The Foes of Our Own Household

by

Theodore Roosevelt

Copyright 1917

Chapter III

The Children of the Crucible

WE Americans are the children of the crucible.  The crucible does not do its work unless it turns out those cast into it in one national mould; and that must be the mould established by Washington and his fellows when they made us into a nation.  We must be Americans; and nothing else.  Yet the events of the past three years bring us face to f ace with the question whether in the present century we are to continue as a separate nation at all or whether we are to become merely a huge polyglot boarding house and counting house, in which dollar hunters of twenty different nationalities scramble for gain, while each really pays his soul-allegiance to some foreign power.

We are now at war with Germany.  For three years Germany has heaped insult upon insult, injury upon injury, on our people.  We showed a reluctance passing the bounds of ordinary timidity either to resent the insults or to prepare for defense.  We feared to resent wrong in the present.  We did not even dare to prepare so as to be able effectively to resent wrong in the future.  Our supine inaction was partly due to the folly engendered in our people by the professional pacifists.  But an even more important factor was the dread many of our politicians felt not merely of the German Army abroad but of German votes at home.  The cold, greedy selfishness and short-sightedness of our political leaders were indefensible; and were due to the fact that the men who took the lead in the professional German-American movement sought entirely to subordinate the actions of the country of which they were nominally citizens, the United States, to the needs of the country for which they really cared, Germany.

Now we are at open war with Germany; yet many of these persons ‑ supported of course by the professional pacifists ‑ continue to champion Germany's cause as against the cause for which we are fighting.  This is moral treason to the Republic, and all who engage in it, whether senators, congressmen, editors, or professed humanitarians, are in fact, although not in law, traitors, who have no right longer to be treated as American citizens.  The time has come to insist that they now drop their dual allegiance, and in good faith become outright Germans or outright Americans.  They cannot be both; and those who pretend that they are both, are merely Germans who hypocritically pretend to be Americans in order to serve Germany and damage America.  At the moment, the vital thing to remember about these half-hidden traitors is that to attack America's allies, while we are at death grips with a peculiarly ruthless and brutal foe, or to champion that foe as against our allies, or to apologize for that foe's infamous wrong‑doing, or to clamor for an early and inconclusive peace, is to be false to the cause of liberty and to the United States.'

In this war, either a man is a good American, and therefore is against Germany, and in favor of the allies of America, or he is not an American at all, and should be sent back to Germany where he belongs.  There are no stauncher Americans in the country than the average Americans who are in whole or in part of German descent; and all these are as stanchly against Germany now as the Americans of English descent were against Great Britain in 1776, I speak of them with knowledge; for German blood runs in my own veins.  But the American of German descent who remains a German or a half-German is not an American at all; and a large number of the men of this type are dangerous traitors who ought instantly to be sent out of the country.  These men work steadily against America in the company of the native-American professional pacifists, and the pro-German Socialists, and all the anti-English foreigners.  Some of these pro-German and anti-American leaders have been advocating that men of German descent should not be required to serve in our armies against Germany.  This is precisely as if in the Revolutionary War it had been proposed that men of English descent should not serve against England.  Such a proposal should be regarded as treasonable, and all men making it should be treated accordingly.

Many of these German sympathizers, of these foes of the United States (including not only men of German descent but men of Irish descent whose blind hatred of England makes them disloyal to America, and men of native origin, who are conscienceless politicians or who are. pacifists or denationalized and therefore thoroughly unpatriotic) fear openly to assail our country; and therefore they serve our country's enemies effectively by assailing England, by endeavoring to keep us from effective cooperation with the allies, or by condoning and defending such acts of barbarity as the Zeppelin raids on English cities and the murderous assaults on ships crowded with innocent non-combatants.

