H51 0\kc Wftr vo;4K 50a |ir\ lt\9 The Spanish- American War E 721 .H57 Copy 1 The Decline and Fall of a Great Nation, The Causes Which Led to the War, And the Likely Results on Ourselves and the World. DELIVERED ON THE AFTERNOON OF JuLY OD, 1898, IN THE FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, BOSTON, By SCOTT Fj HERSHEY, PH.D. Published for the Author. 7 Ms' NTRODUCTORY NOTE. On Memorial Sunday, in the afternoon, one of the Grand Army Posts attended the First Presbyterian Church for its annual religious service. The discourse I delivered on that occasion led to the sug- gestion for a treatment of our present trouble with Spain. As I had been for years an observer of the conditions which I foresaw would some day lead to the fall of the Spanish nation, I entered upon the taskwith pleasure. On the afternoon of July 3d, though it was the hottest day of a continuously-sustained heat which had been experienced in Boston for eighteen years, an unexpectedly large number, many of whom were Grand Army men, listened to a rapid talk for an hour and ten minutes. A gentleman, not known to me, immediately arose, and after some highly complimentary remarks, moved a vote of thanks and then a vote to request the publication in pamphlet form. I confidently hold that in these pages will be found the causes of Spain's decay, a justification of our course, and, at least, a fairly intelligent outlook into the broader mission which confronts us, and, in addition, a timely warning to our own nation to beware. SCOTT F. HERSHEY. First Presbyterian Church, Bostctt^July 5, i8g8. \ V> 3 The closing years of the niaeteenth century are witnessing cer- tain movements of important interest to the worldwide cause of humanity, and to civil and religious reform. The stupendous signi- ficance of this statement may be seen when I say that, when these movements are brought to a close, it will be found that the political map of the world will be greatly changed, and the nation which three hundred years ago was the mightiest power of the world, shall never again associate with the leading nations. Some nations move forward, under the momentum of high and morally indispensable laws of national character, sweeping out of their paths the encum- brances and debris thrown into the highway of progress by dying civilizations ; while other nations, under the inexorable laws of retribution, to which they have subjected themselves by a prolonged and deliberate course of crime and inhumanity, enter on the fiaal steps of ruin into which they are driven, not by external foes, but by internal evils. Our country is engaged in a war for the third time in its history, with a power on the other side of the Atlantic. We are engaged in war with Spain. It requires a pause to believe that this is true. We Americans are mostly a peace-loving people. We do not quick- ly, or kindly, take to the assembling of fleets, or the mobilization of armies. We have studiously avoided the diplomatic and political entanglements in Europe. We early served notice that we desired to be left alone to pursue the high course of national development indicated to us by Providence, and planned by the founders of our Republic ; and at the same time we disclaimed any desire to take a hand in European problems. And yet, having for over one hun- dred years adhered with persistent consistency to this policy, we now find ourselves, by our own appointment, engaged ia war with a European nation. A faithful review of history will show that the United States and Spain are in conflict because of the absolute necessity for a con- flict, unless one nation or the other had departed from its settled policy. The paths of adverse and antagonizing forces have been for a hundred years running toward a point of contact, and by < e 4 very law of hostile forces, when that junction was formed a war had to come. In my study the other day, I was examining a map of the American continent for the year 1800. The territory of the United States was bound on the west by the Mississippi River, beyond which, stretching off to the Pacific, lay the possessions of Spain, reaching from the British Provinces and the disputed territory of Oregon, on the north, clear down to, and encircling the Gulf of Mexico, including all of the two Floridas, and portions of the terri- tory now belonging to Alabama and Mississippi, and on, through the Southern portions of the continent embracing Mexico, twelve hundred miles long, with an average of eight hundred in width ; Central America, twice the area of our New England States; Peru, itself twice as large as that portion of our country which lies east of the Ohio and north of the Potomac; Chili, four times the siz3 of New England; Colombia, ten times as large as New England ; the Argentine Republic, in size considerably more than one-third the whole present area of the United States, including Alaska; Uruguay, nearly twice the sizi of New England; Paraguay, still