From LEAGUE TO ENFORCE PEACE,
70 Fifth Avenue,
New York.

ADDRESS OF GOV. BICKETT OF NORTH CAROLINA

Delivered at the Conference of Governors and Former
Governors in Independence Hall, Philadelphia,
May 17, 1918

In connection with the National Convention of the
LEAGUE TO ENFORCE PEACE

It seems to me to be eminently fitting that this convention should hold one of its meetings in a building where for the first time in the history of the world a great nation first proclaimed the supreme law of public opinion. When our forefathers came to write the Declaration of Independence, they confessed to a decent respect for the opinion of mankind. That opinion is today defied by Prussianism, and the chief object of the League to Enforce Peace is to compel Prussianism to give a decent respect to the opinion of mankind, to dethrone the gun and to make the Christianized conscience of the world the supreme arbiter of the destiny of nations.

I was thinking today of a question that has been much discussed at different times in our history, and that is, what we ought to do to or with our ex-presidents. I am sure that every one who has attended the several sessions of this convention is convinced that the very finest thing that we can do to or with any ex-president is to make a Mr. Taft out of him.

There are a great many fascinating things around this City, animate and inanimate, and I have been taking notice, being from the country, of the various attractions of the City. I was very much fascinated yesterday and today with the operations of that Stenotype down there in the Academy of Music. I gave to the speakers my ear, but I kept my eye on the Stenotype, and I am prepared to give it to you as an exact fact that yesterday and today that Stenotype reeled off just exactly seven miles of war oratory. But he must have been a very dull scholar that didn’t see in every inch that was reeled off that the sole and settled purpose of this meeting of the League to Enforce Peace is to place the circumflex accent on the world “force”.

I think the spirit of this meeting finds its incarnation in that noble old Quaker of this City whose enemy lurked privily for him and smote him on the right cheek. He turned the other, and the enemy landed there. And then the old Quaker quietly removed his coat, rolled up his sleeves, and displayed muscles like iron bands and said, “Now, thou son of Beelzebub, having fully complied with the law of Heaven, I shall proceed to lick the hell out of thee!

And yet, the Kaiser dreamed. He dreamed first that we wouldn’t fight, and he dreamed second that we couldn’t fight. Well, all I have to say is that there is laid up in store for him the sharp awakening that came to that daring investigator in the foothills of Carolina who sat down on a circular saw to see whether or not it was running. And the neighbors who gathered up his fragments said, “She was running some!”

I have been particularly asked to speak for the South on this occasion. Well, this much I will say, and this much I swear, - Dixie will do her duty! Already from the Potomac to the Rio Grande is heard the cry that rang through Shiloh’s woods and Chickamauga, the fearless South cheering on her sons, and I know that when the Godlike genius of Lee and the unconquerable soul of Grant shall sit down together at the council table of the allies, when the martial notes of the Battle Hymn of the Republic shall mingle with the maddening strains of Dixie, when the fiery spirits of Sheridan and Stonewall Jackson shall ride the whirlwind and direct the storm, then something bad is going to happen to the Hindenburg line.

Why, just to illustrate how folks feel about it, there was an old farmer down there in Union County, North Carolina, - the county that gave birth to Andy Jackson and myself - who was at first opposed to the draft law. But after a while, he changed his mind, and he saw that that law was the very essence of Americanism, a legislative incarnation of the principle of equal and exact justice to all and special privilege to none. And so he brought his boy up the county seat and had him registered. The day he was to go off to the camp, the old man laid his hand on the boy’s shoulder and said, “Son, you are going far away into a strange land. Don’t forget your raisin’. Remember the old folks at home. You will have many temptations, but there are just two things that I want you to do, and they are to give the Germans hell and remember your Ma” If there is any finer combination of piety and patriotism than that, why then I would like to see somebody trot it out.

Not only are the men in line, but the women are in line in Dixie. The other day down in Raleigh, when they were having a Liberty Bond parade, I saw a woman walk for two miles up and down that parade and on her shoulder, borne aloft, proudly as if it had been Old Glory itself, was a six-months old baby. The women are in line, and when the women get in line, the men have to.

Why, just how that thing works was illustrated at a convention of Confederate veterans down in Granville County the other day. The old boys, as they call themselves, had converted the meeting into an experience meeting, and each one was telling why he went to the front in the sixties. They gave high-sounding reasons, but after a while one old grizzled veteran got up and said, “Boys, there has been a lot of lying here today. I am going to tell the truth about this matter, and I will tell you why I went. It was during the second year of the war, and I was a-courting of Sally. I went over to Sally’s house one Sunday evening. The apple trees were in bloom, and Sally’s cheeks were more beautiful than the apple blooms, and, of course, we commenced to talk about the war. I says, ‘You know, Sally, Bill’s going’. She says, ‘Yes, I heard about it’. ‘And Henry has gone’. She says, ‘Yes, and Jim has gone, and Sammy has gone, too’. Then a new strange light came into Sally’s eyes, and in a tense and husky voice, she said to me, ‘Paul, when are you going?! I looked once more at the battle light in Sally’s eyes, and I said ‘Why, Sally, honey, I just came over to tell you goodbye’.”

Well, I want to tell you that that light is in Sally’s eyes all over Dixie, and the time has come when no able-bodied, red-blooded young man can look Sally in the eye and stay at home. We are not only in it, but we are in it to the very finish.

Sone one said to me on the streets in Raleigh the other day, “Governor, when are we going to end this war?” I said, “We are not going to end it at all. We are going to finish it.” And to every peace offensive hypocrytically launched by the Kaiser over yonder, or insidiously whispered by his hell-begotten underlings over here, we propose to hurl the answer given by that daring North Carolina sea fighter, John Paul Jones, “We have just commenced to fight!”

We didn’t want to go in, but having started, we don’t know how to stop!

Mr. President, you told us this morning to see it through. I am here to promise that the tar heels will stick it out! Just how they stick was illustrated by a boy who enlisted from one of the counties in North Carolina. The officer of the guard said, “Now, Webb you walk along this river here from this old pine to this stump. That is your beat. Under no circumstances do you move off of it. Keep a sharp lookout. Challenge every man that approaches, and make him give the countersign. You will be relieved at two o’clock.” At two o’clock, the officer of the guard came around but Private Webb was nowhere to be seen. He looked diligently for him. He was not to be found. The officer became alarmed, thinking he had fallen into some raiding party of the enemy, and he called his name softly,”Private Webb, Private Webb!” No answer. He raised his voice and said, “Private Webb!” And then the answer came, “Here I be”. And there he stood, out there in the river fifty feet, with the water up to his waist. The officer yelled at him, “What in the thunder are you doing out there in that river? Didn’t I tell you not to move off of this beat? And back from Private Webb came the indignant reply, “I ain’t moved; the river has riz”.

Just one word more. One of the great by-products of this war is the absolute blotting out already of the Mason Dixon Line. The most powerful German glass couldn’t discover that line, and so I say, “Here’s to the blue and grey as one; as they fight on the fields of France, may the spirit of God be with them all, as the sons of the flag advance”.

(End Bickett)