ARMSTRONG AND WORLD 
 FREEDOM 
 
 FOUNDER'S DAY ADDRESS BY 
 HON. WILLIAM HOWARD TAFT 
 
ARMSTRONG AND WORLD 
 FREEDOM 
 
 FOUNDER'S DAY ADDRESS BY 
 HON. WILLIAM HOWARD TAFT 
 PRESIDENT OF HAMPTON'S 
 BOARD OF TRUSTEES 
 

 Reprinted from the Southern Workman 
 March, 1918 
 
 fnstltntlsfi 
 
ARMSTRONG AND WORLD 
 FREEDOM * 
 
 BY WILLIAM HOWARD TAFT 
 
 President of Hampton's Board of Trustees 
 
 HALF a century ago Samuel C. Armstrong, born in and in- 
 fused with the Christian missionary spirit, founded this 
 great institution. Shakespeare makes Mark Antony say: "The 
 evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with 
 their bones." Of course this is not true; General Armstrong's 
 life and death and what has followed refute it utterly. 
 
 Twenty-five years ago he laid down his task to those who 
 were to follow. Today is the day we celebrate in his name. He 
 left us Hampton and the Hampton spirit. It is not that he 
 founded a school whose buildings have survived him, as those 
 which William of Wickham built. It is not that he founded a 
 school whose organization and purpose survive him, or one like 
 Harvard, Yale, and Cornell, with his name. Hampton does not 
 bear his name, and yet he lives here in the work of his hands, his 
 heart, and his brain, as no other founder of an institution of 
 learning ever did. 
 
 Go to the University of Virginia and you will find something 
 resembling it in the spirit of Jefferson, who lives there still, but 
 not in the warmth of the spirit of Hampton— something which 
 Armstrong breathed into this school of learning, something that 
 here continues as a living fire. 
 
 It was the free spirit of free service that Armstrong taught. 
 He taught a race the spirit of progress from slavery to self-re- 
 spect, from enforced service to voluntary service in the duty of 
 the citizen and the obligation to the community and the neighbor- 
 hood. He founded it in free, intelligent skill, and hard, contin- 
 uous labor. He taught the obligations of freedom. He taught 
 the unending pleasure and satisfaction of work well done and of 
 duty performed. 
 
 From the platform of yonder gymnasium I heard President 
 Eliot of Harvard University say that it was Armstrong who laid 
 the foundations in this country of the great system of vocational 
 training; and Hampton today is the best exponent in this country 
 
 Address delivered at Hampton Institute in celebration of Founder's Day. January 27, 1918 
 
6 
 
 of the practical benefit to be derived from that kind of a system. 
 It was suggested to him by the helpless ignorance of an enslaved 
 and suddenly emancipated race. He enforced the necessity for 
 the love of intelligent labor as dignifying all who engaged in it; 
 and it is, in spite of the objections of those who contend other- 
 wise, it is the solution of the race problem, because with that 
 everything else in life that is worthy to attain, that is useful to 
 attain, can be achieved. 
 
 He launched the struggle of a race to deserve freedom, to 
 vindicate its citizenship, to justify equality of opportunity. It is 
 given to few men to win by their own efforts, unaided by circum- 
 stances, opposed by prejudice, injustice, and contemptuous criti- 
 cism, the victory which was Armstrong's. His name will go 
 down in history with Lincoln's, as a great benefactor of the Negro 
 race. A quarter of a century has not dimmed the lustre of his 
 name or work. He lives forever in his continuing benefaction 
 and in the hearts of the race he saved. 
 
 And now, today, we mourn his successor, Hollis Burke Fris- 
 sell— a contrast to General Armstrong and yet essential in carry- 
 ing on the work of his leader. Recognizing the primary and 
 fundamental value of the Armstrong spirit, he kept himself, in 
 his modesty, in the shadow of Armstrong's great name. Not a 
 brilliant preacher, not distinguished as a teacher, he was wonder- 
 ful as an executive, wonderful in winning the loyalty and enthusi- 
 asm of his Hampton men and women, in retaining and enlarging 
 the number of Hampton's supporters, and in making its value and 
 excellence known to the white men of the South, who must co- 
 operate to make this great work a success. He was Christlike in 
 his spirit and in his way of winning the great influence he wielded. 
 Broad, catholic, sweet, and reasonable, farseeing and firm of con- 
 viction, sympathetic but stimulating, with a vision of increased 
 usefulness for Hampton, he supplemented General Armstrong's 
 work as no other could have done. He lived and was the Hamp- 
 ton spirit, which General Armstrong breathed into this place and 
 this environment. He felt and fanned the religious fervor and 
 faith that are indispensable to Hampton and its men and women 
 if they are to attain the goal General Armstrong sought. 
 
