In this world-crisis the American people need to search their hearts and
determine whether their ideals of peace are based on softness,
effeminacy, disinclination to exertion and sacrifice, love of ease and
pleasure, or upon absolute principle. In either case, we must arouse
ourselves and cast off sloth. Peace is not to be had except with
righteousness. The will to peace must be buttressed in strength, and not
in weakness. In the present temper of the world, international
friendship doesn’t seem to count. The nations have lapsed into sheer
materialism. Each one is seeking its own aims and interests. Such
alliances as exist are made because each member of the alliance believes
that its interests will be better served by that combination than by any
other. Every one of the lesser states of Europe not already engaged in
the war is striving anxiously to determine on which side its bread is
buttered—that is whether continued neutrality or active participation on
one side or the other will best serve its turn.
The proper policy of the United States is neutrality, but we will gain
nothing by toadying to one belligerent or another. Our treatment by the
victor in the war, if the war ends in victory for one side or the other,
will not be gauged by the friendship we have displayed, or the
disappointment which our conduct has occasioned, but by our strength or
weakness. We will have to rely upon our own resources and not upon
anybody’s favor. Our aim as a nation should be, first to preserve our
standards of honor and independence. We should truckle to no one. Next,
to do absolute justice and to uphold the standard of humanity. We may
not be able to prevent any modification of international law or changes
in international rules of warfare, in view of vastly changed conditions,
but we can insist upon the respect due to us as a great nation.
The United States has a legitimate “place in the sun,” and it must
maintain that place morally also physically if need be. It is a time of
human convulsion when any display of weakness and timidity will invite
destruction.