Download The United States and the War (Classic Reprint) Book in PDF, ePub and Kindle
Excerpt from The United States and the War In the first place the average citizen of the United States, in fact the whole great body of its citizenship, with only one exception and that solely based on race, felt, in the quick summary judgment that they were able to give of the exact nature of the quarrel in those fateful days of July and August of 1914, that Austria had committed an unprecedented outrage upon the fine proprieties of civilization in issuing an ultimatum to a little and almost crippled country, so brutal, 'so arrogant and so unreasonable as to challenge the very bases upon which civilization rests. (applause) Now We are a people who are inspired, to a very much greater extent than possibly we are sometimes given credit for, with the Spirit of idealism, and the bravery of this little Servian people, struggling for its national dignity and self respect against this arrogant, cowardly and brutal ultimatum of Austria, most powerfully appealed to the sympathies of the American people and awakened in them, in that period of peace that preceded the war, all the old-time love of liberty which has. Characterized our government from its very beginning. But against that there was a conflicting tradition which did much to confuse our minds and paralyse our judgment. It was a tradition to which we attached a reverence that you cannot possibly imagine, a reverence ap proaching to intellectual idolatry. No other nation probably has a founder quite in the sense of the United States, for no other nation can trace back its beginnings to one man quite as the United States can. And the United States not only has this unique position in having one individual of surpassing wisdom and courage and nobility of mind, to whom it traces the very in ception of the Republic, but it has a founder, upon whom the suffrages of mankind, without respect to race, nation or creed, have paid with unusual unanimity of sentiment the tribute of being one of the noblest personalities that ever lived in the tide of time. (cheers) When George Washington came to lay down his office, he wrote his political testament, a very remarkable thing for him to do, for he was a very shy, diffident and modest man. He rarely expressed an Opinion unless it was solicited, and he at all times felt that others knew far more of a given subject than he could possibly do. He took into consultation the three great Spirits of that period of my country's history, Alexander Hamilton, our greatest constructive statesman; Thomas Jefferson, the prophet of democracy, of whom it might be said, as Rostand pictured his Chanticleer, that while he may not have actually caused the dawn of democracy, at least he proclaimed with clarion voice its radiant dawn (applause) and James Madison, an acute and profound constitutional lawyer. These three men collaborated with Washington in the immortal farewell address. And I want to read to you the very keynote of that address, in which Washington pointed out the path for the Republic that he had founded across the trackless sea of time. He said: Europe has a set of primary interests which to us have none, or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence therefore, it must be unwise to implicate ourselves by artificial ties - now mark these words - in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com
