The American spirit

CORNELL

UNIVERSITY

LIBRARY

THIS BOOK IS ONE OF
A COLLECTION MADE BY

BENNO LOEWY

1854-1919

AND BEQUEATHED TO
CORNELL UNIVERSITY

Cornell University Library
JK271 .S905

The American spirit

olin

3 1924 030 467 181

The original of this book is in
the Cornell University Library.

There are no known copyright restrictions in
the United States on the use of the text.

http://www.archive.org/cletails/cu31924030467181

THE AMEEICAN SPIRIT

Copyright, Pirie MacDonald, N.V.

{^HfcvN.AVvcwvj

f

THE

AMERICAN SPIRIT

BY

OSCAR S. STRAUS

Author of "The Orighi of Republican Form of Govern-
ment in the United States," "Roger Williams,
the Pioneer of Religious Liberty," etc.

NEW YORK
THE CENTURY CO.

1913

Copyright, 1913, by
The Centuht Co.

Copyright, 190J, 1911, by

The North American Review Pi^BLisHiNa Comfanv

Copyright, 1895, by

The Forum Publishing Co.

Copyright, 1911, by

The Viereck Publishing Company

Published, April, 1913

DEDICATED

WITH AFFECTION AND ESTEEM
TO

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN EINSTEIN, Esa.,

A PROFOUND JURIST, A WISE COUNSELLOR
AND A TRUE FRIEND

O. S. S.

CONTENTS

PAGE

The American Spirit 1

Address on Washington's Birthday, February 22,
1912, before the faculty and students of Brown
University, and patriotic societies, Providence, R. I.

Humanitarian Diplomacy of the United States . 17

Address at the Annual Meeting of the American Soci-
ety of International Lav?, Washington, D. C, April
26, 1912.

American Commercial Diplomacy 39

"The North American Review," August, 1907.

Venezuela and the Monroe Doctrine 59

"The Forum," February, 1896.

Growth of American Prestige 79

Address at the Annual Banquet of the Chamber of
Commerce of the State of New York, November
17, 1910.

Citizenship and Protection op Naturalized Citizens

Abroad .... . 89

Lecture at the U. S. Naval War College, Newport,
E. I., summer course, 1903.

Our Diplomacy with Reference to Our Diplomatic

AND Consular Service 123

Address as President at the Annual Meeting of the
American Social Science Society, 1902.

The United States and Russia 147

"The North American Review," August, 1905.

OuB Commercial Age ... . 177

Address at the Anniversary Celebration of the Sa-
vannah Board of Trade, Savannah, Ga., April 3,
1908.

Commerce and International Relations . 193

Address as Secretary of Commerce and Labor, before
the National Convention for the Extension of For-
eign Commerce, Washington, D. C, January 15,
1907.

Commerce and Labor . . . . ... 215

Address at the Annual Banquet of the National As-
sociation of Manufacturers, New York, May 22,
1907.

vii

riii CONTENTS

PAGE

The Peace of Nations and Peace Within Nations 231
Address at the National Arbitration and Peace Con-
gress, New York, April 15, 1907.

Eeligious Liberty in the United States . 241

Address before the University of Georgia, at the Cen-
tennial Celebration, June 17, 1901.

The Fibst Settlement of the Jews in the United

States .... ... 271

Address in Faneuil Hall, Boston, November 29, 1905.

America and the Spirit of American Judaism 285

Address at the Banquet of the American Hebrew Con-
gregations, New York, January 18, 1911.

A College Commencement in Turkey . 295

Address delivered at the Commencement of Kobert
College, Constantinople, June 18, 1910.

Eoosevelt: His Catholicity and Statesmanship . . 309
"The Review of Two Worlds," March, 1912.

Baron Maurice de Hirsch . .321

General Baron T. Kuroki, or the Japanese Army 341
Response to a Toast at the Banquet to the Ambas-
sador, General Kuroki, and Admiral Ijuin, New
York, May 17, 1907.

Cardinal Farley 349

Response to a Toast at the Dinner by Non-CatholicB
to Cardinal Farley on his Return from Rome,
January 30, 1912.

William Lyne Wilson: A Tribute . . ... 357

Read at the Authors Club in New York, March 28,
1901.

Edward Morse Shepabd: A Tribute . ... 365

Address at the Memorial Services, College of the City
of New York, October 29, 1911.

John Hay: A Tribute . . 373

Address at the Unveiling of the John Hay Memorial
Window in the Temple of Keneseth Israel, Phila-
delphia, December 2nd, 1906.

The author wishes to acknowledge the courtesy of the pub-
lishers of "The Forum," "The North American Review," and
"The International and Review of Two Worlds" for permis-
sion to reprint in this volume the articles which originally
appeared in those publications.

PEEFACE

The essays and addresses that compose this
volume I have entitled "THE AMERICAN
SPIRIT," because they illustrate different
phases of that spirit in our economic and na-
tional life and international relations. The
problems that present themselves to each
generation vary with the tendencies of the
times. While our age is dominantly com-
mercial and industrial, it should be our care
to regulate and guide the forces of develop-
ment so that they shall be subordinate to the
unchanging principles of our democratic in-
stitutions and so that they shall not narrow,
but widen, the highways of opportunity for
the average man, woman and child of this
and the coming generations. The equality
of political rights will not conserve the stabil-
ity of our institutions and promote the happi-
ness of our people unless the gateway to
economic betterment remains wide open to in-
dustry and thrift.

I desire to express my appreciation to my
esteemed friend, Dr. Rossiter Johnson, for his
valuable suggestions and for his aid in read-
ing the proofs .of this volume.

Oscar S. Straus.

THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

THE
AMERICAN SPIRIT

THE AMEKICAN SPIRIT

ONE hundred and eighty years have
passed since the birth we are com-
memorating to-day (Washington's), yet what
is that period but a brief span in the march
of mankind? We are especially blessed in the
fact that our entire history is an open and
legible book, the records of which are not
blurred by age or mystified by tradition. The
lives of the fathers are set in frames of real-
ity, and as long as we keep fresh their mem-
ories they will guide us in our patriotic efforts
to steer the Ship of State by the light of their
experience, their wisdom and their foresight.
There is a story of an Irish visitor to the Brit-
ish Museum, who touched his hat to the statue
of Nero; he said in explanation that he was
afraid the old fellow might come in power

3

4 THE AMEEICAN SPIRIT

again. To-day we reverently touch our hats
to Washington with the hope and prayer that
he may remain in power from generation to
generation.

Each generation has its own problems to
face, and upon the correctness of their solu-
tion depends the stability and welfare of the
State. The trials of adversity fell upon the
fathers ; the trials of prosperity are ours. It
was theirs to lay the foundations of liberty
under popular government; it is ours to pre-
serve it under the ever-changing conditions
that confront the march of civilization. Since
the day when Washington, by the unanimous
choice of the representatives of the nation,
was elected as the first Chief Executive of the
Eepublic, we have grown in population from
fewer than four millions to ninety-six millions
on this continent, exclusive of our island pos-
sessions, and in territory from thirteen
sparsely settled States along the Atlantic sea-
board, to a realm reaching from ocean to
ocean, and from the Great Lakes to the Gulf.
We have multiplied the power of man a hun-
dred-fold by steam, electricity, and water,
multiplied the productivity of the earth, and
lengthened the years of life by searching out

THE AMERICAN SPIRIT 5

the causes of disease and providing against
them. These and countless others are the tri-
umphs of the past hundred years, most of
them within the lifetime of many who are still
active in striving and hopefully looking for
additional adaptation of the forces of nature
to the uses of man.

One of the chief concerns of man in all ages
and climes has been the development of a sys-
tem of civil society to unite men under some
form of orderly administration or government
for security or for aggression. Under all sys-
tems — whether under chiefs, tyrants, oli-
garchs, kings, emperors, or czars, whether as
tribes, clans, states, or nations — the liberty
and welfare of the individual have been
largely sacrificed or subordinated to defensive
or offensive purposes, for the glorification or
the security of rulers, dynasties, and priv-
ileged classes.

The most fruitful causes of war have been
race-hatred, national animosities, and reli-
gious hostilities. Church and State in every
country, civilized and uncivilized, were so
closely allied that they kept the world in con-
stant antagonism, and made patriotism a
cloak for persecution, and persecution a badge

6 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

for patriotism. Here in this city two hun-
dred and seventy-six years ago, the crude but
distinct foundations were laid upon which was
first organized a political community that not
only separated Church and State, but secured
to every member thereof absolute liberty of
conscience. "Thou shalt love the Lord thy
God," and "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as
thyself," were first rightly interpreted and
righteously applied by a second Moses — ^the
apostle of the American system of a free
Church in a free State, the immortal Roger
Williams. He consecrated this spot, this set-
tlement of Providence, as "a shelter to the
poor and the persecuted, according to their
several persuasions," where "all men may
walk as their conscience persuade them, every
one in the name of his God." In the light of
its development on this continent and else-
where, this was the most beneficent contribu-
tion that any conqueror, king or emperor had
made for the welfare of mankind in civil soci-
ety in all history.

I do not hold that, but for Roger Williams
and the Rhode Island spirit of religious lib-
erty, the guarantees under our State and Fed-
eral Constitutions would have been in any

THE AMEEICAN SPIRIT 7

respect different or less ample. It is, how-
ever, a fact that the spirit of Ehode Island,
"which promoted the material prosperity and
spiritual happiness of the colony, exerted a
wide influence on the other colonies, in con-
vincing the people that the separation of
Church and State did not lead either to civic
anarchy or to freedom from religion, and it
had an educational value in preparing the
popular mind for the complete divorcing of
Church and State, as the only polity in con-
sonance with true democratic equality and the
liberty of the individual. Eeligious tolerance
in Roman Catholic Maryland and in the An-
glican colony of Virginia, with its important
body of dissenters, contributed materially to
the same end.

From the foundation of religious freedom
to the foundation of political freedom, from
Rhode Island's Charter of Liberties to the
Declaration of Independence, was but one hun-
dred and thirteen years, yet they were years
of wonderful growth and development for the
ideals of freedom in a virgin soil. The little
sapling that was rooted in Ehode Island had
grown to a majestic oak whose branches
spread over the thirteen States, typifying in

8 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

its strength and grandeur that religious and
civil liberty are one and inseparable. The
War of Independence was inspired by the dis-
tinct hope and purpose to enlarge and secure
individual freedom, and that hope was by
wise men, with prophetic statesmanship, de-
veloped into a reality in the charter of our
confederated unity, the Constitution of the
United States, whose preamble recites that it
is adopted in order "to secure the blessings
of liberty to ourselves and to our posterity."
Unlike the republics of history, which were
governments either of city-states or of cir-
cumscribed areas, or were undemocratic re-
publics of aristocratic classes, it was reserved
for our fathers to build a democratic republic
for the equal rights of all men, and to rest its
foundations upon the broad base of a com-
mon humanity. In order that democratic gov-
ernment might avoid the errors and escape
the disasters of ancient republics and be ap-
plied to the government of a continent with
an ever-growing population, the representa-
tive system was adopted for each unit and for
the whole, so that the governing body became,
as it were, a reduced photograph of the peo-
ple in their individual and collective capacity.

THE AMERICAN SPIRIT 9

Universal suffrage, like freedom of the will,
has its pitfalls and dangers and accentuates
the prophetic warning that "eternal vigilance
is the price of liberty." At no time in our
history has that vigilance been more incum-
bent upon the people of this country than now.
We must not forget that at no time in history
were the forms of government subjected to
more careful study and analysis than by the
fathers of our republic, and by the members
of the Convention that debated and framed
the Constitution. The republics of ancient
and modern times were subject to dissection
and most discriminating scrutiny, to discover
the true causes of their decline and subver-
sion; the Federalist is a monument to that
study.

That popular government is subject to per-
version and abuse, we fully recognize. We
have constant reminders and examples abun-
dant, none more prolific than in our municipal
administration and in the corrupting powers
of the "bosses" who enrich themselves by be-
coming the willing tools of predatory wealth,
which gives them the means to purchase the
elective power of the ignorant and the cor-
rupt. This is not the fault of our democratic

10 THE AMEEICAN SPIRIT

system, but is directly due to the neglect on
the part of the average citizen of his civic
duties, so that the government, instead of be-
ing representative of the people's best inter-
ests, becomes a prey to a conspiracy against
those interests. But at no time, and in no
State where such abuses have arisen, have
they been able to stand against the aroused
public conscience of the electorate, which fact
is itself the best proof that the fault does not
rest with the system, but with the electorate
pure and simple.

"We refer with pride to our vast resources,
our wealth, our population, our national
greatness and potentiality. An extravagant
indulgence in modesty and humility has never
been an American characteristic; our patri-
otic fete days have stimulated a self -conscious-
ness and a sense of reliance which, though se-
verely criticized abroad, finds ample support
in our achievements and in our history. So
long as we keep alive the spirit that guided
us in the past, and adapt it to problems that
confront us, we need not fear our ability to
find a solution that will make our greatness
contribute to our true national grandeur.
No greater calamity can befall a nation than

THE AMEEICAN SPIRIT 11

to cut itself off from all vital connection with
its own past, as France did in her Eevolution.
We have freely received from all nations the
immigrant and the refugee from persecution
and intolerance, and have endowed him with
the rights of man and incorporated him into
our political system. These immigrants have
found all our industries open to them, and our
public schools free to their children, and what-
ever evils resulting from congestion their
numbers may from time to time have caused,
these are only temporary, they disappear in
the great melting-pot of assimilation, and in
a patriotic devotion to the blessings of Amer-
ican liberty.

We must not forget that the newcomers in
every crisis of our history, in peace and in
war, have contributed even beyond their quota
to our economic welfare and to the support
of the government. The War Department, in
a memorandum issued in 1905, estimated that
the total number of persons enrolled in the
military and naval service of the United
States during the Civil War was 2,213,365;
and of this number, according to the deduc-
tion made in 1908 by 0. P. Austin, Chief of
the Bureau of Statistics, from all available

12 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

data, the percentage of persons of foreign
birth was not less than 20 and not more than
25. Therefore the total number of persons of
foreign birth in the Federal service during the
Civil War was approximately a half million.
President Lincoln in his messages referred re-
peatedly with gratitude to the great help that
the newcomers rendered the country, and in
his annual message of 1864 he said, "I regard
our immigrants as one of the principal re-
plenishing streams which are appointed by
Providence to repair the ravages of internal
war and its waste of national strength and
health."

