our social life. Therefore I am glad to do what I can in legislation for the improvement of the community. Of course, I do not believe that urse, there is any sanction for the doctrine so much promulgated that the state owes every man a living. The state owes every man a fair opportunity for earning a living, but as long as there is misery and crime and laziness we cannot give every man a living. If you give every man a fair chance, that is all we can hope to do, and that is what all parties are more and more disposed to do.

I hope that the common feelings which this war has aroused, the mingling of all classes together, especially in camp and army life, and the discovery that there is the same human element in all classes, will tend to the democratization democratization and unification of our society. So our legislation must all be charged with a certain human sympathy akin to that which first created the great Republican party. But while we are all encouraging ourselves in that feeling there is no shutting of our eyes to the menace which is now attacking us. Of course, in regard to that everybody here is united, but we do find that right here in the United States of America there are organizations which are trying by propaganda to sprea: the same menace which seems to be engulfing Europe. Against that we must all be united. I confess that I was very much disappointed as I read the stirring, the rhetorical, the most admirable speeches our President made in Europe, extolling democracy and the lifting up of

nations

peoples there. I regret that there was not occasionally another tone in his addresses, It seemed to me that in view of the menace that was threatening all Europe any man having the ear of all the might now and then have suggested that freedom has its responsibilities as well as its blessings, might have suggested that liberty can only be permanent when it has order as its handmaid, and might have suggested, drawing from the experience of this country, that there must be supremacy of law in order that there may be any permanent progress.

For 130 years Our government has gone on steadily progressing, steadily giving to the people great freedom, and at the same time observing everywhere governmental order, and the great glory of it all, the glory of our form of government, is that there is always an unlimited possibility of progress by the peaceful will of the majority.

That is all we need. As long as the majority can always have its way in peace, then we shall always have order and progress. The progress may be slow, but we do not want here the levelling processes of revolution, and this is no place for agitation by the bomb and the torch. What we want is the progress our form of government provides for. That we shall all stand by, and by standing together, by insisting that progress shall observe the law and not trample on the law, we are going to be permanently what we are today, the freest, safest and happiest country in the world. (Cheers.)

Mr. President and Members and Guests of the Home Market Club: The war is supposed to be over, but conscription still continues, and if you wish to know the real reason for the breakdown in the telephone system in New England, it is that last Monday night the Secretary of this Club managed to effect communication with me in New Hampshire to tell me I was drafted to occupy the place of another speaker who could not be present. That was the blow which crushed Father Burleson and shut down the wires.

I have come here only to experience a succession of shocks. I have learned among other things that this question of conservation, so far as it relates to the manufacturers here represented, is all bunk, and that the members of the Home Market Club, at any rate, are still able to generate considerable amount of energy

a

upon water. (Laughter.)

And I have been shocked, Mr. President, at your reference to the difficulties which impeded the progress of cable communication with distant parts of the world. Do you not know that at Paris open COVenants are being openly arrived at, behind closed doors, at whose key hole, as Lloyd George said yesterday, wild men are shrieking, and that in consequence no other news could pass through the wire?

And, Mr. Speaker, your references to the absence from the country of so many of the responsible agents of the government lead me to recall to you, or at any rate to bring to your mind, because the Senator from Massachusetts has pointed out that your youth will not enable you to recall them for yourself, those lines which from the summit of my years I can remember, the lines of the song in the old comic opera, "They never will be missed." But cheer up, my friends. Our peripatetic President will one day return, and already the Henry F. Hollis Marching Club of Ward 4, Manchester, New Hampshire, is making preparations against that great day, and its favorite poet, J. Wellington Spriggs of the board of aldermen of Fosterville has written a verse which we shall commit to memory and all go to the dock at that port where the President will make his next speech in America in favor of a league of nations, and sing:

"Hung be the heavens, with roseate pink;

Go hide thee, sun, with envy blink.
Our President returns today.
What President? Oh, come now,
say?

The President who's been away.
He now comes back, we hope, to
stay."

I said, ladies and gentlemen, that the war was supposed to be over, but I am not sure of it. In fact, when I reflect on the reluctance with which the Administration entered the war. and at the same time think of the difficulty with which it emerges from the war, I call to mind nothing so much as the homely and possibly vulgar, but altogether expressive similitude Deacon Simpkins gave of a certain animal when he said he almost had to peel its durned ears off to get it to start, and then almost had to pull its durned tail off to get it to quit.

But we are making progress. It is true that many months have elapsed since that day when the conqueror's victory should have permitted us to impose a victor's peace upon the German immediately. (Applause.) But we are making progress. The embarrassed cables to which you have referred, Mr. President, this morning informed us in point of fact that the 14 points have been well established at Paris with the exception of 12 or 13, and we should take comfort in that fact because, as we all know, our brave boys in khaki took those 14 points and made them part of their faith and action, because the President told Congress so on the 2nd of last December. And that moved a versifying friend of mine to embalm that thought in rhyme. I hope that I may claim immunity, even though Congress is in recess, if I read the results of that gifted poet's labors in commenting upon the President's statement:

"Jos Jimsonweed, a corporal from out in Yankakakee,

Went forth to meet a German squad and chased them up a tree; And as he did so, loud he cried above the battle's roar,

'Hurrah for our dear President-and Peace Point Number Four.'

