To finance these tremendous preparedness projects, the government called upon the people to lend their money by buying government liberty bonds. This was an entirely new thing for the American people of any generation, but they responded in a manner that showed the government that the people were backing it to the last inch, and that they were out to win as quickly as possible, regardless of cost, or other sacrifices they were called upon to make. The government conducted great loan campaigns. Each one met with greater success than the one preceding it. The bonds were bought by all classes of people, and a man without a bond was like a dog without a home. Of course the great banks and corporations bought millions of dollars worth of bonds, but the great number of small denomination bonds bought by the wage-earning classes was what spelled the success of the loans. The total amount raised by the five loans was approximately twenty-two billion dollars.
Besides these great loans, the American people contributed $300,000,000 to two Red Cross funds inside of a year. There were also enormous contributions to the Y. M. C. A., the Knights of Columbus, the War Camp Community Service, the Salvation Army, and allied funds.
Although a great deal of credit for the remarkable success of America's preparedness program is due to the fact that she had such wonderful resources, the true underlying reason for her success is the magnificent spirit of the American people. Germany thought that, because of the cosmopolitan make-up of the people and the immensity of the country they occupied, they would not unite as one great nation. The United States has proved for all time that she is one solid indivisible nation with ho thought of anything but the progress and liberty of her country and the world, of the unsullied honor and unquestioned defense of her flag, and of all for which it stands.
It was not his olive valleys and orange groves which made the Greece of the Greek; it was not for his apple orchards or potato fields that the farmer of New England and New York left his plough in the furrow and marched to Bunker Hill, to Bennington, to Saratoga. A man's country is not a certain area of land, but it is a principle; and patriotism is loyalty to that principle. The secret sanctification of the soil and symbol of a country is the idea which they represent; and this idea the patriot worships through the name and the symbol. . . .
