Obrázky na stránke
PDF
ePub

neutral States is? Eliminating the semi-barbaric nations that could give us little actual moral co-operation, nations like Italy, Holland, Sweden, Switzerland, Norway, the United States, Argentina, Brazil, have an aggregate population of over 250,000,000 people.

There are people starving in New York to-night because of this war; there is suffering from the Atlantic to the Pacific for the same reason. The very foundations of civilization are being sapped by this war, and in the perpetuity of civilization surely every man has a stake, whatever his nationality. So that if these 250,000,000 people, speaking through these neutral nations-and I have excluded from the calculation nations like the Balkans that might conceivably be drawn into the controversy could meet under the leadership of the United States, to discuss what might be done-not necessarily with any immediate action, not necessarily to interfere by any display of force, but simply to express their collective judgment either upon the cause of the war or at least upon the methods of the war-I believe it to be true, that the nations that are now struggling at each others' throats would not dare to ignore the voice of so many nations thus formally expressed.

It has been suggested that we ought to remain quiet and in the meantime so far as possible capture the markets of the world. It is suggested that as this is the opportunity of the United States for economic primacy it would be most foolish for us in any sense to intermingle in the quarrel even in this most distant way; for the economic opportunities are immeasurable. Gentlemen, in an issue so supremely moral as this, I denounce that as the Judas Iscariot policy. It is the policy of the thirty pieces of silver. It is a policy which would brand this Government with eternal infamy if its only conception of its moral duty in this grave crisis for all humanity were to stand by, to skulk in selfish isolation, and to say that all we will utilize this fateful moment for is in order to increase our markets and to make more money. To prevent any misunderstanding let

me add that I do not mean that this country shall not pursue its normal trade activities. I only object to the suggestion of basing our foreign policy at this critical moment wholly upon considerations of economic advantage. This surely is not an hour for selfishness.

But, it may be urged, would not our moral intervention be a violation of the traditional policy of this Republic? I do not know any better way of answering than to go back to the words of the great founder of the American Republic, the very greatest man that America ever gave to the world, and see exactly what he did say in that pathetic and majestic farewell address to his countrymen. He said:

"Europe has a set of primary interests which to us have none or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise for us to implicate ourselves by artificial ties in the ordinary vicissitudes"-now, mark the words "in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics or the ordinary combinations or collisions of her friendships or enmities. Our detached and distant position"-that is the premise of the whole advice "invites and enables us to pursue a different course. If we remain one people under an efficient government the period is not far off when we may defy material injury from external annoyance, when we may take such an attitude as will cause the neutrality we may at any time resolve upon to be scrupulously respected, when belligerent nations, under the impossibility of making acquisitions upon us, will not lightly hazard the giving us provocation; when we may choose peace or war as our interest guided by our justice shall counsel."

I take it that this policy was based on that “distant and detached position" which surely in this age of the telegraph and the cable and the steamship cannot longer be said to exist. We are all one family, bound together by

centripetal ties of steam and electricity, and the idea of geographical isolation does not exist. Those who would thus invoke the words of Washington to justify for all time a policy of complete isolation from the affairs of the greater world beyond the little America that he knew must first satisfy us that if Washington were the President of the foremost republic of the world, if he were the Chief Magistrate of a hundred millions of people, if his people were bound in the closest ties of steam and lightning with every part of the world, if he were the President of a country that had lasted for more than a century and a quarter, and had assumed both economic and, in the matter of what might be called moral power, the primacy among nations, that he would then ask his countrymen to follow a policy which was most wisely laid down with respect to the infancy of the Republic, when we were but a sheep among wolves in the nations of the world.

Listen to the other words of Washington:

"Observe good faith and justice toward all nations. Cultivate peace and harmony with all. Religion and morality enjoin this conduct and can it be that good policy does not equally enjoin it? It will be worthy of a free, enlightened and at no distant period a great nation to give to mankind the magnanimous and too novel example of a people always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence.'

There is a truth that no time can wither. There is the true policy for all time for America. There is its chart, to cultivate good faith, justice, good relations with all nations, and to give to them an example of a nation great enough to be guided at all times by considerations of benevolence and justice.

If we are thus to follow the moral precept of the founder of the Republic, is it possible that we can be idle at this fateful moment for humanity? Is it fair or just that we should do nothing? "Justice and benevolence" are not mere negations. They imply at times affirmative duties. From Civilization we have gained inestimable rights, to her

certainly we owe immeasurable duties, and to shirk those, it seems to me, is almost a species of moral death. I believe that this nation is the great organ of civilization, voicing as no other does the "decent respect to the opinions of mankind"; that this great Government ought to recognize this as a moral crisis of supreme importance, that it ought not to act by itself or for selfish considerations; that it ought to gather about its council board, with the President of this Republic at the head of that council board, the representatives of every neutral power, and then they should consider how they could best bring to bear upon the contending nations pacific measures, so that once again the scourge of war might pass away, and that once again it might be said, as was sung on the first of Christmas Eves, "Peace on earth to men of good will."

Members of the New England Society and their

Guests Present at the Festival.

Ernest H. Abbott
Lawrence F. Abbott
Rev. Lyman Abbott
W. I. Lincoln Adams

Hon. Mortimer C. Addoms
William F. Albers
Darwin R. Aldridge
Frederic T. Aldridge
Frederic W. Allen
Frederick I. Anderson

William H. Andrews
Irving Bacheller
George F. Baker

Ancell H. Ball
R. G. Barclay

Charles C. Barlow
Hon. C. W. Barnum
George Clinton Batcheller
Anson W. Beard
Hon. James M. Beck
Charles H. Beckett

Rev. Dr. W. W. Bellinger
Henry H. Benedict
George P. Benjamin
S. Reading Bertron
F. H. Bethell
Eldon Bisbee

N. W. Bishop

William Harmon Black
Samuel S. Blood

H. K. Bloodgood

E. C. Bodman

William G. Bosworth

William Welles Bosworth
Clarence W. Bowen
Charles W. Bowring
Owen Brainard
Ira H. Brainerd
Henry D. Brewster
Samuel D. Brewster
Herbert L. Bridgman
James E. Brodhead
J. Romeyn Brodhead
N. Boyd Brodhead
Walter Brodhead

Dr. Edward B. Bronson Ronald K. Brown

Vernon C. Brown

Dr. W. Sohier Bryant
Waldo C. Bryant

Seaver B. Buck

Thomas A. Buckner

Walker Buckner

Charles C. Burke

Russell E. Burke

Prof. William H. Burr
C. E. Bush

Benjamin Campbell
George H. Campbell
Herbert S. Carpenter
Dr. Colin S. Carter
Charles L. Case
Elihu C. Church
Jefferson Clark
Raymond S. Clark
William B. Clark

Hon. George C. Clausen
Edwin W. Coggeshall
Henry F. Cook

William C. Cox

Henry G. Craig

William Crawford
William V. Creighton
John W. Cross
F. Cunliffe-Owen
Harry A. Cushing
James S. Darcy
Walter D. Daskam
Howland Davis

Hon. Vernon M. Davis
A. M. Day

Holman Day
Philip S. Dean
Eugene Delano
Thomas Denny
Harris B. Dick
Walter E. Dixon
William B. Dowd

Charles G. DuBois

Rev. Howard Duffield

« PredošláPokračovať »