^Mi»i3^SStiit^a^^^^ ADDRESS ^ Honorable Charles H, Brough Governor of Arkansas ANNUAL MEETING Missouri Bar Association At Saint Louis SEPTEMBER 20th, 1918 ^'%'" ADDRESS BY HONORABLE CHARLES H. BROUGH At Meeting of MISSOURI BAR ASSOCIATION Mr. President Jones, Mr. Secretary Haid, and Gentlemen of the Missouri Bar Association: I very greatly appreciate, as Governor of the State of Arkansas the compliment that has been done my State by the very highly appreciated invitation on the part of your distinguished president, President Jones, and your able secretary, Mr. Haid, who has been associated with some of the lawyers of our State in rate cases and in matters affecting interstate commerce, to deliver an address before the able gentlemen composing the thirty-sixth annual session of the Missouri Bar Association. I congratulate you, gentlemen, upon the fact that, while last year you had only seventeen local bar associations in your State, now you have seventy-three. And I congratulate you also upon the very thoughtful measure that the Bar Association worked out, of proposing a War Council composed of one hundred and three of your able repre- sentatives to co-operate with the legal advisory boards and with the district exemption boards of Missouri in solving the great problems connected with our present war. As you gentlemen doubtless know, these district exemption boards will be immediately increased by the Provost Marshal Gen- eral — a very brilliant Missourian and a former practitioner at the Missouri Bar — from five to seven. And therefore at least four more of your able lawyers will be placed upon the district exemption boards of your State. I congratulate our neighboring and sister State of Missouri that she has given nearly three hundred thousand of her brave sons to place their bodies as living walls between the cause of human liberty and human democracy and those who would destroy it. I congratulate the great city of St. Louis, which is one of our metropolitan centers with which we are closely connected by the mystic tie that binds, upon the fact that one out of every fourteen men of eligible age, and I may say one out of every fourteen St. Louisans, are in this great war; and upon the fact that this city, which has been allotted the tremendous total of one hundred and thirty two millions for various war purposes, has oversubscribed her quota and has raised the magnificent sum of one hundred and sixty eight millions of dollars! (Applause.) Gentlemen, in this city of St. Louis in the great State of Missouri this morning I feel that I stand upon sacred soil, for I remember that that child of poverty, that youth of adversity, that man of virtue and honesty who is today in command of our forces on the Western front and who will go down in the annals of American military history alongside of Washington and Jackson, Lee and Grant — General John J. Pershing — (applause) is from your State. And I am reminded also, and I am sure that you profoundly regret that he could not be present, that that masterful Provost Marshal General of the United States, who has worked out the demo- — 1— MAY 4 i'^'*' cratic selective draft system, in a most efficient manner, in a manner that so appealed to Congress that he was offered the commission of Lieutenant General, which he declined, is also a native of the great State of Missouri — Provost Marshal General Enoch H. Crowder. (Applause.) I once heard your State described by one of your distinguished Governors, Governor Herbert Hadley, as the land of the big red apple, the little red hen and the much-read Bible; and I want to tell you one thing in connection with that about my own State. You have heard Arkansas referred to as the land of the Arkansaw Traveler, with his coonskin cap, coming to the fork of the road, not knowing which fork to take. My friends, I just want to remind you that we are living in altogether a different State now; in a State that really lives up to the fact that she is especially favored of the Lord in being the only State in the Union mentioned in the Bible — for we read in that Book of Genesis that "Noah looked out of the ark and saw." (Laughter and applause.) Our economic resources are limitless, and we could build a Chinese Tartary wall around our State and every one of our 2,000,000 people be practically independent of the outside world. Our apples have captured the first prize at the last six International Expositions, and the largest apple ever placed on exhibition in the world was an apple raised near Sulphur Springs in Benton County, which weighed 29 H ounces. The soft blushes of our famous Elberta peaches nestle in the snow-white virginity of our fields of cotton, and the only solid carload of peaches that was ever shipped abroad was sent to London some three years ago by Mr. Bert Johnson, an Arkansas truck-grower, living at Highland, in Pike County. With a cotton yield of approx- imately 1,100,000 bales, we have advanced within the past five years from seventh place to third place as a cotton-producing State. Our corn and other cereal acreage this year, under the inspiration of the Profitable Farming Movement, has increased fully 35 per cent, and our rice crop for 1918 will approximate 7,000,000 bushels. We have the largest acreage yield of rice in the world on the beautiful prairie stretching from Little Rock to Memphis. Eighteen of our counties have valuable deposits of semi-anthracite coal, and the smokeless coal now used by the United States in Saline County. We rank first in the production of ash, cottonwood and red gum; third in the pro- duction of hickory and oak, and fifth in the production of yellow pine in the United States. We have the only diamond mine on the western hemisphere in Pike County, a mile and a half from Murfreesboro, from which over 4,000 genuine diamonds have already been taken. Our lead and zinc mines in northwest Arkansas are beginning to rival the famous mines in Joplin, Mo. Montgomery County, Arkansas, could furnish you all the slate that you need to roof every house in your great city. Our State is on an absolutely cash basis, with a secured indebted- ness of $750,000. Our higher institutions of learning have been taken out of politics and rendered independent of legislative lobbies by being placed on a special millage basis. We have recently enabled our struggling school districts to levy a maximum of 12 mills rather than a minimum of 7 mills, as heretofore, for local school purposes, and nearly 400,000 school children are today enrolled in our public schools. We have a compulsory education law which requires children between the ages of 7 and 15 to attend school at least three-fourths of the school term. We have taken advantage of the Shackleford Good Roads Law, introduced by a distinguished congressman from Missouri, and within the next five years will receive from the federal and state gov- ernments $1,500,000 for the improvement of our highways. The third road project in the United States to be undertaken under the provisions of the Shackleford Act is a substantial asphalt road Vv^ith Warrenite surface, five and three-tenths miles in length, leading up to the canton- ment, the headquarters of the 87th Division of the United States Army, where 46,000 troops will soon be stationed. We have recently secured