f E 762 A3 1912 UC-NRLF lllliii 1 $B m 5^7 in 00 CM o. PEACE. PATRIOTIC AN D RELIGIOUS ADDRESSES BY PRESIDENT TAFT ^ DELIVERED DURING HIS ADMINISTRATION PUBLISHED BY INTERNATIONAL PEACE FORUM 185 MADISON AVENUE NEW YORK CITY WILLIAM HOWAKD TAFT 4 i I 4 I I h \ INTRODUCTION M ^ The International Peace Forum takes pleasure in presenting to tlie public the accompanying- address-es delivered during his present admin- istration by President William Howard Taft. They are but few of his platform efforts in behalf of the religious, educational and patriotic interests of the country, but they show how faithfully he has served every good cause of Church and State, without partisanship, sectionalism or sectarianism, and therefore how much he is 'entitled to the gratitude and esteem of all who are devoted to the spiritual, moral and political welfare of the Nation. The Forum is not a political organization. It is enlisted in the cause of Industrial, Social and International Peace. It is not unmindful, however, of the noble and inspiring service of Presi- dent Taft in behalf of the Peace movement, and therefore does not hesitate to urge the importance of his re-election, that there may be no backward step in the advance toward Industrial and International Peace that has been so pronounced during the Talt administration. Towering above narrow partisanship, ignoring sectional lines and over- flowing the boundaries of denominationalism, he has served the people, regardless of creed, caste and party, exalted the flag, defended the Con- stitution, and made his country first among the nations of the earth. W. A. HUNSBERGER, D.D.. Ph.D., Executive Vice President, International Peace Forum. Remarks of President Taft to Miss Booth and Officers of the Sal- vation Army, in the East Room of the White House, February 20, 1911. "Anything that I can do to testify to the feeling that I have in re- spect to the good work that you and your Association are doing, I am glad to do, and Mrs. Taft sympathizes with me in that. I valued the opportunity to hear you last night, and I thank you for giving it to me." 312*^69 hemabks of peesident tait at a banquet given in his honor by the american peace and arbitration league in the ballroom of the hotel astor. new york city, MARCH 22. 1910. Mb. Pbesident, Ladies and Gentlemen t — In the first place, I should like to thank the American Peace and Arbitration League for the com- pliment of this beautiful bai>«|aet. I claim to be an expert in banquets. Therefore, when I say that this is a beautiful banquet and one of the finest that I have ever attended, I hope it may convey the superlative. In the next place, I should like to say th^t the significance of this meeting is not in the fact that the President of the United States is here seeking peace by arbitration, but it is that such a doctrine has been advocated by a Keutuckian, former Senator McCreary, I am glad to see about me here ambassadors of powerful countries and ministers representing the strength of Europe and of this hemis- phere — all in favor of peace by arbitration. The truth is that the sub- ject does not offer much opportunity for variety. W« are all in favor of virtue; we are all in favor of goodness, and we are all in favor of peace ; and as peace can be best maintained by arbitration and con- ciliation, of course we are in favor of it, even if we come from Kentucky — in faror of resorting to arbitration rather than to war. I say we all are, bnt I know there are some gentlemen who, in order to bo unlike most others, favor war as a necessary treatment of a nation in order to develop its finest qualities, and I am not disposed t* say that, as we look back in history, some of the most dreadful wars in history, notably that of our Civil War, could hardly have been avoided if we were to accomplish the good which that war did accomplish. But as a general thing we are all opposed to war, because war is hell. And when you have said that, and s%id that any means of avoiding it by arbitration or conciliation is to be sought, it seem« to me that it is difficult to arouse a controversy om the subject. But my friend from Kentucky and I stand together in thi»— that because we are in favor of universal peace, and in favor of arbitrati«a in order to secure it, that does not mean that we are in favor of one country givingf up that which we now use for the purpose of securing x>«ace, to wit, our Army and our Navy. I don't want to seem inconsistent in speaking so emphatically in favor of peace by arbitration, and in using every effort that I can bring to bear on Congress to have two more battleships this year. I am hopeful that we may continue with that until the Panama Canal is constructed, so that then our naval force shall be doubled by reason of the connection between the two coasts ; and then we can stop and think whether we wish to go further. Perhaps by that tim« there shall be adopted by general agreement a means of reducing armament. Certainly, whenever it comes, we will not be, I am sure, the power to interfere with that general movement. I know, or I feel confident, that there are many executive heads who have longed for peace. The expense of armament is working toward peace. The expense of war, I am sorry to say, is having- greater weig-ht in securing- peace than the expense of lives. A nation does not lightly enter upon war now for two reasons : First, because the expense is so great that it is likely to lead to banl*ruptcy even if she wins ; and, second, if she does not win the government or dynasty or whatever it may be that is in control of the government is likely to go down under the humiliation of that defeat at the hands oi her own people. Those two things are working in a healthful way toward ultimate peace. Now, if we have a permanent court of arbitration — one to which we can easily refer all questions — the opportunity is likely to be seized upon — certainly to be seized upon by that country that is in the contest to follow, if war is to follow, not quite prepared ; and so, by its demand- ing or proposing a reference to the court, it will put the other country in the attitude of desiring war — an attitude that I think no country would like under present conditions to occupy before the world. As a resort to this permanent court becomes more and more frequent, ques- tions which can be submitted in the view of the nations will grow broader and brop.der in their scope. I have noticed exceptions in our arbitration treaties, as to reference of questions of honor — of national honor — to courts of arbitration. Per- sonally, I don't see any more reason why matters of national honor should not be referred to a court of arbitration any more than matters of property or matters of national proprietorship. I know that is going further than most men are willing to go, but as among men we have to submit differences even if they involve honor, now, if we obey the lav/, to the court, or let them go undecided. It is true that our courts can enforce the law, and as between nations there is no court with a sheriff or a marshal that can enforce the law. But I do not see why questions of honor may not be submitted to a tribunal, supposed to be composed of men of honor who understand questions of national honor, to abide by their decision, as well as any other question of difference arising between nations. Now, there is one question that I think is within the actual control of Congress, action upon which will promote the power of the Executive in preventing questions of embarrassment and difficulty between this country and other countries with whom we would be at peace. I am not sure how this will strike the Kentucky mind, because when we reach the Constitution and the division of power between the States and the United States, unless it involves an appropriation to the general welfare in the neighborhood of Kentucky, we on different sides of the Ohio River — because the Senator and I look at each other across the river — have different views. But I believe that the Senator, with his profound knowledge of constitutional law, will nevertheless agree with me that it is within the power of Congress to put in the hands of the Executive and in the courts of the United Statas the power on the one hand to prosecute and on the other hand to hear crimes denounced by Federal law, which con- sist in a violation of the righ1/s of aliens secured by treaties made by the United States with other countries. With all the solemnity that goe^ 6 with the making of onr treaties— signed by the President, confirmed bj-^ the Senate — we say to the people of other countries who come to this land : "You shall be protected in certain rights ; you shall enjoy them under the protection of the United States." And then the^^ come over here with that hope, with that security, and a conspiracy is entered upon by some of our people to deprive them of these rights, and crimes are committed against them, and their representative at Washington comes to the State Department and says : "Here are our citizens and our subjects who have com.e here under the protection of the treaty which you made, saying that they should enjoy all these rights, and they have been deprived by violence of these rights. Now we ask you to fulfill that promise to prosecute the men who have been engaged in this violation of the rights of the people we represent, as you promised to do."' And we say : "Well, we are very sorry. It is true we entered into that promise, and we intended to have it kept, and therefore we will write a note to the governor of the State and express the hope that his district attorneys will institute prosecutions before the grand juries of the State and see that justice is done." When it usually occurs through prejndice existing in that very com- munity where you expect to have justice done. Now I say that puts us in a pusillanimous position. I say that we have no business to enter into any international promise that we cannot use the right arm of this Federal Government to maintain and keep. I dwelt upon this subject in my inaugural address, and I hope to press it again upon the attention of Congress ; but I thought, in view of the fact that we are all agreed about arbitration and peace and the abolishment of war, if we can bring- it about, that I would suggest one practical means by which you can clothe your Executive with a means of avoiding difficulty with foreign countries and with a means of avoiding putting your Chief Executive and yourselves in a hamiliating position with reference to your pledged promise. And now, ladies and gentlemen, I have done. I did not expect to talk quite so long. I have been talking all the week, clear from Chicago here, and if what I have said seems to lack preparation, you may under- stand that you can not prepare every speech, however dignified and how- ever attractive the audience. ADDRESS OF PRESIDENT TAFT AT THE BANQUET OF THE AMERI- CAN SOCIETY FOR THE JUDICIAL SETTLEMENT OF INTERNA- TIONAL DISPUTES, AT THE NEW WILLARD, WASHINGTON, D. C, DECEMBER 17, 1910. We hear a great deal nowadays of movements and societies and legislative resolutions in favor of international peace, and I assume that no one would wish to be put in the position of denying that peace con- tributes greatly to the happiness of mankind, or of advocating war as an institution to be fostered in and of itself. To say that one is in favor of peace is not much more startling than to say that one is in favor of honesty, in favor of virtue, in favor of good, and opposed to evil. That from which the world can derive the most benefit is a practical sug- gestion leading to more permanent peace. jSIany have thought that this could be brought about by an agreement among the powers to disarm, and some sort of a convention by which the race to bankruptcy in the maintenance of great armies and the construction of great navies might cease and a gradual disarmament follow. Future events may justify some different conclusion, but movements in the past along this line have not been fruitful of practical results. Bankruptcy and the burdensome weight of debt involved in continued armament may bring about a change in the present national tendencies. Meantime, however, I am strongly convinced that the best method of ultimately securing disarmament is the establishment of an international court and the development of a code of international equity which nations will recognize as affording a better method of settling international controversies than war. We must have some method of settling issues between nations, and if we do not have arbitration, we shall have war. Of course the awful results of war with its modern armaments and frightful cost of life and treasure, and its inevitable shaking of dynasties and governments, have made nations more chary of resort to the sword than ever before ; and the present, therefore, because of this, would seem to be an excellent time for pressing the substitution of courts for force. I am glad to come here and to give my voice in favor of the estab- lishment of a permanent international court. I sincerely hope that the negotiations which Secretary Knox has initiated in favor of an interna- tional prize court — atter the establishment of that court — will involve the enlargement of that court into a general arbitral court for intei'- national matters. It is quite likely that the provisions for the consti- tution of the arbitral court will have to be different somewhat from those that govern the selection of members of the prize court, but I am glad to think that the two movements are in the same direction and are both likely to be successful. What teaches nations and peoples the possibility of permanent peace is the actual settlement of controversies by courts of jarbitration. The settlement of the Alabama controversy by the Geneva arbitration, the settlement of the seals controversy by the Paris Tribunal, the settle- ment of the Newfoundland fisheries controversy by The Hague Tribunal are three great substantial steps toward permanent peace, three facts accomplished that have done more for the cause than anything else in history. If now we can negotiat-e and put through a positive agreement with some great nation to abide the adjudication of an international arbitral court in every issue which can not be settled by negotiation, no matter what it involves, whether honor, territor\% or money, we shall have made a long step forward by demonstrating that it is possible for two nations at least to establish as between them the same system of due process of law that exists between individuals under a government. It seems to be the view of many that it is inconsistent for those of us who advocate any kind of preparation for war or any mainten- 8 ance of armed force or fortification to raise our voices for peacefxil means of settling* international controversies. But I think this view is quite unjust and is not practical. We only recognize existing- con- ditions and know that we have not reached a point where war is im- possible or out of the question, and do not believe that the point has been reached in which all nations are so constituted that they may not at times violate their national obligations. Take, thus, the question of the Panama Canal. We have a property which, when completed, will be worth $400,000,000 — at least it will have cost us that. It has been built not alone to further the cause of the world's commerce, but also to bring oui* eastern and western seaboards closer together and to secure us the military benefit enabling our naval fleet to pass quickly from one ocean to the other. Now, the works of the canal are of such a character that a war vessel might easily put the canal out of commission. We are authorized to police the canal and protect it, and we have the treaty right to erect fortifications there. Fortifications are the best and most secure method of protecting that canal against the attack of some irresponsible nation or armed force. It is said that we could neutralize the canal and by inducing all nations to agree not to attack the canal secure its immunity from in- jury. But the trouble is that nations are quite as likely as men to vio- late their obligations under great stress like that of war. It seems to me that we ought to put ourselves in a position with reference to this very valuable and delicate piece of property so that, should auy na- tion forget its obligation, we would be in a position to prevent unlawful injury to this instrument of commerce so valuable to the world and so indispensable to us. The fact that we fortify the canal will not pre- vent us from discharging all international obligations that we may have in respect to it, but it will enable us to defend ourselves in its posses- sion against the act of every irresponsible force or nation. It will not prevent our maintaining its neutrality if that is wise and right. I would like to invite attention to an interesting incident within the last month. Suppose a Dreadnought under the command of the men who have recently been in command of Dreadtwiiphts were to seek entrance to that canal by force. What we need is something to defend what is ours, and because we have the means of defending it is no reason why we should not neutralize the canal completely if that be wise. Again, our strong feeling in favor of peace, it seems to me, ought not to prevent our taking the proper steps under existing conditions to maintain our national defenses. We have on the continent of the United States excellent coast defenses for every important harbor that an enemy could enter. We probably ought to see to it that we have ammunition and guns enough for ready use in case of emergency. We have a small but very efficient Army of 80,000 men. We have a militia of about 135,000 men. The Army is so constituted that we could enlarge it from a skeleton organization into a much larger body. We ought to have more trained officers, so as to furnish the teachers to a larger body of men that war might require us to enlist. 9 There has been a good deal of talk in the papers, and some refer- ence in Congress, to the supposed helpless condition of this country in the event of a foreign invasion, I venture to think that much more has been made of this than the facts, calmly considered, would justify. We have a very good Navy, and with the opening of the Panama Canal it will be a much more effective one. It would be useful to prevent the coming of an invading army across the seas. The people of this country will never consent to the maintenance of a standing army which military experts would pronounce sufficiently large to cope in battle with the standing armies of Europe, should they get by our Navy, avoid oui* harbor defenses, and descend upon our coast. If this leaves us in a position of helplessness, then so be it. For those who understand the popular will in this country know that it can not be otherwise. We shall do everything in the way of wise mili- tary preparation if we maintain our present Kegular Army, if we con- tinue to improve the national militia, if we pass the pending volunteer bill, to go into operation when war is declared and not to involve the Nation in a dollar's worth of expense until the emergency arises; if we pass a law, now pending in Congress, which will give us a force of additional officers trained in the military art, and able in times of peace to render efficient service in drilling the militia of the States, and in filling useful quasi-civil positions that are of the utmost advantage to the Government, and if we in a reasonable time accumulate guns and ammunition enough to equip and arm the force we could enlist under our colors in 9,n emergency. This discussion of needed military preparations does not sound very well at a peace meeting, but the trouble about a peace meet- ing is that it seems to be just one-half of the picture, and I want to introduce the whole picture in order that what is resolved here and what is said here may be understood to be said with a view to existing conditions and to the practical truth. I have said this much in order to allay the so-called war scare which has furnished pabulum for the newspapers during the last few days. There is not the slightest reason for such a sensation. We are at peace with all the nations of the world, and are quite likely to re- main so as far as we can see into the future. Just a little more fore- thought, a little more attention to the matter on the part of Congress, and we shall have all of the Army and all of the munitions and ma- terial of war that we ought to have in a Republic situated, as we are, 3,000 miles on one hand and 5,000 miles on the other from the source of possible invasion. Our Army is much more expensive per man than that of any other nation, and it is not an vmmixed evil that it is so, because it necessarily restricts us to the maintenance of a force which is indispensable in the ordinary policing of this country and our de- pendencies, and furnishes an additional reason for our using every en- deavor to maintain peace. I congratulate this association on the recent foundation of Mr. Carnegie, bj^ which, under the wise guidance of Mr. Elihu Root, Mr. Knox, and their associates, an income of half a million of dollars an- 10 niially is to be exjioiuled in tho practical promotion of movements to secnrvi permanent x)eace. The wise discretion given to tlie trnstees, and their known ability, foresight, and common sense, insures the useful- ness of the gift. War has not disappeared and history will not be free from it for years to come, but the worst pessimist can not be blind to the fact that in the last 25 years long steps have been taken in the direction of the pea'jeful settleinent of international controversies, and the es- tablishment of a general arbitral court for all nations is no longer the figment of the brain of a dreamy enthusiast. ADDRESS OF PRESIDENT TAFT AT THE DINNER OF THE PENN- SYLVANIA SOCIETY, HOTEL ASTOR, NEW YORK CITY, JAN- UARY 21, 1911. Gentlemen of the Pennsylvania Society : — I am glad to be here and am glad to know that so much of the energy, the enterprise, and the intelligence of New Y'ork has been contributed by the sons of William Penn. William Penn was in favor of peace. So, too, are the men of Pennsylvania. But I assume that they are practical men who do not lose sight of facts and existing conditions in an ecstacy of hope and Utopian enthusiasm. I ain going to invite your attention to the question now pending in Congress as to whether the Panama Canal ought to be fortified. I can not think that any careful person will read the record of historical facts, treaties, and acts of Congress, and diplomatic negotiations with- out conceding the full right of the United States to fortify the canal. But memories are short, records are not always at hand, and without in the slightest degree conceding that the existence of the full right of the United States to fortify her own property on the Isthmus is in the slightest doubt, I venture, before considering the question of the policy of fortifying the canal, to refer to the historj^ which makes the right incontestable. In 1850 we made the Clayton-Bulwer treaty with England, which contemplated a canal built by somebody other than the contracting par- ties and probably by private enterprise across Central America or the Isthmus of Panama. By that treaty we agreed with England that we would neither of us own any part of the land in which the canal was to be built, and we would neither of us fortify it, and we would unite together in guaranteeing its neutrality and would invite the rest of the nations to become parties to the agreement. The canal was not built under that treaty. The French attempted it and failed. We had a Spanish war. The cruise of the Oregon of 12,000 miles along the sea- coast of two continents, from San Francisco to Cuba, at a time when the seat of war was in the West Indies fastened the attention of the American people upon the absolute necessity for a canal as a military instrLiment for doubling the efficiency of our Navy and for preventing 11 a division of our forces of defense which might in the future subject lis to hinniliating defeat. This lesson brought about the effort to mod 11 y the Clayton-Iluhver treaty for the very purpose of securing the right on the part of the United States to own the land through which the canal was to be built, to construct the can^l itself, and to regain thvi power to fortify the canal, which it had parted with in the treaty of IS.")