and each race forever shifts its outward shape, and yet at the bottom
it is always the same. There are dangers of peace and dangers of war;
dangers of excess in militarism and of excess by the avoidance of duty
that implies militarism; dangers of slow dry-rot, and dangers which
become acute only in great crises. When these crises come, the nation
will triumph or sink accordingly as it produces or fails to produce
statesmen like Lincoln and soldiers like Grant, and accordingly as
it does or does not back them in their efforts. We do not need men of
unsteady brilliancy or erratic power—unbalanced men. The men we need
are the men of strong, earnest, solid character—the men who possess
the homely virtues, and who to these virtues add rugged courage,
rugged honesty, and high resolve. Grant, with his self-poise, his
self-command, his self-mastery; Grant, who loved peace and did not
fear war, who would not draw the sword if he could honorably keep it
sheathed, but who, when once he had drawn it, would not return it to
the sheath until the weary years had brought the blood-won victory;
Grant, who had no thought after the fight was won save of leading the
life led by other Americans, and who aspired to the Presidency only as
Zachary Taylor or Andrew Jackson had aspired to it—Grant was of a type
upon which the men of to-day can well afford to model themselves. As I
have already said, our first duty, our most important work, is setting
our own house in order. We must be true to ourselves, or else, in the
long run, we shall be false to all others. The Republic can not stand
if honesty and decency do not prevail alike in public and private life;
if we do not set ourselves seriously at work to solve the tremendous
social problems forced upon us by the far-sweeping industrial changes
of the last two generations.
But in considering the life of Grant it is peculiarly appropriate to
remember that, besides the regeneration in political and social life
within our own borders, we must also face what has come upon us from
without. No friendliness with other nations, no good will for them or
by them, can take the place of national self-reliance. No alliance, no
inoffensive conduct on our part, would supply, in time of need, the
failure in ability to hold our own with the strong hand. We must work
out our own destiny by our own strength. A vigorous young nation like
ours does not always stand still. Now and then there comes a time when
it is sure either to shrink or to expand. Grant saw to it that we did
not shrink, and therefore we had to expand when the inevitable moment
came.
Great duties face us in the islands where the Stars and Stripes now
float in place of the arrogant flag of Spain. As we perform those
duties well or ill, so will we, in large part, determine our right to
a place among the great nations of the earth. We have got to meet them
in the very spirit of Grant. If we are frightened at the task, above
all, if we are cowed or disheartened by any check, or by the clamor of
the sensation-monger, we shall show ourselves weaklings unfit to invoke
the memories of the stalwart men who fought to a finish the great
Civil War. If we do not rule wisely, and if our rule is not in the
interest of the peoples who have come under our guardianship, then we
had best never to have begun the effort at all. As a nation we shall
have to choose our representatives in these islands as carefully as
Grant chose the generals who were to serve at the vital points under
him. Fortunately, so far the choice has been most wise. No nation has
ever sent a better man than we sent to Cuba when President McKinley
appointed as governor-general of that island Leonard Wood; and now, in
sending Judge Taft at the head of the Commission to the Philippines,
the President has again chosen the very best man to be found in all the
United States for the purpose in view.
Part of Grant’s great strength lay in the fact that he faced facts as
they were, and not as he wished they might be. He was not originally
an abolitionist, and he probably could not originally have defined his
views as to State sovereignty; but when the Civil War was on, he saw
that the only thing to do was to fight it to a finish and establish by
force of arms the Constitutional right to put down rebellion. It is
just the same thing nowadays with expansion. It has come, and it has
come to stay, whether we wish it or not. Certain duties have fallen to
us as a legacy of the war with Spain, and we can not avoid performing
them. All we can decide is whether we will perform them well or ill. We
can not leave the Philippines. We have got to stay there, establish
order, and then give the inhabitants as much self-government as they
show they can use to advantage. We can not run away if we would. We
have got to see the work through, because we are not a nation of
weaklings. We are strong men, and we intend to do our duty.
