name and breathes vengeance: "My children, France comes to make us
slaves. God gave us liberty; France has no right to take it away. Burn
the cities, destroy the harvests, tear up the roads with cannon, poison
the wells, show the white man the hell he comes to make";--and he was
obeyed. When the great William of Orange saw Louis XIV cover Holland
with troops, he said, "Break down the dikes, give Holland back to
ocean"; and Europe said, "Sublime!" When Alexander saw the armies of
France descend upon Russia, he said, "Burn Moscow, starve back the
invaders"; and Europe said, "Sublime!" This black saw all Europe
marshaled to crush him, and gave to his people the same heroic example
of defiance.
THE NECESSITY OF FORCE
From a speech in the United States Senate, March 24, 1898
BY JOHN M. THURSTON
I counseled silence and moderation from this floor when the passion of
the nation seemed at white heat over the destruction of the
_Maine_; but it seems to me the time for action has now come. No
greater reason for it can exist to-morrow than exists to-day. Every
hour's delay only adds another chapter to the awful story of misery and
death. Only one power can intervene--the United States of America. Ours
is the one great nation of the New World, the mother of American
republics. She holds a position of trust and responsibility toward the
peoples and affairs of the whole Western Hemisphere. It was her
glorious example which inspired the patriots of Cuba to raise the flag
of liberty in her eternal hills. We cannot refuse to accept this
responsibility which the God of the universe has placed upon us as the
one great power in the New World. We must act! What shall our action
be? Some say, The acknowledgment of the belligerency of the
revolutionists. The hour and the opportunity for that have passed away.
Others say, Let us by resolution or official proclamation recognize the
independence of the Cubans. It is too late for even such recognition to
be of great avail. Others say, Annexation to the United States. God
forbid! I would oppose annexation with my latest breath. The people of
Cuba are not our people; they cannot assimilate with us; and beyond all
that, I am utterly and unalterably opposed to any departure from the
declared policy of the fathers, which would start this republic for the
first time upon a career of conquest and dominion utterly at variance
with the avowed purposes and the manifest destiny of popular
government.
There is only one action possible, if any is taken; that is,
intervention for the independence of the island. We cannot intervene
and save Cuba without the exercise of force, and force means war; war
means blood. The lowly Nazarene on the shores of Galilee preached the
divine doctrine of love, "Peace on earth, good will toward men." Not
peace on earth at the expense of liberty and humanity. Not good will
toward men who despoil, enslave, degrade, and starve to death their
fellow-men. I believe in the doctrine of Christ. I believe in the
doctrine of peace; but men must have liberty before there can come
abiding peace. When has a battle for humanity and liberty ever been won
except by force? What barricade of wrong, injustice, and oppression has
ever been carried except by force?
Force compelled the signature of unwilling royalty to the great Magna
Charta; force put life into the Declaration of Independence and made
effective the Emancipation Proclamation; force waved the flag of
revolution over Bunker Hill and marked the snows of Valley Forge with
bloodstained feet; force held the broken line of Shiloh, climbed the
flame-swept hill at Chattanooga, and stormed the clouds on Lookout
Heights; force marched with Sherman to the sea, rode with Sheridan in
the Valley of the Shenandoah, and gave Grant victory at Appomattox;
force saved the Union, kept the stars in the flag, made "niggers" men.
The time for God's force has come again. Let the impassioned lips of
American patriots once more take up the song:--
In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in His bosom that transfigured you and me.
As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
For God is marching on.
Others may hesitate, others may procrastinate, others may plead for
further diplomatic negotiation, which means delay, but for me, I am
ready to act now, and for my action, I am ready to answer to my
conscience, my country, and my God.
AGAINST WAR WITH MEXICO
From a speech to the United States Senate, February 11, 1847
BY THOMAS CORWIN
The President has said he does not expect to hold Mexican territory by
conquest. Why, then, conquer it? Why waste thousands of lives and
millions of money fortifying towns and creating governments, if, at the
end of the war, you retire from the graves of your soldiers and the
desolated country of your foes, only to get money from Mexico for the
expense of all your toil and sacrifice? Who ever heard, since
Christianity was propagated among men, of a nation taxing its people,
enlisting its young men, and marching off two thousand miles to fight a
people merely to be paid for it in money? What is this but hunting a
market for blood, selling the lives of your young men, marching them in
regiments to be slaughtered and paid for like oxen and brute beasts?
