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1J1 NATIONAL POLITICS I918-I922
On the same day that I issued this appeal to Republicans to devote all their energies to the fourth Liberty Loan, the Democratic National Committee also issued a directive to their party workers. In part, it read:
You realize a Republican Congress means a divided authority. Do you want the President to be blocked in this great world enterprise by any such obstruction? Don't you realize that any such division of authority or any such hampering means a lessening of our war efficiency? The election of a Republican Congress in November would be viewed as a defeat for President Wilson by our allies, and particularly by our enemies. It would be viewed in Germany as a proof of their unwarranted claim that our country is not behind our war President. It would be a source of comfort and elation to the Kaiser and his cohorts.
This document was signed by the Democratic national chairman, Vance C. McCormick, and by W. D. Jamieson, assistant treasurer of the committee. Both directives were widely publicized, and many newspapers commented on the marked contrast between the two.
Not until September, at a meeting in Chicago, did I mention in a general way the lengths to which the Democratic leaders were going in their efforts to maintain control of Congress, citing in particular a special election in Wisconsin.
Later, another situation arose that was even more flagrant in so far as the phrase "playing politics in wartime" could be applied to the Democrats. Upon the insistence of Woodrow Wilson, the name of the late Henry Ford, who was an out-and-out Democrat, was entered for United States senator in the Republican primary against Truman H. Newberry, then a commander in the Navy. Ford, an acknowledged pacifist, had the entire Democratic state backing, with the added blessing of the President of the United States and commander in chief of its armed forces. This seemed to me to be a prostitution of patriotic proprieties, and I so stated in a later speech at the Chicago State Convention.
Quite unconscious of the storm even then in the making behind the apparent political truce, I made a speech at Grand Rapids, Michigan, on September 26, 191 8, still insisting that we must show the enemy a united nation politically. "No Geography in Politics" was the title, and the situation and timing were so exactly duplicated in World War II that the text might also have been repeated. In part, it read:
This is no time for little things. All the organized diabolical forces of a scientifically trained brutality are at the throat of this country. And we appeal to all patriots, whatever their politics, to aid in every way possible in these efforts to keep partisanship out of the war management and all war activities. In the name of every American mother of those boys, I appeal for the support of the country's cause by all men and women without thought of party.