Thanks to President Wilson, the
most powerful of Democratic nations has refused to recognize the
binding moral force of international public law. Our country has
shirked its clear duty. One outspoken and straightforward
declaration by this government against the dreadful iniquities
perpetrated in Belgium, Armenia, and Servia would have been worth
to humanity a thousand times as much as all that the professional
pacifists have done in the past fifty years .... Fine phrases
become sickening when they represent nothing whatever but
adroitness in phrase making, with no intention of putting deeds
behind the phrases.
After the American messages in regard to the sinking of the
Lusitania had brought no apology, much less any suggestion of
redress, Roosevelt said: Apparently President Wilson has believed
that the American people would permanently forget their dead and
would slur over the dishonor and disgrace to the United States by
that basest of all the base pleas of cowardly souls which finds
expression in the statement: "Oh, well, anyhow the President kept
us out of war!" The people who make this plea assert with
quavering voices that they "are behind the President.
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