larger; Ecuador, five times the size of New England; and Venezuela, eleven times our New England area; and the Isles of Cuba and Porto Rico, in the South Atlantic. These were the Spanish possessions in America. The United States, at the begin- ning of this century, had no Pacific coast line and no shore washed by the Gulf of Mexico. As tlie century opened, the territory occu- pied by Spain, on this Western hemisphere, was at least six times as great as that held by the United States. As the century closes, Spain is in a hopeless struggle to find some way, agreeable to her pride, to withdraw her last title from the South Atlantic. We are called to witness the last gasps of a dying nation. What is the nature of the fatal disease that is taking off this nation ? What are its symptoms, and what were its causes .'' My most enj oyable intellectual pleasure is the study of history. It abounds with im- portant lessons and salutary warnings. The history of Spain for four hundred years points out the causes of certain national decay, and marks the rocks, hidden in the tempestuous waters of national life, where the ship of slate will be sure to go down if she runs upon them. Gibbons says : " It took Rome five hundred years to die. Spain s entered upon her career of death four hundred years ago. Bat Spain has been practically dead for about a century, only presenting before the world a pretence for national integrity, solidity, and pros- perity. The nation without great men is without a head. During this century Spain has not furnished a single scholar of world wide fame and influence, in literature or natural science, or political science or religious lifo. The nation that dies at its top soon becomes de- crepit throughout its entire body. The decline and fall of the once great Spanish nation is full of warning to the greit nations of our day." The task I assign myself this afternoon is : — 1. To point out the causes which brought Spain to ruin. 2, The way in which our country became entangled in war with her. 3 The way in which this war may affect America and the world. We shall not have to seek far to find the causes which have brought Spain down from first position among the nations to that of the very lowest in the scale of Christian civilizition. These causes are perfectly patent to every candid student of history; aad we are in the midst of events which suggest that our people should sit calmly before the open page of history and learn of it. The causes which have led Spain through four hundred years of de;ay, and now cite the attention of the world to behold their evil iaflaence in the life of nations, are these : The ignorance of the masses, the bigotry, superstition, and cruelty of her religion; the tyrainy of her government, and the corruption of her leaders. The certain ruin which these conditions are capable of working in a country is made clear, if we contemplate the position once occu- pied by Spain. Hers was not only a land of chivalry, and of accom- plishment, and of wealth ; but of trade, navigation, discovery, and research. The greatest of maritime nations, she was mistress of all seas, and first among the courts of Europe. Her Charles V. was heir to more than half the thrones of the world. Spain, under this king, held sway over mightier kingdoms, and possessed larger opportunities, than ancient Rome when she was mistress of the world. The Spain of that day had the wealth, she occupied the geographic vantage points in Europe, Asia, Africa and Ameri:a, and had that one universal opportunity which came to no other nation for two centuries, to take up the high duty of placing before all the world a powerful example of what a great natioa should be and do. 6 and ol leading the world into the high paths of the best possible civilization. Her failure has been as monumental as her opportuni- ties were remarkable. We fiud the first cause of Spain's decay to be that of national ignorance. Her standard of intelligence is hardly that of the general standard of the sixteenth century in Europe. Intellectually the world has swept far beyond her. Fully sixty-nine out of every one hundred of the Spanish people are unable to read. From this low intellectual ground she is unable to attain to those advanced princi- ples of justice, humanity and right, which now rule in the inter- national relations of the world, and because of this she is equally unable to administer her home affairs. Since the day of Isabella the Spanish government has discouraged intelligence, industry, and skill; and that nation must expect to find a painful path into oblivion, which neglects the schooling of the common people, who after all are the ground upon which national prosperity and integrity must stand. Because of their condition the common people in Spain should be shown the pity of a merciful world ; because of their stupendous folly and criminal neglect, the rulers of Spain deserve the scorn of civilized communities. The people which in this day depend on monks and nuns to educate Iheir children, will no longer be classified among the leading nations. Spain is doomed because for three centuries she has refused to participate in the general education and enlightenment of the world. It does not take a very careful study of Spanish history and character, to cverwhelDi with the feeling that somehow Spain's reli- gion is connected with Spain's decay. Other people retained the religious superstition of the Middle Ages, and still others a religious bigotry that should have passed away centuries ago ; but the Span- iards are the only people who have retained, in their religious views and practices, that ugly combination of religious barbarism, viz.