The American ideal of the freedom of the
individual includes the right of migration.
This was recognized from the beginning, and
by the Act of July 27, 1868, which is incor-
porated in the Federal Revised Statutes, it
is provided:

"The right of expatriation is a natural and in-
herent right of all people, indispensable to the en-
joyment of the rights of life, liberty and the pursuit
of happiness. . . . Therefore any declaration,
instruction, opinion, order or decision of any officer
of the United States which denies, restricts, impairs
or questions the right of expatriation is declared

THE AMERICAN SPIRIT 13

inconsistent with the fundamental principles of the
Republic."

As recently as December last (1911), in
order to uphold and maintain the sanctity and
solidarity of our citizenship at home and
abroad, and to prevent arbitrary discrimina-
tion by Russia against certain classes of our
citizens on the basis of race, and against other
classes on the basis of religion, contrary to
the express terms of our commercial treaty of
1832, our Government gave notice to Russia of
its termination, thus emphasizing our historic
position, and declaring that wherever human
and material interests conflict, we place human
rights above property, "the man above the
dollar."

We are a commercial nation, but not a com-
mercialized people. The American spirit in
peace and war is a spirit of liberty and hu-
manity. No war, with the possible exception
of our war with Mexico, was ever begun by
us except to vindicate human rights. For this
we entered upon war with Great Britain in
1812, the Civil War of 1861, and the war with
Spain in 1898. To secure these rights in
peace and friendship, we were foremost
among the nations to advance the cause of ar-

14 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

bitration, and in the establishment of the
Hague Tribunal; under the inspiration and
leadership of President Taft, we have negoti-
ated treaties of arbitration for all interna-
tional differences, including questions of
honor and of vital interests, with Great Brit-
ain and with France. Far greater and more
lasting will be our glory and our services ren-
dered to mankind than the decisive battles of
the world shed upon the victorious nations, if
we falter not in the conclusion of these treaties,
thereby leading the way in bringing the na-
tions from the horrors of war, under the
majesty of the Law. Then verily, as Sumner
prophesied, will it become true that "The ex-
ample of the United States will be more puis-
sant than army or navy for the conquest of
the world."

To sum up in conclusion the great epochs
of our history from the earliest times to our
day, these have been, the establishment of re-
ligious liberty, the securing of our political
independence, the formation of a Confeder-
ated Republic under a written constitution,
the abolition of slavery and the preservation
of the Union, the vitalization of the principles
of social justice, and our leadership in pro-

THE AMERICAN SPIEIT 15

moting arbitration, the pathway to peace
araong the nations. These are the glorious
contributions that our country has made to
the welfare of her people and of mankind.

II

HUMANITARIAN DIPLOMACY OF THE
UNITED STATES

II

HUMANITAEIAN DIPLOMACY OF THE
UNITED STATES

AS the nations come into closer contact by
reason of the rapidity of inter-communi-
cation and the growth of international inter-
ests, political and commercial, the meaning of
the phrase "family of nations" assumes a
more real significance, and in a progressing
degree the welfare of each is bound up with
the welfare of all. "World politics" exerts
more and more influence and control over the
relations of nations. Independence, in inter-
national law, signifies that each sovereign state
has complete liberty to manage its affairs ex-
ternally and internally, as it may wish. While
this is the general theory, as a matter of fact
international relations are primarily con-
trolled by national interests modified by the
collective obligations of each nation to all the
others. National independence, like personal
liberty, is not in fact unrestricted, but is a con-
dition modified and limited by the rights and

19

20 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

interests of other independent states. The
highest law of nations is self-preservation, and
in order to protect and conserve its national
entity, a state is justified in going to war, and,
as the greater includes the lesser, to intervene
in the affairs of other states to control their
external as well as internal affairs, if its own
sovereignty is menaced, or its vital interests
are in jeopardy.

This intervention may take many forms, and
has varying degrees. In its extreme form it
implies the ultimate and even the immediate
use of force, dependent upon circumstances.
It may be mandatory or dictatorial. In its
lesser forms it assumes the right to interfere
with the action of another state, be that action
within the state itself or in its relations with
other states. A distinction is drawn, and
properly so, between intervention — or dicta-
torial interference in the relations of other
states, or in the domestic affairs of another
state contrary to its will — and the right of in-
tercession, to protest against action or con-
templated action, to make a tender of good
offices, to act as mediator, to express sym-
pathy for the suffering, et cetera. In fact, the
chief function of diplomacy is, by timely pro-

HUMANITARIAN DIPLOMACY 21

test, by mediation, or by the tender of good
oflSces, and by the exercise of those functions
which, for the lack of a better term, may be
called diplomatic as distinguished from man-
datory or dictatorial intervention, to prevent
a condition which, if not checked or adjusted,
might provoke serious international irritation
and possibly induce active intervention and
war. The grounds for intervention depend
upon circumstances, upon international inter-
ests, and upon the enlightened public opinion
of the civilized world. In other words, inter-
vention is by right when it is necessary for
self-preservation; and secondarily, since the
European "balance of power" was devised to
prevent or hold in check the preponderance
of any single power, it is agreed by the public
law of European states that the right of in-
tervention esists to maintain this status. As
distinguished from intervention by right, there
are instances where intervention is justified by
the enlightened sentiment of the civilized
world. Under this head may be classed the
interventions for the preservation of the Otto-
man Empire, or to prevent its dismemberment
in the interest of separate groups of European
powers.

22 THE AMERICAN SPIEIT

There is another class of cases for which
intervention is not recognized as strictly an
international right, but where it is justified
"by a high act of policy above and beyond the
domain of law,"^ especially if such interven-
tion is free from the suspicion of self-interest
and is not used as a cloak for national ambi-
tion, but undertaken solely and singly in the
interest of humanity for the purpose of end-
ing revolting barbarities, inhuman oppressions
or religious persecutions.

The object of this paper is to review so
much of the diplomatic history of the United
States as directly concerns questions of hu-
manity, where our government has made re-
monstrances, formulated protests, or appealed
to enlightened public opinion in the interest
of humanity, to put an end to oppression and
religious persecutions. No nation has taken
a more positive stand upon the principle of
non-intervention than has the United States
from its foundation, on frequent occasions.
This principle was developed into a policy by
Washington, notwithstanding our alliance with
France, and was emphasized in his Farewell

1 Historicus, Letters on Some Questions of International
Law.

HUMANITAEIAN DIPLOMACY 23

Address. Yet no nation has stood more
firmly upon the right of expatriation and the
protection of its citizens, native-bom and nat-
uralized, in foreign lands, than our own,
which protection has again and again been ex-
ercised in behalf of naturalized citizens who,
on their return to the country of their origin,
have been subjected to pains and penalties im-
posed chiefly because they had emigrated and
become naturalized in the country of their
adoption without first obtaining the consent of
their country of origin. From the many defi-
nitions of our statesmen since Jefferson ex-
pounded the American doctrine of citizenship
and expatriation, I quote that of former At-
torney-General Caleb Cushing, in an opinion
given in 1873, wherein he said:

The people of the United States are composed of
emigrants from Europe, most of whom expatriated
themselves in order to escape oppression, or, if you
please, legal Impediments to personal action in
countries of their birth, and many of whom were
the actors and victims of revolutions or of civil
wars. . . . The doctrine of absolute and per-
petual allegiance — the root of the denial of any
right of emigration — is inadmissible in the United
States. It was a matter involved in and settled for

24 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

us by the Revolution which founded the American
Union.^

In 1859 Mr. Cass, the Secretary of State, in
his instructions to our Minister to Prussia,
said: "The moment a foreigner becomes nat-
uralized, his allegiance to his native country
becomes severed forever. He experiences a
new political birth. . . . Should he re-
turn to his native country, he returns as an
American citizen and in no other character."
The American doctrine of expatriation was
greatly strengthened and expressly adopted by
the conclusion of naturalization treaties with
the principal European nations, beginning
with the Bancroft treaties of 1868 with the
North German Union. This was followed by
the Act of Congress of July 27, 1868 (Revised
Statutes §§ 1999, 2000, 2001), by which the
right of expatriation was declared to he an
inherent right of all people, and that natural-
ized citizens of the United States while abroad
should be entitled to receive the same protec-
tion of person and property that is accorded
to native-born citizens. It was further de-
clared that whenever any citizen was unjustly

2 Foreign Relations, 1873. Part II, 1353.

HUMANITARIAN DIPLOMACY 25

deprived of his liberty under the authority of
any foreign government, it should be the
President's duty forthwith to demand of such
government the reasons for the imprisonment,
and if it appeared to be wrongful and in viola-
tion of the rights of American citizenship,
forthwith to demand the release of such cit-
izen, and, if the release was unreasonably de-
layed or refused, to use such means, not
amounting to acts of war, as might be neces-
sary and proper to obtain such release, and
then to communicate all the facts and proceed-
ings to Congress.

This American doctrine of expatriation,
coupled with our liberal laws of naturaliza-
tion, under which we freely received the emi-
grants from other countries, incorporated them
into our body politic and endowed them with
the rights of citizenship, naturally had the
effect of more directly arousing our sympa-
thies for the oppressed, especially in lands
from which refugees have come, and to which
after naturalization some return attracted
by the suffering of relatives and friends,
becoming involved in revolution or in ef-
forts to ameliorate conditions, and thereby
bringing us into direct relations with political

26 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

and religious oppression in countries where
such unfortunate conditions prevail. The
diplomacy of humanity, to a large extent grow-
ing out of such and similar circumstances, has
made a stronger appeal to our sympathies and
had a wider application in our relations than
in the foreign relations of other countries.
Another class of cases grow out of the fact
that for seventy years some of the largest
American Protestant denominations have
maintained in Oriental countries religious,
medical and educational missions, which by
reason of their work and sympathy for their
converts, become involved in the chronic dis-
orders in such lands and have to appeal to
their government for protection and redress
for the loss of life and destruction of property,
so that on numerous occasions, when diplomacy
failed, protection and redress could be ob-
tained only by a display of naval force.

Upon strict legalistic principles it is very
doubtful whether humanitarian intervention
can be justified, but international relations are
not wholly controlled by the principles of law.
A large element of the popular conscience at
times enters into those relations and shapes
the action of states. Hall says :

HUMANITAEIAN DIPLOMACY 27

The opinions of modern international jurists who
touch upon humanitarian intervention are very
various, and for the most part the treatment which
the subject receives from them is merely fragmen-
tary, notice being taken of some only of its grounds,
which are usually approved or disapproved of with-
out very clear reference to a general principle.^

One of the earliest incidents in our diplo-
matic relations which, appealed to the classic
imagination and humanitarian sympathies of
our people was the war of the Greeks for in-
dependence from the Turkish yoke. Resolu-
tions of sympathy and for aid were presented
by Members of Congress from Massachusetts
and New York in behalf of committees of cit-
izens from those States, but the House took
no action thereon. President Monroe, in his
annual message of December 3, 1822, ex-
pressed the hope that the Greeks would re-
cover their independence, and referred to the
sympathy in their favor throughout the coun-
try. Similar reference was made in his an-
nual message the following year. John
Quincy Adams, in his annual message of 1825,
referred to our sympathy in their war, and
hoped for their success, and in his annual mes-

8 Hall, 3rd edition, p. 288, note.

28 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

sage of 1827 lie informed Congress that "the
sympathies which the people and Government
of the United States have so warmly indulged
with their cause have been acknowledged by
their government in a letter of thanks."

The next notable instance which made an
appeal to the humanitarian sympathies and
liberty-loving sentiments of the people of the
United States grew out of the Hungarian
Revolution of 1848 and commiseration for
Kossuth and his associates, who, having es-
caped to Turkey, were held in captivity there.
On March 3, 1851, both Houses of Con-
gress passed a resolution requesting the Presi-
dent to authorize the employment of a public
vessel to convey the captive refugees to this
country. President Fillmore, in his annual
message, referring to the grateful acknowledg-
ments Governor Kossuth had expressed of
our government's interposition in behalf of
himself and his associates, said that "this
country has been justly regarded as a safe
asylum for those whom political events have
exiled from their own homes in Europe," and
recommended to Congress to consider in what
manner Kossuth and his compatriots brought
here by its authority should be received and

HUMANITAEIAN DIPLOMACY 29

treated. On Kossuth's arrival, he was pre-
sented by Mr. Webster, Secretary of State, to
the President and was received by the Senate
and the House, and afterward he was officially
entertained at the Executive Mansion and ban-
queted by the House.

It was soon made apparent that Kossuth's
purpose in coming here was to induce our gov-
ernment to give its moral and material aid to
renew the struggle for Hungarian independ-
ence, though Mr. Webster and the President
made it clear that our government would not
depart from the traditional policy of not in-
terfering in the affairs of other nations. Not-
withstanding our refusal to meet the hopes and
wishes of the Hungarian patriot, whose mas-
terly oratory and picturesque appearance
aroused the admiration and enthusiasm of
many of our foremost men, this fact and the
hope that was widely expressed for Hun-
garian independence so offended the Austrian
Charge, Hiilsemann, that he addressed a note
to Secretary Webster protesting against the
honors shown to Kossuth by our government
and its citizens, and especially against the lat-
ter 's speech at the Congressional banquet. To
this Webster made no reply, and thereupon

30 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

the Charge laid his protest before the Presi-
dent, whereupon he was informed by the Sec-
retary of State that the government would
hold no further personal intercourse with him,
and that he must confine himself to written
communications. In answer to this notice he
addressed a note to Secretary Webster declar-
ing that his government would not permit him
to remain here longer "to continue in official
intercourse with the principal promoters of
the much-to-be-lamented Kossuth episode."