In the Revolutionary War France was our ally.  Fifteen years before she had been our bitter enemy.  Therefore certain Tories endeavored to harm the American cause by reviving the old anti-French animosities.  They acted precisely as the men act who to-day seek to harm the United States and help our ruthless and bitter enemy, Germany, by reviving the old anti-British enmity.  Any man who during the Revolution stated that although he favored the United States against England nevertheless he also favored England against France, was really a traitor to America.  Any man who now announces that although he favors the United States against Germany yet he favors Germany against England is a traitor to America.  There can be no half and half attitude in this war, and no honorable man can afford to take such an attitude.  We are now bound by every consideration of loyalty and good faith to our allies, and any opposition to them or any aid given to their and our enemy is basely dishonorable as regards our allies, and treasonable as regards our own country.

Weak-kneed apologists for infamy say that it is "natural" for American citizens of German origin to favor Germany.  This is nonsense, and criminal nonsense to boot.  Any American citizen who thus feels should be sent straight back to Germany, where he belongs.  We can have no "fifty-fifty" allegiance in this country.  Either a man is an American and nothing else, or he is not an American at all.  We are akin by blood and descent to most of the nations of Europe; but we are separate from all of them; we are a new and distinct nation, and we are bound always to give our whole‑hearted and undivided loyalty to our own flag, and in any international crisis to treat each and every foreign nation purely according to its conduct in that crisis.

This is a new nation, based on a mighty continent, of boundless possibilities.  No other nation in the world has such resources.  No other nation has ever been so favored.  If we dare to rise level to the opportunities offered us, our destiny will be vast beyond the power of imagination.  We must master this destiny, and make it our own; and we can thus make it our own only if we, as a vigorous and separate nation, develop a great and wonderful nationality, distinctively different from any other nationality, of either the present or the past.  For such a nation all of us can well afford to give up all other allegiances, and high of heart to stand, a mighty and united people, facing a future of glorious promise.

This nation was founded because the Americans of 1776, although predominately English by blood, fought their own kinsmen to establish their liberty and to make this nation the hope of the world.  Again, over a century ago, our forefathers once more fought England; and the men in this country who were of English blood stood with absolute loyalty, by America and against England.  It is not merely our right but our duty to insist on exactly the same full-hearted loyalty by all Americans of other descent, whenever we are at war with the countries from which their ancestors came.  We are now at war with Germany.  The offenses committed against the men of 1776 by King George and the England of his day were as nothing compared to the crimes committed against us and against all civilization and humanity by the brutalized Germany of the Hohenzollerns during the last three years.  There must be the same unhesitating loyalty shown now, by every American fit to call himself an American, as was shown in the days of our forefathers, when Paul Revere's ride and the fight of the Minute Men at Lexington called the country to arms.

The obligation of single-minded Americanism has two sides ‑ one as important as the other, On the one hand, every man of foreign birth or parentage must in good faith become an American and nothing else; for any man who tries to combine loyalty to this country with loyalty to some other country inevitably, when the strain arises, becomes disloyal to this country he who is not with us is against us.

On the other hand, if a man in good faith, in soul and in body, becomes an American, he stands on a full and entire equality with everybody else, and must be so treated, without any mental reservation, without any regard to his creed, or birthplace or descent.  One obligation is just as binding as the other.  It is both weak and wicked to permit any of our citizens to hold a dual or divided allegiance; and it is just as mischievous, just as un-American, to discriminate against any good American, because of his birthplace, creed or parentage.

Let us immediately and practically apply these principles in the present crisis.  A former member of my cabinet, who was born in Germany and who does not profess my religious creed, but who is in every way precisely as good an American as I am, has sent me cuttings from the New York Times which contain extracts from statements issued by the United States Government to the Red Cross societies, in which the Red Cross units and hospital units intended for service at the base hospitals abroad are directed to exclude from service not merely American citizens born in Germany or Austria-Hungary but even Americans whose fathers were born in those countries. I most emphatically protest against such discrimination.  It represents the kind of attack on loyalty which tends actually to encourage disloyalty.

