F E3P5 ANNUAL ADDRESS. BY HORACE G: PLATT ,%€<.-. M<>. BEFORE THE NEVADA STATE UNIVERSITY, RENO, NEVADA, JUNE 2nd, 1898 Baoa PUBLISHED BY NEVADA STATE UNIVERSITY RENO, NEVADA Bancroft Ubiao Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2007 with funding from Microsoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/annualaddressbefOOplatrich Mr, President, Gentlemen of the Faculty, Young Ladies and Gentlemen of the Graduating Class :— I know of no more responsible task, nor one that should receive more serious attention, than that of address- ing a class of graduates, young men and women who have reached the parting of the roads where the traveler must make the correct choice or go astray ; who have before them their first real problem, whose correct solution must deter- mine their lot in life ; who have reached the end of play- time, whose aftermath is work which must result ill or well as it is wisely or unwisely performed ; who must no longer make mistakes ; who must now make their choice, knowing that ' ' whoever chooses must choose aright. Wrong choice carries it own destruction" ; and who must be told that "earth bears no balsam for mistakes." Bearing all this in mind, I would like to develop these thoughts along a line personal to yourselves. But there is today one question that above all others demands consideration, and therefore I have determined to talk to you upon the moment- ous problem that recently confronted this nation, and to endeavor to help you to the conclusion, if you have not already reached it, that the President and Congress have attempted the only solution that was possible under the cir- cumstances, and that would leave us still worthy of the [4] sacred trust of protection to the weak which God has always imposed upon the strong. I feel that I can in no other way so forcibly impress upon you the grave importance of right judgment and the fatality of wrong judgment, the necessity of honestly, fear- lessly, and wisely solving the great problems of life, and the disasters that follow their wrong solution. I would have you now and always seek first to find reasons for believing your country to be in the right, rather than to hasten ( as do too many ) to prove that she is in the wrong : I would have your first impulse patriotic rather than critical. While every true American is for his country, right or wrong, yet how much more strenuously is he her supporter, if he believes that she is in the right ! A Nation, like an individual, must choose aright. When the news of the Maine disaster shocked the Nation and electrified seventy millions of freemen, and Congress, the South joining hands with the North, by unanimous vote, appropriated fifty millions to the country's needs; when the President's call for volunteers was re- sponded to instantly alike in New Orleans and in Boston, and the Rebel yell mingled in patriotic chorus with the Federal cheer ; when the grand-son of Grant enlisted upon the staff of the nephew of Robert E. Lee, and the Gray and the Blue blended into the Red, White and Blue ; when Baltimore welcomed with Southern hospitality the cele- brated Sixth Massachusetts Regiment which in 1861 it had mobbed with Southern hate, giving it flowers and cheers in place of stones and jeers, hugs and kisses in place of kicks and hisses, and upon Baltimore's banner was engraved "For our country and humanity: Baltimore and Boston [5] clasp hands. May the memory of 1861 be effaced by the welcome of 1898"; when the South consecrated its alleg- iance to our one flag with the death of one of her sons, Ensign Bagley, the war's first victim, and with his blood sealed the reunion of the States, I felt that only a great and just cause was worthy of such manifestation of the absolute and eternal oneness and indissolubility of our Union, and that the war was not a mistake, and was worth all its cost. When the Sailor Meek uttered, as he died aboard the ill- fated Winslow, "Tell them I died like a man," I felt that such a man should not be sacrificed but in a holy and just war, and I believe that the cause for which he died is worthy of the sacrifice. I hope that you will in your cool judgment as well as in your glowing patriotism fully agree with me. Hundreds of years ago there journeyed from palace to court, from court to church, from the throne to the altar, and from priest to king a navigator who believed that the world was much larger than Roman Emperor or Vandal Chief or Spanish Monarch had ever dreamed, and that there were undiscovered lands rich in silver and gold that had never paid tribute to Rome, Constantinople or Madrid. This man was Columbus, and in Spanish ships he crossed the trackless seas, and revealed this continent to an aston- ished world. Such veneration have we always shown for the name of this navigator, that in 1893 we gave his name to that White City by the I,ake where all the children of the sons of men, from Greenland's icy mountains to Afric's burning sands, and from the wave- washed islands of many seas, gathered in friendly competition much that was best and most beautiful and useful in art and science and skill [6] and trade and agriculture and manufacture, and we entitled it the Columbian Exposition, and to it not only were there sent from Spain truthful reproductions of those famous ships that brought Columbus to these shores, but also there came as the honored guests