The Cloud

Up on the crest of Carmel a man stood watching. Before him lay the blue waters of the Mediterranean Sea, to the North the curving Bay of Acre, while to the south the white surf was breaking on the reefs of Philistia.

At the other end of the long Carmel ridge another man stood waiting. Before his eyes the great Plain of Esdraelon lay extended with the hills of Galilee to the North and the great bulk of Mt. Gilboa, faint in the summer haze, bounding the vision to the East.

Seven times the Watcher had climbed to the Western crest of Carmel; six times he had returned to report that there was nothing to be seen, and seven times he had been bidden, "Go up again; look towards the sea." Now at last he knew that his vigil was ended; something had risen above the horizon that told him his watch was past. It was a very little thing; yet it sent him speeding back along the mountain's ridge until he came again to the man who was waiting. "Behold," he said, "There ariseth a little cloud out of the sea like a man's hand." And the man who waited sent word to a King of Israel, saying, "Prepare thy chariot."

A man's hand is a very little thing, frail and weak, but we have seen a cloud like a man's hand, a man's hand clad in armor, rising up beyond the sea. The shadow of that cloud fell on Poland, and Poland died. It fell on Russia, and a great Empire went down in darkness and eclipse. It fell on Serbia, and blotted her out, on Roumania, and Roumania passed into bondage. It fell on Belgium, and Belgium cried out a little and then grew still. That shadow fell on France and even the trees withered and died. It stretched out over the sea and touched the Lusitania, and she crumpled and went down, carrying with her 120 American dead. And now that shadow falls upon our own shores and darkens the streets and homes of our towns and cities. So to-day the summons has gone forth to every American, "Prepare thy chariot!" Each one of us has his own--not to all of us is the same kind given. To some of us it is the Red Cross, to others it is the voice or the pen, to every one of us it is the buying of Liberty Bonds, to some of us it is the Training Camp, the Trench, and the Battlefield. But to every man, woman, and child of us the hour has come to "Prepare our chariots." For America has willed with all her might, her soul, her strength, that the shadow of that "Cloud like a man's hand" shall forever pass away; that it shall no longer rest on Poland, Russia, Serbia, Roumania, Belgium, France or on our own America, but that Liberty, Justice, and Democracy shall shine in an unclouded sky and that no shadow of a man's mailed fist shall darken either the homes or the hearts of men.

In 1204 Philip Augustus laid siege to the Chateau Gaillard, which Richard Coeur de Lion had built to defend his lands of Normandy. In the course of that siege, the little town of Les Andelys was destroyed, and the peasants, some 1400 in number, fled to the Chateau for refuge. But Sir Roger de Lacy, defending for England, was already facing starvation, England was far away, John Lackland was slow, and provisions were failing. He did not dare admit these 1400 "bouches inutiles," for that would mean the almost immediate surrender of his trust. Therefore he kept the gates of the castle closed. But the besiegers would not allow the refugees to pass through their lines, their Commandant believing that the compassion of the English would sooner or later compel them to receive these fugitives if they saw them starving before their eyes. So they held them between the lines until they starved to death, so the story goes.

It is a long way from 1204 to the present time, but last year General von Bissing, the German Governor of Belgium, said to F. C. Wolcott, the representative of the Rockefeller Foundation, "Starvation is a great weapon. We mean to use it to force thousands of Belgian skilled workmen into German factories, thousands of Belgian farmers into the fields of Mesopotamia. The rest--the ineffectives, the very old and the very young, the weak and the useless--we mean to place in front of the firing line, put firing squads behind them, and drive them through the French and English lines, that France and England may take care of them." That is what Germany has been doing ever since the war broke out. Wherever her armies have gone, from Armenia to Serbia, Poland, Belgium, and France, she has been driving women, children, and men through our lines for us to care for. Nay, it is more than this; it is not men, women and children, but it is the very essence and principle of manhood, womanhood, and childhood that she has been forcing through our lines and that we have called upon to care for.

I am not going to tell you again what Germany has been doing to men, women, and children; I am not going to repeat the stories of her atrocities. A year ago I should have felt compelled to tell you what to-day I feel I may leave unsaid, for a year ago we were not sure, we could not, many of us, bring ourselves to believe, that men born of women could do such things. But to-day we know. The awful tale of helpless ships sunk so as to leave no trace, the shelling of life boats, the sinking of hospital ships, the bombing of hospitals and ambulances, the crucifixion of men, the outraging of women, the torturing of children, the enslaving of entire populations, all these barbarisms are proved not merely by the testimony of many witnesses, but from the lips of the very soldiers and sailors of Germany herself. So I gladly pass these things by, only bidding you remember that in this war German ruthlessness has driven manhood, womanhood, and childhood through our lines for us to protect.

