Lest We Forget Part 1

Lest We Forget.

by John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood.

PREFACE

Books and articles in astounding numbers have been published in the past four years to explain the World War and to inform the public as to its progress. Societies and agencies of the government have urged that every available means be employed to inform the American people of the reasons for the war and the issues at stake; and much has been done for adults.

Little or no thought seems to have been given to youthful readers who are beginning to think for themselves, and whose first thinking should be properly guided, for they are at an age when tales of heroism and daring make a strong appeal. In many homes the children are the only readers, and in nearly all, their thinking and reading exercise a powerful influence.

This volume of stories of the World War is prepared to meet this important need, and to set before the pupils the war's unparalleled deeds of heroism, with the aims and ideals which have inspired them, and which have led American youth to look upon the sacrifice of life as none too high a price to pay for the liberation of mankind.

It may be used as a reading book or as an historical reader for the upper grammar grades. While great care has been employed to secure accuracy of fact and to select material of permanent value, the stories are written in a manner that will appeal to children.

The thanks of the authors and publishers are hereby expressed to those who have kindly granted permission to use copyrighted material.

LEST WE FORGET

THE SHOT HEARD ROUND THE WORLD

On April 19, 1775, was fired "the shot heard round the world." It was the shot fired for freedom and democracy by the Americans at Lexington and Concord. In 1836, upon the completion of the battle monument at Concord, the gallant deeds of those early patriots were commemorated by Emerson in verse.

By the rude bridge that arched the flood, Their flag to April's breeze unfurled, Here once the embattled farmers stood, And fired the shot heard round the world.

This is not the only shot for freedom fired by America and Americans.

As President Wilson has said, "The might of America is the might of a sincere love for the freedom of mankind." The shots of the Civil War were fired for united democracy and universal freedom.

The soldiers and sailors of the United States fired upon the Spaniards in the Spanish-American War, that an oppressed people might be released and given an opportunity to live and work and grow in liberty.

That the Filipinos, like the Cubans, might learn to understand freedom, to safeguard it, and to use it wisely, has been the whole purpose of the United States in aiding them.

On April 6, 1917, the shot was heard again. The whole world had been listening anxiously for it, and was not disappointed.

Those against whom the first American shot for freedom was fired in 1775 have now become the strongest defenders of liberty and democracy.

Their country is one of the three greatest democracies of the world.

Shoulder to shoulder, the Americans and British fight for the freedom of mankind everywhere. They fight to defend the truth and to make this truth serve down-trodden peoples as well as the mighty.

Indeed, President Wilson has wisely said, "The only thing that ever set any man free, the only thing that ever set any nation free, is the truth. A man that is afraid of the truth is afraid of life. A man who does not love the truth is in the way of failure."

Germany has no love for the truth. The history of the empire is strewn with broken promises and acts of deceitfulness. America stands for something different. It stands for those ideals which President Wilson saw when he looked at the flag.

"And as I look at that flag," he said, "I seem to see many characters upon it which are not visible to the physical eye. There seem to move ghostly visions of devoted men who, looking at that flag, thought only of liberty, of the rights of mankind, of the mission of America to show the way to the world for the realization of the rights of mankind; and every grave of every brave man of the country would seem to have upon it the colors of the flag; if he was a true American, would seem to have on it that stain of red which means the true pulse of blood, and that beauty of pure white which means the peace of the soul. And then there seems to rise over the graves of those men and to hallow their memory, that blue s.p.a.ce of the sky in which stars swim, these stars which exemplify for us that glorious galaxy of the States of the Union, bodies of free men banded together to vindicate the rights of mankind."

At Mount Vernon, he said, in speaking of the work of George Washington, "A great promise that was meant for all mankind was here given plan and reality." So for the sake of many peoples of Europe who were wronged, America has carried out that promise. When honorable Americans promise, they would rather give up life than fail to keep their word. But when the Germans promise it means only "a slip of the tongue," for this is also the meaning of the German word which is translated "promise."

That the United States has to fulfill this special mission of defending the truth is very clear. The great American leader said again in behalf of his people:

"I suppose that from the first America has had one particular mission in the world. Other nations have grown rich, other nations have been as powerful as we are in material resources; other nations have built up empires and exercised dominion. We are not alone in any of these things, but we are peculiar in this, that from the first we have dedicated our force to the service of justice and righteousness and peace.

"The princes among us are those who forget themselves and serve mankind. America was born into the world to do mankind's service, and no man is an American in whom the desire to do mankind's service is not greater than the desire to serve himself.

"Our life is but a little plan. One generation follows another very quickly. If a man with red blood in him had his choice, knowing that he must die, he would rather die to vindicate some right, unselfish to himself, than die in his bed. We are all touched with the love of the glory which is real glory, and the only glory comes from utter self-forgetfulness and self-sacrifice. We never erect a statue to a man who has merely succeeded. We erect statues to men who have forgotten themselves and been glorified by the memory of others. This is the standard that America holds up to mankind in all sincerity and in all earnestness.