of this government royal rep- resentatives of that government that started Columbus on his inspired voyage. And yet in 1898, after a lapse of only five years, these two nations are at war, and the big guns that then were but instruments of courtesy, and thundered only in friendly salutations, now are become engines of death, and belch forth missiles carrying destruction to American and Spanish ships. For years the nations of Europe have been making the seas populous with their floating leviathans of war, while they have made the land resonant with the roll of drum, blast of trumpet, and tread of marching armies. Their ever watchful sentinels have been for years standing guard with bayonets crossed o'er national boundaries, while their mobilized fleets have given constant warning to neighboring thrones. "At every bastioned frontier, every State, Suspicion, sworded, standing by the gate." During these years all our ways have been ways of pleasantness, and all our paths have been paths of peace, and this Republic has gazed with wonder, unmixed with alarm, at these mighty armaments, while its people's shoulders, unbent by military burdens, have stooped only in thriftful toil, and wealth has filled their coffers that needed no soldier guard. During this time the United States has maintained an army and built a navy in no way commensurate with its resources, and, as we now discover, insufficient for its needs, apparently oblivious of the need of either. [73 Therefore today in this land, to which war seemed most remote, the call to arms rang out with all the sudden- ness of an alarm of fire at midnight, and we can hardly realize that from counting room and college hall and scholar's desk and workman's bench our citizens have rushed to enlist beneath the stars and stripes to fight a foreign foe upon foreign soil, and that the flag flying from nearly every housetop means war and not a holiday. For the first time the army and navy of the United States leave this continent to invade a foreign land. Never shall I forget the day when the California and other regi- ments embarked for Manila. There was cheering, singing, booming of guns, and waving of flags, and there were mothers and wives whose hearts were heavy and whose eyes were lustreless with tears that would flow. Never shall I forget the succeeding day when those three ships in stately procession steamed along the city front and out through the Golden Gate towards the Orient. The flags dipped a part- ing salute, from a thousand housetops good-byes were wafted to those departing heroes, from loving lips went the sad adieu, " Good luck to those who see the end, good bye to those who fall." Why were these sons and fathers and brothers and lovers leaving home in this martial array? For territorial conquest? No! For this nearly all the other nations are now battling, or on the eve thereof. England is fighting a pathway for civilization up the Nile, and leaving opportunities for English colonization in the wake of her victorious armies. France and England are almost locking horns in their scramble for territory in Western and Central Africa. Germany and England are both ambitious for aggrandizement in Southern Africa. Russia, Germany and [8] England are jealously watching one another in their prelim- inary steps for parcelling out China. But the United States has hitherto refrained from acquiring territory beyond this continent, and has pledged itself not to appropriate Cuba by means of this war. Should other Spanish possessions be taken by us, as some have been, it will be as an incident of the war, not as its cause or inspiration. Do we seek more power ? No ! Of what benefit would more power be to us, holding, as we do, that government exists not for its own aggrandizement, but only for the benefit of the individual citizen, who wants not power, but liberty, happiness and competence. Then why have we gone into a war that must cost us millions in money and the lives of many of our brave soldiers and seamen ? Possibly it might be answered that Cuba has been a nuisance, that we will no longer have a nuisance next door, and that we have determined to abate this nuisance. But such was not, though it could have been our motive. We have taken upon our shoulders the burden of battle, we have assumed the cost of carnage, we are pre- pared to wear crape for our kindred killed, because we have determined to wage war for humanity's sake alone, because in the name of humanity, in the name of civiliza- tion we have ordered Spain to leave Cuba. We have entered into a war out of which we could expect that there should come to us only the sufferings of those who fall in battle, and the grief of loved ones at home, only sacrifices and burdens, and the satisfaction of having ended misery and misrule in a neighboring land, and of duty done and protection to the weak maintained. We are [9] fighting to carry out the principle upon which this Govern- ment was founded, namely, the uplifting of the weak, and the resisting of the strong. Never before since the crusades has a nation embarked in such an unselfish adventure. We have heretofore been engaged in several wars. We have fought for our own liberty and independence; to maintain the sacredness of our flag upon the seas ; to add Texas and California to our national domain ; and to pre- serve this Union. But this war is not for ourselves, but only