ADDRESS DELIVERED BEFORE THE LIBERTY LOAN 
 COMMITTEE OF THE NEW YORK 
 STOCK EXCHANGE 
 
 I am here in response to the very gracious invitation of your Committee 
 that I should make a brief speech as to the work tliat lies before you. \Vlien 
 I was asked, I attempted to plead off, as it seemed to me to be carrying coals 
 to Newcastle in speaking to a body of men such as this on such a subject, 
 but I knew that no group of men would more readily appreciate the 
 necessity of carrying forward this loan to a speedy and complete success than 
 those whom I am addressing. As for your spirit of patriotism I want to give 
 my evidence, for what it is worth, at this time, that there is no more patriotic 
 place in all this country than Wall Street. It was the first place to have 
 the flags of the allied nations flying in profusion, and in my own journeys 
 through this country in connection with war work, I have found no place 
 where the spirit of loyalty is finer than here at Broad and Wall Streets, and 
 therefore I feel I am carrying coals to Newcastle when I appeal to the 
 patriotic members of this Stock Exchange to make a complete and speedy 
 success of this new loan. 
 
 All that I can say in the few minutes that I propose to trespass upon 
 your patience will be not with respect to the causes of the war, for that, while 
 in no sense academic, is no longer open to controversy. Our Country has 
 declared its pohcy. It must be supported. I want to impress upon you 
 what has painfully impressed me the last three months, since the temporary 
 collapse of Russia, and that is, that we are in the most fateful and critical 
 hour of the greatest crisis of all history, and that the determination of the 
 issue of this titanic contest will not only affect all civilization, but especially 
 and vitally the prestige, dignity, standing, and possibly even the moral 
 independence of the United States. 
 
I remember when the war broke out that I was in Switzerland, and 
 when the clouds commenced to gather, having been something of a student for 
 many years of these international problems, I very promptly left St. Moritz, 
 and journeyed to Paris to get ahead of the storm, and as I remember, when 
 I approached the town of Basle, on the night when the Kaiser declared his 
 state of martial law as a preliminary to the coming hostilities, the thought 
 was then impressed upon me that this was the greatest crisis in history since 
 the days of that great upheaval which is known in history as the Reforma- 
 tion. The Reformation, while to some extent a protest of democracy 
 against then existing forms of government, yet had as its chief causes 
 religious differences, about which the average man to-day is not greatly 
 concerned. At all events, doctrinal differences about which men would be 
 as indisposed to fight to-day as to fight about similar doctrinal issues, which 
 devastated the human race in the earlier centuries of the Christian era. 
 The quarrels in the third century turned upon a Greek dipthong, it being a 
 question of the exact conception of the doctrine of the Trinity, and yet 
 men, divided into the homouists and the homoiuists, shed their heart's blood 
 on a question about which men would not fight to-day. 
 
 The issues of the present war are more vital and fundamental. Nothing 
 in modern history can surpass in vital importance for all the future the 
 present crisis. That, I think, is reasonably clear, at all events, if it does 
 not impress you, no words that I can employ in this brief time would con- 
 vince you as to the surpassing importance of the crisis. This is its fatal 
 moment. 
 
 I have travelled somewhat through this country, and I have endeavored 
 to diagnose the opinions of my countrymen so far as one can diagnose so 
 complex a thing as a heterogeneous democracy, such as ours is. I am very 
 
much impressed with the fact that there has been, beyond the expectation 
 of most men, a general and most loyal acquiescence in the sacrifices required 
 by the war. In the second place, there is among all classes, so far as I can 
 see, west of the Mississippi as well as east, a certain determination to see 
 this thing through for the prestige of America. But where I think the 
 American spirit falters,— not in courage so much as in due appreciation, — 
 due probably to oiu- former provincial outlook as to European questions and 
 in general the parochial view that we once had of world events, — is the fact 
 that we have a happy-go-lucky idea that this war somehow is coming to a 
 successful finish, and that we have plenty of time to prepare ourselves to 
 meet its demands, and that in good time it will come to a successful con- 
 clusion, and that we will be in that conclusion a determining factor. 
 
 God grant that it may be so, but I think we are very rash in assuming 
 that it will necessarily be so. 
 
