Man's Memory Is Short
Wheeler, Burton K.
Man's Memory Is Short By BURTON K. WHEELER United States Senator from Montana') Editor's Note: The following article is a fragment from the masterly address delivered by Sen. Burton K....
...but, oh, Mr...
...Yet I am as sure as that I am standing here that they will vote against what they said then, because they will vote against putting into the pending bill a provision that American boys shall not be sent to fight on foreign soil...
...Canyons and ereek beds begin to trill with falling water...
...The expression of his dissenting view is met...
...President, less than a year ago men stood on the floor of the Senate and said, "I will never vote to send an American boy across the water to fight on foreign soil...
...Burton K. Wheeler HPHIS-IS THE scornful way •*- in which our first World War President, who had just been elected on the slogan "He kept us out of war" had railed at these men a month before in March 1917, for opposing the armed-ship bill...
...From the mail which has come to my office—and I know similar mail has come to the offices of other members of the Senate—I believe that the overwhelming majority of the people of the United States are against H. R. 1776...
...The warm winds of spring bite like steam shovels into these massive frozen ramparts...
...Sometimes it sleeps, sometimes it seems the sleep of death...
...Snows that fell one year may nourish a peach crop 2 or 3 years later...
...an opportunity to keep alive and untarnished the basic elements of democracy—freedom for all the people to speak, to write, to assemble, and to worship as they please—an opportunity, if you please, to keep dictatorship only a name and not a fact in America...
...I favor expediting and expanding reclamation—not cnly as a means of meeting the emergency but also as a means of bwildingthe West and increasing the wealth of America...
...I am for unity for the purpose of solving our own economic problems...
...But this much of it can be seen—peace for our people for years, perhaps for generations...
...In any inventory of the Nation's possibilities this immense wilderness must be considered...
...Here it m a sloping pasture where cattle can feed and grain might grow, and there it is a bleak desert where even the rattlesnake dies...
...Marion La Follette was voted into the Hall of Fame...
...I speak to my colleagues knowing full well that many, probably most, Senators have already made up their minds on these issues, and that for them, and possibly for the country, the die is cast...
...On The Sundown Side By RICHARD L. NEUBERGER TODAY, late in the second century of our national history, title to 395,000,000 acres of America's land continues to rest with the Government...
...WINTER SNOWS mantle the Cascade, Sawtooth, and Sierra Nevada Mountains...
...Today it is still pushing...
...Mountain valleys yield to the settler's hoe if they get enough tnoisttire...
...IWISH TO CALL ATTENTION at this time to the fact that when the armed-ship bill was before the Senate, one distinguished Senator said: "Members of the Senate will never vote for war...
...So far as it is given ordinary mortals with power to see, both roads which streteh ahead of us are fraught with danger...
...ONCE THE public domain of the United States occupied a billion and a half acres...
...I hate Hitler and Hitlerism, Mussolini and fascism, Stalin and communism...
...MR...
...They scoffed at him...
...But a dam wedged into a mountain pass wiH store water indefinitely, and canals and flumes will carry it to arid land many miles away...
...But if we take one road—the road for which the bill before us is a signpost—what, lies ahead is clearly obvious...
...They were men in the Senate then, as now, whose judgment differed from that of the speaker...
...It is not a frontier where a man can stop his wagon when' the horses tire and there plant wheat...
...All the while, without knowing il, the lowly subjects are being pushed closer and closer to the hellish cesspool...
...Glaciers form on the tall peaks...
...Down that road lies involvement in Europe's wars, eventual commitments to help bring order out of chaos in all the world, the shouldering of a back-breaking debt for all our people, possibly, if not probably, death 1n some foreign land for the flower of our young men, the end of democracy and civil liberties, certainly, not only for the duration but perhaps for generations until our war-torn economy will be able once again to feed our people...
...Oh, Mr...
...Glacier peaks wrinkle it in one state and mile-deep canyons bisect it in another...
...an opportunity not only to aid beleaguered states without involving ourselves directly in Europe's age-old quarrels, but also to be so powerful that in the end we could help persecuted peoples everywhere when peace finally comes...
...Yes, Mr...
...9 MR...
...President...
...I am for unity to save America...
...But first of all my sympathies and my feelings go out to the people of the United States of America...
...an opportunity to strengthen ourselves to such an extent that war would not mean national suicide, as it certainly would now...
...Yet in less than one month all but six members of the Senate voted for war...
...My people have lived in America for 300 years...
...Virtually all this enormous chunk of Federal real estate, won through conquest, exploration, and purchase, is concentrated on the sundown side of the Continental Divide...
