Part 4

My message to the Governors of New York, Pennsylvania and Illinois is: Get ready! The troops on the borders of Texas, New Mexico and Arizona are inadequate. The fortifications of the Panama and at San Diego and San Pedro are inadequate. You are in the same condition the French were in previous to 1789, when the motto was, "After us the Deluge." The Deluge came but it did not consist of water.

Our foes of the old Germany and the new Russia count on crippling the United States through South America, with the aid of Japan; but he who delivers the first blow will be the victor.

The Germans still believe they can eventually invade France, enter Paris and cause a revolution, found a new empire to include France, Belgium, Holland and Switzerland, with Italy later on. This dream includes a practical understanding with Soviet Russia, which, by that time, they expect would be weary of futile experiments. Plots will be exposed that will make it apparent how vain some of your optimistic surmises have been. Diplomats who are not psychologists will be balked by developments in Switzerland, that nation having become the rendezvous of disillusioned wire-pullers without a country.

You are now at the cross roads. Take the wrong turning and you will come to the skull and cross bones.

I could say much more but we are not yet experts in this new mode of inter-communication and must be brief.

GENERAL U. S. GRANT.

(Second Message)

Recorded May Third, 1921

I concur with Alexander Stephens when he says: "Congress has never been so supine and so serpentine."

Millions are sent to the people of distant countries in no way related to our Government or people, and yet Congress permits thousands of veterans of the great war to continue in a state of neglect, suffering and humiliation.

Do the authorities believe that when the day of trial arrives the friends and relatives of these veterans will hurry to volunteer for active service? The country is being fascinated by incidents and events in far-off regions, and the tragic conditions at home have entered a chronic stage.

There are too many old men in Congress--men who never did more than fight grasshoppers or watch a game of football from reserved seats.

We do not like the looks of the President's pronunciamento. It contains too many side issues. He is making Mr. Wilson's mistake of being verbose. Mr. Wilson tried to hypnotize Europe; the Senate is trying to hypnotize Mr. Harding. Popularity breeds as much contempt as familiarity. No President can ever succeed in conciliating all classes, sections and parties.

The politicians of Buenos Ayres have now spoken as I predicted in my first message. They have attacked Mr. Harding for his speech on Pan-Americanism, all which goes to prove that the President is repeating for South America Mr. Wilson's blunders in France.

Remember what Lincoln said to Judge Whitney:--

"Those fellows think I don't see anything, but I see all around them. I see better what they want to do with me than they do themselves."

The politicians of South America see better what the President wants to do with them than he does himself.

The administration will face a critical period in the early fall. There will be a break in the dominant phalanx. A social and political readjustment will compel mediation in quarters the most unexpected.

The new political and commercial dispensation for the English-speaking countries will begin on September twenty-second at two P.M.

THOMAS JEFFERSON

Few politicians understand the difference between scene-shifting and progress. Things shift, new names are applied, but the vicious circle continues.

I see no evidence that human nature has changed since my time, in this or any other country.

If the Republican Ship of State is leaking, the Democratic craft is drifting without sail or rudder. What your statesmen fail to understand is that progress is not induced by force but by free will. New political planks rammed into your platforms against the wishes of the majority are without significance. The phrase, "The Solid South," which meant something vital at one time, has no meaning in these days of quick change and movie-show influences.

Democracy, in some sections, is a matter of climate. If you have come to a point where science and sentimentality are engaged in a drastic war, then the Democratic phalanx must undergo some rude changes.

The Democratic tail wagged the Republican dog for some time, but that curious spectacle has lost its hold on public interest. It is not now a question of one end wagging the other, but who will wag both. If Republicans stand for crude force, and Democrats for antebellum sentimentality, both are doomed together.

In the South, Democracy means politics at the polls, aristocracy in the parlor. In the North, Republicanism means the aristocracy of wealth.

However, your conception of social equality is undergoing modification.

In Washington's time the slogan was revolution; in Lincoln's time it was abolition; in your time it is prohibition, which reminds me that laws passed in haste bring long periods of repentance.