Connecticut Society 
 
 of the Sons of tne 
 
 American Revolution 
 
 Address by 
 
 HON. GEORGE B. CHANDLER 
 
 AT 
 
 Annual Banquet 
 OF THE CONNECTICUT SOCIETY 
 
 AT 
 Hartford, Connecticut, February 22, 1917 
 
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WHAT WOULD WASHINGTON HAVE US DO? 
 
 At no time in the life of the nation has it been more impera- 
 tive that the Sons of the American Revolution gather on the 
 birthday of the Father of His Country to ask themselves solemnly 
 what he would have them do if he were now living. To be in- 
 vited to address you at this grave moment is an honor and re- 
 sponsibility that I do not underrate. 
 
 My problem upon this occasion is as much to know what 
 to leave unsaid as to know what to say. America is a Republic 
 and its stability rests upon the principle of majority rule. The 
 people have spoken at a recent national election and no candid 
 man can deny that the policy of our government up to the date 
 of that utterance has been approved. It is my belief that a 
 referendum to the people would yield a hke endorsement of the 
 course of the administration up to the present moment. To 
 what extent, under such ciicumstances and in such an hour, is 
 private disagreement with what appears to be the poUcy of the 
 government and the will of the people consistent with loyalty 
 and good citizenship? That there is a limit beyond which such 
 opposition can not with safety or decency go at such a juncture, 
 no person schooled in the principles of free government can deny ; 
 and, while giving voice to some of the emotions that now possess 
 me — and which I beheve possess this ancient and patriotic 
 Society — I shall endeavor not to transgress that limit. 
 
 I assume that I may recite historical facts, ancient or recent, 
 without offense. He is a superficial and biased student of events 
 who wiU not admit that no great nation, with the possible excep- 
 tion of China, in modern history — or so far as I know, in ancient 
 history — ever has submitted peacefully to a series of outrages 
 and affronts such as have been perpetrated against the United 
 States of America during the past two years. The question 
 which we should ask today of the spirit of George Washington 
 is — Has such peaceful acquiescence been justifiable? Has the 
 national character been enriched or impoverished by this poHcy? 
 And to what extent can we continue to submit to diplomatic 
 insult and murder upon the high seas without taking up arms? 
 
 During this unfortunate period there have been two classes 
 of offenses to be weighed — first, those against the recognized 
 laws of nations and the unwritten rules of hospitafity. These 
 I call offenses against the common morahty. And, second, those 
 
against the laws of God, recognized in greater or less degree among 
 all civilized peoples. These, I will term offenses against the 
 higher morality. 
 
 First, as to the former class. This war started with a viola- 
 tion of the express terms of a convention to which both Germany 
 and the United States were signatory parties. The invasion 
 of Belgium contravened in the most audacious manner the terms 
 of Articles 1, 2 and 5 of the Second Hague Conference, and it 
 was our right under that instrument — and, as I believe, our 
 duty, — to protest against that wanton and illegal act. 
 
 Thereupon there was immediately inaugurated within our 
 borders, under the leadership and probably with the financial 
 backing of eminent citizens of a foreign power who were enjoying 
 the hospitality of this country, a propaganda for the influencing 
 of public sentiment, which continued with increasing virulence 
 in proportion as it declined in effectiveness, until it finally came 
 to be aimed at our government itself and its responsible head. 
 This propaganda sought not only to control nominations for 
 high office but to determine elections after nominations had been 
 made. Along with this were conducted fomentings of domestic 
 discord, the instigation of strikes in munition plants, the dyna- 
 miting of factories, the destruction of bridges, and conspiracies 
 against transportation and production. German consuls and 
 attaches have been convicted of complicity in these outrages in 
 American courts. An Austrian ambassador has been dismissed 
 for diplomatic discourtesy, correspondence has been uncovered 
 insulting the President of the United States, more of a graver 
 nature probably uncovered and wisely suppressed, and a German 
 Ambassador permitted and apparently forgiven the exquisite 
 insolence of pubUshing in the American press an advertisement 
 warning the people of a free and sovereign state that on a certain 
 specific occasion his Government contemplated an act of whole- 
 sale homicide of its citizens on the high seas — a program that 
 was carried out to the letter when the Lusitania received her 
 fatal stab and her human cargo found its grave in the Irish sea. 
 