!) under .other conditions. The »orrespondenee between Lord Lans- downe and Mr. Hay, as well as Mr. Hay's statement to the Senate in transmitting the treaty which was finally ratified, show beyond per- Jid venture that it was recognized by both parties to that treaty, first, th.it the canal to be built should be one to be built by the United States, to be owned by the United States, to be managed by the United States, and that the neutrality of the canal which was to be maintained, was to be maintained by the United States ; second, that nothing in the ti-eaty would prevent the United States from fortifying the canal, and that in case of war between the United States and England or any other country nothing in the treat}^ would prevent the United States from clos- ing the canal to the shipping of an enemy. In the absence of treaty re- striction, of course, these rights inhere in the sovereignty of the United States and the control of its own. It is perfectly palpable that this was insisted upon by the Senate, for the reason that one of the main motives in the construction of the canal was the extension of the coast line of the United States through the canal and the use of the canal in time of war as an instrument of defense. The guaranty of neutrality in the treaty la subject, and necessarily subject, to this construction. The purpose and assertion of the right of the people of the United States to fortify the canal are shown again in the passage of the Spooner Act in 1902, directing the President to build the canal and to make proper defenses. The treaty with Panama reaffirms the treaty with England, made in 1900, and expressly gives to the United States the power of fortification. How, then, can anyone dispute the right of the United States to fortify the canal, when the English treaty was amended for the very purpose of regaining it, when it is expressly given in the treaty' made with Panama that granted us the land on which to build the canal, and when not a single foreign nation — including in this England, who has made a treaty with us on the subject — has ever seen fit to suggest a lack of power to do that which an act of Congress nine years old directed the President to do, and on the faith of which $500,000,000 are being expended? The right of the United States to fortify the canal and to close it against the use of an enemy in time of war being established, what should be its policy? We built the canal to help us defend the country; not to help an enemy to attack it. Even if a certain and practical neutralization of the canal by hn agreement of all nations could be se- cured to us when engaged in war, an enemy could then use the canal for transit to attack us in both oceans as we propose to use it to de- fend ourselves. Aftep expending $500,000,000 thus to make our national defense easier, are we to surrender half the military value of the canal by giving the benefit of it to a nation seeking to destroy us? It 12 seems to me that the very statement of the propositioa carries its re- futation. But it is said that we ought to defend the canal by our Navy. I am not a strategist ; I am not a military or a naval expert ; but it seems to me as plain as that one and one are two that a navy is for the purpose of defense through offense, for the purpose of protection by attack, and that if we have to retain a part of our Navy -in order to defend the canal on both sides, then the canal becomes a burden and not an instrument of defense at all. The canal ought to defend itself, and we ought to have fortifications there which will be powerful enough to keep off the navies of any nation that might possibly attack us. I am glad to see that Capt. Mahan, one of the greatest naval strategists, in a communication to this morning's Tribune, confirms this view. Again, under our treaty with England and other countries, it is we who guarantee the neutrality of the canal. It is not the other coun- tries that guarantee it to us, and we are bound, if we conform to the treaty with England, to put ourselves in svich a condition that we can perform that guaranty. Suppose England is at war with some other country that is not bound to us by treaty rights at all ; is not it es- sential that we should have fortifications there to protect the canal, not only for our own use and for the world's commerce, but for the use of England and her warships as a means of passage? In other words, we have to preserve that canal as a means of transit to belligerents in time of war as long as we are ourselves not engaged in the contro- versy. But it is said that we could induce all the powers to come in and consent to the neutrality of the canal as a treaty obligation. I should be glad to do this if possible ; but even if we do this, can we feel en- tirely safe by reason of that agreement from a possible injury to the canal by some irresponsible belligerent, at least under conditions as they now are? Then it is said that the fortifications are going to cost $50,000,000. This is an error. The estimated cost of the fortifications for the canal is $13,000,000. That, I submit, constitutes hardly more than two per cent, of the cost of the canal — a first premium for insuring its safety that is not excessive. It is also said that it will cost $5,000,000 a year to maintain them. This is also an error. I have consulted the War Department, and they advise me that the addition to the annual Government cost of mainten- ance of fortifications and military establishment in time of peace due to the fortifications of the canal would not exceed half a million dol- lars — an annual insurance rate after first cost of a tenth of one per cent. The case of the Suez Canal furnishes no analogy whatever. In the first place, the Suez Canal is nothing but a ditch in a desert, inca- pable of destruction, and even when obstructed it can be cleared within a very short time. The Panama Canal, by the destruction of the gate locks, could be put out of commission for two years, and the whole eo»nmerce of the world made to suffer therefrom. 13 Ag-ain, the land throug-h which the Suez Canal runs is not in the jurisdiction of England or of any one of the five great powers. Many nations partake in the ownership of the canal, and it is not within the control of any single nation. The circumstances under which the Panama Canal has been building, the ownership of the strip, and one of the main purposes for which it was constructed are very different and make it exactly as if it were a canal cut through the narrow part of Florida. It is on American soil and under American control, and it needs our fortifications for national defense just as much as the City of Xew York needs fortifications, and there is the additional reason that we ought to have them in order to perform our international obliga- tions. I yield to no one in my love of peace, in my hatred of war, and in my earnest desire to avoid war. I believe that we have made great strides toward peace within the last decade. No one that I know of goes further in favor of settling international controversies by arbi- tration than I do, and if I kave my way and am able to secure the assent of other powers, I shall submit to the Senate arbitration treaties broader in their terms than any that body has heretofore ratified, and broader than any that now exist between the nations. In laying down my office, I could leave no greater claim to the gratitude of my countrymen than to have secured such treaties. But I can not permit myself in the enthusiastic desire to secure universal peace to blind myself to the pos- sibilities of war. We have not reached the time when we can count on the settlement of all international controversies by the arbitrament of a tribunal. I welcome most highly the rapidly increasing ranks of the advocates of peace. They help to form a public opinion of the world that is, with appreciable progress, forcing nations to a settlement of quarrels by negotiation or peace tribunal. When adjudication by arbitral court shall be accepted, the motive for armament will disappear. But we can not hope to bring about such a condition for decades. Meantime, we must face the facts and see the conditions as thej^ are. Some earnest advocates of peace weaken their advocacy by failing to do this. War is still a possibility ; and a President, a Senator, a Congressman, who ignores it, as something against which proper precautions should be taken, subjects himself in time of peace to the just criticism of all reason- able men, and when war comes and finds the nation unprepared, to the unanimous condemnation of his indignant fellow-countrymen. ADDT7ESS OF PRESIDENT TAFT BEFORE THE THIRD Nx\TIOXAT, PEACE CONFEEENCE, AT THE LYEIC THEATER, BALTIMORE, MD., MAY 3, 1911. Mb. Chairman and Ladies and Gentlemen : — It expresses my feel- ini^-s when I say that I am frightened by the introduction of the chairman. I have been told before that I exercise in the presic^ential 14 oflRce greater power than any man on earth, and I have been able to take that idea in and know how much of it is. real fact and how much of it is eloquence turning a good period. It is possible that the Presi- dent does exercise greater power than that of any other ruler in the world, but I am able to give you a little information from the stand- point of one with some opportunity to observe, and I am bound to say that the burden and responsibility of the position are brought home to him much more clearly than the power. Your chairman has been good enough to refer to what I have said with reference to general arbitration, and to my expressed opinion that an arbitration treaty of the widest scope between two great nations would be a very important step in securing the peace of the world. I don't claim any patent for a new discovery in that suggestion, be- cause I have no doubt that it has often been made before and has long been shared by all who understand the situation at all. If such an arbitration treaty can be concluded I have no doubt that an important step will have been taken, but it will not bring an end of war. It is a step only, and we must not defeat our purposes by enlarging the ex- pectation of the world as to what is to happen and by then disap- pointing it. We must realize that we are dealing with a world that is fallible and -full of weakness, with somewhat of wickedness in it, and that reforms that are worth having are brought about little by little, and not by one blow. I don't mean to say by this that I am not greatly interested and enthusiastic in seeking to secure the arbitration treaty or treaties that are suggested, but I do think we are likely to make more progress if we express our hopes with moderation and realize the difficulties that are to be overcome than if we proclaim that we have opened the gate of eternal peace with one key within one year. I am not going to dwell upon the question of the arbitration treaty which is in the process of negotiation. The truth is, I would much rather stand upon the platform and refer to such a step when taken, to such a treaty when made and acquiesced in, than to discuss it during its negotiation ; and therefore I would wish to direct the few remarks I address to you this afternoon to other but kindred subjects. I have recently received a great many invitations from various asso- ciations whose titles indicated that tlieir purpose was the promotion of peace, and it has seemed to me that in their closer co-operation we might find some opportunity for an improvement in the movement and give greater force to the cause by organized expression. You have a congress here, and in this congress I assume that a good many associations take part. Have you any basis of organization and union which unites your efforts in anything but this congress? Don't you think you had better bind your peace associations together in a federation and make your efforts united toward the one object you have in view? Aren't you likely to squander a little of your force if you maintain isolated associations without union? My second suggestion is that one of the evidences of an improvement in the world for peace is the fact that all state departments, all foreign chancelleries, are themselves now organized into agencies for the pro- 15 motion of peace bj' negotiation. The State Department at Washing-ton hi.s no more important or absorbing duty than to lend its good offices to the 20 Eepublics of this hemisphere to prevent their various ditler- ences from leading into war. And not to go back of this administration, there have been four instances in which the action of our State Depart- ment, taken in connection with some of the influential countries of South America, has absolutely prevented war, which 20 or 30 years ago would certainly have ensued. The recurrence of war is not now so frequent between stable and powerful governments maintaining law and order within their respective borders as it is in those governments which do not exercise complete control over their people, and in which revolutions and insurrections break out, not only to the injury and danger of the people and their property and of the government itself, but to the disturbance of all the world in their neighborhood. It is with reference to disturbances of this kind that the United States and the other great Eepublics of this hemi- sphere must exercise their kindly and peaceful influence aj much as possible. One of the difficulties that the United States finds is the natural suspicion that the countries engaged have of the motive which the United States has in tendering its good offices. Asseveration of good faith helps but little whei:e the suspicion is real, and yet I like to avail myself of an opportunity in such a presence as this, to assert that there is not in the whole length and breadth of the United States, among its people, any desire for territorial aggrandizement, and that its people as a whole will not permit its Government, if it would, to take any steps in respect to foreign peoples looking to a forcible extension of our political power. We have had wars, and we know what they are. We know what responsibilities they entail, the burdens and losses and horrors, and we would have none of them. We have a magnificent domain of our own in which we are attempting to work out and show to the world success in popular government, and we need no more territory in which to show that. But we have attained great prosperity and great power. We have become a powerful member of the community of nations in which v/e live, and thei-e is therefore thrust upon us necessarily a care and respon- sibility for the peace of the world in our neighborhood and a burden of helping those nations that cannot help themselves, if we may do that peacefully and etfectivel3\ Xow, we have undertaken such a duty in respect to Santo Domingo. She was torn with contending factions. Foreign governments held her bonds and desired to collect what was due. W^e entered into an arrange- ment by which we put in our revenue officers to collect the revenues. We took charge of the customhouse, and that mere agency gave us an instrumentality by which we have enabled that nation to go on, until she is rapidly paying off her debts and becoming powerfid and pros- perous. While our revenue collectors have been there she has had no faction or revolution. I may add that our position with respect to Santo Domingo enabled us to intervene when she and Haiti tlijuglit it was 16 necessary to fig-ht about something and to indiice those two nations to submit their differences to The Hague. And now, my friends, I shall not continue these desultory remarks. I only want to saj^ that I am glad to come here to this world's congress of peace, and, in so far as I have any representative character, by my presence here, to lend to it the support and approval of the people of the United States. ADDEESS OF PRESIDENT TAFT AT ARLINGTON CEMETERY, ON MEMORIAL DAY, MAY 30, 1911. As we gather in this assembly, with all the thoughts that its sur- roundings suggest, the question presents itself, "What is the purpose of these commemorative services?" It is said that we are here to pay tribute to our patriotic dead — to those who yielded up their lives that our country might be saved. But does our coming here and do our ceremonies and hymns and eloquent tributes make the dead happier? If from somewhere their souls contemplate this soene, are they gratified merely because we praise them? Is it not rather that they can see that the influence of their deeds lives after them in the uplifting and revital- izing of the highest ideals of the living? These ceremonies are not for the benefit of the dead. They are to keep green the memory of their deeds and thereby to stir in the living members of society — in the citi- zens of to-day — the spirit of high appreciation and enthusiastic emulation of those supreme sacrifices for their fellow-countrymen that the sight of these graves of the dead makes alive to us. Love of country, love of family, love of God — it is difficult to classifj^ these affections of the human heart and soul, for they so melt into each other that the one who has most of one has most of all. As we stand, however, in the presence of the dead on this beautiful Mgiy morning and seek to realize and enjoy the essence of patriotism which, like incense, steals into the atmosphere of this sacred spot, we find ourselves slipping into a conception of war as necessary to human development, the making- of human character, and the exhibition of the highest human ideals. We lost sight of the cruelty, the courage, the arousing of the most brutal hunaan passion, the indifference to human suffering, the meanest human ambitions, the ghoulish corruption, and all the other wickedness that follows in. the trail of war, and we think only of the calm spirit of supreme self-sacrifice that ennobled the brave soldier who lost his life in the shock of battle and who rests peaceful!/ with his comrades in these beautiful shades. Of course, it is necessary that we should have sin and temptation if we would have exhibitions of virtue which resist them ; bvit is that a reason #or favoring either temptation or sin? Of course, in order that we should know the existence and power of the highest traits of the human soul, we must have human tragedies, but certainly no one would promote a tragedy for the purpose of furnishing to the world proof of the existence of such traits. Strive as we may to prevent or destroy 17 them, we shall have sin and wickedness and temptation and tragedy enough as a school of experience, development and demonstration of human character. The same answer must be made ^o those who permit themselves to advocate war as a necessary experience in the development of man. There was a time when an insult by one man to another in the same social class could only be wiped out by the blood of the other in a mortal duel, and in those days it took more moral courage to avoid a duel than to fight one. We have made great progress, almost within our own memory, in such ideals. If that be true of men, why may it not be true in the near future of nations? Why will it not show more patriotism and more love of country to refuse to go to war for an insult and to submit it to the arbitrament of a peaceful tribunal, than to subject a whole people to the misery and cruelty and suffering and burden of heavy cost of a national war, however glossed over by the excitement and ambitions and the glory of a successful conquest? The lesson in national restraint, the looking at things as they are, the rejecting of the dictates of false pride, and the following of the teachings of the Master of men are not at all inconsistent with, and do not detract from, the continuance of the highest love of country and of one's countrymen. Far be it from me to minimize in any way by these suggestions the debt we owe to the men buried here who carried on the successful struggle that resulted in the abolition of the cancer of slavery and which seemed ineradicable save by an awful slaughter of the brightest and bravest and best of the Nation's youth and manhood. I shall not stop to discuss whether it might have been possible to accomplish the same great reform by milder methods. Whether that be true or not, the supreme sacrifice of these men, who lie about us, in the course of advancing humanity can never be lessened ot obscured by such a suggestion. But the thought at which I would but hint this morning is that even in the hallowed presence of these dead, whose ideals of patriotism and love of their countrymen it needed a war to make ever- lastingly evident, we should abate no effort and should strain every nerve and avail ourselves of every honorable possible device to avoid war in the future. I am not blind to the aid in creating sturdy manhood that the mili- tary discipline we see in the standing armies of Europe and in the Regu- lar Army of this country furniishes, nor do I deny the incidental benefits that may grow out of the exigencies and sequelae of war. But when the books are balanced the awful horrors of either internecine or inter- national strife far outweigh the benefits that may be traced to it. Let us leave this beautiful city of the national dead, therefore, with the deepest gratitude to the men whose valorous deeds we celebrate and whose memories we cherish with the tenderest appreciation of the value of the examples they set, but with a determination in every way possible, consistent with honesty and manly and national self-restraint, to avoid the necessity for the display of that supreme self-sacrifice that we com- memorate to-day in them. 18 ADDEESS OF PKESIPENT TAFT AT THE MARION (IND.) BRANCH OF THE NATIONAL HOME FOR DISABLED VOLUNTEER SOL- DIERS, JULY 2. 