were displayed in a spirit of devotion to a lofty ideal, and not for
material gain. The average man who fought in our armies during the
Civil War could have gained much more money if he had stayed in civil
life. When the end came his sole reward was to feel that the Union
had been saved, and the flag which had been rent in sunder once more
made whole. Nothing was more noteworthy than the marvelous way in
which, once the war was ended, the great armies which had fought it
to a triumphant conclusion disbanded, and were instantly lost in the
current of our civil life. The soldier turned at once to the task
of earning his own livelihood. But he carried within him memories of
inestimable benefit to himself, and he bequeathed to us who come after
him the priceless heritage of his example. From the major-general to
the private in the ranks each came back to civil life with the proud
consciousness of duty well done, and all with a feeling of community
of interest which they could have gained in no other way. Each knew
what work was, what danger was. Each came back with his own power for
labor and endurance strengthened, and yet with his sympathy for others
quickened. From that day to this the men who fought in the great war
have inevitably had in them a spirit to which appeal for any lofty
cause could be made with the confident knowledge that there would
be immediate and eager response. In the breasts of the men who saw
Appomattox there was no room for the growth of the jealous, greedy,
sullen envy which makes anarchy, which has bred the red Commune. They
had gone down to the root of things, and knew how to judge and value,
each man his neighbor, whether that neighbor was rich or poor, neither
envying him because of his wealth nor despising him because of his
poverty.
The lesson taught by the great war could only be imperfectly taught by
any lesser war. Nevertheless, not a little good has been done even by
such struggles as that which ended in ensuring independence to Cuba,
and in giving to the Philippines a freedom to which they could never
have attained had we permitted them to fall into anarchy or under
tyranny. It was a pleasant thing to see the way in which men came
forward from every walk of life, from every section of the country,
as soon as the call to arms occurred. The need was small and easily
met, and not one in a hundred of the ardent young fellows who pressed
forward to enter the army had a chance to see any service whatever. But
it was good to see that the spirit of ’61 had not been lost. Perhaps
the best feature of the whole movement was the eagerness with which
men went into the ranks, anxious only to serve their country and to do
their share of the work without regard to anything in the way of reward
or position; for, gentlemen, it is upon the efficiency of the enlisted
man, upon the way he does his duty, that the efficiency of the whole
army really depends, and the prime work of the officer is, after all,
only to develop, foster, and direct the good qualities of the men under
him.
Well, this rush into the ranks not only had a very good side, but
also at times an amusing side. I remember one characteristic incident
which occurred on board one of our naval vessels. Several of these
vessels were officered and manned chiefly from the naval militia of
the different States, the commander and executive officer and a few
veterans here and there among the crew being the only ones that came
from the regular service. The naval militia contained every type of
man, from bankers with a taste for yachting to longshoremen, and they
all went in and did their best. But of course it was a little hard
for some of them to adjust themselves to their surroundings. One of
the vessels in question, toward the end of the war, returned from the
Spanish Main and anchored in one of our big ports. Early one morning
a hard-looking and seemingly rather dejected member of the crew was
engaged in “squeegeeing” the quarter-deck, when the captain came up
and, noticing a large and handsome yacht near by (I shall not use the
real name of the yacht), remarked to himself: “I wonder what boat that
is?” The man with the squeegee touched his cap and said in answer:
“The _Dawn_, sir.” “How do you know that?” quoth the captain, looking
at him. “Because I own her, sir,” responded the man with the squeegee,
again touching his cap; and the conversation ended.
Now, it was a first-rate thing for that man himself to have served his
trick, not merely as the man behind the gun, but as the man with the
squeegee; and is was a mighty good thing for the country that he should
do it. In our volunteer regiments we had scores of enlisted men of
independent means serving under officers many of whom were dependent
for their daily bread upon the work of their hands or brain from month
to month. It was a good thing for both classes to be brought together
on such terms. It showed that we of this generation had not wholly
forgotten the lesson taught by you who fought to a finish the great
Civil War. And there is no danger to the future of this country just
so long as that lesson is remembered in all its bearings, civil and
military.
Your history, rightly studied, will teach us the time-worn truth
that in war, as in peace, we need chiefly the every-day, commonplace
virtues, and above all, an unflagging sense of duty. Yet in dwelling
upon the lessons for our ordinary conduct which we can learn from your
experience, we must never forget that it also shows us what should be
our model in times that are not ordinary, in the times that try men’s
souls. We need to have within us the splendid heroic virtues which
alone avail in the mighty crises, the terrible catastrophes whereby
a nation is either purified as if by fire, or else consumed forever
in the flames. When you of the Civil War sprang forward at Abraham
Lincoln’s call to put all that life holds dear, and life itself, in the
scale with the nation’s honor, you were able to do what you did because
you had in you not only the qualities that make good citizens, but in
addition the high and intense traits, the deep passion and enthusiasm,
which go to make up those heroes who are fit to deal with iron days.