There have been instances of misconduct on the part of Germans in American hospital or Red Cross units; but this was due to the fact that our Government was then unduly influenced by fear of the German Government abroad or of the German vote at home, and so dared not act in the drastic manner necessary.  Now it swings to the opposite extreme and offsets its former fear of punishing German offenders by failure in the present to guard the rights and the self-respect of loyal Americans of German origin.

If I had been permitted to raise the four divisions of troops for service abroad which Congress gave me permission to raise, among the regular officers whom I would have recommended for command of the divisions and brigades would have been General Kuhn, the present head of the War College, and Colonel Bandholtz, who, when I was President, served as Chief of Constabulary in the Philippines; and I would have counted myself happy to have served under either.  Of the regular officers whom I had chosen to recommend as Colonels of various regiments in the division were four of German parentage or descent.  Among the few men not in the regular army whom I should have recommended for colonelcies, one, a National Guard Colonel, from Chicago, is of German parentage, and he informed me that of the troops he would raise in Chicago probably 8570 would be of foreign parentage.  My headquarters chaplain would have been a retired army officer, who was born in Germany ‑‑ a man not of my religious faith.  He is as good a citizen and as thoroughly an American of the best type as is to be found anywhere in this land.  My brigade Quartermaster General would have been a man of German parentage.  Now, if I had been permitted to take these men abroad to fight, I would have tolerated no discrimination from any source or of any kind between the Americans of Revolutionary stock and the Americans of foreign birth or parentage; and in return I would have demanded of all of them, with absolute disregard of all considerations of national origin, an undivided and whole‑hearted allegiance to the one flag that floats over all of us.

What is true of military life is true of civil life.  The man who for the past fifteen years has been my closest political friend, and who is also one of my closest personal friends, is of German parentage, as is his wife -- and the fathers of both of them were Union soldiers in the Civil War.  They are both of them exactly as good Americans as I am.  If they don't "belong," then I don't "belong."  In my Cabinet, when I was President, sat a descendant of one of Blucher's colonels.  Some of the best books written about our duty in this war have been written by men who are, in whole or in part, of German blood-James Beck, Owen Wister, Gustavus Ohlinger and Hermann Hagedorn.

I have just received a letter from one of my old captains of the Spanish War, a man born in Germany, running in part: "I can stand as much now as I could in the Spanish War, and I am ready and anxious to go whenever you say; as matters now are, every American citizen must stand by his country, and anyone that is not willing to do so should not be tolerated here."  One of the naturalists who was with me in my South African exploration is now in our volunteer army with an officer's commission; his father was born in Germany.  One of the naturalists who was with me in Africa (a joint author with me of a scientific book on the big game of Africa), a man who is now on a trip of scientific exploration in China, was born here of German parents.  He has recently written me: "We have just learned that America has finally declared war on Germany, This good news has restored our hopes for our country and its manhood.  I hope that America will make the declaration more than a matter of 'moral support' and will succeed by force of arms in materially shortening the task of subduing Germany and Austria and Turkey even at this apparently eleventh hour of the great struggle."

There spoke the true American spirit!  These three men are Americans, precisely as I am; they are not German-Americans any more than I am a Dutch-American or an Anglo-American.  We are all of us Americans, and nothing else; we all have equal rights and equal obligations; we form part of one people, in the face of all other nations, paying allegiance only to one flag; and a wrong to any one of us is a wrong to all the rest of us.

The men of whom I speak, and countless others like them, represent the best and most intense Americanism; they teach and they practice the highest service, and the most patriotic devotion to our common country, in the face of no matter what foreign foe; they are fit to guide our thoughts and rule our councils in peace and to lead our armies in war.  Any one of these men who are born here, no matter where their ancestors were born, may become President; all are liable to serve in our armies; and yet our Government permits them to be excluded from service with the Red Cross.  It is a base and unworthy thing for any section of our people, and above all for our Government, to discriminate, or permit even the slightest discrimination, against these, our fellow Americans.  They "belong," exactly as much as the rest of us do.  We are one; and we will tolerate no effort to divide us.

