COMPENSATIONS 
 OF THE WAR 
 
 Address By 
 
 Joseph H. Wade, Ph. D. 
 
 District Superintendent of School* 
 
Digitized by 
 
 the Internet Archive 
 
 
 
 in 2014 
 
 
 
 https://archive.org/details/compensationsofwOOwade 
 
COMPENSATIONS OF 
 THE WAR 
 
 Address by 
 The President of the 
 Teachers Loyalty League 
 JOSEPH H. WADE, Ph. D. 
 District Superintendent of Schools 
 
 Delivered at the 
 Vocational School For Boys 
 138th Street and Fifth Avenue 
 New York City 
 
 O 
 
 March 11, 1919. 
 
Compensations of 
 the War 
 
 ITH the ending of the Great 
 War there must come to every 
 thoughtful American the ques- 
 tion "Was it worth the price 
 we have paid?" And the answer from 
 every loyal citizen should be an immed- 
 iate and decisive "Yes", even though the 
 the price was far greater than it has been, 
 and it has been tremendous in respect to 
 financial expense, loss of man power and 
 in its after-effects. 
 
 When we consider that the total cost 
 of our government from the inauguration 
 of George Washington to April, 1917, was 
 twenty-seven billions including the ex- 
 penditures of four wars, the second war 
 with England, the war with Mexico, the 
 Civil War and the war with Spain, we 
 can realize in some measure the financial 
 burden of this war. According to state- 
 ments made by competent authorities the 
 United States had counted on expending 
 in one form or other, including our foreign 
 loans, more than thirty-six billions in the 
 first two years of the war, one-third great- 
 
Compensations of The War 
 
 er than the entire cost of our government 
 for 128 years. Then the battle casual- 
 ties in killed, wounded and missing in the 
 short time we were actually engaged 
 amounted to nearly two hundred and 
 fifty thousand, and this number does not 
 include the great death list from accident 
 and illness in France and in the camps 
 and cantonments on this side. Again, we 
 must consider the expenditures in insur- 
 ance and pensions and the cost of the 
 after-care of the great army of the wound- 
 ed. But despite all this we have gained 
 far more than we have lost or can lose by 
 our entrance into the war. 
 
 With its ending some messages of hope 
 and inspiration have been carried to the 
 heart of the American people which will 
 compensate in great measure for all the 
 losses, sacrifices, and suffering which we 
 have felt throughout our nation. 
 
 First is the great happiness we must feel 
 in the complete victory of right and de- 
 mocracy over brute- force and autocracy. 
 In the destruction of the German menace 
 
Compensations of The War 
 
 7 
 
 to the peace and liberty of the world, in 
 the humbling of the arrogant Prussian war 
 lords, the world has seen again the ex- 
 emplification of the divine edict that those 
 who take up the sword shall perish by the 
 sword. 
 
 The victory has vindicated the soul of 
 the American people. Germany in its 
 blind egoism thought she knew our soul 
 but Germany never knew the soul of any 
 nation but its own. Her leaders were 
 confident that we could not organize a 
 force that would count in this war. They 
 were certain that our drafts would fail, 
 that the Italians and the Russians would 
 not fight, that the Irish would rebel, and 
 that her millions of faithful sons of the 
 Fatherland, as she called the German 
 Americans, could be relied on for revolt. 
 Furthermore, their leaders confidently as- 
 sumed that if we did raise an army we 
 could not equip it, and if we did equip it 
 her submarines would never permit its 
 transport to France. How all this blind 
 assurance was destroyed by the great 
 
8 
 
 Compensations of The War 
 
 success of our drafts, by the transport of 
 our army to Europe, and above all, by 
 the marvellous victory of those untried 
 men over the finest troops of Germany. 
 
 In the victories that followed in quick 
 succession from the 18th of July to the 
 signing of the Armistice our soldiers have 
 written a page of heroism that is the bright- 
 est of all our history and the joy of every 
 American must far surpass the sorrow 
 that has come to us as a natural result 
 of our entrance into this, the most un- 
 necessary and the most tragic war in the 
 history of the world. 
 
 Future generations will revere the 
 memory of those men for the sacrifices 
 they made on behalf of the liberty and 
 civilization of the world. 
 
 Secondly, we have every reason to re- 
 joice in our boys. From the day when 
 President Wilson called for volunteers 
 more than 50,000 boys between the ages 
 of 16 and 22 left the high schools, the 
 colleges, and the universities of our nation 
 to enlist in the Army or Navy, and hun- 
 
Compensations of The War 
 
 9 
 
 dreds of thousands of young men gave up 
 their business responsibilities and their 
 professions to enter the service. We had 
 been told before our war by pro-German 
 speakers and pro-German writers, some 
 in the guise of pacifists, that our boys 
 would not volunteer, that they could not 
 be induced to take part in this war in 
 great numbers. Our experience has 
 proved such statements to be deliberate 
 falsehoods or ignorant prophecies. 
 