We can never as a nation afford to forget that, back of our reason, our
understanding, and our common-sense, there must lie, in full strength,
the tremendous fundamental passions, which are not often needed, but
which every truly great race must have as a well-spring of motive in
time of need.
I shall end by quoting to you in substance certain words from a
minister of the gospel, a most witty man, who was also a philosopher
and a man of profound wisdom, Sydney Smith:
“The history of the world shows us that men are not to be counted by
their numbers, but by the fire and vigor of their passions; by their
deep sense of injury; by their memory of past glory; by their eagerness
for fresh fame; by their clear and steady resolution of either ceasing
to live, or of achieving a particular object, which, when it is once
formed, strikes off a load of manacles and chains, and gives free
space to all heavenly and heroic feelings. All great and extraordinary
actions come from the heart. There are seasons in human affairs when
qualities, fit enough to conduct the common business of life, are
feeble and useless, when men must trust to emotion for that safety
which reason at such times can never give. These are the feelings
which led the ten thousand over the Carduchian mountains; these are
the feelings by which a handful of Greeks broke in pieces the power
of Persia; and in the fens of the Dutch and in the mountains of the
Swiss these feelings defended happiness and revenged the oppressions of
man! God calls all the passions out in their keenness and vigor for the
present safety of mankind, anger and revenge and the heroic mind, and a
readiness to suffer—all the secret strength, all the invisible array
of the feelings—all that nature has reserved for the great scenes of
the world. When the usual hopes and the common aids of man are all
gone, nothing remains under God but those passions which have often
proved the best ministers of His purpose and the surest protectors of
the world.”
NATIONAL DUTIES
ADDRESS AT MINNESOTA STATE FAIR, SEPT. 2, 1901
In his admirable series of studies of twentieth-century problems, Dr.
Lyman Abbott has pointed out that we are a nation of pioneers; that the
first colonists to our shores were pioneers, and that pioneers selected
out from among the descendants of these early pioneers, mingled with
others selected afresh from the Old World, pushed westward into the
wilderness and laid the foundations for new commonwealths. They were
men of hope and expectation, of enterprise and energy; for the men of
dull content or more dull despair had no part in the great movement
into and across the New World. Our country has been populated by
pioneers, and therefore it has in it more energy, more enterprise, more
expansive power than any other in the wide world.
You whom I am now addressing stand for the most part but one generation
removed from these pioneers. You are typical Americans, for you have
done the great, the characteristic, the typical work of our American
life. In making homes and carving out careers for yourselves and your
children, you have built up this State. Throughout our history the
success of the home-maker has been but another name for the upbuilding
of the nation. The men who with axe in the forests and pick in the
mountains and plow on the prairies pushed to completion the dominion of
our people over the American wilderness have given the definite shape
to our nation. They have shown the qualities of daring, endurance,
and far-sightedness, of eager desire for victory and stubborn refusal
to accept defeat, which go to make up the essential manliness of the
American character. Above all, they have recognized in practical form
the fundamental law of success in American life—the law of worthy
work, the law of high, resolute endeavor. We have but little room among
our people for the timid, the irresolute, and the idle; and it is no
less true that there is scant room in the world at large for the nation
with mighty thews that dares not to be great.
Surely in speaking to the sons of the men who actually did the rough
and hard and infinitely glorious work of making the great Northwest
what it now is, I need hardly insist upon the righteousness of this
doctrine. In your own vigorous lives you show by every act how scant is
your patience with those who do not see in the life of effort the life
supremely worth living. Sometimes we hear those who do not work spoken
of with envy. Surely the wilfully idle need arouse in the breast of a
healthy man no emotion stronger than that of contempt—at the outside
no emotion stronger than angry contempt. The feeling of envy would have
in it an admission of inferiority on our part, to which the men who
know not the sterner joys of life are not entitled. Poverty is a bitter
thing; but it is not as bitter as the existence of restless vacuity
and physical, moral, and intellectual flabbiness, to which those doom
themselves who elect to spend all their years in that vainest of all
vain pursuits—the pursuit of mere pleasure as a sufficient end in
itself. The wilfully idle man, like the wilfully barren woman, has no
place in a sane, healthy, and vigorous community. Moreover, the gross
and hideous selfishness for which each stands defeats even its own
miserable aims. Exactly as infinitely the happiest woman is she who has
borne and brought up many healthy children, so infinitely the happiest
man is he who has toiled hard and successfully in his life-work. The
work may be done in a thousand different ways—with the brain or the
hands, in the study, the field, or the workshop—if it is honest work,
honestly done and well worth doing, that is all we have a right to ask.
