New Britain herald., 1917-11-03
THOUSANDS HEAR THE COLONEL TALK
Roosevelt Given Big Ovation As
 He Speaks in Hartford

| ON~AAASN- i ticut. was given a big ovation here
 last night when he addressed thou
 sands of citizens on the war. He came
 here to speak under the auspices of
 the State Council of Defense, and be- fore entering the armory. where he
 was scheduled to talk, he stopped out
 side and gave a talk to over o'oo0 persons who were unable to gain ad- l mission to the building.
 The colonel, with 15,0OO other per
 sons, sang the Star Spangled Banner
 and he sang it Justify, too. Ills speech 1 was greeted with thunderous ap- 1 plause, and the former president
 beamed his famous smile. He said 1 in part:
 MT. Chairman: Governor: And you men and women of Connecticut: am glad to come here because state
 only the bare truth when say that
 Connecticut-under your, leadership
 governor-has taken the lead among
 the states of this country in prepar-
 ing to do and in doing its duty Tn this
 great war.
 This old commonwealth,T one of the
 thirteen original states, took the lead
 and jumped to the front when the great question of loyalty or disloyalty
 to this flag and to our ancient ideals
 was to be tried by wager of battle
 congratulate you, men and women
 of Connecticut, I congratulate you
 upon the work you have done in the i many activities demanded since we
 went to war; and I congratulate you with all my heart that you have had
 as chief executive of the state the l man to whom we have listened to-
 night.
 And now, friends, have come here.
 not to give you lead. for you do
 not have to have a lead. but what I
 have come here to do is to back up 1 the men of your own state who have led you aright I have come here to
 back up the governor, to back up the
 state council of defense, to back up ] the men and women who have made Connecticut do its duty and above all ] to say to ask you to see to it, men and ] women of Connecticut, that your sons l and brothers who have gone to light l for this country and for the hopes of
 mankind shall be backed by you with 1 every ounce of strength you have in you.
 If my speech needs keynote, 1t is 1 this: We are in this war to a finish, l and we will put 1t through at no mat 1 ter what cost of men and money, and no matter what time is necessary in 1 order that we may win the peace of 1 overwhelming victory.
 1 And governor, among the things upon which congratulate you Is your 1 admirable Home Guard, guard composed, as | understand it, of men
 who, for age or other reasons, can
 not go to the front, and who, there
 fore take up the duty of defense at
 home. We have two sets of enemies of this country, first, the Hun outside
 our gates, the Hun whom our people.
 our soldiers have gone abroad to 1 fight; and then we have the Hun 1n-
 side our gates. the disloyal man here. l don't care what shape his disloyalty
 takes; I don't care whether he is | wealthy man who tries to make an
 improper profit out of the country. or
 an I. w. w. man or Germanized so-
 cialist who acts in the interests of
 the Hohenzollerns.
 America has been little slow in
 waking up, but she is beginning to l get awake. I wish to advise the Hun 1 within our gates that if he continues 1 his activities, it will be bad for him
 when America grows fully awake. There is one point in which I will
 with hearty enthusiasm emulate Ger
 many and that is in treating every
 pro German here as Germany would 1 treat every pro-American on the other side.
 The first thing for us to resolve is 1 that there be only one standard of { loyalty in this country. We have all ] of us been more or less blind, until
 this war came, to the fact that there
 were great many people in this 1
 ton. but as what I have called a
 polygot boarding house, in which dol l lar-hunters of twenty different na-
 tionalities shouldered one another out of the trough, and reserved all their real loyalty for some land across the ] sea.
 Either man is an American, and [ nothing but an American, or he is 1 not an American at all. And that is equally true whether his American 1 ism is corroded by love for some other country or by hatred of some other country. The man who tells
 you that he loves Germany as he 1 loves the United States Is an enemy of the United States. The man who announces that he hates Eng land as much as he loves the United States is an enemy of the United States. We are in this war to win. As Gov ernor Holcomb has said, for two years and half we owed an tgnoble safety to the armies of France and of England and to the British navy. Now, I will do everything I can for the allies. I am immensely grate- full for what they have done. But do not want Uncle Sam ever again to owe his safety to any one but him. self. Now, friends, I wish to say on this 1 matter of citizenship that it cannot