 In the meantime there has continued the wearying monotony 
 of sinkings of American ships and murders of American citizens 
 against which we have solemnly protested with the warning 
 that no "word or act" would be omitted in the maintenance of 
 our legal rights. At the same time there have been probable 
 violations of property rights by the Entente Alhes — irritating 
 but involving no loss of Ufe and clearly of a justifiable character. 
 When these outrages culminated in the Sussex note, an agree- 
 ment was solemnly entered into with Germany which, as we infer 
 from convincing evidence, the government of that nation proba- 
 bly had no intention of keeping beyond the time when her sub- 
 marine fleet could be made ready for the final onslaught. This pact 
 
has been summarily abrogated and a caieer of anarchy upon the 
 high seas entered upon, on a scale hitherto unheard of and of a 
 character such as the world has not witnessed since this republic 
 in its gallant youth raised its arm against the Barbary pirates. 
 After due deUberation diplomatic relations with Germany were 
 severed and the enterprising advertiser of homicide in the first 
 degree was finally given his passports. 
 
 In the meantime there has been kept up by the Prussian 
 autocracy, with a fatuous insolence hard to explain, a series of 
 annoyances to our ambassador, our consuls and our citizens in 
 Germany, the legal status of which I will not presume to discuss. 
 The situation today is that for the first time in American his- 
 tory — except possibly under the Embargo of unblessed memory 
 — outgoing freight is piled high upon our docks and any ship 
 bearing the flag of our country that ventures upon the immemorial 
 highway of the nations does so at its own risk. A more intolerable 
 or humiliating situation it would be hard to conceive. 
 
 Such has been the course of those events whose sanctions 
 and penalties fall within the scope of international law and com- 
 mon practice. Coming now to the offenses against the higher 
 raorahty — and it is upon the higher morahty alone that our 
 supineness can be explained or justified — what have we beheld? 
 A people, distinguished in scholarship, industry, music and the 
 higher arts, have been trained mentally and physically for four 
 decades in the philosophy of military aggression, forged into a 
 weapon infinitely the most powerful ever devised by the wit of 
 man, and finally hurled at the appointed moment against the 
 peace of the world and the rights of its neighbors. That this 
 people has not been without its grievances in the past, and that 
 the nations opposed to them have not been at all times guiltless 
 of offense, no candid man can deny; but no historical fact can 
 be more clearly established than that this colossal adventure 
 has been long premeditated by the Prussian ohgarchy and that 
 the entire Germanic mind has been assiduously prepared for it. 
 The literature of the country has been suffused with evidences 
 of this purpose, and the astounding feature of the situation, as 
 we look back, has been the credufity and indifference of neighboring 
 peoples in the presence of patent facts. Probably they, too, had 
 their pacifists who averred that it never would happen. 
 
 When the opportune occasion arose, we beheld Servia, bullied 
 and brow-beaten by a series of conditions purposely made so 
 intolerable that no nation could accept them and preserve its 
 autonomy and self-respect, and subsequently ground remorse- 
 lessly under the heel of the invader, its people reduced to starva- 
 tion and its aged monarch made a pitiable petitioner at the courts 
 of Europe. 
 
In the Belgian invasion we have beheld, in addition to the 
 violation of the terms of the Hague Convention, a violation of 
 the treaty of 1831 and of the immemorial and unwritten law of 
 nations. Not only has an organized state been ruthlessly over- 
 run, but in the process fair cities have been leveled and venerable 
 temples of learning and art demolished. We have beheld the 
 invaded territory extortionately taxed for the privilege of being 
 invaded, and as a crowning infamy the deportation of its citizens 
 by tens of thousands into state slavery in an adjoining nation. 
 
 We have beheld France, our earliest friend, who succored 
 this nation in its helpless infancy, treacherously stabbed in the 
 back because, credulously trusting in the plighted word of her 
 great enemy, she had restricted her fortifications and mobilization 
 to her own eastern frontier. 
 