an aviation school at Lonoke. Arkansas has furnished over 7,000 volunteer soldiers to the National Guard, and over 10,000 selected troops to our National Army, and 79,842 of her brave sons to various branches of our military and naval service. A generous en- couragement is given to capital to be invested in the virgin resources of our commonwealth, and our bankers are rapidly becoming veritable captains of industry. A constitutional convention assembled on the 19th of November to frame a new organic law in our State, which will undoubtedly secure to state, counties and minor political subdivisions the right to issue bonds for internal improvements without resorting to the subterfuge of the improvement district, curtail the evil of local legislation, make more stable the tenure of officers and enact other reforms that will virtually remake our State. We have taken the initiative among Southern States in giving our splendid womanhood the right of suffrage in primary elections. We have established a rigid examination for admission to the bar, this examination to be held in open court by attorneys appointed by the court, and have prescribed written examinations to be passed on by a body designated by the Supreme Court of our State. There is now pending an amendment designed to increase the membership of our Supreme Court from five to seven, creating a bipartite division of the court, with the Chief Justice alternating as the presiding judge in each division, a plan already in vogue in California, which greatly expedites the business of our highest tribunal. The population of our State is a substantial middle class, where there is neither the froth of aristocracy nor the dregs of the submerged tenth. Over 80 per cent of our people live right out in the country, and we are not confronted with the ills in our commonwealth of con- gested city populations, with their tenement districts on the one hand and the idle rich on the other; 3,500,000 acres of cut-over land, which can be secured from $5.00 to $10.00 an acre, await desirable immigra- tion within the confines of our State, and these lands may be secured from our enterprising lumber companies on most reasonable terms, as to length of the loans and condition of payment. We are rapidly introducing improved breeds of cattle, hogs and poultry, eradicating the cattle tick by means of the dipping vat, conserving the health of our people by proper sanitary measures and ushering in an age of peace and prosperity. Someone has humorously said with reference to our hog industry that "if all the hogs of Arkansas could be put into one hog, we would have a hog with a snout long enough and strong enough to dig the Panama Canal without any steam shovels." At Hot Springs, Heber Springs and other noted health resorts in our State, a modern Ponce de Leon may find fountains of perpetual youth. When I tell you, gentlemen, that the assessed valuation of the property of our State has increased over sixty millions within a single year, it is certainly evidence not only of our unexampled prosperity, but of substantial reforms in our fiscal and assessment systems. Arkansas is no longer a provincial and homespun commonwealth, but is a State that has an empire of vision in her brain. "We are broad backed, brown handed. Upright as our pines. And by the scales of a hemisphere Shape our designs." Gentlemen of the Missouri Bar Association, I feel very highly honored to be asked to deliver an address before this distinguished body, for although I have only been an active practitioner for a very few years, having held the chair of political economy in the State —3— University of my State before I fell from grace and entered politics, nevertheless I am thoroughly convinced of the fact that the law is the greatest of all the sciences and professions, for Hooker says, "She hath her seat in the bosom of God; her voice is the harmony of spheres. All things pay obeisance to her; the greatest is not exempt from her power and the least as feeling her protecting care." "Sovereign Lord, our State's collected well, Sits empress, crowning good, depressing ill." From the days of the Corpus Jurist Civillis and Pendects of Justinian, through the democratic folk-Germots of the early Anglo- Saxons, and the notable reforms made by the great Napoleon in compiling the Code Napoleon, which is now the basis of jurisprudence in the State of Louisiana, to our present jury system, our courts have been held in the highest reverence. For the people of every country and every clime have recognized that "a virtuous court, a world to virtue draws." It is a significant fact that every great reform in con- stitutional progress from the days of the Magna Charta, which the nobles wrested from King James on the Field of Runnemede, to the present time, including such historic instruments as the constitution of the United States, the Missouri Compromise of 1820, the modernized state constitutions including the initiative and referendum, the three reform bills of Mr. Gladstone, and the development of the Roman Canon Law applied to ecclesiastical disputes, have been wrought out by eminent lawyers, sitting as Nestors of wisdom in constitutional conventions, legislatures and parliaments, and sitting as judges on the highest benches of the world. It is doubtful whether anything bespeaks more eloquently the genius of our government, with its innovation of a complete division of powers between the executive and the legislative and the judicial departments of governrnent, than our system of both state and federal courts with their original and appellate jurisdiction. And it is a significant fact that many of our eminent statesmen feel it a higher honor to have a place on the supreme bench of our nation than they do to reach the presidency itself. In this hour of our nation's stress and strife the lawyers are maintaining their ancient prestige. A lawyer. Provost Marshal General Crowder, is largely responsible for our democratic selective draft system which, operating through the new questionaire, will not only secure equality and justice in the selection of our soldiers from a great mass of volunteers, but will also take for the first time a census of the man-power of our country by occupation. Three lawyers in each of the nearly four thousand counties of the United States are serving without compensation on the legal advisory boards, and each district exemption board in the United States has at least one eminent lawyer as a part of its patriotic membership. Closely correlated with the gentlemen who are serving on the legal advisory boards are as- sociate members in each county who, purely because of their patriotic motives, are sacrificing lucrative practices to advise the drafted men of the five classes in filling out their questionaires. In the present constitutional convention of my own State — and I have been very much interested to read of your proceedings in con- nection with proposed codification or recodification of your laws — convened November 19th for the purpose of remodeling our organic law, in spite of the fact that an impression has been current that there has been prejudice among our people in the State of Arkansas against lawyers and against corporate interests, out of the one hundred and fourteen members of the