1911. Members of the National Volunteer SoLi)iERs' Home of Marion : — Such an audience as this, on the eve of the natal day of the Nation, stirs the depths of one's patriotic feeling. Harbors of jrefuge and havens of rest for those who in the stormy passages of their lives bared their breasts, in behalf of their country, to hostile bullets, serve tw^o high purposes : In the first place, they contribute to the payment of their country's everlasting debt to its defenders ; and, in the second place, they make known to all citizens the care which they may expect from a grateful Nation should they in a similar crisis offer their lives to save the Government. Better than monuments of brass to the dead are the comforts to the living in their old age, as an evidence of the country's love and veneration for patriotic self-sacrifice. Much more stimulating to the young is the contemplation of the Nation's heroes living in retire- ment, but in comfort, at its expense, and bringing back in their grizzled faces, in their armless sleeves, in their limbless bodies, the dangers they ran and the deeds they did. Of course such a presence can not but by reminiscence suggest the subject of war, for it was in the greatest war of modern times that the members of this home earned their right to be here. But war suggests its counterpart. It is those who have seen the horrors of war, who have felt its hardships, and have realized its cruelties, and seen the awful passions it could arouse, who have witnessed the suffering and brutality, as well as the courage and self-sacrifice, that know its evils, and that feel most deeply the necessity for avoiding it when possible. No man loved peace more than Grant and Sherman. Neither general hesitated, in time of war, to accomplish the national purpose, to sacrifice the lives that were necessary to achieve victory. Their greatness, how- ever, consisted in recognizing the necessity for action and in seeing clearly that if victories were to be won lives must be given up, and that any attempts to temporize with the occasion and mitigate the awful horrors would only lengthen the war and postpone the coming of peace, with all the suffering that such postponement necessarily entailed. No men were really more tender-hearted than they ; and after the war none were more emphatic in their advocacy of peace and in their detesta- tion of war. It is certain that Grant in his travels in Europe took less interest in the memorials of Napoleon, the greatest soldier of the world, than in a study of social conditions and a comparison of the peoples of the countries that he visited with those of his own. He had no patience with a military genius who sacrificed countries and peoples to his ambi- tion, and whose whole history is nothing but a trail of bloody conqi/est following the lust of power and' ultimate defeat, in all of which the people of France and of Europe were made to pay the cost and render the sacrifices. I am far from saying that war has not in times past accomplished much in the progress of the world. Whether the same progress might 19 have been achieved in a more peaceful way it is unnecessary to discuss. Probably not. It was by war that this country gained its independence of Great Britain. , One hundred and thirtj^-iive years ago the Declaration of Independence was signed, which changed a protest under arms against unjust government to a successful revolution. If England had been better advised, probably war would not have ensued, and we might now be, as in the case of Canada, cherishing attachment to the mother country without exercising complete independence. Certain it is that the lesson which we taught England she took to her heart, and in her colonial policy she continued to lighten the bonds which she had laid upon her colonies, until now they have no weight, and are merely nerves of affec- tion from a mother to children, evincing an authority that, however great in form, is in fact, in the wisdom of the mother country, one of only nominal restriction. When, therefore, our forefathers signed that great instrument of independence, they were acting not only on behalf of the Thirteen Colonies of America, but they were building better than they knew in that the result of their protest was to be a change of the entire colonial policy of Great Britain in the making of her English- speaking colonies that girdled the earth self-governing and independent ; and this result was achieved, not by war with the colonies, but by the persuasiveness of the error that she had made in dealing with us. The War of 1812 might certainly have been avoided by arbitration. The questions there presented were questions all of which have been settled by the judgment of mankind in favor of our side of the con- troversy. The War with Mexico — though there is some dispute over this — was one the questions of which were capable of solution by an impartial tribunal. Whether the Civil War could have been avoided is a very diffi- cult question to answer. When slavery has become embedded in the social fiber of a country it is possible that only an excision of a war knife can remove the cancer. Nor shall I attempt to answer a similar question as to the Spanish War. It is one of those instances of internal discussion like the Civil War ; and yet I believe that the submission of the issues to a tribunal might have affected Spain's treatment of Cuba in such a w^ay that we could have avoided a resort to arms. The truth is the danger of war between two great well-established countries with modern armaments is much less than that kind of war that arises from bad government or from the ambition of sinister men in a weak government, who overturn it. The awful consequences to two heavily armed cotmtries under modern conditions of war have been a great deterrent of war ; but the irrespon- sibility of men claiming to be patriots and desiring to overturn existing governments where law and order are not well established has led to a great deal of guerilla warfare and to the suffering of innocent people, who find no re&l principle involved in the two contending parties except that of ambition for power. Much of this kind of work has occurred in South America and in Central America; and in that degree of guardianship which the United States must feel over the Eepublics of this hemisphere, in maintaining 20 their integrity against European invasion, we ought to welcome every opportunity which gives us a legitimate instrument by which we can make less probable such internecine strife. In the assertion of that sort of guardianship we have to be very careful to avoid the charge, which is always made by the suspicious, that we are seeking our own aggran- dizement in our interference with the affairs of other countries of this hemisphere. It is an unfounded charge, for we envy no power its terri- tory. We have enough. But we have been able to fend off war in five or more instances of recent date, because of our attitude as an elder brother of these smaller governments. Thus, in Cuba, after the Piatt amendment, we were able to intervene and prevent a bloody war of revolution, and this after 20,000 rebels against the constituted Government were in arms immediately outside the city of Havana, ready to take part. We were able, by reason of the agreement we made with Santo Domingo, to help her collect her revenue and liquidate and satisfy her legitimate debts, by putting our agents in charge of the customhouses, to take away the chief motive for a rebellion and the chief hope of success of a revolution, which is the acquisition of the customhouse in order to collect taxes. And, by reason of our intervention between Haiti and Santo Domingo, we have been able to prevent a war between those two countries, growing out of a dispute over a boundary line, which is now in course of reference to The Hague. So, too, as between Peru and Ecuador, we were able, with the assistance of the great South American Republics — Brazil, Ar- gentine and Chile — to stop a war that was on the eve of breaking out, a war that involved chiefly a question of honor, and both countries became willing to submit it to negotiation and arbitration. We have always believed that the course we pursued impressing Bolivia and Peru to settle their boundary dispute prevented hostilities between those countries. The situation was most acute when our advice was sought by both countries. We have been able to bring the heads of two contending factions in a civil war in Honduras onto the deck of an American vessel and there negotiate terms which have led to permanent peace. Now Honduras and Nicaragua ask us to assist them in paying their debts by agreeing in case of a default to accept responsibility for the collection of the revenues and to make settlements in accordance with the contracts of indebtedness. These two treaties are pending in the Senate. I sincerely hope that they may be confirmed, because I do not know any other power that is so useful in the prevention of war as that which enables the United States Government to collect revenue of bank- rupt and unstable governments and to apply them as law and the con- tracts made require, and thus to put the governments on their feet firmly. It has worked out with the Republic of Santo Domingo in a most remarkable way to the benefit of that country in the cause of peace, and we can be certain that it will work in the same way in the case of Honduras and Nicaragua if only the Senate will agree with the Executive and confirm the treaties made. I have merely stated to you what has been accomplished in the present administration in the securing of peace among our South Amer- ican and Central American friends. Treaties of arbitration in the 21 matter of claims have been confirmed between them, and long steps were made by onr predecessors in office in this direction. Indeed, the pacification of Cuba belongs to the last administration, and not to this. As we look back, therefore, it will not do to say that great strides have not been made in the direction of universal peace. Of course, the condition of Mexico may well make us hesitate to prophesy too strongly as to the future, but all the lovers of mankind hope that the present condition of that country may lead to the establishment of a firm government, and one in which there may not be the same occasion for popular unrest as that which gave rise to the recent collision. For the further securing of peace, and as an example to all the world of the possibilities of the use of arbitration, we have invited Eng- land and France and Germany to make a treaty for the arbitraLtion of all differences of an international character that in their nature can be adjudicated, and we have left out in this treaty those exceptions which have heretofore always been excluded from arbitrable controversies, to wit, questions of a nation's honor and of its vital interest. Of course, I can not say with positireness that these treaties will all be made and confirmed. I can only say that the prospect of an agreement with the Executive of one of the countries is reasonably sure, and we have every hope as to the other two, and that these three treaties will be followed by many of the same tenor with other countries if the original three are agreed upon and confirmed. Objection has been made that an agreement to arbitrate a question of national honor ought not to be entered into for the reason that when once honor is affected one will never consent to have the question arbi- trated, and therefore that to agree to do so in advance is to agrefe to do something that one will not be walling to do, and that one does not intend to do, and therefore it savors of hypocrisy and ought not to ba adopted as a national policy. I cannot concede the premises of this argument. I look upon a treaty of this sort as a self-denying ordinance, as a self-restricting obligation. It seems to be of the same character as the Constitution which the people as a whole set up and in which they impose checks upon their own power and limitations upon the method by which they exercise the ultimate sovereignty w^hich is in them. It is not that they do not recognize that w^hen the temptation comes to exercise arbitrary power they will not feel like exercising it, but it is that they deliberately impose these limitations upon their own action with the intention that they shall be effective, however averse they may be to yield to them when the occasion arises for their enforcement. And so in agreeing to arbitrate questions of national honor I see no reason why we may not agree to do so and that we may not have moral courage enough, in spite of our impulse to the contrary, to submit such questions to an impartial tribunal and await its judgment. V As I have had occasion to say before, there was a time when ques- tions of honor could only be settled between gentlemen on the dueling field, and many a valuable life has been sacrificed to a standard of ethics which the world has now generally discarded. There is not the slightest reason why the same course may not be pursued in respect to questions 22 of national honor. There is very little probability as bcLweeu (Jrcal Britain and the United States any occasion will ever arise in which war would be possible. The same thing is true of France and Germany. Why, therefore, it is asked, is it necessary to make a treaty of arbitration to avoid wars that are only remotely possible? International law is made up of international customs, traditions and the formulation of in- ternational standards of ethics in treaties between civilized governments. A willingness of great countries like those of England, France, Ger- many and the United States to submit all their differences, even of honor, to an impartial tribunal, will be a step forward in the cause of peace for the world that can hardly be overestimated. I am not a wild enthusiast or a blind optimist. I do not look forward to a complete restoration of peace which can not be disturbed in the world even if these treaties are adopted. Morality of nations improves only step by step, and so the making and confirming of these treaties must be regarded only as a step, but a very long step, toward the securing of peace in the world. To you men who have seen war, to ,you who know its horrors, I appeal for the support of every practical instrument like this in making war less possible and peace more perma- nent. ADDKESS OF PRESIDENT TAFT TO THE METHODIST CHAUTAUQUA, AT MOUNTAIN LAKE PARK, MD., AUGUST 7, 1911. Ladjes and Gentlemen :— I have snatched a day out of my official work to come up into this delightful mountain country to talk to you about peace. I am not a blind optimist nor a wild enthusiast in the advocacy of an immediate change of human nature as it exhibits itself in the individual man or in the aggregation of men in human governments. I realize that moral changes among all the people and in the countries of the world take place step by step, and that progress is made only by moderate advances from time to time. I know that in the last 30 years the armaments of the great powers, especially in the main means of naval attack and defense, have increased enormously, and a sur- face view of this tendency would discourage one in the hope that we are coming nearer to an era of universal jDcace. But it will be found on study that while preparations for war have been greater than ever before, actual conflicts are much less, and that the very preparations, with their heavy expense and with the prospect of bankrupting losses in actual battle and campaigns, have operated more than ever before as deterrent of war and promoting peace. lAvice in public addresses I expressed the view that arbitration as a means of settling differences between the nations might be greatly extended to include even those things which have heretofore been ex- cluded, to wit, questions of honor and of vital interest. The eager- ness and enthusiasm with which those tentative and informal proposals were received by the great men of England of both parties and by statesmen of many other countries is perhaps the most encouraging cir- 23 cnmstance in a century for those who longed for the end of war. It was not that the statesmen and the nations thus welcoming- the proposal in- tended to disarm or to stop their preparations for possible war, but it was that they welcomed from the bottom of their hearts every attempt to substitute for war a peaceful means for the settlement of the con- troversies between nations, with the hope that when the instrumentality shall have proved itself effective as a substitute for war then the heavy and bankrupting burdens of present war preparations may be substan- tially reduced. The tentative proposals to which I have referred led naturally on to negotiations between Great Britain and this country' and between France and this country, and they have now resulted in the signing of formal treaties of what may be called "universal arbitration." They provide that every question of a justiciable nature shall be submitted to a tribunal of arbitration, and they define what justiciable means. It is any issue between the nations that can be properly settled upon the principles of law and equity, as those are understood in law and in in- ternational law. There are, of course, questions of policy with respect to which each nation must exercise its own discretion, and in doing so is entirely within its legal and equitable right, and however its action may affect the other nation it is not the proper subject of controversy. But even with reference to such questions, it is proposed to submit those to an impartial commission, in which both countries are equally represented, and they are to consider the matter for a year and then decide, first, whether the matters are capable of arbitration, and, if not, they are to recommend a settlement. If the controversies are found by the commission to be capable of arbitration, and not to be settled by negotiations, then the countries are bound to arbitrate them and accept the decision. The machinery thus provided will practically dis- pose of every question so far as it is a war-inducing issue. A year's pandering over matters we can be sure will give such pause to the hot feelings of either nation as to lead to a sensible and peaceful solu- tion. Indeed, with the preliminary commission for consideration of the issues and recommendations for their proper settlement, the treaty may be called almost a treaty not only to avoid war but even to avoid arbitration, for it is only in the last instance, after the commission shall have failed in a year's time to suggest a satisfactory solution, that even arbitration is to be resorted to. In the old treaty of arbitration with Great Britain the subjects of national honor and of vital interest were excepted from those which were to be considered by a tribunal of arbitration. This treaty is made for the purpose of eliminating those exceptions, and they are now subject to arbitration within the limitations of the treaty. The treaty-making power in the United States is vested by the Con- stitution in the Executive and the Senate, it being required that each treaty before it can become effective shall be advised and assented to by the Senate, two-thirds of that body assenting. Hence binding action with respect to international contracts, like those for arbitration, can only be had by concurrent action of the Executive and the Senate. 24 Therefore, it is provided in these new arbitration treaties that while the united States and Great Britain or the United States and France agree to arbitrate every question within the terms, of the treaty, the special agreement of submission, or the terms of submission, as they are sometimes called, in each instance arising when the operation of the treaty is invoked, shall be considered and acted upon by the same au- thority which entered into the main treaty of arbitration. In other words, by this treaty, if it is ratified, the Executive and the Senate, rep- resenting the United States, agree to settle all their differences, as de- scribed in the treaty, by arbitration or through a commission. When a concrete instance of a cause of difference or controversy arises, then the obligations of the main treaty require the United States, through its lawfully constituted authority, to wit, the Executive and the Senate, to make the requisite agreement and submission of terms by which the machinery created in the treaty shall be set in motion, the issue defined, and the question decided. Should the treaty be ratified, the Senate, exactly as the Executive, will be in honor bound by its obligations in good faith to i>erform the offices which the main treaty provides shall be performed on the side of the United States, and then to abide the result, and to acquiesce, or in so far as may be, per- form and execute the judgment of the tribunal. Treaties with England and France are of the utmost importance, not in the actual prevention of war between those countries, because the danger of such a cataclysm as that is, thank God, most remote, but they are most important as steps toward the settlement of all international controversies between all countries by peaceable means and by arbitra- tion. The fact that two great nations like Great Britain and the United States, or like France and the United States, should be willing to sub- mit all controversies to a peaceful and impartial tribunal can not but work for righteousness among the nations, and for a willingness on their part to adopt the same means for the settlement of international dis- putes. To have those treaties not ratified, therefore, by the Senate of the United States, or to have any hesitation and discussion of a serious character in respect to them would halt the movement toward general peace which has made substantial advance in the last ten years. To secure the ratification of the treaties, therefore, appeal must be made to the moral sense of the nation ; and while that is not entirely in keep- ing of the churches, certainly they may exert a powerful influence in the promotion of any effective instrumentality to secure permanent peace. Therefore, I invoke your aid as a branch of the great Methodist Church to bring all the influence you can bring to secure the confirmation of the treaties now made, and of those which may l)e made hereafter of a sim- ilar tenor with other countries. This movement has attracted the at- tention not only of England and France, but of all the countries of Europe and of the Orient. It is not too much to hope that there are a number of others who will be willing now to sign the same kind of treaties as those already made, and that we may ultimately have a net- work of such agreements, making long strides toward universal peace. On Saturday last the Senate not only made public the treaties now 25 negotiated by the United States with Great Britain and France for uni- versal arbitration, but they also made public treaties between the United States and Nicaragua and between the United States and Honduras. One of the encouraging and marked tendencies in int^^rnational matters is the increasing sense of responsibility that powerful nations are acquiring in respect to bad government and human suffering under bad government in other countries and nations. In our own country this is evidenced by the Spanish War, which was undertaken for the benefit of improving the condition of the people of Cuba. It is evidenced by the time and money and effort which have been spent for the last ten years in improving the Philippines. It is evidenced by the intervention in the last administration to prevent a revolution in Cuba. It is evidenced by the wonderfully successful intervention by Theodore Eoose- velt as President of the United States in securing peace between Russia and Japan. It is evidenced by the treaty made in the last adminis- tration with Santo Domingo, by which we agreed to appoint agents to collect the revenue of Santo Domingo and to secure their application to the wiping out of a national debt which was growing beyond any hope of liquidation. One revolution succeeded another in that unfortunate country, and its history was nothing but one of blood and battle, and its people suffered intense misery from the stagnation and halting of all progress that continual wars compelled. In respect to the Central American Eepublics we occupy a ^- culiar position. By the assertion of the Monroe doctrine we decline to allow any European country to acquire further territory in this hemi- sphere at the expense of any of the existing Republics, and as against such an invasion the Monroe doctrine puts us in the attitude of, in effect, guaranteeing their integrity. When, therefore, European nations, in the enforcement of the debts due to their subjects, threaten measures of force against any Central American Republic which may lead to an appropri- ation of its territory we can not >e indifferent, and we must inter- vene to prevent the logical outcome of such forceful measures. But how can we act as guardian for those Republics in their dealings with Euro- pean nations and their subjects unless we assume some responsibility to enable those countries to liquidate their indebtedness and readjust it on an equitable basis? It is not necessary in doing so for us to as- !cquiescence. The Senate is part of the treaty-making- power of the counliry. A treaty is a contract. It is an agreement by which, if the Government of the United States is a party, those who represent it may bind it to a certain course of action in the future. That is involved in the power to make a treaty itself. A contract — a treaty — is a stipulation as to the future conduct of those who enter into it. Now, if w^e have power to enter into>^ arbitration, we have the power to agree to enter into arbitration^ under conditions that are described in the treaty/ and as we have the right to leave the interests of the country to a judgment of the court, to which it is submitted by agreement, we certainly have the right to submit to that court to decide whether the particular instance and difference which has arisen, or shall arise in the future, is within the description of the treaty and of the obligation which we entered into in the treaty. To say that this is an abdication of the functions of the Senate is to say that it is not the function of the Senate to make an agreement at all w^hich shall bind the Government. I have no desire to minimize in the slightest degree the importance of the Senate as part of the treaty- making power. I have no desire to minimize its importance in the framework of the Government which the drafters of the Constitution founded. It furnishes a second legislative Chamber of Members, with a six years' tenure, which insures a proper check in the sober considera- tion of legislation sent over to it by the House of Eepresentatives, and it properly divides with the Executive the power and responsibility of shaping our international relations. But when the prerogatives of the Senate are spoken of, the term "prerogative" does not make the power which it intends the Senate has any more sacred than the power of the Executive in resipect to the same subject matter. If the Executive and the Senate acting together may make a contract of submission to arbi- tration, there is very little limitation upon the scope of the questions which they have power to submit. The treaty-making power is a very •broad one. and it is not straining it in the slightest to include within it the power to make a treaty of arbitration, by Avhich a certain class of questions described in the treaty are to be submitted to arbitration, and by which the power shall be committed to a tribunal of arbitration to decide whether future instances arising are within the class described in the treaty or not. I had hoped that the treaties, when submitted to the Senate, would meet with early ratifi.cation and concurrence. In this I have been dis- appointed, but I do not wish to be put in an attitude of expressing im- patience at a proper deliberation by the Senate on matters of so great importance as this. On the contrary, I urge such delay and deliberation, because I am convinced that longer consideration will satisfy the Mem- bers of the Senate that the chief objection which seems to be made to the third clause of the treaty has no weight in it whatever. Of course, 32 there Ih a dinVrCllCe between llif nr.nninril, (liiTclcd |,(» wIicIIh r tllO Seiittki littw thfi power to mibmll. I.