Sir, this is, when stripped naked, that atrocious idea first
promulgated in the President's message, and now advocated here, of
fighting on till we can get our indemnity for the past as well as the
present slaughter. We have chastised Mexico, and if it were worth while
to do so, we have, I dare say, satisfied the world that we can fight.
Sir, I have read in some account of your Battle of Monterey, of a
lovely Mexican girl, who, with the benevolence of an angel in her bosom
and the robust courage of a hero in her heart, was busily engaged
during the bloody conflict, amid the crash of falling houses, the
groans of the dying, and the wild shriek of battle, in carrying water
to slake the burning thirst of the wounded of either host. While
bending over a wounded American soldier, a cannonball struck her and
blew her to atoms! Sir, I do not charge my brave, generous-hearted
countrymen who fought that fight with this. No, no! We who send them--
we who know what scenes like this, which might send tears of sorrow
"down Pluto's iron cheek," are the invariable, inevitable attendants on
war--we are accountable for this. And this--this is the way we are to
be made known to Europe. This--this is to be the undying renown of
free, republican America! "She has stormed a city--killed many of its
inhabitants of both sexes--she has room"! So it will read. Sir, if this
were our only history, then may God of His mercy grant that its volume
may speedily come to a close.
Why is it, sir, that we, the United States, a people of yesterday
compared with the older nations of the world, should be waging war for
territory--for "room?" Look at your country, extending from the
Alleghany Mountains to the Pacific Ocean, capable itself of sustaining
in comfort a larger population than will be in the whole Union for one
hundred years to come. Over this vast expanse of territory your
population is now so sparse that I believe we provided, at the last
session, a regiment of mounted men to guard the mail from the frontier
of Missouri to the mouth of the Columbia; and yet you persist in the
ridiculous assertion, "I want room." One would imagine, from the
frequent reiteration of the complaint, that you had a bursting, teeming
population, whose energy was paralyzed, whose enterprise was crushed,
for want of space. Why should we be so weak or wicked as to offer this
idle apology for ravaging a neighboring Republic? It will impose on no
one at home or abroad.
Do we not know, Mr. President, that it is a law never to be repealed
that falsehood shall be short-lived? Was it not ordained of old that
truth only shall abide for ever? Whatever we may say to-day, or
whatever we may write in our books, the stern tribunal of history will
review it all, detect falsehood, and bring us to judgment before that
posterity which shall bless or curse us, as we may act now, wisely or
otherwise. We may hide in the grave (which awaits us all) in vain; we
may hope there, like the foolish bird that hides its head in the sand,
in the vain belief that its body is not seen; yet even there this
preposterous excuse of want of "room" shall be laid bare and the quick-
coming future will decide that it was a hypocritical pretense under
which we sought to conceal the avarice which prompted us to covet and
to seize by force that which was not ours.
THE MURDER OF LOVEJOY
From "Speeches and Lectures," with the permission of Lothrop, Lee and
Shepard, Boston, publishers.
BY WENDELL PHILLIPS
Mr. Chairman: We have met for the freest discussion of these
resolutions, and the events which gave rise to them. I hope I shall be
permitted to express my surprise at the sentiments of the last
speaker,--surprise not only at such sentiments from such a man, but at
the applause they have received within these walls. A comparison has
been drawn between the events of the Revolution and the tragedy at
Alton. We have heard it asserted here, in Faneuil Hall, that Great
Britain had a right to tax the Colonies, and we have heard the mob at
Alton, the drunken murderers of Lovejoy, compared to those patriot
fathers who threw the tea overboard! Fellow citizens, is this Faneuil
Hall doctrine? The mob at Alton were met to wrest from a citizen his
just rights,--met to resist the laws. We have been told that our
fathers did the same; and the glorious mantle of Revolutionary
precedent has been thrown over the mobs of our day. To make out their
title to such defense, the gentleman says that the British Parliament
had a _right_ to tax these colonies. It is manifest that, without
this, his parallel falls to the ground; for Lovejoy had stationed
himself within constitutional bulwarks. He was not only defending the
freedom of the press, but he was under his own roof, in arms with the
sanction of the civil authority. The men who assailed him went against
and over the laws. The _mob_, as the gentleman terms it,--mob,
forsooth! certainly we sons of the tea-spillers are a marvelously
patient generation!--the "orderly mob" which assembled in the Old South
to destroy the tea were met to resist, not the laws, but illegal
exactions. Shame on the American who calls the tea tax and stamp act
_laws!_ Our fathers resisted, not the King's prerogative, but the
King's usurpation. To find any other account, you must read our
Revolutionary history upside down. Our state archives are loaded with
arguments of John Adams to prove the taxes laid by the British
Parliament unconstitutional,--beyond its power. It was not till this
was made out that the men of New England rushed to arms. The arguments
of the Council Chamber and the House of Representatives preceded and
sanctioned the contest. To draw the conduct of our ancestors into a
precedent for mobs, for a right to resist laws we ourselves have
enacted, is an insult to their memory. The difference between the
excitements of those days and our own, which the gentleman in kindness
to the latter has overlooked, is simply this: the man of that day went
for the right, as secured by the laws. They were the people rising to
sustain the laws and constitution of the Province. The rioters of our
day go for their own wills, right or wrong. Sir, when I heard the
gentleman lay down principles which place the murderers of Alton side
by side with Otis and Hancock, with Quincy and Adams, I thought those
pictured lips [pointing to the portraits in the Hall] would have broken
into voice to rebuke the recreant American,--the slanderer of the dead.
