Senator Thomas. E. Watson’s Speech On
Soldiers Bonus Bill.
In The U. S. Senate, July 13, 1921.
(Continued from Page One.)
ican soldier wanted a tip, like a Avaiter at the
hotel, like a servitor in the cafe, like a coach¬
man on the box, like a servant in the hall? Why
insult the American soldier by saying that he
wanted a mere tip? That phrase is repeated
five times in the speech of the Senator fyom
Montana (Mr. Myers).
I knqw some of those soldiers. Some of
them have my oAvn blood in their veins. Some
of them have my own pride in their make up,
and I hope I have some of their patriotism
which they displayed on battle fronts, and
those words “a mere* tip”, a tip that you
hand to the man who gives you your umbrella,
or your hat, or your overcoat, seem to me
peculiarly inappropriate when you apply them
to the men who went 3,000 miles from their
homes at the behest of their Government, fo
fight battles AA'hose causes they did not under¬
stand.
I cannot comprehend this abomination of
the word “cash.” Does the Senator from Mon
tana draw land warrants for his pay as
Senator, which really ought to he doubled.
He bad come in here the morning of his
speech and asked unanimous consent for a
bounty, a governmental favor, to the farmers
of his own State, and npbody here objected to
it, and he got it. Did the Senator think he
was asking a tip when he asked that they be
relieved of forfeiture, or that they be given a
year’s time on their payments? Unanimous
consent Avas given, and under the same cir¬
cumstances would be given again, and it is no
disgrace to the Senator who asked for it; it
is a merit. It is no disgrace to the farmers
who will get it; they deserve it. Every time
any such measure is proposed for the East or
the North or West I stand ready, as one of
the representatives from the South, to grant it
without hesitation.
The Senator from Montana in the early
part of his speech stated that long after the
Revolutionary War the soldiers of that war
who volunteered Avere paid in land warrants
or were given land warrants. The loose Con
federation of the Colonies had no money, had
no gold reserve, had no power to tax the States
or the individuals in the States, but they had
public domain. It was all they had to give,
and they gave it bounteously to the soldiers
who volunteered, from Lexington Bridge to
Kings Mountain and Kettle Creek, in my own
State, on whose battlefield, I am proud to say,
one of my great-grand uncles lies entombed.
Wanted a tip? Many of those soldiers
could not go to the Ohio and settle on their
land. They sold their land warrants and con
verted them into cash, the despised cash which
takes (he place of everything in commerce, the
cash which you can use Avhen you cannot use
the land, the cash whiclpyou can use when you
cannot use the bank stock of the bond or the
promissory note or the horses or the herds of
cattle. They took the cash, much of which
they got from the Father of his Country,
George Washington, avIio, being a land survey
or experienced Fairfax in the surveying of wild lands
for Lord and others, knew exactly
what he was doing when he bought those land
warrants. If the Senator from Montana has
not read the classic life Lodge, of George Washing
ton by Henry Cabot, now the senior
Senator from Massachusetts, Avhom we all
and honor as a Member of this body, he should
do so. He will learn that a thriftier business
roan than George Washington never drew
breath. With the possible exception of Ste
phen Girard, he was the first American mil
lionairo, and much of his wealth consisted of
the lands he had bought from his comrades
in arms.
(jmup mention has been made here of
conscripts during the Revolutionary War.
There were no conscripts at Lexington Bridge,
there Avere no conscripts at Bunker Hill, where
they burned the poAvder which the Georgians
had sent them from Savannah. There were
no conscripts at Valley Forge, where Wash
ington’s shivering army Avas partly clothed
and feci by clothing and provisions sent from
Georgia. Not until the very last were con
scripts added, and they came in too late to ren¬
der effective service. Every battlefield of
the honor Revolutionary and War is a tribute and
a monument to the volunteer sol¬
dier, the men avIio rode from the South some
under Col. Elijah Clarke, of Georgia, Col.
Jim Williams, Gen John Sevier, Col. Shelby,
and some under Col. Cleveland. Those men
were volunteers. Washington knew nothing of
their movements. They financed themselves,
They furnished their oavii arms, they furnished
their own ammunition, they planned their OAVII
campaign, and when the silver whistle of Fer¬
guson ceased to sound the commands on the
summit of Kings Mountain those men knew
the battle had been won, that the opposition
was wiped out, and that the flank of George
Washington was secure for the victory of
YorktoAvn. That was the turning-point battle
of the Revolutionary War, fought by the vol¬
unteers of the South.
The Mexican fought hy -mlnn
teers. There was not a conscript in that army,
not a single conscript fought at Cerro Gorda
or at Buena Vista, or in seizing the heights at
Mexico City. They were volunteers, every one
of them.