 Happy an institution and a race who have had two such 
 leaders as Armstrong and Frissell. Their successor — straightfor- 
 ward, effective, earnest, religious, broad, and feeling the joy of 
 service and full of the greatness of the task he assumes — we may 
 be confident will prove to be a worthy follower of the great men 
 who have gone before. 
 
 And now, my friends, what would these men — these two 
 men — have done in the presence of the crisis that faces Hampton 
 and faces the country, faces the country and the world, and Hamp- 
 
ton sympathetically with the country and with the world ? 
 Against our will, against our prayers, we are in this great war. 
 In 1776 this country fought for the independence of the United 
 States— the freedom of a nation. In 1861 to 1865 it fought and 
 lost lives and treasure without number, for the integrity of the 
 Union and the freedom of a race. And today, for three years, 
 and for how many years in the future we know not, we fight for 
 the freedom of the world. 
 
 As we look back upon the course which our country has taken 
 in respect to this war, there is no step in which we have not fol- 
 lowed the path of righteousness. In the outset we conformed to 
 international law as a neutral nation. We permitted our mer- 
 chants and manufacturers to furnish supplies of all kinds to the 
 belligerents at the risk of losing them as contraband upon the 
 high seas. Germany had avowed that to be the rule of interna- 
 tional law and had pursued it in our war with Spain and in Eng- 
 land's war with the Boers. Not for a hundred years has there 
 been any doubt as to the correctness of that as the attitude of a 
 neutral nation. More than that, it was virtuously right in this: 
 had not nations, peace-loving and unprepared as most peace-lov- 
 ing nations are, the right to resort to neutral countries and neutral 
 merchants and neutral manufacturers, to prepare themselves 
 suddenly against a war of aggression by a nation that looks for- 
 ward to war as its normal future and is always prepared, then 
 a nation seeking war domination of the world would have an 
 overwhelming advantage over such peace-loving nations. There- 
 fore the President and Congress were right in keeping open to 
 peace-loving nations the opportunity, when forced into a war by 
 a nation loving war and lusting for power, the means of 
 preparing themselves against such unjust aggression. 
 
 Then Germany sank, without warning, to the depths of the 
 sea a vessel carrying 3000 innocent souls, and carried to their 
 death 114 American citizens— men, women, and children, babes 
 in arms. We protested, and Germany's answer was that the ves- 
 sel was armed — a lie that enabled her to continue the correspond- 
 ence for one full year. Then we said, when she sank the Sussex 
 under similar circumstances, with American citizens on board, 
 "We shall sever relations with you unless you discontinue." 
 She discontinued for a time for the purpose of getting ready for 
 a more ruthless warfare by continuing to make the submarines 
 needed to carry it on. Then, in January last, she notified us that 
 she intended to continue this ruthless warfare and to sink, with- 
 out warning, every vessel, commercial or otherwise, neutral or 
 otherwise, that came into a zone, 900 miles north and south and 
 300 miles east and west, of the high seas off Great Britain, France, 
 and the Mediterranean. 
 
Then we severed relations, as we said we would, and we re- 
 turned to the bosom of his master that philanthropist and eminent 
 Christian statesman— Count Johann Heinrich von Bernstorff ! 
 They sank at once four American sailing vessels and sent to their 
 deaths twenty-five American sailors, and then we declared that 
 war existed. No other path was open to us. Our rights had 
 not only been invaded, the rights of our citizens had not only 
 been violated, but in a way that left us nothing but the duty of 
 offering the sword in vindication. 
 
 In the field of international law, the rules of war concerning 
 the treatment of commercial vessels' at sea are as definite as the 
 law in Virginia with respect to promissory notes and real estate. 
 A belligerent may seize the vessel and the cargo of his enemy on 
 the high seas and may sink it. He may seize a neutral vessel and 
 a cargo violating the rules of war, but for a century the rule has 
 been that in doing so, if he chooses to do so, he must put the 
 crew, the officers, and the passengers of the captured vessel in a 
 place of complete safety. 
 
 Therefore, w^hen Germany sank the vessels she did sink, 
 whether of the enemy or our own as neutrals, knowing that a 
 sinking without warning involved the death of a large part of the 
 company of the vessel sunk, she was guilty of deliberately taking 
 the lives of citizens of other countries without warning and with- 
 out right. 
 