 We have beheld Greece, bound by all the historical ties of 
 gratitude to France and England, and pledged by a signed and 
 sealed compact to join arms with Servia whenever she should be 
 attacked by Bulgaria, violating her pUghted word and secretly 
 giving aid to the Teutons — by submarine bases, for example — 
 all on account of a royal marriage. The Greek Constitution has 
 been trampled under foot by this medieval monarch and the hands 
 of the clock have been turned back 200 years. In the midst of 
 modern democracy the specter of the Divine Right of Kings again 
 raises its head. 
 
 We have beheld the assassination and extermination — I 
 am using the terms almost with literal exactness — of the oldest 
 Christian people. History, I beheve, affords no parallel in fiendish 
 inhumanity and calculated cruelty to the Armenian massacres. 
 The American savages, glutted with blood and intoxicated with 
 the fever of battle, were not more inhuman than the studied and 
 deliberate policy of the Turks. This poUcy could have been con- 
 trolled and checked by the Prussian autocracy by a nod of the 
 head or a wave of the hand. No historical fact is more clearly 
 established than this. 
 
 We have beheld an attempt — futile, but none the less crim- 
 inal and sacrilegious, — to stir up a religious war, an attempt to 
 array the forces of Mohammedanism against those of Christianity. 
 It is an affront to the memory of every Christian soldier who 
 died in the wars of the Crusades, or who feU at the battle of Tours 
 when Charles Martel rolled back from Europe the tide of Islam. 
 
 We have beheld the brazen adoption of the policy of Fright- 
 fulness — the waging of war so cruelly and remorselessly by the 
 bombardment of summer resorts, the dropping of bombs upon 
 the women and children of unfortified towns, the torpedoing of 
 passenger boats, and the application of the iron heel to invaded 
 territory as to endeavor to strike terror to the heart of neutrals 
 
and to the civil population of belligerents. Nowhere has the 
 subtle psychology of this policy been more potent than in America. 
 While it has inflamed a certain element with a holy wrath, it has 
 furnished a text for the pacifist to dilate upon the horrors of war 
 and extol the virtues of non-resistance. Indeed the unconscious 
 alliance of pacifist with Teuton has been one of the outstanding 
 ironies of this world tragedy. 
 
 Such have been those oifenses against the higher morality 
 which, in their relation to the United States, it is difficult to 
 subsume under the canons of international law. And through 
 it all we have been "neutral!" Americans have prated grand- 
 iosely about "humanity" and adjured the "liberals" of aU lands 
 to take heart! The President has asked us to be neutral "even 
 in thought!" I am loyal to my President; he has been elected 
 by a majority of my countrymen; my service is his and my acts 
 must be his. But my conscience is my own! He cannot become 
 the custodian of my convictions. It is no time for an incon- 
 spicuous private citizen to add his pennyweight of criticism to 
 the burden of our ruler, but when he says in an address before 
 the League to Enforce Peace, "With the causes and objects of 
 the war we are not concerned. The obscure fountains from 
 which its stupendous flood has burst forth we are not interested 
 to search for or explore." I reserve the right to indulge in a 
 private moral revolt. Those were burning words that Agnes 
 Repplier recently uttered in the Atlantic Monthly. In comment- 
 ing upon this statement, she says: "The greatest, or at least 
 the most far-reaching, moral issue which has arisen in nineteen 
 hundred years is offered to the judgment of the world, and we 
 are bidden to ignore it. The rights and wrongs of uncounted 
 millions are at stake, agonies unutterable have dimmed the light 
 of heaven, the whole fabric of civilization rocks in the blast, 
 and our President assures us we are not even interested in know- 
 ing where the guilt lies, that it is not our province to sever truth 
 from falsehood! For the first time in our lives we have been 
 offered release from the responsibilities inseparable to man's 
 estate." 
 
 The problem for the Sons of the American Revolution to 
 ponder is whether this country has reached such an exalted moral 
 plane that its policy of inaction is a sublime exhibition of Christian 
 forbccirance ; or whether its supine submission to the tide of 
 events is evidence of a decline of the national spirit and an emas- 
 culation of the national character. If the latter should turn out 
 to be true, it is worth while for us to endeavor to ascertain its 
 causes. 
 