In the Civil War, who won the victories,
of Gens. Grant, of Meade, of Sherman, of
Sheridan, -of Thomas, of Lee, of Jackson, of
Johnson, of Beauregard? Who won them?
The volunteers won them. The moment the
South had to resort to conscripts the bottom
fell out. I was a boy then and I know. The
monaept it ceased to be a volunteer movement
the bottom fell out and the conscripts filled the
swamps with deserters and shot down the en¬
rolling officers who tried to carry them back
against their will.
W T ho -won the victories of Great Britain
and of France? Volunteers did it. For a
thousand years Great Britain never had a
conscript law. There was not a single con
script who followed the flag of Wellington, not
a single one who followed the standard of
Marlborough, not a single Quebec. one Avho followed
Wolfe at the heights of They were
volunteers. They did ha\ r e “crimping” in the
navy, seizing men and carrying them off to
ships; and we all remember the pathetic inci¬
dent where a gang seized a bridegroom as he
Avas leaving the church in which he had taken
the vows Avith his bride, and she never saw him
again in all her life, and she never kneAv wheth¬
er he died under the lash of one of Nelson's
ships, whether he died under the bullets of a
Spanish or a French gun, whether he was
SAvept overboard and drowned, or whether he
died in some pestilential hospital.
Talk about the victories of France! The
great victories that carried that Republic up
the heights, where the soldiers said they felt
like they were marching into the sunrise, were
fought and won by volunteers. The Great
Committee would have the hells ring, the toe
sin sounded, and the lion voice of Danton
would go out, and all Frenchman who loved
their country came to the colors, as thev
Avould come from every hamlet and village and
every town and city, from farm and shop, and
no army which England could hiye Europe to
send against them could beat them down,
The Senator from Montana said that ho
believed the conscript system is the very*best
system—selective draft,’ he chooses to call it.
I saw the workings of that draft. I was in the
midst of it, and I was opposed to it and I am
opposed to it now. Why? Because I believe
that as long as this country is able to tell her
people what her cause of Avar is and convince
her people that that cause of war is just, we will
never need to conscript a soldier.' They will
come by the volunteer instinct of patriotism,
The conscript is necessarily an unwilling sol
dier, forced, into service without regard to his
circumstances, his wishes, or his knowledge of
what the cause of war is.
The Senator from Montana Avould have
us believe that nearly every one of these con
scripts came hack home greatly improved by
his training, bis physical exercise, by the land
scape he witnessed’ by the scenerv ’he viewed,
That Mine is his opinion, and he is entitled to it!
is different. There were some soldiers
Avhose parents had influence with the powers
'that were doing the selecting and the powers
controlled the soldiers when they got
abroad, but most of our conscripts were car
ried across the seas in cattle ships. I have had
them tell me about it themselves. We paid
Great Britain an enormdus sum of money, if
the newspaper reports are correct, for carry
iug over there in cattle ships the very soldiers
who saved her Empire.
They were all well treated, we are told. I
deny it. I can prove by a thousand private
soldiers that that statement is not correct, al
though the Senator from Montana doubtless
believes it to be so. Does the Senator from
Montana know what those soldiers had for
breakfast? I could tell him. Does he know
what they had for dinner? I could tell him.
Does he know what they had for supper? I
could tell him.
Does he know that some of them Avere
saved from starvation by the Chinese coolies
who dug their sewerage trenches around the
camps? I can produce the soldiers avIio would
swear to it and who were saved from starva¬
tion bv those Chinese coolies. We repaid
the Chines coolies by taking away Shantung
and 38,000,000 Chinese and giving them to the
merciful keeping of the Japs, avIio did not
turn a finger during the war except to feather
their own nest by seizing the German posses¬
sions in the»Orient when the Germans were so
busy that they could not lift a hand to prevent
it. “Jap me no Japs”—not yet.
Has the Senator from Montana eA'er had a
private soldier describe- to him the conditions
in which the soldiers camped at Brest? There
was a Senntor and a Senator’s wife aa-Iio saw
those conditions and testified as to them. There
they allowed those soldier boys, who had been
reared in the same comforts in Avhicli you and
1 p^£,«e,W orL r ”V 1 ’ ^dlas.’ leaving
Xitc V-.J..O «•».>« A Sw.v 3 l ii 1 !—i*, iii n, GA.
the imprint of their bodies on the marsh, and
with the frozen ice making a perfect mold
where they had lain the night before. Did
the Senator ever have one of those soldiers tell
him about it?
Of course some of them came home well.