 Now, when a man kills another without right, he is guilty of 
 murder. There is no other name that describes the crime of a 
 nation which does the same thing. But it is said that those who 
 went ought to have known the risk. Well, suppose they did. 
 How does that change the crime of Germany ? Suppose John 
 Smith meets John Robinson on the street and shoots him through 
 the heart and he is haled into court under indictment and then 
 he pleads: " I am not guilty. John Robinson knew, because I 
 wrote him a letter and told him that if he came down into the 
 street in front of his house I would shoot him. I am not guilty ; 
 he is — of contributory negligence, that he came down in the street 
 and met the bullet, the presence of which ought to have been 
 anticipated." How would that plea sound in a court of justice ? 
 
 So, having violated the rights of our citizens, and therefore 
 our rights, what was our duty ? What is a government ? A 
 government is a corporation of which we are all members, to 
 which we render the duty of support, of service, military 
 and civil, the payment of taxes, help of every kind; and we re- 
 ceive from that corporation, as a quid pro quo protection — protec- 
 tion as between ourselves, preservation of the rights of one as 
 against another, and protection of the rights of each as against 
 the invasion of a foreign country. On the high seas, on the deck 
 
9 
 
 of an American vessel and under the American flag, a man is as 
 much within the jurisdiction of the United States as if he 
 stood on the shores of Virginia; and when a nation, a foreign 
 nation, invades those rights by sending him to the bottom 
 and kiUing him, there is no other course for the United States to 
 take but to vindicate those rights, to demand reparation for violat- 
 ing them, and to see to it that in the future the rights of other 
 citizens are not similarly violated. 
 
 No other path was open to us. Germany not only admitted 
 that she had killed our citizens under circumstances that, of 
 course, we must call murder, but she announced that she intended 
 to murder other citizens— anyone who might assert his right to 
 use the common highway of nations and go into that part of the 
 high seas which Germany, without right and with an assertion of 
 world domination, had fenced off against the other nations. 
 
 If this had been Venezuela, we would have sent a message 
 demanding reparation and security against further violation; and 
 every man, woman, and child in the United States, Senator La- 
 Follette, pacifists, conscientious objectors, and unconscientious 
 objectors would have approved the action. What is the difference 
 between that case and this ? None in principle, only in fact; and 
 that fact is that Germany is the greatest military power in the 
 world and Venezuela is not. 
 
 Therefore those who oppose war in this instance, who object 
 to the drawing of the sword to which Germany forces us if we 
 would defend those rights, would put us in this situation: that we 
 are in favor of the utmost sacrifice to protect our rights and those 
 of our citizens against a nation if she is little enough and weak 
 enough so that we can whip her with one hand, but if she is a 
 great military nation, resistance to whose aggression requires war 
 and sacrifice, then we will waive those rights because they are 
 technical only. That appeals to no one with a sense of duty as 
 an individual or as a government. 
 
 President Wilson was criticized for the long delay in asserting 
 those rights. That question we pretermit; it is past. We are 
 neither Republicans nor Democrats now. We are Americans in 
 supporting the President in this righteous war. 
 
 So we find ourselves in a war for a cause for which, in no 
 scintilla, need we apologize, need we defend, need we explain. 
 We are in the war because we could not help it. We are in the 
 war from no jingo spirit. We are in the war from a sense of duty 
 as a country and from our sense of duty as a nation of the world. 
 What were our traditions in the Revolution ? What those in the 
 Civil War ? What was the position we won in the world ? A na- 
 tion upholding justice. What if now we flinch and do not meet 
 the issue ! 
 
10 
 
 We find ourselves now in war, arrayed with the democracies 
 of the world against the autocracies — against one autocracy, and 
 that is Germany. The rest are merely " and company," merely 
 "me, too." Germany is our enemy, and as we understand Ger- 
 many, as we understand the psychological condition and status of 
 Germany, we understand the war, and we do not understand it 
 otherwise. We find that the cause which carried us into the war, 
 righteous as it was, is only one phase of the greater cause of 
 the great World War that we are now engaged in. It comes from 
 the insane obsession of the German people, led by a Hohenzollern 
 and the Prussian military regime, that they are carrying out God's 
 purpose in a world domination for the improvement of civilization 
 by the spread of kultur by force. And you cannot know the dan- 
 ger to the civilization of the world, to the family of nations, of 
 this condition of mind (diseased as it is ) of the German people, 
 unless you study their history. They are an intellectual people ; 
 they are a home-loving people; they are a music- and poetry-loving 
 people; they are a people of great keenness, great tenacity of 
 purpose, lacking in humor and so lacking in a sense of proportion; 
 and when we knew them years ago, we liked them. They were 
 genial and kindly to animals. We do not hate the Germans. It 
 is not our business to hate them. We will not hate them after 
 the war is over; but what we hate is their purpose, their present 
 condition of mind, and unless we change that, the world is to suf- 
 fer in the future from a constantly recurring system of war, en- 
 tered upon to gratify the ambitions of the Hohenzollerns, and the 
 insane purpose of the German people to follow what they regard 
 as their God-given destiny to subordinate the world to their will, 
 in the acceptance of kultur and their method of instructing in it. 
 