So much for one side of our twofold duty.  Now for the other side.  The men who enjoy the privileges of American citizenship, and yet seek in any way to serve some other nation which is hostile to us, are guilty of moral treason to the Republic.  If possible, the Government should act against them; if not, then they should be made to feel the full weight of the sternest condemnation by the people as a whole.  Germany is now our bitter and envenomed foe.  She has repeatedly and brutally murdered our women and children and defense­ less men.  She has proposed to join with Mexico and Japan to dismember us.  Her publicists and newspaper writers back up, with foul abuse and untruthfulness, the efficient brutality which her military men have exercised at our expense and at the expense of the tortured and heroic people of Belgium and of northern France.  Whoever now upholds or justifies Germany is an enemy of the United States.  Recently certain public men and newspapers -- newspapers published in German and newspapers published in English have sought to apologize for such German infamies as the submarine war against non‑combatants, and the destruction of undefended and peaceful cities, by saying that, we would behave in like manner if we had the opportunity.  The infamous falsity of such accusations is shown by the history of our Civil War, in which the most intense and bitter excitement of passion never betrayed the combatants on either side into for one moment permitting such organized atrocities as those of which the Germans have been guilty.  Turn to Emerson's "Life of Charles Russell Lowell," the nephew of the poet Lowell; read his letter to the War Department of June 26, 1863, in which he condemns the burning of a deserted town, and says that to permit "burning and pillaging" will turn the troops into a "horde of savages"; and then think of the fury of indignation this typical American officer would have shown over the hideous atrocities committed in Louvain and Dinant and hundreds of other places in Belgium and northern France.  The deed he condemned was by comparison so slight that to‑day the wretched victims of the German army would treat it as a mercy.  Or contrast the brutality shown toward women and children on the Lusitania and scores of other ships, by the officially directed German submarines, with the Alabama's action fifty years previous; Semmes never destroyed a vessel without providing for the safety of the passengers and crew; he turned his own officers out of their cabins to put in them the women and children of his foes; and once when he had 700 prisoners, and a prize, the Ariel, he actually permitted them to go in freedom on the vessel rather than send them to a nearby port when he found that there was yellow fever in this port. Compare these actions with the methodical and organized brutality of the German military authorities in this war; and then brand with shame the American traitors who seek to aid Germany by asserting that we, if given the chance, would be guilty of atrocities like those she has committed.

The American citizens who traitorously preach such doctrines sometimes preach them in the English tongue, sometimes in the German.  Those who use the former are the more despicable; but those who use the latter are the more dangerous because the great bulk of their loyal fellow citizens are ignorant of the speech in which they write treason.  The events of the last few years have made it evident that in this country we should not only refuse to tolerate a divided allegiance but 'also that we should insist on one speech.  We must have in this country but one flag, the American flag, and for the speech of the people but one language, the English language.  There is no analogy with the European countries where different nationalities of different tongues have coalesced or been conquered, and where therefore it is an injustice not to replace the Greater Bohemia, the greater Jugo-Slavia, the old-time Poland, the old-time Lithuania in the ranks of self-governing countries, each with its own speech.  But any man who comes here, whether he be a German, a Slav, an Italian, a man from the British Islands or the Scandinavian countries, or anyone else, if he becomes a citizen at all either commits perjury or else becomes an American, and only an American, and specifically foreswears all allegiance to his former country and its ruler.  Either he has committed perjury, or else he has ceased to be a German, or an Englishman, or an Irishman, or a Slav, or a Frenchman, and has become an American, and only an American.  He must adopt the institutions of the United States, and therefore he must adopt the language which is now the native tongue of our people, no matter what the several strains of blood in our veins may be.  It would be not merely a misfortune but a crime to perpetuate differences of language in this country, for it would mean failure on our part to become in reality a nation.  Many of the newspapers published in foreign tongues are of high character and have done and are doing capital work, by helping the immigrants who, speak these tongues during the transition period before they become citizens.  These papers deserve hearty recognition for their work.  But it must be recognized as transition work, and therefore its usefulness must be recognized as conditioned upon its finally coming to an end.  This is as true of the use of a foreign language in schools and churches as in newspapers.  I belong to the Dutch Reformed Church; it is now an entirely American church; yet when my grandfather was a young man, the services were still conducted in Dutch, and until this practice was stopped the church dwindled.  Exactly as we must have but one flag, so we should have but one tongue, the tongue of the Declaration of Independence, of Washington's Farewell Address, of Lincoln's Gettysburg Speech and Second Inaugural.