"Pat Murphy of the horse marines, a leather-neck of old,

Met up one day with seven Huns and laid the muckers cold.

He murmured as he put an end to all their evil tricks,

'My only motive is my love for Peace Point Number Six.'

"Upon the battlefield was found, right at the point of death, A gallant lad who said these words.

with scant and failing breath, "Tis sad to think that in this way I

should have met my fate,

But never mind, I've done my bit for Peace Point Number Eight.'

"Oh, many a time in blood-stained France the standers-by could

hear

Our Yankees charge into the fray

with this resounding cheer: 'Huzzah, huzzah, we'll win the day,

and never shall we cease, Till we have forced upon the foe our Fourteen Points of Peace.''

And yet, Mr. President, of the 14 points there is but one remaining. Gone are all the others-the freedom of the seas, the breaking down of economic barriers, the waiving of in

demnities and negotiations, and every other essential of the glittering program.

But I fear that I have wandered from the printed text assigned to me, "America First." I have had one great opportunity of late to show my belief in that stirring slogan, and it came to me on that fateful night of March 3rd, when I was enabled to put my signature beneath the handwriting of the distinguished leader of the Republicans in the United States, Henry Cabot Lodge, when we signed the round-robin. A Boston reporter the other night, with an imagination and a vocabulary exceeding mine, put into my mouth the expression that I said I had been "a blithesome fifth" to sign that instrument. A fifth I was, but I do not recall that I did it blithsomely. I did it rather as the prayer book enjoins those entering the holy state of matrimony, soberly, reverently and in the fear of God. And I have never seen a minute from that hour to this when I have weakened in my devotion to the assertion of of the round-robin that the covenant of the league of nations as proposed then should be rejected by the Senate of the United States.

Now, I claim to be an expert in this league of nations game. I helped to make a league of nations. once, and I have never forgotten with what pride in July, 1912, we stood by the cradle of the Balkan Federation, nor shall I ever be able to blot from my mind the humiliating grief with which we followed its hearse in less than twelve months. I do not

believe human nature has been changed by this war, and I do not believe any league of nations can possibly be set up which could have a more elevating motive or a more practical incentive to go through to the uttermost with all its obligations than the Balkan League, which sought to throw off the subjection of 400 years of humiliation under Turkish rule, and to restore the great peoples of the Balkan peninsula to their rightful territory. That league lasted only so long as every nation in it thought it was getting the long end of it.

So I confess to a huge amount of skepticism that any league of nations. can be formed which will last. But I do not oppose a league of nations. Like the Speaker of the House of Representatives, who has here declared his faith, and like the gallant leader I have been proud to follow in these last months, and whom I shall be proud to follow in the busy months to come, I do not object to a league of nations. But if we enter that league of nations I want America first, not ninth.

When we answer the question which any practical covenant of a league of nations must lay before us, "Is America ready here and now to say she will take part in the next war, no matter where it may be, nor who the belligerents, nor what its issues are, and will do so at the majority vote of a council made up of foreign nations whose judgment will often be heard on a side which will not appeal to the American conscience?"-then I want to be in a position to say that when America

enters the next war she shall go forth as she did in the last war, and as she has in every war, with head erect, with eyes ablaze, with heart ageous, and in her hand an un.

cour

sheathed sword drawn at the impulse of her own great heart, and so be, as we hope she always will beAmerica First.

(Loud cheers.)

It was clearly recognized that Germany's purpose in waging war was commercial domination of the world as well as the establishment of military supremacy. In fact, victory by her armies was merely the method which Germany employed to win supremacy in the markets of the world. While the German drive of a year ago was at its height the leaders of industrial Germany were frankly declaring their plans for the mastery of world markets. Cooperation of the government instead of war control of industries by the government, the regulation of imports and the stimulation of production were the methods that were to be employed when "the German victory" was won. But the American army intervened and the war ended in German defeat, not victory.

Today there is unmistakable evidence that Great Britain, in the hour of triumph, has adopted the economic program that Germany thought would lead to commercial triumph. Importations into Great Britain are now controlled by restrictions and embargoes, and the power of the government is being employed to stimulate British production. Dispatches from London report that recently Andrew Bonar Law de

clared in the House of Commons that "the prosperity of the country depends upon increased production" and that "the efforts of the government will be directed to framing a policy on that basis." This speech by Bonar Law, outlining authoritatively the attitude of the Lloyd George government, clearly indicates that Great Britain has decided upon a revolutionary change in its fiscal policy. The free trade system which has been in partial effect since 1846 will be abandoned for a system of resolute protectionism. "It is ridiculous to suppose," said Bonar Law, "that the old conditions will continue." The new programme involves protection for Great Britain and preference for the British Colonies. High tribute was paid to the aid rendered by the Colonies during the war. "It is not too much to say that we would not have gained the victory but for the help of the Dominions," said Mr. Law. "Therefore, any measure increasing the productive power and man power of the Dominions is a good thing for Britain as well as for the empire."

Arguing in favor of a protective tariff Mr. Law declared that it was of most vital interest to maintain high wages, and asked how high