One would search the world's history in vain
to find a more striking example of a war un-
dertaken by any nation from motives more
singularly humane and free from selfish in-
terests and purposes than our war with Spain.
President McKinley, in his special message to
Congress of April 11, 1898, after reviewing
the insurrections and revolutions in Cuba
against the dominion of Spain during the past
fifty years, and recounting the cruelties and
barbarities which shocked the sensibilities and
offended the humane sympathies of our peo-
ple, recommended forcible intervention as a
neutral to stop the war "according to the
large dictates of humanity." The grounds
set forth by him justifying such intervention

HUMANITAEIAN DIPLOMACY 31

were summarized, the first and main one be-
ing, to quote Ms words: "In the cause of hu-
manity and to put an end to the barbarities,
bloodshed, starvation, and horrible miseries
now existing there, and which the parties to
the conflict are either unable or unwilling to
stop or mitigate." Congress in its joint reso-
lutions which authorized the war, after re-
ferring to the humane considerations that
prompted them, expressly disclaimed any in-
tention or purpose to exercise any other power
or control in Cuba except for pacification, and
when this was accomplished, to leave the gov-
ernment and control of the island to the peo-
ple therein. Subsequent events have verified
and accentuated in every respect the unselfish
purposes and humane motives which prompted
our government and people in the making of
that war.

Our humane diplomacy in the past sixty
years has many times been extended in all
Mohammedan countries, as well as in China
and Japan, for the protection of our mission-
aries, and the good offices of our consular and
diplomatic officials have been employed in be-
half of converts and other native Christians.
Such good offices, when tendered, were not ex-

32 THE AMEEICAN SPIBIT

ercised as a right but in the interest of hu-
manity and to preserve good relations. We
have, however, refrained from going to the
length of the European powers, who, by a sys-
tem of proteges, extend their protection even
to natives of such countries in the interest of
commerce as well as of humanity.

In 1840, in the Presidency of Van Buren,
occurred the massacres of Jews in Damascus
and in the island of Rhodes. Although the
life of no American citizen was involved. Sec-
retary of State Forsyth, by direction of the
President, instructed our Minister at Constan-
tinople, David Porter, to intercede with the
Sultan to prevent or mitigate the horrors. He
said: "The President is of opinion that from
no one can such generous endeavors proceed
with so much propriety and effect as from the
representative of a friendly power whose in-
stitutions, political and civil, place upon the
same footing the worshipers of God of every
faith and form, acknowledging no distinction
between the Mohammedan, the Jew, and the
Christian. . . . You will refer to this
distinctive characteristic of our government as
investing with a peculiar propriety and right
the interposition of your good offices in behalf

HUMANITAEIAN DIPLOMACY 33

of an oppressed and persecuted race, among
whose kindred are found some of tlie most
worthy and patriotic of our citizens."

No people have been oftener compelled to
invoke the humanitarian diplomacy of civi-
lized states than the Jews, because no people
have, from time immemorial, by reason of race
hatred and religious persecution, suffered as
they have from inhumanity and oppression in
every form and degree. The aid of our gov-
ernment has been more directly sought than
that of other governments in recent years,
because of the large immigration of refugees
driven hither by restrictive measures, oppres-
sions, and massacres in Roumania and Eussia.
President Harrison, in his annual message,
December 9, 1891, referring to remonstrances
made by our government to Russia because of
the harsh measures, known as the May Laws,
being enforced against the Jews, said:

The banishment, whether by direct decree or by
not less certain indirect methods, of so large a num-
ber of men and women is not a local question. A
decree to leave one country is, in the nature of
things, an order to enter another — some other.
This consideration, as well as the suggestions of
humanity, furnishes ample ground for the remon-
strances which we have presented to Russia.

34 THE AMEEICAN SPIRIT

President Roosevelt, in his annual message
of December 4, 1904, referring to the remon-
strances of our government by reason of the
massacres in Kishinef and in a hundred other
cities and towns in Russia, which so shocked
the enlightened sentiment of the world, said:

Nevertheless, there are occasional crimes com-
mitted on so vast a scale and of such peculiar horror
as to make us doubt whether it is not our manifest
duty to endeavor at least to show our disapproval
of the deed and our sympathy with those who have
suffered by it. The case must be extreme in which
such a course is justifiable. . . . The cases in
which we could interfere by force of arms, as we
interfered to put a stop to the intolerable conditions
in Cuba, are necessarily very few. Yet it is not to
be expected that a people like ours, which in spite
of certain very obvious shortcomings, nevertheless
as a whole shows by its consistent practice its belief
in the principles of civil and religious liberty and
of orderly freedom, a people among whom even the
worst crime, like the crime of lynching, is never
more than spasmodic, so that individuals and not
classes are molested in their fundamental rights — ^it
is inevitable that such a nation should desire eagerly
to give expression to its horror on an occasion like
that of the massacre of the Jews in Kishinef, or
when it witnesses such systematic and long-extended
cruelty and oppression as the cruelty and oppression

HUMANITARIAN DIPLOMACY 35

of which the Armenians have been the victims and
which have won for them the indignant pity of the
civilized world.

The Treaty of Berlin of 1878, whicli fol-
lowed the Russo-Turkish War of the preced-
ing year, had for its object the adjustment
of the relations of the Balkan States, to free
them from the Turkish yoke and at the same
time restore the European balance. This
treaty not only expressly recognized, but ma-
terially advanced the right of intervention in
the internal affairs of other states and pro-
vided for extensive guarantees of a humani-
tarian nature. The independence of Monte-
negro, Servia, Bulgaria and Roumania were
recognized by the great powers upon the ex-
press condition that there should be no re-
ligious discriminations, that all the subjects
of the several states should be guaranteed the
enjoyment of their civil and political rights,
and that the citizens and subjects of foreign
powers should be treated without distinction
of creed on a footing of perfect equality.

The persecutions of the Jews in Roumania
in 1902, and the large influx of" impoverished
refugees to our shores, shocked the enlight-
ened sense and .roused the humanitarian senti-

36 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

ments of our people. Secretary Hay, taking
up the subject in his inimitable and masterly
style, addressed an instruction to our minister
to Roumania, for communication to that gov-
ernment, and at the same time forwarded it
to our ambassadors to the several signatory
powers to the Treaty of Berlin, with instruc-
tions to bring it to the attention of the gov-
ernments concerned, with the hope that such
powers would endeavor to induce the Govern-
ment of Roumania to reconsider its oppressive
measures and restrictive laws. After recit-
ing the wrongs which the Jews were made to
suffer, so repugnant to the moral sense of our
enlightened age, he adds:

This government can not be a tacit party to such
an international wrong. It is constrained to pro-
test against the treatment to which the Jews of
Eoumania are subjected, not alone because it has
unimpeachable grounds to remonstrate against the
resultant injury to itself, but in the name of hu-
manity. The United States may not authorita-
tively appeal to the stipulations of the Treaty of
Berlin, to which it was not and can not become a
signatory, but it does earnestly appeal to the princi-
ples consigned tlierein because they are the princi-
ples of international law and eternal justice, advo-
cating the broad toleration which that solemn

HUMANITARIAN DIPLOMACY 37

compact enjoins, and standing ready to lend its
moral support to the fulfillment thereof by its
consignatories, for the act of Roumania itself has
effectively joined the United States to them as an
interested party in this regard.*

Secretary Hay, in his instruction to our
Minister to Eoumania, discussing our pro-
posed naturalization treaty with that coun-
try, said: "It behooves the state to scrutinize
most jealously the character of the immigra-
tion from a foreign land, and if it he obnox-
ious to objection, to examine the causes which
render it so. Should those causes originate
in the act of another sovereign state, to the
detriment of its neighbors, it is the preroga-
tive of an injured state to point out the evil
and to make remonstrance; for, with nations,
as with individuals, the social law holds good
that the right of each is bounded by the right
of the neighbor. . . . The right of re-
monstrance against the acts of the Eouman-
ian Government is clearly established in favor
of this Government. ' ' ^

Employment of the diplomacy of human-
ity, which has had so large a jJlace in the for-

i Foreign Relations of the United States, 1902, p. 45.
B Ibid, p. 912.

38 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

eiga relations of our country, has been im-
measurably facilitated, though not in direct
terms, yet in the spirit of the provisions for
the tender of "good offices or mediation" of
the Hague Convention for the Pacific Settle-
ment of International Disputes. These pro-
visions, recognizing the closer ties uniting the
family of nations, reversed their attitude from
that of hostility to friendly reception of that
form of intervention which comes under the
designation above by providing that : ' ' The ex-
ercise of this right [the offer of good offices
or mediation] can never be regarded by either
of the parties in dispute as an unfriendly
act."

The enlightened sense of the world is the
basis of international morality, and as that
sense finds freer expression with the growth
of public opinion and of parliamentary insti-
tutions, the forces of civilization in every land
will supplant more and more the doctrine of
expediency in international relations by the
principles of morality and humanity, founded
upon justice and righteousness.

in

AMERICAN COMMEECIAL DIPLOMACY

in

AMERICAN COMMERCIAL DIPLOMACY

FROM the beginning, our diplomacy, in its
aim and purposes, was commercial as
distinguished from political, and this neces-
sarily gave it the character of sincerity and
straightforwardness. After our independence
was established and we entered upon life as
an independent nation, our first concern was
to negotiate treaties of amity and commerce.
The first of these was our Treaty of Amity
and Commerce with France (1778), by which
France and the United States engaged mutu-
ally not to grant any favor to other nations
in respect to commerce and navigation which
should not immediately become common to the
other party, who should enjoy the same favor.
Historical accuracy compels me to say that the
aid France extended to us in our Revolution
did not arise exclusively out of sympathy with
us or from sentiments of liberty; underlying,
if not superinducing her generous assistance,
the remembrance of which our national sense

41

42 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

of gratitude should ever cherish, there were
substantial reasons of commercial interest.
The Revolution, besides affording an oppor-
tunity of weakening an enemy, also held out
the probability of breaking up the British
monopoly of trade with the colonies, a trade
which France hoped to divert to herself.

In 1780 the earliest, opportunity presented
itself to our country to join in a European
coalition, the "Armed Neutrality," an agree-
ment by means of which a convention was en-
tered into between Russia, Denmark, Sweden,
and Holland to protect neutral commerce; it
defined contraband and declared that "free
ships make free goods." The United States
desired to take part in this concert, and sent
Francis Dana to Russia, but Russia would not
receive him, and our adhesion was most cour-
teously rejected.

Washington, in his Farewell Address, out-
lining with statesmanly foresight our national
policy, said:

The great rule of conduct for us, in regard to
foreign nations, is, in extending our commercial
relations, to have with them as little political connec-
tion as possible. So far as we have already formed

COMMERCIAL DIPLOMACY 43

engagements, let them be fulfilled with perfect good
faith. Here let us stop.

At this time (1796) events had fully justified
the wisdom of this policy, which had been
adopted by Washington against the opposition
of Jefferson and Madison and their partizans,
who, because of their sympathy with the
French democracy, endeavored to identify the
interest of our country with France in her
wars against the allied powers and with her
unbridled and infuriated democracy. Condi-
tions rapidly developed which compelled Wash-
ington to take a decided step forward amid
difficulties and perplexities which at the pres-
ent day it is, perhaps, not possible to realize
adequately and much less to measure; the
young nation gave notice to the world that
the United States was not to be a pawn on
the chess-board of European politics, but
would, in accordance with its independent
position in the family of nations, follow its
own best interests in accordance with its prin-
ciples of international equity and justice.

The conditions referred to were the over-
throw of the French monarchy and the ex-
cesses of the French Revolution, and the com-

44 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

ing to this country of a Minister from the
French Directory, Genet, who, upon his ar-
rival at Charleston, appealed to the public
opinion of the country, enlisting men, equip-
ping vessels, and commissioning privateers, as
if the United States were a colony or a de-
pendency of France. The crisis he provoked
became so intense that it created a distinct
division even in "Washington's Cabinet, and it
was found imperatively necessary for the
President to suspend the functions of Genet
and demand his recall and to issue a proclama-
tion of neutrality embodying the highest ideals
of international text-writers, far in advance
of that doctrine of expediency which then con-
trolled the practices of nations. Hall, one of
the foremost of the recent authoritative writ-
ers on international law, says of it:

The policy of the United States in 1793 consti-
tutes an epoch in the development of the usages of
neutrality. ... It represented by far the most
advanced existing opinion as to what those obliga-
tions were. ... In the main, however, it is
identical with the standard of conduct which is now
adopted by the community of nations.

The proclamation was characterized by the
opposition as unwise and unjust in placing

COMMEECIAL DIPLOMACY 45

Great Britain upon the same footing and giv-
ing her the same privileges as Prance. It
cannot be denied that its immediate effect had
disadvantages for us in restricting our com-
merce with European nations, including Great
Britain as well as France. In the following
year (1794) Congress passed our first Neu-
trality Act, which, in its main principles, as
revised in 1818, guides the practice of civilized
nations. This advanced position of neutral-
ity, coupled with the independent attitude of
the Washington administration, aggravated
the opposition on the part of the maritime
powers, none of whom entertained a friendly
disposition toward us, and our efforts to ne-
gotiate treaties of commerce met with ob-
struction and delay. Discouraging as this
condition was, yet the very causes that pro-
duced it subsequently aided us in negotiating
more favorable treaties with the several
powers than would otherwise have been pos-
sible. Trescot, in his American Diplomatic
History, says:

Thus the treaty with England was yielded to
the necessities of the conditions of hostility between
England and Prance ; the treaty with Spain was the
result of the changed attitude of that power toward

46 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

England on the one side and France on the other;
and the treaty with France depended upon the
special relations which France at the moment wished
to assume for her own purposes toward the other
powers of Europe.

At the outbreak of the Revolution it was
estimated that one-sixth of the wheat and flour
exported from the United States, and one-
fourth of dried and pickled fish, besides other
products, found their best markets in the ports
of the Mediterranean. This commerce had
grown up under the protection of the British
flag, and from eighty to one hundred ships
were employed in it. When the war began,
this commerce had to be entirely abandoned,
and the commercial loss was severely felt. In
the treaty of 1778 with France it was pro-
posed by the negotiators, in accordance with
the instructions given to them by the Conti-
nental Congress, that France should take the
place of Great Britain as the protector of the
American vessels; but the King of France
would go no further than to agree to employ
his good offices.