 Do you remember years ago, when Sir Henry Irving played one of his 
 most striking roles, called "The Corsican Brothers"? In the last act of 
 "The Corsican Brothers," the two duelists in an Italian vendetta each held 
 the wrist of the other, which contained a dagger, and there they stood, eye 
 glancing into eye, with chests heaving, with the expenditure of every ounce 
 of physical and nervous strength, panting with every breath as each gave the 
 last effort that he could to wrest the hand that had the dagger from the 
 grasp of the other in order to end the conflict by plunging it into the breast 
 of his antagonist. Do you remember the intensity with which Henry Irving 
 played that part, until that final moment, when the man of superior strength 
 suddenly wrenched his hand free and plunged the dagger to the very hilt 
 into the breast of his antagonist? If you remember that, you will have 
 what in my judgment is a very fair description of the present hour in the 
 
ever suffered within a like periwl of time, with a million of her sons lying 
 under the soil between the Channel and the Vosges Mountains, was, when we 
 entered the war, in a situation where it was with some of her best thinkers 
 a question whether the military deadlock could be broken, and whether, 
 therefore, it was possible to go on indefinitely. She has borne the heat and 
 burden of the day. Her resources are not inexhaustible. 
 
 When this country came into the struggle it carried inspiration and 
 encouragement into the French trenches. Nothing thrilled the French 
 more, nothing appealed more to their imagination, nothing reinvigorated 
 their failing strength more than the little simple incident, which, I think, 
 will be immortal in the history of these two countries, when Pershing stood 
 in front of the tomb of Lafayette in that little cemetery in Paris and said, 
 "liafayette, here we are." 
 
 Suppose this Liberty Loan were to fail. What would be the impression 
 in France? What would be the impression in England? Eight months 
 have passed since Von Bernstorff was given his passports. It would not be 
 surprising if our French and English allies were beginning to say, "Give us 
 lielj) speedily, for if you do not, it is possible that the powers of darkness 
 in this struggle might, by a military fluke or some fortuitous circumstance 
 have a success that might turn the scales of the titanic struggle." Certainly, 
 if the word will flash through France and England two weeks from to-day 
 that the second Liberty I^oan of America is a failure, that the American 
 people refused to subscribe, — they have thus voted more effectually as if 
 they put a piece of paper in a ballot box — that they did not want the war, and 
 were unwilling to support their government in its further prosecution, — 
 WHAT WOULD THEY THINK OVER THERE? 
 
 All that civilization has ever sought to build up in the last hundred 
 
years has been based on the idea that there was a rule of justice in the affairs 
 of men and that that justice should he deterniined by the processes of 
 reasoning, and that the littlest nation, be it ever so small, had a right — a 
 God-given right — to have that cause determined against the mightiest power 
 by the processes of reason. And yet, the inevitable moral result of Germany's 
 victory in this war is that reason is of no potency in the commonwealth of 
 nations, that justice is a rhapsody of words, that little states have no rights 
 whatever, that there is no law except might, that there are no princi[)lcs of 
 chivalry left to protect women and children and non-combatants, and that 
 there is no sovereign reason to which nations can appeal; that the only law 
 is that of terror, the law of f rightfulness; that the country that is superior 
 in its capacity for moral obliquity, in the inflicting of all manner of devilish 
 atrocities, is the nation which, as Milton describes Satan in hell, "is by merit 
 raised tb that bad eminence." And in hell, Germany would sit as overlord, 
 as Satan sits in hell— BECAUSE CIVILIZATION WILL BE A 
 HELL IF THIS WAR IS LOST. 
 
 We might, three thousand miles away, with a hundred millions of 
 people, preserve a part of our independence. But nations do not fight in 
 groups, and I tell you again — and I say it solenuily — that if Germany 
 shall win this war it will draw, as the magnet draws the filings, all the 
 residuum of the so-called neutral powers to itself, and even, perhaps, some 
 nations, or parts of nations, which are now our allies. And with such a 
 power her might will overshadow the world, and even the independence of 
 this nation may be menaced by a group of nations acting under the lash of 
 the conqueror. 
 
 Do you think after more than a hundred years of independence that 
 America will welcome a return to a condition of slavish subserviency to a 
 
German king? It may not be a question of what we wish to endure, but 
 what we must stand, if that dreadful eventuality should come to pass. 
 
 And, therefore, I simply say to you— and I beg your pardon for this 
 undue trespass upon the time of busy men— do not think it a matter of 
 slight importance that this loan should have a prompt and generous response 
 from the people of this country, we must show that our hearts are really in 
 this struggle, for the failure of this Liberty Loan would be worth a whole 
 army to the Kaiser's forces. 
 
 \