Glass. 
 Book. 
 
 I f 
 
ADDRESSES 
 
 OF 
 
 PRESIDENT WILSON 
 
 AT 
 
 DETROIT, MICH. 
 
 TO THE SALESMANSHIP CONGRESS AND AT LUNCHEON 
 TENDERED BY THE SALESMANSHIP CONGRESS 
 
 AND 
 
 TOLEDO, OHIO 
 
 JULY 10, 1916 
 
 WASHINGTON 
 1916 
 

 D. cf D. 
 AUG 1 1916 
 
 \ 
 
ADDRESS TO THE SALESMANSHIP CONGRESS, DETROIT, MICH., 
 
 JULY 10, 1916. 
 
 Mr. Chairman, Ladies, and Gentlemen : 
 
 It is with a great deal of gratification that I find myself facing so 
 interesting and important a company as this. You will readily un- 
 derstand that I have not come here to make an elaborate address, 
 but I have come here to express my interest in the objects of this 
 great association, and to congratulate you on the opportunities which 
 are immediately ahead of you in handling the business of this 
 country. 
 
 These are days of incalculable change, my fellow citizens. It is 
 , impossible for anybody to predict anything that is certain, in detail, 
 with regard to the future either of this country or of the world in the 
 large moA'ements of business; but one thing is perfectly clear, and 
 that is that the United States will play a new part, and that it will 
 be a part of unprecedented opportunity and of greatly increased 
 responsibility. 
 
 The United States has had a very singular history in respect of 
 its business relationships with the rest of the world. I have always 
 believed, and I think you have always believed, that there is more 
 business genius in the United States than anywhere else in the 
 world; and yet America has apparently been afraid of touching too 
 intimately the great processes of international exchange. America, 
 of all countries in the world, has been timid ; has not until recently, 
 has not until within the last two or three years, provided itself with 
 the fundamental instrumentalities for playing a large part in the 
 trade of the world. America, which ought to have had the broadest 
 vision of any nation, has raised up an extraordinary number of 
 provincial thinkers, men who thought provinciall}^ about business, 
 men who thought that the United States was not ready to take her 
 competitive part in the struggle for the peaceful conquest of the 
 world. For anybody who reflects philosophicalh^ upon the history 
 of this country, that is the most amazing fact about it. 
 
 But the time for provincial thinkers has gone by. We must play a 
 great part in the world whether Ave choose it or not. Do you knoAV 
 
 (3) 
 
 51539—16 
 
the significance of this single fact, that Avithin the hist year or two 
 we have, speaking in Large terms, ceased to be a debtor nation and 
 become a creditor nation ? We have more of the surplus gold of the 
 world than we ever had before, and our business hereafter is to be to 
 lend and to help and to promote the great peaceful enterprises of the 
 world. We have got to finance the world in some important degree, 
 and those who finance the world must understand it and rule it with 
 their spirits and with their minds. We can not cabin and confine our- 
 selves any longer, and so I said that I came here to congratulate you 
 upon the great role that lies ahead of you to play. This is a sales- 
 manship congress, and hereafter salesmanship will have to be closely 
 related in its outlook and scope to statesmanship, to international 
 statesmanship. It will have to be touched with an intimate compre- 
 hension of the conditions of business and enterprise throughout the 
 round globe, because America will have to place her goods by run- 
 ning her intelligence ahead of her goods. No amount of mere push, 
 no amount of mere hustling, or, to speak in the western language, no 
 amount of mere rustling, no amount of mere active enterprise, will 
 suffice. 
 
 There have been two ways of doing business in the world outside 
 of the lands in which the great manufactures have been made. One 
 has been to try to foi-ce the tastes of the manufacturing country on 
 the country in which the markets were being sought, and the other 
 way has been to study the tastes and needs of the countries wdiere 
 the markets were being sought and suit your goods to those tastes 
 and needs; and the latter method has beaten the former method. If 
 you are going to sell carpets, for example, in India, you have got to 
 have as good taste as the Indians in the patterns of the carpets, and 
 that is going some. If you are going to sell things in tropical coun- 
 tries, they must, rather obviously, be different from those which you 
 sell in cold and arctic countries. . You cannot assume that the rest of 
 the world is going to wear or use or manufacture what you wear and 
 use and manufacture. Your raw materials must be the raw materials 
 that they need, not the raw materials that you need. Your manufac- 
 tured goods must be the manufactured goods which they desire, not 
 those which other markets have desired. So your business will keep 
 pace with your knowledge, not of yourself and of your manufactur- 
 ing processes, but of them and of their commercial needs. That is 
 statesmanship, because that is relating your international activities 
 to the conditions which exist in other countries. 
 