present constitutional convention there is an overwhelming majority of lawyers; showing, gentlemen, that we in Arkansas, as you in Missouri and as the people of the other com- monwealths of our Union, recognize the tremendous value of lawyers and masters of jurisprudence in framing organic law. —4— I wish you, therefore, Godspeed in your contemplated recodifica- tion in the State of Missouri, and I hope that action will be taken at this session of the State Bar Association which will make Missouri a much more progressive State in the interpretation of the spirit as well as the letter of the law. Now, gentlemen, I was told by your president and by your secretary that you wanted at this meeting no technical discussion of any legal question, and it would be beyond the purview of my limited ability to give you such a technical dis- cussion as would interest you. I was asked to bring to you the message that wells up in every American heart today; the message of American patriotism and American preparedness, which words, in my humble opinion, sound the shibboleth and the clarion call of duty in this hour of our country's stress and strife, in this unparalleled war of liberty and democracy against autocracy and despotism. Our neu- trality is a thing of the past. The time has come when the proud prophecy has been fulfilled of our great President of the United States: "There will come that day when the world will say, 'This American that we thought was full of a multitude of contrary counsels now speaks with a great volume of the heart's accord, and that great heart of America has behind it the supreme moral force of righteousness and hope and the liberty of mankind.' " It is true that we are the mediating Nation of the world, combined of all nations, mediating their blood, their traditions, their sentiments, their tastes and their passions; but force of circumstances, the violation of the freedom of the high seas, which is the very sine qua non of peace, equality and co-operation, an insolent contempt for American idealism, American liberty and American justice has forced us into the maelstrom of the greatest conflict history has ever recorded. "The die is cast; the Rubicon is crossed;" henceforth we should all be Americans, knowing no hyphenated citizenship, no lukewarm support of our Government, no cliques and cabals undermining the force of our democracy, but everywhere responding to that other sentiment dear to every American heart, "liberty and democracy, now and forever, one and inseparable." Let us realize that while we should maintain no spirit of hatred toward the German people, an efficient, intelligent and expansive Nation, that a steadfast concern for peace can never be maintained except by a partnership of demo- cratic nations; that no autocratic government, manned by a German Kai.ser, and Austrian Emperor, or a Bulgarian King, can be trusted to keep faith with any, or observe its covenants; that there must be a league of honor, a partnership of opinion, and that in this struggle all the interests of mankind are paramount to the interests of any nationality. Let us hope that this stands out above all the other wars of history as a people's war, a war for freedom and justice, a self-government among all the nations of the world, a war to make the world safe for democracy," the German people themselves included; a war, the successful result of which on the part of America and her allies will teach that might is no longer right, and strength is no longer triumphant. In this contest there can be no twilight zone of American patriotism; our citizens must be either for the President and for the flag, or against the President and against the flag. Heretofore European battlefields have been magazines, lit by the fuse of ambition, and in the cannons' raking fire has been sealed the sovereignty of kings; but the American guns that will resound on the battlefields of France, Italy and Russia will reverberate in thunder- ing tones of exalted patriotism "that all governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed." When our brave American soldiers and sailors return with the laurels of well-earned victory, wearing uniforms of consecrated service, and bearing the arms of a free republic, there will no longer be any German Kaisers, Austrian Emperors and ^Bulgarian Kings ^.to ruthlessly violate the treaties of a brave and helpless Belgium, to overrun and lay waste a struggling Poland, to massacre women and children and hospital nurses in chivalrous France, to butcher martyrs in Armenia, struggling against revolt and Mohammedanism, and to annex, by political grand larceny, the territory of Alpine-crested and sun-kissed Italy. No, the eyes of our fellow countrymen will behold a world democracy, presided over by leaders selected by the voice of the people; they will see arise before their eyes temples of human liberty, whose cornerstones will be justice and the equality of all men before the law. With such an epic picture before us and such noble ideals of feeling to our better selves, I believe that each and every patriotic American should feel today, as did Nathan Hale, one of the Revolutionary heroes, as he exclaimed, "I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country." We have reached the point in our patriotism where our faith is being put to the touchstone of our works, and we are soon to discover whether this love which we have professed through the years of our institutions, our country and our flag, is "but a sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal," or whether it is a great and vital inspiration of individual and national life. Our young men, with a devotion unex- celled in the history of the world, are leaving homes of love and affec- tion, where for years they have been enshrined in a father's devotion and wrapped in a mother's love; they have left fields of cotton and waving grain, vocal with the praise of happy husbandry and replete with the gladness of rewarded toil; many of them have sacrificed lucrative positions in the marts of trade to endure the hardships of camp life and dangers of the far-flung battle line — all, for the honor of their country and the glory of their flag. They are going gladly "somewhere in France," to offer, if need be, the last drop of blood in their veins as a free libation on the altar of constitutional liberty, in order that the whole world may witness the march of millions of emancipated political and industrial slaves "redeemed, regenerated and disenthralled by the irresistible genius of universal emancipation." It is our duty to see that they do not go half-clad, half-fed, unequipped or unprepared; to see that the war is not only fought, but financed; to prove our faith by our works to subscribe liberally to the six billion-dollar Fourth Liberty Loan Fund which is being raised, and the Red Cross and Allied War Drive crusades typical of twentieth century chivalrj', and to join in the food conservation movement, which will mean if a pledge card is signed for each of the twenty-two million families of the United States, and a meatless and wheatless day each week is observed, that nearly a quarter million bushels of wheat and two billion pounds of meat will be saved to be sent to our brave boys on the firing line. It is as true in the