The Munitions Investigation

              Reprinted from
The Journal of the National Education Association
September, 1935
Issued by the 
National Council for Prevention of War 
532 Seventeenth St., N.W., Washington, D.C. 
5c for single copy; 3c in quantities
The Munitions Investigation
Honorable Gerald P. Nye 
United States Senator from North Dakota
Senator Gerald P. Nye is one of the great orators of our day. This outstanding address which he delivered at Denver should be brought to the attention of ministers, editors, and other influential citizens. It should be studied in churches, schools, and community forums.
President Smith, Governor McNutt, officers, ladies and gentlemen of the Association: I come to you upon a subject which I would rather discuss with you than with any other group in all the world. I am going to try to follow your wishes as to time tonight, but I want to say at the outset that man cannot, dealing with the conviction which has become that of the seven members of the United States Senate who for something more than eighteen months have been in constant investigation of the influences, the ways, and the ambitions of the makers of the munitions of war, be very brief.
I was wrapped in admiration of the oratory tonight of Governor McNutt when he pictured the situation existing elsewhere in this world, where a false and insane leadership has put entire populations of people under the most distressing situations, apparently wholly unmindful of their feelings or their rights. And while we may be feeling sorry for the people of other lands, I wonder if we hadn't better save a little of that sorrow for ourselves as Americans [applause].
I saw America sixteen years ago firm with high resolve that it would never, Never, NEVER let recur that experience that the nation had just come thru, and I see that same America today, with its various classes of citizens who are saying, where men can hear: "Maybe what this world needs, maybe what we need to get out of this depression is another little war." We have, I fear, drawn the blinds pretty tight, so that we do not see too clearly what is right and best and what is really behind our terrible economic difficulties today.
I am reminded that perhaps we are in much the same position as that character was who never had much religion until they carried him to the hospital for his first operation. Then he did become upset discovering that he was going to have to go under the anesthetic and to submit to a rather serious operation. He wondered what his chances of recovery were going to be and he began to think how little deserving he was of anything more than the fires of Hades, and he pled with his doctors and with the nurses for the assurance that he wanted — that he would come out from under the anesthetic, that the operation would be a success. He went under the anesthetic, underwent the operation, was carried to his room, and as he awakened, and as he sought to get the words out over his dry lips, he turned to the nurse and then turned back to the windows — or where he thought the windows ought to be in his room — and when he could speak he said to the nurse, "Why have you drawn the blinds so close?" And the nurse said, "Well, the doctors were very much afraid of the reaction that might be yours upon awakening. There is a very severe fire blazing in the building across the street, so we took this precaution lest you would fear the operation had not been successful." [laughter.]
Sixteen years ago civilization raised its face and its hands heavenward and said: "Never, Never, NEVER again will we permit an experience like this four years of war to be visited upon this earth." Fathers and mothers who had given of their own flesh and blood in that struggle managed on that day of armistice to summon a smile and to say: "Maybe the sacrifice was worthwhile after all, because this was a great war; it was a worthwhile war; it was a war to make the world safe for democracy." Sixteen years have followed that war to make the world safe for democracy — and democracy is upon thinner ice than it has ever skated before [applause]. In the very shadow of that war to end war, we find this world more madly racing into the jaws of another war than it ever raced in times before.
We came out of the war with what all wars leave in their wake — a depression. Let us not fool ourselves into believing that this depression that we are still in is traceable to anything other as the mighty factor, than four years of war [applause]. If the depression is of long duration, if it is exceedingly stubborn, let us know that it is only a reflection of the costliness, the wastefulness, and the stubbornness of four years of war [applause].
Oh, we are wishing these days that we but had the means with which we could go forth and do for mankind those things that mankind needs done. Nicholas Murray Butler of Columbia University has pointed out what we might do if we had what four years of war cost this world.
If we had that cost we could go forth; build homes costing $2500 apiece; equip them with $1000 worth of furniture; build them on five-acre plots of ground costing one hundred dollars an acre; and give such a home, scot-free, to every family that is resident today in Russia, and in Italy, France, Belgium, Germany, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, England, Australia, Canada, and in the United States; and have enough money left so that every city of twenty thousand people or more in all those same lands could have a two million dollar hospital, a three million dollar library, and a ten million dollar university. And after doing that, there would be a sufficient balance left so that if we invested a part of it so wisely as to bring us a return of 5 percent per year, that return would be sufficient to enable us to pay salaries of $1000 apiece to 125,000 teachers and 125,000 more nurses, and then we would have enough left to go into Germany and
[An address before the National Education Association, Denver, Colorado, July 4, 1935.]