 If we can once get what some gentlemen are so loath to give us, a 
 merchant marine ! The trouble with some men is that they are slow in 
 their minds. They do not see ; they do not know the need, and they 
 will not allow you to point it out to them. If we can once get in a 
 position to deliver our own goods, then the goods that we have to 
 
deliver will be adjusted to the desires of those to whom we deliver 
 them, and all the world will ^\elcome America in the great field of 
 commerce and manufacture. 
 
 There is a great deal of cant talked, my fellow citizens, about 
 service. I wish the word had not been surrounded with so much 
 sickly sentimentality, because it is a good, robust, red-blooded word, 
 and it is the key to everything that concerns the peace and pros- 
 j^erity of the world. You can not force yourself upon anybody who 
 is not obliged to take you. The only way in which you can be sure 
 of being accepted is by being sure that you have got something to 
 oiler that is worth taking, and the only way you can be sure of that 
 is by being sure that you wish to adapt it to the use and the service 
 of the people to whom you are trying to sell. 
 
 I was trying to expound in another place the other day the long 
 way and the short way to get together. The long way is to fight. 
 I hear some gentlemen say that they want to help Mexico, and the 
 way they propose to help her is to overwhelm her with force. That 
 is the long way to help Mexico as well as the wrong way. After the 
 fighting you have a nation full of justified suspicion and animated 
 by well-founded hostility and hatred, and then will you help them? 
 Then w411 you establish cordial business relationships with them? 
 Then will you go in as neighbors and enjoy their confidence? On 
 the contrary, you will have shut every door as if it were of steel 
 against you. What makes Mexico suspicious of us is that she does 
 not believe as yet that we want to serve her. She believes that we 
 want to possess Iier, and she has justification for the belief in the way 
 in which some of our fellow-citizens have tried to exploit her privileges 
 and possessions. For my part, I will not serve the ambitions of these 
 gentlemen, but I will try to serve all America, so far as intercourse 
 with Mexico is concerned, by trying to serve Mexico herself. There 
 are some things that are not debatable. Of course, we have to defend 
 our border. That goes without saying. Of course, we must make 
 good our own sovereignty, but we must respect the sovereignty of 
 Mexico. I am one of those— I have sometimes suspected that there 
 were not many of them — who believe, absolutely believe, the Vir- 
 ginia Bill of Eights, which was the model of the old bill of rights, 
 which says that a people has a right to do anything they please with 
 their own country and their own government. I am old-fashioned 
 enough to believe that, and I am going to stand by that belief. 
 (That is for the benefit of those gentlemen who wish to butt in.) 
 
 Now, I use that as an illustration, my fellow citizens. What do 
 we all most desire when the present tragical confusion of the world's 
 affairs is over? We desire permanent peace, do we not? Permanent 
 peace can grow in only one soil. That is the soil of actual good 
 will, and good will can not exist v/ithout mutual comprehension. 
 
Charles Lamb, the English writer, made a very delightful remark 
 that I have long treasured in my memory. He stuttered a little bit, 
 and he said of some one who was not present, "I h-h-hate that 
 m-man ; " and some one said, " Why, Charles, I didn't know you 
 knew him." "Oh," he said, "I-I-I don't; I-I can't h-hate a m-man 
 I know." That is a profound human remark. You can not hate a 
 man you know. I know some rascals whom I have tried to hate. I 
 have tried to head them off as rascals, but I have been unable to 
 hate them. I have liked them. And so, not to compare like with 
 unlike, in the relationship of nations with each other, many of our 
 antagonisms are based upon misunderstandings, and as long as you 
 do not understand a country you can not trade with it. As long 
 as you can not take its point of view you can not commend your 
 goods to its purchase. As long as you go to it with a supercilious 
 air, for example, and patronize it, as we have tried to do in some less 
 developed countries, and tell them that this is what they ought to 
 want whether they want it or not, you can not do business with 
 them. You have got to approach them just as you really ought to 
 approach all matters of human relationship. 
 