Every father and mother here, if they are wise, will bring up their
children not to shirk difficulties, but to meet them and overcome them;
not to strive after a life of ignoble ease, but to strive to do their
duty, first to themselves and their families, and then to the whole
State; and this duty must inevitably take the shape of work in some
form or other. You, the sons of the pioneers, if you are true to your
ancestry, must make your lives as worthy as they made theirs. They
sought for true success, and therefore they did not seek ease. They
knew that success comes only to those who lead the life of endeavor.
It seems to me that the simple acceptance of this fundamental fact
of American life, this acknowledgment that the law of work is the
fundamental law of our being, will help us to start aright in facing
not a few of the problems that confront us from without and from
within. As regards internal affairs, it should teach us the prime need
of remembering that, after all has been said and done, the chief factor
in any man’s success or failure must be his own character—that is, the
sum of his common-sense, his courage, his virile energy and capacity.
Nothing can take the place of this individual factor.
I do not for a moment mean that much can not be done to supplement
it. Besides each one of us working individually, all of us have got
to work together. We can not possibly do our best work as a nation
unless all of us know how to act in combination as well as how to act
each individually for himself. The acting in combination can take many
forms, but of course its most effective form must be when it comes
in the shape of law—that is, of action by the community as a whole
through the law-making body.
But it is not possible ever to ensure prosperity merely by law.
Something for good can be done by law, and a bad law can do an
infinity of mischief; but, after all, the best law can only prevent
wrong and injustice, and give to the thrifty, the far-seeing, and the
hard-working a chance to exercise to best advantage their special
and peculiar abilities. No hard-and-fast rule can be laid down as to
where our legislation shall stop in interfering between man and man,
between interest and interest. All that can be said is that it is
highly undesirable, on the one hand, to weaken individual initiative,
and, on the other hand, that in a constantly increasing number of cases
we shall find it necessary in the future to shackle cunning as in
the past we have shackled force. It is not only highly desirable but
necessary that there should be legislation which shall carefully shield
the interests of wage-workers, and which shall discriminate in favor
of the honest and humane employer by removing the disadvantage under
which he stands when compared with unscrupulous competitors who have no
conscience and will do right only under fear of punishment.
Nor can legislation stop only with what are termed labor questions.
The vast individual and corporate fortunes, the vast combinations of
capital, which have marked the development of our industrial system,
create new conditions and necessitate a change from the old attitude
of the State and the nation toward property. It is probably true that
the large majority of the fortunes that now exist in this country have
been amassed not by injuring our people, but as an incident to the
conferring of great benefits upon the community; and this, no matter
what may have been the conscious purpose of those amassing them. There
is but the scantiest justification for most of the outcry against the
men of wealth _as such_; and it ought to be unnecessary to state that
any appeal which directly or indirectly leads to suspicion and hatred
among ourselves, which tends to limit opportunity, and therefore to
shut the door of success against poor men of talent, and, finally,
which entails the possibility of lawlessness and violence, is an attack
upon the fundamental properties of American citizenship. Our interests
are at bottom common; in the long run we go up or go down together.
Yet more and more it is evident that the State, and if necessary the
Nation, must possess the right of supervision and control as regards
the great corporations which are its creatures, particularly as regards
the great business combinations which derive a portion of their
importance from the existence of some monopolistic tendency. The right
should be exercised with caution and self-restraint; but it should
exist, so that it may be invoked if the need arises.
So much for our duties, each to himself and each to his neighbor,
within the limits of our own country. But our country, as it strides
forward with ever-increasing rapidity to a foremost place among the
world powers, must necessarily find, more and more, that it has world
duties also. There are excellent people who believe that we can shirk
these duties and yet retain our self-respect; but these good people are
in error. Other good people seek to deter us from treading the path of
hard but lofty duty by bidding us remember that all nations that have
achieved greatness, that have expanded and played their part as world
powers, have in the end passed away. So they have; and so have all
others. The weak and the stationary have vanished as surely as, and
more rapidly than, those whose citizens felt within them the lift that
impels generous souls to great and noble effort. This is only another
way of stating the universal law of death, which is itself part of the
universal law of life. The man who works, the man who does great deeds,
in the end dies as surely as the veriest idler who cumbers the earth’s
surface; but he leaves behind him the great fact that he has done his
work well. So it is with nations. While the nation that has dared to be
great, that has had the will and the power to change the destiny of
the ages, in the end must die, yet no less surely the nation that has
played the part of the weakling must also die; and whereas the nation
that has done nothing leaves nothing behind it, the nation that has
done a great work really continues, though in changed form, to live
for evermore. The Roman has passed away exactly as all the nations of
antiquity which did not expand when he expanded have passed away; but
their very memory has vanished, while he himself is still a living
force throughout the wide world in our entire civilization of to-day,
and will so continue through countless generations, through untold ages.
