Extract from Speech

Title

Extract from Speech

Creator

Palmer, A. Mitchell (Alexander Mitchell), 1872-1936

Identifier

WWP16236

Date

1920 April 10

Description

Extracts from a speech given by A. Mitchell Palmer at Savannah Georgia.

Source

Cary T. Grayson Papers, Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library, Staunton, Virginia

Language

English

Text

EXTRACT FROM SPEECH OF
A. MITCHELL PALMER,
ATTORNEY GENERAL OF THE UNITED STATES,

At Savannah, Georgia.
(Stenographic Report)
--------
I do not want that any State shall send a delegation to the San Francisco Convention which will stultify the democracy of the nation by voting to repudiate all that Woodrow Wilson and the Democratic party have done. We cannot hope to win by such a course and we would not be right in such a course, win or lose. But your distinguished Senator says, if I understand him aright, that he is not against all things that Wilson has done; he is against some of them and he is for some of them, and as near as I can make out, after reading his speeches since I have come to Georgia, he heartily approves of everything that he himself has done. He has taught me more things about the achievements of the Democratic party at Washington since I have been here and read his speeches this week than I ever knew before. I thought that Carter Glass, and Bob Owen, of Oklahoma, had most to do with the writing of the Federal Reserve Act, but I have discovered it was done by Senator Smith. I thought that the good Lord and the old rule of supply and demand had something to do with the price of cotton, but I find that is all due to Senator Smith. So on down the line of his wonderful achievements. I was blaming the Democrats -- other Democrats -- for the income tax I had to pay, yet I understand he said over at Macon the other night that the reason you only pay eight per cent now when you used to pay twelve is because he reduced it from twelve to eight. Why, he is the busiest man in Washington, to hear him tell it -- in Georgia.

He says he does not approve of all that the President has done and he criticises me because in my announcement I said I wanted to give the people of Georgia an opportunity to pass upon the candidacy of a man who stood for the record of Woodrow Wilson and his party in every phase. I did say that and I do not apologize for it. Senator Smith says it means I am nothing but an apron-string candidate and that I am really running for Woodrow Wilson, that I am really blindly following Wilson. Well, I say right now that I would rather blindly follow a great leader than to follow a foolish one with my eyes open! But I have not blindly followed him and no Democratic friend of his has blindly followed him, for no man is blind who goes the way that Wilson spreads the light. He has not asked his friends to take his plans and purposes unsight and unseen. The Senator comes to Georgia and praises his independence before his constituents. He says that he has not gone along with the President every time. Why, he voted, he says, to override the President’s veto of the immigration bill and he justifies it; and he is right about it in my judgment, because I voted to override President Wilson’s veto of the immigration bill also.

Yet I approve of the record of President Wilson. I do not pick a single flaw and try to destroy him because I differed with him in a single case. Let there be no mistake about it, for I will come here under no false pretenses, I want the people of this great State to understand where we both stand. I acknowledge and I follow, as I have for eight years, as a loyal Democrat, the leadership of the greatest Democrat since Jefferson! You may not know it in Georgia, where you read speeches or where you read how the record shows he votes, but we know it in Washington, where we can see behind the screen and listen in the cloak room, that Senator Smith does not acknowledge the leadership of Woodrow Wilson and will not follow it, and that is the issue. The whole question here is just that. “Oh,” but he says, “I did follow when it suited me; I did follow when it was necessary to help my country in the war, I did go along and vote for this, that and the other measure.”

I do not want to attack Senator Smith. I have the greatest respect for his abilities, for his character, for his gentlemanly qualities; he and I are splendid friends, there is nothing personal about this, but I say this to you so that you may understand it perfectly, that in the matter of his war record or his record in support of the President in any great matter, the difference between Senator Smith and myself, both members of the Administration, if you please, has been the difference between the two old mules that the darkey had: Senator Smith is one kind of a helper and I am another; I have worn out the collar and the Senator has worn out the breeching! The Senator says he would not wear the collar of any leader. Well, he need not worry; he would never outwear one. That is the difference. You may search the record and the Senator always votes right. His record is right on the record vote, but he pulls back hard and goes very slowly toward the front.