 Those people who give their money to philanthropy, for example, 
 but can not for the life of them see from the point of view of 
 those for Avhose benefit they are giving the money are not philan- 
 thropists. They endow and promote philanthropy, but you can not 
 be a philanthropist unless you love all sorts and conditions of men. 
 The great barrier in this world, I have sometimes thought, is not the 
 barrier of principle, but the barrier of taste. Certain classes of so- 
 ciety find certain other classes of society distasteful to them. They 
 do not like the way they dress. They do not like the infrequency 
 with which they bathe. They do not like to consort with them under 
 the conditions under which they live, and, therefore, they stand at a 
 distance from them, and it is impossible for them to serve them. 
 They do not understand them and do not feel that common pulse of 
 humanity and that common school of experience which is the only 
 thing that binds us together and educates us in the same fashion. 
 
 This, then, my friends, is the simple message that I bring you. 
 Lift your eyes to the horizons of business; do not look too close 
 at the little processes with which you are concerned, but let your 
 thoughts and yonr imaginations run abroad throughout the whole 
 world, and with the inspiration of the thought that you are Amer- 
 icans and are meant to carry liberty and justice and the principles 
 of humanity wherever you go. go out and sell goods that will make 
 the world more comfortable and more happy, and convert them to 
 the principles of America. 
 
ADDRESS AT LUNCHEON OF SALESMANSHIP CONGRESS, DETROIT, 
 
 MICH., JULY 10, 1916. 
 
 Mr. Chairman, Judge Murphy, Ladies and Gentlemen : 
 
 I am glad to find myself in Detroit and face to face with the men 
 who have played the principal part in giving it distinction through* 
 out the country and throughout the world. Looking about among 
 you, I see that it is true in this matter, as in others, that the only men 
 fit for such a job are young men and men who never grow old. There 
 is tho liveliness of youth in the eyes even of those of you who have 
 shared with me the painful parting with the hirsute appendage. 
 
 I have been interested in some things that Mr. Denby has said to 
 me to-day. He has shamefacedly admitted that he has found him- 
 self enjoying the companionship of Democrats. Now, I have long 
 enjoyed the friendship and companionship of Eepublicans, because 
 I am by instinct a teacher and I would like to teach them something. 
 We have been trying, some of us, for a good many years to teach in 
 politics, as well as elsewhere, this lesson, that we are all in the same 
 boat ; we have common interests, and it is our business to understand 
 and serve those common interests. The great difficulty that has 
 confronted us, gentlemen, has often been that we have deliberately 
 looked at these common interests from self-chosen angles, which 
 made them look as if some of us were separated from others; ag 
 if some of us wanted to depress business, for example, and others of 
 us wanted to exalt business. I dare say that you have noticed that 
 the same necessity to make a living is imposed upon Democrats as 
 Republicans, and I dare say you are ready to believe that Democrats 
 are just as willing to make a good living as Republicans. Therefore, 
 it seems to me logically to follow, though I have been quoted as 
 having no regard for logic, that Democrats are naturally as much 
 interested in the business prosperity of the United States as anybody 
 else. So that if you believe that they are not as fitted to guide it 
 as other persons, you can not be doubting their interest; you are 
 only impugning their intelligence. 
 
 And some Democrats had noticed that the inclination to suppose 
 that only some persons understood the business of America had a 
 
 (7) 
 
8 
 
 tendency to run into the assumption that the number of persons ^Aho 
 understood that business was very small, and that there were only 
 certain groups and associations of gentlemen who were entitled to be 
 trustees of that business for the rest of us. I have never subscribed, 
 in any walk of life, to the trustee theory. I have always been inclined 
 to believe that the business of the world was best understood by those 
 men who were in the struggle for maintenance not only, but for suc- 
 cess. The man who knows the strength of the tide is the man who is 
 swimming againsi it, not the man who is floating with it. The man 
 who is immersed in the beginnings of business, who is trying to get 
 his foothold, who is trying to get other men to believe in him and 
 lend him money and trust him to make profitable use of that money, 
 is the man who knows what the Ijusiness conditions in the United 
 States are, and I would rather take his counsel as to what ought to 
 be done for business than the counsel of am' established captain of 
 industry. The captain of industry is looking backward and the other 
 pian is looking forward. The conditions of business change with 
 every generation ; change with every decade ; are now changing at an 
 almost breathless pace, and the men who have made good are not 
 feeling the tides as the other men are feeling them. The men who 
 have got into the position of captaincy, unless they are of unusual 
 fiber, unless they are of unusually catholic sympathy, unless they have 
 continued to touch shoulder with the ranks, unless they have contin- 
 ued to keep close communion with the men thej' are employing and 
 the young men they are bringing up as their assistants, do not belong 
 to the struggle in which we should see that every unreasonable ob- 
 stacle is removed and every reasonable help afforded that public 
 policy can afford. 
 