But there is something else that has been driven into our lines and which we are called upon to guard. We are protecting the freedom and dignity of Labor. I wish every laboring man could be made to understand Labor's stake in this war. The leaders of American labor, for the most part, have understood from the beginning. Their appeals to the manhood of the country have been stirring and stimulating, and to-day Labor is beginning to respond. There are fewer strikes and more effectiveness. But the individual laboring man did not grasp the issues from the first. If he had there would not have been 3000 strikes in the first year of our war, with a total of 6000 years of labor lost. Let me speak for a moment of Labor's stake in this war.

Ambassador Gerard says, "The workingmen in the cities of Germany are worked longer and get less out of life than any other workmen in the world. The laws so much admired, insurance against unemployment, sickness, injury, old age, etc., are in reality skillful measures which bind the workmen to the soil as effectively as the serfs of the Middle Ages were bound to their masters' estates.

"I have had letters from workingmen ... begging for a steerage fare to America, saying that their insurance payments were so large that they could not save money from their wages. Of course, after making these payments for some years the workingman hesitates to emigrate and lose all the premiums he has paid to the State. In peace times a skilled mechanic receives less than two dollars a day, for which he must work at least ten hours." He says that he visited a nobleman on his estate in Hungary, where--as throughout the Central Empires,--the agricultural work is largely done by women who are paid twenty cents a day. "The women in the farming districts of Germany are worked harder than the cattle. In summer time they are in the fields at five or six o'clock in the morning and they work until eight o'clock or later at night. For this they are paid as high as forty-eight cents a day in harvest time." We have a Contract Labor Law which forbids the importation of labor. Germany every year imports a million laborers from abroad and the employers favor both the employment of women in farm work and the importation of labor, for the more workers the lower the scale of wages throughout the Empire.

There is a document written by a German, Siegfried Balder, which is printed in the Congressional Record for January 17, 1918.

The writer says that in Prussia, whose population is two thirds that of all Germany, only one twentieth of the householders have an income equal to $750 a year, while over fifty per cent are living on $225 a year or less; more than 820,000 of the population of Berlin are living in single rooms, while 49,991 of these single rooms house from five to thirteen people each. Large numbers of the Prussian work people are doomed to live and die in quarters narrower than a prison cell.

But if this is what Germany does to her own, to men of Teuton blood and to the children of the Teuton God, what does she do to those who are born in the outer darkness of other lands, to those who are not of Teuton blood, to the laboring men of other nationalities?

You know the story of the Belgian Deportations. When the Germans overran Belgium many thousands of the people sought refuge under the flag of Holland. Germany then pledged her word to Holland that, if she would exert "gentle pressure" on these refugees and force them to return to their homes, the German Administration in Belgium would hold itself bound by the terms of the Hague Conventions. The German authorities "did not for a moment dream of making them prisoners, of making requisitions, or of deporting those who are law abiding into Germany." The German Governor of Antwerp also gave his pledge to Cardinal Mercier, first verbally and then in writing, that "young men need not fear deportation into Germany whether for enrollment in the army or for employment at forced labor." This pledge was finally ratified by the Governor General, Gen. von der Goltz, in the presence of witnesses "pour la generalité du pays et sans limite de temps." (Les Deportations Belges, à la Lumière des Documents Allemands, Chapter 14.)

One year later another Proclamation appeared:

"Recently workmen have refused, without reason, in different parts of the occupied territory, to obey the commands of the Military Commanders relative to the performance of necessary work; they have caused great harm to their communes and their fellow citizens. To avoid such conditions I order as follows:

"Those who are able but refuse to work or to continue their labors in accordance with their usual occupations, in accord with the interests of the German Military Administration and the desire of the German Military Commanders shall be punished by imprisonment up to one year. Also recusants may be sent into Germany. The fact that they appeal to any possible law of Belgium or even to International Conventions can never justify a refusal to work. The Military Commander alone will decide on the acceptability of the forced labor."

One year later still, in October, 1916, the deportations began. It is not necessary that the story be told again. You know that boys and girls, men and women were torn from their homes, packed into cattle cars and sent on long journeys, with insufficient food and clothing, into Germany. There they were threatened with rifles, bayonets, and machine guns to compel them to sign statements to the effect that they were voluntary workers in German munition factories. Do you know that girls have been beaten with whips for failing to complete their tasks? In one place they were promised four marks a day, but two and a half marks were deducted for food and lodging, one mark for clothes, half a mark went into a "reserve fund" and they were paid half a mark a day, about six cents. But they did not really receive that for they were under a military Governor who had the power to fine them up to fifty dollars for the infraction of any one of a hundred petty military rules, for failure to salute an officer, for instance, and remember, the German salutes his officer when he is two blocks away. In other words they were subject to a fine, without appeal, which was equal to more than two and one third years' pay at six cents a day! We have the record of a girl, which is interesting only because she is a type, who received 187 cents for 180 days work, about one cent a day.