^ superstition, bigotry and cruelty. Her religion has put shackles on liberty and an embargo on inquiry, and has conducted, at home and in all her colonies, a blameworthy crusade against free institutions, and every type of Christianity not of her peculiar brand. The Spanish constitutions have been of the most pronounced stamp of religious intolerance known to constitutional students. In the penal code of Bolivia, once a Spanish colony and still a Spanish country, is this section : " Whoever conspires directly, and in fact, to estab- 7 lish any other religion in Bolivia than the Catholic Apostolic Roman religion, is a traitor, and shall suffer the death penalty." This spirit of religious intolerance is of the demoniac kind, and cultivates the entire horde of inhuman and brutal passions. History cannot over- look the count, in settling accounts with Spain, that her foremost leaders in state aSairs were equally foremost as religious bigots. Isabella, Columbus, Cortes, Pizarro, Charles V., Philip II., and Alva, were as intolerant in their religion as they were brutal in their pas- sions. This hideous nightmare of intolerance has most heavily afflicted Spain. Under its bidding she has blindly driven from her shores, or put to death, that portion of her race which in her present crisis would have furnished the intelligence, wealth and integrity sufficient to save her. The year that Columbus discovered the American islands, which she is now losing, Isabella issued her mem- orable decree of expulsion, sending three-fourths of a million of her most thrifty population beyond her borders, and confiscated their property, because they would not, like dumb cattle driven, blindly follow her religion. Intolerance is the mother of weakness. O Spain, thy retribution has come at last I Thy crimes have overtaken thee, and thou goest down unf eared, unhonored, and unsung I Ah, Spain, thou art the home of the Inquisition, of Dominic and Torque- mada; and these have made of thy history a veritable chamber of horrors. Let us not fail, as we stand by the death struggle of Spain, to contemplate the disaster of her religious folly, or fail to fasten the responsibility upon her religious leadership. The Spanish people are the most intensely religious, according to their religion, in Europe. It has been the most dominant force in Spanish character for four centuries. It has originated, directed, and controlled inter- nal affairs and foreign policy; and in her colonies the religious leaders have administered the civil functions. In the hour of her dissolution her religion must be brought into court. Her population has declined one million in ten years; her income has fallen away from $i,200,ooo,oco thirty years ago, to $600,000,000 this year ; the national debt is far greater than that of the United States ; and now the remaining sixteen million of her population, ignorant, bigoted and pauperized, must support in idleness one half million people belonging to the religious orders. Had Spain built more school- houses and fewer monasteries and nunneries during the nineteenth century, she might have been spared the shame and ruin with which she faces the twentieth century. Incapability of Spanish leadership in American civilization, is shown to lie, in a great part, in the cruelty of her government. As all people in the last centuries have grown into an appreciation of their just rights, they have not taken kindly to the ways of despot- ism. Spain and Austria have tried to carry through the nineteenth century the narrow, monarchic spirit which marked the old monarch- ies of Europe. The House of Hapsburg has furnished both thrones with rulers, without much interruption, for four centuries ; and dur- ing these centuries the cruelty, barbarism, and inhumanity of Spain, have worked a course of crime most atrocious in character and gi gantic in degree. No nation, in all the tedious ways of universal history, can bS cited to answer for torture on a scale so extensive. Pagan Rome, in the days of Nero, slaughtered fewer wild beasts in the arena than Spain burned and tore asunder by the Inquisition, under Torquema- da. The incomprahensible Turkish government starved no more in all Turkey in two years, than Spain