 In the early part of the nineteenth century they were twenty- 
 eight different states— Austria at the head, Prussia next, and 
 twenty-six other states. The other states were kingdoms and 
 dukedoms and electorates, under the rule of kinglets,, dukelets, 
 and electors— little despots governing by the divine right of kings ! 
 Then they had a revolution in 1848 by liberty-loving Germans, 
 who did not succeed and were driven out and came to this 
 country and made a valuable part of our citizenship. Their 
 blood in the Civil War was found on every battlefield, where they 
 struggled, as they thought and believed, for liberty and the 
 suppression of slavery. Their descendants have made valuable 
 citizens with us. 
 
 The people they left behind went under a different environ- 
 ment and different education. Bismarck came into their lives and 
 planned the unity of Germany, not by constitutional monarchy 
 and the institution of civil liberty, but by blood and iron; and he 
 carried it through. He organized the Prussian Army with the 
 
11 
 
 tradition of drill and effectiveness derived from the time of 
 Frederick the Great and his father. He added to that and 
 strengthened it, and then he began his plan. 
 
 I am not telling you anything that is merely inference from 
 what he did. I am telling you what he says himself. He car- 
 ried on three wars — wars in which he so arranged it that they 
 were all wars of aggression against Germany. He took from 
 Denmark Schleswig-Holstein and annexed it to Prussia. He 
 wiped Austria off the map of Germany, and took Hanover and 
 Hesse Cassel and Frankfort, and united the Southern German 
 states to him by an offensive and defensive alliance, and then 
 he waited until Napoleon should declare war against him. He 
 prepared for the war and then led Napoleon on to declare it. 
 Then he defeated France and he took Alsace-Lorraine and an 
 indemnity of $1,000,000,000, which he put into the army. He 
 crowned his king German Emperor. He went back to Berlin and 
 sat down and digested in peace the bits of territory which he had 
 chewed off from the rest of Europe. 
 
 This turned the heads of the German people. Such an un- 
 usual series of military successes put them in a state of exaltation 
 that was unsafe for them and unsafe for the world. They said: 
 *' We have done this by the application of scientific principles to 
 the art of war. We will apply this to the arts of peace." They 
 went into manufacturing, into agriculture, into the field of 
 business, and they achieved a wonderful success. They did it 
 under Bismarck and they did it under William. They accumu- 
 lated wealth. They increased their prosperity. They increased 
 their population. They looked at themselves with perfect satis- 
 faction and with a self -adoration that led to their obsession. 
 Looking back over their success, they could not reconcile them- 
 selves to their existence except by close association with God. So 
 they proceeded to assume that they were the chosen people of 
 God; that God looked upon their work with satisfaction and upon 
 them as agents to carry this work to the other nations; and as it 
 had been won by force — military force— they created the German 
 State into an instrument of God, and, acting for God, they easily 
 reached the conclusion that there was no consideration that could 
 be yielded to in the progress of that State. Thus they abolished 
 morality for the State. They laid down the rule: "There is no 
 international morality." Decency, humanity, respect for the 
 obligation of treaties all disappeared when the interests and 
 the progress of the State were concerned. And that is our 
 enemy — as dangerous to the family of nations as a mad dog is in 
 a domestic family, waiting only the opportunity to strike when 
 success may follow the stroke. 
 
 You ask proof — read literature. You ask why we did not 
 
12 
 
 know it before. We assumed they were extremists. We have 
 them among ourselves— I do not name them. We do not want to 
 be held responsible for them. But these were not extremists. 
 They spoke the word that had sunk to the hearts of the people. 
 The principles were taught in the primary schools, in the acade- 
 mies, and from the lecture platforms of the universities. Their 
 lecturers, their great leaders in philosophy, taught them. In 
 their sermons you saw it crop out here and there. Read the 
 sermons— one addressed to a "German God; " another a prayer 
 to " Him who presides in the Heaven above the seraphim and 
 the cherubim and the Zeppelins." The association of the sera- 
 phim and the cherubim with the Zeppelins is incongruous and 
 irreverent to us, but to the German mind seems all right, for the 
 reason that all are agencies of the Deity, and the Zeppelins are 
 carrying out the God-given purpose and policy of kultur by drop- 
 ping explosives on East London, numbering among their victims 
 the school children and the old men and old women of that city. 
 It is shocking, my friends, it is shocking when you think of the 
 change that has come about through this horrible, hideous phil- 
 osophy into which the Germans have led themselves. 
 