"We have gone down to Mexico to serve mankind, if we can find out the way. We do not want to fight the Mexicans; we want to serve the Mexicans if we can, because we know how we would like to be free and how we would like to be served, if there were friends standing by ready to serve us. A war of aggression is not a war in which it is a proud thing to die, but a war of service is a thing in which it is a proud thing to die."

The liberty-loving nations now fighting in the World War desire that truth and freedom shall be secured even to the Germans along with all other peoples. If the Germans had possessed these priceless virtues, probably no World War would have been necessary. But the spirit of militarism has bound down and deceived the German people.

President Wilson, at West Point, said: "Militarism does not consist in the existence of any army, not even in the existence of a very great army. Militarism is a spirit. It is a point of view. It is a system. It is a purpose. The purpose of militarism is to use armies for aggression. The spirit of militarism is the opposite of the civilian spirit, the citizen spirit. In a country where militarism prevails, the military man looks down upon the civilian, regards him as inferior, thinks of him as intended for his, the military man's support and use, and just as long as America is America that spirit and point of view is impossible with us. There is as yet in this country, so far as I can discover, no taint of the spirit of militarism."

The people of Germany have given up their sons, paid enormous taxes which kept them poor but made landowners rich, all for the sake of the military whims of their superiors.

Any American would say, like President Wilson, "I would rather belong to a poor nation that was free than to a rich nation that had ceased to be in love with liberty. But we shall not be poor if we love liberty, because the nation that loves liberty truly sets every man free to do his best and be his best, and that means the release of all the splendid energies of a great people who think for themselves."

Thus, it is clear that America fights _to serve_. The Germans fight _to get_, even as their word "kriegen," used by them to mean "make war,"

really means "to get." For them, making war is never with the idea of service, but with the idea of getting. They desire many things for Germany, and to get them, they have used the most brutal force. Not for a moment would they stop to listen to the opinions of mankind throughout the world.

President Wilson spoke with authority, when he said: "I have not read history without observing that the greatest forces in the world and the only permanent forces are the moral forces. We have the evidence of a very competent witness, namely, the first Napoleon, who said that as he looked back in the last days of his life upon so much as he knew of human history, he had to record the judgment that force had never accomplished anything that was permanent. Force will not accomplish anything that is permanent, I venture to say, in the great struggle which is now going on on the other side of the sea. The permanent things will be accomplished afterward, when the opinion of mankind is brought to bear upon the issues, and the only thing that will hold the world steady is this same silent, insistent, all-powerful opinion of mankind. Force can sometimes hold things steady until opinion has time to form, but no force that was ever exerted except in response to that opinion was ever a conquering and predominant force."

By the opinions of mankind, he meant ideals, of which he had already said: "The pushing things in this world are ideals, not ideas. One ideal is worth twenty ideas."

Thus, in behalf of the great American nation, he calls upon the young Americans of to-day to follow the true spirit of their country. To them all he says, "You are just as big as the things you do, just as small as the things you leave undone. The size of your life is the scale of your thinking."

When this great American president who believed that moral force was always greater than physical force and who taught that America's mission in the world was to serve all mankind and finally to make them free; when he perceived after every other means had failed, that only physical force could affect Germany and that "the sore spot" in the world must be healed, as a cancer is, with the surgeon's knife; then he appeared in person, on April 2, 1917, before the Congress of the United States and read his great war message. Following his advice, Congress declared on April 6 that a state of war existed with Germany.

The message was in substance as follows:

Gentlemen of the Congress:

I have called the Congress into extraordinary session because there are serious, very serious, choices of policy to be made, and made immediately.

On the third of February last I laid before you the extraordinary announcement of the Imperial German Government that on and after the first day of February it was its purpose to put aside all restraints of law or of humanity and use its submarines to sink every vessel that sought to approach either the ports of Great Britain and Ireland or the western coasts of Europe or any of the ports controlled by the enemies of Germany within the Mediterranean.

The new policy has swept every restriction aside. Vessels of every kind, whatever their flag, their character, their cargo, their destination, their errand, have been ruthlessly sent to the bottom without warning and without thought of help or mercy for those on board, the vessels of friendly neutrals along with those of belligerents.

Even hospital ships and ships carrying relief to the stricken people of Belgium, though the latter were provided with safe-conduct by the German Government itself and were distinguished by unmistakable marks of ident.i.ty, have been sunk with the same reckless lack of compa.s.sion or of principle....

I am not now thinking of the loss of property, immense and serious as that is, but only of the wanton and wholesale destruction of the lives of non-combatants, men, women, and children, engaged in pursuits which have always, even in the darkest periods of modern history, been deemed innocent and lawful. Property can be paid for; the lives of peaceful and innocent people cannot be.

The present German submarine warfare against commerce is a warfare against mankind. It is a war against all nations.

American ships have been sunk, American lives taken, in ways which it has stirred us very deeply to learn of, but the ships and people of other neutral and friendly nations have been sunk in the waters in the same way. The challenge is to all mankind.