 From April 6— to Aug. 15, 1917, more 
 than 1,300,000 young men at the call of 
 President Wilson applied at recruiting 
 stations for service in the army and navy, 
 of whom 448,859 were chosen. Thou- 
 sands of these young volunteers were of 
 the first generation of their families in 
 this country. Every training camp for 
 officers, every training station for marines 
 and naval reserves contained hundreds of 
 young men from our colleges and from 
 the business and professional life of the 
 country who were the sons of Irish, 
 Russian, Italian, German, Polish, and 
 
10 
 
 Compensations of The War 
 
 other nationalities that constitute such an 
 important element in our American cit- 
 izenry. These sons of our immigrants 
 took up the sword at the call of their 
 country as readily and as resolutely as 
 the sons of the American Revolution. 
 Again, the great encampments and can- 
 tonments which were organized for the 
 volunteer and drafted soldiers of our 
 country were filled with the youth of our 
 land who were ready to give up their 
 future ambitions and their lives if nec- 
 essary, to support their United States in 
 this war for liberty and civilization. 
 On Aug. 1, last, 13,826 of our marine corp 
 were under 21 years of age, and when we 
 consider their wonderful courage in the 
 face of almost certain death at Chateau 
 Thierry, the immortal bravery of the 
 young men of the 77th Division in the 
 Argonne Forest and the dash and morale 
 of our army in all the lines of danger in the 
 victorious march of the allied armies, we 
 have glorious reasons to be proud of our 
 youth. In the making of these young 
 
Compensations of The War 
 
 11 
 
 patriots the public schools of America 
 played the most important part. These 
 boys received in the classrooms of the 
 nation their first training in discipline 
 and their first lessons in patriotism. 
 What they did "over there" was but a 
 glorious reflection of what our loyal 
 teachers did over here. This is the type 
 of patriotic service that will nullify the 
 efforts of those irresponsible and disloyal 
 propagandists who would raise the red 
 flag of the Bolsheviki above our glorious 
 symbol of the Stars and Stripes. 
 
 The stories of the marvellous courage of 
 our boys must thrill every teacher as 
 well as every parent in our land. 
 
 Some great phrases of this war will live 
 for generations. The French Marshal's 
 "They shall not pass", the English 
 Marshal's "We stand with our backs to 
 the wall" do not surpass that answer of 
 our General at Chateau Thierry, who on 
 receiving the suggestion from the French 
 Commander that it might be advisable 
 to retreat, replied, "It is unthinkable for 
 
12 
 
 Compensations of The War 
 
 an American Army to retreat", and the 
 order of the Colonel to his Captains to 
 take a certain position and if they found 
 they could not hold that position to go 
 forward. Again every loyal American 
 must be thrilled by the story of those 
 boys of the Marine corps hurrying along 
 the road on the 17th of July crowded in 
 the lorries and meeting the retreating 
 French, many of them terribly wounded, 
 who cried out to the Americans: "Go 
 back, go back" "Beaucoup Boches", too 
 many Germans. But these boys only 
 stopped their songs and cheers to answer, 
 "Go back nothing. We are going to it. " 
 
 The third message of hope speaks of 
 the generous spirit that animated all 
 classes of the country in support of our 
 righteous war. In the public schools we 
 saw this generous support in its strongest 
 light. Thousands of teachers have seen 
 the poorest childern in their classes save 
 their few pennies to buy Thrift Stamps, 
 to furnish their mite each week for the 
 United War Funds and to buy their 
 
Compensations of The War 
 
 13 
 
 membership in the Junior Red Cross. 
 We have seen parents at Liberty Loan 
 meetings held in school houses come forth 
 at the call to buy bonds, though we knew 
 at what a sacrifice many of them were 
 purchasing even a $50 bond. In all this 
 work we noted that no distinction was 
 made between Jew and Gentile, between 
 Catholic and Protestant. All our loyal 
 people joined in one great band to answer 
 the call for funds whether issued by our 
 Government, by the Red Cross, the 
 Y. M. C. A., the Knights of Columbus, 
 the Salvation Army, or the Jewish Welfare 
 Board. 
 
 The fourth message of hope speaks of 
 the union of races in this country that has 
 resulted from this war. Before our entry 
 into the struggle there was a strong pro- 
 German and anti-English spirit among our 
 foreign-born inhabitants and naturalized 
 citizens. This spirit disappeared from 
 all excepting those who are at heart and 
 who have been at heart always against 
 this country in its prosecution of the war. 
 