The Cologne Gazette of June 10 brazenly declares that the German-Americans of the United States are the "best allies" of Germany against the United States, and rejoices in the fact that these German-Americans "embarrass and restrain" us in the war.  The German-American Alliance stands among the foremost of the organizations which have thus worked against the interests of the United States; and the most prominent German newspapers in New York and Chicago during the last three years, at the time of the Lusitania infamy and since, have richly deserved the ominous and sinister praise of the Cologne Gazette and the other organs of the German autocracy.  The German-American organizations and newspapers have served Germany against the United States.  They seek to embarrass and restrain our Government so as to bring victory for Germany over the United States.  They may have kept within the law, but they have been guilty of moral treason against the Republic.

     The Philadelphia North American, with equal courage and patriotism, has called to account the German newspapers of Philadelphia, which have shown similar disloyalty to, the Republic.  It conducted an investigation into the matter these German newspapers had been publishing; the investigation, by the way, being made by Mr. Einar Barfod, an American of Scandinavian birth, but just as straight an American as exists -- and as he writes in English his fellow Americans can understand him.  The North American proved that the German papers in question were in effect behaving as enemies of the United States in this war, sneering at and misrepresenting our country, and violently attacking our allies, especially England, and praising and upholding Germany and the Kaiser in extravagant terms.  The worst offender was a socialist paper.  This was natural; for the German socialists in the United States, who for years have been the leaders in the American Socialist Party, have in this war shown themselves not only disloyal to the United States but traitors to humanity and to democracy, and tools of the unscrupulous militaristic autocracy of the Hohenzollerns.  The censor at Washington should deal with such a paper and not leave the matter to the North American.

These German papers of course like to quote Americans of the stamp of Senator La Follette who in this great crisis stand as hostile to the cause of the American people and of liberty loving mankind, occupying a position like that which the Vallandighams of the Civil War occupied in relation to the cause of the Union.  During this war we should not permit the publication in the United States of any German paper, or any paper published in the tongue of any of our enemies.

      I condemn these men.  But I condemn more strongly the foes of our own household who, for political reasons, or from sheer, easy-going, selfish inertness, have encouraged or acquiesced in what they have done.  Prior to the war ignorance or lack of foresight in this matter was perhaps excusable.  But since the outbreak of the war the action of the German Government and the action of the German-Americans, who, whether for hire or for other reasons, in this country played the game of Germany, have been so flagrantly evil that to be ignorant of them was impossible, and to fail to denounce them was explicable only on the ground of folly, cowardice or moral obliquity.

The actions of the agents of Germany in this country have ranged from seditious propaganda to attacks by dynamite on property and murderous assaults on life.  They were accurately described by President Wilson in his message to Congress of December 7, 1915, as follows:

"There are citizens of the United States, I blush to admit, born under other flags . . . who have poured the poison of disloyalty into the very arteries of our national life; who have sought to bring the authority and good name of our Government into contempt, to, destroy our industries wherever they thought it effective for their vindictive purposes to strike at them, and to debase our politics to the purposes of foreign intrigue . . . such creatures of passion, disloyalty, and anarchy must be crushed out they are infinitely malignant . . . they have formed plots to destroy property, they have entered into conspiracies against the neutrality of the Government, they have sought to pry into every confidential transaction of the Government in order to serve interests alien to our own."

