Our Common Country is a collection of informal addresses, eighteen in all, given by Warren G. Harding as president-elect. What makes these addresses as relevant today as they were back in 1921 is the mood of the country. Even though World War I is now a distant memory, with very few participants still alive, today’s Americans have suffered through similar conflicts, from World War II to Vietnam and beyond. In 1917 when Americans went off to war, the red, white, and blue flew everywhere. Two million American soldiers went to France and fifty thousand of them died; the battle of the Meuse-Argonne was one of the costliest in American history. With the announcement by America’s allies that the United States’s contributions to the war were insignificant compared to their own, President Wilson’s leadership began to collapse. Also, the domestic economy’s boom was turning to a bust and the national debt was expanding. The general consensus of Americans was that things had gone to hell in a handbasket. In an effort to ease the minds of troubled and confused Americans, President Harding tried to provide them with inspiration in their lives. Addressing different members of the populous–mothers, veterans, patriots, farmers, businessmen, the press–he sought to send each a personal message of re-assurance. During his administration, he would bring a formal end to the war by signing the Treaty of Berlin. He would also establish the Bureau of the Budget, thereby bringing order to the departmental and bureaucratic requests that had disgraced budget making for decades. Although the former president was much maligned after his death, his good works during his term of office speak for themselves andshow that his concern for his fellow Americans was not just rhetoric. His strength of character and intelligence are demonstrated throughout these addresses. Harding spoke to his own time, yet these addresses speak to our own confusing times as well.