The Barbary powers, Morocco and the re-
gencies of Tunis, Tripoli and Algiers, which
for generations subsisted by depredations on

COMMERCIAL DIPLOMACY 47

commerce, were known as the "Piratical
States," and the European States, in order
to protect their commerce, had their choice
either of paying a certain sum per head to
ransom each captive or of buying entire free-
dom for their commerce by expenditure of
large, stipulated annual sums. In the treaty
renewed by Prance in 1788 with Algiers she
agreed to pay $200,000 annually, besides
large presents periodically. The peace of
Spain with Algiers is said to have cost from
three to five million dollars, and it is said upon
good authority that England was paying an
annual tribute of $280,000. England was the
only power sufficiently strong on the sea to
put down these pirates; but she found it to
her commercial advantage as mistress of the
sea to leave them in existence and to pay a
large annual tribute, so that they might re-
main a scourge to the commerce of other
powers.

Lord Sheffield said in 1783, in his Observa-
tions on the Commerce of the American States:

It is not probable that the American States will
have a very free trade in the Mediterranean. It
will not be for the interests of any of the great mar-
itime powers to protect them from the Barbary

48 THE AMERICAN SPIEIT

States. . . . That the Barbary States were
advantageous to the maritime powers is certain.
. . . The armed neutrality would be as hurtful
to the great maritime powers as the Barbary States
are useful. The Americans cannot protect them-
selves from the latter; they cannot pretend to a
navy.

It may be incidentally mentioned that these
diflSculties with Barbary gave us a navy. I
need not here detail the account of our rela-
tions with the Barbary powers, which forms
a well-known and glorious chapter in our dip-
lomatic history.

When the new government under the Con-
stitution was formed, Jefferson, as Secretary
of State, declared the determination of the
United States "to prefer war in all cases to
tribute under any form." But a navy was
wanting to make this declaration effective. By
December, 1793, the number of American ves-
sels captured by Algerian corsairs was thir-
teen, and the number of captives was one hun-
dred and nineteen. The United States, urged
on by the cry of the captives, whom it was then
unable to rescue by force, accepted the condi-
tions of the Dey, and by the expenditure of
nearly eight hundred thousand dollars ob-

COMMERCIAL DIPLOMACY 49

tained the release of its citizens and purchased
a peace, which was signed on September 5,
1795. A treaty with Tripoli followed in No-
vember, 1796, and one with Tunis in August,
1797. In our treaty with Tripoli, concluded
in the administration of Washington, we find
a significant declaration, doubtless inserted to
overcome the religious fanaticism of the Dey,
and for the purpose of emphasizing the fact
that our form of government was a civil com-
monwealth as distinguished from a monarchy
where its church and state are united, or
where the state is under the domination of an
ecclesiastical hierarchy. The declaration re-
ferred to is in Article IX of the treaty and
reads as follows:

As the Government of the United States of
America is not in any sense founded on the
Christian religion, as it has in itself no character of
enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity of
Mussulmans, . . . it is declared by the parties
that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall
ever produce an interruption of the harmony exist-
ing between the two coimtries.

Perhaps the idea was also to emphasize the
strictly and exclusively commercial purpose
intended to be served by the treaty. With

50 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

tlie omission of tlie introductory phrase a sim-
ilar declaration was inserted in the treaty
with Tripoli of 1805 and in the treaties with
Algiers of 1815 and 1816.

During the seven years following the sec-
ond peace with Tripoli the foreign relations
of the United States were comparatively un-
eventful, but the feeling of hostility broke out
again in 1812 when it became known that war
between the United States and Great Britain
was then imminent. An act was passed by
Congress on March 3, 1815, "for the protec-
tion of the commerce of the United States
against the Algerine cruisers." Two squad-
rons were ordered to the Mediterranean un-
der Bainbridge and Decatur, and immediately
upon their arrival on the scene they forced
the Dey to sign a treaty by which it was de-
clared that no tribute of any form or
under any pretext should ever be required
from the United States. Tripoli and Tunis
were also admonished, and thereby, through
the intrepid course of our navy, the Barbary
pirates, after centuries of depredations on life
and property, were taught to respect human
rights, and the Mediterranean was made free
to the commerce of the world.

COMMERCIAL DIPLOMACY 51

I refer to but few of the leading incidents in
our diplomacy affecting the rights of com-
merce, and I have purposely confined this re-
view chiefly to such questions as advanced the
freedom of commerce not exclusively for our
country but for all nations. The efforts of
the United States to secure for commerce the
free navigation of rivers and seas began early
in its history and has been persistently and
successfully pushed forward upon the broad
principles of international justice and equality
among nations ; in other words, our policy on
land and sea has consistently been that of "the
open door." Besides maintaining the free-
dom of the seas, the United States from the
beginning contended for the free navigation
of the natural channels that lead to the seas.
In the advocacy of this international principle
for the freedom of commerce, it was mainly
instrumental in bringing about the abolition,
in 1857, of the dues levied by Denmark on vesr
sels and cargoes passing from the North Sea
into the Baltic. Mr. Clay, as Secretary of
State, in his protest against these dues and
exactions had declared that "if a canal to unite
the Pacific and Atlantic oceans should ever be
constructed; the benefits of it ought not to be

52 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

exclusively appropriated to any one nation,
but should be extended to all parts of tbe globe
upon the payment of a just compensation or
reasonable tolls. ' ' ^

This principle is embodied ia the Hay-
Pauncefote Treaty for the neutralization of
the Panama Canal. The free navigation of
the St. Lawrence was secured for a limited
period by the Reciprocity Treaty of 1854, and
in perpetuity by the Treaty of Washington in
1871. In accordance with the same principles
the United States endeavored to secure the
free navigation of the Amazon, which in 1866
was voluntarily granted to all nations by the
Emperor of Brazil. By a treaty with Bo-
livia in 1858 the Amazon and La Plata, with
their tributaries, were declared to be, "in ac-
cordance with fixed principles of international
law, . . . channels open by nature for the
commerce of all nations."

In 1821 the Emperor Alexander of Russia
issued a ukase prohibiting foreign vessels
from approaching, withia less than one hun-
dred Italian miles, the northwestern coast of
America, from Bering's Strait to the fifty-
first degree of north latitude. The Russian

1 John Bassett Moore's "American Diplomacy," pp. 81-82.

COMMERCIAL DIPLOMACY 53

minister in Washington, in his note to our
Grovernment, made the additional claim of
Eussia's right of sovereignty over the whole
northwestern part of the continent of Amer-
ica above that line. These negotiations re-
garding Eussia's extraordinary claims aroused
a great deal of bitterness and hostility
throughout the country, until they were finally
adjusted by the Convention of 1824. Madison,
in writing to President Monroe in regard to
the conclusion of this treaty, said:

The convention with Russia is a propitious event
in substituting amicable adjustment for the risks of
hostile collision. But I give the Emperor little
credit for his consent to the principle of mare
Itberum in the North Pacific.

These negotiations are of the highest inter-
est to us historically from another point of
view, as in them expression was given to the
main principles which soon came to be known
as the Monroe Doctrine. A new Eussian
Minister, Baron de Tuyl, was sent over in the
autumn of 1822. Mr. Adams wrote in his
diary, "I find proof enough to put down the
Eussian Government, but how shall we answer
the Eussian cannon?" He declares that a

54 THE AMEKICAN SPIEIT

few days later the Eussian Minister held a
conversation with him and desired to know
what instructions he had sent to Mr. Middle-
ton, our Minister at St. Petersburg, and Mr.

Adams says:

I told him specially that we should contest the
right of Eussia to any territorial establishment on
this continent : and that we should assume distinctly
the principle that the American continents are no
longer subjects for any new European colonial estab-
lishments.

When maritime commerce was identified
with piracy, and subsequently with disregard
of neutral rights, it was continually a source
of irritation and aggravated the militant spirit
between nations; but with the growth of the
modern industrial development and the ex-
tension of foreign trade, nations no longer find
it profitable to be hostile to one another be-
cause of their prosperity. The commercial
spirit, while it is competitive, is not a militant
spirit, for in its final analysis foreign com-
merce rests upon mutuality, and a wealthy and
prosperous nation is a much better customer
than a poor nation. The commercial spirit,
therefore, from enlightened self-interest, fav-

COMMEECIAL DIPLOMACY 55

ors the promotion of prosperity in other na-
tions. The only apparent exception to this
modern spirit of commerce is to be found in
relation to trade with Oriental nations, where
there is a tendency on the part of the great
powers to establish spheres of influence and to
force special concessions and exclusive privi-
leges, to the detriment of competing nations.
America again has come to the forefront by
insisting upon "the open door" in China and
in other Oriental lands, in the furtherance of
which it has consistently refrained from and
protested against the policy of some of the
great powers who seek to advance their po-
litical influence in order to obtain exclusive
rights for their commerce, or who seek to es-
tablish exclusive commercial rights to promote
their political influence. The American pol-
icy, which was so felicitously characterized
by Secretary Hay as that of the "Monroe
Doctrine and the Golden Kule," is an interna-
tional policy of the highest equity and justice,
and it should ever be our vigilant care that
these two parallel purposes of our national
policy in foreign affairs should not be so con-
strued as to become incompatible in guarding
our continental interests and our peaceful re-

56 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

latibns with the nations of the world. This
will be the responsible task of American states-
manship, requiring no less the highest wisdom
than the calmness of patriotic restraint to
guide our destinies aright in times of stress.
It is largely due to the vast extension of
commercial intercourse between nations in our
times, which rests upon reciprocity, that the
standard of public morals has been lifted from
the lower sphere of international expediency
to the higher sphere of morality and law. As
examples of this may be cited the abolition of
the slave-trade and the more recent efforts,
on the part of China in concert with the lead-
ing powers, to prohibit the cultivation and
trade in opium except for legitimate medical
use. The standard of international morality
still continues to lag far behind the standard
of commercial fair dealing within nations ; the
evidences of this are no more glaringly exhib-
ited than in the exceptions in the laws of neu-
trality, which rest not on principle but on
legal casuistry. As the law now stands, it is
entirely lawful for the subjects of neutrals to
supply belligerents with arms and ammuni-
tion, as well as, by public subscription or
otherwise, to raise loans to aid belligerents;

COMMERCIAL DIPLOMACY 57

yet the fact that such loans can be legally con-
tracted makes war possible when otherwise
either or both belligerents would be prevented
by economic necessities from beginning a war,
or, when begun, from prolonging it. The
Eusso-Japanese War would certainly have
come to an earlier end if neither belligerent
could have borrowed money from the subjects
of neutrals. It requires no argument to prove
that such acts are against the fundamental
principles of neutrality; and when the stand-
ards of international morality advance a sin-
gle step further such contraband commerce
and loans will no longer be considered lawful.
No more practical work can be undertaken in
the promotion of peace than to hasten the day
when the laws of neutrality shall be made to
square with the principles of impartiality, jus-
tice, and morality.

IV

VENEZUELA AND THE MONEOE DOC-
TEINE

IV

VENEZUELA AND THE MONROE DOC-
TRINE

THE Declaration of Indepeadenee, Wash-
ington's Farewell Address, and the Mes-
sage of President Monroe containing the
Doctrine called after his name, were three in-
struments in the history of these United
States, neither of them a charter, or a consti-
tution, or even laws, that yet have had a con-
trolling influence upon the policy and destiny
of the nation far beyond all public acts com-
bined, with the single exception of the Federal
Constitution. The patriotism and statesman-
ship of the fathers of the Republic formulated
these several documents for the guidance and
preservation of our institutions for all time to
come.

Two cardinal principles have always con-
trolled the relations of the United States with
the governments of the world — the neutrality
policy laid down by Washington, and the Mon-

61

62 THE AMEEICAN SPIEIT

roe Doctrine to guard the integrity and wel-
fare of institutions on this continent. When
President Monroe submitted the papers which
called forth the Message to the author of the
Declaration of Independence for his advice,
Jefferson answered:

The question presented by the letters you have
sent me is the most momentous which has ever been
offered to my contemplation since that of Independ-
ence. That made us a nation ; this sets our compass
and points the course which we are to steer through
the ocean of time opening on us.

The question so momentous, which Jeffer-
son referred to, and which was also submitted
by Monroe for the opinion of Madison, briefly
summarized, grew out of the following circum-
stances :

In 1815 a treaty was entered into between
the Emperors of Russia and Austria and the
King of Prussia, not through the intermedia-
tion of ministers, but by themselves acting as
absolute sovereigns. The objects of the
league thus formed — called the "Holy Alli-
ance," thus bearing a benevolent and sacred
aspect — were primarily to rehabilitate autoc-
racy with jure divino, and secondarily to pre-
vent the rise of and to overthrow free govern-

THE MONROE DOCTRINE 63

ment and dominate the world. Congresses
were held at Aix-la-Chapelle, Troppau, and
Laybach, for concentrating and extending the
powers of the allies and putting their ob-
jects into operation. Liberal movements were
forcibly suppressed in Piedmont and Naples
in 1820, and the system of armed intervention
was adopted in the affairs of other states, in
order to suppress free institutions and to
strengthen monarchical government, without
regard to the immediate interests of the states
composing the Alliance. In October, 1822, the
allied sovereigns assembled at Verona and
formulated measures for the suppression of
the revolution in Spain. In April, 1823,
France undertook to apply the principles of
the allies by invading Spain for the purpose
of overthrowing the constitution of the Cortes
and restoring absolute monarchy under Ferdi-
nand VII. The British government protested
against this interference, disclaiming for
itself, and denying to other powers, the right
of requiring any change in the internal insti-
tutions of an independent state.

The allied powers, having gone forward in
their plan to suppress popular government,
purposed to transfer their intervention to

64 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

our hemisphere, a result of the relations
of France and Spain and their attitude
toward the South American colonies then
at the approaching end of their successful
struggle for independence. Canning, the Brit-
ish Prime Minister, in August, 1823, had
a conference with our Minister, Rush, with
the view of sounding our government as to
what action it would take against such threat-
ened intervention by France, laying stress on
the commercial interests of Great Britain and
the large portion of maritime power which his
government and ours shared between them.
This conference was followed by a note ad-
dressed by Canning to Rush, wherein he writes :

Is not the moment come when our governments
might understand each other as to the Spanish-
American colonies? And if we can arrive at such
an understanding, would it not be expedient for
ourselves, and beneficial to all the world, that the
principles of it should be clearly settled and plainly
avowed ?