I have stated that much because I want the people of this great State to understand that the issue is just that -- the difference between one who stands by the Administration in all its great phases and achievements, and one who would repudiate it. I am one of those who believe in all honesty and candor that history will never write a brighter page of political life in this Republic than has been written by the Democratic party under the leadership of Woodrow Wilson! I want the chance for my children to enjoy the same kind of blessings that have been vouchsafed to us. I want America to continue to be led by the great Democratic party under the management of men who believe in the same high ideals that have moved Woodrow Wilson in all things. Senator Smith wants our platform to be an apology for our record and the nominee for President a critic of our course.

My distinguished friend, the Senator, says that he is constrained to go into this fight in Georgia because he does not agree with the President and with me, and with other friends of the Administration, on the matter of the peace treaty. The whole thing about Senator Smith’s entering the primary in Georgia was a surprise to me and, while that is not important, it is interesting as I come to Georgia as a candidate because -- let me tell you this in confidence -- Senator Smith was the last man that I expected to meet in the presidential contest in this State; for a half dozen times during the last four months the genial Senator has been in my office and has told me that my record and my position upon public questions entitled me to the delegation from his own great State of Georgia. He wrote me a beautiful letter one day in his own hand, which I read in Macon the other night, in which he praised the present Attorney General and offered me any assistance in his power. I feel like calling on him for that now.

So that we get down, I suppose, to this new found reason, yet six weeks ago, when he was offering me the delegation from this State, he knew where I stood on the League of Nations; I never was quite certain where he stood, but he knew where I stood. He has declared that the President and I, and others, in our position are opposed to every kind of reservation to the treaty; he declares that we are opposed to the dotting of an “i” or the crossing of a “t” in the treaty or covenant of the League of Nations, and he declared in his opening statement, announcing his candidacy, that it was our position that if any substantial reservations were adopted we favored the rejection of the treaty. The President has never said any such thing! Certainly I have never said it; and I do not admit the right of Senator Smith to speak for the President of the United States or for me.

The President and his friends in the Administration at Washington have urged in season and out the prompt ratification of the treaty of peace. The world has been yearning for peace; the country has been demanding peace; chaos in Europe is rising to heaven in eloquent volume, pleading for peace. Our quarrel has been with the Senate of the United States in refusing to give the world peace upon any terms; our complaint has been that the Senate has failed to ratify the peace treaty in any way, shape or form, either with or without reservations. Why should we discuss reservations when there are none? Except those which have been passed by a bare majority of the Senate, never passed up to the President because never receiving a two-thirds vote, and which could not have been passed at all except with the support of men like Borah, Reed and Johnson and the ten or eleven others who will not stand for the treaty even with those reservations which they vote for. Why discuss before the people of Georgia whether this, that or the other reservation is right when these reservations are the work of the enemies of a League of Nations? Why not be honest, why not be candid, why not admit that the question is not, “Shall there be reservations?”, but the question is: “Shall there be a treaty or no treaty? Shall there be a covenant of the League of Nations or no League of Nations? Shall there be peace or a continuance of war?” That is the question. The Senate of the United States, by a combination of Republican and Democratic enemies of the President who have sought to destroy him and injure the party which he leads, has evaded its responsibility, defied its constitutional duty to advise with the President with respect to the treaty and has refused to pass any kind of treaty or covenant of the League of Nations!Now they say to you they will go to the country. Senator Lodge says the treaty is dead; his followers go about the country and say the treaty has been killed, and those who would claim to be friends of the League of Nations with reservations of one kind or another are saying to you that it was killed by the best friend it has in the world, they are saying to you that the President killed the treaty. Murder is not often committed by a man who loves the person he kills. This treaty has not been destroyed by the man who created it, by its best friend; it has been destroyed and the covenant of the League of Nations has been killed by its enemies in the Senate of the United States! There must be the responsibility.

But I am willing to discuss some of the reservations with them just the same, though I do not propose to go into detail about them because the issue is not about the reservations; the issue is about whether we shall have a League of Nations of any kind or not. They say particularly that they have saved the American character of the League of Nations by their proposed reservations to the treaty. I say to you, though it is not very dignified language for a dignified Attorney General to employ, that as to most of these so-called Lodge reservations they are pure political “bunk”, and I will tell you why.

