Remarks to the General Meeting of the Committee on Labor of the Advisory Commission of the Council of National Defense

This is a most welcome visit because it means a most welcome thing— the spontaneous cooperation of men from all walks of life interested to see that we do not forget any of the principles of our lives in meeting the great emergency that has come upon us.

Mr. Gompers has expressed already one of the things that have been very much in my mind of late. I have been very much alarmed at one or two things that have happened—at the apparent inclination of the Legislatures of one or two of our States to set aside even temporarily the laws which have safeguarded standards of labor and of life. I think nothing would be more deplorable than that. We are trying to fight in a cause which means the lifting of the standards of life, and we can fight in that cause best by voluntary cooperation. I do not doubt that any body of men representing labor in this country, speaking for their fellows, will be willing to make any sacrifice that is necessary in order to carry this contest to a successful issue, and in that confidence I feel that it would be inexcusable if we deprived men and women of such a spirit of any of the existing safeguards of law. Therefore I shall exercise my influence so far as it goes to see that that does not happen, and that the sacrifices we make shall be made voluntarily and not under the compulsion which mistakenly is interpreted to mean a lowering of the standards which we have sought through so many generations to bring to their present level.

Mr. Gompers has not overstated the case in saying that we are fighting for democracy in a larger sense than can be expressed in any political terms. There are many forms of democratic government, and we are not fighting for any particular form; but we are fighting for the essential part of it all, namely, that we are all equally interested in our social and political life, and all have a right to a voice in the Government under which we live, and that when men and women are equally admitted to those rights we have the best safeguard of justice and/' peace that the world affords. There is no other safeguard. Let any group of men, whatever /their original intentions, attempt to dictate to their fellow-men what their political fortunes shall be, and the result is injustice and hard ship and wrong of the deepest sort. Therefore we are just now feeling as we have never felt before, our sense of comradeship. We shall feel it even more because we have not yet made the sacrifices that we are going to make; we have not yet felt the terrible pressure of suffering and pain of war, and we are going presently to feel it, and I have every confidence that as its pressure comes upon us our spirit will not falter, but rise and be strengthened, and that in the last we shall have a national feeling and a national unity such as never gladdened our hearts before.

I want to thank you for the compliment of this visit and say if there is any way in which I can cooperate with the purposes of this committee or with those with whom you are laboring, it will afford me a sense of privilege and pleasure.