(» n ■ mimmh . .i..ii ih.- (|iMv(ti(.ii wii.i.h.-r a tUflforeiico \n itrbltrftble or not, Jiml ihr policy (»!' doin;' ..>. i (..ni. ,« myself iinitble to find any JiiHt iirf^-dinenl, upon whii i, ,. .i. i.,i m iii« power of Ihe Hemit^^ f(jr thl« piirpoN^ enn be inx<'d. 'Vhv pidley of the nialter prewenls a Momrwlml, dilTncnl. iMMtM- and fruvl\' Midnnil l.inf^ linporljinl. Inlcrnal lonnl dllVci'cnrrM |.o n Ifilmnal wlicrc wr may win or lo^^e. I venture tliUM, my frlcndM, l,(» point oul. III. .hir-n n.. . Muil. imiy arise belwrnt I deem It my duty, until I shaH reeelvo an adverse decisifm, t(» urg-e my views ujxm the Henatc, ami to inv(dect to foreign countries, and 1 have got to speak with care — I could call your attention to a good many instances where those who are in favor of popular government, and who, if I may use the expression, pull the tail feathers out of the eagle in deifying liberty and apostrophizing everything that we think dear, and yet just as soon as they become a majority they think that gives them the right to control the minority absolutely, and if the minority show any disposition to question it, they send them to jail. What is the effect of that? They say this is popular rule; this is the rule of the ma- jority. So what does the minority do? Why the minority says: "We will take to the woods," and they do take to the woods. And so we have that system that alternates between an election and a revolution and a revolution and an election, and you call that popular government. Now why is it that that works that way? It is because the majority and the minority do not govern themselves and do not exercise that self- restraint without which popular government is absolutely impossible. And that is the application of the text that comes home to me in think- ing and dealing with those countries that are struggling for popular government. A minority that is beaten in the election can not stand the defeat. It has to go to the woods. They are not good losers, and the majority are not good winners. Popular government is a most diffi- cult thing to establish. We have had to hammer it out in a thousand years of Anglo-Saxon suffering and controversy and contest. And now it rests where? It rests in the common sense and the self restraint of the American jjeople. It rests in the knowledge of the majority that it has got to keep within the checks of the law and the Constitution if the Government is to be preserved. And it must rest in the view of the minority that it is much more important that the government should be sustained than that the minority should have for the time being control of or a voice in the government. It rests in the knowledge of the majority that the rights of the minority and the individuals of that minority are exactly as sacred as the rights of the individuals of the majority. Our people exercised government over themselves when they adopted the Constitution of the United States. We don't vote directly under that Constitution. We have a vote which controls the lower House in the selection of the members. We delegate to those members the power to make laws. We do not make them directly. We elect legisla- tures that elect Senators. Those Senators are re-elected every six years. The members of the House are elected every two years, and then we elect a President every four j^ears. Each one of those little joints between popular expression and will and the embodying of that will in the re- sultant course of the government, is something which the people volun- tarily introduced into our government for what purpose? To enable 45 them to g-overn themselves, so that the first wave of popular will should not find immediate expression in legislation, but that the people should take time, should discuss the matter, and should have several delays before they accomplish their entire purpose with respect to the government. The people rule, there is no doubt about that, but they rule ac- cording to law and under the Constitution, and they voluntarily and wil- lingly placed the restraints of that Constitution upon themselves in order that they might act with deliberation and with the checks that were sure to secure moderate, clear-headed, well-thought-out politics, and therefore when the American people voted that Constitution and now are maintaining it and supporting it, as I hope they always will, they are governing themselves, and are more to be credited than he that taketh a city. And finally, even we, or rather even those of the cloth whose place I humbly take at this hour, have learned to govern themselves in this. There was a time in religious history when the man who was in gov- ernmental control and had his own theological theory to work out, worked it out by breaking everybody into believing it or else by cutting off the head or burning the body of the man who didn't agree with him. Well, you can reason out pretty logically sometimes that that was the course to be properly taken. And we tried it on both sides. One church and then the other, as it got a chance, took that method of introducing re- ligion into the mind and soul and body of the person thus offered up. After a time there crept into the beliefs and practice of all re- ligions the idea that the way to have religion conquer w^as to be gentle with views that were contrary to the creed and rely on the arguments and the spirit of the religion to win converts rather than to use the stake and the axe. They overcame that feeling in themselves that they must make their religion conquer by any means, and they took the method that introduced a broad tolerance of all religious creeds and let each creed and each religion speak for itself gently with a message of good will to all humanity; and that is what we have to-day. And that is what I am glad to think is illustrated by this meeting to-day. It means the brotherhood of man as between all Christian religions, the brotherhood of man and the Fatherhood of God. It means tolerance for every belief and every creed that a man honestly and conscientiously en- tertains. And it means that with that tolerance all the people can be much more surely brought within the circle of those who believe and act upon that belief than by any other method. 40 ADDEESS OF PEESIDENT TAFT AT THE WASHINGTON CONVENTION OF THE LAYMEN'S MISSIONARY MOVEMENT IN CONTINENTAL MEMORIAL HALL OF THE DAUGHTERS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION, WASHINGTON, D. C, THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 1909. Mr. President, and Gentlemen of the Laymen's Missionary Move- ment : — I like to think, whether it be true or not, that we have in this generation reached a somewhat different view of the responsibilities of a civilized nation from that which prevailed in the last generation, espe- cially as applied to our country. It was perhaps natural that when we were engaged in digging into the soil and doing the best we could to make enough to live on, we should fall into the habit of thinking that we were a nation by ourselves, with no responsibilities whatever with respect to the rest of the world. So we have had maxims come down to us, and a construction put upon Washington's farewell address that would still keep us in a place of isolation, and with pleasant remarks and well and politely expressed hopes for the welfare of other peoples, would cause us to devote ourselves entirely to our own improvement. In the days when that principle was announced and was followed with a good deal of care, there was one doctrine which was utterly at variance with it — the Monroe doctrine. That did cause some sort of responsibility and did make us assume some sort of protection over and interest in the independent nations and governments of this hemisphere. That is now enlarged into what I think we may call a definite recognition on the part of our public men that we have a very distinct interest in the welfare, and a very distinct duty with reference to the condition, of the coun- tries of this hemisphere, and that we have exhibited it in what was, I think we may almost say, the only altruistic foreign war that history presents ; that in which we fought for the liberties of Cuba and the end- ing of what we regarded at that time as an international scandal. So we have gone on ; we have tatosn over in a sense a receivership for Santo Domingo ; we are helping out Itiat country as well as we may, and we are doing what we can to preserve the peace between the Central Ameri- can countries ; and there lies back in all the history of this continent the possibilities of the heavy obligation resting upon us should unhappi- ness and chaos arise among any of the people of this hemisphere. That is one step. The Cuban war illustrated the fact that when you go into a war you never know where you are coming out. We entered lightly — well, not lightly, but with a sense of due gravity, but certainly not with a sense of what the possibilities were — at Key West and at Santiago, and we brought up ten thousand miles away at Manila. Then we had to take over that Government; and we still have it. It has cost us a good deal of money. I had a Democratic Senator ask me the other day how much I thought it cost — "right down between us," he said. Well, I explained to him that the War Department accounts showed, so far as the army was concerned, down to 1902 it had cost us about one hundred and seventy millions of dollars, and that the further cost depended upon 47 how you regarded the army. If 3'ou thought we could get along with fifteen to twenty thousand men less than we now had, then the whole cost of these men should be imposed on the cost of our Philippine policy, which would be twenty-five or thirty millions of dollars ; but that if you thought we ought to have an army as it is now anyway, it has cost by reason of our Philippine policy upward of six millions of dollars. Per- haps I am a little bit extreme ; perhaps my experience in the Philippines has colored my view ; but I do not think that the money we have spent in that way, even estimating it at the highest sum, has been wasted in any way. I think it has developed our national character ; that it has broadened us into a view of our national responsibility that no other experience could. No one can say — I mean conscientiously say, I mean "right down between us" — that we have been there for the exploitation of our own business. We ha;ve been there conscientiously for the better- ment of the people of the Philippine Islands ; and I am sure we have bettered their condition. We are in the position of many a man who has sought to help another man, and if we go into that sort of thing for undying gratitude we may as well give it up in the beginning. It does not continue and it does not persist, and the only benefit you can get out of it is the consciousness of having tried to do something for another man and the belief that you have, no matter what he thinks about it. I was thrown into the Philippines against my will — I won't say that, for I am a person I presume who could say yes or no — but I mean I was led into it by another, by that sweet nature, that most engaging char- acter, that lovely man, William McKinley. I know what actuated him and I know that the spirit that actuated him influenced us all — his suc- cessor, Theodore Roosevelt; his Secretary of War, Elihu Eoot, and all who had the good fortune to serve under those great men. In the con- trol and government of those islands I first came to be aware of the iniportance of foreign missions ; and, if I may say so, I think there is a strong analogy between the spirit that leads a nation into what we have done in Cuba, in Santo Domingo and in the Philippines, and that move- ment which I am glad to see growing stronger and stronger — the move- ment in favor of foreign missions. The Philippine Islands themselves are an example of what ancient foreign missions could do. They are the only people, the only race, in the Orient that are Christians, and they w^ere made so three hundred years ago by the earnest efforts of Au- gustinian and Franciscan friars. They led them on, taught them the agricultural arts, and led them on to a peaceful and religious life. They did not believe in too much education ; they did not believe in bringing them into close communion with the European nations. They thought there was a good deal they might learn there that would hurt them. But that which they wrought has been to our great advantage in work- ing out the problem that we are set to there, the problem of teaching them self-government. They are a Christian people, and they look to Europe and America for their ideals, and they recognize those ideals, and that makes it possible to instill in them the principles of civil liberty and the freedom of our institutions. Now there came about in the islands what is perfectly natural with the prevalence of one denomination, and 48 the division between the Spanish and the native priesthood led to a great deal of demoralization in the church, and led to its taking on a very- strong political character. The condition has greatly improved since we veent in there, in that regard, because of course we carried with us entire freedom of religion. That has led to the sending in of missionaries of other than the Roman Catholic denomination, and has brought about a spirit of emulation and competition that makes for the good of the entire islands and for all the churches. But the operation of the foreign missions there, the effect upon the people, the influence upon the people which the church exerts and without which the Government could carry on but few of its reforms, all impress themselves upon a man charged with the responsibility of civil government in those islands. In the Orient I could not but take an interest in what occurred on the mainland. The Philippine Islands are about sixty-six hours from Hong-Kong, but here we are apt to associate them all together. Dis- tances there do not seem quite so great as they do here, and you do come closer to China when you are in the Philippines than when you are here. We could, those of us who were in the Orient, study somewhat the Chinese question, study somewhat the movements that were going on in that great Empire of four hundred millions of people ; and the chief movement that was going on was a movement that found its inspiration, that had its progress, in the foreign missions that have been sent there to introduce Christian civilization among that people. I do not hesitate to say that, because I am convinced of the fact. They are the outposts of the Christian civilization. Each missionary, with his house and his staff, forms a nucleus about which gathers an influence far in excess of the numerical list of the converts. They have a political influence, an influence upon the Government of China itself, upon the Viceroys of China, who exercise so much power there that we do not understand. The development of China to-day, and her budding out as she is, and as I hope she will continue to do, is largely the result of, first, the mis- sionary movement, and then the education in America and elsewhere, under the influence of these missionaries, of young Chinamen who are anxious that their country shall take the position that her wealth, and numbers, and resources, and possibilities, and history justify. The same thing is true, though I am not so familiar with it, in regard to Africa. The men who take their lives in their hands and go among the natives are entitled to be called the outposts of civilization. They have been criticized, and I presume that is something that is common to human kind ; they have been held up to contempt at times. I have read one book by a very distinguished author who visited China and thought it wise to poke fun at what he called the assumed self-sacriflce of the mis- sionaries in China. But I am glad to say — I have not seen it myself, but I understand — that the author has withdrawn all these implications and all of this criticism of the men who are flghting for the cause of civiliza- tion in that great country. You visit a Chinese mission — -I mean a denominational mission in China from this country or Great Britain — and you find a large house, you find a considerable staff, you find as near comfort as they can have in a country that does not know what Occidental 49 comfort is ; but you find upon examination that tliey have to go out among the sick, they have to pursue their course of life far away from friends and homes ; they have to undergo that homesickness that no one understands until he has been ten thousand miles aw^ay from home and is longing just to breathe in the smoke of his own home, dirty as it is, in order that he may know that he is near where he grew up. The lives they lead, the good they do, and the fact that they represent the highest of our civilization, make it so important that they should be sent, with all the instruments of usefulness possible, into those far distant places. I sincerely hope that the result of this movement will give to the foreign missions an impetus that, with due respect to our clerical brethren, it can not have unless the whole body of good men in the community press forward. I have spoken of it solely from the laymen's standpoint and not from the purely religious standpoint ; but I have spoken the things that I think I know, and I am here not so much to talk as to express by my presence the sympathy I have with the move- ment that you have so successfully inaugurated. ADDEESS OF HOTC. WM. H. TAFT BEFORE THE Y. M. C. A., DAYTON, OHIO, MAY 28, 1907. Ladies and Gentlemen of Dayton : — It is my great good fortune that an engagement of a year's standing has brought me to southwestern Ohio at such a time as to be present upon the occasion of dedicating this great new building in your beatiful city to the high purposes of the Young Men's Christian Association. The ample proportions of this building, and its necessarily great cost, furnish the clearest evidence of the generous sup- port which the association receives from the people of Dayton. And the reason is not far to seek. It has doubtless demonstrated in this com- munity as elsewhere that it is one of the best instrumentalities for assisting those whose circumstances deny them a comfortable home and prevent them from enjoying at home the rational amusements and use- ful occupations of their leisure hours which are available generally to the more fortunate of the community. The great advantage of the institution is, that after long experience it has, come to be conducted on the most approved business principles. And while it furnishes, on the one hand, an opportunity for the con- tributions of those who love their fellowmen, it furnishes, on the other, an example of assistance to those who need assistance which is not ex- travagant or excessive and which does not discourage self-help by creating a spirit of dependence in those v>^ho enjoy the benefits which it offers. The world has improved greatly in fraternal brotherhood and in as- sistance which the more fortunate extend to those less fortunate. But no problem in our whole social life is more difficult than that repre- sented to one who wishes to give money to aid his fellowman without doing him more injury than good. The instances of ill-advised gener- osity are as many, almost, as the instances of ill-advised investments. 