The gentleman said that he should sink into insignificance if he dared
to gainsay the principles of these resolutions. Sir, for the sentiments
he has uttered, on soil consecrated by the prayers of Puritans and the
blood of patriots, the earth should have yawned and swallowed him up.
I am glad, Sir, to see this crowded house. It is good for us to be
here. When Liberty is in danger, Faneuil Hall has the right, it is her
duty, to strike the keynote for these United States.
DEPICTING CHARACTER
A TALE OF THE PLAINS
From "Hunting the Grizzly," with the permission of G. P. Putnam's
Sons, New York and London, publishers.
BY THEODORE ROOSEVELT
One of my valued friends in the mountains, and one of the best hunters
with whom I ever traveled, was a man who had a peculiarly light-hearted
way of looking at conventional social obligations. Though in some ways
a true backwoods Donatello, he was a man of much shrewdness and of
great courage and resolution. Moreover, he possessed what only a few
men do possess, the capacity to tell the truth. He saw facts as they
were, and could tell them as they were, and he never told an untruth
unless for very weighty reasons. He was preeminently a philosopher, of
a happy, skeptical turn of mind. He had no prejudices.
On one occasion when we were out together we killed a bear, and after
skinning it, took a bath in a lake. I noticed he had a scar on the side
of his foot, and asked him how he got it, to which he responded, with
indifference:--
"Oh, that? Why, a man shoo tin' at me to make me dance, that was all."
I expressed some curiosity in the matter, and he went on:
"Well, the way of it was this: It was when I was keeping a saloon in
New Mexico, and there was a man there by the name of Fowler, and there
was a reward on him of three thousand dollars--"
"Put on him by the State?"
"No, put on by his wife," said my friend; "and there was this--"
"Hold on," I interrupted; "put on by his wife, did you say?"
"Yes, by his wife. Him and her had been keepin' a faro bank, you see,
and they quarreled about it, so she just put a reward on him, and so--"
"Excuse me," I said, "but do you mean to say that this reward was put
on publicly?" to which my friend answered with an air of gentlemanly
boredom at being interrupted to gratify my thirst for irrelevant
detail:--
"Oh, no, not publicly. She just mentioned it to six or eight intimate
personal friends."
"Go on," I responded, somewhat overcome by this instance of the
primitive simplicity with which New Mexican matrimonial disputes were
managed, and he continued:--
"Well, two men come ridin' in to see me to borrow my guns. My guns was
Colt's self-cockers. It was a new thing then, and they was the only
ones in town. These come to me, and 'Simpson,' says they, 'we want to
borrow your guns; we are goin' to kill Fowler.'
"'Hold on for a moment,' said I, 'I am willin' to lend you them guns,
but I ain't goin' to know what you'r' goin' to do with them, no, sir;
but of course you can have the guns.'" Here my friend's face lightened
pleasantly, and he continued:--
"Well, you may easily believe I felt surprised next day when Fowler
come ridin' in, and, says he, 'Simpson, here's your guns!' He had shot
them two men! 'Well, Fowler,' says I, 'if I had known them men was
after you, I'd never have let them have the guns nohow,' says I. That
wasn't true, for I did know it, but there was no cause to tell him
that."
I murmured my approval of such prudence, and Simpson continued, his
eyes gradually brightening with the light of agreeable reminiscence:--
"Well, they up and they took Fowler before the justice of peace. The
justice of the peace was a Turk."