 So I invite your thoughts, in what I sincerely believe to be an en- 
 entirel}' nonpartisan spirit, to the democracy of business. An act 
 was recently passed in Congress that some of the most intelligent 
 business men of this country- earnestly opposed. — men whom I knew, 
 men whose character I trusted, men whose integrity I absolutely 
 believed in. I refer to the Federal Reserve Act, by which we in- 
 tended to take, and succeeded in taking credit out of the control of a 
 small number of men and making it available to everybody who had 
 real commercial assets, and the very men who opposed that act, and 
 opposed it conscientiously, now admit that it saved the country from a 
 ruinous panic when the stress of war came on, and that it is the salva- 
 tion of ever}' average business man who is in the midst of the tides that 
 I have l)een trying to describe. What does that mean, gentlemen? 
 It means that you can get a settled point of view and can conscien- 
 tiously oppose progress if you do not need progress yourself. That 
 is what it means. I am not impugning the intelligence even of the 
 men who opposed these things, because the same thing happens to 
 
9 
 
 every man if he is not of extraordinary make-up, if he can not see 
 the necessity for a thing that he does not himself need. When you 
 have abundant credit and control of credit, you, of course, do not 
 need that the area of credit should be broadened. 
 
 The suspicion is beginning to dawn in many quarters that the aver- 
 age man knows the business necessities of the country just as well 
 as the extraordinary man does. I believe in the ordinary man. If 
 I did not believe in the orclinar}' man I would move out of a democ- 
 racy and, if I found an endurable monarchy, I would live in it. The 
 very conception of America is based upon the validity of the judg- 
 ments of the average man, and I call you to witness that there have 
 not been many catastrophes in American history. I call you to 
 witness that the average judgments of the voters of tlie United 
 States have been sound judgments. I call you to witness that this 
 great impulse of the common opinion has been a lifting impulse, 
 and not a depressing impulse. What is the object of associations 
 like that which is gathered here to-day, this Salesmanship Congress? 
 The moral of it is that a few men can not determine the interests 
 of a large body of men, and that the only way to determine them 
 and advance them is to have a representative assembly chosen by 
 themselves get together and take common counsel regarding them. 
 And do you not notice that in everj'^ great occupation in the United 
 States there is beginning to be more and more of this common coun- 
 sel? And have you not noticed that the more common counsel you 
 have the higher the standards are that are insisted upon { 
 
 I attended the other day the Congress of the Advertising Men, 
 and their motto is " Truth and fair dealing in what you represent 
 your business to be and your goods to be." I have no doubt that in 
 every association like this the prevailing sentiment is that only by 
 the highest standards — I mean the highest moral standards — can you 
 achieve the most permanent and satisfactory business results. Was 
 that the prevalent conception before these associations were drawn 
 together? Have you not found the moral judgment of the average 
 man steady the whole process and clarify it? Do you not know 
 more after every conference with your fellows than you did before? 
 I never went into a committee of any kind upon any important pub- 
 lic matter, or private matter so far as that is concerned, that I did 
 not come out with an altered judgment and knowing much more 
 about the matter than when I went in ; and not only knowing much 
 more, but knowing that the common judgment arrived at was better 
 than I could have suggested when I went in. That is the universal 
 experience of candid men. If it were not so, there would be no object 
 in congresses like this. Yet whenever we attempt legislation, we find 
 ourselves in this case : We are not in the presence of the many who 
 can counsel wisely, but we are in the presence of the few who counsel 
 
10 
 
 too narrowly, and the means by which we have been trying to break 
 away from that is not by exchiding these gentlemen who constituted 
 the narrow circles of advice, but by associating them with hundreds 
 of thousands of their fellow citizens. 
 