 In my opinion one of its causes is to be found in the moral 
 collapse of our clergy in the face of a great crisis. I have been 
 
amazed and shocked — or possibly encouraged — to find in 
 hard-headed, square-jawed men of affairs and in virile, red- 
 blooded young college graduates a more searching grasp of the 
 moral and political issues at stake in this war than has been gen- 
 erally revealed by our spiritual advisers. Occasionally there 
 has rung out from our pulpits the voice of a prophet, but in general 
 there has been a tendency to dwell hngeringly upon the horrors 
 of war and glorify peace into a beatitude, to the exclusion of 
 truth, justice, righteousness and honor. The inexorable laws of 
 struggle and sacrifice which are fundamental in the development 
 of personal or national character have been glided over raeagerly. 
 Our clergy have talked about a "league of the nations," the 
 "community" of the races, and the glories of internationalism 
 and world citizenship ; but what is a community? It is a common 
 sharing of common responsibiUty. If I sit upon my porch while 
 a buUy beats and robs an inoffensive little boy, or a brute vio- 
 lates the honor of a woman, and callously look on and do nothing 
 because I am a man of peace and it is none of my business, what 
 kind of a citizen of my boasted community am I.^^ Neutral, I 
 suppose! And I can expiate it all the next day by taking up a 
 collection to send some fruit and flowers to the wronged family 
 or by preaching a sermon, full of beautiful generalizations about 
 love and humanity. 
 
 Our Protestant pastors aie given to lamenting the fact that 
 they are unable to reach the young men of the land. They com- 
 plain of the disproportion of women in their congregations and 
 in the activities of their church organizations. When we have a 
 religion preached to us that is vibrant with a call to present duty, 
 instead of nebulous in its promise of security from attack, our 
 young men wiU respond with the thrill of eager youth. How, 
 for example, can a pastor expect to appeal to a young lawyer, 
 schooled in the processes of logic, when he exalts peace into a 
 moral quality? His hearer knows that, if he were to prepare a 
 brief in which his reasoning limped so palpably, it is doubtful 
 if the Court would do it the honor of reading it through. Peace 
 is not a moral quality. It is a mere state or condition. True, it 
 is a condition very much to be desired, just as prosperity and 
 good homes and warm clothing are to be desired. But if these 
 things are purchased at the price of dishonor, they become a badge 
 of shame. Justice is a moral quaUty, so is truth, so is honor, and 
 righteousness is the sum of all the moral quahties. It is true 
 that Christ preached peace, but He did not preach peace at any 
 price. If He had, there would have been no Gethsemane and no 
 Calvary. 
 
 I wish the cartoon of the Dutch artist, Raemaeker, could be 
 framed and placed on the study table of every pacifist pastor in 
 this country — the figure of the body of a maiden clinging to a 
 
 8 
 
cross with a dagger through her heart. Beside her stand three 
 sensual male figures. One of them points his finger at her and 
 sneeringly asks: "And why did she not yield: they would have 
 paid, to be sure.^" The maiden is labelled "Belgia." Yes, Bel- 
 gium could have had "peace" and the price beside — for per- 
 mitting the Central Powers to march across her territory and 
 stab France in the back. But she went on the altar for such a 
 bauble as honor! Alongside it, it might be well to place that 
 other cartoon — was it another of Baemaeker's, or was it from 
 Punch .^ — in which Kaiser Wilhelm stands pointing to a devastated 
 Belgium and asks of its indomitable young monarch "What have 
 you left, Albert?" "My soul!" is the reply. 
 
 Another cause of the failure of the nation to measure up to 
 the moral responsibilities of the hour is found in^ the occupation 
 of this country by numerous partially assimilated racial groups. 
 When the Democratic Chairman of the Committee on Foreign 
 Relations in the Senate and the Republican Leader of the lower 
 House, each representing large German constituencies, advocate 
 the contemptible poUcy of warning American citizens of ships 
 where they have a legal right to be, for fear this nation may be 
 called upon to defend them, the condition of our American Con- 
 gress is indeed reduced to a low estate. With brothers, sons, or 
 other relatives fighting in the German Army, or lying in unmarked 
 graves in front of Verdun or the Somme, it is quite understand- 
 able that men of German blood should turn yearningly to the cause 
 of the Fatherland, but what shall we say of pubUc men who 
 forget their oath of office and the honor of their country at such 
 an hour? We have also in this country an unknown percentage 
 of citizens of Irish blood who nurse so keenly the past wrongs of 
 their people at the hands of England that they are blinded to the 
 principles of human liberty at stake in this contest. Just how 
 considerable is this percentage, I am unable to say. Most of the 
 Irish-Americans with whom I converse condemn the acts and 
 poUcy of the Central Powers. We have also a considerable number 
 of Swedish-Americans who, on account of their inherited enmity 
 to Russia, seem to have been likewise blinded. I also believe 
 that a certain percentage of our Russian Jews have allowed their 
 sense of the wrongs of their kindred at the hands of Russia to 
 dull their vision of the issues of right and wrong involved in this 
 contest. In other words, the American spirit has failed to re- 
 spond because of the lack of homogeneity in the American people. 
 