in Cuba under Weyler in six months. The march of Spanish conquest in Mexico and Peru, un- der Pizzaro and Cortez, has gone into history as a highway of mur- der and inhumanity, the only excuse for which was Spanish greed. Spain covered the land of the Netherlands with blood, under the frightful Prince of Alva, who boasted that he had " caused eighteen thousand six hundred persons to be executed by the Inquisition." In a period of seventy years Spanish cruelty reduced, by means of the Inquisition, the population of Spain from ten to six million. The Spanish monarchic spirit has never relented of any of the cruelty which characterized the old despotic methods of government. No people will longer submit to the old form of despotism in reli- gious or civil aSairs ; but Spain will have no other. The attempt at a republic was strangled in its birth by the Spanish clergy. Cruelty is a national trait of Spanish character. Her national, popular en- tertainment, is the brutal bull-fight. The nation that is characteris- tically brutal in government, institutions, religion, and amusements, is a degenerate in the family of nations. One more acute cause is working the ruin of Spain. There is in Spain a certain small class of grandees, notoriously corrupt. They are ruled by a spirit of greed. They have worked the ignorance and gullibility of the people since the days when Spanish greed for the gold of Peru and Mexico corrupted the ruling classes. The rulers of the Spanish colonies have been the most corrupt puplic men in 9 the world. An example is found ia Weyler. The Tab!e'., thel<^d ing Roman Catholic paper in England, recent y contained aa art o;e in which it appears that when he was governor of the Ffci'ippine Islands his salary was ^40,000 a year, and that at the cose ef his term he had to his credit, in the banks of Lond in an ; Paris, a sum variously estimated at from ;?i,oooooo to ;?4ocoooo The tyranny and corruption of the colonial governors in the Spanish provinces on our south at the beginnii g of our century, brought on the dissatisfaction in that vast section of the coa'intut south of the Rio Grande, which, under the example of cmstituti-^nal liberties furnished them by the young republic of the United States, broke into open revolt, and led to the beginning of Spain'a dismissal from the American continent. I have for years been a diligent student of Spanish history and character, and I have faithfully analjz2d and defined for you the causes which I find to be responsible for the decline and fall of Spain. I must now address you on the second part of this theme : how our country has become involved in war with Spain. Dr. Von Hoist, of the university of Chicago, said a few months since, that ours is " the one nation on earth whose peace is wholly in its own hands." Our relations with Spain throughout this century will show that this opinion is not maintainable. After the fall of Napoleon, and the consequent quiet which came to Spanish affairs at home, that country began to see that the new principles which were set to work in the thought of the political world by the young republic of the United States, were fatal to her colonial system of oppression and suppression. Because of this logi- cal influence of American liberty, Spain accompanied her attempt to crush the uprising against her rule in Mexico and the South Amer- ican countries, by many and serious depredations upon our com- merce, by her privateers. For a third of a century these depreda- tions were exceedingly irritating. In addition, our diplomatic rela- tions were, from the first, troublesome. The administration of Washington failed to secure a settlement of the boundaries between the United States and the Spanish possessions, and the free com- mercial navigation of the Mississippi. After Spain had ceded Louisi- ana to France, these relations became more annoying. Several times during the century the Spanish minister at Washington had to be recalled, because of undiplomatic and half-civilized conduct. Spain never respected or faithfully kept her treaties with us. Spanish aggression, greed, and inhumanity, on this Western Conti- nent, have been constant, and frequently brought us to the point of war. The provokiug element was always found in Spain's semi- barbarom course. The Mexican War, in its earliest phases, was of Spanish origin. President Grant had to give peace to Cuba, after allowing the revolution to continue for eight years, by bringing heavy diplomatic pressure to bear upon Spain ; the Virginius affair in 1873 in which American seamen were cruelly shot without trial, are but phases of the irritating relations with Spain; which clearly in- dicate that a highly civilized nation; compelled by geographical posi- tion and commercial relations to hold intercourse with a half civilized nation actuated by a spirit of barbarous aggressiveness, cannot per- manently maintain peace unless the high civilization submit to the low, and