for the right of others to live, and like ourselves to be free. Ex-President Harrison recently said, " Our foes now are not, thank God, those of our own household. That was a war for the life of the Union, this is a war for humanity. That for ourselves ; this for the oppressed of another race. We could not escape this conflict. Spanish rule had become effete. We dare uot say that we have God's commission to deliver the oppressed the world around. To the distant Armenians we could only send the succor of a faith that overcomes death and the alleviations which the nurse and the commissary can give. " But the oppressed Cubans and their starving women and children are knocking at our doors ; their cries pene- trate our slumbers. They are closely within what we have defined to be the sphere of American influence. We have said, " To us, not to Europe," and we cannot shirk the re- sponsibility and the danger of this old and settled American policy. We have as a nation toward Cuba the same high commission which every brave-hearted man has to strike down the ruffian who in his presence beats a woman or child and will not desist. For what if not for this does God make a man or a nation strong ? " [IO] "The mission of this country", says Richard Olney, lately Secretary of State, "if it has a mission, as I verily believe it has, is not merely to pose but to act — and, while always governing itself by the rules of prudence and com- mon sense, and making its own special interests the first and paramount objects of its care, to forego no fitting op- portunity to further the progress of civilization practically as well as theoretically, by timely deeds, as well as by elo- quent words. There is such a thing for a nation as a 'splendid isolation', as when for a worthy cause, for its own independence or dignity or vital interests it unshrink- ingly opposes itself to a hostile world. But isolation that is nothing but a shirking of the responsibilities of high place and great power is simply ignominious. • ' Before the first gun was fired many of us were irreso- lute and full of doubt as to the necessity or justice of the war. As a nation we are said to be very irresolute and very full of doubt up to the point when we wake the " drumming guns that have no doubt", after which there is no more irresolution till the last shot is fired. But, as there were some who continued to denounce President Cleveland long after even the British Prime Minister had admitted that this government in the Venezuela matter was acting within its right and according to its traditions, so there are some of us who still challenge the necessity of this war. Fortunately those who so think are in the minority, and probably have no flags as yet flying over their homes and offices. Such a patriot, whose heart is not in the struggle, would never have made the name of Dewey rival that of Nelson in immortality. I wish your patriotism and mine to be able to hold up its head and challenge the justification of mankind for its [II] zeal in this fight. Thrice is he armed who knows his cause is just. Cuba was discovered in 1492 by Columbus on his first voyage, and was almost immediately colonized by the Spaniards in their peculiar manner, to-wit, by exterm- inating the natives, causing a native Chief to exclaim to the missionaries of the Cross, ' ' If there are Spaniards in heaven, I prefer to go to hell." After four hundred years of Spanish rule Cuba, aptly named the ' ' Gem of the Antilles," the paradise of the Tropics, fertile in soil beyond all compare, rich in all mineral wealth, and capable of great commercial development, is to-day a political, agricultural, commercial and financial wreck, whose most active business and trade is that of grave-digging, and where there is neither " peace nor war, but desolation and distress, misery and starvation." I^ess in area than the State of New York and with a smaller population than the City of New York, it pays its Governor-General a salary as large as that re- ceived by the President of the United States, and is bur- dened with a debt of $300,000,000.00 incurred by its alien rulers mostly to feed fat a host of foreign officials, and in crushing the liberties of its people. Since 1777 the supreme power in this island has been bestowed upon a Governor-General, who has been invested with the absolute power of the commandant of a city during the time of siege. Since that time, office, power, patronage, distinction and rank in their native land have been denied to all Cubans, and since that time race hatred, "a mountain of hate and a sea of blood," between the Blacks and the Creoles on the one side and the Spaniards on the other has [12] been the cause of Cuba's troubles, whereby this poor land once called "the ever faithful Isle," has been torn and rent asunder until to-day it is a shamble and a pest-house. One insurrection has followed close upon another, the cry of Liberty bursting from the dying lips of a captured rebel leader, being instantly caught up by some successor. There was an insurrection in 1829, another in 1848, lasting three years, another in 1855, another in 1868 lasting ten years, and another in 1895 now wa g m g« During all this period Spain has been not only a poor mother to Cuba but a bad neighbor to us. The Cuban question is not a new one to us. For a century it has with varying intensity demanded our consid- eration. From