life of a nation as an individual, that "no one liveth to himself, and no one dieth to himself." We have become a world power, not in the sense of sinister intrigues with foreign govern- ments, nor in the assertion of economic dominion throughout the world, nor in the abandonment of our ancient traditions, or isolation in the politics of other nations, but in our idealism in our mission of belting the earth with bands of the light of liberty and the love of democracy. "We are set, where ways are met. To lead the waiting nations on; Not for our own land is freedom's flag unfurled. But for the world." If the ruling military classes of Germany have divided the world into two parts — one conquered during the present war, and the other, which is the Western Hemisphere, to be conquered later — the United States hurls the challenge of democracy that will eventually make for the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. If Germany menaces the high seas by a nefarious submarine campaign, that is —6— worse than "the devil carrying a dirk in the dark," the United States replies that the free, constant, unthreatened intercourse of nations IS an essential part of the process of peace and of the development of commerce. If German intrigue fills the thrones of the Balkan States with German princes, puts German officers at the service of Turkey to drill her armies and make interest with her government, develops plans of sedition and rebellion in India and Egypt, and, like the ancient fire worshipers, set their fires in Persia— throwing a broad belt of German military power and political control across the center of Europe and beyond the Mediterranean into the heart of Asia— the United States replies that the proud states of Bohemia and Hungary, the stout little commonwealths of the Balkans, the indomitable Turks and the subtle peoples of the East have a right to their own national independence and their own political autonomv. The Macedonian cry is heard on every hand — "Come over and help us" — and the United States, like Peter and Paul of old, have heard the cry and are carrying to the oppressed nations of the war a gospel of life and an assurance of liberty. Just a word of warning here: you and I have been so thrilled recently within the last six weeks over Marshal Foch's brilliant victo- ries in capturing over 250,000 prisoners and over 2,000 machine guns, and penetrating the Hindenburg line and recapturing from four hundred to five hundred square miles of territory on the western front alone, and the reports in our newspapers are so glowing, that there is a prevalent opinion on the part of our citizens that this great holocaust, which has already cost approximately twenty-two million human lives, and has involved an expenditure of approximately one hundred and seventeen billion four hundred millions of dollars, or four times the combined war debt of the world, that this great holocaust is going to have its end within another year and that perhaps by next Christmas we can eat Christmas dinner in Berlin. (Applause.) I am not an expert on military affairs, my friends, but we have a great camp in our capital city. Camp Pike, where thousands of splendid Missouri boys are stationed; where we have sixty thousand men at the present time; where the United States Government is now spending an additional five million of dollars at the present time to give it a capacity of seventy-five thousand men. Frequently I talk with the commanding officers of that camp on military questions, and, my friends, if you talked with military officials of the United States, if you talked with President Wilson, as I have — and I esteem it an honor to have sat at the feet, as a scholar, of that man who, today, combining as he does the patriotism of a Washington, the philosophy of a Thomas Jefferson, the constructive genius of an Alexander Hamilton, the cour- age of an Andrew Jackson, a Grover Cleveland and a Theodore Roose- velt (applause), the sweet charity of an Abraham Lincoln and a William McKinley, and the judicial poise of a William Howard Taft, is destined, in my opinion, to go down in American history as one of the greatest men who ever sat in the presidential chair — President Woodrow Wilson. (Continued applause). — If you had talked with President Wilson and had seen the lines of care on his face, if you had talked with Secretary of War Baker, with Provost Marshal General Crowder, with Adjutant General McCain and with General Carter, and the men in command of our military forces, you would be convinced, as I am, and you would go back to your respective communities and prepare the people of your respective communities for a long, hard war; and also prepare them for the fact that they must yet break the alabaster box of their oint- ment of sacrifice, and perhaps for two or three years yet to come of rehabilitation work wander through the valley of the shadow of sacri- fice. You and I must reflect upon the fact that the territory of our great enemy is four times the size o( its territory at the outbreak of of the war. It occupies thirteen million square miles of territory. Gemany has already conquered Servia, Montenegro, Roumania, two hundred and ninety-three square miles in France, eighty-five per cent of Bel- gium, a thousand square miles of Italy, and the Russian provinces of Riga, Livonia, Finland, Poland, Lithuania, Esthonia and Ukraine — the Ukraine alone being the size of the German Empire at the beginning of the war, with a population of approximately thirty-three millions of people. We can not starve our enemy out, whether we are victorious on both fronts; she can not be starved out. Her crop this year is twenty- seven per cent greater than it was last year, according to official estimates; and she now has access to all the rich grain fields of Russia, with two million five hundred thousand Russian prisoners to work these grain fields for her.) Not only that, my friends, but you and I have talked with French officers recently, right from the battle front; and we must remember this fact, that the numerical superiority of the Allies has not yet been definitely established on the Western front. While the morale and the esprit de corps of our troops is infinitely higher today than the morale and the esprit de corps of the German troops, yet Germany has approximately today four million men on the Western front, and the numerical superiority of the Allies has not yet been established. By the first day of July next year, when it is proposed to put an army of four million Americans on the Western front, that superiority will have been definitely established; but it is a condition and not a theory that confronts us, and I plead with you, gentlemen, as leaders in your respective communities — and you are leaders, because every man who stands high at the bar is a leader in his community — to go back and counteract the impression that is becoming prevalent among the communities of the United States that we are going to eat Christmas dinner in Berlin and that the war will be over in another year, so far as all military preparations are concerned. I believe that the military leaders of this great country are firm in their belief, and I share the hope, that an optimistic view can be taken as to the length of the war, but it is