And then he sets forth Great Britain's atti-
tude in detail: that he regards the recovery
of the colonies of Spain as hopeless; that
she does not aim at the possession of any por-
tion herself, and could not view their trans-

THE MONEOE DOCTRINE 65

fer to any other power with indifference. He
continues :

If there be any European power which cher-
ishes other projects, which looks to a forcible enter-
prise for reducing the colonies to subjugation, on
the behalf or in the name of Spain, or which medi-
tates the acquisition of any part of them to itself,
by cession or by conquest, such a declaration on the
part of your government and ours would be at once
the most effectual and the least offensive mode of
our intimating our joint disapprobation of such
projects. . . . Nothing could be more gratifying to
me than to join with you in such a work, and I am
persuaded there has seldom, in the history of the
world, occurred an opportunity where so small an
effort of two friendly governments might produce
so unequivocal a good and prevent such extensive
calamities.

Our government, which before this time had
formally acknowledged the independence of
the Spanish-American states, received this
overture of the British Prime Minister with
all the deliberation that the importance of this
step demanded. President Monroe did not
adopt the proposal for a joint declaration.
He maintained that the public policy of the
United States, which held it aloof from inter-
vention in the affairs of European powers,

66 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

necessarily implied European non-interven-
tion in the affairs of this hemisphere, and
he embodied this principle in his Message of
December 2, 1823. After declaring that it
was our policy not to interfere with the inter-
nal concerns of European powers, and refer-
ring to the contemplated interference by the
"Holy Alliance," he said, in language which
has gone into history as the "Monroe Doc-
trine," of our continental policy:

With the movements in this hemisphere we are,
of necessity, more immediately connected, and by
causes which must be obvious to all enlightened and
impartial observers. . . . We owe it, therefore, to
candor, and to the amicable relations existing be-
tween the United States and those [European]
powers, to declare that we should consider any at-
tempt on their part to extend their system to any
portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our
peace and safety. . . , With the existing colonies or
dependencies of any European power we have not
interfered and shall not interfere. But with the
governments who have declared their independ-
ence and maintained it, and whose independence we
have, on great consideration and on just principles,
acknowledged, we could not view any interposition
for the purpose of oppressing them, or controlling
in any other manner their destiny, by any Euro-
pean power, in any other light than as the manifes-

THE MONROE DOCTRINE 67

tation of an unfriendly disposition towards the
United States. ... It is equally impossible, there-
fore, that we should behold such interposition, in
any form, with indifference.

This policy, far from being arbitrary, em-
bodies tbe golden rule of international rela-
tions, as it concedes to the nations of the other
continents the rights we demand on the Amer-
ican continent. Instead of producing war, it
was a harbinger of peace ; it not only hastened
the independence of the struggling colonies on
this hemisphere, but it also relieved Europe
from the terrors of absolutism of the "Holy
Allies." In England the Message was hailed
with joy and enthusiasm; her statesmen ex-
tolled it in unmeasured terms. Brougham re-
ferred to it as an event "than which none has
ever dispersed greater joy, exultation, and
gratitude over all the freedom of Europe."
Canning, in his justifiable pride for his share
in the circumstances which called forth the
Message, said: "I called the New World into
existence to redress the balance of the Old."

The Doctrine so formulated by Monroe,
expounded by Adams, and counseled by Jef-
ferson and Madison, said Secretary Freling-
huysen in his instructions to Lowell (May 8,

68 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

1882), "has since remained a cardinal prin-
ciple of our continental policy. ... It is not
to be anticipated that Great Britain will con-
trovert an international doctrine which she
suggested to the United States when looking
to her own interests, and which, when adopted
by this Republic, she highly approved."
For more than seventy years the executive
branch of the government has on repeated
occasions given to this Doctrine its approval
and has uniformly acted upon it; our diplo-
macy has been guided by it, and our secreta-
ries of state have time and again made it the
subject of diplomatic representation. The
details of these representations in more recent
years are to be found in the instructions and
communications of Secretaries Fish, Freling-
huysen, Evarts, Blaine, and Bayard, and in
Olney's resume of the negotiations and in-
structions, communicated to Lord Salisbury,
attached to the President's Message. Be-
sides being the controlling factor in the eman-
cipation of the South American states, and in
protecting them from European ambition or
intervention, the Monroe Doctrine operated to
prevent the establishment of a European dy-
nasty in Mexico at the close of our civil war.

THE MONEOE DOCTRINE 69

On more than one occasion it has been applied
to the case of Cuba, and especially by Presi-
dent Grant in 1870, in his Message of that
year, wherein he said that existing dependen-
cies were no longer regarded as subject to
transfer by one European power to another;
and that when existing relations of colonies
cease, they are to become independent powers.
It was applied to dangers threatening Yuca-
tan, and its principles were embodied in the
treaty of the United States with Great Britain
respecting the settlement of affairs in Central
America. Secretary Fish, in his report ac-
companying the President's Message, wrote:

The United States stand solemnly committed by
repeated declarations and repeated acts to this
Doctrine, and its application to the affairs of this
continent. ... It does not contemplate forcible in-
tervention in any legitimate contest ; but it protests
against permitting such a contest to result in the
increase of European power or influence. . . . This
policy is not a policy of aggression; but it opposes
the creation of European dominion on American
soil, or its transfer to other European powers, and
it looks hopefully to the time when, by voluntary
departure of European governments from this con-
tinent and the adjacent islands, America shall be
wholly American.

70 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

We now take up the question of the Ven-
ezuelan boundary dispute between that Re-
public and Great Britain, the repeated tender
of our good offices to Great Britain in the in-
terest of peace and harmony, and the urgent
representations of our solicitude, while dis-
tinctly withholding any expression of opinion
as to the real merits of the controversy, so as
not to prejudge or prejudice the rights of
either party.

The dispute existed at least as early as
1814, when Great Britain, by treaty with the
Netherlands, acquired the provinces known as
Essequibo, Demerara, and Berbice. From
that time to the present day the boundary be-
tween this territory — now known as British
Guiana — and Venezuela has continued to be a
source of contention. The limit contended for
by Venezuela has consistently been the Esse-
quibo, excepting when she offered concessions
in order to arrive at an amicable settlement
by treaty and arbitration. Great Britain's
claim has varied considerably, growing in ex-
tent from stage to stage in the negotiations.
In 1840 an English engineer. Sir Robert
Schomburgk, who five years before this date
had explored the Orinoco for the Royal Geo-

THE MONROE DOCTEINE 71

graphical Society, was commissioned by the
British, government to survey and delimit pro-
visionally the boundaries of British Guiana;
it being the intention of the Foreign Secre-
tary, Lord Pahnerston — as appears by a letter
of instructions written in 1840 by the Under-
Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Vis-
count Leveson (afterward Earl Granville) —
to submit the maps of the boundaries thus de-
limited to Venezuela and the other govern-
ments interested for their consideration and
objections. The boundary thus traced and
marked is known as the "Schomburgk line."
Whether the maps were or were not sub-
mitted, it is quite clear that Venezuela
promptly remonstrated, so that the monu-
ments of the line set up by Schomburgk were
removed by order of Lord Aberdeen.

For the quarter of the century following
1848, Venezuela was convulsed by revolutions,
so that the boundary question received little
or no consideration. Since that time, as ap-
pears from the negotiations, the boundary of
British Guiana has been deporting itself as if
galvanized by Horace Greeley's advice to "go
West." While negotiations were pending,
new appropriations were being made by Great

72 THE AMEEICAN SPIRIT

Britain whida amounted' to 33,000 square
miles in the years from 1885 to 1887; so that
Venezuela, finding this condition unbearable,
in the latter year suspended diplomatic rela-
tions, protesting "against the acts of spolia-
tion committed to her detriment by the gov-
ernment of Great Britain." Diplomatic rela-
tions have not since been restored, though new
negotiations begun in 1890 and in 1893 met
with the same fate as before; Great Britain
refusing to negotiate or arbitrate, except as
to territory west of an arbitrary line drawn
by herself. To all these negotiations, as de-
tailed with explicitness by Secretary Olney,
"the United States has not been, and indeed,
in view of its traditional policy, could not be,
indifferent." In December, 1886, Secretary
Bayard, in order to avert the impending rup-
ture between Venezuela and Great Britain, of-
fered to the latter, through Minister Phelps,
the cooperation of our government to arbi-
trate the differences, and said :

Her Majesty's government will readily under-
stand that this attitude of friendly neutrality . . .
is entirely consistent and compatible with the sense
of responsibility that rests upon the United States
in relation to South American republics. The doc-

THE MONROE DOCTRINE 73

trines we announced two generations ago, at the
instance and with the cordial support and approval
of the British government, have lost none of their
force or importance in the progress of time, and the
governments of Great Britain and the United States
are equally interested in conserving a status the
wisdom of which has been demonstrated by the ex-
perience of more than half a century.

The United States, in respect to the Ven-
ezuelan boundary dispute, is not concerned
whether British Guiana be larger by an area
estimated at 109,000 square miles, nor
whether the territorial dominions of the Re-
public of Venezuela be less to that extent. In
the language of Monroe's Message, "with the
existiag colonies or dependencies of any Eu-
ropean power we have not interfered and shall
not interfere."

It is held by Venezuela that Great Britain's
usurpation entails most serious consequences,
the "exclusive dominion over the Orinoco, the
great artery on the north of the continent,
the Mississippi River of South America," and
that this control perpetuates measures of
usurpation that will be the cause of perma-
nent danger to the industry and commerce of
Venezuela and neighboring states, which may,

74 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

as to certain "American countries, render il-
lusory their political existence as free and in-
dependent states." Even tlie possibility of
such consequences would not justify our gov-
ernment in intervening for the purpose of
depriving either country of a foot of territory
that it is by right — as distinguished from
might — entitled to hold. But, under the most
favorable construction that can be put upon
this controversy, it is apparent that the true
boundary line between Great Britain and Ven-
ezuela is involved in an uncertainty, which
fact is made the more apparent by the ever
widening of the British boundary, during the
past fifty years, from the Essequibo line until
it includes the mouth of the Orinoco. Aside
from the real facts of the controversy. Lord
Salisbury's refusal to avail himself of our
friendly offices, and to submit the question to
impartial arbitration, leads to the conclusion
that he had not sufficient faith in the justice
of his claim. This he does not assert or ad-
mit ; he resorts to a line of argument which is
not only undiplomatic, but untenable, and
changes the controversy from one affecting
the boundary of a comparatively insignificant
Britisb colony to an attack upon our conti-

THE MONEOE DOCTRINE 75

nental policy. It is this inadmissible conten-
tion on the part of the British Prime Minis-
ter, and not the President's Message, which
has the dangerous tendency to change the
issue from one of fact and diplomacy to one
affecting the cardinal principle of our na-
tional policy for the security of our institu-
tions and our relations to the nations on this
continent. Mr. Schurz, in his admirable ad-
dress before the New York Chamber of Com-
merce, referring to this regrettable phase of
the controversy, said:

Now questions of fact, of law, of interest, of
substantial right and justice, it may sometimes be
very difficult to decide; but there are rules of evi-
dence, rules of legal construction, and rules of
equity, to help us to a solution. But a question of
honor usually withdraws from all those aids, be-
cause it is a matter of sentiment.

While the closing passages of the President's
Message show some evidences of irritation
because of this offensive attitude on the part
of Lord Salisbury (assumed doubtless to jus-
tify his refusal to submit the boundary dis-
pute to arbitration), the President has wisely
provided for keeping the controversy within
the realm of fact and evidence by suggesting

76 THE AMERICAN SPIEIT

the appointment of a Commission to make an
inquiry to that end, to **be conducted care-
fully and judicially ; and due weight should be
given to all available evidence, records, and
facts in support of the claims of both par-
ties."

I do not believe that the possession by
Great Britain of the disputed territory has
the possibility, even remotely, of any such
consequences as is claimed by Venezuela; but
I do believe that Lord Salisbury's refusal
to arbitrate charges Great Britain with
weighty responsibilities that are not meas-
ured by their effect upon her possessions on
this continent. It entails upon her the re-
sponsibility for the abrogation of the humane
principles of arbitration as the best and most
civilized method for the settlement of interna-
tional disputes, which have been so courte-
ously and urgently pressed ijpon her in this
matter by our government, by every Secretary
of State since 1876, and by our Presidents in
their messages to Congress. Eeference to
this request for arbitration, with a brief state-
ment of our traditional policy, was again
made by President Cleveland in his last an-
nual message at the opening of the present

THE MONEOE DOCTRINE 77

Congress. Great Britain and the United
States have been foremost among the nations
of the world in advocating this method of set-
tling international controversies, and their
example has been the most encouraging and
potent factor for promoting good will and
"peace with honor" among the nations of the
earth. During the present century about
eighty international controversies have been
adjusted by this method, and a large propor-
tion of them have affected boundaries. Our
country has settled more than forty of these
difficulties in this wise, and of these some of
the most important have been with Great
Britain touching boundaries. The Monroe
Doctrine has ever been a preserver of peace,
and every assertion of it has had the effect of
averting the calamities of war. Our Presi-
dents, from Monroe to Cleveland, in order to
maintain our traditional policy, to prevent,
on the part of European governments, any
misconception of its meaning and application,
and to avoid a condition which threatened to
arouse popular excitement to a point that
might drive the nation into war, have reiter-
ated our policy in accordance not only with
the right, but with the duty, devolving upon

78 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

the chief Executive. Following in this regard
the precedent set by Monroe — ^who prefaced
his enunciation of the Doctrine with the
words, "We owe it, therefore, to candor and
to the amicable relations existing between the
United States and those powers" — Mr. Cleve-
land has responded to this grave duty in order
to avert a hostile collision between the two
great English-speaking peoples, who should
ever remain "strenuous and worthy rivals in
all the arts of peace."