It is because we believe with all our heart and soul in the greatness
of this country, because we feel the thrill of hardy life in our
veins, and are confident that to us is given the privilege of playing
a leading part in the century that has just opened, that we hail with
eager delight the opportunity to do whatever task Providence may
allot us. We admit with all sincerity that our first duty is within
our own household; that we must not merely talk, but act, in favor of
cleanliness and decency and righteousness, in all political, social,
and civic matters. No prosperity and no glory can save a nation that
is rotten at heart. We must ever keep the core of our national being
sound, and see to it that not only our citizens in private life, but,
above all, our statesmen in public life, practice the old, commonplace
virtues which from time immemorial have lain at the root of all true
national well-being. Yet while this is our first duty, it is not our
whole duty. Exactly as each man, while doing first his duty to his wife
and the children within his home, must yet, if he hopes to amount to
much, strive mightily in the world outside his home, so our nation,
while first of all seeing to its own domestic well-being, must not
shrink from playing its part among the great nations without. Our
duty may take many forms in the future as it has taken many forms in
the past. Nor is it possible to lay down a hard-and-fast rule for all
cases. We must ever face the fact of our shifting national needs, of
the always-changing opportunities that present themselves. But we may
be certain of one thing: whether we wish it or not, we can not avoid
hereafter having duties to do in the face of other nations. All that we
can do is to settle whether we shall perform these duties well or ill.
Right here let me make as vigorous a plea as I know how in favor of
saying nothing that we do not mean, and of acting without hesitation up
to whatever we say. A good many of you are probably acquainted with the
old proverb: “Speak softly and carry a big stick—you will go far.” If
a man continually blusters, if he lacks civility, a big stick will not
save him from trouble; and neither will speaking softly avail, if back
of the softness there does not lie strength, power. In private life
there are few beings more obnoxious than the man who is always loudly
boasting; and if the boaster is not prepared to back up his words his
position becomes absolutely contemptible. So it is with the nation. It
is both foolish and undignified to indulge in undue self-glorification,
and, above all, in loose-tongued denunciation of other peoples.
Whenever on any point we come in contact with a foreign power, I hope
that we shall always strive to speak courteously and respectfully
of that foreign power. Let us make it evident that we intend to do
justice. Then let us make it equally evident that we will not tolerate
injustice being done to us in return. Let us further make it evident
that we use no words which we are not prepared to back up with deeds,
and that while our speech is always moderate, we are ready and willing
to make it good. Such an attitude will be the surest possible guarantee
of that self-respecting peace, the attainment of which is and must ever
be the prime aim of a self-governing people.
This is the attitude we should take as regards the Monroe Doctrine.
There is not the least need of blustering about it. Still less should
it be used as a pretext for our own aggrandizement at the expense of
any other American state. But, most emphatically, we must make it
evident that we intend on this point ever to maintain the old American
position. Indeed, it is hard to understand how any man can take any
other position, now that we are all looking forward to the building
of the Isthmian Canal. The Monroe Doctrine is not international law;
but there is no necessity that it should be. All that is needful is
that it should continue to be a cardinal feature of American policy
on this continent; and the Spanish-American states should, in their
own interests, champion it as strongly as we do. We do not by this
doctrine intend to sanction any policy of aggression by one American
commonwealth at the expense of any other, nor any policy of commercial
discrimination against any foreign power whatsoever. Commercially, as
far as this doctrine is concerned, all we wish is a fair field and no
favor; but if we are wise we shall strenuously insist that under no
pretext whatsoever shall there be any territorial aggrandizement on
American soil by any European power, and this, no matter what form the
territorial aggrandizement may take.
We most earnestly hope and believe that the chance of our having any
hostile military complication with any foreign power is very small. But
that there will come a strain, a jar, here and there, from commercial
and agricultural—that is, from industrial—competition, is almost
inevitable. Here again we must remember that our first duty is to our
own people, and yet that we can best get justice by doing justice. We
must continue the policy that has been so brilliantly successful in
the past, and so shape our economic system as to give every advantage
to the skill, energy, and intelligence of our farmers, merchants,
manufacturers, and wage-workers; and yet we must also remember, in
dealing with other nations, that benefits must be given where benefits
are sought. It is not possible to dogmatize as to the exact way of
attaining this end, for the exact conditions can not be foretold. In
the long run, one of our prime needs is stability and continuity of
economic policy; and yet, through treaty or by direct legislation, it
may, at least in certain cases, become advantageous to supplement our
present policy by a system of reciprocal benefit and obligation.