Let me review with you for a minute the history of the matter. When the President came back from Paris in February, 1919, he brought with him a tentative draft of the covenant of the League of Nations. He gave publicity to it; he let the country know what was in it; he invited the friends of a League of Nations to make criticisms, and they suggested amendments. Former President Taft, President of the League to Enforce Peace, which organization has been in favor of some kind of a League of Nations for years, offered amendments; ex-Senator Root, who had long favored such a pact, offered amendments; they were taken back by the President to Paris and incorporated in the draft of the League of Nations. Dr. Lowell, the President of Harvard, in his joint debate with Senator Lodge, invited him to propose constructive amendments which the President might incorporate in the draft, and he refused to do so. He offered destructive criticism instead of constructive suggestion. He saw that he was in control of the Senate and that he could destroy the President and his work after the President was finished with it. I cannot blame a partisan Republican leader for taking such a position, but I do say that it was the duty of a Democratic Senator, who loved his party and wanted to see it succeed, to go to his leader in the White House when it was possible for his suggestions to be incorporated in the draft and say to his leader, “I think this change ought to be made.” It is not the part of loyalty for a Democratic Senator to wait until the time has gone by when an amendment could properly be made and then join hands with the bitter Republican enemies of the President to destroy his handiwork.

I will tell you what happened. The President incorporated the amendments from friendly sources into the covenant of the League of Nations; and finally, after battling with twenty-seven nations with all the greed and selfishness of human nature, he wrought a covenant which he brought back and offered to the Senate of the United States as a part of the treaty. In the meantime, the Senate had organized. Do you realize what the election of Senator Newberry in Michigan has cost the world? It cost this Republican plunderbund $800,000 or thereabouts, but it has cost the world untold misery and suffering. The Senate was Republican by two votes. If Senator Newberry had not been elected in Michigan and his Democratic opponent had been, the vote in the Senate would have been a tie; the Vice President would have cast the deciding vote, the Democrats would have organized the Foreign Relations Committee, they would not have kept off Senator Kellogg of Minnesota, whom Senator Lodge kept off that Committee because Kellogg was in favor of the covenant of the League of Nations, and the treaty would have been reported promptly by the Democratic members of the Committee to the Senate and passed by a two-thirds vote; and that corruption in Michigan, for which now a United States Senator will go to the penitentiary, is responsible.

Here was a Republican majority led by Senator Lodge, who refused to make any constructive criticisms to the President. He said that his fight was not over the League of Nations, but that he was fighting Woodrow Wilson -- said it in open meeting. Senator Lodge, leading a Republican majority, secured in the way I have described, organized the Senate for the purpose, and solely for the purpose, of killing this treaty. Why? Because the record of the Democratic party had been such that the Republican party would go into the campaign in 1920 without an issue before the American people. They had to have something to attack for them to return to power -- and God knows they were hungry for power -- so they determined to fool the people of the United States by offering amendments, reservations and suggestions to the treaty which would make people believe that they, the Republican party, had again saved the nation. I am not surprised at them, but shall we not be heartbroken that there would be Democrats in the Senate who joined with them to help them in such a plan?Why do I say they are trying to fool the people? Read the reservations. Most of them are of this kind, most of them are based upon the idea that they can tell the American people: “Why, if we had not written these things into these reservations your boys would have been called on to go to war at the behest of some European country or some Asiatic country.” Senator Smith himself has asked the people: “Do you want your boys to be called on to fight another war in the Orient or somewhere else?” He says he thinks these reservations protect America because they say in many places that no action shall be taken either by the Council or Assembly of the League of Nations which will put America into war, except by act of the Congress of the United States. They put that there and tell you that they have saved your boys from going to war because they have declared that the Congress will have to declare war under this League of Nations. Why, let them read the Constitution of the United States, which says that Congress alone shall have the power to declare war, and then let them read the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States, and they will find that the Supreme Court has said over and over again that a treaty must comply with constitutional requirements exactly as an act of Congress; that where a treaty violates the Constitution or is in conflict with it, the Constitution stands. The Constitution is the supreme law of the land, higher than any treaty that can ever be written in any time. Everybody in the world knows that when America in the League of Nations covenant pledges itself to do any act which might lead to war, it made the pledge with the treaty in one hand and the Constitution in the other; it pledged itself to do that thing in the constitutional way, and there is not a word, line, sentence or paragraph in all that treaty, or in all the draft of the covenant of the League of Nations which can -- even if it were designed to, which it is not, -- strike down a single word in the Constitution built by the fathers. The Constitution is there; they know it is there. They want to argue with the people of the country that again the old Republican party saved the Constitution and the nation. Nearly all the reservations hinge upon that idea.