the part of patriotism to prepare our people for a period of long struggle, har d war and long- continued sacrifice. While Bulgaria has already been eliminated from the trinity of the Central Teutonic Powers, and even threatens vengeance against her traditional enemy, Turkey; while the German government, through the new Chancellor, Maximilian of Baden, has already hearkened to the cry of a rapidly dismembering Austria singing the Marsellaise and crying for bread in the streets of Vienna, as red-blooded Americans we can accept no dictated peace, neither can we stop short of the realization of our noble ideal of making the world safe for democracy, the German people themselves included. Maximilian's voice is the voice of the Jacob of pacifism, but his hand is the hand of the Esau of militarism. We can afford to grant no armistice until Germany is completely disarmed and the German people themselves thoroughly realize that "might is no longer right, and strength is no longer tri- umphant." So let our army and navy continue to wear the armor of preparedness and patriotism, and let our civilian population continue to gird themselves in the righteousness of sacrifice. Our President is a tried and true leader, capable of his every step, for he is the chosen spokesman of a fratricidal world. Let us be patient, and not too optimistic that a world's peace can be secured by Christmas, or even by next summer, and let us continue "to press forward toward the —8 — prize of the high calling of our manifest destiny," as the world's leader m battles for righteousness and chosen arbiter in the epoch-making councils of peace. But gentlemen, don't misunderstand me this morning in giving you this note of warning to carry back to your respective communities. Just as surely as you and I are in this beautiful room at the Hotel Statler, convened in the thirty-sixth session of the Missouri Bar Association, gentlemen, we are going to win. We are going to achieve a glorious victory, and before we get through with it we are going to put the old Kaiser absolutely out of business. (Applause). We are going to win, in the first place, because of the superiority of our form of government. I, for one, recognize the German people as a very intelligent people, as a very scientific people, as the greatest military power that the world ever knew; as a very frugal people; as a very thrifty people. And, coming from a State where we have thousands of Germans and where, in one of the seventy-five counties of my State, the Germans are in the majority, I take pleasure this morning in testifying to the fact — and I have made a very careful examination of this situation — that from ninety to ninety-five per cent of the German-Americans in our State are absolutely loyal to our flag, loyal to our institutions and loyal to our form of govern- ment. (Applause.) Why are they loyal? In the first place, they have been over here long enough to have absorbed the spirit of our institutions. In the second place, either they or their ancestors before them were driven from Germany by the very blood and iron military program against which we are now battling. But while we have a very high regard for the intelligence, for the scientific attainments, for the spirit of thrift and frugality that has permeated Germany's economic life, their form of government is like the house that Christ described, that was built upon the sand, and when the winds blew and the storms beat upon that house it fell because it was built upon the sand. What is Germany's form of government? Why, gentleman, it is a complete autocracy. It is based on the theory not only of the divine right of kings, but by the divine right of God himself. "Qui placuit regi habet viris legorem." "What pleases the Kaiser has the force of law." It matters not that the Kaiser has at his right shoulder an arm which he never allows to be taken in a picture, an arm which is the product of an hereditary unmentionable disease in the Hohenzollern family. It matters not that his father, who was an infinitely better man than the present Kaiser, and who, had he lived, would never have been guilty of this atrocious world war, had to have three opera- tions performed upon his throat by eminent surgeons, from which he eventually died as a result of the same hereditary, unmentionable disease in the Hohenzollern family — the German people have been religiously taught for fifty years that the Kaiser speaks not only as the representative of the divine right of kings, but as the divine representative of God himself. The German people believe he speaks as one who has the authority of Elijah, Elisha, Hosea, Amos, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and the long line of canonical prophets. Their educational system, one of the most magnificent in the world, ranking next to that of Switzerland in efficiency, is permeated with this teaching, this idea, among all its schools; in the great Universities of Dresden, Leipzig, Heidelberg, Gottingen and Berlin they have been taught the cruel and militant philosophy of Nietzsche, Treitschke, and Von Bernhardi, that the German is a superman and that by virtue of the law of the survival —9— of the fittest he is entitled not only to rule over "Mittel Europa," but that this dominion is established over the world. You have read von Bernhardi's great work, "Germany and the Next War," published in 1911, that had five editions in the United States prior to the outbreak of the war in 1914, and you will remember that in that most remarkable work, which has now become a part of Prussia and is Prussianism itself, that von Bernhardi states posi- tively that the economic necessities of the German Empire justify a world war; that a world war will be waged, and that Germany is going to be the victor in that world war. Now, gentlemen, in contradistinction to Germany's form of government, a complete autocracy, what is the form of government that we have in this country? It is a complete democracy; the rule of the people, a government of the people, for the people, and by the people, which the great Abraham Lincoln said, "Shall not perish from the face of the earth." The American Constitution, under which you and I live today, has been pronounced by Mr. Gladstone, who, next to Lloyd George, is perhaps the greatest statesman that England ever produced, "as the most wonderful document ever struck off at a given time by the brain and by the purpose of man." By virtue of the elastic construc- tion of the Constitution of the United States, men of all countries have been brought together and have been inspired with a passionate loyalty to a lofty ideal; and, whether the material thrown into that crucible be the "thoughtful Englishman, the jolly Irishman, the bril- liant Frenchman, the thrifty German, the hard-working Scandinavian, the temperamental Italian or the loyal negro, it emerges with the dross refined and shines forth resplendent as the purest gold of humanity, the modern American. (Applause.) America takes but to give again. As the sea returns her rivers in rain, So she gathers the chosen of her seed From the haunted of every race and creed; Her German dwells by the gentle Rhine, Her Ireland sees the old sunburst shine, Her France dreams some dream divine, Her Norway still clings to her