 I have had some say that I was not accessible to them, and when I 
 inquired into it I found they meant that I did not personally invite 
 them. They did not know how to come without being invited, and 
 they did not care to come if they came upon the same terms with 
 everybody else, knowing that everybody else was welcome whom I 
 had the time to confer with. 
 
 Am I telling you things unobserved by you? Do you not know 
 that these things are true? And do you not believe with me that 
 the affairs of the Nation can be better conducted upon the basis of 
 general counsel than upon the basis of special counsel? Men are 
 colored and governed by their occupations and their surroundings 
 and their habits. If I wanted to change the law radically. I would 
 not consult a lawyer. If I wanted to change business methods radi- 
 cally, I would not consult a man who had made a conspicuous suc- 
 cess by using the present methods that I wanted to change. Not 
 because I would distrust these men. but because I would know that 
 they would not change their thinking over night, that they would 
 have to go through a long process of reacquaintance with the cir- 
 cumstances of the time, the new circumstances of the time, before 
 they could be converted to my point of view. You get a good deal 
 more light on the street than you do in the closet. You get a good 
 deal more light by keeping your ears open among the rank and 
 file of your fellow citizens than you do in any private conference 
 whatever. I would rather hear what the men are talking about on 
 the trains and in the shops and by the fireside than hear anything 
 else, because I want guidance and I know I could get it there, and 
 what I am constantly asking is that men should bring me that counsel, 
 because I am not privileged to determine things independently of 
 this counsel. I am your servant, not your ruler. 
 
 One thing that we are now trying to convert the small circles to 
 that the big circles are already converted to is that this country 
 needs a merchant marine and ought to get one. I have found that 
 1 had a great deal more resistance when I tried to help business 
 than when I tried to interfere with it. I have had a great deal more 
 resistance of counsel, of special counsel, when I tried to alter the 
 things that are established than when I tried to do anything else. 
 We call ourselves a liberal nation, whereas, as a matter of fact, we 
 are one of the most conservative nations in the world. If you want to 
 make enemies, try to change something. You know why it is. To do 
 things to-day exactly the way you did them yesterday saves thinking. 
 It does not cost you anything. You have acquired the habit; you 
 
11 
 
 know the routine ; j'oii do not have to plan anything, and it frightens 
 you with a hint of exertion to learn that you will have to do it a 
 different way to-morrow. Until I became a college teacher, I used 
 to think that the young men were radical, but college boys are the 
 greatest conservatives I ever tackled in my life, largely because they 
 have associated too much with their fathers. What you have to do 
 with them is to take them up upon some visionary height and show 
 them the map of the world as it is. Do not let them see their father's 
 factory. Do not let them see their father's countinghouse. Let them 
 see the great valleys teeming with laborious people. Let them see 
 the great struggle of men in re^ms they never dreamed of. Let them 
 see the great emotional power that is in the world, the great am- 
 bitions, the great hopes, the great fears. Give them some picture 
 of mankind, and then their father's business and every other man's 
 business will begin to fall into place. They will see that it is an 
 item and not the whole thing; and they will sometimes see that the 
 item is not properly related to the whole, and what they will get 
 interested in will be to relate the item to the whole, so that it will 
 form part of the force, and not part of the impediment. 
 
 This country, above every country in the world, gentlemen, is 
 meant to lift: it is meant to add to the forces that improve. It is 
 meant to add to everything that betters the world, that gives it 
 better thinking, more honest endeavor, a closer grapple of man with 
 man, so that we will all be pulling together like one irresistible team 
 in a single harness. That is the reason why it seemed wise to substi- 
 tute for the harsh processes of the law. which merely lays its hand 
 on your shouldei after you have sinned and threatens you with 
 punishment, some of the milder and more helpful processes of coun- 
 sel. That is the reason the Federal Trade Commission was estab- 
 lished, — so that men would have some place where they could take 
 counsel as to what the law was and what the law permitted; and 
 also take counsel as to whether the law itself was right and advice 
 liad not better be taken as to its alteration. The proceseses of 
 counsel are the only processes of accommodation, not the processes 
 of punishment. Punishment retards but it does not lift up. Pun- 
 ishment impedes but it does not improve. And we ought to sub- 
 stitute for the harsh processes of the law, wherever we can, the 
 milder and gentler and more helpful processes of counsel. 
 