permit, in silence, all sorts of unspeakable inhumanities about its very doorways. The course of Spain was one which no longer could be tolerated by a self-respecting, humane people, who had lifted before the world the standard, not only of independence and liberty, but of right and justice. Spain had taxed Cuba beyond what any but a Spanish col- ony had ever suffered ; she reduced her white race to slavery ; she was a party to the grossest embezzlements and defalcations on the part of officials, amounting in seven years in the Havana customs alone to $100,000,000; she entered, three years ago, upon the most cruel attempt to fores a colony into submission by extermination, by which, through desolation and distress, misery and starvation, she had completed a ruin more entire and pitiable than cyclone and earthquake harnessed together had ever produced. Almost within sight of the lighthouses on our Florida coast men have been tortured, precisely as Spain tortured three hundred years ago. Two hundred thousand have been reduced to starvation, with the Spanish military governor daily witnessing the agony, and forbidding them the gift of charity. Let the Spanish names of Pizzaro, Cortez Alva, and Wey- ler, go into history as the infamous four whose unfeeling and savage inhumanities outdo those of Nero ; and the last was as inhuman as the others. Daring these three years our Spanish trade has dwindled from 1126,418,693 to $50 212,085 Because of the imbecility of Spanish rule in Cuba, American lives have been lost, the peace and moral in- terests of American cammunities disturbed, and the continuance of a half barbarous government permitted at our very doors, all of which is logically out of place in this hemisphere of self government. Three times the United States has protected Cuba for Spain once from France, once from England, and once from Mexico. Now the time has come when it is the duty of America to protect Cuba from Spain and her atrocities. Spain had been given centuries in which to learn the lessons of right, of justice, and of tolerance. America afforded her a striking object lesson of national greatness, prosperity, and happiness ; but the example was thrown away. Against those high manifestos of liberty, which have attained permanent forms in the national life and thought of Canada, the United States and Mexio, and against the financial, coumercial, and peace interests of Europe, and against the most solemn warnings of American diplomacy, she was deter- mined to continue her war of outrage and extermination. As far back as 1859 Anthony Trollope visited Cuba, and report- ing the abominable state of things, said : " There must be some stage in misgovernment which will justify the interference of bystanding nations in the name of humanity." America has recognized her re- sponsible relation to this principle. The fulness of time had come. The clock had struck the pathetic hour of justice. Ah, I say it rev erently, the signal of Providence had sounded. We are not respon- sible for this war, unless you mean that our mission is divorced from humanity, j ustice, and right. We served notice on Spain that we should be compelled to heed the cry of a starving people, and con- sider the plea of j astice, even though we should have to perform police duty to do it. The warning she cast aside. We came near departing from our celebrated Monroe doctrine at high noon April 9th of this year, when the President of the United States permitted the representatives of the seven great European powers to formally assemble in the White House and make presen- tations of their united desire touching political conditions oa this Western Continent. The closing paragraph of the President's reply is worthy of quotation : "The government of the United States is confident that equal appreciation will be shown for its own earnest and unsalfish endeavors to fulfill a duty to humanity, by ending a sit- uation the indefioite prolongation of which has become ins uffer able." This defines our position. On this ground we tske our stand, and justify our course before the world. The greed of commercial- ism, the unholy and unpatriotic spirit of militarism, and the dema- gogusism of politicians, may unite to move us to the ground of con- quest and imperialism. If we permit ourselves to be moved, we will deserve the censure of the Christian world. In the principles by which we justify our course before the world, we disclaim all commercial motives, though our coast trade has been mined; we disclaioi the motives of revenge, though condi- tions of Spanish barbarism were responsible for the loss of a great ship and hundreds of seamen ; we disclaim the motive of conquest, though we could take and hold all the Spanish possessions in both the Atlantic and Pacific. As a peac3 man of the most pronounced convictions, deploring w*r always, yet I hold that there are times when the very primary and most sacred rights and institutions must be defended by force. But the present is a higher war than that of self defense ; it is for the defense of those who are too weak to defend themselves. I pass to the last consideration of my theme. How will this war affect ourselves and the world .