mountain pine. And, broad-based under all. Is planted England's broken-hearted mood, As rich in fortitude As ever went worldward from the Island wall; Fused into her candid light. All races here into one great race unite. Hereditary foemen forget their sword 'and slogan, Kith and clan; 'twas glory once to be a Roman; America makes it a glory now to be a MAN! (Applause.) Gentlemen, that is the spirit of our Government; that is the spirit of our law; that is the spirit of our military preparedness. And with that principle of individuality, with the spirit that the latch string of the humble cottage is as sacred as the sculptured entrance of the palatial lodge, that principle by which an humble Missouri or Arkansas boy may reach the highest position within the gift of the army and navy of the United States, and may one day wear laurels the equal of the baton of a Grand Marshal of France — it is this principle of democ- racy that has enabled our troops "as good as the Kaiser's best" to withstand the terrific German onslaught at Chateau Thierry and wipe out the famous St. Mihiel salient, the last German salient in France, with the capture of 30,000 prisoners in twenty-seven hours, that has alreadj' stamped the brave boys in khaki as the finest soldiers —10— in the world, combining as they do the stubbornness of the English- man with the brilliancy of the French, the initiative of the Italian, and something which is peculiarly and indefinably Amencart. (Ap- pluase.) Our brave soldiers and marines, whom the Germans last sunimer derisively called "teufel hunden," or "devil dogs," have within a single year brought the military party of Germany to its knees by their brilliant achievements, they have poured into France in a mighty golden stream of 300,000 a month, and have turned the red tide of battle Rhineward. Thev have proven themselves as good as the best shock troops of the Allies, as good as the Alpini or the be- feathered Berseglieri of Italy, the Blue Devils of France, the naked- kneed Highlanders of Scotland, as good as the best of the bulldog breed of New Zealand or Australia, as good as the bravest of the lion's litter from England or Canada— all because of the nobility of the ideals and the spirit of democracy for which they are fighting. Thev are Cavaliers worthy of the knightly traditions of Richard Coeur de Lion or Godfrey of Bouillon. The Poilu and the Tommy love him because of the unselfishness and efficiency of his service, and in the golden years to come they will cherish their comradeship with our brave American boys as the most priceless memory of their common service, nor will they forget — "The look of men that ha' bothered men by more than an easy hrcathj The eyes of men that ha' read with men in the open books of death. Gentlemen, practical men of affairs may say, "Wars are not won by differences in ideals and forms of government; although we are battling for the great ideal of making the world safe for democracy and democracy safe for the world, wars are not won by differences in forms of government. Wars are won by heavy artillery. Napoleon Bonaparte once said that "God is on the side of the heavy artillery." I am inclined to think that God is oftentimes on the side of the heavy artillery; but, thank God, we have the heavy artillery in the United States to win this war. (Applause.) We have the wealth of the world. Bradstreet says that last winter we had two hundred and eighty-seven billion dollars worth of wealth. England ranks next, with eighty billions; Germany next, with seventy-four billions; and France next, with sixty billions. Our wealth is so great that if, as our good Socialist friends suggest, the property of the United States was evenly divided, every man, woman and child in this country would have two thousand and thirty dollars' worth of property. But property is not the test ot the ability of the people to subscribe for Fourth Liberty Loan bonds the Red Cross, and a War Allied Drive. Income is the best test ot a person's ability to pay taxes and lend money. How does the income of the United States compare with the income of other countries? The income of the United btates is i ty- four billions of dollars a year; England ranks next with twenty-three billions a year. Gentlemen, that explains how in a single year, we can float twenty-six billion dollars' worth of loans; why Congress enacted recently a new revenue bill which provided for the addition of eight billions to the twenty-six billions we have a ready expended, three-fifths as much expended in a single year as this Government expended for all purposes during the one hundred and twenty-six years of our previous financial history. The income-producing power of our people is so tremendous, and is increasing from year to year. Then again, gentlemen, we can not be starved oVt as w^e take p'art in this war^ The farmers last year pro duced twenty-six billion dollars' worth of agricultural products^ How much is twenty-six billion dollars? A poor Governor has no —11 — conception of twenty-six billions of dollars. And perhaps a few of you distinguished lawyers have not. But I can illustrate. The entire wealth of my own dear State of Arkansas, with all its great resources, on a fifty per cent basis — and we have raised our assessments seventy-six millions of dollars within the past year through the passage of the Township Assessment Bill — the entire wealth of the State of Arkansas at the present time on a fifty per cent basis is five hundred and twenty millions of dollars. That means that we have a total wealth of one billion four hundred million of dollars for taxation purposes. That only represents about seventy-five per cent of our real wealth. The real wealth of the State of Arkansas would probably aggregate two and a half billions of dollars. In other words, the farmers of the United States last year produced over thirteen times the entire value of the State of Arkansas. The farmers of the United States are constantly increasing their wealth, in spite of drouths severe killing winters, and labor shortage, because our agriculture is becoming more intensive and scientific. The planting of winter wheat, rye and oats in our Southern States will partially compensate for the ravages of drouths and severe winters. We have not only got the property and the income-producing power, but the agricultural and manufactured products to win this war, but we also have the inventive genius in the United States. Germany has made wonderful strides in invention, particularly in the invention of munitions of war; but, gentlemen, perhaps I can give you a bit or two of official news this morning that may be surprising to some of you. A good many of the fathers and mothers of Missouri are worrying about the death of their boys in crossing the ocean. Did you ever stop to think that not a single American transport, convoyed by an American battleship or an American convoy, has yet been sunk? The Tuscania was sunk — twenty-eight hundred of our boys had their lives imperiled last month. But those were English cruisers or transports; they were not our own. Every American transport that has crossed the ocean since the month of March has been armed with the latest improved microphone of Mr. Edison, based on the theory of wireless electricity and the wave