 If you wish proof in addition, read what the Kaiser says. 
 He is always associating himself with God in a personal way. 
 "Forward with God ! " He says that "God is with us uncondi- 
 tionally, with avowed support." " Unconditionally "—that is, 
 " without regard to what we have done. The purpose, the end, 
 the destiny is what we must look to, not the means." He claims 
 an intimate association with God and communications denied to 
 other people. Now, that is a condition of a perverted mental 
 state, but it is a condition so dangerous that we cannot allow it 
 to continue in this world when it is backed up by the application 
 of the highest scientific principles to the destruction of men. 
 
 I cannot take time to point out how completely responsible 
 Germany is for this war and its character, but when you meet 
 those who have been at the front and who have come back 
 (as I did the other day) and hear from them the horrible nature 
 of this war, its mechanical, physical brutality, its desire to de- 
 stroy men; and when you then look back upon our Civil War- 
 that was bloody, lives were lost, but there was a chivalry, there 
 was a kindliness between the sides, there were obligations even 
 in war that were kept, there was a glamour about it, courage, 
 bravery, and chivalry, reflecting the natural gentleness of the 
 people engaged, — when you compare these two wars you realize 
 that today in Europe, under the influence of this cruel German 
 philosophy, it is blood and destruction of the most brutal char- 
 acter—anything, anything for military advance and military 
 success. 
 
13 
 
 That presents the problem to us. Our Allies have been 
 fighting this monster for three years. They are nearly exhausted, 
 and we are praying and should be praying that they may hold 
 oat until we can get there with our forces, so as to predominate in 
 man power and win this world war for righteousness, and forever 
 stamp out this horrible philosophy, this crass materialism, this 
 brutal murder of the human race which Germany makes the 
 object of her government, in order that, through the blood of 
 other men, she may march on to control the world. 
 
 Therefore it is that you, my boys, have before you an 
 opportunity to show the value of these equalities of opportunity. 
 Show that you are not only citizens of the United States, but 
 citizens of the world. Do not allow yourselves to be misled by 
 the thought that peace is near. All these dealings of Germany 
 with the Bolsheviki amount to nothing except a moving around 
 on the chessboard for the advantage of Germany, so that she 
 may acquire control of Russia and her supplies. It is enough to 
 make one first laugh and then cry to note the dealings of 
 Trotsky and representatives of the Bolsheviki with the armed 
 leaders of Germany for a peace — a peace of the world — a peace 
 of the world's workers, as Trotsky says. There is an old 
 maxim that "he who dines with the devil must have a long 
 spoon" — but the Bolsheviki spoon has no handle at all ! 
 
 Now, my boys, think of General Armstrong. He led 
 a colored regiment in the war for your race. Would he be a 
 pacifist in these days ? Would he fail to see clearly what is 
 before us now ? We should thank God that w^e are in the battle 
 now, rather than waiting until these European countries, fighting 
 our battle, have been defeated by this monster of mihtarism, so 
 that we should have to measure swords with it alone. 
 
 Do not listen to arguments of pacifism ; do not allow sug- 
 gestions that are mere camouflage about coming peace. We can 
 have no peace until we whip Germany, until we produce in the 
 minds of the Germans a conviction that the policy they have 
 followed is all in vain; that it comes from the devil and not from 
 God ; and then they will attend to the form of government that 
 they ought to have. They will become an amenable and human 
 member of the society of nations again, and they will relegate 
 the Kaiser and the rest of the "Potsdam gang" to the place 
 where they ought to go. 
 
 There are over two hundred Hampton students and grad- 
 uates already in the war. I hope there may be many others. 
 Do not give up your education until you are called. Do not 
 think it necessary for you to rush in until you have finished, until 
 you are called, because you will be better men and better officers 
 when you are called. But be ready. Do not look forward to 
 
14 
 
 a speedy end of the war, but grit your teeth. Make yourselves feel 
 that you cannot offer up your lives in a higher cause than this ; 
 not even the War of the Revolution nor the War of the Rebellion 
 offered greater reason for sacrifice than this. 
 
 Now God bless you, boys, and go on with the Hampton 
 spirit, for that is the spirit that will carry you to the victory we 
 must have if the human race is to live in Christian civilization. 
 
LIBRARY OF CONOKt^^ 
 
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