V

GEOWTH OF AMEEICAN PEESTIGE

V
GEOWTH OF AMEEICAN PEESTIGE

IT is a strange historical coincidence that
the two great English-speaking nations
came out as it were from their isolation and
developed into great world powers following,
if not growing out of, a war with the same na-
tion. The destruction of the Spanish Armada
in 1588 gave to England international inde-
pendence, and made her mistress of the sea;
while our war with Spain, followed by the
peaceful and triumphal procession of our war-
ships around the globe, raised the United
States to a great world power, and achieved
for us an international respect not only on the
Atlantic and the Pacific, but throughout the
habitable world. Let me give you a quaint
illustration of this, a little incident that hap-
pened to me at the Sublime Porte. Twelve
years ago, during my former mission to Tur-
key, they had at the Porte as attendants
several deaf mutes who by gestures had a way

81

82 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

of describing the diplomatic representatives
of the several countries. At that time they
described me by holding up their palms and
blowing upon them, indicating I had been
"wafted from a country far, far away. This
time, however, I was told they described me
by swinging their arms around a circle to in-
dicate that I represented a great World
power.

Our country from the beginning has been
represented by many capable accredited offi-
cials in the capitals of the world, yet the men
who have done most to advance American
prestige were two unaccredited private citi-
zens, the one the hero of our Civil War, who
sheathed his sword with the message to our
people: "Let us have peace" — General
Gkant — the other, Theodore Roosevelt, the
champion of the justified grievances of the
masses, who aroused the conscience of our
people and won the admiration of monarch
and peasant, from lOiartoom to Christiania,
for American ideas and practical idealism.
"Americanism," said he, "is a question of
spirit convictions and purpose, not of creed or
birthplace."

We are a commercial nation, but not a com-

GEOWTH OF AMERICAN PEESTIGE 83

mercialized people; we do love the almighty
dollar, but we love the Almighty more. Com-
merce is based on mutuality and reciprocity.
It wages its contest not against the people, but
against the silent forces of nature, to put to
the uses of man the richest products of his
skill and ingenuity, and to raise the comforts
and standards of life and living. Our diplo-
macy is directed toward securing a fair field
and no favor, an open door in the markets of
the world, and in that spirit we have been
foremost among nations to lead to a peaceful
solution the most important international dif-
ferences. "We were the first to open the doors
of the International Tribunal at the Hague,
and in conjunction with Great Britain we have
submitted to it for solution the gravest and
most difficult questions that ever have been
presented for international arbitral justice —
the Alabama claims, and the long pending and
often threatening fishery disputes.

"No greater calamity," says Lecky, "can
befall a nation than to cut itself off from all
historical connection with its own past, as
France did during the Eevolution," except, I
would add, it be a blind disregard for the wel-
fare and opportunities of those who come

84 THE AMERICAN SPIEIT

after us. To this destructive spirit of indul-
gence and suicidal disregard for the future, is
due, more than to any other cause, the fall of
the mighty empires of the Eastern World,
whose buried columns, devastated forests, and
exhausted lands still remain as silent but
warning witnesses to the selfishness of man
and the folly of nations. Bismarck said the
logic of history is as exacting as Prussia's ac-
counting-office. To profit by that logic, and to
instruct and arouse public conscience, to
guard the nation's natural resources from
waste and exhaustion, formed the philosoph-
ical basis of the policies of the last adminis-
tration and of the constructive statesmanship
of President Taft.

When great wealth is allied to great souls
it is a blessing; but soulless wealth is an evil
in itself and a menace to our future as a na-
tion. The death-knell of our grandeur and
prestige will sound when we permit the men
who control millions to reach out for more
millions through political power, or when we
permit men who wield political power to de-
bauch it in reaching out for millions. No
form of government can endure when the in-
struments through which it works are corrupt.

GEOWTH OF AMEEICAN PRESTIGE 85

"We are blessed in the fact that in no country
does private munificence make so large a con-
tribution to benevolence and public uses as
with us, and in no country does humanitarian
idealism make a deeper impression upon na-
tional character. Last year when your dis-
tinguished member John S. Kennedy died, and
when his will was made public, with its bene-
factions reaching from the Golden Gate of the
Pacific to the Golden Horn of the Bosphorus,
one of the foremost European papers de-
clared that the Americans had found a rem-
edy for their swollen fortunes, and that
remedy was in swollen benefactions.

The unit of our democracy is the individual,
and its basis is trust in the people. The dis-
tinguishing feature between our political,
economical, and social fabric, and the Euro-
pean systems, is that under our system all the
people have the fullest opportunity to reap the
benefits of individual liberty, material wel-
fare, and social equality; and so long as these
are preserved — and to preserve them we must
guard them not only from above, but with no
less determination and jealousy from below —
they will continue to insure our stability and
happiness and be a gain to the world and to

86 THE AMERICAN SPIEIT

civilization. So long as our idle rich drift
abroad, and the honest laborer comes to us,
America will grow in power and prestige ; but
when the tide is reversed it will mark decay.
With a nation as with a man, without ideals
he may maintain the present, but he can not
help in molding the future. Our ideals were
less recognized and lacked impressiveness so
long as we remained isolated and distant; but
as we are coming year by year into closer
touch with the nations of the world in the
markets of the world, and stand forth as a
strong and righteous people for a square deal
not only in our home affairs, but also in our
international relations, we shall march for-
ward in fulfilment of Sumner's prophecy:
"The national example will be more puissant
than army or navy for the conquest of the
world." So long as the world conditions and
international relations are far from ideal, not-
withstanding the progress that has been made,
we must have an adequate navy that will com-
mand respect for its size and eflBciency; but
the Union Jack is not sufficient to advance
our prestige unless it is supplemented by a
merchant marine. No more patriotic cause
appeals to the merchants and manufacturers

GEOWTH OF AMERICAN PRESTIGE 87

of the nation than to enlighten our legisla-
tors, so that they will understand that we
can never win and retain our share in the
markets of the world so long as we chain our
merchant flag to our coasts and restrain
American-owned ships from carrying our
products to distant shores. Our present laws
in their effect promote the ocean carrying-
trade of other nations and discriminate
against our merchants and our flag. I am a
protectionist, and because I am I believe in
protecting not alone our domestic, but equally
our foreign trade; and that trade will never
attain its legitimate proportions until we
shape our laws so that American ships — ^by
which I mean ships owned by Americans and
sailing under our flag — can carry American
products over every sea to the four quarters
of the earth. If this cannot be brought about
in any other way, then let us annually devote
one-half the cost of a man-of-war as a postal
subsidy to the building up of our merchant
marine, which sum will come back to us ten-
fold in the increase of our foreign trade, and
in the growth of American intercourse and
prestige throughout the world.

VI

CITIZENSHIP AND PEOTECTION OF
NATUEALIZED CITIZENS ABEOAD

VI

CITIZENSHIP AND PROTECTION OF
NATURALIZED CITIZENS ABROAD

WHEN tlie normal relations between na-
tions were those of belligerency, the
principle underlying those relations was the
predominance of might and self-interest. As
this attitude changed and gradually developed
with the advance of civilization into a desire
on the part of nations to maintain peace with
one another, so did the relations change from
normal belligerency to normal amity and
friendship. In the earlier stages of this de-
velopment the foreigner had no rights, he was
regarded as a slave; his property, on the
slightest pretext, was plundered or confis-
cated ; ^ piracy was an important and legiti-
mate branch of international commerce, the
dangers of which could be avoided by paying
in advance a stipulated and often regulated

1 Walker's Science of International Law, pp. 214-217.
91

92 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

tribute, whicli tribute, or tariff, was regarded
very mucb in the light of marine insurance.

If we bear in mind that the development to
whicli we have referred has by no means
reached its final stages ; that distinct signs of
arrested growth in varying degrees are not
only traceable but clearly evident in many of
the principles as expounded by the eminent
authorities on international law, we shall be
better able to harmonize as well as to dis-
tinguish between abstract principles as laid
down by the text-writers and specific cases as
adjusted by diplomatic negotiations. This
development also marks the stages of evolu-
tion of international relations from a policy
based upon predominant might and self-inter-
est, to the recognition of reciprocal obliga-
tions based upon equal sovereignty and the
principles of justice as between civilized na-
tions. As the individuals composing a nation,
became more enlightened and imbued with a
sense of right and justice, so the nations that
ultimately reflect public opinion shaped their
political and executive relations toward each
other by their laws, treaties and conventions,
in order to avoid international differences and
lessen those double-edged controversies which

CITIZENSHIP AND PEOTECTION 93

arose out of the conflict of sovereignty and
were fruitful causes of war.

Among tlie questions coming under this
head, none are of more frequent occurrence
than those growing out of the conflicting
claims of sovereignty and allegiance made by
nations respecting their subjects.^ The chief
conflict arises out of two classes of cases:

(a) Where a person is domiciled in a coun-
try wherein he was born, descended from a
father born in the dominion of another coun-
try,

(b) Where a person born in one country,
emigrates therefrom and becomes naturalized
in the country of his adoption, and afterward
returns to the country of his birth.

The evolution and revolutions which
brought about the overthrow of Feudalism as
a state system have not entirely obliterated
many of the precedents that system engen-
dered. It has left in European countries, as
a prerogative of early monarchical claims, the

2 Subject and citizen are, in a degree, convertible term3 as
applied to natives, and though the term citizen seems to be
appropriate to republican freemen, yet we are, equally with
the inhabitants of all other countries, subjects, for we are
equally bound by allegiance and subjection to the govern-
ment and law of the land." — H Kent's Commentaries (6th
ed.)> 258, note.

94 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

idea of perpetual allegiance transferred from
the liege lord to the state, except in so far as
these ideas had to yield to the conflicting
claims of sovereignty, which are chiefly em-
bodied in the reciprocal clauses of naturaliza-
tion treaties. The feudal doctrines never
have found root in this country. "The Gov-
ernment of the United States commenced
with successful revolution; it was organized
on the hypothesis of allowing the largest
range to individual volition compatible with
publip safety ; the people of the United States
are composed of emigrants from Europe,
most of whom expatriated themselves in or-
der to escape from oppression, or, if you
please, legal impediments to personal action,
in the countries of their birth — and many of
whom were the actors and the victims of rev-
olutions or of civil wars. . . . The doctrine of
absolute and perpetual allegiance — the root
of the denial of any right of emigration — is
inadmissible in the United States. It was a
matter involved in and settled by the Revolu-
tion which founded the American Union. "^
It has been held even by some of our fore-

3 Foreign Relations, 1873, Part 2, 1353-1365. Opinion of
Caleb Gushing, Attorney-General.

CITIZENSHIP AND PEOTECTION 95

most jurists of former years, that as we
adopted the common law of England, as it ex-
isted at the time of our separation, therefore
we adopted the common-law doctrine of indis-
soluble allegiance. "But there are two suffi-
cient answers to this course of reasoning; the
common law of England is not the international
law of the world, and we have inherited and
adopted the common law of England only in so
far as its provisions and its reasoning are
adapted to our new situation and our political
institutions. Therefore the common-law doc-
trine of indestructible allegiance is not a part
of the system of American law, any more than
it is of the international law." *

The United States have led the way in the
overthrow of the feudal doctrine of perpetual

■* Report of George H. Yeaman, United States Minister to
Denmark. Diplomatic Correspondence, 1867, Part 1, 674.

"Obviously, when the Constitution deals with common-
law phraseology, the language should be read in the light
of the common law; but when the question arises as to
what constitutes citizenship of the nation, involving as it
does international relations, and political as distinguished
from civil status, international principles must be consid-
ered, and unless the municipal law of England appears to
have been affirmatively accepted, it cannot be allowed to
control in the matter of construction. Nationality is essen-
tially a political idea, and belongs to the sphere of public
law."— U. S. V. Wong Kim Ark, U. S. Rep., Vol. 169, p. 707
(1898).

96 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

allegiance. From the earliest times the ex-
ecutive branch of the Government has con-
sistently upheld the right of expatriation, and
opposed the doctrine of indissoluble allegiance.
In 1793 Mr. Jefferson, then Secretary of State,
in a letter to Mr. Morris, said: "Our citizens
are certainly free to divest themselves of that
character by emigrating, and other acts mani-
festing their intention, and may then become
the subjects of another power, and free to do
whatever the subjects of that power may do."
Again, in 1794, Mr. Randolph, Secretary of
State, relative to the alleged expatriation of
one. Captain Talbot, said: "I can not doubt
that Captain Talbot has taken an oath to the
French Republic, and at the same time I ac-
knowledge my belief that no law of any of the
States prohibits expatriation."

The United States have never passed any
law restraining their own citizens, native or
naturalized, from leaving the country and
forming political relations elsewhere.^ Be-
sides, the naturalization laws of the United
States are inconsistent with this doctrine, as
they require an alien who is to be naturalized,

5 Webster, Secretary of State, to Mr. Thompson, July 8,
1842. Wharton's International Law Digest, Vol. II, 310.

CITIZENSHIP AND PROTECTION 97

to abjure Ms former allegiance without taking
cognizance whether his sovereign of origin has
released him.

The right of expatriation was expressly rec-
ognized by the Act of 1868, whose preamble
reads: "Whereas the right of expatriation is
a natural and inherent right of all people, in-
dispensable to the enjoyment of the rights of
life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and
whereas in the recognition of this principle
this Government has freely received emigrants
from all nations, and invested them with the
rights of citizenship, ' ' &c.

Our foreign relations are replete with cases
wherein we have consistently urged and gener-
ally upheld the doctrine of the inherent right
of expatriation. The insistence upon this
right brought us into war with England in
1812, and again in 1848 came near bringing us
into hostile collision with Austria, arising out
of the case of Martin Koszta. The peculiar
circumstances and the summary manner in
which Martin Koszta was seized or rather kid-
napped by the Austrian authorities in neutral
territory, provoked, if they did not entirely
justify the extreme claim of protection by the
United States. The case is commented upon

98 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

in all the text-books. Martin Koszta was a
Hungarian insurgent of 1848-9. He escaped
to Turkey, and went thence to the United
States, and in 1852 made the usual declaration
preparatory to being naturalized under our
laws. In 1854 he returned to Turkey. At
Smyrna, by order of the Austrian Consul, he
was seized while on shore and thrown into the
water, taken up by the crew of the Hiissar, an
Austrian frigate, and put into irons. Before
the boat got under way an American frigate
arrived and threatened to sink the Austrian
vessel unless Koszta was released. This led
to an arrangement by which he was put under
the custody of the French Consul-General, un-
til the governments should come to an under-
standing. The Turkish authorities had re-
fused to allow his arrest, and Austria, it seems,
subsequently claimed a right to arrest him un-
der the capitulations. I have examined these
capitulations, but do not find a basis for such
claim. This point I find referred to in the
correspondence, but not by the text-writers in
their discussion of the case. This fact doubt-
less influenced Mr. Marcy, Secretary of State,
to expand the doctrine of protection so as to
include inchoate citizenship under such excep-

CITIZENSHIP AND PROTECTION 99

tional circumstances. Besides, as Secretary
Marcy correctly empliasized, Koszta had been
banished by Austria, and banishment, under
the law of nations, operates as a release of al-
legiance. So in any event Austria was
estopped by her own act. That this is a fact,
is borne out by the action of Secretary Marcy
in the case of Simon Tousig, who also had filed
his declaration to become an American citizen.
On returning to Austria, Tousig was arrested
for the same cause, participation in the Hun-
garian insurrection. Mr. Marcy refused to in-
terfere, and said: "Every nation, whenever
the laws are violated by any owing obedience
to them, whether he be a citizen or a stranger,
has a right to inflict the penalties incurred
upon the transgressor if found within its juris-
diction."