Jefferson to Buchanan eight of our Presi- dents have advocated the annexation of Cuba. In 1809 Jefferson prophesied its annexation, and in 1823 John Quincy Adams repeated this prophecy. From time to time we have apprehended its acquisition by some other European Power, and we have repeatedly announced that we would not allow this island to pass from Spain to any other Power. The probability that the Holy Alliance and King Ferdinand might make Cuba the base of operation against these revolted South American provinces led to the message of President Monroe, in 1823, which was the official announcement of what is known as the Monroe Doctrine, to-wit, that we will not allow the acquisition by force of any part of this continent ( including Cuba ) by any Euro- pean Government. In 1825, when the South American countries had revolted, and Spain was endeavoring to drown the cause of freedom and the hatred of oppression in the blood of the [13] oppressed, Henry Clay said, "If war should continue "between Spain and the new Republics, and Cuba should 11 become the object and the theatre of it, its fortunes have "such a connection with these United States that they "could not be indifferent spectators, and the possible " contingencies of such a protracted war might bring upon "the Government of the United States duties and obliga- "tions the performance of which, however painful, they " might not be at liberty to decline." In 1825 John Quincy Adams suggested to Spain an indirect purchase of Cuba by the United States. In 1848 President Buchanan revived this idea of purchase and in 1853 President Pierce renewed it. la 1854 the United States Ministers to England, France and Spain jointly protested to the Powers of Europe that the possesion of Cuba by a foreign country was a menace to the peace of the United States, and proposed that Spain should be offered tho alternative of taking two hundred millions of dollars for her sovereignty over Cuba, or have it taken from her by force. In 1869 Secretary Fish protested against Valmaceda's brutal warfare against the Cubans, and added that this government could not admit the indefinite protraction of such barbarities. President Grant during the insurrection of 1868 to 1878 in vain offered his mediation for the purpose of effecting the peaceful separation of Cuba from Spain, and in 1875 inti- mated that the United States might have to intervene in order to stop the loss and misery in Cuba. In 1873 we came to the verge of war over the execu- tion by the Spanish officials of the captain and fifty-three [14] of the crew of the Virginius, an American steamer, loaded with supplies and ammunition for the Insurgents. In 1896 President Cleveland said: "The spectacle of the utter ruin of an adjoining coun- try, by nature one of the most fertile and charming on the whole globe, would engage the serious attention of the United States in any circumstances. It should be added that it cannot be reasonably assumed that the hitherto ex- pectant attitude of the United States will be indefinitely maintained. * * * "By the course of events we may be drawn into such an unusual and unprecedented condition as will fix a limit to our patient waiting for Spain to end the contest. When the inability of Spain to deal successfully with the insurgents has become manifest, and it is demonstrated that her sovereignty is extinct in Cuba for all purposes of its rightful existence, and when a hope- less struggle for its re-establishment has degenerated into a strife which means nothing more than the useless sacrifice of human life and the utter destruction of the very subject matter of the conflict, a situation will be presented in which our obligations to the sovereignty of Spain will be super- seded by higher obligations which we can hardly hesitate to recognize and discharge." President Cleveland offered mediation, and Spain re- plied that there was no effectual way to pacify Cuba unless it should begin with the actual submission of the insurgents to the mother country. Too well had a century's experi- ence of cruelty, oppression, extortion, bad faith, and tyrany the most crushing taught the Cubans what submission to such a mother meant, too well did they know that there was poison on such a mother's lips, and that her embrace [15] was death. There was consequently no submission, in pacification, but, instead, the driving of 400,000 people, the women and children, the old and helpless, the sick and in- firm, all who would not or could not fight under either banner, into vile pens to starve and die, and the laying waste of the homes they had occupied, until the dead by the hundred thousands filled these shambles, putrifying proofs of Spanish honor, Spanish pride, Spanish cruelty, and Spanish incompetency to govern Cuba. Weylerism added new terrors to inhumanity. You know what President McKinley has said of this policy of devastation and concentration. " It has utterly failed as a war measure. It was not civilized warfare. It was extermination. Against this abuse of the rights of war I have felt constrained on re- peated occasions to enter the firm and earnest protest of this Government. " The long trial has proved that the object for which Spain has waged the war cannot be attained. The fire of insurrection may flame or may smolder with varying sea- sons, but it has not been and it is plain that it cannot be extinguished