 It has been a very great grief to some of us,' year after year, year 
 after year, to see a fundamental thing like the fiscal policy of the Gov- 
 ernment with regard to duties on imports made a football of politics. 
 Why, gentlemen, party politics ought to have nothing to do with the 
 question of what is for the benefit of the business of the United States, 
 and that is the reason we ought to have a tariff commission, and, I 
 may add, are going to have a tariff commission. But, then, gentle- 
 
12 
 
 men, the trouble will be upon me. The provision as it stands makes 
 it obligatory upon me not to choose more than half the commission 
 from any one political party. The bill does not undertake to say 
 how many political parties there are. That just now is a delicate 
 question. But I am forbidden to take more than two of the same 
 variety, and yet the trouble about that is I would like to find men for 
 that commission who were of no one of the varieties. I would like to 
 find men who would find out the circumstances of American busi- 
 ness, particularly as it changes and is going to change with perplex- 
 ing rapidity in the years immediately ahead of us, without any 
 regard whatever to the interest of any party whatever, so that we 
 should be able to legislate upon the facts and upon the large economic 
 aspects of those facts without stopping to think which party it was 
 going to hurt and which party it was going to benefit. But almost 
 everybody in this country wears a label of some kind, and under the 
 law I suppose I will have to turn them around and see how they are 
 labeled, how they are branded ; and that is going to be a very great 
 blow to my spirit and a very great test of my judgment. I hope, 
 after the results are achieved, you will judge me leniently, because 
 my desire would be not to have a bipartisan but an absolutely non- 
 partisan commission of men who really applied the tests of scientific 
 analysis of the facts and no other tests whatever to the conclusions 
 that they arrived at. 
 
 Did you ever think how absolutely supreme and sovereign facts are? 
 You can make laws all the year through contrary to the facts and the 
 facts will overrun the laws. Do not let a fact catch you napping, 
 because you will get the worst of it if you do; and the object of the 
 tariff commission is that we should see the facts coming first, so that 
 they could not get us. I remember a cynical politician saying to 
 me once, when I was thanking him for having voted the Avay I hoped 
 he would vote, knowing that that had not been his initial inclina- 
 tion, " Well, Governor, they never get me if I see them coming first." 
 He had heard from home, and he saw them coming. Now, I have 
 that attitude toward facts. I never let them get me if I see them 
 first, and it is because I want to see them that I want commissions of 
 this sort and the spirit of this sort that I have tried to describe 
 in the commission as it is constituted. 
 
 Because, as I was saying this morning, there is a task ahead of 
 us of most collossal difficulty. We have not been accustomed to the 
 large world of international business and we have got to get accus- 
 tomed to it right away. All provincials have got to take a back 
 seat. All men who are afraid of competition have got to take a 
 back seat. All men who depend upon anything except their intelh- 
 gence and their efficiency have got to take a back seat. It will 
 be interesting to see the sifting process go on. I have some men m 
 
13 
 
 mind to nominate for back seats, and I Avill not draw all of them 
 from the same party. It will not need an act of Congress for that 
 purpose. And some men are going to be surprised at the keen- 
 ness of the air into which they are thrust out. They are going 
 to be thrust out, and we are either going to make conquest, peaceful 
 conquest, of the markets of the world or we are going to be pre- 
 vented forevermore of boasting of the business ability of America. 
 I have never been afraid of trusting an American business man out 
 in the air, but some men have. They have said, " Give us a vrall 
 lo crouch behind for fear these fellows should get us," and when 
 it has come to finding out who were crouching behind the wall, it 
 was found that all sorts were crouching behind the wall, the capable 
 and the incapable, and that the main object of the wall was to 
 shelter the incapable. 
 
