UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT LOS ANGELES WINNING ORATIONS Inter-Collegiate Contests South Dakota Compiled by O. W. Coursey, Author of: Literature of South Dakota Biography of General Beadle The Philippines and Filipinos Biography of Senator Kittredge The Woman with a Stone Heart Who's Who in South Dakota, Vol. I. Who's Who in South Dakota, Vol. II. History and Geography of the P. I. Published and for Sale by the EDUCATOR SUPPLY COMPANY Mitchell, S. D. Copyrighted 1917 By 0. W. Coursey cic* V-l FOREWORD The Dakota (now South Dakota) Inter-Col- legiate Oratorical Association was organized at Brookings, Dakota Territory, November 5, 1887. The educational institutions originally uniting in it were: (1) The State University, Vermillion. (2) The State College, Brookings. (3) Dakota University (Methodist), Mitchell. (4) Yankton College (Congregational). (5) Sioux Falls College (Baptist). Since that time the following schools have joined: (6) Redfield College (German Congregational). (7) Huron College (Presbyterian). Augustana College (Scandinavian) at Canton, was later admitted to the Association, but it re- tained its membership only one year. The first contest was held at Sioux Falls in the spring of 1888. Dakota University (now Dakota Wesleyan) was not represented in this contest, be- cause this school had burned down that year. Since then, twenty-nine additional contests have been held to date (1917). On three occasions, the Orations that won second place in the State contest, won first place in the Inter-State. This made it neces- sary to publish both of the Winning Orations for each of these years 1899, 1906, 1907. The oration by Case which won the National Peace Contest in 1916, has also been added, making a total of thirty- four speeches in the volume. They cover a variety of subjects; are models of English composition, and seem worthy of preservation. THE AUTHOR. CONTENTS Varney, G. R 9 Chase, E. A 15 Clark, Fred 21 Shepherd, A. C 29 Barrington, J. W 37 Stubbins, T. A 45 Locke, Richard F 51 Rowell, A. B 57 Ewert, W. F 63 McVay, Winifred 69 Colton, E. T 77 Rodee, H. A 85 Hubbard, Walter (Interstate) 93 Walton, Jas. A '. . . 101 Noble, Edith 109 Hardy, Clarion 117 Bagstad, Anna 125 Crowther, Jas. E 133 Tanner, Burton 141 Miles, Lou E 149 Shearer, Ralph (Interstate) 157 Norvell, George 165 Warren, Howard (Interstate) 173 Dobson, John 181 Dobson, James 187 Alseth, C. A 195 Leavitt, Harvey L 203 Tibbetts, Roi B 211 Pool, Floyd 219 Marble, Sam 227 Thomas, Clement 235 Nelson, S. P 241 Husted, Harold 249 Case, Francis (Peace Contest) 257 INDEX Alseth, C. A 195 Bagstad, Anna 125 Barrington, J. W 37 Case, Francis (Peace Contest) 257 Chase, E. A 15 Clark, Fred 21 Colton, E. T 77 Crowther, Jas. E 133 Dobson, John 181 Dobson, James 187 Ewert, W. F 63 Hardy, Clarion . ., 117 Hubbard, Walter (Interstate) 93 Husted, Harold 249 Leavitt, Harvey L 203 Locke, Richard F 51 Marble, Sam 227 McVay, Winifred 69 Miles, Lou E 149 Nelson, S. P 241 Noble, Edith 109 Norvell, George 165 Pool, Floyd 219 Rodee, H. A 85 Rowell, A. B 57 Shearer, Ralph (Interstate) 157 Shepherd, A. C 29 Stubbins, T. A 45 Tanner, Burton 141 Thomas, Clement 235 Tibbetts, Roi B 211 Varney, G. R 9 Walton, Jas. A 101 Warren, Howard (Interstate) 173 FIRST CONTEST (1888) THE JEW (G. R. VARNEY. SIOUX FALLS COLLEGE) Religion is the foundation of all history. In its upheavals old social systems have disappeared and new ones have come into being. From it have sprung all forms of truth and all shapes of error. It is the controlling element whether in the life of an individual or of a nation. By it the past has been both guided and led astray. To it the future with broader charity must look for light. The history of the Aryan race is an unending tale of conquest. With face toward the setting sun it has marched until the West is East and the course of its victories belts the earth. But from the hills and plains of Syria came those, who, in the range of morals and religion should conquer even the conquerors, and hold over the modern world un- questioned sway. Up to the period when the record of the Jews passed from the sacred narrative their history is well known. They were contemporaries of Egypt, Chaldea and Troy. As the chosen people of God they had increased from the nomad family of Abra- ham to a mighty nation. They had defied the Pharaohs. The chariots of Assyria had gone back from their gates humbled. They had left a history luminous with heroic virtues. But now they were a dismembered nation. They had crouched under Egyptian whips, and their bodies bore the seams of the cruel lash. As slaves they had built the palaces of Ninevah, and their limbs were galled by chains. In entering the further conflict of races they were but despicable opponents. Thus thought the sons of the captains of Alexander, 10 WINNING ORATIONS and they dragged them beneath the harrow of in- vasion. So thought the proud Caesars, and the Roman eagle darkened with his wings their sky and brought them into servitude. Their freedom had been for many years lost, when at Bethlehem the Greatest of the Jews was born. Him they crucified. This was their fatal error. Again and again they had defied disaster and outlived defeat. But now there were to be heaped against them the curses of a relentless hate. From the cross upon which the lowly Disturber of the peace had died there went forth teachings which should render immortal their Jerusalem, their Jordan, their Bethany, their Mount of Olives, and "whose leaves should be for the healing of the nations." But for the Jews, these teachings, through the perversions of a misguided zeal, were to spring up into a harvest of woe. In the year 70, A. D., the fall of Jerusalem drove the entire Jewish nation from its home. Slowly, with broken hearts they went out in the darkness. The world was broad, but it afforded them no resting place. The gates of every city were closed against them, and the bitter cry "Anathema Maranatha" now hurled back upon them forbade their entrance. They became scattered throughout all Europe. Some at length found a home in Spain with the infidel Moors. But with the decline of Moslem authority their persecutions were renewed with increased bitterness. And finally, when the land had become almost as dear to them as their own Canaan, by a decree of Ferdinand and Isabella they were driven out. Along ways steep and rough, bearing the ashes of their kindred, they fled again from Christian into Pagan lands, and under the sway of the Sultans of the East they sought and found that charity which Christian Europe had de- nied. They were expelled from Portugal and were SOUTH DAKOTA 11 obliged to leave their children in the hands of their persecutors, until in despair mothers threw their babes into the rivers and killed themselves. The story is everywhere the same. In the sunless dun- geons of France, in the gloomy prisons of the Rhine, in the trackless forests of Russia the Jew was clutched like a wild beast and slain without mercy: and all this in the name of Him who died praying "Father forgive them; for they know not what they do." In the times when religious zeal was strongest, when nations were arousing themselves to rescue the Holy Sepulcher from dishonor, then the fagots were heaped highest about the Jew, and human in- genuity was exhausted in devising instruments of torture. Men and women of all ages, the most saintly and chivalrous, deemed it a virture to perse- cute them. They were expatriated by every gov- ernment in Europe. The Magna Charta, which raised the first bulwark of civil liberty in England, contained a clause which drove the Jews beyond the borders of the British Isles. Even the most ardent champions of religious freedom had no regard for them. Luther despised them, and the followers of Cromwell forgot them in their prayers. But in spite of fire and sword and dungeon, through ages of barbaric cruelty, the intellectual and moral vigor of the race persisted and survived. Their thinkers stood upon the heights; and when the night had passed, upon the forehead of the Jew, Maimonides, there fell the first clear rays of dawn. Though decimated in number the Jews emerged from the Middle Ages with their national faith un- shaken. They had clung with tenacious hold to the old Judaic standards. When no longer able to forti- fy their loved city they had raised their law like an impregnable fortress, and not one jot or tittle had 12 WINNING ORATIONS passed from it. They had remained, moreover, pure in blood and with the strong lineaments of their race unchanged. But it is not strange that their rough contact with the Gentile world had left its impress upon them. The enforced employments of fifteen hundred years had ingrafted other traits than those which they had borne with them from Jerusalem. In Palestine they had been a race of husbandmen. Through their industry and thrift Judea had become as fertile as a garden. In Europe they became a race of brokers. Why? Not, as was now charged against them, because the Jew chose to live by means of graft instead of labor. But be- cause as often as he had turned himself to other pursuits his lands had been confiscated, his harvests burned and all the labor of his hands destroyed by his merciless oppressors. The Jews became usurers not from choice but from necessity. If they secreted their wealth it was to hide it from the plunderer. If they became at length greedy in their money lending it was because every avenue had been closed to them except the one sordid channel. But they were changed for the worse in other ways than this. In the olden times the Hebrew's soul was as open as his sky, his brow was unclouded, his face wore the sunlight of an infinite trust and love. He came from the persecutions of the Middle Ages suspici- ous, revengeful, hissing the curses of a measureless contempt. He had learned to meet scorn with scorn, revenge with revenge. But shall we count it strange that the Jew, in obedience to his precept, "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth," took, when he could, stern vengeance upon his foes, and forget that the Christian, enjoined to love his enemies, outdid him a thousand fold in deeds of cruelty? In the Jew of the Sixteenth Century there was but little to admire. For ages famine and the sword SOUTH DAKOTA 13 had done their worst upon it, and now the sym- metry of the old Hebrew character was, for the greater part, destroyed. It had refused to perish utterly. But like the mountain pines which grow upon the craps and persist in spite of storms, it re- tained no element of beauty except its strength. Notwithstanding these facts the Christian world has, in modem times, held the Jewish race to a strict account for those faults of character which were developed by its own injustice. When, after four centuries of banishment, the Jews were allowed to re-enter England, and when, in turn, the other governments of Europe had given them free access beyond their borders, when they had done with the baser forms of cruelty, a torture not less keen, though more refined, awaited them. They were allowed to re-enter England. Bow how? As social outcasts; as beings despised and hated; from whom the Gentile race should draw back its skirts in disdainful pride. This prejudice has stub- bornly survived even to the present time. But though often well grounded in a narrow sense it cannot be justified in a broader view. To the proud nature of the Jew this humiliation was at first deep and bitter. But he was content to bide his time. He could force an unwilling recognition. Once free to act, the strength and versatility of the Hebrew mind began to assert themselves, and gradually rose into prominence. And when the wit of Heine had made all Europe hold its sides, when the name of Mendelssohn had been written beside that of Beethoven, when in philosophy the name of Spinoza had been enrolled above all others, when Castelar at the head of the Republicans in Spain had won the only real victory they had ever gained, when Lasker had torn the mask from German despotism, when the will of Gambetta had become sovereign in 14 WINNING ORATIONS France, and when at last after years of striving Disraeli waved his salute to England from his place beside her throne, then the world returned the salutation and paid its tardy homage to the Jew. The Hebrew race, remarkable from whatever point of view, holds a place in history above all others. Its services to this world cannot be meas- ured and should not be denied. If there are present causes of grievance, let it not be forgotten that two centuries cannot undo the work of a thousand years. Let it not be forgotten that this present age, which in spite of its so-called liberalism is more deeply religious than any other, owes, under Divine guidance, to the Hebrew race, the faith upon which it rests. And let the hope which was Disraeli's be shared by all; that in a higher sense than they have dreamed the Zion of the Jews shall be restored, and that in that starlit temple, greater than the one of old, on a plane radiant with truth, Jew and Gentile shall bow together before their King, whose mantle of charity must cover all. SECOND CONTEST (1899) THE PURSUIT OF WEALTH (E. A. CHASE, YANKTON COLLEGE) When the early colonists left their native land, they left, also, their love of military life and glory. They sought this new world for the happiness of liberty and peaceful pursuits. Here, where the disturbing element of war could not often appear, where the chief thought was for the individual, it seemed that a bright day of prosperity had dawned. Webster, catching the glories of the new morn fast breaking, was inspired to exclaim: "There is for us a noble pursuit to which the spirit of the time strongly invites us. Our proper business is improvement Let our age be an age of improvement; in a day of peace let us advance the arts of peace. Let us develop the resources of our land, call forth its powers, build up its institutions, promote all its great interests." The sound of these words seemed to vibrate throughout the land. With a mighty throb of life the nation springs forward to grasp the wonderful opportunities. The keen axe hews the majestic forests into magnificent structures. The pick and bar unlock the hidden stores. The steel points plow their way through the vast prairies, and turn the sod-covered surface into rich fields. The mighty Rockies resound with the heavy thud of the ponder- ous stamp crushing out the glittering gold. There remains scarcely place or substance that has not yielded something to this new industrial world. All this men have done. But what has all this done for them in return? In a day of peace they have called forth the powers of nature and built up great industries. 16 WINNING ORATIONS But these pursuits have recast the nation's thought in molds of gold. The simple purpose of providing the necessities of life has been over- shadowed by a great passion for wealth. Amidst the rapid whirl in factory and mill, in the crowded square of the market, in the ceaseless hurry of the farm, this burning passion is ever felt. Question the youth, with books in hand, behind the counter, at the bench, or wherever he may be preparing for life, as to his thought of success, and seldom will it be other than the making of money. But is it strange? If his home is on the farm he hears chiefly of "hard times," and what will pay; if in the city, incessant talk of business and speculation. If he asks advice, little will he receive that does not bear on the prospect of wealth. The saving boy, he is told, is the youth of promise; the successful business men, the valuable citizen; the millionaire the one who has reached the goal of life. The cur- rent expression, "When I am rich," though often uttered lightly, yet expresses the fond hope of every heart. Certainly the pursuit of money has been the path of this nation. Is it the true path? For some divine reason this existence must be sustained by the fruits of labor. Hence, vigorous industry is good for the maintenance of existence, but should the wealth ac- cruing from industry be the prize for which this earthly race is run? Is that life? Is that the inevitable amount of man's hope and aspirations? Was the highest mechanism of God's handiwork to create beings of no nobler purpose? Was human- ity fashioned in Hissown image only to minister to the temple of that image? Was the spirit of life breathed into these forms of clay only to heap up SOUTH DAKOTA 17 and worship inanimate piles of dust? Let us con- sider a little, if we may, the nature of this much coveted boon. Toil is the only exchange for which earth yields up her fruits. If that price is refused, her store-house is locked. As the Persian drove his warriors into battle by the lash, so grim necessity whips the laborer to his drudgery. The real wealth of the world is its supply of the necessities of life. Being subject to Nature's economic laws, which permit production of but little more than the required amount for each year, and take back by decay the surplus, no great amount of real wealth can ever be accumulated. Do they who pride themselves on their riches never realize the vanity of their possessions? Let your precious metals, your railroads, factories, massive buildings, and speculative stocks be so increased that every one might count himself a millionaire. In the ecstasy of sudden wealth labor would be ignored. A season's harvest would be neglected. Poverty in its most wretched garb, starvation, would appear. Then railroads would lie unused; factories cease their busy whirl; brick blocks crumble from neglect, gold and silver be flung away; the world of millionaires divest itself of costly garments and resume its dig- ging- Tis a fancy, this hope of wealth, this dream of luxury. Before the stem truths of life it vanishes like the rain-bow from the heavens before the shade of night For a brief moment in the long and gloomy day of the world's history the golden sun has broken forth from the clouds of tyranny and war, and shone out from the clear sky of peace its bright rays reflected from the new industries, glisten and sparkle, forming a beautiful rain-bow in the heaven of hope. The eyes of men were dazzled by the splendor of the scene of luxury. In 18 WINNING ORATIONS childish illustration they went in search of the fancy. They knew not, and seemed, not yet fully to understand, that where this enchanting vision of idle comfort in its graceful curve seems to reach down to earth is not a place, but, a deceptive image of the mind. Still they pursue that image, and as it grows dim before them, they do not see the threatening clouds of greed and contention rising on the horizon of peace, shutting them out from the object of their journey. They stop and chide one another with leading in the wrong way. As the shades of greed and poverty deepened, the bright hope of universal comfort faded into a homely struggle for existence. Out of this struggle has arisen something known as wealth, or capital. It is the power which controls labor and governs the distribution of supplies. Capital is a good thing. It is to the nation what tools are to the farmer. But the value of machinery depends on its right use, and so does the value of capital, and when it is used, as it now is to a great extent, for creating artificial needs, and producing useless supplies to fill this perverted demand, and then, not satisfied with not filling the demand, employs thou- sands of men to crowd through the market as much more as possible of unneeded and worthless articles of trade, simply to gather more capital, to erect more machinery, to make more such articles, to support more men in mischievous employment, then, indeed, capital becomes one of the most grievous causes of poverty in a nation. It has no value except as it is brought into con- tact with legitimate production and distribution. Do you attribute to capital the advance in the scale of comfort which America has enjoyed? It is not in this that the nation has found its relief from poverty. But in the vast domain a broad SOUTH DAKOTA 19 avenue of escape for the poor. But the limit is not distant. It stands before us like a great black wall. The west is filling. The east groans under her burden. She no longer has place to send her poor. What relief comes from capital. Where it stands in pyramids of wealth, monuments to the industry of a nation, there about the basis of those pyramids skulk the hungry poor; and the higher those monu- ments rise the darker is the shade of poverty cast about them. This love of gain, this "mad haste," to be rich, this establishment of a false purpose of life, is fruitful of much harm. It depreciates life, denies the claims of mind and body, ignores the existence of the soul, and breeds discontent by placing success hopelessly beyond all but a few. On the struggling masses of humanity hope and ambition turn back in mockery. In sullen silence they bear their poorer condition, or, angered by the pride of the more successful, they rebel against all wealth, all capital. We reverence no crown, but to the ill-gotten crown of gold we pay as much homage as was ever shown to the iron crown of the Lombards. We are free and safe to go where we will. But feudal lords of wealth, from their castles of monopoly, prowl forth to plunder and to rob. We have peace. The sword is laid aside. But, armed with the keen scimiter of business skill, men engage in cruel and fearless war. We have liberty. But the glad shout of free- dom is set at discord by the harsh notes of anarchy. But Hark! Beside the din of grating sounds from money-getting, come softer strains. Listen, and you may catch the words of this new song! 'Tis of love, this joyous note. Love shown and ex- tended through the medium of wealth. It is a song 20 WINNING ORATIONS that turns the heart's desire from selfish hoarding to kind impulses of charity. Under its influence, men gifted with superior business talents will yield to the less gifted the benefits of their greater powers. They will acknowl- edge these special powers granted to them as calls of God to minister to His less favored children with the wealth which he has placed here for them. The laborer will have no more reason for complaint of his employer, but will join in this song, singing praise of him who lives and gives his life that the laborer's lot may be lighter. Then this great America, with its bright skies and clear waters, fertile fields and noble forests, lofty mountains and verdant valleys, a land filled with the beauties of nature and the rich treas- ures of earth, overflowing with abundance of good gifts, spread out in all the elegance and luxury of a kingly banquet, may indeed be called the home of the poor and friendless, the refuge of the oppressed of every nation. Not yet have many learned the beauties of this new song of love. But the key note has been sounded. May it awaken response till it has softened the greed of every soul in charity, and the whole land is resonant with its happy sound. May it be a grand chorus sung by the whole nation, till it will seem that the beautiful refrain of angels has been taken up, "On earth peace, good will toward men." THIRD CONTEST (1890) THE PROBLEM OF THE CENTURY (FRED H. CLARK. DAKOTA UNIVERSITY) History, as it stands outlined against the dark background of time, presents the picture of a vast mountain range. The plain of each century has been broken by some gigantic issue; some mighty upheaval in the common course of events, which towers like a rugged peak, far above the minor circumstances that sur- round it, distinguishing the age in which it occurs. From the present, back to where obscurity shuts out the light of ages from history's winding course, we see these massive monuments upreared to the race; these great landmarks in the march of time, which seem to draw toward them both the precedent and subsequent events, and make themselves the centers of their respective ages. The fifth century saw the Roman Empire fall, scattering its embers over darkened Europe, where they smoldered for a thousand years until kindled into a flame that spread throughout the world. The fifteenth century saw the dawn of a new day break upon the nations, and dispel the long night of a thousand years. Columbus, crossing the awful sea about which had gathered the fear and superstition of four thousand years, threw open the gates of a new Eden. The sixteenth century felt the world tremble under the colossal tread of the Reformation. The nineteenth century has been crowded with circumstances of great moment; unprecedented has been the progress of science; discovery and inven- 22 WINNING ORATIONS tion have belted the globe; vast empires have fallen and mightier ones arisen; and now to close this golden era, a fitting crown for such an age, comes its grandest event; penetrated is the heart of Africa, and Henry M. Stanley opens to development a new colossal realm. Westward the mighty waves of emigration that have swept over the old world since man began his march around the globe, seem ever to have rolled; surging past dark Africa, on toward the settting sun. The vast hordes that have swarmed back and forth across Europe, touched the north of the con- tinent only, and left unknown this land of eternal summer, this far-off sunny clime. In the brilliant days of the old Augustan age, the Roman generals led their unconquered phalanx across the Mediterranean to subdue the great un- known, but reaching the desert they were dis- heartened by the burning waste that lay before them, and returning erected here and there massive structures, which stand today as monuments of the tremendous failure. Thus one after another the ancient and mediae- val nations feebly essayed to penetrate the mys- teries that shrouded the Ethiopian kingdom, until at last the daring Portugese circumnavigated Africa and fixed is boundaries. This stupendous task accomplished, explorers flocked on every side, like a vast army surrounding a fortress, and the attack on the center was begun. From the west, Park explored the wonderful region of the Niger, and in attempting to follow its terrible flood to the sea, lost his life. Lacreda, striking at the southeastern forests, cut his way in to the capital of the African King, where disease struck him down. SOUTH DAKOTA 23 Thus, from time to time, these great discoverers attacked the impregnable battlements of the un- known land on every side, and died while bravely pushing on to open to the world the unseen treas- ures that lay hidden in its heart. 'Twas in the midst of these uncertainties and discouragements that Stanley began his work, and opened one of the grandest campaigns known to history. The immortal Livingstone had discovered the great lacustrine system whose outlet is the Lualaba; a tremendous flood that every second pours a hun- dred thousand cubic feet of water into something? Stanley was determined to find out what; and re- solved to follow it to whatever sea or ocean it might lead. The storied voyages of Marquette and Joliet on the Mississippi, and of Orellana on the Amazon, sink into insignificance, when compared with this herculean task. On through the treacherous whirlpools and over the roaring cataracts of the great stream; often compelled to hew their way through the dense forests that bounded them like a wall on either hand; through showers of poisoned arrows; through disease, through death; for a thousand days save one, the heroic little army wandered in the heart of the unknown land; the sparkling waters beckon- ing on they knew not where. No sound came to betray the name of this vast shining river whose roaring torrents bore them on. Discouraged, reduced in numbers, the little band would fain have turned back. But one dark day the old Arab chief, recognizing some landmark, re- turned the answer, "Ikuta ya Kongo." Never did "Vive '1 Empereur" more inspire Napoleon's glittering troops than did this trium- 24 WINNING ORATIONS phant shout thrill the hearts of these weary pil- grims alone in the Dark Continent's heart. Press- ing on, they safely reached the sea. Livingstone's Lualaba was connected with Tuckey's Congo, and the shout of the old Mohammedan chief rang throughout the civilized world. Far to the south of the well-nigh boundless Congo forests lies a lovely land, with a sky as soft and a climate as perfect as balmy Italy. Vast fields of gold and diamonds glitter in the tropic sun. "Whatever fruits in different climes are found, That proudly rise or humbly court the ground, Whatever sweets salute the northern sky. With vernal lives that blossom but to die; These here disporting own the kindred soil, Nor ask luxuriance from the planter's toil, Yes, vernal beauty reigns supreme." But why has the creator for centuries concealed this beautiful garden in the heart of a hidden realm; withholding it from the sight of enlightened man! 'Twas the hand of the Omnipotent, working out a mighty problem that it took four hundred years to solve. For centuries explorers nibbled, as it were, at the coast of Africa. For centuries the nations hurled their forces on its impregnable sides. Hundreds of brave adventurers vainly essayed to solve its mysteries, and left their bones to bleach upon its burning sands. But you ask, if this was the hand of God, why did he permit this sacrifice? For answer, why did he permit his chosen people to languish under the lash of Egyptian bondage for four hundred years? Why did he not send the Christ in the brilliant days of the Babylonian kingdom; or later in the golden age of Greece? The fullness of time was not yet SOUTH DAKOTA 2& come. God was not ready and the world must wait. Going back along the path of history to the close of the ' Middle Ages, we see the Portugese throwing the inhabitants of western Africa into slavery, and later selling them to the pioneers of our own country, by whom they were held in servi- tude until their emancipation in 1863. We as Americans look upon these three centur- ies as a dark period in the history of the Negro; and yet 'twas the dawn of his day. For, had not the African been taken from his southern shore, he would have been as savage as his brethren in the Dark Continent are today; and if taken from his native wildness and brought to the land of civiliza- tion, he must be controlled before he could be taught. You say America has cursed the black man; but show me a nation that has done more for his race than has she. The centuries of servitude that the African has endured have transformed him from savage to man. Brought in contact with civil- ization, the light of reason slowly dawned upon his slumbering intellect, and as the years wore on, he gradually became, as far as circumstances would permit, the equal of his master. In 1860 the people of the north, recognizing his right, turned and with one terrible blow, shattered his fetters and made him free. Investing the slave with every right that was his master's, gave rise to a jealousy and hatred be- tween the races, which we first see in the Ku Klux; sitting like a spectre in the moonlight before some lonely cabin, while the horrified Negro looks upon him as the Celestial looks upon his god; or, we see him creeping upon the home of some unionist, like a fox upon his prey; dragging him from his couch 26 WINNING ORATIONS and leaving him bound and bleeding with none but the stars to watch his suffering. Though the iron hand of the law could check such deeds as these, it could not quench the fire of hatred between the races, and the terrible strife has been growing ever since the emancipation of the slaves. The color of the Negro's skin is an eternal bar from the society of the whites; murder and outrage stalk abroad in our land today as a result of this unnatural mingling, and at last the people in their despair cry out, "the race problem must be solved." Right here is the grandest coincidence in the history of nations. Just at this crisis Almighty God solves the problem; throws open the portals of the wonderland in Africa that have been sealed since the beginning of time; discloses a colossal realm where roam a hundred million souls, shrouded in the darkness of barbarism. The Dark Continent must have light, and here in America he has been preparing eight million tutors of their own blood to civilize and Christianize this savage horde. Call it circumstance; a mere coincidence; call it what you will. I believe it the design of the Omniscient one that in the year of our Lord, 1890, Africa should burst her iron doors and send forth to the world an appeal for help for her people in darkness. That in this same year the crisis should be reached in the race war, and America send her eight million Negroes back to their native shore to impart to their brethren the light for which they plead. You say the cost will be enormous. Will you pay it from the overflowing coffers of your treasury, or will you pay the price in blood? Eight million Negroes inhabit your land today, invested with every right that you enjoy, yet barred SOUTH DAKOTA 27 forever from your society by the blood that courses through their veins. Their number is increasing year by year. Must a crisis be reached where the sword shall take the place of the dagger, and our fair land be convulsed by a war with the race for whose freedom we have just sacrificed three hundred thousand lives? The amalgamation of the races is a solution than which nothing can be more horrible. It will elevate the Negro, but it will debase the race that has made the world progressive and glorious. This natural distinction between the Anglo-Saxon and the African is divinely drawn. God and nature de- mand that it be kept inviolate; and yet amalgama- tion is the only road to peace save colonization. When this migration of the black man to his native land shall be accomplished, Africa will pour her riches into the markets of the world; these savage races shall be elevated to the plain of civil- ized nations; the worship of the Fetich shall be superseded by the worship of the true God; and God shall have justified his ways to man. Then this stupendous question with which America grapples today shall be settled, settled right and settled forever. Through the mists of strife that envelope us we shall see the dawn of a better day. When the southern zephyrs shall bring a cry for light from the Dark Continent, America shall send back the answer, sweeping like a mighty wave across the 28 WINNING ORATIONS Atlantic, "We are coming, 'nighted brethren, eight thousand thousand strong." America will be free, and Africa saved. And the shout shall ring through- out the nations to the uttermost parts of the earth; and the listening angel shall bear the glad news upward where unnumbered millions sing in realms of endless bliss, and the mighty chorus shall echo 'round the throne of God, from which shall shine the light to illumine the path to freedom for a hundred million souls. FOURTH CONTEST (1891) THE INDIAN PROBLEM (A. C. SHEPHERD, DAKOTA UNIVERSITY) History, with its mystic charms and charming mysteries, reveals to us the treasures of the past. It enables us to glance back through the dim mists of vanished ages and behold many scenes which dis- close the actuating motives of the world's great actors. Piercing the dark clouds which enshroud the pathway o'er which progress has traveled, we enter in thought the vale of long ago. It is the historic day when the little island, San Salvador, was first seen by that illustrious voyager whose name is now immortal. As he views enraptured the scene before him, the dusky, stal- wart natives swarm down from the flower-decked hillsides and emerge from sylvan forests. They gaze in profound awe and ignorance at the strange pale-faces whom they enthrone in their credulous imaginations as fair gods from the far-off spirit world. Little did the untutored Indian dream that these pale-faces would soon dispossess him of his native land and confine him upon some narrow sec- tion of this wide, colossal realm. Ignorant, simple, and savage, little did he know that the advance of civilization meant death to many of the non-pro- gressive Indians themselves. The Indian has sometimes been pictured as a noble hero. He has been idealized by the fervid fancy of genius, his praises sounded in sweet strains of poesy and song; but such characters as the im- mortal Hiawatha lived only in the dream of the poet, for