Address by Honorable Franklin K. Lane, Secretary of the Interior at Conference of Regional Chairmen of the Highways Transport Committee Council of National Defense — John Shaqi
Address by Honorable Franklin K. Lane, Secretary of the Interior at Conference of Regional Chairmen of the Highways Transport Committee Council of National DefenseUnited States. Council of National Defense. Highways Transport Committee
History
Address by Honorable Franklin K. Lane, Secretary of the Interior at Conference of Regional Chairmen of the Highways Transport Committee Council of National Defense
United States. Council of National Defense. Highways Transport Committee
Roads; Transportation, Automotive
The United States is not going to be after the war as it has been.
That is a thing that you sober men of business are already thinking
about. We are never going to return to the idea that was. The man that
comes back from this war will be treated by us with distinguished
consideration, because he has taken a risk that we have not taken;
that we have not had the opportunity to take, I am sorry to say. But
that man is going to insist upon larger opportunity for himself, and
the largest opportunity that he wants is an opportunity to make
himself independent, and he is going to have a conception of a social
America that we have not had. This war is a leveling force. When we
adopted the draft, under the leadership of that man over there
(Senator Chamberlain), we did a thing that was of the deepest and most
far-reaching consequence. We did a thing that put the millionaire's
boy and the lawyer's boy and the Cabinet official's boy alongside of
the bootblack and the farmer and the street-car driver. It was the
most essentially democratic thing that this country has ever done, and
the spirit of the draft is going to continue after this war. Those
boys are always going to look upon each other as brothers in arms,
sympathetic toward each other.
Yesterday Mrs. Lane established a little hospital for convalescent
soldiers, and as she was gathering up the 10 men she was taking into
the hospital, one of the men from out West said: "Won't you take my
chum? We left Colorado and went out to California together and took up
a piece of land. When the war came on we went into the war together,
and we fought together in France, and when we were making the charge
together I saw him fall, struck by a bullet. I ran to pick him up and
I got mine." Now, those two fellows are going to be tied together for
life, and that is the relationship that will exist between all those
men.
We men who are in politics to-day have seen our day. They are going to
take charge of the politics of the United States. They are going to
take charge of the social problems. They are going to insist upon
industrial as well as social equality. We know that this does not
necessarily mean that the Nation must be run by them because they were
soldiers, not unless they have the quality that gives them foresight
and good sense. But now we should prepare for them. We must realize
that these men are all comrades, that they are going to work together,
and we ought to spread this feeling throughout the entire country. The
fighting men themselves ought to get the feeling that we who have been
left behind are also in the service of the country, trying to do
something large for the making of this Nation along real lines.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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