-' The values of passing events are of stupendous ▼eight. I am impressed profoundly that the great Ruler of the world, and the director general of movements running through centuries of time, has made a providential assign- ment to our country. I see it now in our discovery. The North American continent was untouched by Span'sh navigators, yet it lay right in their path. I sea it in our colon'zition, which was mostly effected by men of thrift, of education, and who were lovers of lib- erty. There was only one colonizsr of force of character. Lord Baltimore, among the Catholic colonizers. I see it in the develop- ment of our colonial system towards representative, educative, tol- erant and free institutions. I see it in the internal development and unification of our institutions, in the process of which was the Civil War, and the ^onsrqusnt overthrow of slavery. That was one of the most remarkable wars of history in this: beneath the surface of questions which were agitated as the ciu38 of the cocflic*, lay concealed the real question, v'z. : whether a system of government, eminently republican and representative, and built on political equality, could continue, with diverse and discordant institutions in different states. In settling this, those who fought on Southern fields, many of whom yet linger and we pray may long remain with u?, had a hand in adjusting one of the gravest and most important questions which ever came up in civilization for settlement. And it was settled so in accord with the higher laws of Christian civih'zi- tion, which are the laws of God, that it can never agiin disturb any civilization of the first rank. A hundred years of experience makes impressive the reflection made by Washington at his first inaugura- tion : " No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the invisible hand which conducts the affairs of men, more than the people of the United States." We should always interpret Providence with humble mind and hesitating hand ; but in the light of American history and the Provi- dential past it seems clear, at least to my mind, that our present duty is to deprive Spain permanently of all her possessions in the west Atlantic, and either dispossess her in the north Pacific, or permit her to longer rule only under the guardianship of some of the high Christian powers. Crispi, the eminent and patriotic Italian states- man, has recently said : " Spain has committed sins, and for these sins must pay the penalty." Spain has pushed the outrageous bar- barism of her conduct not only to the point where, as our President says, it has bejome insufferable, but beyond the limit of Providential 13 endurance. Her sins have been mostly those of an uninterrupted assault upon the just instincts of liberty, right and humanity ; and to America, the first star of liberty to rise in the western world, falls the duty to punish Spain. It seems to be in the line of our historic calling. Let the rulers of the nations be quiet, and the statesmen of the world keep silent, while another and most important act, in the great drama of civilizition, is being worked out by the great Republic of the West. This was not intended to be, it must not be, a war for revenge, or for conquest, or military glory. Here are indicated the perils of which we must be warned : The dangers of a professional war spirit ; a crazs for conquest, with the trend to imperial empire ; and the unholy, unpatriotic, and evil ambition to rival the military equipment of other nations. There are those who would glory in war because of opportunities afforded for the performance of daring deeds, and the chance for fame and self -glory. This is brutal, and unbecoming American motives. Such men as Mahan in the navy and Miles in the army, who would make warfare an American pro- fession, are unworthy leaders of American thought. The man who would lead the great American Republic into an ambition to com- pete with the militarism of Europe, is an enemy of our institutions. We are in this war, not for a love for war as a profession, but because we have been inducted into it by a solemn sense of duty; and when that duty has been performed, and Spain has been taught the lesson that she can no longer interrupt the progress of humanity, and the war is over, we want our armies speedily disbanded, and our ships mostly returned to the carrying trade of the country. Con- quest, either to feed the insatiate craving for the enjoyment of mili- tary triumph, or to gratify the ambition fcr mere imperial greatness, is equally unprofitable and wi:ked. If we consider the high welfare of coming generations, we will desire no additional possessions beyond our coast lines, unless they come as necessary