Address to the American Legion in Boston, Massachusetts

My fellow countrymen:

It is with a great deal of pleasure that I am able to meet here with the American Legion.

I hope I may venture to claim from some years of service during the Great War, a measure of comradeship with the men who fought in that war. I understand your variety of French perfectly. I know from intimate experience, and I intend to hold in confidence, the first reaction you had from a passing shell, and the homelike appearance of shell holes under certain circumstances. I shall maintain secret your opinion of those who profess indifference to or the glory in passing bullets, or insects, or the mud and filth of the trenches, or days and weeks in the wet and cold.

The glories of war are not in the heartbreaks of passing buddies and the thousand tragedies of the battle-line. Its glories do not lie in its surroundings-they lie rather in the spirit, the sacrifices, the devotion of those who go cheerfully and courageously into the trenches, and the ultimate triumph of those lofty ideals for which they gave their all.

It was inevitable that men who had lived through that great common experience, who had engaged in supreme adventure with death, should combine into associations of lifelong comradeship. Yet, it was not alone the comradeship of high adventure that instinctively called your organization into being. It was the common understanding which war called forth, the common experience from which sprang the highest emotions of patriotism--that shoulder-to-shoulder companionship in an idealism which transfigured men's lives.

The millions who shared in that experience came home from it rededicated to the further service of their country. But great as was that service, performed under impulse of the high emotions of war, the service to the great ideals of peace is ofttimes even more difficult and ofttimes requires more sustained courage. It was, therefore, with deep sympathy that I witnessed the birth of the American Legion in France in 1919.

At that memorable meeting you sensed this high purpose and expressed these lofty ideals of your peacetime service in the preamble to your constitution, which reads in part:

"To uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States of America, to maintain law and order; to inculcate a sense of individual obligation to the community, State, and Nation; to combat the autocracy of both the classes and the masses; to make right the master of might; to promote peace and good will on Earth; to safeguard and transmit to posterity the principles of justice, freedom, and democracy; to consecrate and sanctify our comradeship by our devotion to mutual helpfulness." That, indeed, is the real preface to American citizenship.

It is my purpose to speak upon some of these ideals and purposes, for idealism must be translated into cold realism of the day-to-day task of citizenship.

At the moment you made that declaration, you sensed an imperative national need. You foresaw that the aftermath of war would be a period of change, a period of disturbed mind, of loosened moorings; a period when evil forces among men might lead to violence and crime; a period which demanded understanding and wise restraint if the basis of all society and all progress were to be maintained. You realized that liberty and freedom can be won on the battlefield, but they can be held only by ordered government in peace. You realized, in fact, that without ordered government the very sacrifices which you had made, the fruition of your high hopes, your endurance, your courage, might come to naught.

Eleven years of experience in our own country and in every country engaged in that war have proved the need of that inspiration to active citizenship. It has been a period of readjustment, a period of challenge to democratic institutions, a time when the world has had to contend with a greater mood of violence. Even today nearly one-half of the population of our globe is in a state of great unrest or a state of revolution.

Among these ideals was: "to promote peace and good will upon Earth." Those indeed were courageous and constructive words at the moment when the guns had barely been silenced and the fires of hate were still burning fiercely. They were the words of brave men, of the soldiers from the trenches, men who respected a courageous enemy, who in clear vision saw that the future hope of the world lay in good will, not in hate. It was the real feeling of men who had fought and who knew the dreadfulness of war.

In that statement you gave no glorification to war. It was a pledge to peace based upon freedom and justice, and without this, civilization itself must fail. It was a statement neither of pacifism nor militarism.

Real peace in the world requires something more than the documents which we sign to terminate wars. Peace requires unremitting, courageous campaigns, laid with strategy and carried on successfully on a hundred fronts and sustained in the spirit and from the hearts of every individual in every town and village of our country.

In the great intangibles of human emotion, respect is inseparable from good will. The maintenance of respect requires that we sustain a preparedness for defense that is impregnable yet that contains no threat of aggression.

You have maintained that the development of good will also requires the firm establishment of confidence in our sense of international justice. This becomes of double importance from us because of the overpowering strength of our country in its relations with many nations. We have to remember that during the Great War we demonstrated not only our military power but also our ability to quickly organize it and the valor to use it. After the war the disturbed condition of the world made it necessary to increase our defense establishment beyond the prewar basis. Above all, we made a more rapid recovery from the vast losses of the Great War than other nations in the world. Our national income has expanded to embrace more than one-third of the whole commercial world. As a result we have become a dominant economic power. Our citizens have spread their trade and finance into every corner of the Earth. From these tremendous happenings in our country some leaders in other countries came to believe that they were in the presence of the birth of a new imperial power intent upon dominating the destinies and the freedom of other peoples. Such a conclusion would be the logical deduction from many instances during 3,000 years of history when the exploitation of other people has been the outcome of the ability to do so. This we know is an utter misconception of America. We know there is a desire to do justice and not exploitation. We know there is no financial, traditional, or military imperialism in the American heart. We know, in fact, that we have opened the door of a new social and economic system by which, within our own borders, we shall create the conquest of poverty without exploiting other nations. But as wrong as these fears may be, it becomes our first duty to show by our every act, not alone by our Government but by our citizens, that our guide is justice and that confidence may be reposed in that sense of justice.