To do our duty—that is the sum and substance of the whole matter.
We are not trying to win glory. We are not trying to do anything
especially brilliant or unusual. We are setting ourselves vigorously at
each task as the task arises, and we are trying to face each difficulty
as Grant faced innumerable and infinitely greater difficulties. The
sure way to succeed is to set about our work in the spirit that
marked the great soldier whose life we this day celebrate: the spirit
of devotion to duty, of determination to deal fairly, justly, and
fearlessly with all men, and of iron resolution never to abandon
any task once begun until it has been brought to a successful and
triumphant conclusion.
THE TWO AMERICAS
SPEECH AT THE FORMAL OPENING OF THE PAN-AMERICAN EXPOSITION, BUFFALO,
MAY 20, 1901
To-day we formally open this great exposition by the shores of the
mighty inland seas of the North, where all the peoples of the Western
Hemisphere have joined to show what they have done in art, science, and
industrial invention, what they have been able to accomplish with their
manifold resources and their infinitely varied individual and national
qualities. Such an exposition, held at the opening of this new century,
inevitably suggests two trains of thought. It should make us think
seriously and solemnly of our several duties to one another as citizens
of the different nations of this Western Hemisphere, and also of our
duties each to the nation to which he personally belongs.
The century upon which we have just entered must inevitably be one of
tremendous triumph or of tremendous failure for the whole human race,
because, to an infinitely greater extent than ever before, humanity is
knit together in all its parts, for weal or woe. All about us there are
innumerable tendencies that tell for good, and innumerable tendencies
that tell for evil. It is, of course, a mere truism to say that our
own acts must determine which set of tendencies shall overcome the
other. In order to act wisely we must first see clearly. There is no
place among us for the mere pessimist; no man who looks at life with
a vision that sees all things black or gray can do aught healthful in
molding the destiny of a mighty and vigorous people. But there is just
as little use for the foolish optimist who refuses to face the many and
real evils that exist, and who fails to see that the only way to ensure
the triumph of righteousness in the future is to war against all that
is base, weak, and unlovely in the present.
There are certain things so obvious as to seem commonplace, which,
nevertheless, must be kept constantly before us if we are to preserve
our just sense of proportion. This twentieth century is big with
the fate of the nations of mankind, because the fate of each is now
interwoven with the fate of all to a degree never even approached in
any previous stage of history. No better proof could be given than by
this very exposition. A century ago no such exposition could have even
been thought of. The larger part of the territory represented here
to-day by so many free nations was not even mapped, and very much of it
was unknown to the hardiest explorer. The influence of America upon Old
World affairs was imponderable. World politics still meant European
politics.
All that is now changed, not merely by what has happened here in
America, but by what has happened elsewhere. It is not necessary for
us here to consider the giant changes which have come elsewhere in
the globe; to treat of the rise in the South Seas of the great free
commonwealths of Australia and New Zealand; of the way in which Japan
has been rejuvenated and has advanced by leaps and bounds to a position
among the leading civilized powers; of the problems, affecting the
major portion of mankind, which call imperiously for solution in parts
of the Old World which, a century ago, were barely known to Europe,
even by rumor. Our present concern is not with the Old World, but with
our own Western Hemisphere, America. We meet to-day, representing the
people of this continent, from the Dominion of Canada in the north, to
Chile and the Argentine in the south; representing peoples who have
traveled far and fast in the last century, because in them has been
practically shown that it is the spirit of adventure which is the maker
of commonwealths; peoples who are learning and striving to put in
practice the vital truth that freedom is the necessary first step, but
only the first step, in successful free government.