formations of the sea, and our vessels can absolutely detect the presence of a submarine either on the surface of the water or below the surface of the water, at a distance of sixteen miles. (Applause.) You and I were very much frightened last March when we read of the big Berthas of Germany. We were reminded of the discussion between the two negroes. One said that the Allies had a gun that could shoot twenty-five miles. The other said, "Why, shucks, that ain't nothin'. Them Germans has got a gun that all they axes fo' is yo' address." (Applause.) Well, we were very much frightened by the greatness of that gun that can shoot sixty-three miles, eighteen and one-tenth miles up in the air; that shoots a shot that weighs two hundred pounds and costs four thousand dollars a shot to shoot the gun. But, gentlemen, I bring you the official information this morning that at the Navy Yard in Washington, approved by the Bureau of Standards of the United States, there has been maufactured and is being manufactured a sixteen-inch gun, hammered to a twelve-inch gun at its muzzle — a gun within a gun, having a range of seventy-two miles. (Applause.) Mirabile dictu! Mirabile dictu! Last week the Kaiser and his imperial chancellor protested through the Spanish Ambassador that the use of gas was a violation of international law. (Laughter.) Do you gentlemen know why that protest came? Not, because the use of gas in the opinion of the Kaiser was a violation of the rules of inter- —12— national law, for the German government sanctioned the use of chlorine gas, mustard gas, and tear gas, and other gases, in violation of the Hague Tribunal, but because on the shores of Maryland, for thirty-five acres on the Baltimore & Ohio and for thirty-five acres on the Chesa- peake & Ohio there is being manufactured a concentrated chlorine gas that is so strong that it doesn't matter whether the Germans wear gas masks or not, it will eat its way right through any gas mask made. (Applause.) It will be a note of encouragement to the gentlemen of the State Bar Association of Missouri to know that a bomb was invented last October by a Pennsylvania inventor and presented to the Sixty-fourth Congress in executive session, which, if successfully operated, should prove the most dangerous weapon in the annals of military warfare. This bomb is seven feet high. It is operated by an air valve, which, timed with mathematical precision, causes a terrific explosion when the air strikes a chemical compound. It explodes by centripetal and centrifugal force, combining the joint effects of dynamite and black powder. It was recently tried out on Virginia islands on the eastern coast of the United States, and so terrific was the force of its explosion that it tore up every rock and tree within a radius of a haljf mile. The one weak spot in the heel of the American Achilles is being strengthened; that is our aviation service, without which a bomb of the size could not be effectively used. After Congress appropriated six hundred and ninety-six millions of dollars for the purchase of thirty thousand aeroplanes, we began to discover by Congressional investigations that German spies had gotten into those aeroplane factories and had substituted leaden parts for steel parts, with the result that a number of our brave aviators, many of whom are from the State of Missouri, have lost their lives. I have in the Governor's ofiRce at Little Rock, sent me by one of the boys I taught in the University of Arkansas, a beautifully mounted cane made of the crushed pieces of aeroplanes on which our aviators lost their lives on Kelly Field, Texas. But this situation is being remedied. The type of aeroplane that was defective has been rejected by General Pershing; we now have in the active service of this country approximately five thousand aeroplanes, and before next spring the entire Congressional program of thirty thousand aeroplanes will be completed, many of them of the Italian Caproni plane type, capable of carrying at least nine tons. Every one of us has our opinion of how this war will be won. Some agree with Simons and Repperton that we will win on the Western front, of Charmand that we will win on the Eastern front; some hold the theory — some say we will make wonderful advances this winter through the valley of the Moselle; others believe that there will be advances from the north, and we will blow up the fortifications at Helgoland, without the necessity of exposing our boys to those wonderful fortresses and the electric mines of Germany; but, gentlemen, my theory of the war is, and I believe that you will concur to a certain extent in this — my theory is that the final ending of this — and whether it's going to be this year or next year, or three years hence, we will all know that there's going to be two years of constructive work for our boys to do after the final victory is won, at least two years of recon- structive work before the troops can be withdrawn. My theory is that the war is going to be suddenly ended by a social, a political, and an economic revolution in Bulgaria, Austro-Hungary, and in Germany itself; and one of the most terrible factors in creating this social, political and economic revolution is going to be the efficient use of our aeroplanes — bombarding the Krupp Works at Essen, the Shodka Works in Bohemia, and the industrial towns of Germany, and causing the German people to realize that war is hell! (Applause.) —13— When the war is brought to their own doors, when we bombard the Krupp Works at Essen and the industrial centers of Germany and Austro-Hungary, then, in my humble opinion, this great military combination of the Central Teutonic Powers is going to crumble, and our t)oys, under the Stars and Stripes, marching between the fluttering and pro'ud banners of France, England and Italy, are going to show them a new step on the streets of Berlin, the stride of free men and Americans; and instead of the German song "Die Wacht Am Rhine" being sung, they are going to listen to the newer and more glorious song of a world made safe for democracy and a democracy made safe for the world! You may think, gentlemen, that I am rather old-fashioned in my views on this point; but, in the third place, I believe that it has been divinely decreed that we shall win this war, because, if Browning was correct when he sang "God is in his heaven and all is right with the world," this God, who holds within the hollow of His hand the destinies of nations as well as the lives of indivduals, is never going to permit the victory of a nation that has already made an unholy alliance with Turkey, that Sick Man of Europe, a monster that has butchered over two millions of Armenian Christians and piled their skulls up as high as Ghengis Khan piled his pyramid of human skulls up in an age of barbaric pillage and plunder. No matter whether a man is Jew or Gentile or a Protestant, he can never believe that God will sanction the victory of a ruler of a Christian nation who, in his addresses to his troops, proclamations, and public utterances, has never once mentioned the name of Christ. If any one of you learned gentlemen can show me a single proclamation or a single address of the Kaiser in which he has ever once mentioned the name of Christ, I will be very greatly obliged. You