Having thus spoken of the German spies, dynamiters, and murderers in this country, the President proceeded to state that they were no worse than the Americans whose judgment and sense of honorable obligation made them sympathize with Belgium and the allies, in contrast with the Germany which had employed the spies, dynamiters and murderers against the United States.  He said that "every man" should "make it his duty and his pride to keep the scales of judgment even and prove himself a partisan of no nation but his own."  He continued by reprobating the "men among us" who although "calling themselves Americans have so far for­ gotten themselves and their honor as citizens as to put their paramount sympathy with one or the other side in the great European conflict above their regard for the peace . . . of the United States.  They also preach and practice disloyalty.  No laws, I suppose, can reach corruption of the mind and heart; but I should not speak of others without also speaking of these and expressing the even deeper humiliation and scorn which every self-possessed and thoughtfully patriotic American must feel when he thinks of them and of the discredit they are daily bringing upon us."

This was a carefully prepared, deliberately phrased official message to Congress.  When the message was written the war had lasted for over sixteen months.  It was precisely as much a war "to make the world safe for democracy" then as it is now; unless this statement was true at that time it was a mere rhetorical flourish, an untruth, sixteen months later.  Every cause alleged as a reason for our going to war against Germany sixteen months later existed then.  Seven months had elapsed since the sinking of the Lusitania; and the, sinkings of other passenger and freight ships, with the attendant murders of innocent non‑combatants, including scores of American women and children, had continued month by month.  The hideous nature of the German outrages in Belgium, Servia, Poland, and Northern France had been officially established and 'Made known to every human being who was not willfully blind to the truth.  The various outrages by German spies and dynamiters in the United States, and the intrigues of the Germans against this Government, were due to the direct action of the, German Government, usually working through the German Embassy in Washington; this was known to every Government official from the President down, and was so self-evident that no reasonably intelligent and well-informed private citizen was ignorant of the truth.

     It was under these conditions that the head of our Government officially declared that the American citizen who declined "to keep the scales of judgment even" between tortured Belgium and the Germany that wronged and tortured her was guilty of "corruption of the mind and heart," which put him on the same plane of "disloyalty" with the other "citizens of the United States" who were "creatures of anarchy" and "sought to destroy our industries," by dynamite, with murder as an incident The head of our Government officially   'declared on behalf of the American people that the Americans who, after the murder by Germany of hundreds of innocent American men, women and children on the Lusitania and other boats, expressed passionate sympathy "against" Germany without "regard for the peace of the United States" were causes of "even deeper humiliation and scorn" to "thoughtfully patriotic  " persons than were the German spies, intriguers and murderers them­ selves. Incidentally, of course, if these Americans who stood for America and Belgium and

against Germany in December, 1915, were at that time proper subjects for "scorn and humiliation," and were guilty of "corruption of the mind and heart" and of "disloyalty," then every American who took part in or approved and supported our going to war in April, 1916, was similarly guilty of corruption and disloyalty, and equally a subject for humiliation and scorn.  Neither the situation nor the duty of America had changed in the smallest degree during the intervening sixteen months.

     This address apparently at the time met the approval of most politicians, and there was little adverse criticism of it; and therefore we, the American people, became responsible for the doctrine that the German spies, intriguers and dynamiters were no worse than the men who sympathized with the wrongs of Belgium, or jeopardized "peace" by demanding action against Germany on account of the Lusitania horror.  It is axiomatic that to condemn, equally, good and bad actions is completely to destroy all effect of the condemnation of the bad.  The net result of the conduct of the American politicians -- which was not repudiated by the American people -- was really to encourage Germany and her German-American allies in their campaign against the United States, and to discourage and dishearten the great mass of