...Less than a third is left...
...I think, Mr...
...IN 1917 one of the slogans was "stand back of the President...
...But the water which dug the great gorge and today is gouging it deeper can be diverted onto Idaho bottomlands far below, and those lands will become the home of our modern pioneers...
...At least six who are still members of this body heard those words...
...I ask that no man impugn my motives...
...Man's Memory Is Short By BURTON K. WHEELER United States Senator from Montana') Editor's Note: The following article is a fragment from the masterly address delivered by Sen...
...They challenge us to tell them whether the "forgotten man" of 1932 is destined to be the "unknown soldier" of 1942...
...I am an American...
...But where water never softens the earth, the public domain is gaunt and harsh, a*Waste land of cactus and tumbleweed...
...Half the land of the 11 States of the far West—California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, Wyoming, and Colorado—is the undisputed property of the United States Government...
...In the Rocky Mountain States and over on the Pacific coast," says Senator Charles L. MeNary, of Oregon, "we have millions of bountiful acres that await only the union of water with soil to bring forth abundantly...
...1 likewise sympathize with the enslaved millions who have been exploited by the British banking group engaged in selling opium in India...
...It takes in the towering "rain forests" of Puget Sound and the seared plateaus of Arizona...
...but I am not for unity and the American people will never be for unity to take this country into a European war...
...If the final vote shows that I am in the minority, that I am in the 1941 "little group of willful' men," I shall take comfort not only in the inner conviction that I am right, but from the fact that, according to all present indications, the little group of 1917, consisting of only 11 Senators ¦who opposed the armed-ship bill and of only six Senators "who voted against the war resolution, has as least grown to several times its former size...
...PRESIDENT, I have been a member of this august body for 18 years...
...This is irrigation, started long ago on the Nile, used in primitive fashion on the Colorado by the ancient cliff dwellers, and brought to its most scientific development by engineers working in the American West...
...In Oregon and Washington it is a limitless counterpane of evergreen trees...
...Because of the attitude of these organs of mass communication, an intolerance is being bre(l against the right of any man to utter his independent judgment, on a vital question...
...Appraisal can be made of the timber in the public domain of California and of the alunite in the public domain of Utah, but water is too precious to catalog...
...It stretches all the way from the crags frowning down on the Pacific to the Rocky Mountain ramparts which face the Great Plains...
...Tell us of the other road...
...The poor, sir, who are the ones called upon to rot in the trenches, have no organized power, have no press to voice their will upon this question of peace or war...
...Senators stood upon the floor of the Senate then, as they are doing now, and said, "This is a bill which will keep us out of war...
...There is no sure road to safety...
...I despise totalitarianism and all that it symbolizes...
...They opposed the bill because of the danger that it would involve us in war...
...But, it may be asked, What is the other road...
...Upon new irrigated lands rests the foundation of the far West's future growth," explains John C. Page, Commissioner of Reclamation...
...California's high uplands are partof its fastnesses, and so are mountain meadows in Montana and grassy swales in Idaho...
...Almost every day some Cabinet, members, some appointee, some man close inside says, "We are in the war now...
...I am for unity...
...Fifty thousand families have recently migrated westward...
...THE DISTRIBUTION of America's people resembles a big cake with most of the frosting heaped on one side...
...A month later we were at war...
...It is a frontier which requires development and conservation and improvement, but it is a frontier nevertheless...
...Its diversity is strange and startling...
...I abhor intolerance or bigotry whether it be predicated upon color, race or religion...
...Burton K. Wheeler in opposition to the Lease-Lend Bill...
...More than 280,000,000 acres were homesteaded...
...an opportunity to make democracy mean something more than a word to those millions of our countrymen who still are ill-fed, ill-housed, and ill-clothed...
...In the West are found our major undeveloped resources...
...Most valuable of all the resources in the public domain is water...
...I have neither relatives not financial interests in any European or foreign, country...
...Already irrigation has pushed back our frontier...
...President, I speak of these things because I love them, because they are America—and because I sincerely believe that we are about to lose them all if we go into this war...
...He made clear that a majority of the members of this body will not vote for war...
...President, that it is being denied • expression now...
...President, at some time they will be heard...
...In this sense they are inarticulate...
...Freshets gurgle out of the highlands...
...Where there is water the federal land has value...
...Rain is the most essential ingredient in the dense national forests of the Pacific slope...
...Is it treason to differ with crusaders for the "new world order" who divert attention from their imperialism by shouting democracy, and who preach freedom for men elsewhere while strangling it at home...