During the last century we have on the whole made long strides in
the right direction, but we have very much yet to learn. We all look
forward to the day when there shall be a nearer approximation than
there has ever yet been to the brotherhood of man and the peace of the
world. More and more we are learning that to love one’s country above
all others is in no way incompatible with respecting and wishing well
to all others, and that, as between man and man, so between nation
and nation, there should live the great law of right. These are the
goals toward which we strive; and let us at least earnestly endeavor
to realize them here on this continent. From Hudson Bay to the Straits
of Magellan, we, the men of the two Americas, have been conquering the
wilderness, carving it into state and province, and seeking to build
up in state and province governments which shall combine industrial
prosperity and moral well-being. Let us ever most vividly remember the
falsity of the belief that any one of us is to be permanently benefited
by the hurt of another. Let us strive to have our public men treat as
axiomatic the truth that it is for the interest of every commonwealth
in the Western Hemisphere to see every other commonwealth grow in
riches and in happiness, in material wealth and in the sober, strong,
self-respecting manliness, without which material wealth avails so
little.
To-day on behalf of the United States I welcome you here—you, our
brothers of the North and you, our brothers of the South; we wish you
well; we wish you all prosperity; and we say to you that we earnestly
hope for your well-being, not only for your own sakes, but also for our
own, for it is a benefit to each of us to have the others do well. The
relations between us now are those of cordial friendship, and it is
to the interest of all alike that this friendship should ever remain
unbroken. Nor is there the least chance of its being broken, provided
only that all of us alike act with full recognition of the vital need
that each should realize that his own interests can best be served by
serving the interests of others.
You, men of Canada, are doing substantially the same work that we of
this Republic are doing, and face substantially the same problems that
we also face. Yours is the world of the merchant, the manufacturer and
mechanic, the farmer, the ranchman, and the miner; you are subduing the
prairie and the forest, tilling farm-land, building cities, striving
to raise ever higher the standard of right, to bring ever nearer the
day when true justice shall obtain between man and man; and we wish
Godspeed to you and yours, and may the kindliest ties of good will
always exist between us.
To you of the republics south of us, I wish to say a special word.
I believe with all my heart in the Monroe Doctrine. This doctrine
is not to be invoked for the aggrandizement of any one of us here
on this continent at the expense of any one else on this continent.
It should be regarded simply as a great international Pan-American
policy, vital to the interests of all of us. The United States has, and
ought to have, and must ever have, only the desire to see her sister
commonwealths in the Western Hemisphere continue to flourish, and the
determination that no Old World power shall acquire new territory here
on this Western Continent. We of the two Americas must be left to work
out our own salvation along our own lines; and if we are wise we will
make it understood as a cardinal feature of our joint foreign policy
that, on the one hand, we will not submit to territorial aggrandizement
on this continent by any Old World power, and that, on the other hand,
among ourselves each nation must scrupulously regard the rights and
interests of the others, so that, instead of any one of us committing
the criminal folly of trying to rise at the expense of our neighbors,
we shall all strive upward in honest and manly brotherhood, shoulder to
shoulder.
A word now especially to my own fellow-countrymen. I think that we
have all of us reason to be satisfied with the showing made in this
Exposition, as in the great expositions of the past, of the results of
the enterprise, the shrewd daring, the business energy and capacity,
and the artistic and, above all, the wonderful mechanical skill and
inventiveness of our people. In all of this we have legitimate cause
to feel a noble pride, and a still nobler pride in the showing made of
what we have done in such matters as our system of widespread popular
education and in the field of philanthropy, especially in that best
kind of philanthropy which teaches each man to help lift both himself
and his neighbor by joining with that neighbor hand in hand in a common
effort for the common good.
But we should err greatly, we should err in the most fatal of ways,
by wilful blindness to whatever is not pleasant, if, while justly
proud of our achievements, we failed to realize that we had plenty of
shortcomings to remedy, that there are terrible problems before us,
which we must work out right, under the gravest national penalties
if we fail. It can not be too often repeated that there is no patent
device for securing good government; that after all is said and done,
after we have given full credit to every scheme for increasing our
material prosperity, to every effort of the lawmaker to provide a
system under which each man shall be best secured in his own rights,
it yet remains true that the great factor in working out the success
of this giant Republic of the Western Continent must be the possession
of those qualities of essential virtue and essential manliness which
have built up every great and mighty people of the past, and the lack
of which always has brought, and always will bring, the proudest of
nations crashing down to ruin. Here in this Exposition, on the Stadium
and on the pylons of the bridge, you have written certain sentences to
which we all must subscribe, and to which we must live up if we are
in any way or measure to do our duty: “Who shuns the dust and sweat
of the contest, on his brow falls not the cool shade of the olive,”
and “A free State exists only in the virtue of the citizen.” We all
accept these statements in theory; but if we do not live up to them in
practice, then there is no health in us. Take the two together always.