Out of 4,000,000 the Senator would not expect
that we should lose the whole 4,000,000,
would he? Why are the Zulus such a su
perb race of men, physically? It is because
the weaklings are not allowed to live. In
Flanders and in France the weaklings did not
live; they did not have a chance to live;
died; and, in my judgment, no accurate
port has ever yet been made of the number of
men who either died in the cantonments of
this country or in the camps and on the bat¬
tlefields of Europe.
The Senator from Montana, to do him
justice, wants to compensate the man who lost
his eyes. What does the Senator think would
compensate him if he lost his eyes? He talks
about land. What can a blind man do with a
piece of land? He talks about life insurance.
What can a blind man do with life insurance?
He can not eat it; he can not drink it; he can
not pay his board with it. He does not make
himself welcome anywhere on earth; he is a
burden to himself; and if he has some faithful
dog or some affectionate child to lead him
around hv a string he is fortunate. Compen¬
sate a blind man whose sight was destroyed In¬
gas or the exploding bomb! There is not money
enough on earth to do it.
Take the man whose features were gassed
out of all human recognition, made hideous to
himself as he sees reflected in the mirror a
countenance which to him at least, was once
not repulsive; take that man, against the sight
of whose face tenderhearted people will in¬
stinctively try to screen their eyes—what com
pensation can you give that man? What hope
can you give him? When hope is gone out of
this life, what is there, left in it f When you
lose the feeling that you are welcome to your
friends as you visit their houses, and when you
sit in their circles talking with them them as
in the old time friendly way—when you lose
that, do you want to live? I do not.
, Take the man whose arm was torn from
his body by a bursting shell or one of whose
limbs Avas or boil} of Avhose limbs were torn
away, how are you going to compensate him?
But we will come to the well men; the men
who did not get hurt; the men who got enough
to eat and who managed to get back. What
about them? If they had farms, they left the
plow in April, 1917, as did the farmers of New
England in our Revolutionary War more than
100 years ago. The crop was lost; the land was
lost; everything they had was lost; and they
came back to start life over. How is a man
going to start life over without cash? If the
Senator from Montana should so far forget
himself as to take lunch today, he had better
take some cash with him.
Take the crossroads merchant with his lit¬
tle store of goods, bought partly bn credit,
perhaps, and partly with cash; a little stock of
$500 or $600 or $1,000 on which he was trying
to do business and to lift himself in the world.
Where was that business and where was that
stock when he got home from the war? They
were gone. How is he going to replace them ?
Ho can not do it.
Take the young laAvyer who was building
up a clientele; his clients went to other lawyers
and they .are permanently lost to him. He
has got to start all OAmr again. Take the
young doctor; the same statement applies to
him. His patients who were trying him, g-iv
ing him a chance, had to go to other doctors;
now they are attached to those other doctors,
and the returning ex-service man, if he he a
doctor, has to choose a new location and start
his practice o\ r er again. Is it not so!
Mr. President, I am not exaggerating any¬
thing. I lived in the midst of such circum¬
stances, I lived in the midst of the Civil War,
and I know that I am not oAmrdrawing the pic¬
ture.
We are told that the ranks of the unern
ployed are swelling. Some estimates put the
number as high as 5,000,000 or 6,000,000, which
may be too many; I think it quite likely that
that estimate is too high; but the lowest esti¬
mate puts them at 2,000,000, and I think pos¬
sibly that estimate is within the bounds of
reason. When we give these ex-service men
vocational training, AA-hat are they going to do
after they get it? Where is the job io be
found for them, when there are 2,000,000 peo¬
ple hunting for jobs?
There is another point of view in which
the conscripted soldier sent to Europe to fight
3,000 miles away from home may be distin¬
guished from the soldier who fought near at
home. “The embattl’d farmers” of New Eng¬
land, whose glories I hope will never be dimm¬
ed, fought within sight of their homes; and
oftentimes were supplied with arms and ammu¬
nition by the loved hands of Avives and daugh¬
ters, a second loaded gun being furnished as
the first had been emptied against the enemy.
from They their were supplied homes; with good provisions
own their neighbors vied
with one another in supplying those soldiers.
They Aver proud to do it, and they did do it;
and when the Army was in its extremity at
Valley Forge every colony of the original 13
that had a surplus pound of bacon or a surpus
garment of clothing sent them to the American
soldiers under George Washington. Always,
under George Washington. Always,
President, there was the sight of home and
firesides for which they were fighting. They
had only to look, and there avhs the anxious
face of Avife or mother or sister or sweetheart
looking from a window or a door cheering
them on to battle. No wonder, amid those en
eouragements and inspirations, they fought
as they did.