50 And when we find an institution which has worked out the problem of materially aiding- our fellowmen in the struggles of life without in- juring their self-respect and without discouraging their self-support to- ward better things, we have something that we should certainly prize. Another characteristic of the association is its nonsectarian religious quality. It believes in the Christian religion but is tolerant^ liberal in its scope, and knows no denomination, no race, no politics. The truth is, the growth of the Young Men's Christian Association has been an evi- dence of, and at the same time an assistance to, the growth of the spirit of Christian tolerance among all denominations. We are all more tol- erant to-day than formerly. I never was so fully conscious of this fact as when the question arose which had become intensely acute in the Philippine Islands in regard to the continued ownership of a large body of agricultural lands by certain religious orders of the Roman Catholic Church. By circumstances not really connected with religion at all but growing out of political conditions, the Catholic people of the Is- lands had been aroused to bitter hostility against the continued owner- ship of these lands by the religious orders, and with the restoration of peace and the resort to the courts (to which the orders would have been entitled) for the collection of rents or the eviction of 60,000 ten- ants, the prospect of a new ' insurrection was immediate, and the solu- tion which offered itself w^as, that the government should buy these lands from the Friars and then sell them on easy terms to the present tenants. In order to bring this about, however, it was necessary to secure the consent of the head of the Roman Catholic Church, and it was thought wise, therefore, to send a representative to Rome to confer with Leo XIII upon this question, in order, if possible, to bring about a friendly and amicable solution. But it was seriously objected that the Protestant denominations of the country will resent deeply the estab- lishment even temporarily^ of what might seem to be diplomatic rela- tions with a church. Finally, the President, after consulting the repre- sentatives of the leading Protestant denominations, counted upon the good sense and religious tolerance of the people of the United States, and concluded to follow the ordinary business principle that w^hen one wishes to accomplish a result he should deal directly with the ^Dcrson having the power effectually to agree upon the result desired, and a representative was sent. The business, after much negotiation both at Rome and at Manila, was finall^^ concluded, and no persons were more considerate of the difficulties presented and sympathetic with the policy adopted to meet them by the President than the Protestant demoni- nations whose opposition had been feared. - I venture to think that 50 years ago such a result would not have followed, and that the motives of the government and of the President would have been misunderstood or misconstrued. I regard that as one striking instance of the greater brotherhood that now exists between the great Christian denomJnations — a brotherhood that finds no more eloquent proof than the continued prosperity and the growth in influence and power of the Young Men's Christian Association which dedicates this building to-day. The Young Men's Christian Association has come to be recognized 51 as a powerful and necessary factor, both in business and in government matters. All railroad men with whom one comes in contact speak in the highest terms of what the Association is doing for the elevation and assistance of railroad employes in creating healthful home influences for them. The railroad companies find it to their pecuniary interest to erect and fit up expensive structures for the rational, physical, intel- •lectual and moral amusement and entertainment of their employes on each division and to put them under the control of the Young :Men's Christian Association. So Congress, in its wisdom, has given authority to the Secretary of War, in an act passed May, 1902, to grant permis- sion, by revocable license, to the Young Men's Christian Association to maintain on the military reservations in the United States and in its island possessions such buildings as their work for the promotion of intellectual, physical and moral welfare of the garrisons may require, under such regulations as the Secretary of War may approve; and under date of May 7, 1904, the Secretary of War directed that permis- sion be granted to the Army Young Men's Christian Association to es- tablish its work at the various posts of the army of the United States and in the Island of Porto Rico and the Philippines, and commanding officers were enjoined to facilitate the efforts of the Association to provide healthful physical, intellectual, and nonsectarian religious in- fluences by providing therefor suitable quarters, which might be in the post exchange building, if rooms there were available and their use for such purpose was deemed wise by the commanding officer. This permis- sion has been availed of by the Young Men's Christian Association at a great many posts, and it is doing excellent work in furnishing to the soldiers of our army the opportunity to enjoy their leisure hours in healthful and moral physical and intellectual entertainment and amuse- ment. ' But nowhere is the opportunity for usefulness of the Young Men's Christian Association greater than among Americans in the Philippines, Porto Rico, Cuba and on the Isthmus of Panama. It is inevitable that a great many of the Americans who go first to our tropical dependen- cies, a long distance from the United States, should be wandering and irresponsible. And it is also inevitable that many men who are staid and upright and of good habits at home, when they go to tropical cities far away from home, should yield to the temptation of drinking, gambling and other dissipations, because during their idle hours in those remote countries there seems to be nothing else to do. A striking illus- tration of the truth of the maxim "The devil finds some work for idle hands to do," is found in the demoralization of many Americans who first settle in our foreign dependencies. The loss of vitality, and the depression produced by the continued high temperature, so common to persons brought up in a temperate zone, while living in the tropics, make a greater temptation to seek relief in stimulants than in this country, and the absence of anything else to do leads on to a continuance in the indulgence until a habit formed is even more destructive of the physical and moral character of the individual than it is here. There are no attractive theatres. There are but few places of amusement of 62 any kind. Libraries are insufficient. Home amusements are wanting. And is it any wonder, under tliese conditions, that many Americans wander from the ijath of rectitude and morality? This is not only unfortunate for themselves, but it is especially un- fortunate from a public standpoint, in view of what we are trying to do with those tropical peoples in the Philippines. We are seeking to give them capacity for self-government. We are seeking to do that by educating them, by teaching them American institutions, and by in- culcating- in them, as far as we may, admiration for and a de- sire to imitate our civilization. Of course, there are a number of people among the natives who resent this purpose, and who strongly as- sert that they have a civilization quite equal to ours, and in this way seek to divert their people from that path along which we would lead tnem. Nothing contributes more to the support of the views of these opponents of our plans of progress than the presence in Manila and other cities and towns of dissolute Americans whose example is any- thing but edifying, and who form an object lesson to enforce the claim made by our opponents that there is nothing of value in American civilization for them to follow. Their people are generally a temperate people, as most tropical people are, while northern people in the tropics are not infrequently given to intemperance. Now, the way to avoid this result is, to furnish a place in which the leisure hours of Americans in these dependencies can be passed in rational, elevating and moral pursuits and entertainments. The Young Men's Christian Association is one of the most effective instruments to this end that we have. The Young Men's Christian Association went out with the army in 1898, and has been in Manila ever since. I am glad to say that it is increasing ite influence by increasing its plants, increas- ing the number of agents who represent it, and sending there men of the highest experience and energy and enthusiasm. Recentlj^ Mr. Mott, of the Association, raised in this country $80,000 for the construction of a building in Manila on condition that $40,000 should be added to the $80,000 for this purpose by the citizens of Manila. It speaks highly of the public spirit of the Americans and others in Manila and for the energy of the agents who represent the Association in Manila that in a very few days after the offer became known, although business conditions are by no means hig'hly prosperous, $42,000 were raised and the generous enterprise has become a completed thing. The munificence of the donors was met by the public spirit of the people of Manila, and we shall now have, in that far distant oriental city, a great Christian club which will keep men from drinking, gambling and other forms of vice, by offering them an opportunity to spend their unoccupied hours in a home atmosphere, surrounded by the best influences. Again, we are constructing a great canal across the Isthmus of Panama. We have now introduced into that Zone, 40 miles long by ten miles wide but for all practical purposes not more than a mile wide, a^bout 30,000 people, of whom perhaps 7,000 are Americans. They are in a tropical climate, with an absence of rational amusements, and with all 53 the temptations to dissipation and degradation to which a new commu- nity like that under tropical skies is exposed. Appreciating that, and believing that no measure could be better directed to secure good work, honest work, by honest and moral people, than through instrumentalities which should prevent the employees of the Canal Commission from yielding to the temptation to lead dissolute and dissipated lives, the Commission has constructed four club houses, at Culebra, Empire, Gorgona, and Cristobal. They are all alike in design. They provide a front building- of two stories connected with a rear building- of one story. The front building, which will be 313 feet by 45 feet, will contain a social parlor, a card room, a billiard room, and a writing room on the first floor, and an assembly hall 67 feet by 27 feet, free from any columns, on the second floor. The rear building, which will be 100 feet by 28 feet, will contain double bowling alleys 100 feet long, a gymnasium 52 feet long, shower baths, and over a hundred single lockers. A comprehensive plan has been devised whereby the Commission, working in conjunction with the Young Men's Christian Association, will manage these and other similar buildings in the chief labor centers. The Commission has appointed as secretaries of these four club houses four gentlemen who are identified with the Young Men's Christian Association. The Commission has also appointed as superintendent of club houses a gentleman who went to the Isthmus as a representative of the Inter- national Committee of the Young Men's Christian Association. The Com- mission pays the salaries of these men and furnishes the houses, and will give them proper libraries. I do not think there is any action of the Commission that will do more to assist in c&rrying on the work of canal construction intelligently and energetically than the expenditure of the money for the purposes I have enumerated. And the excellence of the results will be made possible by the use of those men who have been trained in the work of the Young- Men's Christian Association and who represent that Association on the Isthmus. Some question has been raised as to whether the expenditure of this money was within the authority of the Commission. I haven't the slight- est doubt about it. The authority of the President in the construction Qif the canal is to build the canal, and he has therefore the right to expend the money in any way necessary in the pursuit of that purpose. This is a great enterprise, involving the moving- to this strip which con- nects the two oceans in the far distant tropics of a colony of from 30,000 to 50,000 people. To render them efficient for the purpose for which they are transported there, it is absolutely necessary that they be surrounded with the influences and furnished with the attractions neces- sary to keep them in a moral and physical state which will make them efficient laborers, to the end which the Government has in view in ex- pending these millions. And I have not hesitated, therefore, not only to authorize the construction of these club houses under the auspices of the Young Men's Christian Association, but also to confirm the action of the Commission in the payment of chaplains of different denomina^tions who officiate in the church services held in the buildings of the Association in the various labor centers across the Isthmus. 54 For these reasons have 1 coine to bear testhnony to the greatness of the Association whose strength and usefulness this beautiful building typifies. It is only one of many evidences to be found all over this country, in the far distant Philippines, on the Isthmus of Panama, in Cuba, and in Porto Ivieo, of the great work which the Association is doing in the moral elevation of American manhood. addeess of hon. william h. taft at the dedication of the Mckinley memorial ougan at the ^ietkopolitan tem- ple, NEW YORK CITY, SUNDAY EVENING, DECE^^IBER 13, 1908. Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen : — I heard Dr. Hill say to- night that he was a very poor beggar. That is an instance of self- depreciation. W^hen the doctor said he was going to dedicate an organ, made possible through the generosity of Mr. Carnegie, in memory of William McKinley, he said : "Of course, you will help us." Well, the doctor and I w^ere out trying to convince recalcitrant voters of the same thing, and it was a peculiarly suitable occasion for him to make the suggestion. It was very difficult for me to yield, but I did yield, and I judge from that adaptation of time and circumstance to the accomplish- ment of purpose that Dr. Hill then displayed, that he has facilities for getting things that he does not beg for and therefore does not need to be a beggar. But I sympathize very deeply with Dr. Hill's work here and with the work that this tabernacle is doing, and I sincerely hope that his aspiration for an endowment, which shall make everybody happy in this part of the city, will be satisfied, even if it takes one or two more meet- ings of this kind, distributed through the next Presidential term. Al- though I say now that I can not come, I am sure I will be here. As he painted a picture of the night which he wished to develop, it did seem to me that it was exceedingly appropriate that a man who loves music as our friend — for everybody must call Mr. Carnegie "our friend" — for he is a friend of all of us — all we have to do is to recipro- cate — don't misunderstand me — not a literal reciprocation — it is exceed- ingly appropriate that a man who loves music would make it possible that this organ should be here dedicated to a man like William McKinley, whose whole soul was one of harmony. There is nothing that suggests his whole character as that harmonious relation with his fellowmen, with his family, with his God and with his country. He bent every effort to make that note of harmony always sound wherever his influence extended. He had a face that could be made by caricature or an artist to look something like that of Napoleon. It was, as you know, a frequent sug- gestion ; both had fine outlines, but the character of the two men was so absolutely different that the suggestion was really only a surface one, and only a passing impression. Napoleon was a man most peremptory and decided in his methods and strong of will beyond anything then known. McKinley was a man strong of will but absolutely without the mandatory peremptory character that were known in Napoleon. Mc- . 55 Kinley accomplished his purpose over men and over thing's, but largely through their voluntary acquiescence in his will. The thing that came over you when you dealt with McKinley was his sweetness. Colonel McCook said, or perhaps it was Mr. Carnegie, that he had never heard of a word of impatience coming from his lips and that he never knew him to be angry. I knew him pretty well, and I never knew him to be angry but once, and that was when somebody was threatening him that if he did not do a certain thing with reference to his policy in the Philippines, that he did not think it was the right thing to do, he would lose the nomination for the second term. The dispatch that was sent in reply was mild. While it was parliamentary and diplomatic in language, it left no doubt what McKinley thought of the sender. There was no impatience, there was not any indirection, but it was an expres- sion of opinion on the issue presented. Major McKinley was a great judge of men. I did not quite realize how great a judge of men he was until I had to select a cabinet of my own. He always seemed to be sure of his men. No matter how positive the information was brought to him that the man whom he wished for a particular job would not accept it, he never was discouraged. He said : "I will get him," and so far as I know, he always did. I know that he was told positively that he could not get the greatest Secretary of War we ever had — I hardly except Stanton — Elihu Eoot. Elihu Root went over to Washington determined to decline, but he went back as Secretary of War, and so it was his influence over men, his power of receiving a man into his cabinet. That description of putting a man down into the seat of the Secretary of State was perfectly characteristic. He would give him a carnation, he would send a kindly word to his wife, and the man coming to ask for an office and going out without it would feel much greater gratitude toward McKinley than many a man who had left other Presidents with the couamission in his pocket. He breathed out in his manner with men the sweetness that he felt and had toward the whole world. He never would cultivate animosities or hostilities. He was always ready to forgi\*e. He had, more than any President I know, greater power in dealing with both houses of Congress. He had been for a long time a member of the House of Representatives and under- stood the slightest motive that would govern any member of that House, and so it was with the Senate. They all were anxious to do what he wished, and when they could not do it, they were all disappointed. He was a lover of peace throughout his nature, and yet he had more wars than any President since Lincoln. Does not Fate play tricks with us? Are not the ways of Providence mysterious? To think that a man who loved peace as Lincoln did, as i)eaceful a man as Garfield was, and as McKinley was, should be taken off as they were by the hand of the assassin, and that two of them should have had upon thei.r souls and minds the responsibilities of those wars : Lincoln the Civil War, and McKinley three wars, for there were three wars: the Spanish war, the Philippine war, and the Boxer war. Reference has been made to Major McKinley's knowledge of war. As a matter of fact, he conducted the Spanish war. He took full charge of the War Department and was always there to receive telegrams and to issue telegrams governing the movements of the troops. You all remem- ber how the hotheads of the Government were anxious to bring on the Spanish war, and that a majority of our f)eople felt that the international scandal at our doors required action by us, and that in their happy-go- lucky conjidence in Providence and in our national deserts, we were ready to go into war without knowing whether we were prepared or not, that we could whip a nation. You all know how martial we were when Mr. Cleveland sent in that Venezuela message. We had just one gun down here at Sandy Hook, and that was the only one on the whole coast line from Maine clear down to Texas and from California to Washington, to resist the British navy ; but the Lord looked after us, as He does after children and drunken men. I hope those lessons have not been lost. But McKinley knew how unprepared we were, even to fight a power equally unprepared as Spain was, and so he used all his influence with Congress to put off, and I think in his heart, if he could, to avoid the war with Spain, and he only let it come on when he could not prevent the onrush. When it became necessary for him to lead, then he did lead, and he led to a purpose. Again, in the Boxer war, we were a little better prepared, and we entered into that war with the rest of the nations to save the butchery of our legations. Then in the Spanish war, and that brings me to that relation in which I knew President McKinley best. I was walking up and down the floor of the consultation room of the Circuit Court of the United States one day in February, 1900, trying to dictate an opinion — not one of those that got me into trouble afterward — when a boy came in and handed me a telegram, and it read this wise : "If you have not any other engagement you would oblige me very much if you would call on me in Washington next week. Please let me know the day." There was not any vacancy on the Supreme Court at that time and I could not imagine what the occasion for that summons was, but I went, and when I entered the cabinet room Mr. McKinley and Secretary Long of the navy were there, and Secretary Root was sent for. I said : "I came, Mr. President, in answer to your telegram. I would like to know the occasion for the call." He said : "Well, judge, I would like to have you go to the Philip- pines." Said I : "Mr. President, what do you mean by 'going to the Philippines?' " He said : "We must establish a government out there, and I would like to have you help me dp it." "But, Mr. President," I said, "I am sorry you have got the Philippines. I don't want them, and I think you ought to have a man who is in sj'-mpathy with taking them over." "Well," he said, "you don't want them any less than I do, but we have got them and I think in dealing with them I can trust a man that dJd not want them in the beginning better than I can a man that did." Well, you can readily understand the feeling of a man whose only ambition was to go to W^ashington and find a cushion on a bench, to be asked to go 10,000 miles away from home. But Mr. Root came over and between him and Mr. McKinley I had a feeling when I went out of that room'^ 67 that if there was another vote in favor of that thing-, that vote being east by one who is denied suffrage at home, but who exercises equal power, that I would probably go to the Philippines with her, and I did. I went there under the influence of William McKinley's wonderful personality in making people do what he thought they ought to do in the interest of the public. He said to me : "Now, I am going to stand by you out there. You will be criticized. You will have a great deal of trouble on the one hand and the other, but I am going to stand by you, and I am going to appoint or allow you to appoint anybod}' out there in that government that you think will serve you well, and you will not get a single man appointed by me or through the influence of Washington on political grounds. I want you to understand that we know what that business is out there and that we are going to support you." And he did. After we had a government established there, there were a great man}- patriots in Washington who thought .the people at home, whom they knew, who had not succeeded very well at home, might develop won- derful abilities if you could only get them 10,000 miles away from home. They would come to Major McKinlej- and suggest it. I know this because it happened several times. They would say : ''Well, I have got a man who will make you an excellent judge in the Philippines ; he is not the kind of a man to get a good practice at home ; I have understood he is a first-class lawyer and some of my powerful constituents would like to have him go." The Major would say : "Now, you know I would like to accommodate you ; you know my feeling toward you, but I want to state a proposition to you. I asked these five gentlemen to go out to the Philippines to do the best they could with something that I know, and what they thought, was a very difficult job, and I agreed with them that I would not appoint a single man except on their recommendation. Now you would not ask me to go back on that promise." Each time the man went away feeling that there was some reason that distinguished the Philippines from other parts of the country and that possibly the merits of his friend ought to be tried out nearer at home. There is one thing about good nature and sweetness of temper ; they are given by Providence, but they depend a good deal on the digestion. Major McKinley's good nature and sweetness of temper went much fur- ther than that acquiescence, that mere indisposition to make a fuss in things that are, because one is perhaps a little too lazy, it was an affirma- tive sweetness. He was always thoughtful, as his cabinet officers can testify ; he was always inquiring as to the members of their families ; he was always sending a little tribute