have frequently heard that wonderful combination that exists between "Ich" and "Gott," always placing the "Ich" before the "Gott," and making "Gott" the Go-at of the combination. (Laughter and applause.) But never once has the Kaiser mentioned the name of Christ. My friends, there have been tyrants throughout all history. This one is not the one alone of the breed who has hungered for empires. Alexander was a tyrant and conquered the then known world, but he died in a Bacchanalian revel, sighing for more worlds to conquer. Hannibal was a tyrant; he was probably greater than Alexander; he led his armies against imperial Rome, military mistress of the world, and struck the proud Roman legionaries and humbled their pride; he climbed the Pyrenees and almost realized his ambition to conquer the conqueror of his world; but Hannibal, too, met his crushing defeat at Tanea; his star was setting even while he was conquering on the Arno, and at Capua and Tarentum it went into its declension, and finally he, too, went the way of tyrants at Libyssa by taking poison, seven years after his overthrow on the field of Zama. Napoleon Bonaparte, perhaps the most wonderful genius that the world has ever produced, was a tyrant. His sun began to rise at Marengo, and reached its meridian as Austerlitz, but it sank forever on the battlefield of Waterloo, and Napoleon died, a lone and a dis- appointed man, his soul lashed by the billows of ambition as relentlessly and unsparingly as ever the lonely rock of St. Helena was lashed by the surging billows of the Atlantic. And yet farther back let us go, back into ancient times, and you will find tyrants. There were Kaisers in Biblical times, who no whit suffered the less than their descendant of today shall suffer for his many sins. King Sennacherib was a Kaiser, ruling over Babylonia, lord over Syria and Egypt; a king, so run the shards, before whom monarchs trembled and potentates —14— humbled themselves; but the Lord saj's, in whatever station we occupy in life, that a proud spirit goeth before a fall and haughtiness before destruction; and He said these words to King Sennacherib through sturdy Prophet Hezekiah: "I know thy sitting down and they going out, and thy coming in and thy raging against Me, and because thy arrogancy is come up into my ears, therefore will I put my hook in thy nose "and My bridle in thy lips, and I will turn thee back by the way which thou camest," spoke the Lord God of Hosts. You ask whether this prophecy was realized, whether the majesty of the God of history was vindicated? Lord Byron, by no means a religious poet, answers: The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold. And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold; And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea When the blue wave rolls mightily on deep Galilee. Like the leaves of the forest when summer is green, That host with their banners at sunset were seen; Like the leaves of the forest when autumn hath blown. That host on the morrow lay wither'd and strewn. For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed; And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill, And their "hearts but once heaved, and forever grew still. And there lay the steed with his nostril all wide. But throughit there rolled not the breath of his pride; And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf. And cold as the spray of the rock-beating surf. And there lay the rider distorted and pale. With the dew on his brow and the rust on his mail; And the tents were all silent, the banners alone. The lances uplifted, the trumpet unblown. And the widows of Asshur are loud in their wail. And the idols arc broke in the temple of Baal; And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword, Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord. Read and re-read, my friends, the story of the destruction of Sen- nacherib. The stone crieth out of the wall, and the beam out of the timber, "Woe, woe to him that buildeth a tower with blood, and establisheth a city in iniquity!" Gentlemen, the whole purpose of the German government was to spread kultur throughout the world. Write the name, gentlemen of the Missouri Bar, write the name in relief worthy of their race: Kultur! KULTUR! K for killing! U for U-boat submarine menace! L for lies! T for treachery! U for unfaithfulness! R for ruthlessness! K-U-L-T-U-R! That spells kul-tur; and the kultur is the code of the ruling classes of Germany! But, thank God, there isn't enough —15— in von Hindenburg or von Mackensen or von Ludendorff to ram kultur down the throats of free and independent Americans! (Strong applause.) To you, gentlemen, as Governor of a neighboring State, here by virtue of your very kind invitation, may I extend from the very bottom of my heart our country's thanks for what you, as lawyers, are doing to make this war a glorious success; may I thank the mem- bers of the legal advisory boards in one hundred and fourteen counties in Missouri for the work they are doing and for the painstaking care they are taking in making out questionaires for our brave soldier boys? Each and every one of us must do our part to make the world safe for democracy and democracy safe for the world. My own opinion is, as I expressed at the beginning of this address, that the struggle will continue at least another year, considering the period of recon- struction work that will have to be done before we will resume normal times. We are going to have a great civil reconstruction work as well to do; economic, political and religious lines, in my opinion, are going to be entirely changed; politics is going to be fought out on entirely different lines, and our returning soldiers and sailors are destined to be the leaders in our public life. We will live in a period of vast recon- struction work for years yet to come. There will be much suffering, and there will be seen many a badge of mourning in every hamlet in the nearly six thousand counties of the United States and in every one of the forty-eight States in the American Union; but my friends, I am sure that our American mothers and our American fathers are going to have the same spirit that the fathers and mothers of France have had. You have heard the story, I am sure, of the English mother who had three sons killed in battle, and who, when the death of the third son was reported to her, instead of loud lamentations, exclaimed: "Who dies, if England lives? Who dies, if England lives?" And the French mother, who lost two of her boys in battle, instead of weeping and wailing and tearing her hair, when she saw the dear tri-color of France pass by, cried: "Vive la France!" Long live France ! Methinks that in after years, when the brave American boys with their flags flowing to the breeze shall return victorious from the battle-fields of Europe, and when during the entire time intervening we must make our fearful sacrifice in blood and money, instead of loud lamentations at our sacrifices, each and every one of us, as Old Glory passes by, will cry, "Vive la Democracy et Liberte!" Long live Liberty and Democracy! I thank you, gentlemen. (Sustained and continued applause.) —16- LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 021 547 729 • \ LIBRARY OF CONGRESS ^ 021 547 729