...I believe fervently in civil liberties—and I would do more than render mere lip service for freedom of assemblage, freedom of religious worship, freedom of the press, and all our other precious civil rights...
...I think there will come a day when it...
...The need is here and now for more irrigated land...
...President, we are confronted today with momentous issues which, so far as our country is concerned, differ very little from those which faced the Congress during those crucial weeks preceding our involvement in the first World War...
...Wheeler's words ring with as much power and conviction tdday as the Administration, prepares to place the bill in operation...
...From what I read, hear, and see in the press, over the radio, and in the moving-picture houses I know we are on the threshold of repeating the infamies of the first World War...
...Ravines clog with ice...
...The torn and awesome fastness of Hell's Canyon on the Snake River cannot be pwt to use...
...To that group of Senators I address myself primarily...
...Approximately 95,000,000 acres were given in grants to railroads so that they would extend the line of rail all the way across the continent...
...I well know that the Senate includes a group of the most sincere and candid minds to be found anywhere—minds which are never clouded to the appeal of reason, minds which know no master other than fearless honesty...
...Those minds, I know, will accord me a fair hearing on this most vital of issues, and they will not hesitate to voice their opposition to the bill before us if my words and those of other Senators impress them as bearing the stamp of truth and reason...
...Maloney) pleading for the boys and girls of England...
...with cries of treason, expressed in an ever-changing variety of epithets but always with the same meaning...
...They "cry 'Havoc' and let slip the dogs of war...
...And so I rise to speak in their behalf and to voice my opposition to this bill with all the force at my command...
...In 1941 the cry is for "unity" but the meaning is the same...
...This is the public domain of the United States —Uncle Sam's backyard, a backyard a day and a night across by limited train...
...will have expression...
...Even most of the minority favoring the^bill reveal they are doing so because they do not understand it.—they have blindly and trustingly accepted soothing assurances from .their leaders that the .bill will keep us out of war...
...The inarticulate who are sending us expressions of their feelings on post cards and in pencil-scrawled letters are almost unanimously against going to war...
...It may be suppressed for a time, it may be misled, be fooled, silenced...
...I sympathize with the persecuted in Poland and in Austria and in China...
...Mr...
...The combined area of Pennsylvania and New Jersey is less than Pennsylvania and New Jersey is less than that of any one state in the far West, yet they have more inhabitants than all 11 far Western states put together...
...I regret only that the Almighty God did not endow me with greater force, that my words would carry to more of you the full strength and righteousness of my cause...
...I oppose and denounce political control by a financial oligarchy whether it be the Thyssens and Krupps in Germany, the Rothchilds in England and France, the Sassoons in India and China, or the Morgans, the Warburgs, the Kuhn-Loebs and other international bankers in the United States...
...One answer is irrigation...
...TWENTY-FOUR YEARS AGO a man stood on this floor and said: "We need not disturb ourselves because of what a minority do...
...Treason to what...
...But a little more than a decade later, Robert...
...but, sir, the sovereign power of the people never dies...
...Nearly an equal amount was allocated to various States...
...Although the bill has now passed, Sen...
...The people, Mr...
...The West is America's elbowroom " —her room to grow...
...President, for whom he spoke, hanged him in effigy —the poor, blind, foolish people who were being led in a dance of death...
...President, none of us can see that road clearly...
...In the words of one of the psalms—the 55th: "The ¦words of his mouth were smoother, ttum butter, but war was in his heart...
...They do not own newspapers or radio networks or moving-picture plans with which to saturate the country with propaganda...
...They are my first and only love...
...PRESIDENT, I listened to the argument made by the distinguished Senator from Connecticut (Mr...
...There is always lodged and always will be, thank the God above us, power in the people supreme...
...STAND TODAY at the crossroads...
...It is a long road with many turns...
...Inestimable centuries from now it will still be owned by the Federal Government...
...I am for unity for peace...
...It includes sagebrush flats in Colorado and Nevada that are measured by horizons rather than miles...
...He belonged to the now-celebrated "little group of willful men, representing no opinions but their own...
...reviled him, insulted him...
...The American frontier of 1941 is a new kind of a frontier...
...With irrigation here, and stump clearance and drainage titter*, the West can be made habitable for many additional Americans...
...What is the development program which will give balance to the distribution of the country's population...
...Almost 358,000,000 acres were sold and 61,000,000 were handed out in the form of military warrants...
...Then by midsummer the streams are a thin trickle again...
...The melted glaciers come and pass like a tidal wave...
...When they came to this country, they came not from Germany, Russia, Holland, Italy, or France, but from England only...
Vol. 5 • March 1941 • No. 11