the naturally honest, industrious, and moral Indian is a mythical being, created by fancy, the 30 WINNING ORATIONS unseen hero of fictitious tales. The Indian has his ideals, admires his heroes, worships the Great Spirit, and hopes at last to enter the happy hunting- grounds of his future Elysian home. But his ideals are ignoble for his nature is untamed and base; his heroes are reverenced, not for deeds of love and self-sacrifice, but for those of cruelty and revenge; the Great Spirit is a solemn, mysterious, unknow- able something, worshiped in fear and superstition; the happy hunting-ground is a consummation of his earthly ambitions, hopes and joys. Thus history portrays him by removing four hundred years from the vista of the past. But the Indian is not a being of the past. In spite of the conquering armies that have swept over his territory, in spite of disease, famine, and wars, he exists today, and although four centuries have passed since the light of civilization first broke through the gloom that o'ershadowed his race centuries in which the greatest triumphs of genius have been achieved he exists today as he has existed from time immemorial. True, there may be a few notable exceptions, but almost universally the same impulses animate his being, the same de- sires and longings characterize his nature. Amid unprecedented prosperity and progress he has lived, not aiding in its development, nor participating in its joys, not even sharing in its rich fruitions. The record of events, the Indian's determined opposition to culture and refinement, and above all, the recent threatening outbreak lead us to believe that however successful civilization may have been in art, science, and invention, in elevating the Indian it has signally failed. When wars between civilized powers arise, we calmly and dispassionately consider the causes and then exonerate or condemn the belligerent nations. SOUTH DAKOTA 31 Yet scarcely do we realize how many and how great the provocations which have led the Indian to take up arms against the intruders upon the soil which he claims as an hereditary possession, and which claim our government has fully recognized, as seen by the treaties it has made. Thus it is that often the savage warrior who is reprobated by public opinion would be readily acquitted if tried before a less prejudiced tribunal. The story of the Red Man awakens feelings of tenderest pathos as well as sternest condemnation. It is a story of hopes blasted and confidence be- trayed, though placed in the representatives of the most glorious civilization known to the world. Study his history, throw aside all prejudice, and can you then deny that he has been wronged? He has often been made the victim of the cupidity and dishonesty of his white brother and as a natural result he has vented his outraged feelings and wreaked his merciless vengeance in atrocious massacres. Actu- ated by no law, human or divine, save the law of revenge, and having no redress for wrongs, but re- taliation, and no recourse in retaliation save war, can we blame him alone that he has caused fields to run red with blood. Within our own state, recently occurred an out- break which, General Miles affirms, at one time threatened to be the most terrible recorded on the pages of Indian warfare. Along the Missouri dwells the same tribe that instigated the awful massacre in the early days of Minnesota. Upon the rolling prairies of that frontier state was enacted one of the saddest tragedies the historian has ever chronicled. While the people were anxiously await- ing the result of the strife between the North and the South, the Sioux Nation, believing the govern- ment was weakened by the war, in open defiance of 32 WINNING ORATIONS civil authority, sought to avenge themselves of wrongs endured. It is the fault of the Indian's gross ignorance that he does not discriminate between unoffending citizens and corrupt government officers. Hence it was that the unsuspecting settler fell a hapless victim before the destructive tomahawk, and prairies and dales were crimsoned with the blood of guile- less innocence, and the grassy plains were dotted with the nameless unmarked graves of brave, de- fenseless pioneers. But it was not wanton cruelty. It was an ap- peal, not to feelings of right and justice, but to arms, his last untried resort. It was war, honorable and fair, as his savage mind had been taught to appreciate honor and fairness. He had demanded his rights, he had appealed to the sympathy and humanity of those in authority. His demands were unheeded; his pitiful appeals touched no responsive chord in the unfeeling heart of enthroned villainy; then in one final, desperate struggle he attempted to assert his unrecognized rights. "For nearly a thousand thousand acres of the most fertile soil in the Mississippi Valley, he had received," says Bishop Whipple, "not a farthing." In the light of this fact, we are led to believe that it was his manhood, his sense of injured rights that impelled him to seek redress in the only way re- maining, but it was ignorance and a savage nature into which had been inculcated from earliest days a love for the infliction of torture, that provoked those murders, the most cruel of which human mind can conceive, the most fiendish of which savage brain is the author. Yet the government did not learn, even at the cost of a thousand lives, that it is economy as well as humanity to treat these nomadic tribes with the SOUTH DAKOTA 33 same fairness with which it treats its own constitu- ents, and causes similar to those which resulted in the Minnesota outbreak have occasioned the late Sioux War. Pledges violated and obligations unper- formed have cost the government two million dollars. The supplies promised were given only in part and, with a scarcity of food and an insufficiency of clothing, the Indian felt that there was no pitying eye to see, no sympathizing heart to appreciate his condition. At this juncture came a wonderful story of hope. Messengers from the Rockies carried the glad tidings of deliverance. A Messiah was coming. The Indian was to be liberated from his foes who were to be swept from the earth. His former hunt- ing-grounds would be restored and he, in unre- stricted freedom, would engage in hunt and chase, unmolested and unrestrained. And what he holds most sacred, his departed friends, dear to him by a thousand ties of affection as strong as those which bind you, Christian, these friends were to be resurrected and together, reinstated in the scenes of happier days, they were to dwell in the land where their fathers had dwelt and know no sorrow nor care. Thus the brightest picture that hope could paint upon the sky of promise was disclosed to his delighted eyes. Imagine yourself in the same position, surrounded by the same conditions, and as firmly believing that some supernatural power was about to bring release and that your supremest ideal of perfect happiness was just within your reach. Think you that you would idly stand and not im- plore that omnipotent power to grant the joys dearest to your heart? The unfortunate Indian was soon brought to see the mightiness of his foe; the excitement was quelled; the Indian subdued. His fond dream is 34 WINNING ORATIONS gone. The bright picture of joys restored has faded from the sky of hope and the Indian still remains almost an emblem of despair. What shall we do with his race that we may perform our duty to him, to our government and to our God? It has been said that the only road to peace is through extermination and, as the chosen people of God were commanded to slay the heathen nations in the ancient land of Canaan, so are we, in this enlightened age, privileged to strike from off the earth these human beings created in the image of God, the work of His own hands. But we live not under the dispensation of six thousand years ago, for those mysterious ways were changed when that forgiving, sinless Son of God gave the divine command, "Go preach the gospel to every creature." Two things are necessary for the elevation of the Indian Education and Evangelization. These are the mighty factors, used as agencies in the hands of the Divine, for the uplifting and upbuild- ing of humanity. These benignant forces will ulti- mately triumph over every superstition, transform the nature of the savage and gladly proclaim to every man beneath the stars sweet tidings of uni- versal peace and love. Then not with the flaming sword, but with glad news of intellectual emancipa- tion, and with messages of a dying Savior's love are we to win the confidence of this race and lead them from the darkness of savagery into the glori- ous light of civilization. Educated and Christianized, the Indian, no longer a dependent ward upon the government, be- comes a man with all the boundless possibilities of a noble manhood. Then let the government enact just laws to ameliorate the unhappy condition of this unhappy race. Let the church promulgate the true gospel and thus create comfort and gladness and SOUTH DAKOTA 35 blessing where now is darkness and despondency and gloom. Then in this Republic all kindred tribes of the globe shall be comprehended within the bonds of brotherhood. For the people shall know that God has made of one blood all nations of the earth. Then the starry flag of the Union, unfurling its silken folds in the balmy sunshine of freedom, will inspire the same patriotic emotions of pride and love in the heart of the Red Man that swell in the hearts of the sons and daughters of those who fought and died to keep it floating there. Then the grateful prayer of thanksgiving from this race, re- deemed from savagery, shall be borne on the wings of faith, up through boundless ether to the throne of him who is the God of nations and the God of love. FIFTH CONTEST (1892) THE NATIONAL PROBLEM (J. W. HARRINGTON, REDFEELD COLLEGE) A year ago Italians assassinated the Chief -of- Police at New Orleans. A criminal offense and but one of a thousand yet it serves a purpose; it carries with it a message of truth and a lesson of national importance. To the statesman, to the student, to every individual whose interest goes be- yond self, this occurrence brings into prominence a social problem of highest moment. Discussed in the weekly press and solid review; noted in the plat- forms of political parties, investigated by the "Ford Committee;" pondered over by congressmen and senators; carefully measured by the philanthropist's eye; agitated as a party issue; weighed in the bal- ance of legislation, but not yet solved the immi- gration problem. We have welcomed the European immigrants as does a mother her beloved child. Twas well. They have tilled our land, built our railways, and fought our battles. The English, the Irish, the Germans, the Scandinavians eliminate their work, forget their deeds, and you have not an American Republic but an English colony. The ruddy glow on the cheeks of their children is your heritage. Their strong arms which make factories resound and cities rise are your safety. Condemn not their labors. Give them credit for a noble work. But alas! The laws of a progressive people must ever change. Conditions and circumstances shift as the winds. Come with me to Castle Garden. What alien faces now cross the gang-way? Not Germans, not Irish; but the forbidding hosts so 38 WINNING ORATIONS familiar in south and central Europe Italians, Hungarians, and Poles men and women born of poverty, fed with crime, dwarfed in body and soul. This unwelcome throng doubles in a single year, while the more desirable classes from northern Europe steadily decrease. Mark well the contrast. No longer come great numbers from intellectual Europe, but the undesirable classes from the south, encouraged as they are by glowing promises of steamship companies or driven from their home lands by want and taxation, rush into our borders like so many sheep set free from the fold. Despite enforced idleness and crowded poor-houses, despite the rise of colossal fortune and scarcity of money among the working classes, despite the rapid change in public sentiment the alien stream continues to swell. Long established laws have a charm. It is a weakness to cling to the old. Still reforms must come. They steal upon us as the morning light a quiet, health-giving, resistless presence. Civiliza- tion follows no beaten path. The course society should take can never be definitely mapped out. Political Economy is not an exact science. As the individual advances in thought, so does society. Fixed laws cannot meet the demands of an unfixed people. Certain liberties may bring harmony to one generation, but cause confusion and war in the next. No matter what our past policy has been toward immigration; our government should not hesitate to alter that policy if the welfare of society demands a change. The law, good in a new and sparsely settled country, becomes bad when the struggle of life is intense and when tramps and paupers multiply. In history's drama we see two forces battling; one for more liberty, the other for more law. These SOUTH DAKOTA 39 factions have played their parts in leading society on and up. Yet with all our freedom and our learn- ing the heritage of centuries we are unable to reach the most practical boundary between freedom and restraint. But we approach it as legislation is shaped to fit the changing moulds of progressive society. Count the great nations ruling in other ages. Where are they now? "Gone, glimmering through the dream of things that were, A schoolboy's tale, the wonder of an hour." To conquer the world was their ambition, physical and moral neglect their error. The strength and dignity of a nation consists not in its acres, gold, or cities, but in a united and homogeneous people. It is not enough for a nation to frame a model government; it should maintain the mental and physical qualities of its people, that they may be true to that model. The mingling of peoples differing in environ- ment and in habits brings disastrous results. Ancient history proves this many times; I cite but a single case. From the time Alexander captured the key of the Orient at Arbela, Greece declined. True, she Hellenized Asia; but a re-action in morals and manners came. " 'Twas Greece, but living Greece no more." Patriotism, oratory, and intellect bloomed in the "age of Pericles." By the influence of the Oriental mind, weakened under the yoke of despotism, and blinded by the darkness of centuries, they were crushed and poisoned. But why go back so far in history? The effect of mingling different bloods is seen today in our own land. The red man has united with the white only to produce a de- generate offspring; while the Mexicans, represent- ing the amalgamation of widely separated families, now feed on revolution and chaos, though their 40 WINNING ORATIONS land is one of richness and beauty, such as only a Prescott can describe. These people have a strong hold in south-western United States. They impede progress. They are un-American. Education must soon lead them to appreciate American citizenship, or force expel them. The proclamation declaring freedom to the Negro bound our nation to provide that race with a home by itself. Nature teaches that amalgamation of races, or widely separated families, is often a step toward national decay. During the last twenty years two potent social factors, hidden in the rapid rush of progress, have quietly arrayed themselves for battle, and now ap- pear under the names of Capital and Labor. Agi- tation is concentrating their* forces. Time only widens the gap of hatred. Under these threatening circumstances an average of one thousand foreigners is daily added to Labor's army. Ignoring the en- croachments of Capital and the demands of Labor, ignoring the efforts put forth by philanthropists and statesmen to harmonize all social factors, they throw themselves into the already crowded indus- tries, lower wages, then lead an excited mob in a lawless demand for a wage-increase. Who felt not the shock of the bursting bomb at the Chicago Hay Market! What face can hide the blush of shame as the honest wage-workers of Pennsylvania's mines are displaced by Poles and Hungarians? Mr. Gladstone's argument in favor of home rule is that the Irish vote blocks legislation. So, in this country, legislation in behalf of Labor is prevented by the "foreign vote" so largely influenced by party bosses and whisky dictation. Look at Chicago! Look at New York! It is here that the alien controls the ballot-box; it is here that municipal government is most corrupt. SOUTH DAKOTA 41 Twenty years ago a city in Pennsylvania con- tained a population of thirty-five thousand. Happy Americans they were, toiling all day in the mine and at evening gathering round a fire-place of their own. The city was filled with homes of love and contentment. Children romped on the lawns and voiced sweet music in song and play. No thought of "strikes" ruffled the simple life or disturbed the quiet work of the miner. Labor, child of God and gift to man, blessed all. Enter that city today. You see but a remnant of that happy people. Italians and Hungarians fill their places. True happiness is unknown to these. Slavish drudgery is their lot. The day is worn away for a scanty pit- tance; and at night they crowd together, thirty or forty in a single shack. Children are pushed into the streets to tramp and steal, to beg and steal, as children before them have done for centuries in another land. In such a place Freedom's voice is hushed. The Stars and Stripes fade away. This nation has a lofty mission to perform; it is destined to carry moral reforms not to individuals alone, but to nations. With God in its constitu- tion and freedom its ensign, it is bound to turn the currents of mercy and good will where they are most needed to flow. How can this noble work be accomplished? Shall we make our land a home for the oppressed of other nations, regardless of inter- nal conditions? Democracy means co-operation; the requisites are harmony and homogeneousness. Without these, great moral reforms cannot be carried beyond our borders, because all moral forces must constantly work at home. Example is the greatest teacher. If our duty to other nations is reform, let us hold up before them a unified people; thus saying, "Go thou and do likewise." The in- discriminate absorption of society from the over- 42 WINNING ORATIONS burdened nations of Europe, not only deteriorates our own people, but prevents these other nations from rectifying social wrongs. "Let England break up her parks and game-preserves and give Ireland a good land bill. Let Russia either exterminate or pacify her revolutionists. Let Prussia and Italy and Austria disband the armies which starve one part of their population by keeping the other part in enforced idleness. Let the great powers form alliances in behalf of their people instead of their crowns; instead of emigrating, these oppressed multitudes should stay and hammer the doors of palaces and gates of hedged forests and untilled parks, and cast their burdens of military despotism and taxation and groaning want upon the floors of Parliament and Reichstag, demanding relief, and taking it if it be not granted." "Failure" is stamped on the present immigration law. To enforce it is impractical. How many men are necessary to guard our border line of thirteen thousand miles? What statute provides for the expulsion of the alien when once he has crossed our threshold? The provisions of the law are such as to admit the unconvicted anarchist and assassin, but drive back across the sea the family which can show no visible means of support. They admit thieves and murderers having booty to show efficiency in their devilish trades but debar the wage-worker merely because he has no money. In the name of God! Is character put at naught? Can American manhood be bought with gold? In brief, the immigrant should bring from his home a certificate of character showing the nature of his past occupation and an upright life before the law. This should be signed by a local official, then endorsed by an American consul at the port of SOUTH DAKOTA 43 departure, and at last presented to the American commissioners at the port of landing. With such a provision the cost of American citizenship would not be wealth but character. On a pile of granite in New York harbor is the Goddess of Liberty. High above her head she holds a torch to welcome all. Life breathes in the majestic image. Beauty plays upon her countenance and the wisdom of Minerva beams from her eye. She is the incarnation of all that is good and great. See! her arm rises; her hand extends toward the tenement-house districts of New York City, where every trace of American manners is eliminated by clannish foreigners. Now her body turns. She points beyond the steeples and towers of Brooklyn to the poorly paid factory workers of New England. Now she stretches her hand toward that little city once filled with happy homes, but today the center of misery. From east to west, from ocean to ocean, the arch of blue is hung with golden letters. She reads: "To thee, Nation, it is given to bring light to the world." A sound of dashing waves is heard. She looks. A ship glides into the harbor laden with people of another clime. Her head turns. Her eyes seek the Capitol at Washington. She speaks: "In behalf of the American people filter the stream of immigration." SIXTH CONTEST (1893) THE SPIRIT OF ROMANCE (T. A. STUBBINS, YANKTON COLLEGE) There is nothing in the way of man's equip- ment for the battle of life that so drives him to the goal of success as that power which "bodies forth the form of things unknown." It is found in all ages; it is present in every heart. The intellect may grasp a scepter; the determined will may hold that scepter relentlessly over the head of a turbu- lent people; but it is the imagination that stands behind them both and scourges them on to their deeds of daring. The mind and heart may change as the chameleon, but the spirit of romance present in every breast, is as stable as the life of which it is a part and endures as long as that life endures. Think lightly of it if we will, question its living reality and its vital importance yet it does exist and exists to inspire the soul. It leads us on, on and on, but at last crowns our aspirations with success; not the chimerical success that our fancy painted, but the prosperity that has palpability, even to this prosaic world. It brings before the mind magnified pictures of things which have as yet neither shape, nor existence, but which embody the soul's highest desires. Through it we see only the golden future spread before us; in it we feel our brightest hopes and most daring ambitions realized. That mystic spirit may build tottering castles, but experience never levels them lower than their foundations. When Jacob in olden times arose, forsaking his father, mother and home, seeking the land of Pan- dan-aram, a spirit went with him whispering tales 46 WINNING ORATIONS of success. -He then believed that his possessions should spread to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south. He pillowed his head upon stones; watered the sheep for Rachel, served many years and "it seemed but a few days." Did not a spirit shall we say of romance lead him on? King Richard in his arrogant, passionate and yet human pride, with his dark and mysterious career, is led to all his success by a tale of romance. William Wallace, as he sees the Highland clans deploy upon the plains of Cambus Kenneth, never thinks of Scotland as languishing in chains. He sees her rather rushing through the din and roar of battle with myrtle thrown from her brow and the wreath of victory in her hand. Hannibal draws his sword, and as it flashes in the air sees reflected a vison of glory, power and success. Today it is said that the spirit of romance is dead that this is the age of facts and figures; of railroads and realities; of traffic, trade, and bank accounts. No longer does the youth go forth as a knight errant to do battle for "honor and his lady love;" no young Sir Launfal leaves has castle now to find the Holy Grail; and Europe would laugh to scorn a visionary Hermit Peter, who sought to lead a holy crusade against the modern Saracen. The lands have all been discovered; the seas have all been swept; the forests have all been pierced; the witches have all been burned; the nymphs, the Dryads, the mermaids have all been routed from their haunts in forest and ocean, and find no longer a place to rule but in the fanciful retreats of Baby- land. But is that life? Are we all practical? In reality we never buckle on armor and ride forth hunting those marvels that soar beyond fact and real life and sometimes possibility. But are SOUTH DAKOTA 47 we not too ready to laugh at the poet and acquiesce with the cynic? Have they indeed all gone those fancies that built the Pyramids, chiseled the Sphynx and peopled Greece with marble forms of beauty? Does Jacob no longer see in his dreams the ladder leading up to heaven; nor Joan of Arc hear a voice whispering in her ear that she must lead the army of France to battle? No, they are not gone those visions. When men cease to dream, they cease to hope; when hope is gone, they die. It is said that upon the vast plains of North America the shepherd lads seldom live to see their hair grow white with years. In the morning and at night, in summer and in winter they sweep their eyes about upon one boundless, measureless, changeless blank. The great plains from every direction seem to slope downward to the hapless shepherd's feet, until to his desolate fancy he stands in a mammoth pit. He looks to the west and there is no change; he appeals to the east and there is no promise of hope. No change, no change in sight. The remorseless plain presses in upon him; it suffocates, it crushes him. In youth he is haggard; in manhood his temples have whitened; in maturity he is a maniac. Thus must it be in life to those whom the spirit of romance has forsaken. How few they are, the river sedges and morgues disclose. Merely a hand- ful from the thousands are overwhelmed, as is the shepherd boy, by life's vast treeless plain. The rest bear in their very souls the magic safeguard of romance, and even while their ears are arrested by the suicide's sullen plunge into the river of death, their eyes are fixed eagerly upon their own enchanting "Castles in Spain." The visions above all things that come to the beggar, place him on a more equal footing with the 48 WINNING ORATIONS millionaire. He wanders along the street, the cold rain falls upon him as he shivers in his scanty raiment. The fitful glare of the street lamps reveals his bent and weary form. He is spattered with the mud from the street; but he looks up with hope in his eye. What does he see? Around the corner warmth, prosperity and success seem to beckon him on. They are just ahead. The millionaire in his carriage looks out, sees the beggar, pities him; then leans back upon the cushions, closes his eyes, and unto him a vision comes. He sees political fame, greater riches, honor, and success just ahead. An Oriental reclines, inhaling the sweet fumes of opium; before him is a summer evening in all its beauty. The blood red sun is setting in a bank of pink haze which rests upon the horizon, while the sea, undisturbed by a single ripple, shines like a mirror of burnished gold; dark sails and hulls of ships, white patches of sea birds floating on the outgoing tide, and cliffs rising precipitously be- hind, are reflected. A range of rugged mountains is lost among the purple clouds. The murmur of some wee streamlet tumbling to the sea is borne to his ear. All is clad in silver and gold as he dreams, dreams, dreams of success just ahead. Oh thou spirit, how closely our lives are inter- woven by thine invisible forces! But this impalpable spirit of romance does more than incite us to enterprise. It beautifies the com- monplace of life. Childhood never sees the com- monplace. To it the darkness is more than dark- ness; it is a black horror that holds every form of evil. To it the sunlight is more than sunlight; it is alive and the stars are living beings. Words- worth tells us that every creature brings from an- SOUTH DAKOTA 49 other world the memory of a glory that is left behind, and that in the journey of life every young man "Is by the vision splendid Upon his way attended ; At length the man perceives it die away. And fade into the light of common day." Ah, yes; but that "common day" never quite comes. There is always something of the child in us. Look into the hearts of the very aged or very poor; in the most desolate land or the most popu- lous, and there will always be found this element of youth. Far out in the west, where the plains stretch away in monotonous expanse, and the parched vege- tation does not even undulate in the breeze, a new town springs into existence. The whistle of the locomotive does not yet disturb its silence. No crowds hurry through its streets. A few squalid buildings, a few forlorn beasts, silence, desolation; "stale, flat, unprofitable" existence that is all. Is it all? A man stands upon the corner of a future street. He is one in whose heart burns the spirit of romance. A few hundred years ago he would have been a knight and fought in the crusade. Later, he might have stood with Luther and helped shake the Vatican. Still later his hands would have been the first to break the chains of human slavery. Now as he looks his eye kindles. The wretched village acquires dignity in his sight. Its meanest sounds are as sweet as the notes of a deep-toned bell; its huts become mansions; its streets the fairest boulevards; and there, with marble steps leading to its brown-stone front, stands his home. Toil is made easy, privations are forgotten, pain does not hurt; for he walks in the light that reflects from a glory just ahead. 50 WINNING ORATIONS Thus the spirit of romance given by God to Adam for an eternal legacy to mankind has come through the ages, overthrowing despots, setting up kingdoms, and next to the Christian faith giving solace to weary souls and making bright many a life. The world moves on in its progress. Schools, with apparatus adapted for every kind of scientific work, flourish; railroads intersect each other at almost every milepost; canals wind their way through hills and mountains; steamships plow the waves with incredible swiftness; telescopes bring fiery bodies through millions of miles of space and we view them; telephones carry the voice from ocean to ocean, and the telegraph sends a message with the speed of the sun's rays; Eiffel towers penetrate the clouds, and great buildings cover acres of ground; rivers are turned from their channels, and the whole face of the earth undergoes mighty changes but do we? No! "We are such stuff As dreams are made of, and cur little life Is rounded with a sleep." Only when thought born of spirit shall become fact, and all facts thought, shall we cease to look for greater things just ahead. SEVENTH CONTEST (1894) THE PRESERVATIVE ELEMENT IN AMERICAN SOCIETY (RIQHARD F. LOCKE, SIOUX FALLS COLLEGE) Political optimism is said to be one of the vices of the American people. A French writer has recently declared that there exists in this country "a popular belief that God takes care of children, fools, and the United States." During the last thirty years Americans have cherished an almost unquestioning faith in the wisdom and soundness of their institutions. With the abolition of slavery, which had so long disturbed the peace and threatened the security of the nation, it was believed that the only serious danger had been safely passed; and that the union, having stood the test of the mightiest civil conflict of all history, was thenceforth secure. The years since then have strengthened this belief. No danger has arisen serious enough to cause alarm. While the nations of Europe have been clouded with threatenings of conflict, our skies have been serene. In the midst of party strife, in commercial panics, in the jarring of social questions, one thought has found lodgment in every patriotic mind the thought that we as a nation are great and free. The real progress of the world has been along two lines the development of the individual, and the organization of society. Individualism is the power which produces the social units. It secures freedom of thought, freedom of action. Organiza- tion binds these units into the social whole. One is the progressive, the other the conservative force. One gives motion, the other permanence. Upon 52 WINNING ORATIONS the proper balance of these two forces the worth and stability of every social system must depend. Individualism without organization is savagery. Or- ganization without individualism is tyranny. The American Indian is an example of the former. China, standing motionless for four thousand years with her back to the future, is an example of the latter. In the full recognition of individual rights we have reached in this country the ultimate goal of progress. A step beyond is anarchy. We are free. This has made us great. The courage and energy which have united in our material development have no parallel in history. The right to acquire and possess his own has made every man a worker. It has awakened the latent energies of every mind, for it has set a goal of promise before every life. Invention, the child of freedom, has unlocked the treasure house of nature and has utilized its secrets for the blessing of mankind. This country possesses to an unmatched degree the opportunity and the power to grow. In the extent and splendor of its material achievements it has already distanced com- petition. It is not, however, what a nation gains, but what it keeps, that insures its well being. The story of the condemned Sisyphus, toiling painfully with his burden almost to the hill top only to let it fall, has stood too long as the mournful type of baffled human hopes. It has been believed that we were coming to the golden age of the world; that as the burdens of toil were shifted more and more to "the willing shoul- ders of Nature" there would be leisure for every man. During the last generation the productive power of a day's work has been doubled. But, has it brought rest to anyone? Rather, is not the struggle of American life growing more intense! Is SOUTH DAKOTA 53 not the strain upon our social system constantly increasing? During the last decade the masses of our people have been better housed and clothed and fed than ever before. With the application of ma- chinery the efficiency of labor rises. It yields a constantly enlarged return. But in spite of this we see a rapidly growing unrest and discontent. The truth is that the standards of living have changed. Things which were luxuries yesterday are necessities of life today. A new law of pro- gress is unfolding to our view. It is this that as civilization advances the wants of men multiply and tend always to outstrip the power to satisfy them. It will yet be plain to every mind, that whirling spindles, flying looms, and swiftly rolling wheels are all in vain to cool the fever of industrial strife. We have been accustomed to look behind us for the crises of our government. But there is reason for believing that the time for the real testing of American institutions has not yet come. The su- preme question is this can this country develop a conservative energy proportionate to its progressive power? It is not unlikely that we may yet be com- pelled to contend for life against conditions which shall be but the logical outcome of the things in which we have gloried most. What are the chief sources of our pride? Are they not our freedom, and our greatness? Aye, we are free! The serfdom of the past is gone! The struggle has been long and hard. Through weary centuries of conflict, groping blindly in the fogs of ignorance and doubt and error, breaking down the barriers of hate and scorn which hedged his way, pushing with deathless courage up the steep and rugged pathway, he has come, and stands today uncrowned, but regal in his rights the common man. He is free! No more for him shall slavery's 54 WINNING ORATIONS chains be forged or whips be woven out of thongs. The index finger of history, on its every page, has pointed to his coming. Upon the richest and fairest continent of the whole world God kept "the time- lock of providence" until he came. And here, on this broad theater, he is to play his part. If he plays well, it means the sunrise of freedom to the world, and the twentieth century may witness the complete enfranchisement of humankind. But if he fails, it means the coming on of night, in whose rayless darkness not one star of hope shall shine. But, for weal or woe, his will is sovereign now. Henceforth the destiny of the world is in his hands. He has tasted of the sweets of life and has found them good. He will take possession of his own. It is in vain for men to say that this Caliban, this "Titan of the mud-sills," should now be contented with his lot. 