In our eager, restless life of effort but little can be done by that
cloistered virtue of which Milton spoke with such fine contempt. We
need the rough, strong qualities that make a man fit to play his part
well among men. Yet we need to remember even more that no ability, no
strength and force, no power of intellect or power of wealth, shall
avail us, if we have not the root of right living in us, if we do not
pay more than a mere lip-loyalty to the old, old commonplace virtues,
which stand at the foundation of all social and political well-being.
It is easy to say what we ought to do, but it is hard to do it; and yet
no scheme can be devised which will save us from the need of doing just
this hard work. Not merely must each of us strive to do his duty; in
addition it is imperatively necessary also to establish a strong and
intelligent public opinion which will require each to do his duty. If
any man here falls short he should not only feel ashamed of himself,
but in some way he ought also to be made conscious of the condemnation
of his fellows, and this no matter what form his shortcoming takes.
Doing our duty is, of course, incumbent on every one of us alike; yet
the heaviest blame for dereliction should fall on the man who sins
against the light, the man to whom much has been given, and from whom,
therefore, we have a right to expect much in return. We should hold to
a peculiarly rigid accountability those men who in public life, or as
editors of great papers, or as owners of vast fortunes, or as leaders
and molders of opinion in the pulpit, or on the platform, or at the
bar, are guilty of wrongdoing, no matter what form that wrongdoing may
take.
In addition, however, to the problems which, under protean shapes,
are yet fundamentally the same for all nations and for all times,
there are others which especially need our attention, because they are
the especial productions of our present industrial civilization. The
tremendous industrial development of the nineteenth century has not
only conferred great benefits upon us of the twentieth, but it has
also exposed us to grave dangers. This highly complex movement has had
many sides, some good and some bad, and has produced an absolutely
novel set of phenomena. To secure from them the best results will tax
to the utmost the resources of the statesman, the economist, and the
social reformer. There has been an immense relative growth of urban
population, and, in consequence, an immense growth of the body of
wages-workers, together with an accumulation of enormous fortunes which
more and more tend to express their power through great corporations
that are themselves guided by some master mind of the business world.
As a result, we are confronted by a formidable series of perplexing
problems, with which it is absolutely necessary to deal, and yet with
which it is not merely useless, but in the highest degree unwise and
dangerous to deal, save with wisdom, insight, and self-restraint.
There are certain truths which are so commonplace as to be axiomatic,
and yet so important that we can not keep them too vividly before our
minds. The true welfare of the nation is indissolubly bound up with
the welfare of the farmer and the wage-worker—of the man who tills
the soil, and of the mechanic, the handicraftsman, the laborer. If we
can ensure the prosperity of these two classes we need not trouble
ourselves about the prosperity of the rest, for that will follow as a
matter of course.
On the other hand, it is equally true that the prosperity of any of
us can best be attained by measures that will promote the prosperity
of all. The poorest motto upon which an American can act is the motto
of “Some men down,” and the safest to follow is that of “All men up.”