 Still another cause may be found in the geographical remote- 
 ness of large sections of this country from the theater of action. 
 It has been difficult to interest people of the Middle West and 
 the Mountain States in questions of national honor involved in 
 the rights of the sea. These people are intensely loyal and would 
 respond to a man, if the call to arms were sounded; but it is 
 
perhaps not unnatural that we should find greater indifference 
 there than upon the Atlantic seaboard. There is also a larger 
 German-American element in the West than here. 
 
 The chief cause, however, is to be found in a philosophy in- 
 sidiously taking root in the minds of the people that the State 
 is an institution to be filched from and leaned upon, but not to 
 be served. Every street corner orator declaims raucously about 
 his rights, but never a word about his duties. Until we learn in 
 the fire of bitter experience that rights and duties are correlative 
 terms, we can look for no revival of the national spirit. So long 
 as able-bodied young men are left to lounge about city streets 
 and country grocery stores, while other young men volunteer 
 to go to the front and fight their battles for them, democracy is 
 a mere sounding phrase. Until we recognize that the state pro- 
 tects our property, safeguards our fives, gives us our education 
 and renders possible the performance of individual and family 
 functions under the rule of law and order; that the condition 
 of orderly liberty is the fruit of long ages of struggle in which 
 uncounted and unnamed millions have borne their part; and that 
 he who would participate in these benefits without contributing 
 to them is a parasite and a robber, we can have no real sense of 
 personal loyalty to the nation. Instead of gratitude for the bless- 
 ings of fiberty and order, we often encounter resentment against 
 their necessary restraints. Only the shock of disaster, or the 
 immediate and thoroughgoing estabUshment of a system of uni- 
 versal and compulsory military service can renew the declining 
 national character. This would symbofize patriotism in action, 
 not mere lip-loyalty. If we are to rely on volunteer military 
 service, why not introduce voluntary tax-paying? Let that in 
 turn be foUowed by voluntary observance of law. Abrogate 
 government, relax discipline, and let every duty, public and 
 private, be subject to voluntary observance. Then, indeed, 
 will our dreamers have their "rights" and we shall enter upon a 
 Fool's Paradise. 
 
 Can we not copy the virtues of other nations without appro- 
 priating their vices? Switzerland, more democratic than America, 
 has done it. Let us take our boys in the schools, begin young 
 with them, train them to physical vigor and powers of endurance, 
 teach them to stand erect and give and obey orders, instill into 
 them love of country and concrete patriotism, and at the age of 
 eighteen or nineteen turn them over to the federal government 
 to be moulded and made fit by a period of military service, and 
 we will have a generation of better workmen, better lawyers, 
 better doctors, better ministers, better husbands and fathers, 
 and infinitely better citizens. Do likewise with our girls; make 
 them, also, fit and strong; educate them in aU that is truest and 
 best! Let their education, if possible, be so much better than 
 
 10 
 
that of boys as the functions they are to perform are more sacred 
 and important. Before all, teach them in the fear of God that 
 there has been confided to them the holy office of replenishing 
 the earth. When instruction in "birth control" succeeds the 
 sacrament of the family altar, and the whimpering refrain, "I 
 Didn't Raise My Boy to be a Soldier," replaces the martial notes 
 of the "Star-Spangled Banner," the doom of this republic is 
 sealed ! 
 
