"The administration never moves unless it is forced by public pressure and public pressure can as a rule only be obtained by showing the public that we have failed in doing something we should do; for as long as the public is fatuously content, the administration lies back and does nothing."--_April 20, 1918._ "The people who wish me to write for them are divided between the desire to have me speak out boldly, and the desire to have me say nothing that will offend anybody--and cannot realize that the two desires are incompatible."--_April 28, 1918._ "I spoke at Springfield to audiences whose enthusiastic reception of warlike doctrine showed the steady progress of our people in understanding what the war means."--_May 5, 1918._ "It is well to have had happiness, to have achieved the great ends of life, when one must walk boldly and warily close to death."--_May 12, 1918._ "We are really sending over large numbers of men now, and the shipbuilding program is being rushed; but the situation as regards field guns, machine guns, and airplanes continues very bad. The administration never takes a step in advance until literally flailed into it; and the entire cuckoo population of the 'don't criticize the President' type play into the hands of the pro-Germans, pacifists, and Hearst people, so that a premium is put on our delay and inefficiency."--_May 12, 1918._ "The only way I can help in speeding up the war is by jarring loose our governmental and popular conceit and complacency. I point out our shortcomings with unsparing directness and lash the boasting and the grandiloquent prophecies. "The trouble is that our people are ignorant of the situation and that most of the leaders fear to tell the truth about conditions. I only wish I carried more weight. Yet I think our people are hardening in their determination to win the war, and are beginning to ask for results."--_May 23, 1918._ "The war temper of the country is steadily hardening and so is the feeling against all the pro-German agitators at home."--_June 2, 1918._ "In every speech I devote a little time to the 'cut out the boasting plea.' Of course I really do think that in spite of our governmental shortcomings we are developing our strength."--_June 26, 1918._ "On the Fourth of July I went down to Passaic, where three quarters of the people are of foreign parentage, the mayor himself being of German ancestry. I talked straightout Americanism, of course, which was most enthusiastically received; the mayor's two sons have enlisted in the navy, and one has been promoted to being ensign. The war spirit of the people is steadily rising."--_July 7, 1918._