'Tis enough that he is not contented, and will not be. He has become a different sort of a man. The horizon of his desires has widened with his freedom, and his growing wants are push- ing him ever more and more into the conflict of life. In that conflict, by means either foul or fair, he is sure to win. That he may carry peace upon his banners, that his victory may be a noble one, must be our aim and prayer. The revolution of the sixteenth century resulted in freedom of conscience religious liberty. With the eighteenth century came equality of rights civil liberty. Here, on American soil, these prin- ciples have had their freest and largest growth. SOUTH DAKOTA 55 Of their abundant fruitage time has made us the favored heirs. But an equally important work re- mains the preservation of liberty through the ad- justment of the industrial and social relations of man to man. This work must be accomplished, as Milton wrote of glory. Without ambition, war. or violence. By deeds of peace, by wisdom eminent. By patience, temperance. But we are great as well as free. America is great in all things; great in wealth and in com- mercial importance, great in her victories won in war and in nobler victories of peace. But she is notably great among other nations in extent of ter- ritory. Including Alaska, her area almost equals that of the entire continent of Europe. She is bounded only by the limits which God has fixed the oceans and the zones. But history teaches this lesson, that the successful administration of govern- ment is difficult in proportion to the extent of a nation's territory. In order that a free government may exist in prosperity and peace the people who live under it must be essentially a unit. Wide di- versities of race, religion, or material interest, must prove a menace to the security of any people. In all cases in which the strong hand of arbi- trary power has bound together tribes and people hostile to each other the law of disintegration has annulled the work. Alexander went forth in con- quest. Egypt, Assyria, Babylonia, Persia, fell under his sway. Rome pushed out the highways of her power, and over them her legions marched to bind all nations under the yoke of the Caesars. Out from the chaos of the Middle Ages, evoked by the master genius of Charlemagne, even from her own ruins, the spirit of imperial Rome came forth to rule again. But not one of these gigantic systems was strong 56 WINNING ORATIONS enough to give it permanence. And America! What of her? Her people are substantially of one race and of one political faith. But this is not enough. The instinct of self-interest is that which men every- where most constantly obey. In this country com- mercial interests are supreme. The pursuit of wealth is the all-absorbing master passion of our time. It moulds the opinions of men. It warps the decrees of justice, and supplants with jarring discords the harmony of peace. As once it raised the standards of treason in the South, so today it is marshalling under defiant banners the hosts of toil. It has already, upon at least one vital issue, arrayed the East and West against each other. Capacity for self-government is the marked characteristic of the Saxon race. In the twentieth century, whose dawn is breaking even now, it will meet in this country its decisive test. As our popu- lation multiplies, as the circle of our material inter- ests widens, the unseen power which binds the whole must have a corresponding growth, and the essence of that power shall be the nation's love of liberty and its respect for law. May these two forces be welded into one. Then shall the union stand, between the tides that swell upon its shores, as the world's defense for freedom and for free- dom's law, the fulfillment of Homer's vision as he saw it mirrored in Achilles' shield: Now, the broad shield complete, the Artist crowned, With his last hand, and poured the ocean round ; In living silver seemed the waves to roll, And beat the buckler's verge, and bound the whole. EIGHTH CONTEST (1895) ROBERT BURNS (A. B. ROWELL, YANKTON COLLEGE) The man within whose breast there burns the flame of genius, can never die, can never be for- gotten. His own age may treat him with indiffer- ence, may even scourge him with the stinging lash of censure; but a later age will lift him high above the common mass and pay him rightful homage. When his soul^ freed from its earthly wrappings, is laid bare in its simplicity, then men see aright and understand the mighty passions, the world- wide thoughts that have throbbed within him. When the mists of time have gathered 'round him, and have softened the stern outline, and concealed eccentricities and faults, then appears nothing but grandeur, is felt nothing but awe. Many a genius has toiled on in poverty and reproach and dropped into a lowly grave, only to be reverenced in after years. Not even the divine Christ could receive from his fellowmen more in return for his love than the cross and the crown of thorns. Among the saddest of these personal histories is the story of the life of Robert Burns, sad, because it tells of a soul that soared to the loftiest heights and then sank beneath a burden of poverty and bitter deg- radation. A century has passed since this greatest of Scotland's bards laid down his lyre, a century of change, of tumult and confusion. The millions of the oppressed have proclaimed the dignity of man; have risen in their might and burst asunder the bonds that held them; minds groping for the light, have pushed through the restraining barriers of 58 WINNING ORATIONS dogmas and tradition, out into the broader realm of freedom and of truth. Among the first to sound the notes of progress in this vast upheaval, was the simple poet, Robert Burns, and even to this day his voice still rings for larger freedom and is heard where'er true men are found. He draws to him with gentlest tones those souls that plead for sym- pathy. He holds within his grasp, to do with them as he will, the hearts of men. Whether it be in the humble cottage of the peasant or in the palace of the rich, there are found his friends. At the time when he first poured forth his heart in song, Scottish patriotism was almost dead. The men who led in literature and in art, turned their eyes away from the possibilities of their native land and sought to ape the work of others. Poor imitators, unfitted by their very training to strike out in unknown paths, disdaining the simple and lowly life of their countrymen, they were unable to awaken one single spark of national pride. There was still need of someone who could call to life again those sturdy peasants, who, under William Wallace, had fought so bravely for their liberty and their homes. Without warning, to the surprise of all, this new leader came from the common people. Nothing but a ploughboy, nothing but a rustic youth courting country maidens, nothing but a lowly poet, he so touched with coals of genius the hearts of Scotland's stalwart men, that they flamed with patriotic fire. Once again Scotland shook from her wrists the chains of foreign customs; once again the eyes of her people were turned with reverence toward one great guide, and at the present time, there is no one dearer to her; no one of whom she is more proud than the rustic poet, Robert Burns. In the understanding of ordinary men the leader in business, in politics or in war, may rise SOUTH DAKOTA 59 from the lower ranks, but a leader in thought or in literature, never. Environment may usually make the man, but in the case of Burns this law is broken, and a noble soul rises to its true level of greatness in spite of hindrances, seemingly all powerful. As we contemplate the sterile soil out of which Burns' genius sprang and the hard physical conditions under which it throve, our minds are filled with wonder and admiration. Born in a hut so poor that the storms of winter tore from above his head the sheltering roof, denied in his youth the advantages of education and contact with learned minds, forced to gain his livelihood among the vulgar and im- moral, struggling year after year with grim poverty and gaunt hunger, in spite of this, he was yet able to fulfill the missions intrusted to him by God. It was not as a philosopher; it was not as a rhetorician nor a commander that he was able to mould the thoughts of others. None of these char- acteristics were needed to make up his power. His might lay in the fact that he was a man, and more than that, a brother of other men. No veneering of social customs covered the beatings of his heart. No desire of gain urged him to play falsely before his fellows. Deceit aroused within him all the force of righteous indignation, and at hypocrisy he hurled the bitterest shafts of denunciation and contempt. Born in a place where "Ayr gurgling kissed his pebbled shore, O'erhung with wild woods thick'ninj? grreen." reared in the midst of hills, now green with grass, now purple with the heather, under a sky worthy to belo^r to the poet's ideal home, there sunk into his soul lessons which only nature could have given. Around him he saw a simple people, open-hearted as himself. He watched them toiling for their daily bread. He saw their pleasures and their pains, their 60 WINNING ORATIONS loving and their hating, their praying and their jesting, and in so doing he saw enacted the whole great drama of life. He might have wandered from land to land throughout the earth, and nowhere would he have found more true life than in his country home. Human nature, unfettered, was be- fore him, and without restraint he laid bare his heart, quivering to receive the faintest impress, that he might take it and send it forth in a swell of wondrous song. The poor and the grieving stretch forth their hands for sympathy, and with gentlest touch he smooths away their sorrows. The smitten and the oppressed call to him for aid, and he bursts forth in fierce invectives against the strong and mighty. Now he is filled to overflowing with joy and hope; now there are drawn from his heart-strings notes of sadness and of pain. Wild emotions course madly through his veins, sweeping all before them, only to be followed by the quiet, peaceful calm. One mo- ment he is held in admiration of all that is noble and beautiful in man; the next with scoff and sneer he is bringing the haughty low. Uniting so within himself the two extremes of mortal man, he awakens to the sense of human brotherhood, and reaches out far beyond the confines of his beloved Scotia until the universal man comes beneath his magic touch and feels the power of his song. Thus stands the poet, the greatest of the eighteenth century, crowned among the immortals of his art. Would that the same praise, the same honor might be given to the man himself, but alas, it cannot be. No life more sad, more wretched in its poverty, more fraught with mournful lessons in its sins than that of Burns, has ever been witnessed by the eyes of men. Within his breast opposing forces SOUTH DAKOTA 61 struggled for the mastery. On the one side stood a noble nature, filled with pure and holy thoughts, endowed with the keenest sense of right and wrong, reverential in its tone; on the other, passions, dark and turbulent, fierce in their intensity, irresistible in their might; between the two a will, irresolute, powerless to curb the mighty forces that should have moved in harmony at its command. Once touch the kindling spark and a roaring flame of passion surges through the heart, licking up in its raging course all the good and noble to be found. With brain seething and writhing in mad frenzy, with pulse leaping and throbbing, the laws of God and man are broken down and trodden under foot. Reason is dethroned, madness has full sway. On, on and on the soul is carried on the crest of the sinful wave, until lust reigns triumphant, until the beast has conquered the man. After all is over, too late, come the bitter tears of anguish, the stinging pangs of shame. The man has fallen. Burns, thus swayed by passion, drifted aimless on the sea of life. His heart was stirred by no am- bition. No great purpose forced him on. Prudence and wisdom were thrown aside for thoughtless follies and hare-brained fancies. Had the mighty powers at his command been taught to move in unison to work out the details of some great plan, had the streams of passion been ever pure and holy, how matchless would have been the result, how per- fect the man! When we consider that men ever see the outer man alone, can we wonder that his fellow-men con- demned him? He gave them the wealth of his genius, and they returned him poverty. He poured out to them the warm life-blood of his bleeding heart and received naught but coldness. He stretched forth his hands to them, pleading for 62 WINNING ORATIONS sympathy, and they beat him back with sternness. Stung by their indifference, wounded by their taunts, he rushed headlong into revelry, in the vain endeavor to stifle his cares and his sorrows. At last the life so full of misery and pain, of remorse and anguish, draws to an early close. With head whitened by sorrow, with body wasted by dis- ease and sin, with heart filled with bitterness toward his countrymen, the man lies down to die. Even in his last hours there comes to him no peace, no quiet, and the troubled spirit, racked with anguish and despair, passes to the presence of its Maker. Thus his life is ended. As he lies stretched in death, the awful pathos, the sombre tragedy of his life presses upon his countrymen until they turn to him with pity and with love. Forgetting the stains upon his honor, the scenes of debauch and sin, the dark hours in which passion dragged him from the path of right, they remember nothing ex- cept that a noble soul, filled with gentleness and kindness, has departed from them forever. With eyes filled with tears of compassion, with lips mur- muring prayers for pardon, they tenderly and rever- ently lay him in his grave. "Sweet mercy ! to the gates of heaven This minstrel lead, his sins forgiven ; The rueful conflict, the heart riven With vain endeavor And memory of earth's bitter leaven, Effaced forever." It is not for us to judge. It is for the God of heaven, the God of love. NINTH CONTEST (1897) INDIVIDUALISM (W. F. EWERT, YANKTON COLLEGE) The absolute worth of the individual is the basis of true democracy. Upon the recognition of this vital truth hinges the success or failure of self- government, the hope and happiness of mankind. The progress of society is dependent upon the un- folding of those principles that seek the highest development of the individual. Freedom to think and act and share in the responsibilities of govern- ment is a necessary condition of individual advance- ment This political liberty has been eagerly sought for in all ages; it has often been purchased with blood. It was not obtained by a single struggle, but its progress has been slow and painful, step by step. The Magna Charta laid the foundation for mo- dern political freedom; the Reformation swept away the pall of religious superstition, destroyed papal tyranny, and made man accountable for his sins to God alone; the Petition of Rights destroyed the theory of the "Divine Right of Kings" and estab- lished the belief in the inalienable rights of man; the American Constitution embodied the principles of representative government. Political freedom has struck the shackles from imprisoned thought, and has given birth to the in- dividual. Its growth has always revealed a health- ful condition of society; its decline has been the harbinger of decay. Two centuries ago the spirit of the age was voiced by the declaration of Louis XIV., "I am the State;" today representative government boldly 64 WINNING ORATIONS proclaims as a principle of modern social philosophy that "the state is made for man, not man for the state." The state is but the means; the happiness and welfare of the individual the end. Wherever states have pushed forward, over-riding the privileges of the common man, ruin has inevitably followed in their wake. The great empires founded by Alexan- der and Caesar perished because their greatness was but the greatness of a single man. With them the state represented by a central power was the ab- solute authority to which the individual was com- pelled to submit. Their national greatness centered in a single idea; now the energies of man enter into widely diversified avenues of life; tremendous are the forces of modern civilization; magnificent are its possibilities. Back of all progress lies individual effort; back of individual effort is the incentive of final reward. This has been the silent force that has wrought the mighty changes in our social and in- dustrial life. It has sent men in search of the precious metals in the depths of the earth; it has bound localities together with a network of steel; it has called into being countless workshops and factories, given wings to commerce, and converted arid wastes into fields of waving grain. It has done all this, but it has brought with it threatening dangers. In a representative government opportunities are presented for an abnormal development of the individual. Man uses this freedom from restraint for his own selfish ends, in place of the common good of all. As a result, democracy has become perverted and individualism is once more in danger. Gigantic trusts and illegal combinations cannot long conduce to national greatness, for they are SOUTH DAKOTA 65 opposed to the development of individualism. They are the result of misdirected energy and tend toward a centralization of power. The mere fact that to- day millions of human beings are rising in their might and with stern determination are demand- ing the abolition of industrial tyranny, is sufficient evidence that the purposes of government have be- come diverted, and that the improvement of the condition of the masses has not been commensurate with the gigantic increase in the productive power of modern civilization. Representative government may guarantee equal rights to all citizens, but vice and avarice are certain to rob the individual of his worth, and the state of its perpetuity. The lessons of the hour are plain. Large aggregations of capital, controlled by single men, which have sprung up in the last quarter of a century, are crushing out free com- petition, the life of trade, and destroying the op- portunities for the development of the individual man. The entire social fabric has been shaken, class is being arrayed against class. Men who have al- ways been peaceful and useful members of society are now tramps and outcasts, and capital itself has disappeared in the universal lowering of values. The true conception of government and the secret of its success are being lost sight of in man's struggle for gain. The magnificent triumphs of the human mind should be but the agencies to lighten the burdens of man. Never should they be used for the oppression of the weak. The advancement of the individual should keep pace with the march of civilization. Man in his primitive state, though not always happy, was comparatively free. Unless the forces that have built up modern civilization have proportionately bettered the condition of those 66 WINNING ORATIONS who toil, industrial progress amounts to naught, government is a farce, and civilization itself is a failure. As searchers after the truth, we cannot turn away from the destitution to be seen on every hand. Strange, is it not, that with the productive power of the world increased a hundred, aye, a thousand- fold, there should be no greater improvement in the condition of the individual: strange that with a single loom doing the work of a hundred men; a single machine producing a thousand pair of shoes where one was made before; with the magnificent engine spending tons of energy with every pulsa- tion of its iron heart; with mansions outshining in splendid the magic palace of Aladdin, and boule- vards eclipsing the famous roads of Rome strange, I say, that thousands should be shoeless and home- less and penniless, that life for a large portion of mankind should be a dismal failure. What does this condition of things betoken? It means that those sacred principles fought for at Runnymede and Marston Moor, baptized in the blood of martyred heroes at Lexington and Bunker Hill and Valley Forge, consecrated by the lives of thousands upon our country's altar at Shiloh and Gettysburg and Spottsylvania, are being trampled under the usurping feet of might, that greed is in- vading the rights of individuality, that personality may soon become the helpless slave of corporate selfishness. How can this centralization of power be checked, the individuality of the citizen preserved, and the perpetuity of the state insured? Man must see in the mighty power of organized labor and capital, not a means to enslave some and to enthrone others, but to promote the general welfare and to secure the common blessings of liberty. Instead SOUTH DAKOTA 67 of being appalled by the sight of a hundred hovels standing over against the millionaire's palace, he must remember that the political power of the one is a hundredfold greater than that of the other. The outlook is not altogether dark. With a gradually improved system of voting whereby the voter may express his own will and not that of the "boss," with a civil service on whose banner is gradually being unfolded the motto "opportunity for all and privi- lege for none," with the newspapers and magazines flying through the land like the shuttle of a mighty loom weaving into the woof of the common people a sense of their privileges and duties with these things already at hand, there opens in the face of our danger, a brighter prospect for the future. In the disruption of political parties, in the awakening of the individual to the dangers of the state, there is hope for better things. In the future men may write of a "Triumphant Democracy," but they will not be classed among the nation's patriots when they defraud their country by the sale of bogus "Armour Plates." Political parties will no longer be considered martyrs to principles when their principles are established by the million dollar con- tribution of the sugar trust. Out of the present chaos there will spring a new and better dispensa- tion in which the individual will come to his own. The spurious individualism of selfishness must be rejected, and in its place must be substituted the true individualism based upon the sacred treasures of character rather than upon material possessions. No longer must Mammon be allowed to crush be- neath his Juggernaut wheels the lives of helpless men, women and children. More clearly must be recognized the Christian principle of the worth of man as man. True individualism must manifest it- 68 WINNING ORATIONS self more strongly. Men must be more firm in their convictions of duty to themselves and the state. It is not always wise to follow the wishes of the majority, for there are times when the majority is clearly in the wrong. Every great reform must be wrought against strong opposition. This is the supreme test of the individual. The hero of the hour must rise above the clamor of the multitude and in the face of persecution and ridicule lead the way. True, from the dawn of history those who have sought to better the condition of the individual man have been despised and rejected by their own age, aye, some have even suffered martyrdom; but the martyr of today is the hero of tomorrow. "Thus humanity sweeps onward: where today the martyr stands, On the morrow crouches Judas with the silver in his hands; Far in front the cross stands ready, and the crackling fagots While the hooting mob of yesterday in silent awe return To glean up the scattered ashes in history's golden urn." Men come and go; but their individual efforts are their bequests to the world. The opposing forces of justice and avarice will exist forever, but he who proves his love for un- titled humanity in its struggles against forbidding social conditions will be enrolled among the names in the galaxy of the world's benefactors. Then the triumph of the individual will be the triumph of the state. Then the destiny of man will find its consummation in a social structure perfected by the highest individual development, in a government where the strong do not oppress the weak, "where virtue is ever triumphant and vice is ever crushed." TENTH CONTEST (1897) CIVILIZATION AND THE PROPHET (MISS WINIFRED McVAY. DAKOTA UNIVERSITY This oration also won first prize in the Western League of Oratory Contest held at Fargo, N. D., the same year 1897). There is that which raises us above the order of the brute. There is a spark of divinity that disturbs our clod. There is a force that has drawn humanity up from savagery to nineteenth century civilization, that urges nineteenth century humanity on to heights of intelligence, known only to God. Throughout the ages this force has worked un- til now we stand on the slope that swells toward the perfection of the race. We look back upon dis- cord, tears and blood; upon those slow inclines and sadly frequent stretches of level where humanity has blindly stumbled up a little, or groveled upon the plain; where humanity has crowded and crushed brother humanity through centuries of darkness and confusion. We see how man has cast off his fetters and climbed up, step by step, toward God and day. We recognize in the fact of civilization the su- premest fact of all history, and our greatest cause for pride, is the superiority of nineteenth century civilization over any of the past. The world of activity today, is a world of order. System rules. We have cultivated a passion for unity. We have no patience with the poet who sings: "All things here are out of joint." Our civilization is distinct from any of antiquity in its eminently practical and critical sense. It decries all leaps of faith and blunders of prophecy. It demands reason, reason in everything. No object escapes the universal challenge "Show forth a pur- pose in existing." Above all is this the age of 70 WINNING ORATIONS science. The mountains are measured with plum- met and chain, our thoughts with the ferule of criticism; a nation we test with a law, a man with a principle. No field is shut up from our science. We make us a scientific God and a scientific Devil, a scientific Heaven, and a scientific Hell. Consistently then, this critical age inquires of civilization, if it be itself scientific, if there is a law for its development, a law for the progress of society. Man creates society, and history records it. The events of history exemplify the spiritual life of man- kind. The record of government, is the record of man's advancement, from the exhibition of savage force, to the exercise of civilized law. The record of religion is the record of man's uplift from an abject cowering before the terrors of Nature to an en- nobling worship of Nature's God. The record of strife, is the record of man's emancipation from the argument of the war-club, the persuasion of the fire-brand, the art of cannibalism, to the argu- ment of justice, the persuasion of truth, the art of arbitration. The steps in civilization, are steps in the devel- opment of man. In every crisis of history, in every event that has rolled civilization forward, wherever progress of society has been marked, is inevitably found this other element, progress of man. Greek civilization must not be measured by the glory of the state nor by the political weakness and briefness of its existence. Greek statehood declined, but Greek culture, wrought into the minds of men, lived on lives today. It is the effective- ness with which it struck the bonds from the intel- lect of man and taught him to strive for the noblest in philosophy, literature and art that must ever be the pride of ancient Grecian civilization. SOUTH DAKOTA 71 The glory of Rome, living, was the perfection in philosophy, literature and art that must ever be of her civil system, the magnificence of her empire. The glory of departed Rome is incarnate in her Horace, her Cicero, and Virgil, and in the principles of justice in law. Whenever the movement in civilization has been retarded it has marked periods of waiting for the generation of spiritual force sufficient to move society forward. From the fall of Rome until the Crusades, society waited. Not quietly; there was surging to and fro. There was a chaos of warring peoples. There was confusion and blood. Man, animated by the savage spirit of resistance, dwelt alone in his fortified castle, without friends, save his family, without neighbors, save enemies. But in Feudalism was nourished the noble character that fruited in chivalry. Here were fostered the virtues of do- mestic life. Here first was placed upon the brow of woman the crown of honorable wifehood. Feudal- ism fell when man outgrew his feudal age and de- manded a social system in harmony with his im- proved spiritual state. The Crusades, that series of heroic movements that swept over the Western World turning the tide of social dissolution, and setting it strongly towards centralization, swept Feudalism away for- ever, and Christian Europe, with her unified nations, into a first existence. The Crusades did more. They made manifest the existence of mind among the masses. They deprived religion of its exclusive dominion in the realm of thought. They gave breadth of soul to the fanatical Knights of the Cross. They inspired a boldness that restlessly in- vaded and reveled in every realm of nature. The Reformation finished what the Crusades began. It was the climax of the struggle of mind 72 WINNING ORATIONS for liberty. It was the successful insurrection of reason against Popery. It gave to modern civil- ization freedom of inquiry and liberty of conscience. Everywhere progress of man and progress of society constitute the dual development of humanity. Everywhere the melioration of man, his advance- ment in intellect and morals has advanced the state. Everywhere the melioration of society, improve- ments in laws, in the administration of justice has uplifted the people. Everywhere the checking of intellectual development or the decline of justice in law has retarded civilization. The development of civilization is dual. Is its end two-fold, is it manifold? Is it the perfection of the social system as Rome thought, or the perfec- tion of religious hierarchy as Popery taught, or the perfection of mind as Eighteenth Century Europe believed? No. The preponderance of the civil principle led to political tyranny: Rome fell: the people went free: civilization rolled on! The pre- ponderance of the religious idea led to tyranny of the Church: the Reformation struck off the shackles; conscience went free: civilization rolled on! The preponderance of mentality led to the tyranny of skepticism, materialism and all the follies and hor- rors of the so-called "Reign of Reason:" Christianity is loosening those bonds; the soul of man will go free as civilization rolls on! Not states, nor creeds, nor knowledge is the supreme object of civilization. It is man himself. Whether Rome falls or revolutionary France floods Paris' streets with blood, civilization advances, bear- ing humanity through confusion and terrors to the perfection of peace, which is the perfection of lib- erty. Civilization is a science: it is the science of man's subjective development. There is a law of SOUTH DAKOTA 73 civilization: it is the law of spiritual freedom. We hold up now in the critical light of this most scientific age the fact of our own American civilization and ask: Can it stand the test of proph- ecy? Is the issue of our many splendored nation wrapt in a scroll of darkness or blazoned on the sheets of light? Is the day of the prophet ended? Are not the voices of our illustrious dead, our Washingtons, our Sumners, our Phillips, our Lin- coins calling to us, "Is America free?" Is she gov- erned morally or by force? By principles of social sovereignty or by principles of savagery? Are we still the freest people the world has ever known, the most enlightened, the most subject to moral govern- ment? We are at peace while the rest of the world is bristling with armies and bloody with wars. But evils dark and terrible exist, and posterity will judge our civilization by its unjust as well as by its just, by the misery of its one-tenth as well as by the happiness of its nine-tenths. Alienation of classes is loosening the ties of brotherhood and the wedge of fratridcidal hate is forcing its merciless point into the heart of society. Is America wholly free? Is there nothing more to be done? Is America free, while industrial tyranny drives fainting men to hopeless tasks, tortures them to insanity, and crushes them into suicidal graves? Is this not slavery? Shall it not be called physical bondage? Is America free, while thousands of human forms slink for food along darkened alleys, devour- ing the poison of the gutter, and hiding at night in a resting place of rags, in woe indescribable? While slums exist populous cities of misery and crime liberty cannot be shouted abroad in the land. Poverty is slavery, physical, mental and moral. 