The Mobilizing of America AN ADDRESS DELIVERED BEFORE THE PARK VIEW COMMUNITY CELEBRATION, AT WASHINGTON, D. C. ON JULY 4, 1917 BY HON. ROBERT L. OWEN UNITED STATES SENATOR FROM OKLAHOMA PRESENTED BY MR. SHEPPARD SEPTEMBER 20, 1917.-Referred to the Committee on Printing WASHINGTON GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE " SENATE RESOLUTION NO. 142. Reported by Mr. Fletcher. IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES, Resolved, That the manuscript submitted by the Senator from Texas (Mr. Sheppard) on September 20, 1917, entitled "The Mobilizing of America," an address delivered by Hon. Robert L. Owen, United States Senator from Oklahoma, at the Park View community celebration, Washington, D. C., July 4, 1917, to be printed as a Senate Document. Attest: JAMES M. BAKER, Secretary. THE MOBILIZING OF AMERICA. By Hon. ROBERT L. OWEN, United States Senator from Oklahoma. In other years the Fourth of July observance has been needed to call our minds up from our private tasks to the high thought of the Nation's ideals. But now, when these ideals have come to a final death grapple with autocracy to protect the liberty of the world, there is no need of a celebration to remind us. The best use of this great day will be to think now practically and earnestly what we shall do in the face of our stupendous problem. Recently a call was sent out to all the men and women of poetic impulse in America asking for a fitting expression of our national sentiment. To this call more than 4,000 made answer. The poem among all these adjudged the worthiest expression of our deep and common feeling has just been published. It was written by Daniel M. Henderson, and it is entitled "The Road to France." These are some of its lines: Thank God, our liberating lance To France-with every race and breed At last, thank God! At last, we see The soul that led our fathers west See, with what hearts we now advance Now, how does it happen that the best expression of the feeling of America to-day is contained in a poem which turns our thought to France? It is not merely because of our debt to the French people for aid to us in the dark days of our own Revolution. It is not merely because, among all the nations of the globe, France has longest and most truly been our fellow in democracy. And it is not merely because of the heroism that French soldiers have shown and are showing to-day on the battle field. The explanation lies deeper. It is in the fact that, more than any other nation, France has attained a unity of consecration, a unity of participation, in this war. In France, not the soldiers only, not the statesmen only, but the people every man, woman, and child-have come into vital and effective union for the common cause. How has this been attained? And how is it maintained? Every week there goes from the central agency of Government at Paris, through the Ministry of Education, a communication-the Bulletin Administratif-to each public schoolhouse throughout all France. It carries the roll of the week's exceptional heroes who have come forth from French neighborhoods and been revealed in battle at the front. It carries the Government's report upon the conduct of the war and the Government's appeals or advice regarding the nation's needs. It goes to the servant in each neighborhood house; to the teacher, who has become more than a teacher, who has become the community secretary, and through this local official, who is the living medium between the nation and the neighborhood, it reaches not merely the children as they gather in the schoolhouse during the day, but the men and women as in the evening they assemble there. There are the daily news flashes there as here. There is the daily press. But it is by this weekly communication of the national Government direct to every community in France; and by this weekly assembly of all the people at their common schoolhouses to receive, discuss, and act upon this thoroughly trustworthy and official information furnished directly to them by their Government, that the French people are mobilized and their actual unity of thought and courage and practical effort is attained. Is there a demand for special effort to increase and conserve the food supply? Here is the means of placing the matter directly before all the people-not individually, one by one, but assembled together where discussion may be had and plans of effective cooperation formed through common conference. Is there a special call for Red Cross service? This bulletin brings that call home to all men and all women gathering as neighbors and united so as best to meet that need. Is there required the issuing of a new Government loan? Through their own agency of communication the people learn the facts and, assembled in the building that stands to them as the schoolhouse is to us-the place of sincerest devotion-they respond. Or is there an inspiring event, or a great word spoken, the report of which will kindle and renew the common enthusiasm, the common zeal? This bulletin sent directly from the national Government to the people as they gather in the schoolhouses conveys the inspiring message. So, for example, the text of President Wilson's speech asking for a declaration of war, and interpreting America's position, was received in every public schoolhouse in France, there to be read, considered, implanted by discussion in the minds and souls of the citizens as they gathered in these headquarters or neighborhood assembly, which have become the centers of a nation mobilized. From England also comes the news that the War Savings Association is finding the machinery of the common schools the most effective agency for its work of reaching all the people, and the administration of food control is finding here the channel of its most efficient service. Italy, too, so far as its public school system is developed, is making the discovery that the mechanism of the children's instruction is the ready and adequate equipment for the defense organization of the whole people. In Russia the public-school system is only now in process of establishment. But the plans which aim to equip that great land with common schools within 10 years' time include not only provision for the instruction of children but also for the use of this equipment by adults. The nation that has learned first-hand neighborhood |