"Now, Simpson, what do you mean by that?" I interrupted.
"Well, he come from Turkey," said Simpson, and I again sank back,
wondering briefly what particular variety of Mediterranean outcast had
drifted down to Mexico to be made a justice of the peace. Simpson
laughed and continued: "That Fowler was a funny fellow. The Turk, he
committed Fowler, and Fowler, he riz up and knocked him down and
tromped all over him and made him let him go!"
"That was an appeal to a higher law," I observed. Simpson assented
cheerily, and continued:--
"Well, that Turk, he got nervous for fear Fowler was goin' to kill him,
and so he comes to me and offers me twenty-five dollars a day to
protect him from Fowler; and I went to Fowler, and 'Fowler,' says I,
'that Turk's offered me twenty-five dollars a day to protect him from
you. Now, I ain't goin' to get shot for no twenty-five dollars a day,
and if you are goin' to kill the Turk, just say so and go and do it;
but if you ain't goin' to kill the Turk, there's no reason why I
shouldn't earn that twenty-five dollars a day!' and Fowler, says he, 'I
ain't goin' to touch the Turk; you just go right ahead and protect
him.'"
So Simpson "protected" the Turk from the imaginary danger of Fowler,
for about a week, at twenty-five dollars a day.
Then one evening he happened to go out and meet Fowler, "and," said he,
"the moment I saw him I know he felt mean, for he begun to shoot at my
feet," which certainly did seem to offer presumptive evidence of
meanness. Simpson continued:--
"I didn't have no gun, so I just had to stand there and take it until
something distracted his attention, and I went off home to get my gun
and kill him, but I wanted to do it perfectly lawful; so I went up to
the mayor (he was playin' poker with one of the judges), and says I to
him, 'Mr. Mayor,' says I, 'I am goin' to shoot Fowler.' And the mayor
he riz out of his chair and he took me by the hand, and says he, 'Mr.
Simpson, if you do I will stand by you'; and the judge he says, 'I'll
go on your bond.'"
Fortified by this cordial approval of the executive and judicial
branches of the government, Mr. Simpson started on his quest.
Meanwhile, however, Fowler had cut up another prominent citizen, and
they already had him in jail. The friends of law and order, feeling
some little distrust as to the permanency of their own zeal for
righteousness, thought it best to settle the matter before there was
time for cooling, and accordingly, headed by Simpson, the mayor, the
judge, the Turk, and other prominent citizens of the town, they broke
into the jail and hanged Fowler. The point in the hanging which
especially tickled my friend's fancy as he lingered over the
reminiscence was one that was rather too ghastly to appeal to our own
sense of humor. In the Turk's mind there still rankled the memory of
Fowler's very unprofessional conduct while figuring before him as a
criminal. Said Simpson, with a merry twinkle of the eye: "Do you know,
that Turk, he was a right funny fellow too after all. Just as the boys
were going to string up Fowler, says he, 'Boys, stop; one moment,
gentlemen,--Mr. Fowler, good-by,' and he blew a kiss to him!"
GUNGA DIN
From "Departmental Ditties," with the permission of A. P. Watt and
Son, London, and Doubleday, Page and Company, New York.
BY RUDYARD KIPLING
You may talk o' gin and beer
When you're quartered safe out 'ere,
An' you're sent to penny-fights an' Aldershot it;
But when it comes to slaughter
You will do your work on water,
An' you'll lick the bloomin' boots of 'im that's got it.
Now in Injia's sunny clime,
Where I used to spend my time
A-servin' of 'Er Majesty the Queen,
Of all them blackfaced crew
The finest man I knew
Was our regimental bhisti, Gunga Din.
He was "Din! Din! Din!
You limping lump o' brick-dust, Gunga Din!
Hi! slippery hitherao!
Water, get it! Panee lao! [Footnote: Bring water swiftly.]
You squidgy-nosed old idol, Gunga Din."
The uniform 'e wore
Was nothin' much before,
An' rather less than 'arf o' that be'ind,
For a piece o' twisty rag
An' a goatskin water-bag
Was all the field-equipment 'e could find.
When the sweatin' troop-train lay
In a sidin' through the day,
Where the 'eat would make your bloomin' eyebrows crawl,
We shouted "Harry By!" [Footnote: O Brother]
Till our throats were bricky-dry,
Then we wopped 'im 'cause 'e couldn't serve us all.