74 WINNING ORATIONS Is America free while diabolical appetite cruci- fies two thousand souls a year? While lust un- blushing dwells among us, and the Scarlet Letter burns deep into the bosom of society? While thieves and murderers fill our prisons? While paupers, maniacs and waifs of unhallowed parent- age crowd our asylums? Man is yet a slave to greed, to appetite, to sin. What must be the task of the liberator? The power of law must restrain the despotism of ac- cumulated wealth. It is infringing the rights of labor and economic freedom. It is dictating state policy and working political corruption. It is bias- ing legislation and warping the justice out of civil enactment. Law alone cannot make men prosperous or happy, but law can give to every man an equal opportunity and an equal protection. Society estab- lished upon any other principle than community of interests, than the brotherhood of all cannot per- manently stand. So Christ taught, so history con- firms. Godless industry and Godless politics are as much in need of a Redeemer as Godless religion. Weave the strong fibre of Christian altruism into politics, establish commercial relations in Chris- tian honor and integrity and governmental and in- dustrial oppression will be no more. Seal up for- ever those bitter fountains of despair whereof the people drink and perish four thousand suicides a year! No longer leave eight million American youth un-schooled. Learn the sad lesson of the eighty-six thousand Wearers-of-the-Stripes that know no trade but law-breaking, no education but crime. Let not the future show that America established a nation in justice and liberty and then fell to gathering riches into her bosom, and filling her eyes with the pride of her republic, while SOUTH DAKOTA 75 avarice, ignorance and sin were permitted to work the corruption of her people and destruction of her state. A republic exists in the intelligence and morality of its people. A republic lives in the pure hearts, in the wise judgments, in the clean lives of its people. American republicanism is rearing with eager confidence a glorious temple to civilization. The foundation is laid in freedom of thought and liberty of conscience. The key-stone of the arched door-way, through which all nations enter, is equal- ity. She has topped the structure with a gilded dome of civic excellence, and has run up glittering spires of commercial, literary and scientific achieve- ments: but a sightless Samson of tortured and desperate humanity is feeling for the supporting columns. Will the temple fall? Let the age itself, boldly claimed for science, stand the test of science. Let it prophesy: A rose has no surer death than the worm at its heart, a man, no more fatal foe than the evil in his own soul. An army knows no greater danger than the traitor in its camp, a republic no surer destruction than its own people enslaved in ignorance, greed and sin. Bring education, bring enlightenment! Lift up, purify, Christianize, lest our greatness be brought low, or statehood perish and our boasted civilization crumble into dust! We are the latest, the grandest people of history. Are we the last? Is the race in us to blossom into the peace of perfect freedom under the just laws of men and the holy laws of God? Or will the ultimate civilization know us only as a lost nation, one that heeded not the warning of its own prophecy until disaster seized it? Will the future civilization spring from our decaying mold? Shall it be written upon our fallen ruins: "MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN!" ELEVENTH CONTEST (1898) THE DECLINE OF CITIZENSHIP E. T. COLTON. DAKOTA UNIVERSITY Also winner of the Interstate Contest. The London Evening News announced the re- sult of the Greater New York election by this sig- nificant statement: "The population of the second greatest city in the world has elected its ruler, and the morning after election the problems occupying his mind did not relate to the government of the city, but to squaring and rewarding his supporters." Such is the dispassionate view of New World statesmanship from Old World perspective. It is a rebuke to democratic despotism, and a stinging reproach upon superficial patriotism. When the cos- mopolitan press is bold to reflect thus upon Ameri- can citizenship, the situation is portentous. What! Is the spirit of Faneuil Hall and Monticello dead? The spoilsman violates a principle of government as fundamental as did George III. He oppressed, the spoilsman usurps. The usurpation becomes manifest under an analysis of government. Representative rulers are but the interpreters and agents of a collective will. The assertion of their personal will is supreme contempt of the inalienable rights of men. The amalgamation of interests in national life does not bind the many and license the few. It exchanges private opinion for public sagacity, and individual influence for mass momentum. The crystallization of a people's wisdom is national policy, of their energy, sovereign will. Whatever is not of these, is tyranny. But government exists not only by the people; it exists for the people. The evolution of govern 78 WINNING ORATIONS mental functions and the unfolding of human desire are parallel. The mission of the state no longer ends with standing armies and teeming commerce. Statecraft accompanies man in his higher walks, and extends on into the regions of his hope, where away from intrigue and clank of gold, destiny drops carnal form for the stately model of a divine archi- tect a hint of the possible, a sublime conviction of human dignity. Classified according to their recognition of this relation to human development there are three great types of state. The first is vicious. The state is changed from means to end. Subjects are legitimate prey. Bril- liancy and death distinguish the career, a meteoric flash, a trail of human ashes, a plunge into a tide of blood French Bourbonism. The second is lethargic. Government and people pause suddenly amid dazzling prosperity to glory in their civilization. It becomes immaculate. The once potent stimuli of the future deaden. The masses stagnate. The state disintegrates. Thus unhappy Judea decayed at the altars of her past. Tonight her millions without a country are the unbidden guests of Gentile nations. The third type grasps the truth that man will not forever endure oppression; that he languishes in luxury; that he seeks not gifts but opportunities. Therefore, the worthy state proud of her stalwart son environs him with her majesty and power, honors his industry, exalts his intelligence, enthrones his integrity. Organized man, the patron of individ- ual man, is the essence and justification of govern- ment. There has long existed among nations a deep conviction that the American experiment would decide the momentous question: "Will govern- ment vested in the common people endure?" The first hundred years triumphantly vindicated the SOUTH DAKOTA 79 claims of freedom. Birth pangs were forgotten in the pursuits of peace; the invader was driven from our border; the bond of union was tested in fiery trial, and came forth annealed by war and blood. The second century is less auspicious. While ma- terial achievements have no historic parallel and baffle prediction, popular sovereignty has suffered the double disgrace of betrayal and defeat. Already the partisans of monarchy are jubilant. Shall we be longer deaf to the stubborn logic of facts? The impending dangers have not sprung from new or transient sources. They belong to a genus that breeds in human nature, and is nourished by the centuries. Our civilization has developed two ancient foes of democracy, class rule and mobile centers of population. Their respective units are the politician and the great city. American politics is feudalized. Its barons are bosses. Their castles are cities. Their fiefs are states. The logical out- come will be a national league of lords. The wide- spread supremacy of ring methods, and the pheno- menal growth of cities have already placed this ulti- matum beyond the stage of prophecy. The rise of class rule makes the passing quarter century epochal. Historians will define the period when dominion lapsed from a nation of thinkers to a coterie of traders. Behold the genius of this blood- less revolution the professional politician. He rules for a livelihood and trades in public trust. Great convictions cannot control his unmoral nature. He champions good or evil as votes abound, and weighs public measures by revenue and pluralities. Dearer than the interests of home and country are the dollars of the Sugar Trust, and the voting ver- min of the divekeeper. Denying kindred and native land, this creature dwells at the antipode of states- 80 WINNING ORATIONS manship the re-embodied heresy of "state for its own sake." Representative government assumes to gather in its councils the purity and wisdom of the nation. Professional politics has brought what? Integrity and ability are either proscribed from office or de- graded by forces behind the scenes. Anomalies too common to excite comment are low rate lawyers on the bench, mediocrity controlling public boards and commissions, ex-pugilists in Congress, Thomas Platt and Arthur Gorman wearing the mantles of Hamil- ton and Dr. Franklin. If this be the drift of Ameri- can life, it is the ebb of another civilization. The status of our civic problems attests a regime either of incompetence or venality. Party platforms are burdened with the accumulated issues of twenty years. The Negro still sensual and illiter- ate is, by his life-long friends, apparently forgotten. Foreign immigration continues to inundate our in- stitutions. The recriminations incident to every tariff revision place ultimate solution farther away. The Interstate Commerce fiasco, heralded as a tri- umph of Senatorial jurisprudence, has been shattered piecemeal by inferior courts and railroad counsel. And even now, with panic behind and national honor in prospective, the present Congress cannot conduct a great financial conflict above the plane of guerrilla warfare. But national spoilsmen are antiquated. The new school fight in the open, are no longer the mob, but the regular army. Their leader is not a brigand lying in wait for a luckless traveler, he is a general foraging for his regiments. Municipal misrule has attained the dignity of a science. Tammany Hall, the terror of good citizens, is the perfection of mo- dern methods and the envy of aspiring contem- poraries. That pre-eminent career of triumph SOUTH DAKOTA 81 follows no lucky star, its abuses are not prompted by peculiar depravity. The colossal ring rules by the law of price and steals by schedule. Organiza- tion makes sachems millionaires, and Richard Croker the despot of a larger population than Washington made free, and an empire richer than the Con- federacy. The future program of the boss is nationaliza- tion. The certain preponderance of urban popula- tion, with its notorious subservience to machine politics, allures unchecked ambition, and constitutes the most serious problem that American government will carry into the twentieth century. Our cities are growing two hundred and forty- five per cent faster than the general population In 1860 one-sixth were in cities above the eight thousand class. Today one-third are there; tomor row there will be a majority a condition already realized in several states. This rapid increment of cities must augment the period to democracy, and impatient cunning anticipates natural forces by consolidation. The day of counter rings merges into the day of ring com- binations. Greater New York alone cannot dominate Empire politics, but a triple alliance with Albany and Buffalo is supreme. Pittsburg and Philadelphia jointly rule our richest commonwealth. Illinois is the creature of Chicago. The fraternal bond is inter- state, and the mayor of the western metropolis, whose potency lingers in a name linked with two generations of civic abomination, travels half the continent to lend his magic presence against good government. The champion of corruption, whom he helped enthrone, now heads an open conspiracy to nominate a candidate for the presidency. Is an inter-partisan league a chimera of the imagination? A greater vagary is the artificial dis- 82 WINNING ORATIONS tinction between spoilsmen. They present an un- broken line on every issue essential to our civiliza- tion. ' They cripple education ignorance is blind. They do not lay a finger's weight upon foreign im- migration, the bulwark of railroad caucusing and snap conventions. They do not bankrupt the cam- paign treasury by opposing corporations. Vice goes unchallenged it is wiser than virtue, and knows its friends. The modern boss stands between this people and their destiny. New citizen generation, will you be the agent of his coronation or his down- fall? Experience has demonstrated that there is no relief in party panaceas. Organizations rise and decline in power, new growths succeed the old, but the manipulator is omnipresent and perennial. Turning out laden rascals to make room for a fasted horde is progress in a circle. Revolution is not regeneration. Arraignment of the politician alone is equally futile and grossly unjust. The amputation of a member does not purge the system of blood disease. The sacrifice of individuals does not atone for na- tional sin. Let a summons reverberate across the Western World calling to political judgment the American people. Whether seeking a cure or a victim, why not begin at the beginning? What has replaced the spirit of the Pilgrims and Minute Men? The spirit of the stock exchange and wheat pit. American life in the delirium of a passion for gain has forsaken the highways to hu- man greatness for the vulgar court of riches. A nation foremost in the quest for human rights swerved at a "yellow gleam across the world, and where it smote the plowshare in the field, the plow- man left his plowing and fell down before it; where it glittered on her pail, the milkmaid left her milk- SOUTH DAKOTA 83 ing and fell down before it." Commercialism has transformed a great common people, not into mil- lionaires and tramps, but into millionaires, full grown and embryonic. The same mighty magician breathed the firedamp of personal greed upon public spirit. The crime of the politician consists in fidelity to the spirit of his age, and the exercise of its busi- ness sense. In a mercenary age he made merchan- dise of the state. A motley host, moved by money lust to prey upon society, were pressing forward to buy indulgence, and he sold it; while citizen- ship abdicated the throne of this citizen- empire to pursue the fleeting image of a golden god. The dying century brings us to the summit of the divide. The iridescent dream of fortune shades into a dark reality where the dual monarchs, monopoly and vice, hold high carnival. Citizens re- turning to duty by legions cry "legislate," but the occupants of the abandoned State House mock them with Allen bills and license laws. They cry to the masses "vote" and are answered by a new oath of allegiance to Crokerism. There will be a weary waiting ere the old time dynasty of kingly men returns to power. The standards of a people are not the product of a mo- ment, they are not destroyed by a breath. Captivity to corruption will disappear with the idolatry of wealth. Righteousness will reign when the father of the lisping citizen places character above cunning, and Garrison above Gould; when his mother knows ethics as she knows the fashion plate; when piety finds the primary; when business men scrutinize a congressman as they do a cashier; when plowshares rest and furnace fires go out election day; when college recluses are Seth Lows, lawyers are Choates, and preachers Parkhursts. 84 WINNING ORATIONS Hail, Civic Federation! Hail, Christian Citizen! Hail, Henry George, first fallen chief! Citizenship makes its final stand upon an eminence more lofty than Mont Saint Jean. On the plain below, the glittering 1 arms of Mammon marshal in the confi- dence of a hundred victories. The splendid pageant moves our shifting senses to exclaim, "magnificent!" but our regenerate spirit discerns the death that follows in its wake. Is the conflict long, "Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, lest we forget, lest we forget." TWELFTH CONTEST (1899) OUR SOCIAL CRISIS (H. A. RODEE. DAKOTA UNIVERSITY) On June the 4th, 1897, in the home state of the President of the American Republic, the chief magistrate of seventy millions of people, an un- fortunate human being, without trial or sentence, met a horrible death at the hands of an infuriated mob. Upon the tomb of this unfortunate man should be written: "Here lies Charles Mitchell, murdered by Enlightenment, in the name of the Law." Such an atrocity in the very center of the world's civilization is an occasion for startling in- quiry. Labored the founders of our political in- stitutions in vain? Is the domestic tranquility vouchsafed to us by the organic law of our land an abandoned hope? The spirit of mob violence and the Jeffersonian principle of human liberty can never be harmonized to form a basis of social conduct. They are irrecon- cilable. The former presents the outburst of un- controlled passion. With no respect for property or human life it perpetrates public crimes to atone for private injuries. In times of war it extirpates an Acadian peasantry, exiles the brave patriots of Po- land, storms the infamous Bastile and rejoices over the destruction of the Imperial Household. In times of peace it dynamites the Royal Palace of the Czars, precipitates a race war in the New South and stains the pavement of Haymarket with innocent blood. The spirit of freedom is not so. It is the noble expression of a patriotic sentiment constituting the active impulse in such lives as those of Garabaldi and Abraham Lincoln. It has been a ceaseless in- spiration to the reformers of every age. Through 86 WINNING ORATIONS its influence the name of a reluctant monarch was subscribed to the great Magna Charta, through its power it curbed ecclesiastical rule in temporal affairs and substituted popular government for the Divine Right of Kings. Thus do liberty and violence become opposing forces, born of discordant elements: the one rooted in the primitive savagism of the individual; the other grounded deep in the humanitarian spirit of organized society. The advancement of a nation, therefore, depends upon the adjustment of these two factors, the individual on the one hand to society on the other. Individual man is a paramount agency in both human upbuilding and human destruction. The one gave to the world a Charlemagne, the other a Nero; the one an Alfred the Great; the other a Louis the XIV. The individual is the precipitant of anarchy as well as the stimulus to progress. From the influ- ence of a Robespierre or a Patrick Henry there may come French Reign of Terror or New World Re- public. Society also is a power for good or for evil. Social organism is the creation of individual man. He is its unit, the nucleus of its power, the origin of its disintegration. Human society is but the magnified representation of its integral parts. It can neither rise above them nor fall below them. As a power for good society conserves and economizes human energy. It makes possible the telegraph, the railroad, the chautauqua and the city. It gives us the university, the church, the asylum and the hospital. It binds all interests together and distributes all blessings equally. It develops the humane spirit and cements the bonds of universal brotherhood. Is there suffering in our own land? Then with compassionate heart charity goes forth SOUTH DAKOTA 87 into the darkness of tenement and slum. It places healing medicines by pallets of sickness, furnishes nourishing food for barren tables and folds a com- forting shawl about shivering shoulders. Is there starvation in Russia? Then our own hearts are sad and our treasures speed swiftly at the call of des- titution. Thus in the name of humanity and liberty the Red Cross Society and the American army have rescued the survivors of three centuries of Spanish barbarity. On the other hand the crimes and outrages committed by society are appalling. As a power for evil society has defended the slave driver and his whipping post and with cruel complacency impris- oned a John Bunyan. We behold with horror the forms of Savonarola and Joan of Arc consumed in torturing flames in the midst of a maddened multi- tude, or call out against oppression in contempla- ting the slow decimation of the living in the rack rent of the Irish peasantry, the persecution of the Armenians and the starvation of the Cuban recon- centrados. The same oscillation in a varied degree inheres in all mankind. It is not confined with geographical limits. It exists under every form of government. Thousands of marble headstones in national cemetery and southern battlefield are solemn witnesses which attest the awful penalty paid to expiate our own constitutional wrong. But the Emancipation Pro- clamation did not alter men's natures. It did not destroy the spirit of oppression. The frequent mo- bilization of state militia along our public thorough- fares and highways and the presence of federal troops in the city of Chicago indicate what? In- dustrial revolution? Yes. Industrial freedom? No. Men's ideals have changed. The reign of the Planter has ended, the reign of the Millionaire has 83 WINNING ORATIONS begun. Commerce has overshadowed philanthropy and statecraft. The unprecedented opportunities for acquiring wealth and position have absorbed the minds of men. The exalted ideal of public duty has been compromised to satisfy the insatiate lust of personal ambition. Accumulated dollars is as great a recommendation to public position as duties performed. Cunning competes with intelligence in the battle of life. It is more practical to compute interest and clip coupons than to follow the Golden Commandment. Desire for distinction in the count- ing room and the stock exchange is primary to the fulfillment of life's nobler purposes. Politics is de- graded by duplicity, and fidelity to party rather than service to country secures the emoluments of citizenship. The illustrious patriotism of Robert Morris and Daniel Webster is apparently forgotten, while the public admiration is deeply aroused by the business sagacity and herculean plans of a Pier- pont Morgan. The transformation has been gradual but com- plete. From a republic of equal citizens with demo- cratic principles there has come a dynasty of in- dustrial despotism. We have enthroned a hierarchy of political kings and commercial potentates. The combination is irresistable. Each dependent upon the other, they double their strength by uniting their forces. What shall be the issue of such a coalition? What has it already accomplished? Thoroughly intrenched in the citadels of legislative power, it defies the independence of the citizen and the majesty of the state. It usurps sovereignty in the name of Crokerism and holds the people of New York City in political bondage. It converts the municipality of Chicago into a machine for corporate plunder. It sends Matthew Quay and Arthur Gor- man to the halls of the American congress to be- SOUTH DAKOTA 89 tray the interests of the great Common People. It has made possible the most gigantic monopolies that the world has ever known. The Standard Oil Com- pany and the Coal Combine of multi-millionaires have arisen. Their power is prodigious. They en- force their edicts and exact their tributes from the sweat of industry with a front more invincible than the point of the bayonet. The Sugar Trust is with us. One-fourth of a cent per pound extorted from the tables of the poor adds $40,000,000 to its annual profits. While the Amalgamated Steel Combine, with a capitalization of $200,000,000, is heralded as the commercial triumph of the centuries. And what is the revelation in this? Unanswerable statistics expose the past and foretell the future. The per capita wealth of the United States has trebled in fifty years. In the same half century our people have gravitated to the extremes of wealth and poverty more rapidly than hitherto in the history of the world. Today ten per cent of our population own seventy per cent of its wealth, while one-half of seventy millions of people own less than five per cent of our country's inheritance. Industrial free- dom perishes and society languishes, but this is not all. It has ushered in an epoch of strife, of lawless- ness, of violence. It has given us strikes, lock-outs, and riots, mob rule, lynchings, boycott, and anarchy. On January 17, 1898, nine thousand weavers at New Bedford, Massachusetts, driven to despair by a cruel and arbitrary reduction of wages, dropped their shuttles with a prayer to humanity for succor. The blasts of midwinter were upon them. Strong men, fragile women, and innocent children succumb- ing to cold and hunger lay down to die. Ten days later, while the moans of destitution still issued from their lips, one thousand members of the Manu- facturers' Association held a royal banquet, costing 90 WINNING ORATIONS fifteen dollars a plate, in the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, New York City, to proclaim to the world the revival of business prosperity. Prosperity for whom? Prosperity for the agriculturist, when the Millers' Combine and the Board of Trade fix the price of produce? Prosperity for the factory operatives, when they are turned out by thousands in the dead of winter? Prosperity for the coal miners, when they are shot to death by hired assassins? Pros- perity? Prosperity for a few individuals. Pros- perity that has created corporations stronger than the sovereignty of states. Prosperity that has sold at auction half a million homes and mortgaged posterity for alien gold. Prosperity? Plutocracy! The century of the world's greatest achieve- ments closes in the turmoil of social agitation. This unrest is the legitimate product of modern indus- trial conditions. Its beginning was contemporane- ous with the origin of these evils. Of slow, but continuous development, it has reached the climax of governmental danger the point of violence. The outlook is foreboding. Violence is the ultimate and most awful recourse of human life. Its shib- boleth is death. Its cataclysm is limited only by the ferocity of human nature. Its harness is the gallows, the guillotine, the battle ax and prison pen. Having its only justification in rebellion against tyrannical government or the defense of human life, it is now turned loose upon trembling institutions and helpless individuals. The cry is not to uphold but to tear down, not to protect but to destroy. Colossal effects must come from a colossal origin. There must be one fundamental cause of anarchy, one Goliath error in society. The crisis has arisen from a misapprehension of human rights. Individuals banding together have arrogated to themselves the right of combining powers financially SOUTH DAKOTA 91 and politically to enrich themselves legally at the sacrifice and oppression of society. Society in turn unable to endure this reign of extortion, resolving itself into mobs has claimed the same right of com- bination for violent and lawless resistance. Thus is the battle line drawn. Both in the name of rights, both in the wrong. Let mankind learn that rights are inherited by virtue of birth and realized by vir- tue of state. That rights are neither the emolu- ments nor offspring of corporations, combines, mobs or clans of any kind. That rights are rights every- where, at all times and for all classes. The principle of genuine reform must be evo- lutionary not revolutionary. People must be edu- cated in the knowledge of social relations. The in- dividual should know the inner circle of manhood as well as the outer circle of citizenship. The neces- sity of the times is not for more or diverse parties and organizations: the supreme need is for men; men of ability, men of principle, men of sympathy, men who thoroughly understand the needs and rightly interpret the appeals of suffering humanity. We stand at the daybreak of a new century. Thoughtful men gaze through the horoscope of the future upon the momentous problems of the race. They are perplexed to discern whether we are ap- proaching the era of our national splendor or enter- ing the cycle of a long eclipse. The vantage ground which we now occupy has been attained through the toil and travail of generations. Their course is strewn with whitened skeletons and crimsoned with blood. Conflict precipitated in ignorance may close in tragedy, but the apostles of progress in prophetic vision proclaim an eternal faith. "For they doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose runs, and the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns." WENDELL PHILLIPS (WALTER R. HUBBARD, HURON COLLEGE In the State Contest of 1899. the oration of Walter R. Hubbard. Huron College, won Second place, and the oration of H. A. Rodee, Dakota University, won First place. In the Inter-State contest, these two orations were reversed Hubbard taking First place and Rodee. Second. Therefore, both of these winning orations are given). On the morning of December 8, 1837, a multi- tude of eager, earnest men poured into Faneuil hall in Boston. News had come from Alton, Illinois, of the brutal murder of Lovejoy, the fearless defender of free speech and champion of even-handed justice for the negro race. Conflicting feeling swayed the multitude as waves are driven by an ocean storm. A part of that surging crowd in Faneuil hall had come to approve the action of the murderous mob. A part had come with hearts filled with indignation. Resolutions were offered condemning the action of the Alton mob. The sentiment of the assembly seemed to hang in the balance, when in the gallery arose the attorney-general of the commonwealth James Trecothic Austin. He began to harrangue the crowded hall with all the practical arts of the demagogue. He heaped personal abuse upon the author of the resolutions, condemned Lovejoy in un- measured terms, praised the "orderly mob" which wrought the editor's death and justified its action. With passionate prejudice he turned the opinion of the meeting against the purpose of those who called it and when he retired the old "Cradle of Liberty" echoed to the applause of his ignoble sentiments. In Boston, in Faneuil Hall, he who dared to stand for the freedom of the press and for even-handed jus- tice was maligned and mocked while men approved. As the crowd became a mob in its mad applause it 94 WINNING ORATIONS seemed as if American liberty must be strangled in her very birth-place. But in the midst of the tumult a young man gained the platform to uphold the sacred cause of liberty. With consummate tact and skill he began his reply and held the vast audi- ence spell-bound while he upheld the resolutions and transfixed with lightning anathemas the brutal apologist for murder. The old hall rocked with the uproar of contending factions but he held the mastery and ceased only when he had utterly over- whelmed the attorney-general and his argument, and had snatched complete victory from defeat. That triumphant, youthful orator was Wendell Phillips. The nation was soon to learn his name and feel his matchless eloquence as he pleaded the cause of a down-trodden race until she had loosed the fetters of her slaves. When we speak of the abolition of slavery we think only of Lincoln's inspired proclamation, for- getting that he, like all statesmen, was powerless to take such a measure of his own volition. Ameri- ca forced him to yield to her will, and then praised his glad obedience. But who waked America's slumbering conscience until she cried to free the slave? Who planted the seed that blossomed in the Proclamation of Emancipation? William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips. Others there were, who rallied to their standard, but these two stood giant-like among them. For thirty years they had cried like Israel's prophets against the nation's sin. But for their work, Sumner had never reached the Senate, the impassioned philippics of Henry Ward Beecher had fallen on deaf ears, and the immortal "Uncle Tom's Cabin" had perished, as born out of due time. In the early thirties when the abolition move- ment first began to demand attention the slave SOUTH DAKOTA 95 power sat in every high place, dominating the thought and dictating the laws of the country. It was entrenched behind the Constitution. It was fostered by the laws. It was upheld by vast money power. When a few brave men started a crusade against it they met with an opposition fierce and violent enough to have appalled any but the most dauntless. Their meetings were broken up, their leaders were mobbed, their property destroyed and themselves treated with every possible indignity. The pulpit thundered against them, defending slavery as a Biblical institution. The press cursed them, while their own publications were ex- cluded from the mails. Society scorned them, and in the bitterness of its hate the benevolent state of Georgia set a price upon the head of Garrison. Six- ty years ago it was as popular to be an abolitionist in America as it was to be a Christian in Rome in the times of Nero. At this time Wendell Phillips was a young lawyer in Boston. Fresh from Harvard College in the bloom of youth, wealthy and eloquent, he was the pet of Boston aristrocracy. A large circle of influential friends had high hopes for him and Justice Story prophesied for him an unprecedented career. He had a rapidly increasing practice and it seemed as if he would surpass even the fondest hopes of his friends. But God had marked him for a nobler work. Pure and noble in his character, he had become convinced that slavery was a curse; but he hesitated to join the abolition movement. By such a step he had nothing to gain and everything to lose. But right and conscience triumphed, and, after counting the cost, to the disappointment of his friends and the intense chagrin of his family, he gave himself heart and soul to the cause of Anti- slavery, conscious that he would get no reward but 96 WINNING ORATIONS hisses, and have no guide save the light of his own conscience. But ah "how far that little candle throws its beams!" Upon the lyceum platform, in halls and churches it grew to be a beacon-light, warning America against shipwreck on the rocks of slavery. We point to Lincoln and tell with pardonable pride, how he surmounted the obstacles which humble birth and poverty had placed in his way. A noble example! But nobler still is the sight of Wendell Phillips, thrusting back every offer of wealth and distinction which the world might give him, to become the scorned and hated "friend of 'niggers,' " to become helper and friend of Garrison the "black" and hated abolitionist, upon whose head was set a price! What American ever showed greater moral courage? What reformer ever made a greater sacrifice? From the moment he espoused the Anti-slavery cause he became a leader. His first great speech in Faneuil Hall revealed his power, and gave him a nation for an audience. From that moment he set himself to crush the power of slavery. Far- seeing and dispassionate, he saw that his hope lay in arousing the masses. He saw that the immortal principles of the Declaration of Independence con- templated universal freedom and enfranchisement as their natural and inevitable result. He began to agitate the question of negro slav- ery, now here, now there, but at every opportunity. Confronted with mobs again and again, derided by press and pulpit, he pressed steadily on, confident of the ultimate triumph of right, making no com- promises, asking no favors, and knowing no retreat. In nothing else was his character more sublime than in his unfaltering faith in the triumph of truth. Other men might stumble and go astray in the dark- SOUTH DAKOTA 97 ness of self-interest, but his pathway was always bright with self-sacrifice and devotion to duty. Rising like a mountain peak among his contempo- raries, he caught the earliest beams of a nobler civil- ization dawning upon the world, and he failed not to reflect them to the plains below. Reformers tend to become excessive. The slav- ery agitation showed the need of other reforms and many of the best of the abolitionists enlisted under these new banners. Some of the reformers were ready to adopt every "ism" and every new idea, good or bad, which looked to change. But Phillips, anxious to further every movement for the betterment of humanity, always carefully distinguished between liberty and license. He espoused every cause that had its rise in justice and right, but turned a deaf ear to the wild shouts of the iconoclasts. Some of the noblest reforms of today are still indebted to his genius. Reforms in Penal Legislature, Equal Suffrage, the Temperance Reform, the Labor Prob- lem and many others all claimed and received his thought. His philanthropy knew no limits of race or condition and of him too we might say: "His toleration was as broad as human nature and his sympathy as boundless as the sea." When the war was over and the slaves were freed, Garrison and others, thinking with strange shortsightedness that their work was done, withdrew from the Anti-slavery organizations. Not so Wen- dell Phillips. He saw that the work of the aboli- tionist did not end with the mere emancipation of the negro. He had worked not more for the over- throw of the slave-power than for the overthrow of all systems of law which denied the negro the rights of citizenship. The negroes of the South just freed, were in danger of being denied the franchise, but at the call of Phillips the abolitionists rallied to their 98 WINNING ORATIONS aid. During the years of reconstruction his was the voice that cried for unbiased justice and from end to end of the North went home to conscientious hearts. He went from city to city speaking for the enfranchisement of the negro. His speeches were copied far and wide and many of the leading papers gave space for editorials from his pen. Freed from party lines he wielded a greater influence than any statesman, and, by arousing the Northern con- science, brought forth the crowning glory of our Constitution the Fifteenth Amendment. "More than to any other," says Senator Henry Wilson, "more than to all others, the colored people owe it that they were not cheated out of their citizenship after emancipation, to Wendell Phillips." Thus he stood, a complete victor, after a life- long battle. The nation was ready to give him al- most any civic honor. The hissing mobs of his earlier career had given place to applauding mil- lions. Most men would have retired from the battle- fields to enjoy the fruits of victory most men would have done so but not Wendell Phillips. "New oc- casions teach new duties" was his watchward and