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"The Third Liberty Loan"
In the great Third Liberty Loan drive, just one statement
seems necessary before an American audience. It is simply a
question now of the survival of autocracy or democracy. They are
in their death grapple. It is a fight to the finish and it is up
to us. All the evidences about the city advertising this great
loan, and the many speakers that appear before you, do so at the
request of the government to thoroughly acquaint the American
public with the situation. It is thought that with our hundred and
ten million of people fully aroused we are very likely to start
something that can be heard in Berlin.
The most convincing reason for this loan, as I see it, is the
publication in the daily press of the last few weeks of the war
maps of Europe, showing that shadowy and crooked German line,
crooked in more senses than one, that all patriotic Americans have
been so anxiously watching as it moves slowly mile by mile to the
westward. It is our duty to hurry to that war front with all the
haste and energy we can summon, and with every resource that our
two hundred and fifty billions in national wealth can command,
before that shadow crosses the Atlantic.
The latest news from the front is cheering. Our splendid
General Pershing with our hundred thousand and our allies are
holding that line. Let's do our share and hold it over here and
raise this loan. We need every cent of these billions to send the
right kind of message to the German Kaiser. We want to say to him
that democracy, so handicapped perhaps at the start, can meet
autocracy on any ground it chooses. We want to say to him that we
intend to sail on all the seas as we have ever done, our only
passport to be our own blessed flag flying.
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