Part 10 (2/2)

Such facts as these show how easy it is, in a huge, complex community like our nation, for conflicts to arise among different sections and groups of the population; and how difficult it is always to see the common interests that exist. But they also show how such conflicts tend to disappear when a situation arises which forces us to think of the common interests instead of the differences. All else was forgotten in the common purpose to ”win the war.” No sacrifice was too great on the part of any individual in order that this national purpose might be served. Everywhere throughout the country, in cities and in remote rural districts, service flags in the windows testified that the homes of the land were offering members that the nation and its ideals might live.

Men, women, and even children contributed their work and their savings and denied themselves customary comforts to help win the war. THE ENTIRE NATION WAS WORKING TOGETHER FOR A COMMON PURPOSE.

OUR NATIONAL PURPOSE

We have said that this common purpose was to ”win the war.” But there were purposes that lie much deeper than this, without which it would not have been worth while to enter the war at all. As we saw in Chapter I, our nation is founded on a belief in the right of every one to life and physical well-being; to be secure in one's rightful possessions; to freedom of thought--education, free speech, a free press; to freedom of religion; to happiness in pleasant surroundings and a wholesome social life; and, above all, to a voice in the government which exists to protect these rights.

It was to secure a larger freedom to enjoy these rights, ”for ourselves first and for all others in their time,” that our nation was solidly united against the enemy that threatened it from without. But it was with this same purpose that the War of Independence was fought, that our Const.i.tution was adopted, that slavery was abolished, that millions of people from foreign lands have come to our sh.o.r.es. It is this common purpose that makes the great ma.s.s of foreigners in our country Americans, ready to fight for America, if necessary even against the land of their birth. It is this for which the American flag stands at all times, whether in peace or in war.

What proof can you give of a ”national spirit” in your locality during the war?

What evidence can you give to show that this national spirit is or is not as strong since the war closed?

What was the ”National Army”? the ”National Guard”? Which of these organizations was most likely to develop a ”national spirit”? Why?

What good reasons can you give for the action of the government in consolidating the Regular Army, the National Army, and the National Guard into a ”United States Army”?

What arguments can you give in favor of requiring all instruction in the public schools to be given in the English language?

What arguments can you give in favor of teaching lessons in citizens.h.i.+p in foreign-language newspapers?

What foreign nationalities are represented in your locality?

Make a blackboard table showing the nationality of the parents and grandparents of each member of your cla.s.s.

Give ill.u.s.trations to show that ”winning the war” was the controlling purpose in your community during the war.

In what way has the war made YOU think about the right-to-life and the need for physical well-being? about security in property?

about freedom of thought? about the desirability of an education?

about the right of people to pleasant surroundings? about self- government?

Show how the Spanish-American war was fought for the same purpose as that mentioned in the paragraph above.

Write a brief theme on ”What the Flag Means to Me.”

NATIONAL INTERDEPENDENCE

The attempt to work together in the war made it very apparent how dependent the nation is upon all its parts, and how dependent each part is upon all the others. It was often said that ”the farmers would win the war.” At other times it was said to be s.h.i.+ps, or fuel, or airplanes, or railroad transportation, or trained scientists and technical workers. The truth is, of course, that all these things and many more were absolutely necessary, and that no one of them would have been of much value without all the others.

It is true that the winning of the war depended upon the farmers, because they are the producers of the food and of the raw materials for textiles without which the nation and every group and person in it would have been helpless. But the farmer could not supply food to the nation without machinery for its production, and without city markets and railroads and s.h.i.+ps for its distribution. Machinery could not be made, nor s.h.i.+ps and locomotives built, without steel. For the manufacture of steel there must be iron and fuel and tungsten and other materials. And for all these things there must be inventors and skilled mechanics, and to produce these there must be schools. And so we could go on indefinitely to show how the war made us feel our interdependence. What we need to understand, however, is that THIS INTERDEPENDENCE IS CHARACTERISTIC OF OUR NATIONAL LIFE AT ALL TIMES; the war only made us feel it more keenly.

NATION-BUILDING IN WAR TIME

During the war, strange as it may seem, while we were devoting our national energies to the work of destruction incident to war, we as a nation made astonis.h.i.+ng progress in many ways other than in the art of war--in what we might call nation-building.

In some ways we made progress in a year or two that under ordinary circ.u.mstances might have required a generation. A striking ill.u.s.tration of this is in the development of a great fleet of merchant s.h.i.+ps at a rate that would have been impossible before the war. Beginning with almost nothing when the war began, we had, in less than two years, a merchant fleet larger than that of any other nation, and that in spite of the constant destruction of s.h.i.+ps by the enemy. The chairman of the s.h.i.+pping board of the United States government says that this is because the necessities of the war made the whole nation see how much it depends upon s.h.i.+ps, and caused not only s.h.i.+p-builders, but also engineers and manufacturers and businessmen and the Navy department of the government, and many others, to concentrate upon this problem, with the result that we discovered methods of s.h.i.+pbuilding, and of loading and unloading and operating s.h.i.+ps when they were built, that will probably enable us to maintain permanently a merchant marine, the lack of which we have deplored for many years.

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