now, as aforetime, he brushed aside personal honors to give himself to the help of oppressed humanity. The reforms he then embraced are yet before us, radiant still with the impress of his genius. As to them let future generations judge, and with fresh glory crown his eloquence. Most men who reach the heights of greatness are noted for some particular talent by which they have risen. But Phillips was distinguished by the quality and range of all his powers. Wherever duty placed him he towered above his fellows. Some few mistakes he made to show that he was human, but when he saw himself in error, he never hesitated to acknowledge it. Not even his bitterest foe dared SOUTH DAKOTA 99 assail his private life, while often his public enemies were his personal friends. Born and bred an aristo- crat, he freely gave his life to the service of the most lowly, deeming no task too heavy for him to undertake, no sacrifice too great for his philan- thropy. His own time may not have granted him all the honor that was his, but he does not need it. The story of his life is his noblest eulogy. The peer- less orator, the broad-minded reformer, the devoted patriot, the consecrated Christian, he stands tower- ing aloft in the greatness of his genius serene, fearless, incomparable. Our praises cannot add to his fame. Our blame could not dim the glory of his life. Give but the story of his life and centuries hence, when Justice, Truth and Virtue are enthroned, impartial History, seeking to do honor to her noblest sons, will lay at the feet of Wendell Phillips states- man, hero, man a nation's gratitude, a world's re- nown. THIRTEENTH CONTEST (1900) AMERICAN PROBLEMS (James A. Walton, Redfield College) The progress of humanity during the century just closing has been more rapid than during any other like period. If by progress we mean the struggle of humanity to realize itself, to develop higher forms- of individual life, as well as a nobler national righteousness, then our nation has been the most progressive in the world. Starting a little over a century ago, a handful of people with only a small strip of territory along the Atlantic, with- out money or credit, without army or navy, with- out standing among the nations, foes without and foes within, we have attained an eminence where we stand as one of the greatest among the nations. Territorially our expansion has been unparal- leled. During the last years of the eighteenth cen- tury our boundary was the Appalachian system, next the Father of Waters became the goal of pos- sible extent Today our nation extends from sea to sea, and the garden of the Pacific and the fertile island of the Carribean sea are integral parts of our Republic. Commerce and wealth have readily kept pace with territorial extension. It is the Englishman's boast that he is manufacturer to the queen, the American's that he is manufacturer to the world. We are leaders in the great industrial competition of the world. We send American cotton to Asia^- through our own port, Manila American iron to Australia, American steel to Egypt, American con- duits to Glasgow and American locomotives to Canada and Russia. The increase last year of the 102 WINNING ORATIONS shipments of manufactured iron alone was $105,680,000. We are outstripping the mistress of the seas, and the limits of our foreign trade have by no means yet been reached. In Africa the demand for Ameri- can goods has been continuous and China is being opened up to American commerce. As we view the present commercial expansion we feel that the fu- ture has greater wonders in store. There is no country better equipped educational- ly. Public schools are the great lever which ele- vates our children to the plane of intelligent, loyal citizenship. One of the features of education in this epoch is the extension of all forms of instruction to the people. Thirty-two states have adopted the compulsory school laws resulting in a largely in- creased attendance on the public schools. The grand total enrolled in public and private schools at the close of 1898 was over 17,000,000. We have today a population of 75,000,000 with wealth untold, with possibilities beyond measure, with educational advantages unlimited, with com- mercial interests unparalleled, a great and happy people, honored among the nations, with more of comfort, happiness and freedom than any other na- tion past or present. But with our great opportunities and possibil- ities have come greater responsibilities. The moral and spiritual growth must keep pace with the ma- terial. Questions have arisen unforeseen by the founders of our Republic; problems that are of deep- est moment to the state; problems which unsolved retard the development of freedom and righteous- ness in our nation. Let us consider some of these. Political corruption is in evidence on every hand. On all sides we see the scramble for office; cities making law ridiculous; citizens selling their birth- SOUTH DAKOTA 103 right for money, driven to the polls and voted; cit- izens turning 1 over their rights to professional poli- ticians whose highest aim is to fill places of re- sponsibility with a low order of intelligence; United States Senators serving the state for its spoils effectually opposing the will of the people, and edu- cated men recreant to political progress. When we come to the conflict between labor and capital, we find a widely prevailing hatred. This gap between rich and poor cannot be closed until masters learn to value men more than they value things. Within this generation have grown up two black passions, each debasing to society: the greed for wealth; the hatred of capital. The wage earner especially in the large cities has become a wage slave. The laboring man has no day sacred to rest and the enjoyment of his home. Do you wonder that Christian men feel the hurt when denied their Sun- day's rest by their employer? Do you marvel that honest men feel the hurt when they know what hunger is, and what it is to hear their children cry for bread and sunlight, while before their eyes is the wasteful luxury of the rich whose every window is open to the sun? Factories, shops and tenement houses, where gloom reigns, might be as halls of light and health if masters would only give to the laborer a little of his due. Deep in the heart of society is the core of sel- fishness. Any form of self-worship or self-absorp- tion is the essentially wrong idea. The secret of the cure is found in this, you serve yourself by serving others. As slavery fell before the patriotism of this country, so also will selfishness go down before the law of love. There is another menace to our civilization which we cannot, dare not ignore the saloon. It threatens the home, the state, the church and the 104 WINNING ORATIONS best interests of humanity. If we are to succeed in any alteration of our political machinery, the saloon must be defeated in its work of debasing American manhood. Municipal ownership of street railways cannot be a success while the municipal government is controlled by whisky politicians. Di- rect election of United States Senators will not produce anything better than Quays and Murphys if voters are corrupted as they now are by saloon politics. Politics in large cities have become little less than an organized appetite. What will our "benevolent assimilation" of the islands avail if the islanders are debauched by American liquors? In the first five months of 1899, $690,000 worth of liquors was exported to these islands. The saloon in America and our possessions is an agency that blocks the upward way. The first step to successful political and social reform must be over its ruins. The problem of immigration is of no small im- portance to our land. The number of immigrants during the fiscal year just closed was over 300,000. Commissioner Powderly recommends that the immi- gration laws be made more stringent and asserts that even under present rigorous conditions a large number of persons come here who are paupers or physically incapacitated. Men who do not appreci- ate the progress and happiness that may come to them in this country should be excluded. Those who enter our land and here resist law and throw bombs into the streets were never citizens of any land. Their minds are too narrow to hold the idea of a state. The true citizen does not live for self alone. He feels the agony of the millions and grows am- bitious for humanity. We must make citizenship a high calling and the right of suffrage a holy and unsullied trust. SOUTH DAKOTA 105 These are some of the conditions. What is the true solution of these problems? Good progress has been made in eliminating hatred and prejudice by the development of education and Christian cit- izenship. The charity of the rich is flowing into the channels of practical helpfulness thus mani- festing the brotherhood of man. These powers for good shall at last crush out the evils of this hour. Then will be ushered in the glad, new day of out- poured light. Education is reaching out along many lines. It is filling the minds of the American youth with the principles of liberty and truth. The steady flow of educated men and women from our universities and colleges is what keeps our life as pure and high as it is now. What is a country to expect of its educated young men? To lead his fellow men toward higher conceptions of national honor and civic duty. Whenever dogmas have turned the mind from men, literature and art have stepped in to save the precious things of society. This has been done by teaching through prose and verse the principles of duty, justice and love, by portraying man as a brother of all mankind and a citizen in the realm of law and love. Let us teach youth to study man in his needs the most vital subject of thought in the world; to think deeply, love greatly, strive mightily for moral ends and character which is the true uplifting force in a Republic. That bigness is not greatness, nor vulgarity simplicity, and that the rule of the majority is not the moral law. What should be our attitude toward existing evils? One of hopefulness. We must not yield to despair over the shortcomings of these passing years. The evils of today are not great enough to menace the life of the State. "God never scooped the Mississippi for the grave of a Republic, nor 106 WINNING ORATIONS poured Niagara for its dirge." Comparing the past with the present, we find we have made marked pro- gress both socially and politically. Today woman is on equal terms with man, the shackles are broken from the limbs of the slave, and "a schoolhouse is on every hilltop." The stan- dard of health, temperance and beneficence to the weak even to animals has been noticeably raised. The masses have received popular recognition and rights far beyond the dreams of their leaders of a century ago. The government of the people is growing stronger every year. Religion has been taken from the realm of theory and creed and applied to the life of the individual and society. Sectionalism is no longer known. There is no North, no South, but a great united people. Let us not despair of the future of the common people. For centuries they have been serving the favored few. Educate them! Let them have full access to books, art, the sunlight and beauty of God's world. As sand cast into the furnace comes forth resplendent crystal, so from the ranks of the common people may come another Lincoln to bless the world. The need of today is men and women who are not indifferent to the moral darkness and misery in the world; who will take an active part in political life not to get something out of it but to put some- thing into it; who will make it easier for good poli- ticians to remain good men; men who will grapple hand to hand with iniquitous power "that peace, truth, brotherhood, freedom shall be no longer the rhetoric of the platform but dominant, sovereign facts of life." Here is an optimism that can be at- tained by all; it is founded not so much on thought as on action. What we need chiefly is a race of statesmen who are nurtured in the ideals of true SOUTH DAKOTA 107 patriotism, who are trained to estimate rightly the trend of events, who are animated with the noble purpose of serving the State for the sake of the State. Would you help to usher in a nobler national righteousness, the brotherhood of man? When the voice of truth speaks that holy word charity "in its larger rendering of love, brotherhood and self- sacrifice, obey it, and leave the metaphysics of the question to take care of itself." That happy day will come not by magic or science, tempest or fire, but by the entrance of education and the spirit of love into the life of our nation. "Ring out the old! Ring in the new!" the great moral renaissance, the new learning of the mind and heart, the new types of man and woman developed by liberty working within the domain of love and law. God keep our Nation through the dangers of the coming years. May the lustre of our flag never be sullied by warfare for conquest! May it never advance save to bring liberty and self-government to all beneath its folds. May it ever float un- changed, save by the blossoming of new stars in its celestial field of blue. God preserve the birthright of the one Nation whose ideal is not to subjugate but to enlighten the world. FOURTEENTH CONTEST (1901) TITO MELEMA MISS EDITH NOBLE. DAKOTA UNIVERSITY Also winner of Interstate Contest In the historical romance, Romola, George Eliot has created a masterpiece of treason. Tito Melema will ever be a warning to the world his character a wonderful product of evolution, sin-blighted in the midst of perfect nature. The calm skies of South- ern Europe manifest omnipotent mercy; the soft breezes lift upward the adorations of nightingale and incense of rose; the rigid and unyielding Alps re-echo the bugle-call of austere purpose, and the rolling waves of the Mediterranean voice obedience to divine decree; yet, out of it all, we see him rising in defiance of nature, society, and God one of the blackest monuments of literature. It is seldom that fiction creates such a master- piece of evil. But George Eliot recognized that temptation follows hard on the heels of ambition; she knew that base power is the legitimate offspring in the union of a quickened intellect and a dormant heart; she was conscious that to the mind steeped in sin, honor is a mockery, virtue a lie; and it is for these reasons that the author has set against the beauty of nature and the innocence of youth an un- paralleled silhouette of direst wrong and unrelent- ing retribution a warning solemn and awful. No man had been more favored than the young Greek. For sixteen years, Tito Melema had been nurtured as a cherished son by Baldassarre Calvo, who owed him no more than the world owes any man the consideration due to humanity. Yet, rescuing the boy from penury, the foster-father had lavished upon him wealth and luxury, learning and love. 110 WINNING ORATIONS There had been years of travel in countries rich in the treasures of ancient civilization. Together they risked barbarian hatred in search of wider culture. But the risk was fatal. Turks captured the galley, and separation came with shipwreck. Yet the sea could not quench the sturdy life of the youth. Wresting himself from the grasping waters he found refuge in the city of Florence. Who ruled the winds that their wreaking wrath should have made possible such opportune anchoring? The initiative acts of Tito Melema's scholarly career exhibited a trait that foretold his ruin. Blessed with learning and talent, he was guilty of basest ingratitude. For the obligation imposed upon him, he offered the crime of disloyalty, and, alas! beneath his gigantic wrong, the innocence and pur- ity of youth were forever crushed! In the separa- tion that came with shipwreck, what had become of Baldassarre Calvo? Had he escaped the bloodshed of a struggle with Turkish captors? Whatever it was, whether slavery, wandering, poverty or death, to him Tito Melema owed an untiring search. Post- ponement of honor, aye, a life of futile, dangerous toil, would have been but a just requital for years of devotion. Baldassarre Calvo might be a slave, looking to his son for emancipation. Stripped of wealth, perishing among strangers the bowed, grey- haired benefactor might be blindly groping for a place to die. Gratitude and pity must have warred with selfish ambition, and alas! ambition was the victor. Loyalty shudders at the price Tito Melema paid for prosperity the freedom of his benefactor. The heinousness of the desertion appalls. Two antagonistic possibilities were presented: vigilant solicitude, neglect. Recognition of the obligation would have been but the natural loyalty of devotion; disregard of it was the faithlessness that culminated SOUTH DAKOTA 111 in treason. Learning was no antidote for the bane of sin. Tito Melema had stolen the knowledge of heaven when he learned the secrets of the ages. But genius failed utterly to lead the transgressor to re- pentance; it had no alchemy to transmute sinner into saint. A message came from Baldassarre: "I am sold for a slave. I think they are going to take me to Antioch. The gems alone will serve to ransom me." His chains were a plea for rescue. Victory could be wrenched from the jaws of defeat, if Tito Melema would but choose the union with God that makes man triumphant over faithlessness. But to leave Florence after months of passive disregard of his father's fate would be a confession of guilt. Should he expose popularity to censure? Should he abandon growing success for years of blind search? No, Baldassarre must suffer! Treachery followed treachery until fealty was supplanted it was the inevitable expansion of evil. The first insidious deed was the death-knell of every faithful impulse. Twice he chose to betray; twice he trampled on his nobler instincts; twice he scorned allegiance. Devotion was fast becoming an im- possibility. Active wickedness followed passive weakness. Schemes of faithlessness he cherished even in the presence of purest love. His marriage to Romola, the daughter of the blind Bardo di Bardi, forged another chain of relation. Years of worthy, but fruitless effort to transform wide learning into imperishable literature, had culminated in the intense desire of Bardo di Bardi to preserve his priceless library. The betrothal was a tacit transfer of this duty from father to son. But the price of the library would repair Tito Melema's dilapidated fortune; and the dying wish of a broken-hearted scholar bound 112 WINNING ORATIONS him no more than the sunbeam stays the course of the tempest. For sordid gain, a traitor! The betrayal of country was inevitable in the character of that man who scrupled not to sell his father's freedom. But patriotism was not bartered in a single transaction. Lack of devotion was lost in indifference, indifference grew to unfaithfulness, unfaithfulness bred desertion, and desertion ended in treason. Troublesome times came to Florence. The diplomacy and popularity of Tito Melema be- came the servant of the Medicians, struggling against two factions for the city's freedom. The peril of the Medicians was the peril of Tito Melema. He purchased his own safety with the heads of five of the leaders. God of Heaven and earth, is there no vengeance for such awful deeds? Is Justice dead that she metes out to evil no measure of retribution? Is there no longer judgment for crime? Ah, yes, for surely treachery is its own worst punishment! Tito Melema, drink the fatal hemlock your own hands have distilled! In the merciless heat of a tropic sun, an old man toiled, a slave. In the loneliness of bondage, passionate heart and stricken body cried out in anguish. His son the boy whom he had lifted from beggary to wealth, from cruelty to tenderness his son would surely save him. In the filthy hold of the pirate ship, and on a hot coast, scourged by tyrant taskmasters, even his clanking chains rang with the hope, "Tito will find me." And yet, that rescue never came; hope, doubt, despair. But at last, in the very city of Florence, the thongs were cut from the wrists of the bent captive. Freedom! but a freedom that brought only knowledge of de- sertion, and that wrung from the startled Tito a cry of denial, "Some madman, surely." Hope en- SOUTH DAKOTA 113 tombed, doubt dead, despair born, revenge conceived! The sweetness of devotion turned to the bitterness of gall. Hate became passionate as love. Would Baldassarre Calvo never hear a cry of pain for the light laugh of that gay, handsome man, reveling in gilded glory? His maddened brain was charged with a single purpose: with his own hands to wreak vengeance upon that beautiful form. Can you won- der that revenge conquered him, you who have felt the depths of human love and human wrong, who have been stung by the ingrate? On the swift wings of Nemesis Justice overtook laggard flight. The wrath of Florence was baffled only to give place to waiting revenge. The swift current of the Arno sought to save him, but it bore him into the very hiding-place of the seeking Baldassarre. It was the day of revenge, the hour of retribution! Death hung its chill gloom over them, as the hardened hands of the worn-out scholar clutched the blackened throat of his son a traitor poisoned by the venom of treason! In his evil career, Tito Melema swept the gamut of human possibilities; and as the quiet beauty of a summer's day perishes in the fierce onslaught of the hurricane, so his life, begun in promise, was blotted out by the swift-gathering storms of sin. Yet he still lives, not a mere fictitious creation, but the exponent of a living principle. Centuries ago, Tito Melema was a Sejanus, inciting Tiberius Caesar to duplicity; today, he is a political boss, wheedling thousands into dishonest votes; lured on by hope of public honor, he incites political faction to break faith with the people. As a tradesman, made greedy by gain, he transforms honest competition into bitter strife, imperiling the prosperity of the com- mercial world. As a social menace, he maintains the divorce court; heeding not the desolation of loveless 114 WINNING ORATIONS homes, he upholds an impure standard, masked by the semblance of chastity, pouring into the veins of the twentieth century the hot blood of lust. With hollow worship and the religious fad, he opposes the simple purity of the Christian life; and unmindful of retribution, denies universal fraternity as the expansion of individual relation to God robbing the Church of power. Must we admit that our nation, tutored by free- dom and grown sturdy in loyality, is becoming blind to the advance of infidelity? We condemn the anarchy that murdered King Humbert, while our own land hides the grave of Guiteau. We sneer at English piety befriending the opium traffic, and yet throttle state prohibition in our own country. We scoff at the corruption of French militarism torturing a helpless Dreyfus. Look you at Tammany Hall! A fair political organization, nourished by upright men seeking to strangle an insidious nion- archial spirit. Tammany Society has been trans- formed, by the intrigue of such men as Aaron Burr, into Tammany Hall, with an influence so malign that honest men cry out in desperation of fear: "Will it plunge a nation into destruction?" Would we rear a defense? History and fiction join hands to build it. Victoria, the God-fearing queen, a splendid tribute to fidelity; Patrick Henry, inspiring a despairing nation in a struggle for lib- erty; Gladstone, exalting statesmanship by unswerv- ing passion for right: such are safe-guards against treachery. But not all: boldly against that noble background stands the traitor of literature. It is the relief that makes the warning picture. Fear of the condemnation of baseness supplements the in- spiration of grandeur, giving force and endurance to the powers awakened. Tito Melema is a monu- ment of warning whose colossal proportions shadow SOUTH DAKOTA 115 the world. We scorn his odious mind, we pity his selfish heart, we resolve to shun the dark deeds that submerged his life in ruin. Literature has breathed into his calamitous decline the breath of justice. May the fire of his judgment purify the world of treason! As the Lord God liveth, every Sodom shall perish in the flames of its sulphurous brooding cloud. Can we fathom the punishment? Behold the traitor, king of a lone, loathsome isle, groaning out eternity in desertion and remorse: the only sight he sees, the desolation his own hands have wrought; the only sound he hears, the taunting echo of his own in- gratitude his, the desolation of Tyre, the ruin of Gomorrah! The sacred writer inspired of God, the historian thrilled by love of liberty, the author discerning human danger with united voice proclaim "Anathema Maranatha" upon the ingrate and the traitor. For one hundred years profane history has perpetuated a picture of base betrayal and remorseful exile in the man who raised an evil hand against a struggling nation false to country, Benedict Arnold! For two thousand years, sacred story has breathed its curse upon him who sent innocence to its crucifixion false to Master, Judas! And now, fiction with her facile pen has written on the lasting walls of litera- ture, never to be erased, never to be dimmed, the name of the man who sacrificed loyalty for ease, integrity for fame, manhood for prosperity; a traitor to friend, father, country, God Tito Melema. FIFTEENTH CONTEST (1902) FROM FAME TO INFAMY CLARION D. HARDY, DAKOTA UNIVERSITY Also winner of Interstate Contest Two memorable graves in the cemetery of Princeton college contain all that is mortal of two memorable men. Peacefully entombed here lie the ashes of a father and a grandfather. Imposing headstones record their deeds of virtue, love and pa- triotism. At the foot of these two graves is a third. No epitaph recounts the mighty deeds of its silent sleeper; no loving hands decorate that obscure sepul- cher; no friend lingers to drop a tear of fond re- membrance; that home of death is deserted, un- marked and desolate. Here rest the remains of Aaron Burr. The early life of this remarkable man was spent amid circumstances the most favorable for culture and intellectual growth. Naught was lack- ing that the most ambitious youth could desire. The refinements of home and nature shed their beneficent influences about him in childhood; wealth, oppor- tunity, and the best advantages of school and college blessed him in young manhood. He possessed a dignified presence, a fascinating personality, and a brilliant intellect, that served him well in all his relations to society. These God-given powers won him honors at Princeton, glory on the battlefield, leadership in the senate and national fame as vice- president of the United States. In this high office we see him rise to majestic greatness the idol of an admiring people. From Maine to the Carolinas, from the Mississippi to the Atlantic, Aaron Bun- was trusted and honored. But this man of colossal genius, the organizer and leader of democracy, falls 118 WINNING ORATIONS from his position of power, the object of universal hatred and execration. While yet vice president, he became an inde- pendent candidate for governor of New York, using the political methods of an infamous party organ- izer and an unscrupulous demagogue. Denounced as such by Hamilton, he quickly revealed his hatred and enmity by challenging his rival to mortal com- bat. Hamilton sought to avoid this extremity, but in vain; Burr would try honor upon the field of death. Behold these men on the morning of the eleventh of July, eighteen hundred and four, standing on the heights of Weehawken, awaiting the moment for action. The mind of one longs for home, wife and happy children; that of the other dwells only on the present moment and gratification of revenge. In the heart of one throbs the kingly spirit of a patriot; in that of the other burns the fiendish desires of an lago. The countenance of one is calm and serene, reflecting the thoughts and purposes of a guiltless soul; that of the other is black with passion, reveal- ing the hatred of years, the soul of a satan. Here, upon these heights, under the clear blue of the morn- ing sky, the evil genius of Burr assaults the holy spirit of a patriot and wins two victims the soul of Burr, the life of Hamilton. A man of principle is slain on the altar of folly, revenge, ambition. The spirit of passion confronts the spirit of patriotism; the latter loses a defender that the former may win an ally. This tragedy was more than a struggle between man and man, between politician and poli- tician; it was a mighty combat of passion and prin- ciple a combat typical of the eternal warfare waged wherever humanity exists. In the hearts of men, in political parties, in the great nations of the earth, the battle is ceaseless. SOUTH DAKOTA 119 It is inherent in man to respect the rule of law and abhor the supremacy of passion. Burr violates this sense of justice, and is rejected by friends, de- spised by opponents, branded as a murderer. Henceforth flee whither he will Burr shall not escape the crushing burden of a nation's righteous wrath. To the north, to the south, to the east, to the west, it shall follow him forever and ever. Driven from his palace on Richmond Hill, he sought the west, but his evil ambition was ever with him. Aaron Burr saw pathless forests and un- tracked prairies stretching toward the sunset; gleaming lakes studding the landscape and shimmer- ing rivers winding lazily toward the seas. With all this wealth of opportunity before him, his active brain plotted and schemed until the possibility of a mighty kingdom captivated him. Here, here will he build an empire; of all this, he shall be the crowned monarch. On yonder hill shall rise his capital; upon this crest will he rear his castle. Aaron Burr must sit upon a throne. He seeks aid on a beautiful island in the Ohio. Harman Blennerhassett had here erected a palace. Wealth and peace reigned supreme, a loving wife and children blessed him, the charm of books and the mysteries of nature guided his thoughts. In the midst of this quiet scene the seducer appears. Aaron Burr comes, for he needs money. The temp- ter tells of greater riches and power; calls up images of royal banquets and noble titles, stirs the soul with glories of battle and the triumphs of war. This peaceful life is transformed into one of excite- ment and disquiet. The unsuspecting heart of the listener is captive. Blennerhassett is snared in ambition's toils. Aaron Burr had turned this Heaven of love in to a Hell of discontent; for what? He led this man to devote his money to a base and 120 WINNING OEATIONS ignoble cause, for what? He drove the lovely mis- tress from that palace to leave her an outcast, at midnight, upon the desolate ruins of a former home, for what? To gratify ambition incarnate. Napol- eon may conquer Europe; Aaron Burr shall rule the western world. He will forget Quebec and Mon- mouth, and place upon his own brow the monarch's crown. From the scene of murder he flees to become a traitor to country. The chronicles of Greece or the annals of Rome record no more tragic example of fallen greatness. Aaron Burr, heroic, marshals troops, plans battles, supports Arnold, aids Washington; Aaron Burr, passionate, rejects principle, kills Hamilton, seduces innocence, corrupts Blennerhassett. Burr, the poli- tician, thrills a senate, denounces despotism, in- spires multitudes, competes for the supreme honor in democracy; Burr, the traitor, succumbs to lust of power, deceives friends, plots his country's down- fall, sinks into ignominy, the victim of selfish am- bition. This reign of passion has ever been a foe to society and a menace to government. Supreme in the hearts of enemies, it cast John Bunyan into prison, burned Savonarola at the stake, and nailed the Son of God to the cross. Supreme in the lives of men and nations, it engulfs them. Through it Napoleon seized the throne of France, hurled Europe into chaos, but reaped an exiles' fate on the lonely shores of St. Helena; through it Benedict Arnold turned traitor, betrayed his country for English gold, but died a castaway in a foreign land; by it Rome rose, flashed the splendor of her great- ness across the world, but fell drenched in blood; by it Venice reigned, sent proud flotillas to the bounds of the sea, but is now a stalking shadow on the border ground of history. SOUTH DAKOTA 121 The evil that ruined Burr was not born in the prime of manhood but had its inception in the days of youth, when he rejected the Christians' Bible and the Christians' God. By this decision Aaron Bun- discarded the basic element of moral character. He renounced the controlling force that makes the heart a symbol of virtue, tempers violent passion, rebukes lust, and guides ambition. Rejecting the faith of a Paul, a Luther, he chose the hollow mockeries of a Judas, a Nero. Casting away all respect for God and hope of immortality, he reached man's estate utterly devoid of moral sense. Thus his vicious spirit was at restless enmity with the ethical; false- hood fought against truth, usurpation, against jus- tice, lust against chastity, selfishness against altru- ism. Without a religious helm to his ruling motive this man worshipped but one deity self. Wrapping the mantle of virtue about him, he fascinated the innocent only to leave them filched and destitute. He would fight for his country, when it brought him power and pelf; he would destroy it, when it ceased to serve him. He was a leader at the bar, not in behalf of justice, but for sordid gain; he developed skill in politics, with no thought of enriching his generation with true principles of government, but that his arm of power might be felt in every city and hamlet of the land; he was fascinating in private life, not to please and entertain, not to instill higher sentiments of purity and honor, but that he might broaden his sphere of influence and satisfy his licentiousness. In public life he was a Talleyrand, in private life a Mark Antony. But not all desire for leadership is ignoble or unjust. The principle of altruism is the ground- work of all legitimate ambition. It is the spirit of love working in all the relations of society. It wages a war, relentless and internecine, upon selfish- 122 WINNING ORATIONS ness, and abhors passion. It animates the statesman and scorns the demagogue; respects law and crushes anarchy. Its setting is virtue, its watchword is ser- vice, its hope is Eternal life. The world's heroes have been ambitious, but their ambition was noble. The aspiration is sublime that impelled Washington to leave Mt. Vernon for Valley Forge, which sustained him in that terrible conflict from Lexington to Yorktown; that aim in life is glorious which guided Florence Nightingale in- to the wards of suffering and disease; there to lave the wounds of strangers, to receive the last message of dying heroes, to minister even to the weakest and poorest of earth's creatures; that desire for leader- ship is exalted that moved William Lloyd Garrison to brave the threats of Boston mobs that he might make the chattel a man; that ambition is ever re- vered that inspired Abraham Lincoln to toil for years in obscurity, that urged him to guide the nation through the long and bloody struggle from Sumter to Appomattox, that made him the savior of the Union, the emancipator of a race. Mankind sitting in the high courts of enthroned justice will ever condemn Aaron Burr to public execration, but posterity should always grant a sigh of pity for him in death. With the silver of eighty years touching his withered brow, with a body weakened and a mind broken, he gazes upon a dark eternity. In that silent bed chamber I see him in the throes of grief and remorse. His defiant soul is humbled and his proud heart broken by the death of his beloved Theodosia. This was the greatest loss in his tragedy of sorrows, and with the death of this loved one Aaron Burr was forever "severed from the human race." I see him, joyless and alone, dy- ing in a lonely garret. No hand is there to smooth his troubled brow; no whisper of hope reaches his SOUTH DAKOTA 123 ear, while death hovers over him, eager to grasp its victim, and the great clock of time is slowly ticking out the last moments of his wasted life. In that eye, now glazing in death, there gleams no hope of immortality, no trust in