to this one or that one. It never was that he did not have always in his mind the making happier, the smooth- ing out of life for those who came under his influence, for those for whom in a sense he v^as responsible. That is what tact is, and he had tact in a more wonderful degree than any man I ever knew. I was going on to-night even in the presence of Mr. Carnegie to speak of the Philippine problem and his views in respect to it, but Brother Carnegie and I differ on the Philippine problem. McKinley's idea, and it is his idea that we have been carrying out, was that we should go out there and, to use his own expression, carry out a policy 58 of "benevolent assimilation." That has been made the basis for a great deal of criticism and ridicule, because in order to put those islands in a condition where that policy cr any government indeed could be carried out, we had to fight a war and we had to bring about tranquillity by exercise of the sword. It was a source of great agony to AEcKinley that that instrumentality had to be used. He had hoped, from the testimony given at the time of the Paris treaty, that it would not be necessary o do so. Ultimately the work was accomplished and to-day we are trying to carry out in every respect that which McKinley would have had us carry out had he lived — a policy of the utmost interest in the welfare of those people, of an earnest desire to uplift them, and teach them by actual practice in partial self-government and by the spread of education among them, to bring them up to a point where they shall be able ulti- mately to govern themselves. >iow it has been contended that no nation ever intervened for another nation to the betterment of that nation. That is a question of argument. I think it is necessary for us to stay there in order to benefit thoso people. Ninety per cent, of them to-day— 7,000,000 out of 8,000,000 — are in a state of Christian tutelage, and are densely ignorant. In my judgment we cannot hope to improve that densely ignorant part by education, but only to improve the next genera- tion or the rising generation among them. They are manifesting a very g-reat interest in education. It is pathetic to see the desire of the taos, as they are called, the farming element, who are unable to read and write, but who, nevertheless, are sending their children to school and making every effort and sacrifice to send them there in order that thej^ may learn English and learn the industrial education which we are trying to spread among them. We are limited, of course, in our resources, and limited therefore in the extent to which we can give them the benefit of this edu- cation, but there are to-day reading, writing and reciting in English in those islands upwards of half a million Filipino children. My own feel- ing is — perhaps I am wrong in that — that the people themselves, as we are extending to them more and more self-government — we have given them now a popular assembly — are becoming interested in the develop- ment of the government and are seeking to vindicate, as far as they may, their growing capacity by making that assembly a respectable body. It is a burden on us. It will continue to' be a burden on us, of perhaps from five millions to ten millions annually, but my idea is with respect to that, and it was the idea of President McKinley, for we all took our ideas with respect to the Philippines from him, that where Providence has thrust upon us a people like that, we are just as much charged with aiding them in the best way possible as a man upon whom Providence has conferred fortune in a community properly feels himself charged to help the helpless and the unfortunate. The experiment we are trying is an experi- ment. I am not speaking with the confidence and certainty of a man who knows that we arc going to be successful, but I am speaking with the confidence that comes from having watched that progress in the movement that we are carrying on there. The whole success must depend on our good faith in carrying out an altruistic policy in holding those islands for the benefit of the Filipinos. The moment we allow selfish 59 reasons and motives of exploitation to enter into our treament of those islands, and deny those people in any way that which they are entitled to, and benefit ourselves at their expense, then we have departed from the faith and we have destroyed the premises upon which William Mc- Kinley based his judgment that that experiment was one which, under the providence of God, we were obliged to undertake, and one which he believed we could carry to success. REMARKS OF PRESIDENT TAFT AT THE LOYAL LEGION CONVEN- TION, MASONIC TEMPLE, CINCINNATI, OHIO, MAY 3, 1910. My Friends : — It seems to me I have enjoyed to-day almost more than any other day of my life. Coming back here for only a few hours, it has been given to me to see a great many of those who were near and dear to me in years gone by, and who only grow dearer as the years go on. It is a great pleasure for me to come here and see among these — I hope General Grosvenor will forgive me if I say "grizzled" — faces, friends of mine of years, I suppose — indeed, it is natural — that those of you who are veterans should think it a little strange that the Com- mander-in-Chief of the Armj^ and Navy never smelt gunpowder. But, as the Chairman sajs, I was born in 1857, and when the Spanish War came on I am afraid I could not have been admitted on account of my weight. So you will have to take me just as a civilian, with an intense interest, however, in all that has gone to make this country great and in those wars which have been the evidence of deep-seated patriotism, and a willingness to make the utmost sacrifice to save the country and to make her great. This Commandery, as I understand it, has a great many distinguished men in it. Ohio, in the war, was certainly remarkable for the com- manders which she furnished to the Union Army, and the pictures that I see about me here confirm that judgment. It is a pleasure to come back to one's home, especially when you have been in Washington and have been gently chided for your short- comings, and to snuggle up close to those who are fond of you and who have a respect for you whatever happens, and who believe that, however great the obstacles and however severe in other parts of the country they may be, you are doing the best you can. Now, my friends, j'ou veterans are not the only ones who have gray hair and bald heads. We are all getting in that condition. We are all getting beyond the time when we can call ourselves young. The truth is, as time goes on, it seems to wipe out the difference that 10 and 15 and 20 years make ; and those who, by reason of strength, can continue on are just about as young as — and perhaps a little younger — than those of us who really came later on, but still give evidence of the coming of years. I assume that there is no association that is closer — none that you cherish with greater fondness — than that of the comradeship of arms. GO The fact that during- four years you were all exposed to the same dinger, were all fighting- for the same government, and inspired with the same feeling of patriotism, brings you together in a way that those of us who have not had that experience hardly understand the bond. And. I congratulate you that into your lives has entered that element that has made life sweeter to you, and that is, I hope, a reward for the sacrifices that you have made. I thank you, my dear friends, for your very cordial reception. KEMAKKS OF Pl^ESfDENT TAFT AT THE BEDFORD PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, BROOKLYN, N. Y., JUNE 8, 1911. Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen : — As I look at these faces here and go about the streets of Brooklyn, I am sincerely sorry that I haven't in my life the sweet traditions that must have grown up in the life of every Brooklyn man over these annual Sunday School obser- vances. It must be one to which you all cling. It must be the basis for enthusiasm in your schools. It is a thing that you never will give up because its advantage grows on you each year. Now, with respect to Sunday Schools, there are a great many reasons why you should attend' them ; biit I would speak to the young men and the young women who are old enough to understand the importance of lit- erature and history, and I would urge upon them the necessity for close attention to the lessons that are learned and taught in Sunday Schools, the study of the Bible, the study of the history of the people, the study of its literature — all those things will form in future life a wealth of possession for you that you can not now at your present age under- stand. The men who speak with most telling effect are those who are able to command illustrations from Holy Writ, who are familiar with the stories of Holy Writ, and who can tell them to their audiences. They are the ones who understand the force of that Book. And it is in Sun- day School where you get the opportunity that you will never have again in your busy lives to familiarize yourselves with the history that it teaches, with its literature, and with its lessons. I do not mean to say, and I should be lacking in appreciation if 1 did say it, that that was the chief benefit from Sunday School experi- ence. Of course, the great one is the laying of the foundation of a moral and religious character. But to the older students, the young men and the young women, this is something that I would impress upon them, because they will realize before they grow much older, the oppor- tunities that they lost if they have not studied well that Book which is the Book of all others in Sunday School education. I thank you, my dear boys and girls, for listening to me thus much without paying attention to anything else, but I am afraid I haven't the talent of the Sunday School teacher to keep your attention longer. Good- bye and God bless you ! 61 ADDRESS OF PRESIDENT TAFT AT A MASS MEETING IN CELEBRA- TION OF THE DIAMOND JUBILEE OF MBTHODIST EPISCOPAL MISSIONS IN AFRICxV, AT CARNEGIE HALL, NEW YORK CITY, DECEMBER 13, 1909. Ladies and Gentlemen : — I am very glad to be here to bear witness to my very great interest in that which this meeting celebrates — the attack of the Methodist Church upon Africa. I like to think of Meth- odism among the denominations as an affirmative, aggressive, pushing, practical church militant, and it needed to be that to tackle Africa. Since I have had the honor to occupy public office, it has fallen to me to address meetings of many different churches, and I always seize the opportunity, when invited to any other church than my own, and I hope I don't leave out my own, to be present, because I like to feel and imbibe in my nature the sense of tolerance and increase in the feeling of the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of Man among all the denominations of the churches ; and my own reception by churches, not my own, makes me feel certian of the growing and wide cath- olicity of the Christian Church. Doubtless it is because I was not aroused to the importance of the missionary spirit, and the great things that were being done years ago, that it seems to me that it is only within recent times that this missionary feeling has taken such a hold upon the people. I have observed that each man dates the spread of public opinion on a particular subject from the time that he began to think of it; but the history of our country does offer a date and an epoch when it seems to me that the people of the United States acquired a wider and a world feeling, and an interest and a responsibility for all the people of the world, as distinguished from those who enjoy our oppor- tunities of living under the Stars and Stripes. It is not perhaps appropriate to date a religious movement from a war, but it does seem to me as if our people acquired a world feeling from the time we undertook the responsibility of freeing Cuba and saying what should be done by our neighbors with reference to internal government when that internal government seemed to us to pass the bounds of what we thought to be civilized. We began our war expect- ing to finish it shortly, and we landed in the Philippines and we are still there. But our horizon has widened much beyond those gems of the Pacific Ocean by reason of the responsibilities which we have been obliged to assume with reference to the entire world. We are a great power in the world, and we may be, and I hope we are, a great power for usefulness, a great power for the spread of Christian civilization. We must be so if we would justify, our success and vindicate our right to enjoy the opportunities that God has given us in this fair, broad land of building of wealth and comfort and luxury and education and making ourselves, what we like to think we are, the foremost people of the world. There are those who would read the last words of Washington in his Fa-rewell Message as an indication that we ought to keep within G2 the seas and not look beyond ; but he was addressing- thirteen States that had much to do before they could make themselves a g-reat nation and that might well avoid entang-ling alliances, or any foreign inter- ference, or any foreign trouble, while they were making themselves a nation. But now we are a nation with tremendous power and tremendous wealth, and unless we use that for the beneflt of our international neigh- bors (and they are all neighbors of ours, for the world is very small) unless we use that power and that wealth, we are failing to discharge the duties that we ought to feel as members of the international com- munity. This world is very small. It is only 10,000 miles to the Philip- pines, and I am carried back, as I look into the face of my brother, Homer Stuntz, to many a platform that he and I sat upon in the Philip- pines and talked about the possibilities of what we might do in de- veloping those islands and bringing those people to a realization of what good government was. I ut it is true that when you live in the Philip- pines, 10,000 miles away from here, and meet people coming and going, see people on the streets of Washington that you met in Mindanao, or in Luzon, or in Panay, or in Iloilo, and shake hands with them as if it were only yesterday when you last saw them, the world does not seem very wide around. And so I can understand, though I don't quite have the feeling, that Africa is not so dark, is not so far away from anything that one would wish to be in when your interest is excited, when your knowledge is full of the needs of the 160,000,000 of people who are in that continent, and of the possibilities of developing them into a Christian people who shall learn after a time all the arts of peace, and learn to govern themselves. I confess, if I were a missionary, I would prefer to try my hand in a country like China that has a history of two or three or four or five thousand years, than to go into Africa that hasn't any history at all except that which we trace to the apes. But you can not read the account of the missions that your church is carrying on in that continent without knowing that there is the seed which is to lead those people on to be useful citizens and useful members of the community and of the world. Now, as I understand it, the Methodist Church has taken the continent in front and rear at Madeira, at Algiers, in Areola, in Portuguese East Africa, and in Rhodesia, and that there are missions and a stream of them in which the practical, sensible methods of modern missionaries have been adopted, and accompanying instruction in the Christian religion and the leading on to Christian civilization, of lessons in agriculture, in the simple mechanical arts, in primary education, a^nd in lea ling them on to feel that debt of gratitude which reaches a native's heart as noth- ing else can, the ministrations of the physician when the dear ones of those native savages seem about to be taken away. The mission is a nucleus, an epitome, of the civilization that is ex- pected to widen out in that neighborhood. I have heard missions criti- cised. I have heard men say that they would not contribute to foreign missions at all ; that w^e had wicked people enough at home and we might just as well leave the foreign natives and savages to pursue their own G3 happy lives in the forests and look after our own who need a great deal of ministration. I have come to rei>-ard that as narrow-minded as a man who does not like music, who does not understand the things that God has provided for the elevation of the human race. The missionaries in China and the missionaries in Africa are the forerunners of our civiliza- tion, and without them we should have no hope of conquering the love and the admiration and the respect of the millions of people that we hope to bring under the influence of Christian civilization. A man who goes into Africa as a missionary goes into a place where he must be content to put up with all sorts of sacrifices and a very pos- sible death from the malignant fevers that he is constantly exposed to, unless he goes clear into the interior on to the table lands. I admire the missionaries who go to India and China and the Philippines, because I know they are doing good work, and I know that they have many sacri- fices to make ; but the men whom I wish most to commend are those who in the face of all obstacles that certainly tend to discourage the bravest, enter the dark continent of Africa in an attempt to win these people to Christianity and civilization. It is curious to see how the Almighty works His ways. Our interest iii Africa for many years was the interest to suppress the slave trade. W'e were all responsible — New England got out of it a little earlier than tt»e rest — for a time in the encouragement of that trade. And now we have living with us ten millions of people who are descended from the sla\es that were taken by force — the negroes that were taken by force from that dark continent, taken with all the cruelties incident to the miuvije passage ; and yet no one would say that the descendants of those people thus brought here are not to be congratulated on the fact that their ancestors were brought here, so that they have been able to enjoy the proximity to civilization, so that they are a hundred years in advance of their relatives in Africa ; and yet they came here by the greed and the sin of those for whom we, by reason of ancestry, must be responsible. I think that is a very curious working out of the ways of God that no one could have anticipated. It is natural that the negroes of America, who have had the advantage of an association in a Christian country, with modern civilization, so that they are civilized and educated, should yet retain an intense interest in the development of the continent from which their ancestors came ; and I am glad to note the fact that there is an interest among the race, both as to Liberia and the maintenance of that Eepublic, and this missionary movement through the dark continent, to bring all the black races into Christian civilization. Now, my friends, I have a cold. I ought not to have spoken at all to-night, because I haven't any information about Africa that you haven't got ; but I have got into the habit of speaking at foreign mission meet- ings, and the managers of the meetings think that there is something missing in the support of the government unless I appear to testify in my insufficient and inadequate way to the interest that the country all has in the success of this movement. Now, my dear friend. Bishop Ilartzell, I hoi)e has realized what he came here to bring about, and I hope he will take back in his pocket that $300,000 that is necessary to aid him in tlxe 64 f^reat work he is there carrying on. I wish he had $3,000,000 instead of $300,000, but H is a g-ood deal easier to wish it than to get it ; and if we have gotten $300,000, we ought to be as smiling and as happy in the thought of the good that will do as possible. REMARKS OF PRESIDENT TAFT AT THE BANQUET OF THE CON- STITUTION GRAND LODGE. INDEPENDENT ORDER OF B'NAI B'RITH, ARLINGTON HOTEL, WASHINGTON, D. C, APRIL 6, 1910. Me. Chairman, Me. Toastmastee, Ladies and Gentlemen of the B'nai B'eith : — It is a great x^lG^-sure to be here and to welcome to Washington so important a society. We haven't any Mayor in Wash- ington. We only have a District Commission, and so the President is drafted in to act the part of a Mayor at Washington. I am not here to make a speech. I am only here to try and make you welcome in the National Capital. We have great plans for Wanjhington, and I hojie they will develop. Certainly there is ev«ry prospect that the beauty of the city will con- tinue to grow. Those of you who have been in the wilder plates about Washington will understand the opportanity that there is for develop- ment. I am, with respect to Washington, at least, an expansionist. I wish that our neighbor, Virginia, would give back those few square miles that, in the younger daj^s of the Republic, when we were not as wise as we are now and had a Cong'ress that was narrow-minded, we retroceded to Virginia that part of the ten miles square that Virginia had given us ; but Virginians, like their Virginian ancestors, like real estate, and they are rather loath to give back that which once was ours, and which we, as I say, in a fit of absent-mindedness and of a narrow view of our future, allowed them to take back. If we had it here now, with the beautiful bank of the Potomac on the other side, we could construct a park there that would be becoming in dignity to the National Capital. We have below here — and if you rode horseback I would be glad to take you down and show j'-ou — an island nearly two miles long and from a half to three-quarters of a mile wide, immediately at the door of the city, which, added to the Potomac Park that we now have, will make one of the finest drives and finest parks in the world. We now have appro- priations from Congress to proced to fill up, to kill all the mosquitoes that are generated there, and to make it worthy of the surroundings, with that magnificent monument to the Father of the Country presiding over it all. I didn't come here to make a speech about Washington. I came here only to w^elcome you to Washington. I have known the B'nai B'rith long, for its good works, for the social opportunities that it gives, and as a model Jewish Society. When I say a model Jewish society, I mean a society that may be a model for all societies. 