ROBERT M. LA FOLLETTE

If there is no sufficient reason for war, the war party will make war on one pretext, then invent another... after the war is on.

Before the war is ended, the war party assumes the divine right to denounce and silence all opposition to war as unpatriotic and cowardly.

In times of peace, the war party insists on making preparation for war. As soon as prepared for, it insists on making war.

Every nation has its war party... It is commercial, imperialistic, ruthless. It tolerates no opposition.

The question of primary elections is one of government for the people and by the people. Under our system of government by political parties, two elements, equal in importance, are involved in the exercise of suffrage; one, the making of the ballot; the other, the casting of the ballot. The right to cast the ballot is regarded as sacred. The right to make the ballot is equally sacred. No man would be willing to delegate his power to vote the ballot at general elections. No man shall be compelled to delegate his power to make his ballot.

The draft is the corollary of militarism and militarism spells death to democracy.

Andrew Mellon [Treasury Secretary and multi-millionaire] is today the real President of the United States. Calvin Coolidge is merely the man who occupies the White House.

The time has come when the Executive branch of this Government must enforce the plain letter of the law and check monopoly, or it must turn the people over boldly into the hands of exploiters grown impudent and ruthlessly aggressive through long years of wanton violation of the law.

If I were a citizen of Russia, I would resist this communist dictatorship as vigorously as I have endeavored to resist the encroachment upon our democratic institutions in America. I hold that government of one class, denying the other classes the right to participate is tyranny.

He has signed an agreement to bind us to fight in every future world-war. He has entered into a treaty that is without a parallel in all history as a spoils-grabbing compact of greed and hate.

He loves people, but even more than that he loves to talk to people.

The principle of free speech [is] no new doctrine born of the Constitution of the United States. [It is] a heritage of English-speaking peoples, which has been won by incalculable sacrifice, and which they must preserve so long as they hope to live as free men.

I always hate a speech after I make it.

So long as there is an income to be found in the country so large that it yields to its possessor a surplus over and above what he needs for the comfort or even luxuries of life for himself and his family, I am in favor of taking such portion of the surplus income by taxation as the Government needs for war purposes, and if it needs it all I am in favor of taking it all before we take one penny from the slender income of a man who receives only enough to provide himself and family with the bare necessities of life.

I fear that the court has done what the trusts wanted it to do and what Congress has steadily refused to do.

Reposing complete confidence in the soundness of the deliberate judgement of the American people, I have no apprehension that the Communist Party can ever command any considerable support in this country. I do not question their right, under the Constitution, to submit their issues to the people, but I must emphatically protest against their being admitted into the councils of any body of progressive voters.

I long for the time when the public service will get onto a higher plane than that of serving political parties, and come to serve the public interest instead.

I will say that I never had a more respectful hearing or fewer interruptions.

I would like to be remembered as one who in the world's darkest hours kept a clean conscience and stood at the end for the ideals of American democracy.

If the people want a government of their own they must do the work of making it their own.

How can that popular will express itself except by meetings, by speeches, by publications, by petitions, and by addresses to the representatives of the people? Any man who seeks to set a limit upon those rights, whether in war or peace, aims a blow at the most vital part of our government.... And before this great fundamental right [freedom of speech] every other must, if necessary, give way, for in no other manner can representative government be preserved.

The supreme issue, involving all others, is the encroachment of the powerful few on the rights of the many. It is against the system built up by privilege that we must make unceasing warfare.

Now all of you profiteering "patriots" who have bawled yourself hoarse about "standing back of the President" get into line and support his recommendation for "additional taxes on war profits, incomes and luxuries.

Permanent political parties have been born in this country after, and not before, national campaigns, and they have come from the people, not from the proclamations of individual leaders.

Politics is economics in action.