by present methods. The only hope of relief and repose from a condition which cannot longer be endured is the enforced pacification of Cuba. In the name of humanity, in the name of civilization, in behalf of en- dangered American interests which give us the right and the duty to speak and to act, the war in Cuba must stop." Then came the blowing up of the Maine, and the kill- ing of two hundred and fifty-six American seamen in Havana Harbor, and Spain's practical response, "What are you going to do about it?" Then war was declared be- [i6] cause it was unavoidable, peace and war being not always of our own chosing. This Government of the people, by the people, and for the people could no longer sit idly by and see a neighboring people destroyed by a Tyrant because forsooth his sover- eignty was imperilled by their struggle to be free. This Christian, humane, civilized people could no longer listen to the sounds of suffering that every wind brought from Cuba, and could no longer witness scenes of cruelty surpassing the Inquisition, and not lift a hand to help, because forsooth a Tyrant's honor would be thereby offended. This Government, which had spent two millions in trying to stop filibustering, could no longer expend its revenues in helping Spain to continue its tyranny and cruelty ; it could no longer have the administration of its internal affairs disturbed by this constant obtrusion of a question that Spain could not settle and which the con- science of our people demanded should be settled. This Government and this people could not forget or forgive the treachery or the criminal incompetence that destroyed the Maine. We had in vain tried diplomacy. We had long listened to the promises that the Spaniards knew they could not keep, to proposals of reform that they knew they did not intend to grant. ' ' We were dealing v r ith a Power whose methods have discredited her in the realms of truth and justice, a Power which has never lifted its heel from the neck of a subjugated people until compelled by force," a Power that could not treat the insurgent Cubans with humanity because it could not understand humanity towards an insurgent. [17] Therefore we are at war with Spain, and we propose to teach her by the lesson of shot and shell that American gun- ners backed by the impulse of freedom to enslaved and suffer- ing humanity are invincible, that a new day has dawned for Cuba, and its Sun is the torch that liberty holds to light the world, a torch whose flame it is our sacred duty to keep burning. Over the victims of Spanish misrule floats the Buzzard, and the Eagle has winged its flight to drive this vulture from the Antilles. For centuries Spain commanded the attention of the civilized world, and the tribute of many nations. Her armies spread her power by land, and by sea her vessels carried her flag to many distant climes. By conquest and discovery she rivaled ancient Rome in greatness. In the 1 6th century Philip the Second had upon the continent of Europe no antagonist worthy of his steel. His army was the largest and best disciplined in the world, his fleet were more numerous than that of any other Power. Upon his brow he could place the royal crowns of Spain, Portugal, Naples and Sicily, and the ducal coronets of Milan and the Netherlands. In Africa and in Asia his domain extended, while in America he was head of an empire Caesar would have envied. Since the downfall of the Roman empire no such preponderating Power had existed in the world. Bancroft Library To-day she again attracts the attention of the civilized world, but this time by her dying groans rather than her shouts of victory, by the smoke of the smouldering ashes of her grandeur rather than the glare of the camp-fires of her conquering armies, by the cries of the helpless victims of her cruelty and intolerance rather than by the hallelujahs of a free and prosperous people. [18] For centuries possessing ports in many lands, colonies in every clime, and subject islands in many seas, to-day, at the close of this century, from her crown drop all her ocean jewels, and neither Bast nor Western Ind will longer do her obeisance. In the 1 6th century, when Boabdil, the last of the Moors, pausing in his retreat before the victorious Spaniards, looked down from an eminence, since called the Hill of Tears, for a last glimpse of the beautiful Alhambra, and wept, his royal mother reproached him for bewailing as a woman the kingdom he had not defended as a man. At the close of this century, as the last Spanish sovereign to rule over any part of this Western World weeps that the gem of the Antilles will never again glisten in the Spanish crown, and that the Spanish flag will no longer wave over the islands of the Eastern or Western sea, well may her royal son reproach her for bewailing as his mother the lands she had not protected as a Queen, well may the Angel of Mercy reproach her for bewailing in her Spanish pride the million of subjects to whom her Government had been merciless. The last Moorish sovereign looked back upon a land where his ancestors had ruled with tolerance, and where the Alhambra remained, a monument of Moorish arj: and genius to challenge the admiration of mankind as long as love of the beautiful holds sway in human souls. The last of the Spanish sovereigns to rule in Cuba looks back upon a land where she and her predecessors had ruled with