Let me illustrate with one reservation that shows the utterly -- what is the adjective for “bunk”, “buncombe”? -- character of these reservations. That is number thirteen, I think, –– it ought to be thirteen –– which I happen to know about because that reservation was aimed at me. It is a reservation which says this, that nothing in Sections 296 and 297, or the annex of the treaty, shall be held to prevent an American citizen from recovering damages for property unlawfully taken from him during the war. Do you know why that was put in? The Alien Property Custodian, who was authorized by law to take all German property in America, took all German property in America and he found a great deal of it in the possession of men who claimed it was theirs and claimed that they were American citizens. They were German-Americans, so-called, friends of Germany. The Alien Property Custodian took it away from them because he held it was enemy owned. The act of Congress under which he took it said that if the Alien Property Custodian made a mistake, the person whose property was taken could sue in the courts and recover his property. The treaty says that nothing therein shall prevent an American citizen from recovering damages for property unlawfully taken. Even if it did not, no treaty ever could be written which would deprive an American citizen of the right of suing his own government in his own courts for his own property. They know that, yet they write this reservation into the Lodge ratification resolution. Why? To tell the German-Americans of America, all the great German vote, that “if it had not been for us you could not have got your property back that this man Palmer took away from you during the war.” I say that is “bunk”! What is the use of discussing reservations like that?Oh, yes, they say a lot about the reservation which was based upon the idea that we were being put at an unfair disadvantage because the self-governing colonies of Great Britain each had a voice in the Assembly of the League of Nations. But theyway they put it is that Great Britain has six votes in the Assembly as against America’s one vote, and they have rung the changes on that from sea to sea expressly to tell the Irish-American voter that Great Britain is going to do to all the world what she has been doing to Ireland these last few years. I say that is political “bunk”. They try to scare the American people with the allegation that Great Britain has six votes in a council that never votes!- Because the League of Nations is composed of two bodies, the Council and the Assembly. The Council consists of nine, representatives of the five great powers and four others -- the United States is always to be one -- and every vote in the Council must be unanimous. The Assembly is composed of one representative or more, but with one vote -- when they have a vote -- from all the nations who subscribe to the covenant; and yet no motion can be passed by the Assembly unless every member of the Council is voting in the affirmative. What difference does it make how many votes Great Britain has if she cannot pass a thing without the United States voting with her? What do you care about the five men in the jury box who are all of one mind as long as you are sitting in the jury and the court says to you your verdict has got to be unanimous? It is not going to hurt you if they do have five votes or six votes. My friends, read that treaty; read the covenant of the League of Nations, and you will find that this great Virginian, this great Georgian if you please, for here he had his early training in the law, went to Paris and wrote a document, in which he was faithful to his client as no lawyer ever has been in the history of the world, for in every line, every sentence, every paragraph and on every page is written so that it can not be mistaken this one thing, that hereafter the nations of the world shall do nothing which will disturb the peace of the world except by and with the consent and approval of Now, why get excited about the number of votes that are given to Great Britain, or about the Constitution of the United States which is written into the treaty, if the representative of the United States must say what the League will do before anything is done? Why, it is as safe as a New England clock.

A supersovereignty they call it. They say it is a supersovereignty because under Article X we may have to go to war some time in the future to protect the territorial integrity or the political independence of a small nation. Well, the covenant does not say so. The provision as it stands in Article X is that the signatory powers agree to respect and guarantee the territorial integrity and political independence of all the nations. That is true. And if it is violated, then the Council shall what action shall be taken. That is all that happens. The Council of nine, of which the United States must be a party and must join in the vote, shall advise what action shall be taken. They raised such a howl about it that I took the dictionary and looked up the word “advise”. I thought it must mean to go to war immediately. I found the dictionary said that “advise” means -- to advise. That is what it means; and then when they have advised, we can do as we please about it. Congress may go to war or it may not, just as it sees fit. That is what it always has done and what it always will do, just what it sees fit. Nobody could ever drive the Congress into doing anything.

