624 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



great safety A'alve in the life of the state, and through the state in the 

 life of the nation. And yet you gentlemen have a duty to perform. You 

 farmers will have to produce to the limit; you will have to produce just 

 the same as during the war, because if production of foodstuffs is also 

 shortened or lessened, it may be nobody's fault, they may be treating 

 you unfairly, but if it is lessened greatly and the world is fed more spar- 

 ingly, there arises throughout the world that sinister figure which is 

 threatening to run amuck in the life of Europe today. So I call upon 

 your patriotism. When I think of that I am reminded of some lines 

 by Tennyson. We have just seen the spectacle of a great war flare up 

 in the midst of the activities of the world; so great that none but could 

 feel the heat, none but could hear the roar of its voice. It has died down; 

 that great flame has died down in the aspect of war, and now we are 

 going to snooze around? You may say that it is not up to you, particu- 

 larly, but remember what Tennyson says: 



"Slowly comes a hungry people. 

 As a lion creeping nigher, 

 Glares at one who nods and winks, 

 Before a slowly dying fire." 



Here is a world that is hungry, and it is creeping, creeping on civiliza- 

 tion. You have a great duty to perform; not sleep and doze before a 

 slowly dying fire in this great world conflagration, but remember your 

 relation to society, produce more food, is the great thing that the flag 

 expects of you in the crisis of the nation. And loyalty? Oh, yes! If 

 there is any man who has come over here, has lived under our flag, raised 

 his family or is going to, had our educational advantages, has spread out 

 upon our prairies, got Iowa land, living here in the freedom and sweet- 

 ness of Iowa life — if there is any man who thinks there is something 

 better on the other side, or that he cannot here have equal or fair oppor- 

 tunity, he and his children, I hope they will put him in one of those 

 "arks" that we sailed recently from American shores, and I rejoice that 

 the great Statue of Liberty that has stood on the Atlantic shore for so 

 many years and welcomed the needy of all the world to the country, can- 

 not only say "Come," but also say "Good-by forever" to the advocate of 

 violence and the anarchist. (Applause.) I have great faith in the great 

 body of American people; I have faith in the laboring man, taken as a 

 whole, his wife and daughter worked in every Red Cross booth and in 

 every hospital on the other side, and his sons in 1917 answered adequate- 

 ly the call of the world for succor, and from 1917 to 1919 this nation has 

 not turned bolshevik, and it is not going to turn bolshevik, in my opinion! 

 All we need is to reach the great heart, the purpose, the self-conscious- 

 ness, the beautiful, sweet purposes that really do animate this great Amer- 

 ican people. And to the farmer we look most of all because he is in an 

 elemental position, with his feet on the ground, with the sky over his 

 head. What a wondrous life it is! And so I will close by repeating 

 certain lines: 