It was "Din! Din! Din!
You 'eathen, where the mischief 'ave you been?
You put some juldee in it
Or I'll marrow you this minute, [Footnote: Hit you]
If you don't fill up my helmet, Gunga Din!"
'E would dot an' carry one
Till the longest day was done;
An' 'e didn't seem to know the use o' fear.
If we charged or broke or cut,
You could bet your bloomin' nut,
'E'd be waitin' fifty paces right flank rear.
With 'is mussick [Footnote: Water skin] on 'is back,
'E would skip with our attack,
An' watch us till the bugles made "Retire,"
An' for all 'is dirty 'ide
'E was white, clear white, inside
When 'e went to tend the wounded under fire!
It was "Din! Din! Din!"
With the bullets kickin' dust-spots on the green.
When the cartridges ran out,
You could hear the front-files shout,
"Hi! ammunition-mules an' Gunga Din!"
I sha'n't forgit the night
When I dropped be'ind the fight
With a bullet where my belt-plate should 'a' been.
I was chokin' mad with thirst,
An' the man that spied me first
Was our good old grinnin', gruntin' Gunga Din.
'E lifted up my 'ead,
An' he plugged me where I bled,
An' 'e guv me 'arf-a-pint o' water-green:
It was crawlin' and it stunk,
But of all the drinks I've drunk,
I'm gratefullest to one from Gunga Din.
It was "Din! Din! Din!"
'Ere's a beggar with a bullet through 'is spleen;
'E's chawin' up the ground,
An' 'e's kickin' all around:
"For Gawd's sake git the water, Gunga Din!"
'E carried me away
To where a dooli lay,
An' a bullet come an' drilled the beggar clean.
'E put me safe inside,
An' just before 'e died:
"I 'ope you liked your drink," sez Gunga Din.
So I'll meet 'im later on
At the place where 'e is gone--
Where it's always double drill and no canteen;
'E'll be squattin' on the coals,
Givin' drink to poor damned souls,
An' I'll get a swig in hell from Gunga Din!
Yes, Din! Din! Din!
You Lazarushian-leather Gunga Din!
Though I've belted you and flayed you,
By the living Gawd that made you,
You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din!
ADDRESS OF SERGEANT BUZFUZ
From "The Pickwick Papers"
BY CHARLES DICKENS
Sergeant Buzfuz rose with all the majesty and dignity which the grave
nature of the proceedings demanded, and having whispered to Dodson, and
conferred briefly with Fogg, pulled his gown over his shoulders,
settled his wig, and addressed the jury.
Sergeant Buzfuz began by saying that never, in the whole course of his
professional experience,--never, from the very first moment of his
applying himself to the study and practice of the law, had he
approached a case with such a heavy sense of the responsibility imposed
upon him,--a responsibility he could never have supported, were he not
buoyed up and sustained by a conviction, so strong that it amounted to
positive certainty, that the cause of truth and justice, or, in other
words, the cause of his much-injured and most oppressed client,
_must_ prevail with the high-minded and intelligent dozen of men
whom he now saw in that box before him.
Counsel always begin in this way, because it puts the jury on the best
terms with themselves, and makes them think what sharp fellows they
must be. A visible effect was produced immediately; several jurymen
beginning to take voluminous notes.
"The plaintiff is a widow; yes, gentlemen, a widow. The late Mr.
Bardell, after enjoying, for many years, the esteem and confidence of
his sovereign, as one of the guardians of his royal revenues, glided
almost imperceptibly from the world, to seek elsewhere for that repose
and peace which a custom-house can never afford."
This was a pathetic description of the decease of Mr. Bardell, who had
been knocked on the head with a quart-pot in a public-house cellar.
"Of this man Pickwick I will say little; the subject presents but few
attractions; and I, gentlemen, am not the man, nor are you, gentlemen,
the men, to delight in the contemplation of revolting heartlessness and
of systematic villainy."
Here Mr. Pickwick, who had been writhing in silence, gave a violent
start, as if some vague idea of assaulting Sergeant Buzfuz, in the
august presence of justice and law, suggested itself to his mind.
"I say systematic villainy, gentlemen," said Sergeant Buzfuz, looking
through Mr. Pickwick, and talking _at_ him, "and when I say
systematic villainy, let me tell the defendant, Pickwick,--if he be in
court, as I am informed he is,--that it would have been more decent in
him, more becoming, in better judgment, and in better taste, if he had
stopped away.