But they put in the reservation to Article X, which provides that nothing shall be done under it -- I do not quote it in words -- which might commit this country to war or commit it to any commercial retaliation, or any other method of enforcement of the decree of the Council of the League of Nations against an invader of the territorial rights of another, without action being taken by Congress in that particular case, or a declaration of war. Well, it would not be anyhow, but what is the purpose of it? The purpose of it is to tell the world that the United States used to be in favor of the small nations, that it formerly believed they ought not to be invaded, but from now on we are going to consider every case as it arises. It gives to the great empires of the world, who will not hesitate to ride down the little peoples, fair and free license to go about their business as they will and keeps the American people free from any pledge of their honor to save the little peoples of the world. The President says that the reservation to Article X imperializes the treaty. The reservation makes it possible for the great empires to rule the world as they please. The President knows, for he wrote the Article and the great empires resisted it. The President's own work Americanizes the covenant of the League of Nations, saying to all the world that what has maintained the peace of the western continent for a hundred years -- a mere declaration by this great young republic of ours that any attempt of a foreign power to set foot on American soil shall be considered an unfriendly act -- shall be extended to all the world. We propose to say to every nation on earth, “Keep off of that land, that belongs to others, or the United States will extend the Monroe Doctrine to all the world.” The President says that Article X will keep the world out of war. I believe it!Every war that has ever been fought in Europe -- over here we have fought about other things, but over in Europe they never start a war unless it is an aggression by a big nation against a small one; it is always a grabbing after territory; it is always an invasion of the territorial rights of a nation or an invasion of the political independence of a nation, which starts a war. The President says that under Article X, if the world makes that pledge, peace shall be maintained on earth by keeping the invader out of the small nations. Peace will come. The world admits without debate that if in 1914, when Germany crossed the line into Belgium, Germany had known that Great Britain would go in, there would have been no war. Germany says so; the world knows it. If Germany had known in 1914 that Great Britain would go in, that France would go in, that Italy would go in, that Japan would go in and that the United States would go in, there would have been no war. What the League of Nations proposes is that the next time a Hun shall raise his bloody hand and step across the line upon a weak and defenseless nation, he will be told that not only will the lion of <place rend="inherit" link-pointer-type="place">Great Britain</place>, but also the eagle of Uncle Sam, put an end to his designs. And so it will make for peace.

Oh, my friends, these boys in uniform who crossed three thousand miles of sea, what did they go there for? The great thing which led our people, a hundred million strong, behind our great leader in the war, was the belief that this was the last war in the world; that it was a war against war, a war to bring peace. When the President stood at Paris beating back the selfishness of the world, the great argument that he made was the war itself. Those millions of dead on the fields of Europe pleaded from their graves for the kind of peace that Wilson wrote. The war itself was the greatest argument for peace that the world has ever known. Every boy who sleeps tonight “In Flanders field where the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row,” every wounded soldier boy whose armless sleeve flaps in the winter's wind, every widowed wife, every orphaned child, every sorrowing mother, every grief-bent father, in the unhappy lands that knew the war, is an argument swelling up to heaven with more eloquence than has been heard since the morning stars sang together in support of the American doctrine -- the Christian doctrine -- of peace on earth, good will to men.

That is what these boys fought to get. Not the peace of armed isolation, not the peace which would make of America an armed camp, saying to all the world “Stand off or we will shoot!”, but the peace which would make of America the great moral leader of the Christian civilized peoples of the world, which would say by force of its every power “You shall maintain peace on earth, America demands it!”; the kind of a peace which means manly participation in a courageous American fashion in the affairs of all the world, a world grown so small that a fire in the Balkan mountains may stretch to Georgia, as it did in 1914 -- a world not like that which George Washington talked about when he said “Keep out of foreign entanglements”, but a world so small that we know tonight what happened this morning in every part of the world. We cannot shirk that responsibility. If George Washington were here today, he would be the last man to say to the American people: “Be a nation of quitters”, for he was no quitter! When he fought to make a people free, he maintained a peace that saved their freedom; he would want his people now, having fought to make the world free, to maintain a peace that would keep the world free.

So, my countrymen, I come to Georgia, carrying the flag of the regular democracy of the nation, pleading with you to remember that under the leadership of Woodrow Wilson this great party has written a page in history which will be indelible in all the ages to come. For just as it was the slogan that won a great battle in 1916, “He kept us out of war”, so, when history centuries in the future shall come to be unfolded, if this League of Nations shall be an accomplished fact, untold millions of the world's people yet unborn will rise up to call the name of Wilson blessed and say “He kept us out of war!

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Palmer, A. Mitchell (Alexander Mitchell), 1872-1936, “Extract from Speech,” 1920 April 10, WWP16236, Cary T. Grayson Papers, Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library & Museum, Staunton, Virginia.