65 Kow, I have the profoimdest admiration for the Jewish race. They make excellent citizens. They ^re in favor of law and order always. I am glad to have them come to this country. I have known those who have been in the country as long as I have, and therefore are just as much American as I am. I have also bod the privilege of knowing those who have come but recently, and I have always found in them the pro- foundest appreciation of our institutions of liberty, the profoundest ap- preciation of our educational facilities, and their ability generally, what seems to those of us who have sons and daughters in competition in the schools, to stand first in their classes. Now, my friends, I had not intended to say so much, but if in what 1 have said I have conveyed to you my high appreciation of the race that you represent — the oldest race in the world — that people who are entitled really to be the aristoci;ats of the world, and yet who make the best Republicans, I have succeeded in what I hoped to do. REMARKS OF PRESIDENT TAFT AT THE TOMPKINS AVENUE CON- GREGATIONAL CHURCH, BROOKLYN, N. Y., JUNE 8, 1911. My dear Boys and Girls : — I feel just as if I were a boy or a girl myself, aJx)ut to make a recitation in a Sunday School without having studied the lesson. It is a great pleasure to look into your faces and to see how you are enjoying this afternoon. I hope you like your Sunday Schools. I hope your mother or your father doesn't have to exert herself or himself — doesn't have to push you to school. Does she? (Voices, "No.") You go without it, don't you? (Voices, "Yes.") I am glad that is the case in Brooklyn. I am afraid there are some cities where it is not always the case. But this kind of a celebration — this making much of the Sunday Sehool, as it ought to be made much of, make« the Sunday School popu- lar ; makes it a place that boys and girls love to go to, where they learn the lessons of the Bible, learn of God and of Jesus Christ, and learn, I hope, to be g-ood boys and girls ju^ because they know it is good to be good. I never talk to a Sunday School now. I used to talk in a Sunday School when I was a member of one, and I think I know more how k boy or a girl feels in a Sunday School than I know how a teacher feels. It is a moment to me of exhilaration to see these young faces, and to feel that they are instinct with an interest in this occasion that is certain to make them recollect it and certain to do them^-T-ood. God bless you, my dear boys and girls ! God bless you ! I know you are going to grow up to be good men and women, and to make this country better 1 6G ADDEESS OF PRESIDENT TAFT BEFORE THE CHRISTIAN EN- DEAVOR CONVENTION, AT YOUNG'S PIER, ATLANTIC CITY, N. J., JULY 7, 1911. Mr. Chairman, Members of the Christian Endeavor, Ladies and Gentlemen : — As I stand upon this platform I am conscions of being- in the presence of a religions force for progress and good in the world that had its genesis nearly 30 years ago, and now is making its in- fluence felt completely around the world, and through the expression and activity of 4,000,000 living souls. This convention commemorates the organization of a movement based upon the principle that the time to influence men and women in their lives is in that formative period between youth and manhood, and that the making of the character of men and women is best achieved by training and practice, rather than by instruction and preach- ing. By insistence upon opeft confession of religious faith and the bring- ing forth of works needful for the expression of that faith and in the fellowship which follows a common confession and works, the Christian Endeavor has made its mark in the religious history of the world. But I did not come here to discuss before an audience that knows them very much better than I the principles upon which your society is founded and the methods by which these principles have been em- bodied in the present glorious and useful development. I may take one sentence to express my profound and sincere admiration for Dr. Clark and his estimable wife, the founders of this society, who have lived long enough to see it grow from one small organization in Williston, Maine, to a world power for good; and, as the Chief Magistra,te of this country, to recognize the debt it owes for their work and especially in the development of individual Christian character among the members of the Evangelical Protestant churches of this country. Such a move- ment can not but have the most beneficial effect upon the citizenship of a nation like this, and I should be lacking in appreciation of these currents of popular reform and individual uplift if I did not seize such an opportunity to pay a just tribute to those who have deserved so well of the Republic ; for while this country has no state church, and en- courages the utmost freedom of religious belief and practice, it is a fundamental error to suppose that those who are responsible in any de- gree for the public welfare may not in every proper way encourage all instrumentalities for the betterment of the individiial man, all moral and religious movements ft)r his higher spiritual welfare, without re- gard to the denominational jurisdiction in which such movements take their source or exercise their influence. They necessarily tend to a leaven of the whole community and to the righteousness that exalteth a nation. But, as I say, I did not come here to tell you about your own or- ganization. T came here to talk on a subject and cause in which I have, in common with all the civilized people of the world, an intense in- terest, and that is the avoidance of war by providing such instrumental- 67 ities for t-ie settlement of international controversies as to make war remote beeaiise unnecessary. * I observe that in your last convention, the Twenty-fourth Inter- national Convention, one of your resolutions was as follows : ''Resolved, That as followers of the Prince of Peace, we ally our- selves with every effort that is being- made for the suppression of war. The immense and ever-increasing tax which war and prepar- ations for war levy on peaceful industries, and the frightful hor- rors of war itself, demand that every lover of God and humanity should unite for its suppression." In the last 25 years w^e have made great progress toward an in- ternational condition in which war is less likely than heretofore. It is true that in that time we have had several great wars — the war be- tween China and Japan, the war between Russia and Japan, the Vv^ar between the United States and Spain, the war between England and the Boers, and perhaps some others. Nevertheless, as between the great countries of Europe which have armed themselves to the teeth since the German-French War of 1870, peace has been maintained; and under the inspiration of a common desire for peace, treaties have been made with reference to arbitration at The Hague, and for the establishment of a court at The Hague for the settlement of international disputes, and have pointed to the ideal of the utmost use in the promotion of the cause of peace. Ey negotiation and mediation, and the formation of arbitration agreements, wars in the last decade have been stopped in Central and South America in a most gratifying num.ber of instances. All wars have not been stopped in those counti'ies lacking stability and power to enforce law and order ; but that there is a marked improvement throughout Latin America in this regard, and especially in Central America, no one who has consulted the statistics of revolutions can fail to recognize. The heroism and exhibition of the noblest qualities of the heart and soul and mind of man that war makes possible, every student of history and of human nature must admit, but that this is accomplished with the horrible cost and sacrifice of human suffering and lives, and that an associated exhibition of the lowest moral qual- ities in man, of ambition, lust for power, of cruelty, ghoulish rapacity, and corruption,, is equally true, and in very few cases, if any, can the historian say that the good of war w^as worth the awful sacrifice. And hence it is that we should all welcome, as far as we can, the effort to dispense with the necessity of war altogether. Even if that effort may not be entirely successful, every movement which tends to dis- courage war, and to furnish a means of avoiding it, ought to receive and does receive the earnest support of an organization that has the purposes and principles that actuate the Society of the Christian En- deavor. I am glad to say that to-day we have reached such a point in the negotiations for a treaty of universal arbitration with one of the great European powers that we can c;onfidently predict the signing of a satis- factory treaty. I am exceedingly hopeful that we may have half a dozen treaties with the European countries looking toward arbitration of interna- tional differences. This will not abolish war, but it will provide a most effective and forcible instrument for avoiding it in many cases. Of course, war between Great Britain an'd the United States, between I'rance and the United States, and between Germany and the United States, is quite remote ; but the adoption by those great countries of arbitration and mediation as a means of meeting all controversies must have the most healthy moral effect upon the world at large and must avSsist all the friends of peace in their effort to make it permanent. To this audience, and this great society with its world-wide influence, I do not hesitate to appeal to give the tremendous weight of its support to such a cause. ADDEESS OF THE PRESIDENT AT THE CATHOLIC SUMMER SCHOOL OF AMERICA, AT CLIFF HAVEN, N. Y., JULY 7, 1909. Your Eminence, Governor Hughes, Dr. McMahon, and my Fellow- citizens OF the Catholic Summer School of America :— Governor Hughes and I are going through these three or four days delivering speeches at each other, and expressing our opinion of each other in a way that will enable us, when we get through, to do it with greater facility. The truth is that the gift of eloquence and speech which Governor Hughes has needs no practice, but I have to have a little. I would be without that which makes a man if I did not appreciate to the full the kindly words of your distinguished Governor, and if I did not congratulate the State of New York on having a Governor who represents the highest ideals. One is almost carried off his feet before such an audience. There is something in the atmosphere that suggests a flying machine, as if you were all so full of joy that that element in you could raise you up, and that is the way you ought to be, and I congratulate you that such is the feeling. The combination of work and pleasure, the cultivation of health on the one hand and of intellect on the other, and of religious faith above all under such beautiful surroundings is calculated to make every one enthusiastic, and I share that enthusiasm to the full. I am not a Catholic, but I have had in the last ten years a great deal to do with the Catholic Church. My lot did not carry me into a part of the world that made me familiar with the French explorers, the French leaders of civilization like Champlain, as it did into the re- gions of those leaders that came from Spain — into the Philippines, where the same influence that carried Champlain here and the same ideal that controlled him, controlled men equally brave, and in certain re- spects more successful. There was Magellan and later Legaspi who came out to the Philippines and with four or five Augustinian monks con- verted to Christianity that entire Archipelago now having some seven 69 or eight niillion souls, and then perhaps 500,000 — the only community, the only j^eople in the entire Orient that to-day as a people are Christians. There is on the Luneta, the great public square facing the otean in Manila, a statue carved by a great Spanish sculptor, Querol, in which there are two figures, Legaspi, holding the standard of Spain and with his sword drawn, and behind him Urdenta, a RecoUeto monk, holding aloft behind all the cross, and there is in that statue such movement, such force, such courage that I used to like, even in the hot days of Manila, to stand in front of it and enjoy, as I thought I got the spirit that the sculptor had tried to put in there, of loyalty to country and faith in God. I think we are reaching a point in this country where we are very much more tolerant of everything and everybody than in the past, and where we are giving justice where justice oug'ht to be given. We are no longer cherishing those narrow prejudices that came from denomi- national bigotry, and we are able to recognize in the past those great heroes of any religious Christian faith and appreciate the virtues they exhibited as examples for us. Eeligious tolerance is rather a modern invention. Those of us of Puritan ancestry have been apt to think that we were the inventors of religious tolerance. Well, as a matter of fact, what we were in favor of, if I can speak for Puritan ancestry, was having a right to worship God as we pleased, and having everybody else worship God in the same way. But we have worked that out now; and there has been a great change, I am sure His Eminence the Cardinal will agree with me, even in the last twenty-five years. I have had personal evidence of it in some of the work that we had to do in the Philippines. Fifty years ago if it had been proposed to send a representative of the Government to the Vatican to negotiate and settle matters arising in a country like the Philippines between the Government and the Roman Catholic Church, it would have given rise to the severest condemnation and criticism on the part of those who "would have feared some diplomatic relation be- tween the Government and the Vatican contrary to our traditions ; but within the last ten years that has been done, with the full concurrence of all religious denominations, believing that the way to do things is to do them directly, and when a matter is to be settled that it should be settled with the head of the church who has authority to act. And so it fell to my lot, my dear friends, and in that respect just by good luck, 1 came to be an exception, which will perhaps stand for many years as the sole exception, of being the representative of the United States at the Vatican. There I had the great pleasure of meeting that distin- guished statesnian and pontiff, Leo XIII, a man of 92, whom I expected to find rather a lay figure directed by the council of the Cardinals than one active in control of the Church. But I was most pleasantly disap- pointed, for even at 92 he was able to withstand an address of mine of twenty minutes, to catch the points of that address, and to respond in a speech of some fifteen minutes, showing how fully he appreciated the issue that there was and its importance. We did not succeed in bringing about exactly the agreement which 70 we asked, and he realized that, but he was full of friendly enthusiasm for the settlement of the issne, and after two audiences whieh 1 had the honor of holding- with him, at the close of the second one he said, "You haven't got exactly what you want in exactly the way yon want it, but," said he, "I am going to send a representative of mine to the Philip- pines with instructions to see that the matter is settled justly in accord- ance with the wishes of the Government of the United States." And it was so settled. I am gratified to say that now every question between the Church and the State in the Philippine Islands, which were so closely united that it seemed almost impossible to make a separation of the two as it ought to be made under our Constitution, has been settled fairly and justly to both sides, and that no bad taste or feeling of injustice exists on either side with respect to those questions. And now, my dear friends, I ought to talk about Champlain, and I would talk something about him because I appreciate as highly as any one can those motives that governed him and his high character as a man and the obstacles that he had to overcome; but when T get up to talk on any subject, I am a little bit in the attitude of the doctor who could cure fits and that is all he could cure, and so he wanted to throw his: patients into that condition. I can only talk about the Philippines, and that is what I have done, but I hope they have some a])plication to the thoughts of the morning. I thank you, my dear friends, I thank the reverend fathers and His Eminence the Cardinal, for the cordial reception that j^ou have given to the civil head of New York and to the civil head of the Nation. ADDRESS OF THE PP.ESJDENT AT THE LAYING OF THE COKNER- STONE OF THE INGRAM MEMORIAL CHURCH ON CAPITOL HILL, JULY 11, 1909. De. Fkizzell, Ladies and Gentlemen : — When your minister came to see me in the hurry of a busy morniiig at the White House, and invited me to attend the dedication ceremonies of his church, either he forgot to tell me that I was expected to make a speech or else there were so many matters pressing that I did not catch that statement from his lips. I am glad to be present at a ceremony beginning the usefulness of an institution of religion as this church will be. It is a Congregational Church, and as the minister says, comes from New England by descent. I likewise claim New England ancestry. I venture to think, however, that the plan of this church is somewhat different in its method of bringing men to God and attracting men and women to religion than that which was adopted by the Pilgrim Fathers and those who imme- diately followed them. As I recollect it, their idea was to separate every- thing from religion, to clothe it with nothing externally beautiful, and to make the service of religion as severe as possible, so that you can well understand the question of the little boy who had been subjected to those very strict rules of the Sabbath day in the Puritan family when 71 ho asked his mothor whethei\ when she told him that heaven was to b^ all the Sabbath day. he could not go down to hell and play Saturday afternoon. Now this church and most churches have properly departed from making religion something severe, something in the way of a test and a criminal trial to which everyone is to be subjected to condemna- tion. You know the story of the young man and his bride who began life in a city and who found themselves confronted with the question what newspaper they should subscribe to. The young man described his situation and the trouble he found himself in by saying, "My dear, I don't know what to do. The paper that is published in the morning makes vice so attractive, and the paper that is published in the afternoon makes virtue so unattractive, that we will have to subscribe to some other paper in some other town." As I understand the plan of this church, it is to make religion a part of the li^e of those who are members of the church. It is to furnish rational amusement. It is to make the church so attractive by reason of its social qualities, by reason of offering an opportunity for physical exercise, for intellectual exercise, that those who are members of it shall regard religion as a necessary part of life and one which they will wel- come as a part of life, and not which they regard as something apart to be improved once every seven days and then to be taken in as small doses as possible and still conform to the religious law. I am glad to know, to see and to believe that all churches in a way, not so completely as this plan indicates, are adopting the view that there is nothing incon- sistent between religion and duty and happiness and rational amusement, and that the union of all of them is not something that is repellant to the real religious soul. But, my dear friends, I did not expect to speak after the eloquent address of my friend, Mr. Esch, of Wisconsin, who properly was called upon here to answer for both of his constituents and to answer well, as he did. But I want to say one thing. This church is established in Washington ; it is well that it is here ; it is established upon Capitol Hill. Now Washington contains the Government of this country. I don't mean the President and the Cabinet. I don't mean the Senate and the House of Representatives ; but there is something that goes to make up this Government as a machine that continues to operate when the Presi- dent goes to the seacoast, when the Senate and the House go home and attend to their private business, and when the members of the Cabinet disappear in, various directions from this somewhat heated temperature, and that Government is the Government of the civil servants — trained civil servants who know how things ought to be done, and through whose agency the Government will be carried on from now until the end of time as I hope ; a trained body of civil servants who are willing for a very reasonable compensation, sometimes much too low, to give out what is best of them to the carrying on of this Government in an honest, effective way — men who are philosophers enough to know that by the enjoyment of a small salary, if they rid themselves from the worry and the corroding effect of mercenary ambition, they can get more happiness out of life in seeing their families grow, in the education of their chil- dren, than by aspiring to be millionaires and plutocrats. Now that body 72 of men is here in Washing-ton, and 1 know no better body of men con- stitute a moving- force in a church like this than the civil servants who doubtless live about this vicinity. I congratulate the minister on having that material out of which to build up the great structure that doubtless will be his when this church is built and when the congregation reaches the proportions that it will doubtless reach. I congratulate him on the auspicious beginning of this enterprise. I congratulate the neighborhood on having an instrumentality that cannot but elevate it when it is put in force. And now, Dr. Frizzell, as I am an accomplished mason I shall be glad to continue. ADDRESS OF PRESIDENT TAFT AT THE LAYING OF THE CORNERv- STONE OF THE UNIVERSALIST CHURCH, IRVINGTON, PORT- LAND, OREGON, OCTOBER 3, 1909. Mb. Pastor, Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen : — I don't know that anybody questions the propriety of my attendance on this occasion, or that it is necessary for me to enter into an explanation. I conceive it to be the duty of the President of the United States to welcome and encourage and support every instrument by which the standard of morals and religion in the community may be elevated and maintained. It was my pleasure and my opportunity to take part in the dedication of an orthodox Congregational Church in Washington in the spring ; my pleas- ure to take part in ceremonies in a Jewish tabernacle in Pittsburgh ; to officiate as the layer of the cornerstone of a Roman Catholic university at Helena, and now to take what part I may in the ceremonies of laying the cornerstone of a Universalist Church in this beautiful suburb of Port- land. And I do it because I believe that the cornerstone of modern civili- zation must continue to be religion and morality. We have in our Constitution separated the civil from the religious. It was at one time my good fortune to visit Rome in order by negotiation to effect a settlement of a number of questions which had arisen between the Roman Catholic Church and the civil government in the Philippines. The government of the Philippines under Spain had illustrated that system known in the Spanish Government as the Union of Church and State. Their interests were so inextricably united that it seemed almost impos- sible to separate them, but with the consent and acquiescence of all denomi- nations in this country, I was authorized to go to Rome to meet the head of the great Roman Catholic Church, in order to see if amicably those matters might not be settled. I am glad to say that the result of the visit was a satisfactory settlement, equitable and just to both sides. But I started to mention it in order to relate that I ventured to say to the Pope that the division between Church and State in this country and their separation was not in the slightest degree to be taken as an indi- cation that there was anything in our Government or in our people that was opposed to the church and its highest development, and I ventured to point out that in the United States the Roman Catholic Church had flour- 73 ished and grown as it had not grown in many European countries, and that it had received at tlie hands of the Government as liberal and as just and as equal treatment as every other church, no better and no worse ; but that that was not to be taken as an indication that every officer of the Government properly charged with his responsibility would not use all the official influence that he had to encourage the establish- ment of churches, their maintenance and the broadening of their influ- ence in order that morality and religion might prevail throughout the country. This is a Universalist Church, known as a liberal church. We havo reached a time in this country when the churches are growing together ; when they are losing the bitterness of sectarian dispute ; that they appre- ciate that it is necessar}'^, in order that their influence be felt, that they stand shoulder to shoulder in the contest for righteousness. They believe in the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of man ; and the real broad Christian