Every housekeeper in America said to her
son, as the Spartan mother of old said in
handing her son his shield, “Return with it
or on it”; alive with it, or dead upon it.
In the war of 1812, who won the victory
that made Henry Clay say, “Mow 1 can go to
Paris and London without a blush upon my
cheek”? It Ava s the volunteer soldiers from
Alabama. Kentucky, Mississippi. Georgia, Ten¬
nessee. No conscripts fought under Andrew
Jackson; they were volunteers. When a man
volunteers he does not have to be*disciplined
by any “Hard Boiled” Smiths and does not
have to be fed by any Chinese coolies. When,
you send him 3,000 miles from home
there is no telling Avhat may happen to him.
He can tell you about it afterwards in words
that make your blood leap and which are hard¬
ly fit to print.
The Senator alluded to the Civil War as
“the Rebellion.” There was a Senator from
Tennessee here a few years ago by the name of
Carmack, and he had Congress pass a law
that made it illegal for the word “Rebellion”
to be used in any public document; and, of
course, when a Senator speaks here, Mr. Pres¬
ident, he necessarily puts his speech into a pub¬
lic document. When a dozen States go oat of
a Union into which they have voluntarily gone
under certain conditions, and they retire when
they say those conditions have been broken,
that is not any more of a rebellion than the
War of the Roses Avas in England. No rebel¬
lion ever had a Robert E. Lee at the head of
an Army of Northern Virginians. No rebel¬
lion ever had a Joseph E. Johnson, or a Long
street, or a Wheeler, or a Jackson or a For¬
rest—never.
As I say, Mr. President, these men in Eu¬
rope were not volunteers. The administra¬
tion refused to accept the services of ex-Presi
dent Roosevelt and his volunteers when they
AA’ere tendered. He claimed to have a quarter
of a million men enrolled and ready to go,
just as they Avent in the Spanish-American
War. How many conscripts were in the Span
ish-American War Avhen a Southern General
put backbone into the command, as Gen. Wheel¬
er did, and gave victory instead of defeat? Not
a single conscript was there. Three thousand
miles away from home! Any motherly faces
looking upon them with encouragement and in
spiration as they marched! No. Any face of
sweetheart looking upon them, pinning faA'ors
to their uniforms, and saying, “Fight in my
name and conquer for me. 1 want to embrace
you and marry you Avhen you come home”?
Not a bit of it. There were no letters from
home that were censored by officers. There
Avere no letters from camp to homo
except the stereotyped-letters that were
approved by officers—not one. No soldier,
unless he was able to slip a letter throus^,
could freely write to his mother or his wife'<
or his sweetheart; and the mountains of food,
that Herbert Hoover piled up with his absurd
meatless days, and his absurd wheatless days,
and his absurd regulations of smokehouses -?
and larders, and his absurd regulations of
AA'Jieat mills and private stores—those* moun
taians of food did not go to our soldiers. They
were virtually given away to the French .■
Government; and we now learn that the Red
Cross speculated—speculated!—in those chari¬
table gifts, coming from the loving hearts of
the American people who wanted to feed their’
boys at the sacrifice of themselves during!
those terrible years of the Avar. They were
speculated upon by the very agencies of charity
that were going to feed them and see that they
lacked for no necessary or comfort of life!
I think there is some difference. The Sen¬
ator says that it would be degrading to give ■
these men $600 a piece. If it is a degradation,
Mr. President, it is because the amount is so
small. I would give them a thousand dollars
apiece today, if I could. Yes; Avrite 'it down,
and get up and make a speech t about it when I
get through, and maybe will make one about
yours when you get thyough.
Mr. MYERS. I will, in due time, and the .
Senator is entirely welcome to reply to me.
Mr. "WATSON of Georgia. Yes; and you ,
need not doubt that I will reply to you, too.
I would give them a thousand dollars apiece.
Something vvas said here yesterday by the >
Senator from New York (Mr. Wadsworth)'
about the $60 given to the soldiers to buy them
a new suit ( of clothes. That was a fine bonus, ,
was it not—$60 to buy a now suit of clothes! ;
Why, I do not know how it is in other States,''
but down in Georgia after a criminal serves
out bis term of penal servitude we make him a
gift of a good suit of clothes to start civil life
again and to make himself a better man if it
is in his power to do it. Talk about putting
the soldier, at the end of his service, on the
same footing with a criminal competed of ar¬
son or of murder or of larceny after trust, or
of forgery or some other felony! That kind
of thing is shocking to me, with my sense of
honor, when applied to the man who takes his
rifle and faces a man who has a rifle. j j
.We hear of fellows avIio can snuff out a
iC«BtinB£d m J’agfl Four.), J