The day-to-day practical preservation of peace and good will requires that we build up and support agencies for pacific solution of controversies. It requires that no one of us shall entertain suspicion or ill will toward other peoples, that we give them no cause for the most dangerous of all emotions--that is, fear. It requires that every American shall realize that men and women of other nations have the same devotion to their flags and are as sensitive to the dignity of their country as we.

On this road to peace we have attained two momentous victories. The first of these is the Kellogg-Briand Pact. By the London naval agreement we have silenced the high dangers of competitive naval building and have safeguarded our defense by parity with the greatest naval power in the world. We have assured the maintenance of an efficient Navy as the first line of defense. By limiting our strength we have given demonstration to the world that we seek no domination but only adequate defense.

The peace of our country has never stood more assured than at this moment. The realization of your ideal to promote peace and good will through active citizenship is the greatest guaranty of its continuance.

The first high purpose you express is to uphold and defend the Constitution and to maintain law and order in the United States. Happily your ideal is my first and most sacred duty. As President of the United States I am sworn by the whole people to maintain the Constitution and to enforce the laws. No man should dare call himself a faithful American and suggest otherwise. You have recognized that the upholding of the Constitution and the enforcement of the laws must, however, not rest upon Government officials alone; it must rise from the stern demand and the loyal cooperation of good citizenship and individual responsibility to the community.

One of the primary obligations of citizenship is national defense. Our people have been traditionally opposed to a large standing army in times of peace. The Nation needs a regular army, highly developed in training and technical services, as the nucleus for the training of citizen soldiers and to lead them in times of emergency. We have always relied on our citizen army, and never relied in vain, but its maintenance is again the voluntary service of good citizenship. Your association has taken large interest in provision for better industrial mobilization. You have been greatly interested, and I have lately signed an act creating an inquiry into the methods by which the economic burdens of war shall fall with equal weight upon every element of citizenry. It is not equitable that one citizen shall profit by war while another makes the supreme sacrifice.

One of your expressed ideals was that of "mutual helpfulness." In your solicitude for your comrades, disabled both in war and in peace, you have kept that faith. Nor has a grateful Nation failed in its duty. In addition to hospitalization, rehabilitation, war-risk insurance, adjusted compensation, and priority in civil service, the Government has undertaken through disability allowances to provide for some 700,000 veterans of the World War. Our total outlays on all services to World War veterans are nearing $600 million a year and to veterans of all wars nearly $900 million per annum. The Nation assumes an obligation when it sends its sons to war. The Nation is proud to requite this obligation within its full resources. I have been glad of the opportunity to favor the extension of these services in such a manner that they cover without question all cases of disablement whether from war or peace. There is, however, a deep responsibility of citizenship in the administration of this trust of mutual helpfulness which peculiarly lies upon your members, and that is that the demands upon the Government should not exceed the measure that justice requires and self-help can provide. If we shall overload the burden of taxation, we shall stagnate our economic progress and we shall by the slackening of his progress place penalties upon every citizen.

There are many other responsibilities of the individual in his "obligations to the community, the State, and the Nation." The very beginning of such obligation is at the ballot box. The whole plan of self-government presupposes that the whole people shall participate in the selection of its officials, the determination of its policies, and the maintenance of its ideals. Anything less than this involves government by the minority.

Your own expressed fears of "autocracy of either classes or masses" can well come true unless the individual citizen takes at least his share in the burden of government. He cannot hope to escape tyranny, he may not safely trust that "right will be the master of might," unless he is willing to respond to the right and duty to go to the ballot box. When he does not insist upon purity of elections he has lost democracy itself. Beyond this, if right shall be the master of might, every citizen must be on guard against the invasion of our guaranteed liberties even by public officials.

You have insisted that we shall "safeguard and transmit the principles of democracy." We have seen the erection of many new democracies during this period since the war. We have seen some of them fall by the wayside--some to strong men and some to the mob. Strange new doctrines are presented to us in alluring language. Self-government is being questioned. We in America have proved it the surest lift to the common man. We have grown and prospered under it for 150 years. We believe in it. There is no greater service to the world than that we should hold and strengthen it. It is grounded upon the ideal you have set for yourselves--the obligation of the "individual to the community, the State, and the Nation."

During these years your thousands of posts have concerned themselves with these ideals of citizenship. My purpose today is to urge you to renewed efforts--that you, as the American Legion, as a group of men who, inspired by the ideals of our country, went to battle to preserve those ideals--that you should renew and expand your mission of citizenship.

We need the teaching of the essentials of good will toward other nations in every community--that the foundations of peace arise from the sense of justice within the citizenry of a nation, in the good will which they individually evince toward other peoples.

We need the teaching that the foundation of government is respect for law. A quickened interest on the part of the community can insist upon proper enforcement of law, can arouse public opinion, while any condition of lawlessness remains unchecked .in that community. You can impress upon the citizens that the road of self-government is through the discharge of our obligations at the ballot box; to understand that the basis of defense is a willingness to serve in our citizen soldiery; actively to participate in these and a multitude of duties of citizens--all are an inseparable part of the safety and progress of the Nation.

You have a post in every town and every village. These 11,000 posts are organized into divisions with State and national commanders. You are already an army mobilized for unselfish and constructive endeavor. Your strength is made up of men who have stood the quality test of citizenship. You have it in your power to do much. Through your local posts you can awaken the minds of the communities throughout our Nation to a higher ideal of citizenship. You have an exceptional interest and an exceptional opportunity in the frontline of citizenship to cooperate and preserve the fundamentals of our Republic.