savage intol- erance, and where the Reconcentrado Barracks will remain, monuments of Spanish brutality, at the description of which mankind will shudder as long as one touch of nature makes the whole world kin. [19] Let crowned heads waste their sympathy upon this royal mother and son for the impending loss of a throne that does not deserve to stand. We, recalling the Moors whom the occupants of this throne centuries ago massacred, the Jews whom they pitilessly drove into helpless exile, the Protestant martyrs whom they burned at the stake, the natives of South America whom by millions upon millions, by whole races and nations, they remorselessly extermi- nated, and the Cubans whom the present Queen has starved into the submission that comes with death, recalling the fact that for every one of the 200,000 soldiers the Queen has sent into Cuba one Cuban man, woman or child has died from starvation, or disease engendered thereby, that, though Spain has claimed sovereignty over the Philippines for four hundred years, she has conferred the blessing of civilization and Christianity upon only a small part thereof, neglecting and abusing her stewardship, we have sympathy only for the colonists upon whom the blighting shadow of this throne has so long fallen so fatally. The history of Spain has been the history of exagger- ated pride, overwhelming intolerance, and extreme cruelty, illuminated by the torch of Torquemada, while across it like a bar sinister runs a trail of blood from the Chambers of the Inquisition. Earth bears no balsam for mistakes, whether they are committed by individuals or by nations, and Spain's mis- takes have left her shorn of her rich colonies, with a bank- rupt treasury, a ruined credit, a tottering throne, an illiter- ate population, and anarchy threatening her social exis- tence. In her political philosophy the king, the noble was everything, the people nothing. "Her heavy throne, ringed by swords and rich with titled show, is based on 20] fettered misery below." She chose the wrong road, and wrong choice has worked her destruction. The fate of all the empires that have preceded her on this road to national decay awaits her, She is a dying empire. "Why died the empires? I^ike the forest trees Did nature doom them? Or did slow disease Assail their roots and poison all their springs? The old time story answers; nobles, kings Have made and been the State, their names alone Its history holds ; its wealth, its wars their own : Their wanton will could raise, enrich, condemn. The toiling millions lived and died for them." For Spain the handwriting is on the wall. Her doom is sealed. It was long ago written in prophetic ink on Sybilline leaves that we would be God's chosen messengers of his vengeance upon her for her sins. " A hideous skeleton among living nations, a warning spectacle to the world, if her punishment had not overtaken her, men would have said, " there is no retribution, there is no God." I have stated that we have entered upon this war solely to put a stop to man's inhumanity to man in the Island of Cuba, expressly disavowing any design of territorial acqui- sition as to this Island. Other things may have whetted our zeal, but they would not alone have caused war. But now that war has developed, destiny, that shapes our ends, hew them as we will, has opened her Pandora's box, and out has rushed a score of causative events that are leading and driving us into the international world, into the com- pany of the nations, where that nation will win that has the power, and that one will hold that can. From a potential we must now become an actual Great Power, and upon the camera of the future we must cast one of the largest shadows or none at all. [21] Destiny works in a mysterious way its wonders to per- form, and rarely reveals in advance what is forging in the workshop of fate. Behind the curtain of the future to-mor- row waits, holding in its hands the unexpected and the in- evitable, towards which the unerring and irresistible magnet of Fate hurries the nations. Yesterday we were hedged in by the Chinese wall of American isolation, and deaf, blind and heedless of the world without, we neither accepted the responsibilities of our true place among the nations nor secured its advant- ages. Vesterday's to-morrow finds that wall razed by the magic battering ram of destiny, and o'er its ruins marched the Phillipine expeditions. No longer can our ship of State keep within sight of the shores of an inland lake, but henceforth it must navigate the open sea. Upon this sea there are other ships, some large and powerful, others weak and small. With some of them we must in time come in conflict, with others we must sail in friendly companion- ship. If coming events have cast their shadows before, and the friendly and unfriendly utterances concerning us that are heard today in Europe are prophetic of future in- ternational relations, there is a certain mighty ship of State with which ours must eventually combine into an Armada that shall rule the seas. If all this be not merely fancy, and the time shall come when with colonial possessions beyond the seas, with our Atlantic and Pacific Coasts tied more closely together by the Nicaragua Canal, and with our flag floating over as large a navy as our political and commercial interests re- quire, we are compelled to disregard Washington's Fare- well Address, and