United States -- Politics and government -- 1913-1921; World War, 1914-1918 -- United States
There is another misapprehension that I want to remove from your minds:
Do not think that I have come to talk to you about these things because
I doubt whether they are going to be done or not. I do not doubt it for
a moment, but I believe that when great things of this sort are going to
be done the people of this country are entitled to know just what is
being proposed. As a friend of mine says, I am not arguing with you; I
am telling you. I am not trying to convert you to anything, because I
know that in your hearts you are converted already, but I want you to
know the motives of what is proposed and the character of what is
proposed, in order that we should have only one attitude and counsel
with regard to this great matter.
It is being very sedulously spread abroad in this country that the
impulse back of all this is the desire of men who make the materials of
warfare to get money out of the Treasury of the United States. I wish
the people that say that could see meetings like this. Did you come here
for that purpose? Did you come here because you are interested to see
some of your fellow-citizens make money out of the present situation? Of
course you did not. I am ready to admit that probably the equipment of
those men whom we are training will have to be bought from somebody, and
I know that if the equipment is bought, it will have to be paid for; and
I dare say somebody will make some money out of it. It is also true,
ladies and gentlemen, that there are men now, a great many men, in the
belligerent countries who are growing rich out of the sale of the
materials needed by the armies of those countries. If the Government
itself does not manufacture everything that an army needs, somebody has
got to make money out of it, and I for my part have been urging the
Congress of the United States to make the necessary preparations by
which the Government can manufacture armor plate and munitions, so that,
being in the business itself and having the ability to manufacture all
it needs, if it is put upon a business basis, it can at any rate keep
the price that it pays within moderate and reasonable limits. The
Government of the United States is not going to be imposed upon by
anybody, and you may rest assured, therefore, that while I believe you
prefer that private capital and private initiative should bestir
themselves in these matters, it is also possible, and I assure you that
it is most likely, that the Government of the United States will have
adequate means of controlling this matter very thoroughly indeed. There
need be no fear on that side. Let nobody suppose that this is a
money-making agitation. I would for one be ashamed to be such a dupe as
to be engaged in it if it had any suspicion of that about it, but I am
not as innocent as I look; and I believe that I can say for my
colleagues in Washington that they are just as watchful in such matters
as you would desire them to be.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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