statesman is glad to accept from every quarter the assistance which will elevate the people and lead them on in that progress that we all believe the American peoj^le are making. If they are not — if they are not going to higher moral standards, then all this material progress, all this advance in luxury and comfort, is worth nothing. I am an optimist. I believe we are better to-day than we were fifty years ago, man by man. I believe we are more altruistic. I believe that each man is more interested in his fellow than he was fifty or one hun- dred years ago. 1 know you can point to instances of self-depravity, of selfishness and greed, but I believe those instances are made more prom- inent because we condemn them more, and because by being made prom- inent the happening of them is made less likely. I am glad to be here. I hope this church will thrive. I hope it will maintain its high principles of being a good man and a good citizen and mixing them together. I welcome the opportunity to be able as Presi- dent of the United States to say that there is no church in this country, however humble, which preaching 1te:ue religion, which preaching" true morality, will not have my support and my earnest effort to make it more successful when opportunity offers. REMARKS OF PRESIDENT TAFT AT THE NEW BOV/ERY MISSION, NEW YORK CITY, DECEMBER 13, 1909. My Fbiends : — I am just about as much surprised at being here as you are at seeing me. I had a note from your benefactor, Dr. Klopsch, asking me to come down to a mission which he had established in the Bowery, after the meeting at Carnegie Hall. Now, I have known Dr. Klopsch — well, not very long — but I have known him in a way that per- haps you know him. I know him by what he has done. It has been my fortune in life to play a good deal of a part of a figurehead. Some men do the work and others are figureheads ; and na- ture developed me in such a way that I play a pretty good part as a fig- urehead. So that they put me at the head of the Red Cross, and as the 74 head of the Red Cross I came to know the enormous energy and the tre- mendous power for good which Dr. Klopsch could exercise through the "Christian Herald" in raising hundreds of thousands of dollars to re- lieve human suffering wherever it might be in the world. And so when he wrote and asked me to come here, I was not exactly advised as to where I was coming, except that it was on the Bowery ; I have always had a good deal of curiosity (for I have not lived in New York) to know the Bowery, and I felt certain that where Dr. Klopsch and the Bowery met there would probably be the best part of the Bowery, and so I came here. Now, your superintendent has been good enough to say some com- plimentary things about my coming from Carnegie Hall down to the Bowery to meet you. I am not conscious of deserving any credit for that at all. As I look into your faces I see that you are earnest American citizens — to use a colloquial expression — some of you "down on your luclv" perhaps, but nevertheless responding in every fiber of your body to the same sentiments of loyalty and patriotism and love of country and decency and aspirations for better things that every other man, I hope, has in this country. I am glad to be here, if, by being here and saying so, I can' convince you that the so-called chasm between you and people who seem for the time to be more fortunate is not a chasm, and that there is extending over whatever is between you and them a deep feel- ing of sympathy and a deep, earnest desire that you shall have that equality of opportunity, that means of getting on to your feet, of earning your livelihood, of supporting your families, that we hope every man under the Stars and Stripes may fully enjoy. I am glad to come here and to testify by my presence my sympathy with the great work of Dr. Klopsch in this mission by which he shall from time to time and con- stantly, but not always the same people, help over hard places, help over the times when things seem desperate, when it seems as if the Lord and everybody else had turned against you — should help you over those times to believe that there are people in the world who sympathize with yoii and wish for better things, and enable you to achieve those better things that the equality of opportunity in this country I hope may enable you to achieve. I know it is difficult for you to believe that I, who for the time being am receiving a large salary from the United States and living in comfort, could understand or take into my heart the feeling that you may have of desperation and of a sense of injustice that you have not had the chance that other men have had ; and yet I assure you that in spite of that seeming influence, your fellow-citizens and mine are not tke greedy, oppressive persons that sometimes people would make yon believe, but that, more to-day than ever in the history of the world, their hearts are open and their desires to help the needy and lift the sufferlVig out of their suffering is greater to-day than it ever was and is growing every month. Dr. Klopsch is one of those through whom I hope that thought is being conveyed to you, so that you may not burn with a sense of injustice, but that you may hope on and struggle on with the belief that the future is brighter for you. 75 ADBKESS OF PRESIDENT TAFT AT THE INSTALLATION OF WIL- LIAM ARNOLD SIIANKLIN AS PRESIDENT OF WE.3LEYAN UNI- VERSITY AT THE MIDDLESEX THEATER, MIDDLETOWN, CONN., NOVEMBER 12, 1909. Mb. President : — After the felicitous congratulations which you have received from men of this University, from men of your own Alma IVi.ater, I feel a little as if I were uttering an alien note, for it has not been my good fortur*be personally to know you long. I can not forget that my acquaintance began with you when for another Presidency I was attempting to convince the people how they ought to exercise their judgment, and then I was talking and it seems to me I have been talk- ing ever since ; and if there is lacking in what I have to say the polish and elegance of an address which this occasion requires, you, sir, will understand from the exigency in which you saw me at the time vvh}' it is absent from what I have to address to you. The President of the Board of Trustees instituted by implication a comparison between the powers which you are about to exercise and those which the Constitution accords to the President of the United States. I have had some experience in college government of an incidental character, and I am able to congratulate you, sir, that the powers which you will exercise as President are the powers which you choose to exercise. It is well that it should be so. I would not advocate it or be understood to advocate any change in the existing Constitution of the United States. I think that excellent ; but for the control of an insti- tution like this, in-order that it may work out its destiny as it should work it out, the great responsibility and therefore the great power must be in its President, and I congratulate you that it is so, because of the opportunities that the position offers in the development of the character of a body of young men that if properly developed are bound to exercise a profound influence in the history of the Nation. Coming here at the most formative period in their lives, they here take in not only the instruction and the education, to observe the distinction made by that gentleman who preceded me and represented nobody (they think differently in New York) (referring to Senator Root), but also that spirit of an institution called sometimes the "college spirit" that takes its form and influence as much from the personal character and the per- sonal influence of the head of the institution as from any other source. Now, that spirit is different from the education that we get. It is something hard to define. It is something that stands through life for the men who come under its influence as a restraint from evil and furnishes an aspiration for good. Except for the influence of the family upon the man, there is nothing I know of that prompts such endeavor that keeps men in honorable courses like the desire to stand well with the men who for four years develop their youth to manhood in the same class and under the same influence. Mr. President, the influence of the college graduate and the duty whicn he owes to himself and society to take an interest in public affairs perhaps I may speak of for a moment. I can not forget that it was within the walls of Wesleyan 76 that George William Curtis delivered that great oration in 1865, upon the duty of the college man and the scholar in politics, and I doubt not that the spirit that he there infused has continued in old Wes- leyan ever since, and that it will grow under your influence. I don't know" how greater intiuence college men exert to-day in the public life of our nation than before. Certainly there are more of them. Certainly the standard is as high in the institutions of learning to-day as it ever was. I can not help thinking that unless the colleges of the country and the universities of the country do their duty and continue to turn out men who are willing to sacrifice themselves to the public weal there will be a retrograde step in this country. Something has been said about small colleges. There are advantages in large colleges, and there are advantages in small colleges. The advan- tage in the smaller institution is that you come closer into con- tact with the student body, you as President, and the Faculty as members, and that there comes under your close observation the growth of the character of the men for whom you are responsible. Mr. Bryce in his Commonwealth comments on the tremendous advantage that the United States has had in the fact that there are small colleges everywhere in the country offering an opportunity by proximity to the young men for higher education, and I cannot conceive anything more inviting than the taking of a comparatively small body of young men, developing them under your immediate influence and bringing out those traits of high character for which, after all, all instruction and all education and all training are the preparation and the basis. Mr. Presi- dent, I am one of those who have advice and nothing else to offer. I congratulate the University that it is to have such a President. A col- lege president is first of all a teacher. That is his profession. The uni- versity is a teaching instrument. And if he would fulfill the measure of his duties he must understand how teaching is best done. There- fore he must be a pedagogue. It is his profession. Of course, as in every other profession where a great institution is to be looked after, he must have executive ability and he must have the power of select- ing the men for the work which they are to do. Now, I submit that unless he is a teacher and understands generally with reference to all the teaching that is to be done in the university, he is not fitted to make the selections which are to build up the faculty, which is to do the work of the institution, and I congratulate you, sir, and I congratu- late the University that it has a President that fills in every respect the measure which I have described. REMARKS OF PRESIDENT TAFT AT THE ALL SOULS' (UNITARIAN) CHURCH, FOURTEENTH AND I STREETS, N. W., WASHINGTON, D. C, MAY 15, 1910. My Fellow Unitarians: — I am not sufficiently advised of the exact conditions and the history of this church to be able to make what I have to say authoritative, or perhaps even useful. I never have thought . .77 of Unitarians as the wealthy people oi any comniTinity: I do not think they are. I had a very novel experience at Beverly last summer in being- asked to take part in a movement for a charitable organization in the neighborhood, on the ground that if I did I might arouse the in- terest of some rich Unitarians in the neighborhood, and it was a novel sensation to me to be put in that attitude toward my fellow Unitarians. But whether we of this congregation are poor or rich, I do think it is of the utmost importance for all of us who believe in the Unita- rian Church that the capital of the country should have a suitable Unitarian edifice in which it can be made as useful as possible. I note that the chairman of the board of trustees says that the audi- torium is large enough. I do not presume to differ with him as to the business of the church, but I think we have had visible evidence during the wint,er that the church is not large enough ; and I do not doubt that when people come and stand in the aisle during one Sunday service and find it difficult to get seats, it discourages their coming again. We certainly ought to have a church here large enough to afford seating capacity for all who wish to come under the beneficent Uni- tarian influence. We have a preacher who attracts ; we have a church whose principles ought to attract and do attract; and we ought to spare no effort to erect a large enough auditorium to give comfortable opportunity to hear to those who would come. No one can have listened to the Sunday School exercises here at the end of each year without failing to realize the wonderful educa- tional, Christian influence that is exercised hy our Sunday School, and that it should have adequate accommodations is essential. There is ho time in the history of the church and in the history of our country when such a movement is likely to be as successful as to-day. We have prosperity. We shall probably be able to dispose of this church now for a sum as high as at any time, and the congre- gation is probably in a condition to give more liberally now than it may be in ten years hence. For that reason, it seems to me that the moment is here and that we all ought to strain to give as much as possible to make this movement a success, and I for one, although only an humble worshipper in the church, vote "aye." ADDRESS OF PRESIDENT TAFT AT THE FORTY-FIFTH BIENNIAL CONVENTION OF THE GENERAL SYNOD OF THE EVANGELICAL CHURCH OF THE UNITED STATES, AT THE LUTHER MEMORIAL CHURCH, WASHINGTON, D.'c, JUNE 7, 1911. Mb. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen : — I have listened with a great deal of interest to a review — a summary — of the strength and virtue of the Lutherans and the Lutheran Church. I hardly needed such an intro- duction of the audience, because I have known Lutherans ever sin(?e I knew anything. I came from Cincinnati. More than one-third of our population there are Germans, and a great majority of them are Luth- , .; 78. erans. I never think oT T.uLhernn?; without remembering- the only German phrase I know, and that I am uoL q lite sure is grammatical — "Ein Feste Burg-." That suj^g-ests their character and their reliance. I am delig-hted to welcome yon to Washington. I am glad you have chosen Washington for the meeting of your synod. I think it is a good city to come to. If you will believe some of my friends, like Dr. Rad- cliffe, perhaps your presence will help us. But seriously speaking, one of the pleasures and one of the duties of the President has come to be that of the welcomcr of the Capital City of those who are attracted here to hold useful conventions in the sight, so to speak, of the United States. Those of you who w^'alk u'lder the dome of the Capitol have the feeling, I know, that you are rigl.t there in the presence of the country. There the spirit of nationalism— the spirit of patriotism — seems to be in the atmosphere, and that is why you love to come to Washington, and to see personified, so to speak, your country. It is unnecessary for me to speak of the strength that the Lutheran Germans and the Germans g-enerally have added to our civilization. In Cincinnati we received what we thought was the "cream" of Germany in 1848 and 1849. At that time there were disturbances in Germany, and men who advocated the utmost freedom in government found homes here a little more comfortable than they thought they would be if they stayed. They were men of indei>endence, strength and of high standing in the communities they had left, and they stood for something in the commu- nities into which they came, and they formed the leaders of those Ger- mans who went into the Civil War for the purpose of upholding the North, vindicate freedom and eradicating slavery. Therefore, you have a history to which you may look back with intense pride. I am glad to be here on this platform. I am glad to congratulate you on such a convention. I am glad to meet the Speaker of the House here in such good company, but I am sorry that I can not wait to hear him. The truth is, my engagements are so many that it is a little difficult for me to keep them. I have just left the Chief Justice of the United States, with whom I have been engaged in a consideration of the reform of the equity procedure of Federal Courts. As he is leaving the city, and as this is the last time I shall have-the opportunity of seeing him, I must return to him, and I must ask you therefore to excuse me. I am sure the result of the synod will be as it ought to be, good for the church, good for the people in the church, and good for the coun- try. I am glad to welcome such sturdy members of the conimunity as the Lutherans of this country. ABDEJ^SS OF PEESIDENT TAFT AT THE METHODIST SOCIAL UNION BANQUET, AT SHEREY'S, NEW YOEK CITY, APEIL 27, 1911. Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen : — I have just left a gathering of newspaper men and publishers, the largest in the United States, and I have come to tell you one great advantage that you have over that gathering, and that is, that you bring the ladies down to your level, and give them an opportunity to exercise that iTitiiieiice whicli when exercised will elevate you to their level. It is a great pleasure to address a Methodist body under any cir- cumstances, but it is especially a pleasure and a privilege to address the Methodist Social Union. Methodism ia militant Christianity, but there is nothing in the militant spirit that prevents you from enjoying the sweets of association, and so it is that you have always cultivated, so far as I have known your Church, and I have known it in a great many different climes and quarters — you have cultivated a social side as well as a religious side of life. And you have not clothed your religion with that character of severity and rigidity that makes the members long for a little lack of restriction. I have come into contact with your Church under conditions where I have felt its beneficial influence in a marked way. It fell to my lot to assume responsibility for the civil government of some six or eight millions of people that the United States had taken over as a guardian, in order to point the way to good government and better civilization, and and in that work I found Methodist brethren and Methodist missionaries at my back, anxious to furnish their support and every assistance pos- sible. The truth is I became so much a friend of one of the Methodist brethren in the Philippines that I have been running him for Bishop ever since, but I have not yet been successful. But, my friends, I have just inflicted a speech of about forty minutes on one audience, and my love and consideration for you will prevent my repetition of the same cruelty on you. I am going on — ^moving on as Joe did in Bleak House. One limitation to-night is that I have to catch the midnight train in order to reach Washington in the morning. I ask you therefore to excuse me from further remarks because there are two other dinners that await my consumption. I thank you sincerely for your very cordial reception, and I thank your management for the opportunity of addressing such a beautiful and attractive audience. ADDEESS OF PRESIDENT TAFT ON THE 0€CASION OF THE FIF- TIETH ANNIVERSARY OF THE PRIESTHOOD AND THE TWENTY- FIFTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE CAEDINALATE OF HIS EMI- NENCE JAMES CARDINAL GIBBONS, AT THE FIFTH REGIMENT ARMORY, BALTIMORE, IVLARYLAND, JUNE 6, 1911. Ladies and Gentlemen : — ^This assembly, I venture to say, can find few counterparts in history. We are mcrt us American citizens to con- gratulate the American primate of one of the great ci) arches of the world upon the twenty-fifth anniversary of his accession t(j the highest office in his Church but one, and upon the fiftieth anniversary of his entering the Church as one of its priests. We are not here ;is members of any denomination. We are not here in any oflicial capacity. Bat we are here to recognize and honor in him hia high virtues as a patriotic member of our political community and one who through his ifj'g and useful life -80 has spared no efforts in the caxise of good citizenship and the uplifting of 'his fellow-men. As American citizens we are proud that his prominence in the Church broug-ht him 25 years ago the rank of Cardinal. The rarity with which this rank is conferred in his Church upon bishops and priests so far from Rome is an indication of the position which he had won among his fellow churchmen. But what we are especially delighted to see confirmed in him and his life is the entire consistency which he has dejnonstrated between earnest and single-minded patriotism and love of country on the one hand, and sincere devotion to his Church and God upon the other. One of the tenets of his Church is respect for constituted authorit3% and always have w^e found him on the side of law and order, always in favor of peace and good will to all men, always in favor of religious tolerance, and always strong in the conviction that complete freedom in the matter of religion is the best condition under which churches may thrive. With pardonable pride he points to the fact that Maryland under Catholic con- trol was among the first to give complete religious tolerance. Nothing could more clearly show the character of the man whose jubilee we celebrate than the living testimonial that this assembly is to his value as a neighbor in the community of Baltimore. If you would find what a man is, go to his home and his neighbors, and there if every- thing that he does and says rings true and shows his heartwhole interest in the welfare of men and women and children near about him, you have the strongest proof of his virtues as a lover of mankind. Born in Baltimore, educated in Ireland, made a priest in Maryland, a curate in North Carolina, a bishop in Bichmond, a coadjutor in Balti- more, Archbishop of Baltimore and successor of Archbishop Carroll and Archbishop Kendrick in the primatial see of this country, he was called to the high position of Cardinal June 7, 1886, by Leo XIII. In spite of the burden and responsibilities of hia high position in the Church, he has taken part in the many great movements for I'le betterment of mankind, and has shown himself not only a good Catholic in the church sense, but he has been broadly catholic in the secular sense of that word, so that the aifection felt for him by his co-religionists has spread to all denominations and to all the people, who are quick to see a disinterested friend. That he may long continue active in his present high position, that he may long continue in secular movements to take the prominent place he has always had in works of usefxilness, is the fervent prayer of Cath- olic and Protestant, of Jew and Chrisitian. I en con: the be 1. ] mould of the sequen 2. I sentati Servic( gresses 3. E througl control] ters ; 4. B, best ca^ proclam Conseqi 5. B3 and Ag( of Arbii THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE STAMPED BELOW AN INITIAL FINE OF 25 CENTS WILL BE ASSESSED FOR FAILURE TO RETURN THIS BOOK ON THE DATE DUE. THE PENALTY WILL INCREASE TO SO CENTS ON THE FOURTH DAY AND TO $1.00 ON THE SEVENTH DAY OVERDUE. APH 14 1933 APR 15 ^3 v.-/ %'. J3r, iiun'49DB >. HNov'ifiCB NOV 4 ^3^^ ^7Jun'6oF^ 1 mo 22Ma^tOA Kl-CD LD iAn2i3i JUL 3 1 W , by and the ases on- [3 re- otic "on- md be ar- ms L a !he ns LD 21-50m-l,'33 -S- 6. 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