God. Aaron Burr, forgotten and perishing, owns not a single friend to weep for him as he silently enters that dark, endless night of death. Oh! Immortal Man! Hear the warning of de- feated greatness. From the distant gloom thou mayest hear his blighted spirit uttering this solemn admonition: Mortals, hastening through life, architects of soul eternities, would you leave your impress on a nation's heart, would you be honored in the halls of human memory? Put on the armor of Eternal Truth, live for humanity. Would you ennoble self? For- get it. Would you assure your soul an Immortality? Employ it for God. SIXTEENTH CONTEST (1903) GOETHE (MISS ANNA BAGSTAD. YANKTON COLLEGE) We think of human life today as a thing planned, whose end and aim is perfection. We are not willing to believe that any life was intended to be a partial, a fragmentary thing. We reject the ascetic ideal because asceticism tends to the limit- ing and restricting of power. We believe in the fullest development; we believe in the abundant life. He whom we, in strictest speech, can call a man must be a harmony of the physical, intellectual and spiritual, brought to the highest perfection a being "clear and universal." Nearest to this ideal is the poet-philosopher, Goethe. More than seventy years have rolled away since Goethe died. Seventy years of progress, of change so rapid and so radical that one might almost say a new world has come to replace the old. Horizons widening, light undreamed of, flashing upon our vision, life interests and relations bewildering in their multiplicity, clarion calls to action that will not be unheeded. The present the today teeming with possibilities, with problems, with duties; what time have we for the past? Let it bury its dead! Yet are we not the "heirs of all the ages?" Whence comes our inheritance? What is this that we call the present? Who shall draw for us the dividing line between that which is and that which has been? What do we mean when we speak of the living and of the dead? Lived Christ only in the first century? If he lives not more vitally in the twentieth century, then it were better for the world if he had never lived. Surely it was not Shakespeare who died on that English April day, 126 WINNING ORATIONS three hundred years ago. Dare we say that Mc- Kinley's life was ended by the bullet of the assassin? Say rather transfigured, exalted into a potency that shall work for private purity and civic righteous- ness in all time to come. "What is excellent," says Emerson, "as God lives, is permanent." And no artificial boundaries of time or place can confine the spirit that is truly great. He bequeaths a heritage unto all lands and tongues and centuries. He is the world's like the air and the sunrise and the starry heavens. It was about the year 1772 Era of paramount Voltairism, the day of the Infallible Encyclopedia and the Gospel according to Jean Jacques Rous- seau. These two Frenchmen, Voltaire and Rous- seau, had for three decades guided and moulded the thought of their time. Voltaire stood for ration- alism, for the supremacy of the intellect; he fought manfully to enfranchise the understanding. But he lacked insight into the deepest and sorest needs of the time. His was the spirit of denial and de- struction. Rousseau, on the other hand, "dreamed, brooded, suffered" to liberate the heart. His ideal was the natural life, raw, crude, unrestrained, the life of the emotions. This became the ideal of Romanti- cism. The new literary movement, so called, had come gradually upon Europe. It stood for freedom for religious freedom from creed and dogma, for civil freedom from political tyranny, for freedom from convention and fixed rule in art for the free- dom of the individual to live and to feel as nature intended that he should. It was a beautiful movement in theory at least. It was effective too, for it broadened men's minds and deepened their sympathies and kindled life into SOUTH DAKOTA 127 a new warmth. But the leaders of the movement lacked clearness, discipline, self-control. Liberty became synonymous with lawlessness and license. Vapid sentimentality and sensuousness became not only tolerated but lauded because, forsooth, they sprung from the heart. Introspection, brooding over real or imaginary sorrows, sapped the vital energies and diseased the mind. A young man has just returned to his father's house at Frankfort-on-the-Main, fresh from the university, a doctor of jurisprudence at twenty- three. There are wild rumors afloat concerning his student days. The veneer of the schools has not affected seriously this lithe-limbed son of nature, whose great eyes those who looked into them never forgot, this German Apollo with the tumultuous dark hair. And he is the compound of the wisdom and the folly of his age; the "Storm and Stress" of the conflicting currents of the time, meet and beat in this youth. He is passionate, discordant, defiant of all order and restraint; he is by turns a skeptic and a dev- otee; he is lawless insurgent, explosive, senti- mental, vacillating between wild hilarity and tear- ful meditations on suicide. This was the Goethe of 1772; the product of his age with all its agonized aspiration and excess, the pupil of the self torturing Rousseau, he who had invested all passion with a halo and "made even madness beautiful;" this was the author of Goetz von Berlichingen and the Sorrows of Werther. Of these romance heroes, Goetz is a free-booter, Werther a dreaming sentimentalist who shoots him- self out of love for his friend's wife. Both are but phases of the character of the young Goethe. They are such men as Byron might have created and did create. These discordant appeals to a time out of 128 WINNING ORATIONS joint became the sensation of the hour. They made Goethe the literary lion of Germany; his fame spread over Europe; he was hailed the leader of Romanticism. But the mind that produced these works had already passed beyond the delirium they express. He had begun to see clearly, to look not at himself, the picturesque volcano, but at the plain with its commonplace men, with sordid every day affairs. He had seen the disease of his age, had portrayed, had been the disease; he was to become its healer. But the tide of popularity, the storm of ap- plause is he able to resist that? This glorious youth whom it would seem the gods had anointed to lead men into that fairy realm of absolutely un- restrained liberty, into that nature state above and beyond all physical and moral law dared he re- fuse? Publishers thronged him with demands for more of Goetz and of Werther. Here was wealth and a kingdom. He had been a dreamer, he would be a doer, a helper. Was this to be attained by the swash- buckler's sword of Goetz, by the dreams of the mys- tic? No! he followed the only rational way, he learned by doing. The poet was silent, Goethe the man, labored with men; he made their interests his interests. For ten years in the little grand duchy of Weimar, he planned and constructed roads, he organized fire departments. The selfish sorrows of Werther were forgotten in the joys of a life devoted to human service. Did the spirit of the poet die during those ten years of apprenticeship? Had not the Apollo sunk into a mere martyred Prometheus chained to the earth? Farther from all thought of martyrdom man never was. Those ten years he calls the second period of his literary activity; and yet he wrote SOUTH DAKOTA 129 nothing. He had learned what? The lesson that Rousseau and Shelley and Byron never learned, the lesson of order. He who had defied all law had come to know that all life and all activity, to be effective, to be beautiful must conform to law; that liberty itself must come, not through violence and anarchy but through submission to physical and moral law. He found himself now, as he tells us for the first time tranquil and happy, resolved to deal with life no longer by halves, but to live re- solutely for the Whole, the Good and the Beautiful. He was thirty-six when he left Weimar for Italy. There he awoke to the splendors of classic literature and classic art. Beauty had been the object of his sensuous love; he saw it now for the first time in all its holiness. With renewed zeal he gave himself to literature. In his dramas and in his matchless lyrics there is all the freedom, ease and grace of Romanticism and there is all the symmetry and consummate art of the classics. He had traced poetry, painting, and sculpture to their source; he had mastered the laws that govern the beauties of art. His interests extended to all life and to all knowledge. Like another Pericles he drew unto him- self the best of all lands and times and systems. The tragedy of Faust, begun in his youth, be- came the crowning achievement of his old age. It is the great drama of life woven with masterly skill upon the framework of an old tradition. It is as varied and as splendid in its variety as was the life of its author. Not content with the theatre of earth Goethe, with more than Milton's daring, made heaven and hell his stage. He mingles the remote past with the eternities of the future. God and the archangels, Satan and his hosts, Helen of Troy and the heroes of ancient Greece, Grecian art, modern 130 WINNING ORATIONS poetry all are united in this poem, the greatest of the century and shall we say of modern times. But Goethe's life is more wonderful than any- thing that he has written. It is his noblest work of art. He stands for the complete development of the individual. He is himself the clearest example of that individual most worthy to be called a man. "He is neither noble nor plebean, nor liberal noi servile, nor infidel nor devotee, but the best excel- lence of all these joined in pure union." He, and he alone of the thoughtful men of the time, lived out his life, active and hopeful to the end. The English Byron, the most powerful of his contemporaries, dies at thirty-six exhausted in body and in spirit. Shel- ley at thirty-one seeks death in the sea. Words- worth and Coleridge, when the enthusiasm of youth had been chilled, when an impossible liberty had proved a delusion, these men withdrew themselves into a narrow shell of political and religious con- servatism because they dared not face the future. "Goethe, too, had suffered and mourned in bitter agony over the spiritual perplexities of the time; but he has also mastered these. He has risen above them and he has shown others how to rise above them. And he believes, not by denying his unbelief but by following it out. Not by stopping short, still less by turning back in his inquiries, but by re- solutely prosecuting them. How has this man to whom the world once offered nothing but blackness, denial and despair, attained to that better vision which now shows it to him, not tolerable only but full of solemnity and loveliness!" "More light!" were the words which closed the noble fifth act of the great drama. To the young nineteenth century, he bequeathed the works and the example of a man, clear and complete and har- monious the noblest type the past can give, the SOUTH DAKOTA 131 fairest inspiration of what the present with all its large opportunities is able to become. Let us cease then, to think of this man as mere- ly the contributor of a few good volumes to the world's literature, as an eighteenth century Ger- man who paved the way for a free and united nation. That is all true and excellent had he done no more. But he inaugurated a new life. He stands for a new Renaissance, for the life of the spirit in the modern world. He first saw its possibilities, he first revealed the grandeur of its achievements, he enunciated the laws that must govern those achieve- ments. His gospel of hope, of cheerful, patient, unceasing activity, of resolute living for the whole, the good and the beautiful does not that ring re- echoing through the best that men think and do today? He mingled the passion and enthusiasm of youth with the sane wisdom of manhood. He has revealed life abundant in the full consciousness and control of its powers. "He is the prophet of man- kind under new conditions and new circumstances, the appointed teacher of ages yet to come." SEVENTEENTH CONTEST (1904) OLIVER CROMWELL (JAMES E. CROWTHER. DAKOTA WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY) The beginning of the seventeenth century marked the decline and fall of true kingship in England. When the House of Tudor, strong, proud, imperious, closed its eventful history, the insignia of royalty passed to the Stuarts. Strength, pomp, and pageantry lay buried in the sepulchre; weak- ness, mediocrity, and pedantry sat upon the throne. How great and sad a change! For nearly two cen- turies England had been governed by powerful rulers, who, whether loved or hated, were always feared. But the Stuarts were neither loved, hated, nor feared; they were despised, loathed even by steadfast loyalty. Incompetence was their heritage; it characterized their reign from first to last. They were egotists, ignorant of the temper of their people, unobservant of the times. Recklessly would they open the flood gates of national wrath, then strive with puny hands to stem the whelming torrent, or retreat with ridiculous haste. A nation's pride was wounded, her honor outraged, her most sacred rights trampled in the mire. A people's welfare was bartered in the shambles of alien powers, and their treasure forged into fetters to bind the limbs of Liberty. At last came the inevitable rupture, when King and Parliament made their appeal to the sword and plunged England into civil strife. The demand for reform materialized in the Puritan standard of government, whose fundamental principle was man's freedom and God's sovereignty. The theory of the "Divine right of Kings" was a challenge to Puritanism, and a trespass upon the in- 134 WINNING ORATIONS alienable rights of the people. The question to be decided was, "Shall the King have arbitrary power?" It was a battle for liberty, the cause of our common humanity. The two armies were representative of democracy and autocracy; beasts of burden were ar- rayed against beasts of prey. Such times demand and generate greatness. In response to the call of freedom, Oliver Cromwell stepped into the arena of stirring action, full panoplied in the maturity of his manhood. He came as a knight errant, heralding the fall of tyranny and the rise of democracy. He was the product of revolution, the embodiment of Puritanism, the "Grand Remonstrance" personified. His martial genius, his statesmanship, and his per- sonal character eminently fitted him for a task to which God had joined great issues the saving of the nation and of Puritanism. Like a mighty oak en- dued with strength for storm and turbulence, he stood militant, brawny, majestic. The revolution called forth the martial great- ness of the nation; it was a conflict of giants. Towering above all in Royalist or Roundhead camp stood Cromwell, the commander of the Parliamentary forces. The blood of Achilles was in his veins; the omnipotence of a mighty purpose possessed his soul. He was built on the Old Testament plan, his warfare savoring of the battlefields of Joshua and Gideon. How striking the contrast between this genius of Puritanism and Napoleon Bonaparte. "God is on the side of the big battalions," said the French despot. He relied on military strategy and power- ful artillery; Cromwell relied on the Lord Omnipo- tent. The secret of his invincibility was his pray- ing cavalry. He knew that the power of an army consisted not in numbers and armaments, but in giant souls impelled by noble purpose. Cromwell's Puritan character was manifest in the "massive SOUTH DAKOTA 135 directness" of his attack. Welding his Ironsides into a thunderbolt, he would hurl them against the enemy's center, breaking through the stoutest regi- ments, and scattering them like autumn leaves. See him at the battle of Dunbar. Never was a general in more hopeless plight; the sea behind him, twenty- three thousand jubilant foes on the hills before him, his own force reduced by disease and death to less than half that number. On the morrow, the decisive battle of the Revolution was to be fought. All night long through the drizzling rain these Puritans prayed to the Lord of Hosts; they prayed and kept their powder dry. Before the break of day the trumpets pealed forth and the battle began. For an hour the conflict raged furiously on the right; the two armies now advancing, now retreating, swayed and grappled as in the throes of death. Suddenly fell on the ears of the enemy the measured thud of galloping steeds, and above the din of battle was heard the chanting of Psalms. Like an over- whelming avalanche, Cromwell's Ironsides swept round the hill, and with mighty battle cry, rode proudly toward the center of the enemy, while the sun, breaking through the morning mist, cast its radiance over the sea and hills, and flashed along the glittering lines of steel. Then Cromwell rising in his saddle with uplifted sword cried, "Let God arise and let His enemies be scattered." Horse and foot now charged resistlessly on every side; the Scottish ranks fell back wrecked and shattered in tumultuous flight. Before nine o'clock, three thousand of the enemy were slain, and ten thousand prisoners with all their baggage and train were in the hands of Cromwell, who lost not thirty men. Such was Oliver Cromwell, the invincible warrior! Pride of the na- tion! Born to be a king! 136 WINNING ORATIONS As an organizer and leader of men, he ranks among the world's greatest statesmen. At the close of the Revolutionary War, England was a house divided against itself; religious and political factions were quarreling over principles of government and clamoring for supremacy. The people, trained in a school of tyranny, were unprepared for self-govern- ment; they could dethrone their king, but they could not crown themselves. Chaos reigned supreme; anarchy or a return of tyranny seemed inevitable. There was but one alternative; some strong man must unify the dissevered and discordant elements, and guide the nation to safety, prosperity, and peace. That man was Oliver Cromwell; the exigen- cies of the hour pronounced his name. We need invoke neither craft nor ambition to explain his political supremacy; it was the triumph of capacity. His leadership, his discernment, and his compre- hension of vast problems mark him as a great statesman. He saw through the seventeenth century glass, darkly it is true, but he saw. He was a man in advance of his time, a pioneer of Anglo-Saxon democracy fighting his battles on the outposts of civilization. The glorious thunders of Naseby and Marston Moor were to be heard again at Valley Forge and Gettysburg. In his warfare, he had drawn the sword against crime as a crowned and gilded institution. The jewels in the Stuarts' crown were crystallized from peasants' tears; their royal robes were crimson-dyed with plebeian blood. Crom- well cut the despots' shattered sceptre through, and wrote as in eternal brass the thing that should not be in England. But after the battle of Worcester he sheathed the sword forever, and addressed him- self to the work of reform. His rule as Protector of the Commonwealth, though arbitrary, was benefi- cent. His despotism was not the mountain tor- SOUTH DAKOTA 137 rent, covering fruitful fields with worthless drift, but the overflowing Nile, making deserts to blossom as the garden of the Lord. National prosperity, religious freedom, and higher education attended his administration. He staunched the bleeding wounds of Protestantism and dried her tears. Kings and prelates made restitution for wrongs inflicted; pirates cowered in their caves. He befriended the American colonies by freeing them from rapacious governors; he seized Gibraltar, the foundation of England's world-wide expansion, and became the father of her maritime greatness. "Never was any man so conspicuously born for sovereignty." He saved a nation from anarchy and bankruptcy, and gave to her name imperishable glory. But superior to all achievement is the man himself. Character is nobler than intellect; integ- rity than genius. Cromwell's richest legacy to the world is the moral force of personal virtue. His life, unsullied by private vice, is a standing rebuke to all iniquity. He could say with another, "You may write my life across the sky, I have naught to hide." He stands forth amid the corruption of his day, like a sun-crowned mountain peak, regal with dignity beyond that of kings. His appreciation of the magnitude of his task often made him moody, silent, melancholy. To him, every moment trembled with possibility; every hour was big with destiny. He lived as one who should give an account to the Sovereign of the Universe; his whole life was crowded with sacrificial service. Few men have been so misinterpreted as Cromwell. His early bio- graphers, being royalists, wrote with malicious pen and spake with venomed tongue, picturing him as an unmitigated hypocrite, the embodiment of in- satiable ambition; as an outlaw, who stirred up in- surrection against the king, and then usurped the 138 WINNING ORATIONS throne. The greatness of his genius was an object of envy to jealous inferiority. His supreme confi- dence in himself and in his cause, they ascribed to egotism; but it was the same quality which made Savonarola, Luther, and Paul molders of world thought and world destinies. Cromwell was a "practical mystic," the most potent of all combina- tions. He was endowed with a power of reticence which was sometimes to pass for hypocrisy, with an adaptability for adjusting means to ends often taken for craft, and with a high-hearted insistence on de- termined ends which some called ambition. Nor do we blush to eulogize him as an outlaw. As the avowed foe of crowned presumption, he stands side by side with that "immortal rebel," George Washington. With these two stands another in- surrectionist who went to Heaven from a scaffold, and ascending bore with him the fetters of four million slaves, which by Heaven's strange alchemy became his diadem of glory, and John Brown demon- strates to the world that a man may be a rebel and yet a patriot. When Cromwell died he was buried in Westminster Abbey, "the temple of silence and reconciliation." But on the return of Charles the Second with his retinue of lewdness, the royalists disinterred his bones and buried them beneath the gallows. Look we for justice among such men? If we would know Washington, Hamilton, Jay, or Adams, shall we look to sneering cavaliers who drank the health of good King George? Yearning to interpret the Christ life, shall we sit at the feet of Pharisee and Sadducee? See the travesty which they nail to His cross, the record of His life and work, "He made Himself the King of the Jews." Such was Cromwell's epitaph; but it has been erased and revised by our later seers whose ver- dict is based not on prejudice and acrimony, but SOUTH DAKOTA 139 on equity and truth. Today we laud him as a saint, a patriot, an uncrowned king. Kingly indeed was his life. Leisure, comfort, fortune, home, were ex- changed for anxiety, hardship, peril, and calumny. Yea, he counted not his life dear, but laid it un- grudgingly on the nation's altar that she might know the truth which made her free. At last, worn out in the service of his country, he lies down to die. It is September the third, six- teen hundred and fifty-eight, the anniversary of Dun- bar and Worcester. A terrific storm sweeps over the land, beclouding all nature with darkness and gloom; a funeral pall enshrouds the nation. The angry tempest calls with brazen trumpet as if to battle aye, to the last battle. But to Cromwell it is the echo of Heavenly bugles, calling him to the presence of his King. Borne in the chariot of the tempest, his mighty soul, storm-tossed these many, many years, mounts upward to the plains of light, there to be crowned with more than royal splendor, his eulogy pronounced by lips divine. Like Moses, Wycliffe, and Savonarola, he sleeps in an unknown grave; but his "spirit with theirs lives to exalt mankind." Fajn would we turn our footsteps to his shrine, for it is hallowed ground where heroes rest. But this can never be. No cathedral or mausoleum shall ever receive him; he belongs to all the world. Cromwell is enshrined in the heart of humanity. EIGHTEENTH CONTEST (1905) ROBERT BURNS (BURTON F. TANNER. DAKOTA UNIVERSITY) By the middle of the eighteenth century, true patriotism in Scotland had passed away. The people were no longer thrilled with the heroic spirit of Wallace and Bruce. The inspiration of the olden time was gone from their life. Scotia's sons were stern and rigid as her crags and cliffs. Cold and indifferent, they followed grimly a line of conduct, caring little for the woes of men. Theirs was a world of fact, not of feeling. They closed their hearts to all beauty and tenderness; and before the grandeur of nature or amid the sorrows of men, they were alike unmoved. A cloud, thick and heavy as night, floating just above the earth, shut out from their vision the true God. They thought him a tyrant Calvary shed no light of love to illumine the heart and inspire the soul. In the life of the rugged Scotchman, emotion had no place. Duty, "Stern daughter of the voice of God," ruled su- preme. Into such environment came the plowman poet, Robert Burns. Men differ in their estimates of the character and motives of this man; but they agree that he was a genius. We pause before judging him, lest we condemn where we know not. But he is our- selves cast in larger mould. His good is only better than ours; his evil worse. It is not our purpose to discuss the morals of Burns except to say that judged by the French, his morality would not be questioned, but thrown against a Scottish back- ground, he is a black spot on white canvas. Believ- ing in the great law of summation, we shall not rant 142 WINNING ORATIONS or rail against the detailed evil of this erratic child of Scotland, nor flaunt his faults before the world. We shall judge him by his struggles, and by his achievements. This peasant was born on a wild night in January, 1759, in a clay cottage on the banks of the Boon. He came amid the turmoil of nature, and soon gave evidence that the unrest of the tempest was in his soul. The first hours of the babe were portentious; they seemed to foretell the gloom and sorrow of the future. The Ayrshire boy was out of harmony with his environment. His was a re- sponsive nature, longing for sympathy and inspira- tion; but the barren social life of the age had little to give. Men about him saw fact farthest from fancy, and thought a show of tenderness and emo- tion was weakness. The dull, prosaic life of the Scotchman gave him no impulse for upward climb- ing. In that cold world his fiery heart was ill at ease. He was a stranger in a strange land with nothing but the hills and valleys to inspire him. His whole life was a battle with the social condition without and his native moral tendencies within. The mental endowment of Burns made his life a tragedy. He was a man of brilliant intellect, strong passion and weak will a disastrous com- bination, Good and Evil met giant-size in his heart, and a battle ensued. Like Byron and Poe his life was a conflict because passion was stronger than will. In his perplexity he became moody and melancholy; each moment right and wrong fought for supremacy; each day saw a crisis. Only the innate principles of his soul, the principles of "The Sermon on the Mount" could save him. But he did not listen to the voice from heaven. He was alone, sorely smitten by the unrest of sin. Unable to withstand the buffets of an unsympathetic world, SOUTH DAKOTA 143 worn by contending passions, he begins his descent into Avernus. Oh, that he might meet some strong, noble character, great enough to overpower evil with good. His actions are no longer tragic but pathetic. In his pitiable weakness, Burns loses the virtue dearest to every Scotchman his sobriety; and with each step he sinks lower. With what pity do we look upon the suffering of this genius. How he struggles to rise only to fall again. With what bitter anguish he recalls his days of innocence. With what determination he resolves, come what may, to be strong, but he cannot, his will is gone. Leav- ing God out of his life he strives to walk alone, but unaided he cannot walk aright. Yet Burns was an honest soul. He could look men squarely in the eye. When conscience was seared and conviction trampled upon, he would not cringe nor would he pretend to be what he was not. Hypocrisy was never his companion. Too truthful to deny his guilt, he took refuge in a haughty independence, the rock upon which many a soul has been wrecked for eternity. We pity, and pitying, love him. The tears come unbidden as we think of the last months of his life. Oh, the sorrow of it all! Oppressed by poverty, deserted by friends, weary and sick from struggle, he passes to that "bourne whence no traveler returns." But in death the wanderer finds the way to his maker, who, tempering justice with mercy, will judge him as he is, not as he appears to the world. Burns stands forth a great though tragic hero in literature. With Byron and Poe, he thought nobly but lived ignobly. Do not say that evil tri- umphed. If we should write above his grave, "He failed, his life ended with the tomb," we should be guilty of gross injustice. From the turmoil of his life did he give no treasure to the world? Hear the 144 WINNING ORATIONS verdict of the centuries: The fire of his contending passions burned out the evil, and left the good to bless mankind. When Burns died, he gave his best self to the world that scorned him, and today we judge him by his gift. In all his conflict with evil Burns sang of truths to which the world now gladly listens. His message to the twentieth century is a message of simplicity and kindness. He comes to us as an embodiment of simple things, as a child of nature, teaching men to see life as it is. He pours out his love for the true and the lowly in lyrics of surpassing beauty. He sees deep into the heart of the humble cottager and reads his longings, as from an open book. He listens to the "still, sad music" of the poor and in words pulsing with tenderness sings of their simple life. As the shell of the sea imprisons the murmur of many waters and gives it out again to the ear of the inland traveler, so Burns gathers up in trembling lyrics the joys and woes of the weary cottager, and gives them out to the world. Listen- ing, we hear the throbbing life of Scotland's peas- antry, in dreary march over the moorlands. His passionate words are read wherever the warmth of love is found. His heart goes out in universal sym- pathy to all nature. No subject is too insignificant for his use; the hare, the sheep and the shivering cattle suggest to him the most subtle thoughts and tenderest solicitude. Nature to him is prophetic. In the hapless fate of the daisy he sees his own "no distant fate." From the suffering of the "wee, sleekit, cow'rn, tim'rous beastie," he draws a hu- man parallel: "The best laid schemes o'mice an' men Gang aft a-gley, An' lea'e us nought but grief an* pain. For promis'd joy." SOUTH DAKOTA 145 To him there is an answering grief in the howl of the tempest, and the leafless tree reminds him of a fate that resembles his. His delicate nature is an Aeolian harp, responsive to each passing breeze. If the chord is a minor, we listen with quivering lips; if a major, we spring exultant on the wings of morning. The supreme message of Burns is the freedom and individual worth of all men. His dominant tone is humanity and every note is a challenge to tyran- ny and oppression. The roar of the American cannon inspired his soul, and the rumbling storm of the French revolution filled him with hope. He desired his own country to realize the brotherhood of man. In this he was Scotland's first prophet of liberty to the common people. When the peasantry were dumb and heavy with care, who was it put a song of freedom on their lips? Who was it revealed to them their worth, and told them that "Princes and lords are but the breath of kings?" It was Robert Burns, the prince of cottagers; Burns who loved a peasant, but scorned a lord; Burns who put a gleam of light into the soul of the plowman, and taught him that he could be happier in a clay cot than in a palace. Class inequalities did violence to his spirit of justice. In church as in state he would have an aristocracy of the common people. No matter what the station. "A man's a man for a' that" This is the message of Burns to the twentieth century hypocrisy: what a man is counts for more than what he seems. The supremacy of true worth was the only sovereignty he taught. He had a passion for truth and honesty in civic life that would put to shame the political graft of any age. With him manhood makes all men princes and lords; kingship comes with a reign of worth. While he be- longed to a lower class he saw no good reason why 146 WINNING ORATIONS he should not belong to the highest. In fact, he saw no lowest. Belted Knight and lowly peasant were the same; they were men. No fanciful dream of his ever put a cottager into a palace. "Equality and Fraternity" in state were no abstract subjects with him; they were facts in the lives of men. His life is like a mighty sea. About the shores are lowland marshes with noxious vapors rising. But to those who get out into the deep there is health and beauty; there is wild tumult and calm sea; there is inspiration and grandeur; aye. "There is music in all things if men had ears." The Scot owes his appreciation of nature to the poet, for he had it not till Burns gave it him. Burns sang the beauty of Scotland's rills, the grandeur of her crags, and the stories of her heroes that he might arouse the slumbering spirit of his countrymen. He caught from Scotland's past the fire of patriotism. He felt the warrior spirit of the immortal Bruce at Bannock- burn, and in an outburst of freedom exclaims: "What for Scotland's King and law Freedom's sword will strongly draw, Free-man stand, or free-man fa' ; Caledonia ! on wi' me !" Scotland was called to life again by Robert Burns. Have you talked with a Scotchman? He may disagree with you on religion; he may be an oppo- nent in politics; but mention "Robbie Burns" and that hard mouth will break into ripply smiles, and that stern face soften with sympathy and love. No other word has the magic of it. No Homer in literature, no Raphael in art, no Bismark in state- craft, no Napoleon in warfare, has the witchery of that simple name. England is inspired by her Shakespeare; Germany is proud of Goethe; and Italy is fired by the name of Dante; but Scotland SOUTH DAKOTA 147 Scotland loves her Burns, loves him because he first loved her; because he immortalized the beauty of her strong life, and dignified her manhood. Then all honor to this child of Scotland. Worthy is he to rest in lona, the burial isle of Scotland's kings; worthy a statue of bronze in the temple where burn the altar fires of the lowly. Well may Scotland's peaks pierce the clouds, and her valleys spread proudly out, for each cliff and vale and rill sings some melody of this prince of peasants. NINETEENTH CONTEST (1906) MICHAEL ANGELO (MISS LOU E. MILES. REDFIELD COLLEGE) Would you know the true meaning of an age what it stands for in the great history of the world's progress? Then find it in her greatest man. Read in him the thoughts and feelings, the hopes and fears and ideals, the religion of his age. Carlyle says, "It is a great thing for a nation that it get an articulate voice; that it produce a man who can speak forth melodiously what the heart of it means." Is it not an equally great thing for an age? Dante came to embody in divine poetry, the religion and inner life of the Middle Ages. In him ten silent centuries found voice. In his everlasting music stand the thoughts they lived by. With the stilling of his voice there appeared the first faint light of a new day. The Renaissance was come, with its intellectual enthusiasm, its out- burst of culture, and its passion for antiquity. How may we know the real meaning of that great age? Is there no voice from the Renaissance no hero to embody in some enduring art its very soul? Not Lorenzo, with his magnificent luxury, splendid re- finements, and pagan dissoluteness; not Pope Leo X, whose name is given to that golden age of Rome; not Savonarola, the Scourge and Seer; but the one man whose vision was powerful enough to grasp the whole meaning of the age, and whose universal genius has expressed it for all time: "Michael Angelo, towering gigantic above all other Floren- tines, alone in his grandeur, before whom all the ages pause and tremble." 