to form a foreign alliance, then, as Mr. [22] Chamberlain recently said of the United States, I say ot England : "There is a powerful and generous nation, using our language, bred of our race and having interests indentical with ours. I would go so far as to say that, terrible as war may be, even war itself would be cheaply purchased if, in a great and noble cause, the Stars and Stripes and the Union Jack should wave together over an Anglo-Saxon alliance. ' ' With the exception of England none of the European nations give us credit for our real motives in this war. To most of them we are an impertinent, obtrusive, bullying, menacing, grasping people, not content with all of America, but ambitious of intruding into Europe, Asia and Africa. Not only have they misconstrued our motives, but they have also doubted our courage and skill in battle, thinking us simply a nation of shopkeepers. Dewey's gunning has shattered this ill-disguised contempt of us, it has shown them, to use the words of a typical Yankee, that if we can slaughter our pigs in peace we can also slaughter our enemies in war, it has proven that, though in this land wealth has accumu- lated, men have not decayed, and that victory upon the waves is still the birthright of American seamen. By England alone are we entirely understood, and but for her recent firm stand Austria, Italy, France, Germany and Portugal would most probably have attempted forcibly to stay our arms. This appreciation and friendly conduct have brought much closer together these two branches of the Anglo-Saxon race, whose laws and institutions are in a great measure the same, who ' ' of all the Great Powers are the only two in whose national life freedom, in any real sense, has made her home", who " are the only two who have not by choice been bound in the frightful chains of that military madness which has turned the European con- tinent into a camp", who, "are both very cordially detested I 2 3 ] and very bitterly envied by most of the military Powers", and of whom Jefferson said in 1825, " These two nations holding cordially together have nothing to fear from the United world. They will be the models for the regener- ation of man, the source^ from which representative gov- ernment is to flow over the earth." It was the Anglo-Saxon race that shattered Spain's world spreading empire, curbed the ambition of Philip the Second, crushed his Armada, and made England mistress of the seas. It was the Anglo-Saxon race, more than the snows of Russia, that vanquished Napoleon, prevented the triumph of personal imperialism, and stood guard at St. Helena over the military genius of all ages. It is the Anglo- Saxon race that is ' ' the pioneer of progress and the stub- born defender of liberty " ; it is the Anglo-Saxon race that gave to mankind civil liberty, whereby authority and law are harnessed together to the chariot of modern civilization ; and it is this Anglo-Saxon race from which we are sprung. In our religious proclivities, in our system of laws, and in our literature we are as Anglo-Saxon as the British, " We too are heirs of Rummy mede, and Shakespeare's fame and Cromwell's deed are not alone our mother's." We are Anglo-Saxon in the men who today are the controlling ele- ment in our population, who lead and represent us, and we propose in the near future that the nations of the earth shall respect our guns and gunners as much as they do those of our English cousins, and that we as well as England shall henceforth be recognized as much for our strength as for our trade. In the keen competition of the immediate future for the vast trade of the Orient, where the flower of civilization is just budding, we must be in a position to demand and exact [24] our share, or we will lose it. We must match Port Arthur, Wei-a-Wei, and Keao Chou with Manila. When the Nicaragua Canal is completed, as in the near future it must be, at either end our sentinels must stand guard, and our flag must have a resting place on some of the islands that command the Carribean Sea, Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean. Behind courage there must be strength. Behind great national interests there must be immediate and sufficient protection known of all men. We have courage, but behind it little strength immediately available. We have great national interests, but it is now known of all men that the protection behind them is possible, but remote. Neither in the Atlantic, Pacific, nor in the Orient have we a spot where an American ship can coal as of right. If we would be as independent as we can be powerful, all this should be changed. The God of Battles has planted our flag upon islands in the distant Pacific. He will soon unfurl it upon islands in the Atlantic. A friendly people may soon unfold it where the waters break on Honolulu's coral reefs. From now on, wherever it is raised, except in Cuba, it is raised to stay, and there it will remain as long as American courage backs up American genius upon the decks of an American man-of-war. "Earth bears no balsam for mistakes." "Whoever chooses, must choose aright." God grant that the Ameri- can people have chosen aright, that they have made no mistake in fighting this battle for humanity, and that its effect upon our future may redound to the glory of our country, and to the dissemination and perpetuation of popu- lar government throughout the world.