England, while freely allowing liberty of
emigration, held to the principle of indelible
allegiance until 1870. Her former attitude
was neither logical nor consistent, in that she
did not follow her emigrants to other countries
with English protection, but claimed the right
of their allegiance whenever she chose to de-
mand it. So long as they remained in a for-
eign country they were held to their foreign

100 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

claim of allegiance, and were estopped from
asking British protection; yet when they re-
turned to England the claim of their foreign
allegiance was not admitted. There is no
more striking illustration of conflict of sover-
eignty arising out of opposing doctrines main-
tained by two nations on the question of ex-
patriation than the causes that brought on the
Anglo-American war of 1812. So long as
these opposing doctrines were insisted upon,
all efforts to arrive at a peaceful arrangement
proved futile.® In 1807 the King issued a
proclamation containing the following passage,
"Now we do hereby warn all such mariners,
seafaring men, and others, our natural-bom
subjects, that no such letters of naturalization,
or certificates of citizenship, do, or can, in any
manner divest our natural-born subjects of the
allegiance, or in any degree alter the duty,
which they owe to us, their lawful sovereign."
In 1809 Mr. Smith, the American Secretary
of State, in a dispatch to Mr. Pinckney, our
Minister to the Court of St. James, announcing
the refusal of the President to accord further

« The negotiations are detailed in the Appendix to the
Report of the British Eoyal Commissioners on the Laws of
Naturalization and Allegiance (1869).

CITIZENSHIP AND PROTECTION 101

official intercourse with Mr. Jackson, the Brit-
ish representative, whose negotiations his
government had disavowed, wrote: "What
possible consideration could have induced the
British Government to expect that the United
States would admit a principle that would de-
prive our naturalized citizens of the legal priv-
ileges which they hold in common with their
native bom fellow-citizens?"

Englishmen naturalized in the United States
were impressed from on board American ves-
sels for service in the English Navy. Presi-
dent Madison, in his inaugural address on
March 4, 1813, referred to this attitude of
England, saying: "They have refused to con-
sider as prisoners of war, and threaten to pun-
ish as traitors and deserters, persons emigrat-
ing without restraint to the United States, in-
corporated by naturalization into our political
family, and fighting under the authority of
their adopted country in open and honorable
war, for the maintenance of its rights and
safety. Such is the avowed purpose of a Gov-
ernment which is in the practice of naturaliz-
ing by thousands citizens of other countries,
and not only of permitting but compelling them
to fight against their native country."

102 THE AMEEICAN SPIRIT

Mr. Monroe, when Secretary of State, in the
instructions to the American Commissioners
for negotiating the Treaty of Ghent (April 15,
1814), says: "It is contended by some
... by naturalizing a foreigner, no state
can absolve him from the obligation which he
owes to his former government, and that he
becomes a citizen in a qualified sense only.
This doctrine, if true in any case, is less ap-
plicable to the United States than to any other
power. Expatriation seems to be a natural
right, and by the original character of our in-
stitutions, founded by compact on principle,
and particularly by the unqualified investment
of the adopted citizen with the full rights of
the native, all that the United States could do
to place him on the same footing has been
done,"

I cite these opinions out of many of a like
nature as showing the divergent positions
taken by England and the United States upon
this subject. The Prince Eegent, in the Proc-
lamation issued on July 24, 1814, recalling and
prohibiting natural bom subjects of His Maj-
esty from serving in the ships and armies of
the United States, entirely disregarded Amer-
ican naturalization and gave notice to those

CITIZENSHIP AND PEOTECTION 103

who remained in the service that they would
be treated as guilty of high treason. Of
course, this extreme position was due to the
existence of war between the two countries,
and was regarded as a war measure.

In the negotiations which terminated in the
treaty of Ghent, the Commissioners did their
utmost to incorporate the claims of the respec-
tive governments as to expatriation and per-
petual allegiance; but it was found that the
divergent positions under their instructions
could not be harmonized, so that question was
dropped, the United States Commissioners
saying: "The causes of war between the
United States and Great Britain having disap-
peared by the maritime pacification of Europe,
the Government of the United States did not
desire to continue it in defense of abstract
principles, which have, for the present, ceased
to have any practical effect."'^ Yet on ex-
amination of this treaty it will be seen that
Article III provides for the restoration of all
prisoners of war. This was by implication an
abandonment of the extreme position taken by
Great Britain, and to that extent a recognition
of the American doctrine of expatriation.

T Royal CJommissioners' Report, p. 37.

104 THE AMEEICAN SPIRIT

Witli the abandonment by Great Britain of im-
pressment as a means of manning ber navy,
tbe sources of possible collision upon tbis ques-
tion were removed. From time to time tbe
United States made advances to open negotia-
tions witb Great Britain upon tbe subject of
expatriation, but successive Englisb govern-
ments, tbougb tbey bad abandoned in practice
tbe claim of perpetual allegiance, refused to
come to a definite understanding on tbe ques-
tion. In 1842 Lord Asbburton was sent on a
special mission to tbe United States, autbor-
ized to negotiate for tbe settlement of all ex-
isting differences between tbe two countries.
Mr. Webster, embracing tbis opportunity, ad-
dressed a note to bim for tbe purpose of com-
ing to an arrangement upon tbese questions,
setting forth tbe efforts tbat bad been made by
tbe United States in tbat direction for tbe past
fifty years. Lord Asbburton, however, put the
negotiations aside, declaring that bis instruc-
tions limited bim to existing subjects of differ-
ence. He said: "I am well aware that the
laws of our two countries maintain opposite
principles respecting allegiance to the sover-
eign. America, receiving every year by thou-
sands the emigrants of Europe, maintains the

CITIZENSHIP AND PROTECTION 105

doctrines suitable to her condition, of the right
of transferring allegiance at will. The laws of
Great Britain have at all times maintained the
opposite doctrine."

Diplomatic conflicts with England and other
countries, arising out of this question of alle-
giance and expatriation, continually presented
themselves. In 1848, during the Irish disturb-
ances of that year, Bergen, a native Ameri-
can, and Ryan, an Irishman naturalized in
America, were arrested on suspicion of
treason. Mr. Bancroft, our Minister to Eng-
land, remonstrated against the treatment of
the arrested persons as subjects of Great Brit-
ain. Lord Palmerston, in his answer, upheld
the traditional doctrine of perpetual allegiance.
Mr. Buchanan, Secretary of State, instructed
Mr. Bancroft: "Whenever the occasion may
require it, you will resist the British doctrine
of perpetual allegiance, and maintain the
American principle, that British native-born
subjects after they have been naturalized un-
der our laws, are to all intents and purposes as
much American citizens, and entitled to the
same degree of protection, as though they had
been born in the United States." While these
conflicting views were expressed, it resulted in

106 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

the liberation of Bergen and Ryan on condi-
tion of their leaving the kingdom.^

In 1859 Mr. Cass, Secretary of State, in his
instructions to Mr. Wright, our Minister to
Prussia, respecting the protection of our nat-
uralized citizens of Prussian origin, who on
their return were arrested under the regula-
tions for enlistment and the laws against expa-
triation, said: "The moment a foreigner be-
comes naturalized, his allegiance to his native
country becomes severed forever. He experi-
ences a new political birth. A broad and im-
passable line separates him from his native
country. He is no more responsible for any-
thing he may say or do, or omit to say or do,
after assuming his new character, than if he
had been born in the United States. Should
he return to his native country, he returns as
an American citizen, and in no other charac-
ter. In order to entitle his original govern-
ment to punish him for an offense, this must
have been committed while he was a subject
and owed allegiance to that government.
... A future liability to serve in the army
will not be sufficient, because before that time
can arrive for such service he has changed his

8 Koyal Commissioners' Report, p. 40.

CITIZENSHIP AND PROTECTION 107

allegiance and become a citizen of the United
States." He tlien distinguishes between these
cases and those where the person had been
drafted or had actually deserted prior to emi-
gration.^

Another important case that came up at this
time was that of Christian Ernst. He was a
native of Hanover, and emigrated to this coun-
try in 1851, when he was about nineteen years
of age. In February, 1859, he was natural-
ized, and in March, after procuring a passport,
he went back to Hanover on a temporary visit.
He had been in the village where he was born
about three weeks, when he was arrested, car-
ried to the nearest military station, and forced
into the Hanoverian army. Upon this state of
facts Mr. Caleb Cushing, the Attorney-Gen-
eral, said: "I know that the common law of
England denies it (the right of expatriation) ;
that the judicial decisions of that country are
opposed to it; and that some of our courts,
misled by British authority, have expressed,
though not very decisively, the same opinion.
But all this is very far from settling the ques-

»U. S. Senate Documents, 1858-60, Vol. II, 1364. Report
on Expatriation and Naturalization, Foreign Relations, 1873,
n, 1295.

108 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

tion. The municipal code of England is not
one of the sources from which we derive our
knowledge of international law. We take it
from natural reason and from the practice of
civilized nations. All these are opposed to the
doctrine of perpetual allegiance. It is too in-
jurious to the general interests of mankind to
be tolerated; justice denies that men should
either be confined to their native soil, or driven
away from it, against their will. Expatria-
tion includes not only emigration out of one's
native country, but naturalization in the coun-
try adopted as a future residence."

The next class of cases which brought this
question to the foreground in our diplomacy
were those arising out of the Fenian arrests,
and the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act
in Ireland in 1866.^* These cases (the Fenian)
and those with Prussia gave rise to political
agitation which stimulated Congress to place
our policy regarding the protection of our
naturalized citizens in foreign countries and
our doctrine regarding the right of expatria-
tion in a definite enactment, so that there
might no longer be doubt as to our position or

10 Ibid., Foreign Relations, 1873, 11, 1203.

11 Foreign Relations, 1866.

CITIZENSHIP AND PROTECTION 109

any question respecting a conflict between the
decisions of the courts and the executive branch
of the government. This act of Congress, July
27, 1868, the preamble of which I have quoted,
declared the principles upon which the natu-
ralization laws of the United States always
rested, and gave legislative sanction to the doc-
trine uniformly held by the executive and po-
litical branches of the Government. It en-
acted: (Sec. 2) "That all naturalized citizens
of the United States, while in foreign states,
shall be entitled to, and shall receive, from this
government the same protection of persons
and property that is accorded to native-born
citizens in like situations and circumstances."
The foreign relations in all countries to a
degree are shaped by internal conditions, and
doubtless this law, enacted to win over for-
eign-born citizens to the support of the party
in power, while entirely applicable for the pro-
tection of this class of citizens within the juris-
diction of the United States, has in many
instances been found impracticable or impos-
sible to enforce, where a foreign-born citizen
has returned to the country of his birth.
These latter cases have caused endless vexa-
tious negotiations, at times imperiling the good

110 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

relations of our country with other nations.

The fact is, the same year this Act was
passed we concluded the first of our series of
naturalization treaties, wherein we limited,
save under exceptional circumstances, the
period of protection of naturalized citizens to
two years after their return to, and residence
in the country of their origin. And yet the
United States goes further in the protection
of its naturalized citizens, even under these
circumstances, than any other country. Great
Britain, for instance, while freely according
naturalization, has relieved herself from pro-
tecting her foreign-born subjects on their re-
turn to the country of their origin.^ ^

We have treaties of naturalization with the
following countries : Austria-Hungary, Baden,
Bavaria, Belgium, Denmark, Ecuador, Great
Britain, Hesse-Darmstadt, the North German
Union, Sweden, Norway, and Wiirtemberg.
These treaties have had a restraining as well

12 The Naturalization Act, 1870, paragraph 7, subdivision
3: "An alien to whom a certificate of naturalization is
granted . . . shall not, when within the limits of the for-
eign state of which he was a subject previously to obtaining
his certificate of naturalization, be deemed to be a British
subject unless he has ceased to be a subject of that state
in pursuance of the laws thereof, or in pursuance of a treaty
to that effect."

CITIZENSHIP AND PKOTECTION 111

as eliminating effect — restraining such as
otherwise would seek our naturalization with
the purpose of returning to the country of their
origin and there claiming the protection of our
laws; and an eliminating effect, in relieving
our country, with certain exceptions, from pro-
tection of naturalized citizens on their return
to their country of origin after a residence
therein of two years or more.

The Act of 1868, in reference to countries
with which we have treaties of naturalization,
is modified hy the two-year clause of such
treaties; but with such countries as Turkey,
Eussia, France, Mexico, and the other Eepub-
lics of this hemisphere, with which we have as
yet no treaty of naturalization, continual con-
flicts arise, which are aggravated in times of
revolution or other domestic disturbances in
such countries, by the return of their former
subjects clothed with American naturalization.
A large part of the time of our State Depart-
ment and our diplomatic agents is taken up
with this class of eases, which often menace
our friendly relations.

My purpose in presenting this subject, aside
from the importance of the questions involved,
is to direct attention to the advisability, if not

112 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

the imperative duty, of modifying our laws re-
garding naturalization in respect to that spe-
cial class of our naturalized citizens who are a
constant menace to our friendly relations with
other nations. I refer to that class whose
citizenship, though regular in form, yet in the
light of intent and purpose to which it is ap-
plied, is a fraud upon two countries, our own
and the country of their nativity — "thus mak-
ing the claim to American citizenship the pre-
text for avoiding duties to one country, while
absence secures them from duties to the
other." ^3 From my experience in Turkey I
feel justified in saying that a very large pro-
portion of American naturalized citizens of
Ottoman origin, who return to their former
country, cbme under this class. The same is
true to some extent as to the same class of
naturalized citizens in other countries."
Our diplomatic relations with Spain for the

13 Secretary Fish, Opinions of the Heads of the Executive
Departments relating to Expatriation, Naturalization, and
Change of Allegiance. U. S. Foreign Eelations, 187S'.