150 WINNING ORATIONS Would you justly estimate that strangely con- tradictory age? Then through the eyes of Michael Angelo view the Renaissance. He saw Italian cities growing more magnificent; scholarship, art and science reaching the sublimest heights; reason liberated from its fetters. But, with his clear vision, do you not discern, beneath the splendid refinement and intellectual awakening, a morass of wicked- ness? The whole nation was swept along by a great enthusiasm, intoxicated with the newness of life and thought. Their claims rested so lightly upon them that they, a race of slaves, gloried in the name of Republic. You know the history of their rulers, the history of crime revenged by crime. Men played for states and cities as a man plays chess. Italy was a vast arena and only those could hold their own who were gladiators of tried capacity and iron nerve, superior to all religious and moral scruples, perfected in the use of cruelty and terror. The individual states, grasping for power, wealth and territory, vied with each other in the embellishment of their cities. So narrow was their patriotism that the well being of one state demanded the destruction of the rest. Italy was not an or- ganism but an ingenious mechanism, artifically held together by that combination of fraud, violence, and subtle wickedness, called statecraft. Yet in the minds of a few there had ever been a dream of empire and a United Italy. A century before the visionary Rienzi sent an electric thrill throughout the world. He dreamed of a new Rome with a Christian soul. He would lift his country from degradation and save her from ruin.; He failed and Italy purified and united, was still an impos- sible dream. Machiavelli, statesman, cynic, philosopher grasped the idea of unity as the hope of Italy. He SOUTH DAKOTA 151 advocated that all rivalries must cease, the church become subordinate to the state, and all come under the power of one prince. Calmly, philosophically, he stated that fraud, violence, and cold-blooded cruelty were the proper path to power. The cor- rupting influence of his work was unbounded but his patriotic dream failed. Italy was not united. Another soul was struggling with the great problem. The spirit of prophecy came upon him and Savonarola saw a foreign host sweeping over Italy and the streets flowing with blood. With un- sparing hand he laid bare the sins of pope and people and inaugurated the greatest spiritual re- vival the world has ever known. But Jesus Christ was not yet king of Florence. Another name was added to the list of martyred reformers. The rope and fire did their work and Savonarola was dead. He too had failed in his patriotic dream, because he did not recognize the Renaissance as the necessary highway to the reformation. Fanatic, statesman, reformer, all had failed be- cause they did not read aright the meaning of the age. Beneath the culture and the corruption was a great undercurrent of truth, unperceived by Rienzi, Machiavelli, Savonarola. This truth found voice in Michael Angelo. Of noble birth, living in Lorenzo's court, he was embued with enthusiasm for culture and the free spirit of his age. There opened before him an horizon far beyond the dream world of the inspired monk. But with a vision as clear as that of Savona- rola he saw the debauchery, cruelty and corruption underlying the splendid refinement of Lorenzo's court. He saw his loved city "lying in bonds; nay, rather, dancing in them, with the smear of blood upon her garments and loathsome songs upon her lips.'* 152 WINNING ORATIONS He was not an enthusiast. No impossible dreams of empire filled his mind. He was not a statesman with Michiavellian cunning. He was not a preacher. It was not for him to move the multi- tude with his warning words, "Repent, repent, while there is yet time." But a yearning love for his city possessed him; Florence, with the Arno flowing through her midst and the hills about her gray with olive groves; Florence, with her seventy towers en- circling her like a queenly diadem, with her great dome and her bell-towers, her cathedrals and palaces, her scholars and artists and her population that was cultivated, refined and haughty. The city of Dante, Giotto, Ghiberti, Angelico, Leonardo and Savonarola. She would be the queen of cities, the center of the world, a new Jerusalem, purified and exalted. This was the vision that possessed him and which he must tell to the people. He expressed it in the most universal and enduring of arts. Forth from the unsightly mass of marble struggled the figure of the youthful David, getting gradually limb and sinew free as blow after blow resounded upon the stone. When at last the throes were over and the imprisoned soul was free, there stood before the Palazzo a splendidly proportioned, gigantic figure, Angelo's ideal of a youthful hero defending his people from all harm, the world's ideal through all the ages of a kingly king. It stood for a people pure and exalted, a ruler strong, brave, just. Nay, more, the very figure was instinct with freedom. We may read in its calm strength and dignity, a prophecy of the day when man shall know the heighth and depth and breadth of the word liberty. There spoke the truest voice of the Renaissance. Not Machiavelli's dream of empire, not Lorenzo's culture and magnificence, not Savonarola's spiritual SOUTH DAKOTA 153 baptism, was the real message of the age, but con- scious freedom of intellect and soul. All this Michael Angelo expressed in everlasting marble. Italy stood astonished at his genius. Rome was calling him to help adorn the chief seat of the church. The Eternal City, crowned with the relics of a pagan past, was herself a pagan, with a passion for magnificence and a dissoluteness that would have astonished the parasites of Nero. Here, in the holy place of Christendom, the vicars of God stood at- tainted of high treason against civilization and against the Christ whose representatives they dared to style themselves. Holding in one hand the con- science and heart of humanity, and in the other the keys of heaven and hell, they were the source of the poison coursing through the veins of Italy. For the adornment of chapels, for the aggrandizement of favorites, they rent Italy with civil wars, they sold bishoprics and indulgences, they plotted mur- der, they trafficked in the lives of their subjects and the holy things of their office, and they still thought to wipe out their own sins by the blood of the in- quisition, they still hoped to exalt the church by making splendid her abode. Is it strange that the spirit of the old Hebrew prophets awoke in Michael Angelo? Here on the frescoes of the Sistine chapel we may read his warn- ing cry against the sins of his time. His grand simplicity, his awful earnestness cried out against the wild enthusiasm, the wickedness, the degrada- tion of that pagan city. Because he speaks today only through his sculpture and painting shall we deny him a place in the world's long line of re- formers? He saw that security and strength for his country could come not through culture and learn- ing, not through statecraft, not through religious fervor, but through the growth of the ideals of 154 WINNING ORATIONS liberty and purity. Like the prophets of old it was his mission to place these ideals before the people and his life, like their's was a life of sorrow. We may read its tragic climax in the tomb of the Medici, a monument not to the despotic family, but to the great city which had gone astray and re- pented and suffered and sinned again till at last its glorious career had ended. Here was the great poem of the age, the utterance of a mighty soul over- powered by moral sadness but compelled to return after the defeat of all hopes to bear the burdens of every day. Here was the setting forth of the great tragedy of mankind, a mortal struggle with anguish and hopelessness, fatigue and despair of soul. Here was written in majestic sorrow the tragedy of the city he loved, and for all the ages that followed those emblematic figures, Twilight and Dawn, Night and Day, have watched beside her ruins in melanch- oly splendor. Heavy shadows fall upon Michael Angelo who had outlived all loves, for whom all life's attractions are swallowed up in bitterness. He had seen his city perish through her love for luxury and pleasure. He saw his people slaves to the basest passions. In his prophetic vision he saw his country weakened, torn asunder, and reduced to misery. Italy! the chosen vessel of the Renaissance was destined to fall victim to her own enthusiasm. With scorn and grief as lofty and transcendent as his love had been, with silent unappeasable reprobation, he placed upon the tomb of Pope Julius II the stern figure of Moses, rising in his terrible wrath, to cast down the tables of the law; a final protest against the corruption that had destroyed his city and menaced his country. "And Moses turned and came down from the mount, with the two tables of the testimony in his SOUTH DAKOTA 155 hands, and the tables were the work of God and the writing was the writing of God graven upon the tables. And it came to pass, as he came nigh unto the camp, that he saw the Golden Calf and the dancing, and Moses' anger waxed hot and he cast the tables out of his hands and broke them beneath the mount." It is Michael Angelo himself who lives in that majestic figure of Moses and forever utters his warning cry against the love of what is low and de- grading, the worship of the Golden Calf. Not in vain had he placed before the people his visions of free and exalted manhood, of grand and earnest living. Through centuries of foreign oppression and shame Italy was to learn the lesson he had taught till at last, a united country was to rise from the ruins, with individual freedom and social purity upon her banners. Would you know the true meaning of Renais- sance? Then find it in Michael Angelo. NINETEENTH CONTEST (1906) SAXON VERSUS SLAV (RALPH SHEARER, DAKOTA WESLEYAN Miss Lou E. Miles, Redfield College, won the State Contest in 1906, and Ralph Shearer, Dakota Wesleyan, took Second place. In the Inter-State contest which followed these two orations were reversed, Shearer taking First place and Miss Miles, Second. Therefore, as in the case of Rodee and Hubbard in 1899, both orations are given). At each stage of the world's progress some section of the globe has been the center of civiliza- tion. The enlightenment of Babylon grew in the valley of the Euphrates, the culture of Greece and Rome fringed the Mediterranean, and the civilization of more modern times encircled the Atlantic. But the present era presents a new center of activity toward which two great races have been moving for centuries. Four hundred years ago the Saxon landed on our Atlantic coast, and began a march westward across the continent. He has pressed forward courageously over dreary plain and rugged moun- tain until now he stands facing the Pacific. In the same century, on the sunny plains of Moscow, the Slavonic nation was born. Eastward across Siberia it has marched ceaselessly, persistently eastward, until the full surge of Slavonic civilization now beats against the opposite shore of the Pacific. Thus the American Saxon rushing westward meets the Rus- sian slav surging eastward; and again the world sees a conflict of moving civilized centers. The modern era awakes to find that the peaceful Pacific, by a "strange irony of fate," is the field of com- mercial conflict, the storm center of the Twentieth Century. Never in the history of nations has the move- ment of civilization been so mighty as the rush of Saxon and Slav to possess the Pacific. This is a 158 WINNING ORATIONS natural consequence of the forces impelling each in its outward march. The present century is an age of empires; an age in which all great peoples feel destined to work out their peculiar ideals in world movements. It is but natural then that the Twen- tieth Century should awake to find the sacred prin- ciples of Saxon and Slav in conflict. To comprehend the magnitude of the present struggle let us con- sider the supreme motives of these races. Greed for material power is the ruling passion of the Russian. His desire to realize this ambition is increased many fold by the sanction it receives from the Greek Church. This institution binds to- gether the conflicting elements of the empire and inspires the people to spread the Slavonic civiliza- tion. It is the great force of Russian Nationality, the power which for centuries has maintained the principles of expansion. Russia, as the exponent of the Greek Church, believes she is commissioned under God to dominate the world. This force, at once material and religious, is all the more power- ful because of the stubborn and dogged character of the Russian people. For thirteen centuries they have held their position against the current of shift- ing nations. Goth, Avar, Bulgarian, Mongol, and Tartar have in turn swept over them, but they have stood unmoved, grimly, stubbornly, holding their ground; and in all the tyrannical rule of Russian history the Slav has never ceased to worship the despot who oppressed him, and to love his land and church with a passionate ardor unknown to Western peoples. This ideal of expansion is apparent in all Rus- sian history. On coming to the throne, Peter the Great found his domain cut off from all connection with the sea. But he dreamed a dream, and in his vision he saw the boundaries of his little kingdom SOUTH DAKOTA 159 withdraw westward from Moscow until the flag of Russia waved from Gibraltar, eastward until it floated over Siberia, the Bering Sea, and southward until it was planted on the hills of China and Arabia. A dream! Yet no event of history has been a more powerful factor in shaping civilization. It was a vision of the conquest of Europe, the acquisition of Asia, the domination of the world. Peter planned his policy to fit his dream. He defeated Turk, Tar- tar, and Swede, extending the boundary of his em- pire southward around the Black Sea and northward to the Arctic and the Baltic. The working of the ancient vision is evident in all the later history of the empire. Under its activity the insignificant province of Moscow has grown to an empire stretch- ing across one hundred and seventy-two degrees of longitude, six thousand miles of mountains rich in minerals, forests magnificent in their expanse, and fertile plains waiting only cultivation to yield bounteous harvests. It is a mighty nation whose very expanse of territory defies subjugation. Defeat its armies and they withdraw into the interior only to sally forth again when fully prepared. Invade its territories and distance and climate baffle you; the defeat and fate of Napoleon await you. However much it may seem to the contrary, Russia's strength as a world power is not greatly changed by the recent Russo-Japanese war. Her advance has not been permanently checked. Before the thunder of Rojestvensky's cannon had ceased to echo along the shores of the Japan sea, America proclaimed jubilantly that "the Slavonic peril is past." But have we read Russian history in vain? Have we so soon forgotten the dogged persistency, the zeal and fanaticism of the Slav? Have we for- gotten that over seven centuries ago Russia sent an army of seventy thousand men against Constanti- 160 WINNING ORATIONS nople to conquer the Byzantine Empire, and that what she then began she has never abandoned? Do we not remember that in the conquest of Samarkand she held to her purpose for more than two centuries, sacrificing six great armies before she attained success? Even now, she leaves her peasants to hold Manchuria and the northern boundary of China for the beginning of a later and more determined effort at conquest. The treaty of Portsmouth has not lessened Russia's hunger for territory. The Slav, stubborn, determined, cruelly patient, is still a for- midable power in the East, and judging from the past and present, we must conclude that though defeated he is not discouraged; he will rise again mightier than before. In trying to open a harbor on the Pacific, Russia has apparently failed. But her defeat is her victory. The autocratic power dominating for so many centuries is at last yielding to the popular will. Russia without an organized revolution is passing from monarchy to democracy in comparative peace. This is significant. A revolution usually marks the destruction of the ideals of a nation, but a peace- ful popularization of government indicates the trans- ference of those ideals from sovereign to citizen. These social changes do not mean that the ancient dream of Peter is dispelled, nor that the power of the Greek Church is broken. It means that the vision has passed from the exclusive possession of the Czar to peasant and Cossack. Hence the re- sponsibility for Russian domination of the world rests no longer upon the Czar, but upon the Russian people. Thus is multiplied a thousandfold the power which aims to thrust the Russian boundary over Asia. From these facts of history we see that greed for territorial expansion inspired by the Greek SOUTH DAKOTA 161 Church is the basic force in the spread of the Slav- onic domain. But what does Russia want today? She wants the Pacific for her commerce, and China for her religion. To impress her ideals upon the Chinaman, to keep him from civilization of the West, to inject into the Mongol mind the ethical principles of the Greek Church, to save him in the centuries to come as a co-worker of the Russian, to make the Pacific a Slavonic sea, these are the aims of the Slav in the Orient. Though the Russian Bear has with- drawn into the north, watch him! In all his native strength he is certain to come forth and at an un- guarded moment to raid again the sheepfolds of China. Let us look now at the Saxon. His history reads like a divine epic. He has grown steadily to- ward intellectual and spiritual freedom. Though he has made marvelous material progress, his chief ambition has been spiritual rather than material. Early in the Christian era a wild uncultured people from the region of the Baltic Sea crossed the channel and conquered England. After centuries of wild disorder, dark with war and bitter with dis- content, Caesar brought the Roman law and Augustine the Christian religion. These became the bond of the Saxon race. Out of the turmoil of the centuries the nation came "purified as by fire." "Divine right of kings" was lost, individual freedom gained. These principles of political and religious liberty, implanted upon the American continent, brought forth a nation strong and virile, the cham- pion of the rights of the individual, the exponent of religious freedom. Under these ideals the Ameri- can nation has had an unparalleled growth. Yet its great ambition is not expansion of territory but the expansion of the eternal rights and welfare of its people. Greed for territory has not been the 162 WINNING ORATIONS ruling passion of the American Saxon. Under di- vine guidance, he has ever sought "a way that will be unto immortality; and conquered with a conquest unto life." Review briefly the forces beginning the struggle for mastery of the Pacific. Sullen doggedness faces confident self-reliance. Fanaticism confronts rationalism. Tyranny opposes liberty. It is the clash of races, the struggle of religions, the contest of civilizations. Vast territorial possessions are pitted against unlimited resources; the strength of a political aristocracy against the genius of an in- telligent people; a power of assimilation which en- abled the Slav to digest "a hundred tribes and na- tions" against a like power enabling the Saxon to absorb her floods of foreign immigrants as easily as the ocean swallows the river which pours into it. America's position in this crisis of the world is strategic. Hers is an opportunity unmatched in history. Yesterday she faced the Atlantic and the commerce of Europe; today she faces the Pacific and its growing activity. Her broad western coast affords the needed harbors for commerce and naval operations. Already no less than six trans-contin- ental railroads have been thrust across the con- tinent from east to west. Merchantmen and battle- ships which for years have doubled the cape now demand the shorter route across the Isthmus of Panama. America is turning from the old field of European commerce to the rich fields of the Orient. But above the call of commerce comes the cry of humanity demanding the best civilization for every people. As surely as Israel was led from Egypt to the promised land, so surely is America led into the Pacific on a mission for mankind. To save China from Slavonic civilization, to implant upon the East the institutions of the West, to instil into the Mon- SOUTH DAKOTA 163 gol mind the hope of the Christian faith and the morality of Western ethics these are the supreme motives impelling the Saxon toward the Orient. What then means the possession of the Pacific by either Slav or Saxon? It means this; the yellow people of the East roused from their sleep of cen- turies will wake to a full political and religious freedom or to a political and religious tyranny. If they wake to freedom then is the "yellow peril" past, but if they wake to tyranny, let the nations take alarm. It means that the Orient and the Islands of the Sea shall be thrown open to the lib- erty of Western religion, or be closed for centuries and taught the empty forms of the Greek hypocrisy. It means an Oriental civilization of centuries yet to come, fraught with the spirit of commercial and political progress, individual freedom and universal love, or centuries of commercial and political stag- nation, individual slavery and universal wrong. As champions of Western civilization, we are called to dominate our age with Christian culture and enlightenment. It lies with the American Saxon to teach the Orient the full meaning of freedom and upward striving. The magnitude of our mission is appalling, but we dare not shirk our duty. The stern voice of God calls us to the sober work of our inheritance. The wail of Mongolia joins with the cry of centuries, beseeching us to go forth, and to conquer in the name of the eternal principles of liberty and justice. TWENTIETH CONTEST (1907) JOAN OF ARC (GEORGE NORVELL. DAKOTA WESLEYAN) In the year 1412, at the town of Domremy, France, a peasant girl was born. Nineteen years later a charred and smoking stake in the Old Mar- ket-place of Rouen proclaimed her death. Within these short years a human soul had matured, wrought its destiny, and left its mark upon the world's history; the Divine Spirit had inspired to action; human injustice had condemned to martyr- dom. Within that brief span a peasant girl had "broken the back of the Hundred years War" and revived the ebbing life of a nation; and that nation had burned at the stake her saviour Joan of Arc. Ideas, not kings, have ruled the past. And among those ideas, none has been more potent in the world's development than the conception of free- dom. It overturns thrones, obliterates empires, subdues continents. It heralds the conflict on every great battlefield. It leads the vanguard in every upward movement. Luther sees it, the Reformation results; the Pilgrim Fathers feel its power, the mightiest republic of history is born; Christ reveals it, the world is revolutionized. It was the vision of freedom that filled the mind of Joan of Arc. She may not have been aware of its widest significance, but she clearly saw its application to national life. She may not have dreamed of the universal freedom of mind, soul and body, but she did dream of a free France. France in 1429, was in a desperate condition. A hundred years of continuous fighting had reduced 166 WINNING ORATIONS her to the last extremity. Her fields were devas- tated, her resources exhausted and only the ter- ritory south of the Loire remained faithful to the French succession. Civil strife had almost extin- guished patriotism. Liberty was hung on gibbets. The Dauphin, Charles VII, weak and irresponsible, was even then planning a flight across the seas while the broken chivalry of France was making its last stand at Orleans. How are the mighty fallen! The fairest land in Europe, prostrate! Justice in fetters! Fear supreme upon the throne! Every hill and valley of the empire, haunted by the ghosts of the dead past! At this crisis comes the liberator from Domremy, the peasant girl, whose genius will break the fetters which bind the limbs of French Freedom. Joan of Arc, by nature, was modest, gentle and deeply religious. She saw the hand of the conqueror heavy upon her countrymen, and she longed to set them free. Oppressed by the burden of a mighty mission, she fasted, prayed and agonized in the soli- tude of forests. The blood of Frenchmen cried to her from every battle ground of the nation and her sympathetic soul was fired with the patriotic zeal. In the "Holy of Holies" of the Domremy forest she saw visions and heard voices that inspired her to re- deem her people. Communing with the invisible she found the strength to meet the tasks of life and destiny. Directed of God, armed with truth, and guarded by angels she went forth to sacrifice her- self for her country. The military career of Joan of Arc is one of the most amazing recorded in history. The Hundred Years War had called forth and developed all the martial greatness of the nation, but no general had been found who could stay the tide of English in- SOUTH DAKOTA 167 vasion. For more than fifty years the French had been defeated in every important battle. And then suddenly, almost miraculously the tables are turned. An inexperienced and uneducated girl of seventeen years of age is made commander-in-chief of the first army she has ever seen. Taking the scattered and disheartened batallions, she forges them into a thunder-bolt that shatters with one blow the Eng- lish power in France. Behold Joan in her initial campaign of seven weeks! Its first day finds her just emerging from the obscurity of shepherd life; the last sees her clothed in glory, with a "kingdom for a stage." She raised the seige of Orleans in ten days when surrender seemed inevitable and afterwards met undaunted, in open field, the great- est military geniuses of the age. The soldiers of Talbot; the English Lion, fled before her magic en- sign as "from the glance of Destiny." The victories of Jargeau, Meung, Beaugency and Patay followed each other in rapid succession to add glory to her military career. How shall we estimate the services of the Heroine of France? Shall we say that in three months she reversed the fortunes of the Hundred Years War, drove out the conqueror, established the French King upon his throne, and made France a strong, effective nation? Shall we say that she united the people, restored confidence, and infused the spirit of patriotism that has been so typical of the French nation for the last 450 years? She did this, and much more. Without her, where had been the French Revolution which, in spite of its faults, has been one of the most powerful factors in the evolution of modern governments? Where, France's contributions to science, literature and art? And what would be our situation, citizens of 168 WINNING ORATIONS America, had not France, Free France, appeared at the critical moment to lend aid to the American colonies? But personal worth is more than achievement. Joan's greatest legacy to humanity is her character. Her noble unselfishness is admirably shown by an incident that occurred just after the coronation at Rhiems. She was then at the midday of her glory honored in the court, worshipped in the camp, and everywhere hailed as the deliverer of France. The grateful king offered her rewards and honors. But she would take nothing. All that she wished was to be allowed to return home and take up the simple life of her childhood. Here she was offered all that fame and power can give yet chose the obscurity of a peasant's cottage, rather than the honors of the courts. We have but one parallel to this in history when our own beloved Washington retired to private life at the close of the Revolution, and was with difficulty induced to assume the responsi- bilities of government. Had Joan been allowed to retire from the stage of action at this time, many of her noblest qualities would have remained unre- vealed. The wasting confinement of the dungeon; the treachery of friends; the cunning cruelty of foes; the slanders of false witnesses; the villainy of unrighteous judges; the duplicity of priests; the abandonment by people, king and church, which to her trusting heart seemed all but a conspiracy of heaven and earth against her; the fiery furnaces of martyrdom; all these must be endured before the world could know her true greatness. "Her character," says Samuel Clemens, "is unique. It can be measured by the standards of all times without misgiving or apprehension as to the result." Though she lived in one of the blackest epoch's of history, when honor, truth, and morality SOUTH DAKOTA 169" were scarcely more than names, her life was so pure and true and noble, that it challenges admiration in the most advanced and enlightened age of the world. She combined all that is most tender and beautiful in woman, with what is most admirable in man. And whether as victorious general, court favorite, or prisoner at the bar she was ever a modest and lovable girl. See how she compares with the great Captain, Napoleon. Joan and Napoleon! How strange a contrast! Their abilities and opportunities were similar. Both were brave, both possessed the sub- limest fortitude, both had military genius, and both led French arms to brilliant victories. Here the likeness ends. Joan was gentle, meek and gen- erous. Napoleon was domineering, conceited and self -centered. Joan was pure, lovable and noble; Napoleon, egoistic, passionate and arrogant. The master- passion of Joan's life was self-sacrifice; of Napoleon's ambition. She toiled for the peace and prosperity of the whole country, with no thought of personal gain; Napoleon, demanding fame and power for self, "Waded through slaughter to a throne and shut the gates of mercy on mankind." But eternal justice brought him to St. Helena. His mighty empire was shattered into fragments; his fitful dream of power was banished in a night. The peasant girl's work of sacrificial love still blesses mankind. She who was once condemned as a witch r is now venerated as a departed saint. To be forsaken by those we love is the death of hope, the wormwood of sorrow, the crucifixion of the soul. It sears as a red hot iron. It rankles like poison. Joan met imprisonment, trial, and death without a single voice to whisper cheer. Behold her at that judicial mockery called her trial! On the one side are deputies, accusers and judges; the 170 WINNING ORATIONS Church Militant in triple-hatted authority; nuncios armed with writs of excommunication; priests, ab- bots and bishops; all powers temporal and ec- clesiastical; on the other side, the lone shepherd girl. Throughout the infamous proceeding her purity, gentleness and fortitude shine forth with in- creasing glory. The infamy of Judas will live al- most as long as the sacrifice of Christ. Beauvais' perjury is immortal because it forms a background for the forgiving love of Joan. Among those men who form the court she is as " a gleam of sunshine in a foul den." One by one they advance, and are transfixed by the invincible logic of truth. Day after day, week after week, month after month, this young girl, alone and unaided, meets with peer- less skill every trick and plot the villainy of Beau- vais can invent. But her enemies demand her blood. The sentence must be pronounced. The witch must be burned. At last the travesty is ended. The in- nocent is condemned to die. On the Wednesday after Trinity Sunday, 1431, in the glory and the freshness of the Spring, Joan is led forth to death. Guarded by 800 spearmen, she is conducted about midday to the place of exe- cution. One cannot move freely in the presence of such a tragedy. The heart sickens. "The soul grows silent." The fury of the soldiers paralyzes us. The gentleness of the martyr melts us. The height of the scaffold awes. The eager expectancy in the faces of the surging sea of humanity terrifies. The depth of human brutality amazes. It is a repetition of the tragedy of the ages. It is the death of a saint. As she stands upon the lofty pyre, knowing that she is soon to die, she utters these words of profound pity: "Ah, Rouen, Rouen, I fear that thou wilt have to suffer for my death." Even now as she feels for the first time that she is utterly SOUTH DAKOTA 171 deserted, when the agony of mortal fear has seized her and the black curtains of death are closing fast about her; even in this moment, her whole soul goes forth in these words of love, pity and self -forgetful- ness. Surely it will not seem irreverent to say that they remind me of the words of Another who perished at the hands of those he came to save. As they sweep through my mind methinks I see the frenzied mob in Pilate's judgment hall, the rugged blood-stained path up Golgotha, the cross, the shame, the ignominy, and I seem to hear the scorned, rejected Galilean say: "Father forgive them for they know not what they do." To perform her loving service for her country- men Joan toiled in garments dyed in blood; for this they crowned her with a wreath of fire. She died for them and they defamed her memory. But today repentant France is proud to own her child, and gladly honors her with every tribute that Esteem and Love can offer. They talk of monuments! She needs not these to speak her praises! Her deeds are her memorials, and her mausoleum the heart of humanity. Time will obliterate all that is writ on parchment or graved in marble, but in the cen- turies to come, Joan of Arc will receive increasing homage, for "Nothing: can cover her high fame but heaven, No pyramids set off her memories But the eternal substance of her greatness To which I leave her." THE NEW ORIENT (HOWARD WARREN, YANKTON COLLEGE) (Again in 1907, the First and the Second winning orations in the State Contest were reversed by the judges in the Inter- State Contest. In the State contest, Norvell, of Dakota Wesleyan, ranked First, and Warren, of Yankton College, Second. In the Inter-State, they were reversed. Both orations are, therefore, given). Many years the men of America have watched the "March of Empire" in its ever-westward path. As we followed its course, our intense patriotism led us to ignore what lay beyond. We considered the Golden Gate the limit of this great movement. We thought of China; in the old days that mystical, magnificent Cathay; and proudly we said, "The man of the East was the beginning, but we of the West are the culmination. Behold, this mighty march has circled the world. America is its goal." But at the dawning of a new century the con- viction is slowly being forced upon us that the "Star of Empire" is not as we had considered it. Like the stars of the firmament above, it knows no halting in its course, but steadily, resistlessly, swings in its unending circle. Past the barriers of the Golden Gate; out across the wide Pacific; its light has traveled on till it has awakened the men of Japan and is casting its first gleams on the turreted pal- aces at Peking. In the path of its radiance American eyes are opening to a new problem. Some national mistakes are standing out in remorseless prominence. We are beginning to see that we have not sufficiently heeded the signs of the times. True, while it suited our hospitable convenience we royally entertained the peace ambassadors of Japan and won the plaudits of the world. But after the lime light was turned away, what cared we for the men of the Far 174 WINNING ORATIONS East? One of our states proceeded to heap affront upon the children of Japan. We made more strict our bar to the yellow man. With twenty millions starving in China, we continued to exact unjust pay- ments on an unjust indemnity. We continued our insults to