 As an American I am too proud to submit to anything like that. 
 I believe that Americans can manufacture goods better than anybody 
 else; that they can sell goods as honestly as anybody else; that they 
 can find out the conditions and meet the conditions of foreign business 
 better than anybody else, and I want to see them given a chance right 
 aAvay, and they will be whether I want them to be or not. We have 
 been trying to get ready for it. The national banks of the United 
 States, until the recent Currency Act, were held back by the very 
 terms of the law under which they operated from some of the most 
 important international transactions. To my mind that is one of the 
 most amazing facts of our commercial history. The Congi-ess of the 
 United States was not willing that the national banks should have a 
 latchkey and go away from home. They were afraid they would not 
 know how to get back under cover, and banks from other countries 
 had to establish branches where American bankers were doing busi- 
 ness, to take care of some of the most important processes of inter- 
 national exchange. That is nothing less than amazing, but it is not 
 necessary any longer. It never was necessary ; it was only thought to 
 be necessary by some eminently provincial statesmen. We are done 
 with provincialism in the statesmanship of the United States, and we 
 have got to have a view now and a horizon as wide as the world 
 itself. And when I look around upon an alert company like this, it 
 seems to me in my imagination they are almost straining at the leash. 
 They are waiting to be let loose upon this great race that is now go- 
 ing to challenge our abilities. For my part, I shall look forward to 
 the result with absolute and serene confidence, because the spirit of 
 the United States is an international spirit, if we conceive it right. 
 This is not the home of any particular race of men. This is not the 
 home of any particular set of political traditions. This is a home the 
 doors of which have been opened from the first to mankind, to every- 
 body who loved liberty, to everybody whose ideal was equality of op- 
 
14 
 
 portunity, to everybody whose heart was moved by the fundamental 
 instincts and sympathies of humanity. That is America, and now it 
 is as if the nations of the world, sampled and united here, were in 
 their new union and new common understanding turning about to 
 serve the world with all the honest processes of business and of enter- 
 prise. I am happy that I should be witnessing the dawn of the day 
 when America is indeed to come into her own. 
 
ADDRESS AT TOLEDO, OHIO, JULY 10, 1916. 
 
 My Fellow Ciitzens : 
 
 This is an entire surprise party to me. I did not kno%Y I was 
 going to have the pleasure of stopping long enough to address any 
 number of you, but I am very glad indeed to give you my very 
 cordial greetings and to express my very great interest in this 
 interesting city. 
 
 General Sherwood said that there were many things we agreed 
 about, there is one thing we disagree about. General Sherwood has 
 been opposing preparedness, and I have been advocating it, and I 
 am very sorry to have found him on the other side. Because, I think, 
 you will bear me witness, fellow citizens, that in advocating pre- 
 paredness I have not been advocating hostility. You will bear me 
 witness that I have been a persistent friend of peace and that noth- 
 ing but unmistakable necessity will drive me from that position. I 
 think it is a matter of sincere congratulation to us that our neighbor 
 Republic to the south shows evidences of at last believing in our 
 friendly intentions; that while we must protect our border and see 
 to it that our sovereignty is not impugned, we are ready to respect 
 their sovereignty also, and to be their friends, and not their enemies. 
 
 The real uses of intelligence, my fellow citizens, are the uses of 
 peace. Any bod}^ of men can get up a row, but only an intelligent 
 body of men can get together and cooperate. Peace is not only a test 
 of a nation's patience ; it is also a test of whether the nation knows 
 how to conduct its relations or not. It takes time to do intelligent 
 things, and it does not take any time to do unintelligent things. I 
 can lose my temper in a minute, but it takes me a long time to keep 
 it, and I think that if you were to subject my Scotch-Irish blood to 
 the proper kind of analysis, you would find that it was fighting blood, 
 and that it is pretty hard for a man born that way to keep quiet and 
 do things in the way in which his intelligence tells him he ought to 
 do them. I know just as well as that I am standing here that I 
 represent and am the serA^ant of a Nation that loves peace, and that 
 loves it upon the proper basis ; loves it not because it is afraid of any- 
 body ; loves it not because it does not understand and mean to main- 
 tain its rights, but because it knows that humanit}' is something in 
 which we are all linked together, and that it behooves the United 
 
 (15) 
 
16 
 
 States, just as long as it is possible, to hold off from becoming in- 
 volved in a strife which makes it all the more necessary that some 
 part of the world should keep cool while all the rest of it is hot. 
 Here in America, for the time being, are the spaces, the cool spaces, 
 of thoiightfulness, and so long as we are allowed to do so, we will 
 serve and not contend with the rest of our fellow men. We are the 
 more inclined to do this because the very principles upon which our 
 Government is based are principles of common counsel and not of 
 contest. 
 
 So, my fellow^ citizens, I congratulate myself upon this oppor- 
 tunity, brief as it is, to give you my greetings and to convey to you 
 my congratulations that the signs that surround us are all signs 
 of peace. 
 
 o