contingents of war, to be held as security for indemnity, or until they can be restored to original government, or their people encouraged, under our protection, into self-government. The only exception I can see is, that we do need and should secure coaling stations, supply depots, and sheltering and repair harbors, in all sections. The cer- tain expansion of our commerce in the dawning century, makes the last provision of vast importance. What shall we do with the Philippines, is a question for state- craft of the highest order, and to such a settlement I must refer it, with just a passing reflection. In the North Pacific is a group of a thousand islands, under the Spanish flag, with a total population almost equal to the present population of the United States, and which is almost entirely in the most benighted condition, except upon the fringe of trading settlements where Spanish rule has 14 taught them the superstitions of her civilization, which are worse than the simplicity of their savage state. American government in the Philippines would be a failure, if accompanied with the continu- ance of the Spanish religion. The rule of the Spanish monk has been the blackest crime in the Pacific islands. The institutions of our political system and those of the Spanish religious system are so logically at war, that the irrepressible conflict would at once begin ; in fact, it has already begun in the act of the archbishop at Manila issuing his inflammatory circulars to be read in the churches, making outrageous charges against the Americans, and urging the people to rise and kill the American heretics; whereupon Commo- dore Dewey notified him that unless he refrained in the future from exciting the mob spirit in the population, the American guns would be turned upon the cathedral at Manila and the archbishop's palace at Cavite. The next day the archbishop wrote a letter saying that he had no idea that the Americans were such perfect gentlemen. We should be slow to undertake the government of foreign and uncivilized people, whose only tutelage in being led out of savagery has been under Spanish misrule. Still, we may have the corfidence of expectation that American wisdom will rise to its sacred duty, and that the oppressed people of the ocean isles, lying in the paths of great continental trade and travel, will see the dawn of a better time ; for where the American flag advances, the American mission- ary follows with the school teacher and hospital service, and the real work of civil'zation will begin. Let us carefully seek the indications of our national duty. The highest function of human government is to follow the lights thrown out by Divine Providence. Because for over a century we have fol- lowed a policy of keeping out of touch with the moral corflicts of the world, should not blind us to see the hour, which must come, when to us will be providentially assigned the mission of taking an active part in the evolutian of nations, and of tribes, and which evo- lution is towards a higher grourd of agreement for international jus- tice and peace. The man who has the gospel himself cannot always escape the duty of giving it to others. The nation which has at- tained to the best results of intelligence and liberty itself, cannot al- ways withhold Its active influence in behalf of the weak. New con- ditions make new duties. The world conditions of the nineteenth century assigned to us the duty of nonintervention ; the world con- ditions of the twentieth century may lay upon us the highest duty which Providence ever committed to a nation, that of agreeing, with whatever other nations may agree with us, to stand up for the right and prevent national murder, the same as the local police prevent crime in thtir limited jurisdiction. William E. Gladstone, on the eve of departing this life, said : " America will one day become what England is to day, the head steward of the great household of the world, because her service will be the best and ablest." IS I hold that something like this is the legitimate sphere for American service in the cause of human progress, politically, moral- ly, religiously. The rule of responsibility for the individual is the rule of responsibility for the nation. A man of right mind and right heart, and strong arm, could not remain a mute witness of ag- gravated wrongs about him which he could correct. What is a right and strong nation but an aggregation of such men acting in a na- tional capacity ? And this one thing, glorious in fact as it is grave in responsibility, I foresee will eventuate from this war. What shall I call it ? May I not name it, the consciousness cf our larger mis- sion in the affairs of the world, for the good of the world ? There will come to the American national heart a warmer and broader sympathy, and to the national mind a clearer and more comprehen- sive conception of duty, and to American patriotism, the more lofty task of witnessing to others the