Chinese scholars who sought admission to America. We permitted a state to rise in her sover- eign might and wrest even property rights from the men of the Far East. By our cool carelessness of Far Eastern feeling we continually send the taunt across the Pacific: What are you going to do about it? Yes, what do you intend to do? You are weak, and we are strong, you are poor and we are rich; what recks your right against our might? No answering defiance has been flung back. Hence we have felt we were dealing with a de- cadent race. We have counted the Oriental no more than half a man. And here has been our mistake. For among the Manchurian hills the Japanese proved himself before all the world every inch a man. From the plains of China, low, insistent, more and more clear, is coming the answering voice of his brother asking for justice by right of the man he is, pleading for brotherhood by virtue of the mighty force he will become. And today we are confronted with the stern duty of correcting our error, and recognizing that we are dealing with men, millions of awakening men, who deserve all the justice and rights of brotherhood that characterize American liberty. We have underestimated the Mongolian intellect. Because Pacific coast coolies were universally igno- rant, we have supposed the Chinaman universally ignorant. Yet the very foundation of China's politi- cal system is on an educational basis that puts to shame the meager qualifications we ask of our of- ficials. The Chinese Mandarin is a scholar, having SOUTH DAKOTA 175 stored in his capacious memory Chinese law and the lore of Celestial prophets to a degree that is start- ling to the Occidental mind. He does not lack men- tal power; he lacks only modern training. "He sits in his ancestral halls with his head in the realms of the ancient Sung dynasty and his feet upon the present." Will he sit thus forever? Will there be no awakening? Truly the peace of the world were safer if he should dream on, in his intellectual cloud- land! For when he becomes willing to study the coal fields of Honan, instead of musing on the flowering fields through which Confucius walked; when he begins to consider building factories and smelters in Tongking, instead of rebuilding in fancy that ancient paradise where Mencius taught; in short, when the Chinese Mandarin and Literatus begins to think in modern terms instead of pre- historic, there will be born on earth a mighty intel- lectual force. A new power will threaten the na- tions with turmoil. The destiny of Asia will lie in the hollow of her hand. She will make and unmake the economic future of the Far East. The yellow man has other ominous character- istics. His peculiar intellect has a background of marvelous physical vitality. Drought, pestilence, flood and famine; rebellion, invasion, and massacre; that arch-destroyer, opium; all these work their fearful havoc. Yet every square mile of China teems with people. Furthermore, the Mongolian possesses adaptability. And what quality means more for racial success? Place him where you will, and he is a unit with his surroundings. In tropic heat, or Arctic cold; in Central American swamps or on Rocky Mountain plateaus, wherever, whenever, how- ever you meet him, he is the embodiment of smiling content. He drops placidly into any environment 176 WINNING ORATIONS with such ease and completeness that no laborer on earth can compete with him. However, it is not solely because the Chinaman possesses those qualities making for economic suc- cess that America must heed the Far Eastern ques- tion. We have other and more potent, reasons for looking across the Pacific with apprehension. In northern China, where the great wall extends as far as eye can see over the sandy wastes of Shengking, a break can be seen in its battlements. For a hundred yards this ancient rampart has been razed to the earth. The massive brickwork that had rested undisturbed for a hundred generations has been torn away; and through this gap the winds blow alien sands upon China's sacred soil. More significant still, through the breach stretches a mod- ern steel trestle over which daily rush the mogul engines of the Northern Imperial Railway, awaken- ing echoing thunders among the ruined pagodas that crown the grass-covered wall. The scene is mutely prophetic. Just as this monument to the ancient traditions of the Celestial Empire has been ruthlessly torn asunder to meet the imperative demands of modern commerce, so are Chinese walls of conservatism being disrupted by the onward march of civilization. The roar of passing trains echoes through the corridors of the imperial palace at Peking. The desecrating bustle of modern business is resounding through the half- ruined temples of Tien-tsin. The Occident is tear- ing its way into the Orient. From Manchuria on the north, to Yunnan on the south; from Hongkong on the east, to Tibet on the west, rumor comes of a muttering and stirring among the sleeping peoples. Every traveler who disembarks at San Francisco brings the same tale. The Chinamen are opening their eyes to the victory SOUTH DAKOTA 177 of the new over the old. They can see that the alert foreigner makes the sandy deserts of Shansi a highway to riches yearly paved with a hundred thousand tons of coal. They can see that where they scraped a pound of copper from the mines of Yunnan, his steam cranes are swinging out millions. Nor does western education lag behind modern commerce. The keen, practical text-books of Oc- cidental science are already contending on an equal footing with the worn parchments of Confucian philosophy. Who doubts where the victory will be? Even now the Chinese Literati are abandoning the ancient examination booths for the colleges of Europe and America. And, as they return, they are carrying back all the spirit that makes western nations great. They are the vanguard in that fast- forming army of newly enlightened men, who are to storm the strongholds of Chinese conservatism and revolutionize her government policies, her ideals, and her very religion. And during the last two years has not the yel- low man mused deeply over another matter? For did not his marveling gaze follow his brethren of the Orient as they swept over the battalions of the Occident? Did he not see the Japanese wrest Port Arthur from Russia? and drive the Czar's columns back back till even Mukden floated the Mikado's flag, and the pride of Russian arms lay prostrate in the dust? But the story of the east is not yet complete. Another mighty influence is at work. There is no more potent force in the Orient today than the Christian missionary. He has gone up and down the provinces carrying news of the Redeemer, and at the same time healing the sick, bringing comfort to the dying, and teaching the living how to better use their lives. Since this century began, returns 178 WINNING ORATIONS of thirty and fifty-fold are becoming an hundred- fold. The thousands of Christian martyrs have not died in vain. I do not wish to belittle other agencies. The financier has shown China the wonders of mod- ern commerce. Western arts and sciences have opened undreamed realms of thought. The sword of the Mikado's soldier has hewed her a path to better things. But transcending all forces stands the cross of Christ. In interpreting these signs of the times we can come to but one conclusion. This country is going to see a new power unleashed upon the world. There it looms on the eastern horizon. The sky is yet clear. We have naught but the warning mut- tering as of distant thunder. Do those slowly ris- ing clouds mean added prosperity to the nations, as the quiet summer rain means blessing to the fields? Or do they mean storm and turmoil? Tumult and destruction? This is a problem, not of tomorrow, but of to- day. The hour of change is already upon us. The drama of the Far East is no longer to be played by England and Russia. Japan is already upon the stage. China soon will enter. The intellectual force of her people, their physical vitality, and adaptability warn us that she will play a marvelous part in the twentieth century. Let it be no tragedy for America. Today in Tokyo the American is eyed askance. In Peking too often is he jeered. It is to our shame that there is reason for such treatment. Too long have we meted out injustice to the men of the Orient. Too long have we given the lie to the precepts of our missionaries. Our material interests, our claim as a power making for righteousness, demand of us a better, truer attitude. Let us act with such fair- SOUTH DAKOTA 179 ness that when, in turmoil and revolution, the Far East finds its traditions tumbling about its ears, when naught on the shores of the Pacific seems firm on its base, the new Orient will turn toward the west and see its future hope in the justice and brotherhood that are the principles of American freedom. When Bartholdi fashioned that colossal Goddess of Liberty that eternally looks out from the harbor of New York, what did he mean? Why do those eyes forever gaze over the stormy Atlantic? Does her uplifted beacon light show only to a Porto Rico the justice and brotherhood that are the boons of liberty? Does she lavish the gifts of freedom only upon a Cuba, till with every passing political storm she turns to America as her trusted protector? If this Goddess of American Liberty only lights to the blessings of freedom coasts washed by the Atlantic, let us find another Bartholdi. Let us show him the Golden Gate and the serene Pacific. Let us say to him, "Cast for us a mighty statue, greater far than any other. Fashion a more magnificent God- dess of Liberty. Put in her left hand the scales of justice, in her right the cross of Christian brother- hood. Upon this cross write, in blazing letters of gold, America's pledge, that all the Orient may read: 'Mongol or Anglo-Saxon, every race Is but a unit in a universe And brotherhood shall circle round the world.' " TWENTY-FIRST CONTEST (1908) AMERICA'S GREATEST PROBLEM (JOHN DOBSON, DAKOTA WESLEYAN) The worth of a civilization is never greater than the worth of the man at its center. The standard of a nation can rise no higher than the standard of its citizenship. To furnish to all its citizens, irrespective of race or color, the conditions whereby they may attain unto the highest standard of the individual, is the chiefest function of a great race-embracing government like our own. To fail in this vital duty toward any considerable portion of our citizens is to fall short of the high destiny to which America is appointed. Already America has been the arena of mighty conflicts. Here world forces have clashed. Here great principles have been tested and weighty prob- lems solved. Here for two hundred years the forces of Oligarchy and Democracy had full play. Then in the hey-day of their glory they met in deadly con- flict. Northern Democracy triumphed; Southern Oligarchy was overthrown. Slavery, the great ob- ject of attack and defense, was destroyed. This decisive conflict solved a great problem, but by the very nature of its purpose created a greater one. To make four million slaves free men is a worthy task; to make these free men now numbering ten million souls industrious, intelligent, progressive, patriotic citizens, is a worthier task. This is America's great problem. It involves the just co-ordination of two races under principles and institutions that are the flower- ing of the highest political consciousness of man- kind; the one race but a few generations out of savagery, the other the proud exponent of a civil- 182 WINNING ORATIONS ization that is the very consummation of the Divine purpose wrought out through twenty centuries of human progress. On the borders of life, where the baser elements of these races mingle, there will be many a virulent phase; but it should be proclaimed above all the din of meaner striving that the better heart of the two races beats alike to the deeper cadences of the Constitution and the spirit of true Americanism. Is it strange that the negro, upon coming out of two hundred and fifty years of slavery, should be dazzled by the glare of the broad noon-day of liberty and citizenship into which he found himself thrust by the War of the Rebellion and the amendments to the Constitution? Is it strange that he did not realize what it meant, and all that it meant? His full awakening and his permanent advancement can be only by the unhurried processes of race development. The first problem in the life of any people is largely physical and must be solved by labor. This is the natural order; this is the historic order. Labor is a basic element in the development of individuals and of races. Despisers of toil are never builders of nations. This is the secret of America's great- ness an ancestry of toilers; men to whom industry was a creed, muscles a virtue, toil a religion. From men of this vigorous fibre has sprung a race whose industrial achievement have no parallel in history. The development of this country from sea to sea, and from gulf to lakes, is, in its daring genius and its conquering energy, industry's sublimest epic. Industrial independence must be the first condi- tion for the permanent elevation of the negro in America. Servitude had taught him one great lesson that of toil. But with freedom came a terrible reaction. To the negro, slavery was the sum of all villainies, the root of all evil, the cause SOUTH DAKOTA 183 of all prejudice. In his simple and lowly prayer swelled one mighty supplication liberty! At last it came, bewildering maddening even, in its strangeness and its ecstacy. In the wild carnival of freedom that followed all restraints were cast aside. Labor, that had become to the negro the badge of servitude, was now a thing of the past. Peace, rest from toil, unrestrained enjoyment of the best things in a free and bounteous land, were to be his forever. How unbounded the faith of that simple ignorance; how deep the disappointment of that lowly people; how awful the realization of what it meant to be poor and black and ignorant in a land where money was master and Caucasian, King. Years have passed since then. The old gener- ation, skilled in the school of slavery, is no more. A new generation has come a generation of unskilled toilers. To teach them the art of labor, that art which conquers the forces of nature and redeems toil from it's drudgery this must be the first step in the solution of the negro problem. In a material sense the South is still an undeveloped country, Mani- fold possibilities lie open to the negro on every hand. Here is the opportunity which unimproved may never be his again. The present generation of colored people in America must largely determine whether the negro is to occupy the high and manly vantage- ground of industrial independence, or whether he is to degenerate into the mere ward and drudge of the white race. Nothing will more rapidly bring about right re- lations between the two races than the commercial progress of the negro. Trade, commerce, is ever the forerunner of wholesome and friendly relations be- tween races and nations. If the negro rises to the full measure of his presen t industrial opportunity, he can make himself such a factor in the life of the 184 WINNING ORATIONS South that he will not have to seek privileges, they will be freely conferred upon him; and he shall leave to coming generations of black men the price- less heritage of equal opportunity to all that is best in the life of our Republic. But the ultimate forces in race development are spiritual. Mental strength and moral fibre deter- mine finally the place of individuals and of races. The nation that poured out billions of treasure and the costlier blood of her sons to free her slaves dare not stop short of their full enfranchisement through the freedom of knowledge and of culture. Skilled hands, disciplined minds, enlightened hearts, these are the conquering triad in race progress and race emancipation. The negro in America faces as stern a problem as ever confronted any race. Consider the situa- tion: they are surrounded by the strongest race of men on the globe; a race that has mastered every other people that has dared to look it in the face; a race that leads the world in industry and com- merce; a race whose genius for the gigantic, in enter- prise and achievements, is the marvel of history. This is the race with which the negro must struggle hand to hand, brain to brain, in working out his own destiny. Facing such conditions, his supreme need is for leaders educated men; men who know the strug- gles of oppressed people toward light and liberty in the past; men who have faith in the Providence that works through all ages; men of courage, men of ideals, men of vision, who can give to the mil- lions of their race inspiration, ambition, hope; men who can lead these millions into their highest life and their noblest estate as worthy citizens of a great Republic. And these elect sons of the race, who are to lead in its full emancipation, must come not SOUTH DAKOTA 185 from the fields or the workshops, not from the preparatory or industrial schools, but from the col- leges and universities. Call the roll of the spiritual emancipators of men, and Paul answers frqm the School of Gamaliel, Luther from the University of Wittenberg, Huss from the University of Prague, Calvin from the University of Geneva, Wycliff and Wesley from the classic halls of Oxford. Higher education alone can give to the negro race its trained leadership and its true enfranchisement among men. This problem, however, is not merely racial; it is national. Its solution involves not only the wel- fare of the negro, but the future of a Republic. The black man is a constitutional factor of this Republic, and with him we stand or fall. The negroes con- stitute one third of the population of the South. They hold more than one-third of her destiny in their black hands. What the negro does for the South depends very largely on what the South does for the negro. She may make of him the black diamond in the coronet of her intelligence and glory, or the thundercloud that will some day break in a storm of anarchy upon her head. There is no escape from the law of retributive justice. The ever-in- creasing hosts of black citizens will be a mighty factor in the progress and prosperity of this Repub- lic, or they will prove a veritable body of death, re- tarding every movement to national power and glory. The twentieth century is to prove the crucial century in world history. Yonder on the Pacific the world forces are gathering for a last great con- test of civilizations. Occident faces Orient. The exultant spirit of the new world confronts the sullen persistence of the old. The light and liberty of the Christian faith stand over against the superstition and tyranny of old world beliefs. It is the grapple of civilizations the conflict of the century; the re- 186 WINNING ORATIONS suit of which must be the turning back of the forces of liberty and enlightenment, or the final supremacy of Christian civilization upon the earth. The events of a single decade have thrust America out into strategic position upon the seas, and mark her as the determining force in this world conflict. But if America is to lead; if she is to prove the invincible standard bearer of Christian civiliza- tion, she must work out upon her own soil the full vindication of the principles of justice and liberty for which she stands among the nations. She cannot fall short of her duty to the black man within her borders, if she is to fulfill her mission to the yellow man across the seas. She must front the crisis of the century with unbroken solidarity of national life, her citizens, black and white, exultant in the liberty and privilege of citizenship in a great Re- public. Her national consistency must be the mea- sure of her world prestige and potency. We have faith in America. We have faith that the genius of her free institutions and the high- minded statesmanship of her loyal sons will work out a righteous adjustment of her great problem, until the negro shall be no longer an extraneous and threatening element in the body politic, but a com- ponent and worthy factor of her national life. We have faith in the ultimate triumph of true Ameri- canism. We have faith in that spirit of exultant Democracy that has made the common people of America greatest among the peoples of the earth, and that will as certainly elevate the negro in America, enriched by industry and ennobled by edu- cation, to his true place among the races of man- kind. Then shall the sable hosts of her redeemed citizens wake the cane-brakes of this old world to a new song, in triumphant acclaim to America's accomplished mission, and Columbia's exalted name. TWENTY-SECOND CONTEST (1909) OUR PACIFIC OUTLOOK (JAMES DOBSON, DAKOTA WESLEYAN) The present century is to prove the crucial century in history. The bugle call of world-domi- nation is summoning' the forces to contest. The re- sistless logic of events has already determined the scene of action. The peaceful Pacific, its waters stirred by the approach of world conflict, has become the storm-centre of the twentieth century. In the chain of events that mark the onward progress of the race, the exploitation of the Pacific is the culminating one. This will be the final chap- ter in the gospel of expansion; the climax in God's appointed drama of progress. More than five hun- dred million people already live in the Pacific basin. But the lands bordering on the new Mediterranean have resources sufficient to support a population equal to four times the people upon our globe. Here is the potential wealth of the world. Millions upon millions crowding here will tramp the highways into pavements. Here are to be established the indus- trial centers, here will be achieved the commercial and political victories, here will culminate the dom- inant civilization of the future. This is the region whose measureless possibilities are summoning the forces to contest. No harbor on the Pacific but feels the quickening of its throbbing pulse; not a nation with a Pacific exposure can safely fail to grasp its vital importance. For supremacy here will eventu- ally mean the sovereign power upon the earth. On the border of the northern Pacific, stands the Slav, brawny, over-bearing, untaught, fanatical, sullenly persistent. To the southward, in his island Empire, the little Jap, suave, alert, brilliant, self- 188 WINNING ORATIONS confident, artfully aggressive. Across the narrow intervening sea, Japan's ancient neighbors, the Chinese, conservative, intelligent, industrious, eco- nomical, all-enduring. On the opposite shore of the great ocean, the American, progressive, energetic, far-seeing, altruistic, democratic, Christian. Russia, Japan, China, America, these are the peoples about the Pacific destined to leading parts in this drama of world conflict. Russia emerged from the war with Japan, her resources crippled, her peasantry impoverished, the very foundations of her government unstable. But notwithstanding these facts, notwithstanding the Treaty of Portsmouth and the Anglo-Japanese Al- liance, Russia remains the Unbeaten Power. She has abated none of her ambitions. She is promoting great waves of emigration from European Russia into her far Eastern provinces. She is inaugurating an ambitious industrial and commercial program. She is knitting up her Asiatic Empire with a network of strategic railways, destined to world influence. Profiting by the lesson she has learned, Russia is developing her latent resources and gathering her strength, that she may be ultimately irresistible. The dominant note in Russian literature, the dominant force in Russian history, is greed for ter- ritorial expansion. The national dogma, amounting to a powerful instinct with the masses, that the whole continent by right belongs to the Russian, is at the root of his advance in Asia. Impelled by this faith, the sullen persistence of the Slav will assert itself. Russia will come forth again. Six years ago Japan was not recognized in the councils of the nations. Then came the war with Russia. From it Japan emerged, bleeding and torn but glorified. Unaided, little Japan had checked the tide of Slavonic civilization which threatened to SOUTH DAKOTA 189 absorb China, Manchuria, and Korea. Japan came out of this war with the recognition, the conscious- ness, and the ambitions, of a world power. But Japan is over-populated. She must have new territory to relieve this congestion. For the fulfilment of her program of expansion and of world activity, she must look to the Pacific and the Orient. Necessity, no less than ambition, impels her upon a policy of daring proportions. Japan struggles to prevent the closing of the future against her. She is outlining an industrial, naval, and military pro- gram commensurate with her needs and her ambi- tions. She is doubling her army and her navy, that on sea as on land she may be able to face any world power in the Far East. Her self-confidence and her new life, her fleets and her armies, her needs and her ambitions, mark her for aggressive and deter- mined part in the coming struggle upon the Pacific. In Our Pacific Outlook, China looms large; with her vast and fertile areas; with practically inex- haustible resources yet undeveloped; enormous de- posits of iron ore, four hundred and nineteen thou- sand square miles underlaid with coal, rich mines of lead, tin, copper, silver, and gold; with her great waterways and her two thousand miles of coast line; with her unthinkable population four hundred and thirty-seven million three-fourths the people in the Pacific basin. And China is no longer the Walled Kingdom. Today the ancient barriers are down, and influences from all directions play freely through the Celestial Empire. History presents no more significant spec- tacle than the awakening of China in the last ten years. A great race with a great inheritance seems just coming to its own. The world's oldest and greatest Empire, awake at last to her needs, thrilled with a new sense of her power and possibility, is 190 WINNING ORATIONS aspiring to a place among the nations. To what shall be her full awakening? To what program, what principles, what ideals, what religion? The present situation in China marks a crisis in world history. The policies of nations, the fate of a race, the course of civilization, are the issues involved. China the ancient, the learned, the colossal: China with her vast areas, her limitless resources, her great waterways, her imperial cities, her teeming millions; China awakening is the peril or the op- portunity of the twentieth century. Twelve years ago the United States took little part in international affairs. But quietly she has been doing a mighty work; she has performed her first task; she had gained unequalled wealth; she had wrought herself into a great nation. But God had mightier tasks for her. Above the ceaseless throb- bing of her industrial system came the call of hu- manity. The spirit that in the seventeenth century impelled our forefathers across the seas, and an- chored them in the western wilderness; the spirit that in 1776 burst the bonds of tyranny, and paid the patriot's price for liberty; the spirit that in 1861 poured out the blood and treasure of a nation that oppression might be forever blotted out within her borders; that same spirit, in 1898, answered the call of Cuba. It was the inevitable and resist- less expression of the master passion of a race. The Spanish war followed. We began the war to free Cuba; its close found the Stars and Stripes floating over a thousand islands of the Pacific seas. At the beginning of the war we were a people com- mercially and politically self-absorbed; at its close a world power with the consciousness of world-wide obligation and destiny. Beyond the scope of our small intentions God was leading us, along the line of duty, into broader opportunity and to larger SOUTH DAKOTA 191 tasks. As the result of our victory, we were led forth to the Pacific, into the struggle for its su- premacy. The opening years of the twentieth century find America best equipped for the coming contest. She has the longest coast line on the Pacific. She is the great agricultural and manufacturing nation upon its shores. She is the largest exporter a na- tion that can feed and clothe the world. Her re- sources are unequalled. Her inter-oceanic location gives her tremendous advantage. Her position upon the Pacific is strategic. The completion of the Panama Canal will bring all her cities into close trade relations with Asia. It will put the United States three thousand miles nearer China than is any nation of Europe. Her chain of newly won stations, Hawaii, the Ladrones, the Philippines, with which she has garrisoned the Pacific, rise up like ocean sentinels, guarding her commerce and her pathway to the Orient. Her people have the am- bitions and the qualifications for leadership; a virile energy, a grasp of situation, a promptness in action, a genius for achievement, and a faith in the supreme destiny of their own country, that mark them for supremacy. America is just entering upon her larger life and tasks. Her ultimate place and influence as a world power is yet to be achieved. If American trade is to be the imperial trade of the globe, if America is to fulfill an appointed mission of civil- ization in Asia, she must dominate the Pacific. The logic of events has marked out for her a program of industrial expansion, and argues her industrial and commercial supremacy. The higher logic of Divine equipment and appointment indicates her world mission and destiny. Clearly, the hand of God's guidance in her affairs, in her acquisitions and 192 WINNING ORATIONS her victories, is leading her, along the pathway of the Pacific, to the Orient, to establish there the empire of the principles she represents. Her step- ping-stones across the Pacific lead her to China's very door. This progressive young Republic and that conservative old Empire are thus brought close together. In the awakening and re-shaping of China, America must wield a beneficient and deter- mining influence. In the inevitable struggle around this great New China, America must dominate. Russia wants China. To appropriate and as- similate China would make her the mightiest em- pire the world has known. But Russian supremacy in China means the turning back of the forces of liberty and enlightenment; means the triumph of absolutism; means that the hands of these millions of Asia, groping for the light, shall meet only the mailed fist of the Russian Conqueror. Japan wants China. To control China would make her mistress of the Orient. But Japanese ascendency in China makes possible the realization of that doctrine, for- ever opposed to liberty and progress, "The Orient for Orientals." America must dominate China dominate by the force of her ideals and the Faith she represents; because the supremacy of these in China means the passing of Orientalism; means the spread of liberty and enlightenment; means that when the Russian Bear shall have gathered his strength for another invasion of Asia, he will find his advance forever checked, not by Japanse bay- onets or the Chinese wall of old, but by a new wall, whose mighty boulders shall be the ideals and principles of Western civilization embedded deep in the Mongol mind; whose mortar shall be the all- cohesive force of Christian faith and love. At the heart of American civilization are the principles of peace and the brotherhood of man. Out SOUTH DAKOTA 193 of the world conflict, the inevitable clash of inter- ests and struggle for supremacy, must come eventu- ally the higher principles and ideals; the passing of Buddha and Confucius before the widening reign of the Galilean; the broader establishment of that Em- pire of Peace towards which prophets have looked and statesmen toiled. Today the eyes of all the world are upon Asia. She absorbs the thought of the merchant, the states- man, the philanthropist, the Christian. She holds, for all of them, the larger possibilities of the fu- ture: vast areas, slumbering for centuries, to be electrified into life and growth; giant industries to be established; the foundations of government to be laid anew; beneficient reforms to be inaugurated; ten hundred millions to be redeemed. Asia, Great Asia, is before us. The Pacific is our pathway. This new Mediterranean must be an Anglo-Saxon Sea, the undisputed highway of Christian commerce and ideas. The present crisis is an opportunity unmatched in history. Ordained Priestess of Liberty, appointed standard-bearer of Christian civilization upon the earth, America must advance confidently to her destined place and po- tency among the nations; the church of Christ in America must summon all her energy and zeal to her supreme evangelistic task and victory. Our Pacific Outlook is the vision of our larger future. In that direction lies our heritage of ex- pansion and of duty. Through the Golden Gates of Sunset, America looks out upon imperial possi- bilities; fortified by her past, inspired by the vision of her future, confident in her supreme destiny. TWENTY-THIRD CONTEST (1910) THE LION OF THE NORTH (C. A. ALSETH, YANKTON COLLEGE) History is a record of the achievements of heroic souls. Great principles have been planted in the fertile soil of intellect, and there, stimulated by the appeal of a hungry social order, they have taken root, sprung up and matured into definite form, and imparted new life to succeeding generations. What is known as the Enlightenment, that intellectual inspiration of the eighteenth century, springing from the mind of John Locke, its father, was car- ried by Voltaire across the channel to the con- tinent of Europe, there to exert its influence in the shaping of civilization. The Renaissance, that stimulus to the cultivation of the aesthetic and ar- tistic temperament of man, springing from its Italian birth, spread out over Europe to instill new life into the human race. But that code of life, first enunciated from the summit of the Palestinian mountains by the man of Galilee, revived through the iron will of a Martin Luther and the organizing intellect of John Calvin, was destined to create a greater influence than either of these. The immediate effects of the Reformation had passed. The wave of popular enthusiasm that had swept all before it, instilling ideas of religious free- dom into the mind of the German peasant, had been 196 WINNING ORATIONS superseded by the Catholic reaction, which tended not only to rob the Germanic nations of their free- dom of religious thought but also to draw closer the bounds of political absolutism. Thus was the spirit of the reformation about to be broken. In the atmosphere of dark foreboding that ushered in the events that made history at the dawn of the seven- teenth century, "the hero of militant protestantism, Gustavus Adolphus, stands forth in solitary grand- eur." The peace of Augsburg in 1555 had given re- ligious toleration to the German states. Over the whole of that nation the protestant faith had be- come supreme, until the Ambassador of Venice at the court of Vienna could say that only one tenth of the population still remained within the fold of the papacy. But the smouldering embers of partisan hatred still continued to glow, needing only the breeze of political ambition, stimulated by the in- tolerant spirit of Ferdinand of Austria, to fan them into the fiery horrors of a religious war. When, on the morning of the 23rd day of May, 1618, the im- perial regents were thrown from the window of their council chamber at Prague, the challenge was sent out by the protestant leaders for thirty years of in- cessant war; a contest that would involve the ruler of every nation in Europe; a contest that would turn the fertile fields of the Rhenish valley into a barren waste; a contest upon which would hang the destiny of freedom of religious thought for our own Anglo- Saxon race. SOUTH DAKOTA 197 The year 1630 brought on the crisis of the great Thirty Years War. If the cause of protestantism was to survive the crushing tyranny of the Edict of Restitution, that cause must find assistance. Charles I. of England was reluctant. Richelieu was persecuting the French Huguenots. The selfish Christian of Denmark had just concluded his ignoble peace. In the midst of these conditions, from th