 In addition to, and sensitively expressive of, the foregoing 
 causes of national apathy, there is, I beheve, another that I may 
 not at this time discuss, but which history will weigh justly and 
 judge unsparingly. Be the causes what they may, — be they 
 racial, refigious, geographical, philosophical or poUtical, — that 
 nation which is the home of freedom and birthplace of democracy 
 has looked on with callous indifference at an hour when these 
 institutions throughout the world have been hanging in the 
 balance; it has chosen the pathway of sloth and ease instead of 
 hard duty ; it has preferred to grow rich and fat in material things 
 at the expense of poverty of spirit and leanness of the soul. In 
 the brief space of a decade and a half we have changed from a 
 nation that the world applauded for taking up the White Man's 
 Burden, for freeing Cuba, regenerating the Philippine archipelago, 
 maintaining the open door in China and assuming the obliga- 
 tions and honors of a World Power, to a nation of apologists, 
 word-worshippers, phrase-mongers and murmurers of porch 
 philosophies. If this current be not stayed, inside of the next 
 half-dozen generations some more virile people will conquer the 
 soil that your forefathers wrested from the tyranny of a British 
 king, and those who now occupy it will become parasites and 
 vassals. I do not expect this to happen. I have faith in the 
 mighty latent forces not as yet called upon and which are chafing 
 under restraint; but in addressing this society of iron traditions, 
 one must not mince words or gloss over realities. While pleading 
 for national manhood, one must not play the moral coward in 
 the process. 
 
 We end where we began — What would Washington have us 
 do? Washington the unselfish, the tenacious, the wise in counsel, 
 the decisive in action; Washington the man of practical vision 
 and universal conscience, who saw in the wrongs of Massachu- 
 setts the cause of hberty in Virginia, and who recognized in a 
 paltry tax on tea levied in a far-off colony an invasion of the im- 
 memorial rights of Englishmen everywhere; who scorned eva- 
 sions and excuses and dared to pit a disorganized group of un- 
 ready and widely-scattered colonies against one of the first powers 
 of Europe; who asked not, "Csui we win.^" but only, "Are we 
 right!" 
 
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
 You await my answer? — if it has not al q 020 914 028 
 it were futile to measure words. Your forefauiers answereu Ji 
 in 1776. They answered it when they stood at Bunker Hill, 
 chaiged at Saratoga, endured at Valley Forge and triumphed 
 at Yorktown. They answered it when, at the end of the war, 
 bare-footed and in Uttle straggUng groups, with no sound of 
 martial music or acclaim of welcoming throngs to greet them, 
 they found their way back from distant battlefields to their 
 neglected farms and impoverished families, — a race of heroes! 
 And because that question, asked as it was by the searching 
 logic of events, was answered by them in the way it was, you and 
 I and every alien who has since come to our shores and received 
 the boon of our citizenship have today a nation to live in and 
 traditions to defend. 
 
 The nations of Europe are not on trial today. They have 
 met their Gethsemane and overcome it. France, our traditional 
 friend, gallant, chivalrous, heroic France — she is not on trial! 
 England, our traditional enemy, yet the Motherland, the home 
 of our institutions and om- literature — dogged, steadfast, un- 
 shakable and calmy brave — she is not on trial. Neither is Russia, 
 awakened out of her slumber to a new life, on trial. Nor, God 
 forbid, is Belgium on trial, — martyred Belgium, the hero of the 
 nations, a people who were tempted but whose honor was not 
 for sale. She surely has met the test and judgment has been 
 passed. Nor, gentlemen, are the German people on trial! For 
 the world has never witnessed a steadfastness, soUdarity, loyalty, 
 efficiency, and sacrifice greater than this wonderful people has 
 exemplified; and after they awake from this horrible nightmare 
 and their historians have placed the blame of their calamity where 
 it belongs, — as we hope — upon a deposed and departed dynasty, 
 her people in the light of a new liberty will read poems and sing 
 songs reciting the mighty deeds of valor of her Great Army. 
 They fought for the right as they saw the right; more than this 
 no man can bestow or people vouchsafe. The one nation of all 
 the world whose moral qualities aie being weighed in the balance 
 in this mighty crisis is our gisuit young Republic of the West. 
 History will judge us; our sons will judge us; the world is judg- 
 ing us. God strengthen Columbia's arm and refurnish her heart! 
 
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 
 
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