_United States Senator from Illinois_
[FROM A RECENT SPEECH IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE]
No democracy was ever founded in any Government of earth that did not
have to fight to continue its existence or maintain its ideals. Hear
Goethe proclaim to Prussia, "Those who have liberty must fight to keep
it." The test of every free land that tries out its worthiness or
unworthiness to exist as a Government of freedom has been its
willingness or refusal to fight and die for its faith. No Government
that has not exhibited a capacity to sacrifice all it has for the theory
for which it was founded, and to prove its ability to protect and
perpetuate the institutions it has created, has ever yet existed for a
length of time sufficient to be recorded in history as having fostered
liberty or transmitted democracy to men. No Government has yet been
accorded by civilization a place among the nations of the earth until it
had first demonstrated its worthiness to administer justice by doing
justice to itself, and then to prove its power in conflict to overcome
its natural enemies, whether from within or without. * * *
Our United States, too, must pass under the rod. America's institutions
of freedom, inspiring mankind to her example and awakening oppressed
lands to follow her course if they would know liberty, inflamed the
souls of the royal rulers of Prussia with fear and fired them to war of
destruction upon all that America stood for and was living for. * * *
[Illustration: SENATOR J. HAMILTON LEWIS]
Whatever riches America has amassed from her industry, whatever wealth
gathered from her commerce, what harvests garnered from her fields, are
all as but the least of offering compared to that which she brings to
civilization in the growth of liberty, the perfection of justice, and
the expansion of freedom with which she has been able by her example and
her power, through her religion and her generosities, to endow mankind.
Other nations have risen in triumph of power and lived for a while in
the glory of arms, but by selfish achievement--conquest through the
slash of swords--they have fallen. As these wrenched victory by strength
and success by power, they but showed the way to the rival wherein to
multiply and by these same standards prevail. That which was victor
yesterday was the conquered of today, and thus one after the other the
powerful nations of the world, resting only upon the achievement of
riches, the multiplication of wealth, and the power of the sword, have
broken and melted away, leaving nothing enduring to which mankind
appeals as example to follow or the children of men turn to as gods to
be worshipped or praised. Hear Ruskin echoing this truth:
Riches of Tyre, Thebes, and Carthage; yea, I say also the once
Rome and great Persia are left for our beholding in the periods
of their decline. They are ghosts upon the sands of the sea.
Theirs was power, riches, grandeur; much for a country--nothing
for man. They rose; they shined, yea glowed, laughed,
persecuted, and oppressed, and then they died, and man asks not,
where are they? nor cares that they live not among nations. As
among men, there is to nations a justice of God and the
vengeance of time.
Mr. President, refined civilization as it increases in its purpose of
equality among men and justice to all peoples scorns the suggestion of
accepting these dead nations of the past as models of national education
or guides of personal conduct. The people of the modern world shun them
and hold as their boast before earth how they disdain to pattern after
them, and turning the face of all those that are new and hopeful to the
one standard, approach the United States of America, and bowing in
admiration, ask but to follow her past growth, hold her guiding hand,
and walk beside her in the light of approving heaven.
Then who are they who misrepresent the purpose of democracy under Wilson
that they may defeat all democracy to all men? These charge that
America, under Wilson, would continue war to force Governments and
people of foreign lands to take our form of government. Let the world
know that as George Washington fought for democracy as a right to
America and Thomas Jefferson proclaimed it as a necessity to mankind,
while Lincoln made it his creed of emancipation for all color and all
climes--so, too, Wilson fights for democracy as a right of the whole
world. The promise of Wilson to "make the world safe for democracy" is
no threat to make the world take democracy. It is but the assurance of
the effort to give to the world its chance to take democracy. This war
of America is the announcement that we, by our entrance into the
conflict, will prevent any despot from depriving any people of the right
to exercise their free will in rejecting despotism and choosing
democracy. The United States does not fight to force any Government to
adopt the theory of our Government, nor does the United States fight to
force any foreign people to take our form of government against any form
of government they may choose for themselves. But America does fight to
prevent any foreign Government from thwarting any land from enjoying
democracy if it so wills by the voice of its own people. And this United
States fights now and will ever fight to the expenditure of its last
dollar and the sacrifice of every son, rather than submit to any monarch
wresting our democracy from us, to the death of our liberty and the end
of our Republic.