President Wilson Should Seek to Awaken the Nation

President Wilson Should Seek to Awaken the Nation

THE MANUFACTURERS RECORD has recently sought to impress upon President Wilson that the country at large does not understand the war, and that there are millions of people in this country who need once more to hear from him, as the nation's leader, a ringing call, explaining our reason for being in the war and emphasizing the supreme necessity of every man, woman and child waking up to the true situation.

Because at some great gathering people are enthusiastic, and because the enthusiasm of these meetings is reported to the President and to other Government officials, it would seem that they do not at all grasp the sentiment of millions who do not attend public meetings.

From every direction the MANUFACTURERS RECORD has the most specific information that the farmers and the laboring class as a whole and many others are not at all awakened. One young woman who was urged to buy a Liberty Bond flippantly said that instead of doing that she proposed to buy a fur, because the selling of Liberty Bonds simply meant, so she had been told, a higher cost of living. This is a typical case of the loose thinking and lack of a realizing sense of the situation.

The Augusta Chronicle tells the story that in one of the small towns of that district an assistant bank worker told a bond applicant that the new bonds would not probably be delivered until after the war, and another official of the same bank told two applicants that he believed it was the worst thing possible to subscribe for the bonds and for the money to be sent away from home.

These lies are typical of millions of lies that pass through the country. Some of these lies are due to the father of lies, who is encouraging this spirit with a determination to increase the output of lies. Other statements of this kind are based on hopeless, at least seemingly hopeless, ignorance of the people.

The president of a leading coal company in Alabama, whose letter is published elsewhere, writes:My observation is that the laboring classes, especially in points remote from the larger cities, know very little of what this war is about. The majority of them read nothing, and therefore their patriotism has not been aroused. I believe this is largely accountable for the labor disturbances we are having, as it is easy for traitors in the guise of agitators to make the question of wages paramount.

A minister from a country district not more than twenty-five miles from Baltimore tells us that the people throughout that region are entirely unacquainted with the real war situation and the reason for it, and do not see any need of the war or of any activities connected with it.

Information of this kind comes into this office from every direction. On the contrary, our information from Washington is that the President and members of the Cabinet do not get this side of the story. They hear of patriotism and of the great hurrah crowds that are gathered wherever members of the Cabinet make public addresses, and those around them, apparently desiring to show that the spirit of patriotism is rampant, present this side rather than the actual truth of the other side. Perchance these people do not know the other side, or that the other side exists; but it does exist, and it behooves the Administration to use the first occasion possible to review the whole situation and with President Wilson's marvelous command of the English language tell the story why we are in the war, not simply to make the world safe for democracy, but to fight against the enemy which was already fighting us. This war is infinitely more than a war to make the world safe for democracy. It is a war to save civilization. It is a war to save the women and children. It is a war to save all of the wealth that has been accumulated through the ages, and to prevent German barbarians from overrunning this nation as it has overrun Belgium and France and seeks to overrun the world.

A statement of this kind from President Wilson should then be put in pamphlet form and through the agency of the Postoffice Department placed in the hands of every man and women in the United States, so that no one could possibly have an excuse for not understanding the situation. The work that has been done by the publicity committee and the censor has counted for little or nothing in this great campaign. Something broader is needed, and President Wilson is the man who can awaken the nation as it has not yet been awakened, and the distribution, such as has been suggested, could be made to do a marvelous work for the safety of the country.