value of such institutions as we possess, The God of nations may be calUng us to take a larger part in the administration of the affairs of the world. Certainly the plainest sign-board arising out of the evolution of events has this written on it — there is a gradual federating of the best forces in civ- ilization to maet that other federating of the worst. Now to this coming federation of the beit nations will be as- signed as part of its mission the prevention of any further adminis tration, in the settled portion of the world of, the affairs of the bar- barous ages ; the adoption of an international code of justice, under which all colonial populations will feel safe ; and the securement to all uncivilized and half civilized people a just and equal opportunity for se'f development. If endowment with great gifts indicates anything of that re- sponsibility which is laid on by the hand of God, then the hour is approaching, by express time, when the powerful American nation must speak for right and uprightness, and she must speak with a voice that will be respected the eaith around. With numbers, in- telligence, reiources, institutions of liberty and education, wealth and skill, unsurpassed by any other nation in the world, there rests upon us a prodigious moral pressure to do our duty. By this war, which is held by a unanimity, earnestness, and uni- versality of sentiment never before equalled by our people — by this war — we say, that we feel constrained, from the very character of our national conscience, to terminate outrageous conditions perpe- trated by European governments on the American side of the oceans. But that which is unbearable on one side of the ocean will some day be declared unbearable on the other. I look forward to a great Council Chamber of nations in the 20th century. In this chamber will be considered those universal questions which spring out of the natural instincts of human rights wherever man is found. And in this Council America must wield an inflaence commensurate i6 with our greatness as a nation, and to our s and free people. And more, and it is the c forming on the rising horizon of the 20th century, in that Council, and at the head of the table, America and Great Britain will sit side by side. It is altogether desirable that there should be a closer fellowship of these two people of kindred ties of blood, history and hberty. The higher civilization demands it. The peace of the na- tion is best guaranteed by it. The currents of events is rapidly forming for it. The very logic of operating moral forces throughout the world betokens it. The new political map of the world, now being formed, will show it. The Sovereign Ruler of the nations has or- dained it. It is one of the unpreventable things. And neither the cunning of European diplomats, the sophistry and hypocrisy of mi- nor American politicians, or the fumes and votes of the Irish alli- ance, can long delay its coming. It has baen given the right of way by that spirit of mystery of the destiny of nations. Great Britain is the only European power which has made a successful colonial experiment on this side of the water. The Dutch, France, Spain, and Portugal have all failed. Where goes Ihe British flag there ad- vances order, intelligsnce and liberty. These two types of govern- ment and institutions are of the same species, and the law of coher- sion,working in human affairs as it does in natural science, will force an Anglo-Saxon federation, though all the rest of the world should say no. Recently Sir Frederick Pollock, the eminent Oxford jurist, expressed the opinion "that such an alliance would make wholly for peace, and within its legitimate purposes, would be irre- sistable." The British prime minister has within these recent weeks expressed the hope that in the great and noble cause of humanity, the Stars and Stripes and the Union Jack might wave together, for the first time in our history. With firm stroke and clear conscience we advance a hand into the intolerable aflEairs of the Old World dy- nasties, the only people in all Europe whose sympathy is unclouded, are the British. And the rippling waves breaking from old Eng- land's coast confides to the Atlantic waters, to whisper to the sands on our New England shore, the good salutation, " We are bro thers in every strife for the right." The day is dawning — God speed its coming — when the two na- tions, whose paths spring out of the same deep root of national life and feeling, will federate their banners, think alike, and act together, on the great moral problems of the world. If Uncle Sam, with his keen eye and nervous force, and John Bull, with his solid ballast, will stand together in the fear of God, with all the people countenancing only right motives, then humanity, with all of its sacred rights, in all its peaceful blessings, and for all its possible progress, will be safe guarded through the 20th century as never before since the world began.