A good deal can and ought to be done by law. For instance, the State
and, if necessary, the nation should by law assume ample power of
supervising and regulating the acts of any corporation (which can be
but its creature), and generally of those immense business enterprises
which exist only because of the safety and protection to property
guaranteed by our system of government. Yet it is equally true that,
while this power should exist, it should be used sparingly and with
self-restraint. Modern industrial competition is very keen between
nation and nation, and now that our country is striding forward with
the pace of a giant to take the leading position in the international
industrial world, we should beware how we fetter our limbs, how
we cramp our Titan strength. While striving to prevent industrial
injustice at home, we must not bring upon ourselves industrial weakness
abroad. This is a task for which we need the finest abilities of the
statesman, the student, the patriot, and the far-seeing lover of
mankind. It is a task in which we shall fail with absolute certainty
if we approach it after having surrendered ourselves to the guidance
of the demagogue, or to the doctrinaire, of the well-meaning man
who thinks feebly, or of the cunning self-seeker who endeavors to
rise by committing that worst of crimes against our people—the
crime of inflaming brother against brother, one American against his
fellow-Americans.
My fellow-countrymen, bad laws are evil things, good laws are
necessary; and a clean, fearless, common-sense administration of the
laws is even more necessary; but what we need most of all is to look
to our own selves to see that our consciences as individuals, that our
collective national conscience, may respond instantly to every appeal
for high action, for lofty and generous endeavor. There must and shall
be no falling off in the national traits of hardihood and manliness;
and we must keep ever bright the love of justice, the spirit of strong
brotherly friendship for one’s fellows, which we hope and believe will
hereafter stand as typical of the men who make up this, the mightiest
Republic upon which the sun has ever shone.
MANHOOD AND STATEHOOD
ADDRESS AT THE QUARTER-CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION OF STATEHOOD IN COLORADO,
AT COLORADO SPRINGS, AUGUST 2, 1901
This anniversary, which marks the completion by Colorado of her first
quarter-century of Statehood, is of interest not only to her sisters,
the States of the Rocky Mountain region, but to our whole country.
With the exception of the admission to Statehood of California, no
other event emphasized in such dramatic fashion the full meaning of the
growth of our country as did the incoming of Colorado.
It is a law of our intellectual development that the greatest and most
important truths, when once we have become thoroughly familiar with
them, often because of that very familiarity grow dim in our minds. The
westward spread of our people across this continent has been so rapid,
and so great has been their success in taming the rugged wilderness,
turning the gray desert into green fertility, and filling the waste and
lonely places with the eager, thronging, crowded life of our industrial
civilization, that we have begun to accept it all as part of the order
of Nature. Moreover, it now seems to us equally a matter of course that
when a sufficient number of the citizens of our common country have
thus entered into and taken possession of some great tract of empty
wilderness, they should be permitted to enter the Union as a State on
an absolute equality with the older States, having the same right both
to manage their own local affairs as they deem best, and to exercise
their full share of control over all the affairs of whatever kind or
sort in which the nation is interested as a whole. The youngest and the
oldest States stand on an exact level in one indissoluble and perpetual
Union.
To us nowadays these processes seem so natural that it is only by a
mental wrench that we conceive of any other as possible. Yet they
are really wholly modern and of purely American development. When, a
century before Colorado became a State, the original thirteen States
began the great experiment of a free and independent Republic on this
continent, the processes which we now accept in such matter-of-course
fashion were looked upon as abnormal and revolutionary. It is our own
success here in America that has brought about the complete alteration
in feeling. The chief factor in producing the Revolution, and later
in producing the War of 1812, was the inability of the mother country
to understand that the freemen who went forth to conquer a continent
should be encouraged in that work, and could not and ought not to be
expected to toil only for the profit or glory of others. When the
first Continental Congress assembled, the British Government, like
every other government of Europe at that time, simply did not know
how to look upon the general question of the progress of the colonies
save from the standpoint of the people who had stayed at home. The
spread of the hardy, venturesome backwoodsmen was to most of the
statesmen of London a matter of anxiety rather than of pride, and
the famous Quebec Act of 1774 was in part designed with the purpose
of keeping the English-speaking settlements permanently east of the
Alleghanies, and preserving the mighty and beautiful valley of the Ohio
as a hunting-ground for savages, a preserve for the great fur-trading
companies; and as late as 1812 this project was partially revived.