of this war, out of this crusade, there will be new concepts of the relationship between man and man and country and country.
The old concepts will be thrown into the scrap-heap. There will be new concepts of the dignity and of the rights of man, of real democracy, of real freedom; there will be real opportunities for the cultivation of the best that is in us, real opportunities to make of ourselves and of the peoples of all the countries of the world free peoples to work out their own destinies, to establish governments existing by the will and the consent of the governed, thus working out the universal brotherhood of man, the dream of the poets and the song of the philosophers of all time.