14 
 
 Compensations of The War 
 
 I have noted specially the patriotic spirit 
 that developed within the past year 
 among our Russian Jewish population. 
 The great majority of these people were 
 set against the United States entering 
 the war. They had seen enough of war 
 and its terrible consequences before they 
 had left their native land. They showed 
 this feeling in the beginning of the war 
 at patriotic meetings and in their half- 
 hearted support of the first and second 
 Liberty Loans. Everything changed, 
 however, as the war went on and I feel 
 that this change was accomplished by the 
 successful operation of the draft. Their 
 boys were brought into the war. They 
 saw their sons drafted, often without 
 making claims of exemption. They saw 
 them go away, and when again they met 
 their boys they saw them dressed in the 
 khaki of the soldier or the blue of the 
 sailor. And these boys brought from 
 their training stations, their camps and 
 cantonments, the great message of Amer- 
 ican patriotism that could come to their 
 
Compensations of The War is 
 
 parents in no other way. Many times I 
 have passed houses in the poorest quar- 
 ters of Manhattan and the Bronx where 
 I have seen this message of patriotism in 
 the window in the form of a service flag. 
 In some cases this flag was hung in the 
 only window that admitted sunlight into 
 the room. It was not difficult to under- 
 stand how the people of that household, 
 no matter what their sentiments might 
 have been in the past, had become more 
 and more American as they saw the light 
 of the sun shining to them through the 
 Red Badge of Courage— the service flag, 
 displayed in honor of their boy or boys 
 who had left their homes for the service 
 of the United States. 
 
 Never before in the history of the 
 United States have we realized more 
 clearly this great truth, that it is not 
 birth that makes real Americans. It is 
 loyalty to the cause of liberty and equal- 
 ity. It is a truth as old as our nation. 
 Even at the very beginning of our national 
 life some of our leaders in the Revolution 
 
16 
 
 Compensations of The War 
 
 were not Americans by birth or by lan- 
 guage or by tradition and yet such men as 
 Lafayette, the Frenchman, Kosciusko, 
 the Pole, and Von Steuben, the German 
 may well be considered as fathers of our 
 country. 
 
 This union of races will be a wonderful 
 blessing for our country. Thousands of 
 these foreigners have been led by false 
 prophets, who were really agents for Ger- 
 many in this country doing their work 
 under the guise of international opposi- 
 tion to militarism. Our army and our 
 navy have been filled with the sons of 
 these people, and as they fought and per- 
 haps dyed with their blood the battle 
 fields of Europe in support of the Star 
 Spangled Banner, their parents in this 
 country have felt the thrill of the Amer- 
 ican spirit. 
 
 Lastly we must realize how this war 
 glorified the women of our country. The 
 half-hearted and the timid told us that 
 even if our boys wished to fight, their 
 mothers would not let them. 
 
Compensations of The War 
 
 17 
 
 Think of the patriotic sacrifice that 
 hundreds of thousands of mothers made 
 in this country when they sent their sons 
 away to the camps and cantonments with 
 their blessings. 
 
 Think of the heroic fortitude they dis- 
 played when the great lists of killed and 
 wounded began to be published in our 
 newspapers. 
 
 Think of the sacrifices of thousands of 
 educated and refined young women 
 through all our land who left their homes 
 of comfort and even luxury to enlist in the 
 ranks of the Red Cross and the many- 
 Welfare Organizations. 
 
 Think of what these women have done 
 for desolated Belgium and France and for 
 the unfortunate inhabitants of Italy, 
 Poland, Russia, Armenia, and Serbia and 
 all the lands that have felt the scourge 
 of war. 
 
 Think of their work in the hospitals, 
 on the battlefields, and in the ruined 
 villages and towns of Belgium and France. 
 
 No one can think of all these splendid 
 
18 
 
 Compensations of The War 
 
 sacrifices and achievements of the women 
 of America in this war of compassion 
 without the fullest appreciation of the 
 blessed message they have given to the 
 war-worn world. 
 
 The war is ended but the efforts of the 
 loyal men and women of our nation must 
 not cease. The work they did was well 
 done, but it is not finished. For two 
 years the hope of our country was center- 
 ed on our army and navy. To-day it is 
 centered on the work of our schools as 
 the most important factor in developing 
 good American citizenship. Upon the 
 American teacher is placed the solemn 
 responsibility of training our youth for 
 a worthy heritage of the ideals of equal 
 opportunity and equal reward in accord- 
 ance with the principles of law and order. 
 These are the ideals which were form- 
 ulated by George Washington, defended 
 by Abraham Lincoln and vindicated by 
 Woodrow Wilson. 
 
Printed by the 
 Hoys ol the Vocational School 
 1.18th Street and Fifth Avenue 
 
 New York City 
 
Compliments of 
 JOSEPH H. WADE, PH. D. 
 
 District Superintendent of Schools 
 New York City