1* This condition has been largely remedied by the Act of
March 2, 1907, which provides: ''When any naturalized cit-
izen shall have resided for two years in the foreign state from
which he came, or for five years in any other foreign state,
it shall be presumed that he has ceased to be an American
citizen." This presumption, in certain cases, may be ove?-

CITIZENSHIP AND PROTECTION 113

past fifty years bear proof of the extent to
which our naturalized citizens of Cuban origin
were responsible for the chronic state of insur-
rection, fostered by filibustering expeditions
from the United States, which eventually
brought on our recent war with Spain.

Our relations with Mexico and with other
American Republics would be far less liable to
vexatious differences, and would be more per-
manently friendly, but for the machinations
of this same class of citizens, who return to
their country of origin to exploit their native
country, and embroil the country of their nomi-
nal adoption.

Naturalization effected in the United States
without any intent to reside permanently
therein, but with a view of residing in another
country, especially when such other country is
the country of origin, and using such natural-
ization to evade duties and responsibilities that
would otherwise attach to such persons, should
be treated by our Government as fraudulent
and as imposing no obligation upon it to pro-
tect such person. In practice the facts are not
always apparent, as all kinds of subterfuges
are used to conceal them. Many instances of

114 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

this kind may be cited, and in some of these
our country went to the verge of war in behalf
of citizens who never had, and could not have,
any feeling of loyalty to the United States,
much less any knowledge or appreciation of
our form of government. A case which came
near involving us in war with Ecuador oc-
curred in 1885 — that of Julio E. Santos.^^
Santos was bom in Ecuador of Ecuadorian
parents. He came to the United States, where
he was naturalized, and afterward returned to
the country of his birth, where he was engaged
in business for a period of six years, when he
was arrested for complicity in the revolution
of 1884, for which, together with other rebels,
he was tried and convicted. The matter de-
veloped much irritation and was a severe strain
upon our relations and was not finally settled
until our contention was backed up by a man-
of-war.

The reason that acquired citizenship has
been and will continue to be more abused in
the United States than in other countries, is
not that during the last hundred years the tide
of emigration has been directed to our shores,
but that naturalization in other countries is

18 Foreign Relations, 1886, pp. 224-297.

CITIZENSHIP AND PEOTECTION 115

either not so easily acquired or is granted only
with the consent of the native state. To coun-
tries wherein naturalization is granted only
with consent of the native state, restrictions
are usually imposed by the native state as a
condition for that consent, while for such
countries as come under the former classifica-
tion, as a rule, only a limited naturalization is
accorded, which imposes no obligation to pro-
tection beyond the jurisdiction of the state
granting such naturalization.^^

I do not for a moment advocate an abridg-
ment of the American doctrines of citizenship
and expatriation, which are so consonant with
principles of personal liberty. I do, however,
advocate the elimination of those naturalized
citizens who, taking advantage of the broad
and generous provisions of our naturalization
laws, not for the purpose of residing in the
United States, nor with any intention to re-
spond to the duties that citizenship in this
country involves, return to their native coun-
try, and through their acquired citizenship
seek to escape the burdens of their native alle-
le For a summary of the laws of other countries upon
Naturalization and Expatriation see Foreign Relations of
the U. S., 1873, pp. 1276-1293. Hall's International Law,
pp. 231-6.

116 THE AMERICAN SPIEIT

giance. That class, under the pretext of loy-
alty to their adopted country, commit treason-
able acts in the country of their nativity, and
thereby seek to involve the United States in
the domestic turmoils and rebellions in their
native country. This abuse is not eliminated
by our naturalization treaties, it is circum-
scribed to an extent by the two-year clause in
such treaties; but we have found within the
two years after the return of naturalized citi-
zens to their native country, or during a resi-
dence declared to be temporary, but in fact
permanent, it often happens these citizens
have been apprehended as participants in revo-
lutions they have promoted even while resid-
ing in the United States pending the acquiring
of citizenship. The dangers from this class of
citizens have been largely augmented in recent
years by the rapid means of travel on land and
sea, together with the facilities of communica-
tion by telegraph, coupled with our natural
world-wide sympathies for people struggling
against oppression.

The Presidents of the United States, in
their annual messages since our Civil War,
have again and again called attention to the
unsatisfactory and defective condition of our

CITIZENSHIP AND PROTECTION 117

laws. President Grant, in his annual message
of 1875, referring to this special phase of the
subject, says: "In other cases naturalized citi^
zens, immediately after naturalization, have re-
turned to their native country, have become en-
gaged in business, have accepted offices or pur-
suits inconsistent with American citizenship,
and evidence no intent to return to the United
States until called upon to discharge some duty
to the country where they are residing, when
at once they assert their citizenship and call
upon the representatives of the Government to
aid them in their unjust pretensions. It is
but just to all bona fide citizens that no doubt
should exist in such questions, and that Con-
gress should determine by enactment of law
how expatriation may be accomplished and
change of citizenship be established.^'^

President Cleveland, in his Annual Message
of 1888, says: "That easy and unguarded
manner in which certificates of American citi-
zenship can now be obtained has induced a
class, unfortunately large, to avail themselves
of the opportunity to become absolved from
allegiance to their native land, and yet by a

17 Richardson's Messages and Papers of the Presidents,
Vol. Ill, 347.

118 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

foreign residence to escape any just duty and
contribution of service to the country of their
proposed adoption. Thus, while evading the
duties of citizenship to the United States, they
may make prompt claim for its national pro-
tection and demand its intervention in their
behalf. International complications of a seri-
ous nature arise.**

As matters now stand, with the law of 1868,
which provides that the same protection shall
be accorded to naturalized as to native-born
citizens in foreign countries, and in the absence
of any laws providing by what voluntary acts
or circumstances expatriation is effected, this
class of questions, if not the most important^
certainly the most frequently occurring in our
diplomacy, is largely left to haphazard, and to
contradictory evidence and circumstances for
decision.

Secretary Fish, in an instruction to Mr.
Washburn, our Minister to France, refers to
the difficulties surrounding such cases, and in-
dicates ^ distinction that must necessarily be
made between native-born and such naturalized
citizens as have returned to the country of
their birth, as to when and whether they are

18 Ibid., Vol. VIII, 785.

CITIZENSHIP AND PROTECTION ll9

entitled to the protection of our Government.
He says: "But where a naturalized citizen re-
turns to his native land to reside, the action of
the treaty-making power above referred to
would seem to require that such agents be jeal-
ous and scrutinizing when he seeks their inter-
vention. Even in such cases the purpose of
not renouncing the adopted citizenship might
be manifested and proven in various ways,
etc. " *® In other words, the Executive Depart-
ment of our Government, through force of cir-
cumstances, has found itself compelled to read
an exception in the Act of 1868, and in certain
cases to withhold its protection from natural-
ized citizens who have returned to their native
country and concerning whom the circum-
stances justified the conclusion that they have
abandoned their acquired citizenship. In al-
most every case where this conclusion is ar-
rived at, it has been done in contradiction to
the person's demand for protection and to his
pretension of not having abandoned his United
States citizenship. In practice the application
of these principles is difficult, and at times our
Government finds itself committed to the pro-
tection of persons for whom it doubtless would

18 Foreign Relations, 1873, p. 260.

120 THE AMEEICAN SPIRIT

have declined to intervene had all the circum-
stances come to its knowledge before any ac-
tion had been taken by its naval officers or dip-
lomatic officials, but having once asserted its
right to accord protection, and having been
committed thereto by its agents, it is difficult
without loss of national prestige for the Gov-
ernment to recede from its position.

The United States, in consonance with the
spirit of personal liberty which underlies the
fabric of its laws, has had a marked influence
upon European powers in its maintenance of
the right of expatriation, and in inducing them
to recede from the doctrine of perpetual alle-
giance; therefore, all the more should it have
a care to guard that right and prevent it from
being perverted and abused to the detriment of
its bona fide citizens and to the jeopardy of
its relations with other nations. Because from
the beginning of our Grovernment we have en-
couraged immigration by liberal laws, and
freely endowed the emigrants and refugees
from the Old World with a new national birth
by investing them with the rights and privi-
leges of American citizens, we should be jealous
of the duties and obligations those privileges
impose by discouraging the immigration of

CITIZENSHIP AND PROTECTION 121

such persons as come among us only to acquire
our citizensliip as a pretext for seeking our
protection upon their return to reside perma-
nently in the country of their birth.

There are several ways of reaching the de-
sired result, either by adopting some such form
respecting naturalization as obtains in Great
Britain, or by the passage of an amendment to
the existing laws to the effect that the return
of a naturalized citizen to the country of his
nativity, except for a temporary stay or a
brief visit, shall be presumptive evidence of
the abandonment of his American citizenship.
"While this will not be a complete remedy, such
a law would also have the effect of deterring
the immigration of such persons as most abuse
the high privileges of American citizenship,
who are a continual menace to our friendly re-
lations with other countries.

The inevitable consequences of our Spanish
War, together with our keen competition for
the markets of the world for our export trade,
have involved us, for good or for ill, in the
intricacies of the world's diplomacy, and have
expanded the scope of our foreign affairs.

To understand and administer these en-
larged interests, to protect our rights, and at

122 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

the same time to keep clear of strained and
interrupted relations and the many vexatious
questions which, under the provocations of
home politics and a sensational press, may,
even when least expected, bring on the calami-
ties of war, will demand the highest skill of
our Department of State, aided by the trained
knowledge of experienced diplomatic agents.
It is especially incumbent upon a powerful na-
tion to be just. It can best afford to be gen-
erous. It can be so without being charged
with weakness. It must often be firm and res-
olute. Such characteristics are as effective
internationally as inter-personally. To be
this, and to do this, we must concede to others
the same rights that we demand for ourselves,
and not invite quarrels from which we must
often retreat; quarrels, too, which are most
apt to arise at times when nations are most
susceptible to irritation, during periods of
threatening or pending revolution, or of actual
war; when the obligations of neutrality are
difficult to maintain, notwithstanding the most
watchful care on the part of governments.

vn

OUE DIPLOMACY WITH EEFERENCE
TO OUE DIPLOMATIC AND CON-
SULAR SERVICE

VII

OUR DIPLOMACY WITH EEFEEENCE
TO OUR DIPLOMATIC AND CON-
SULAR SERVICE

THE dominant purpose of the first period
of our diplomacy, extending from the end
of the Revolution to the termination of the
war of 1812, until the conclusion of the Treaty
of Ghent in 1814, was to establish by treaties
what had been achieved by war, to obtain
recognition upon equal terms in the family of
nations.

That of the second period was to safeguard
our political existence as a sovereign and in-
dependent nation on the American continent
from threatened aggressions and intervention
on the part of European powers. This period
culminated in 1823 by the promulgation of the
Monroe Doctrine.

The third period extended from that time
until the end of our Civil War. This was the

125

126 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

preservative or surgical period of our develop-
ment, when the nation submitted to the blood-
iest and most serious operation to eradicate
the cancer of slavery which had eaten into its
very vitals, the roots of which extended far
into the colonial times. From this period we
became more assertive of our rights interna-
tionally and on this continent, beginning with
our demand for the termination of Maximil-
ian's rule in Mexico, which rested on French
bayonets for its support, and our insistence
upon Great Britain's making reparation for
her violation of the laws of neutrality during
our Civil War, by adjusting the "Alabama"
claims.

The next, or fifth period was characterized
by a policy that was both vigorous and aggres-
sive, beginning with Cleveland's Venezuelan
message and ending with the Spanish War.
We have now arrived at an offensive as dis-
tinguished from a defensive policy. It is the
commercial stage, whose aim it is to reach out
for our share of the world's commerce, to se-
cure an open door with European nations in
Asiatic countries and procure equal rights and
facilities for our commerce in seeking the mar-
kets of the world.

OUR DIPLOMACY 127

This diplomatic-commercial stage is a natu-
ral development. In modern times it was
inaugurated by Holland, subsequently was
vigorously developed with army, fleet, and
diplomacy by Great Britain, and is to-day
pushed forward with aggressive vigor by Ger-
many. This stage is international in its full-
est application, and has some aspects of re-
semblance to the earliest stages of our foreign
policy, in that it is commercial, but with this
difference — the goal is beyond, and not within,
the United States. In the first stage after we
had achieved our independence "there existed
at that time in Europe," as Trescot points
out,* "an exaggerated idea of the immediate
importance of American commerce. . . . Situ-
ated as were the European states, they were
not always the arbiters of their own interests ;
and there existed on their part a strong dis-
position to apply the rule of their own conduct
to the new republic and compel a participa-
tion in a common fate." The purpose of our
diplomacy during this period was to resist this
pretension; and it was in part accomplished

■■ "The Diplomatic History of the Administrations of
Washington and Adams," by William Henry Trescot (1857),
pp. 2, 4.

128 THE AMEEICAN SPIEIT

by our first treaties witli England, Spain, and
France, and more perfectly by our expansion
diplomacy through the purchase of Louisiana
and Florida, and subsequently by the annexa-
tion of Texas and the purchase of Alaska. A
wide difference, however, is to be noted be-
tween our expansion policy on this continent
ending with the Alaska purchase and that
which has since taken place beyond the limits
of the continent. In the former plan of ex-
pansion the purpose was to free ourselves from
European interests by getting rid of neighbor-
ing and contiguous European possessions:
whereas in the expansion which has taken
place since our war with Spain, especially in
the acquisition of the Philippines, we have not
only assumed new and most troublesome gov-
ernmental problems and burdens, but have
also acquired new and strange neighbors. We
have entered into the arena of world politics,
and have departed from that policy of Amer-
ican concentration and from the security af-
forded by our isolation from the shifting and
perplexing phases of Asiatic and European
conflicts and wars.

Aside, however, from our recent territorial
expansion and entirely apart from it, a natural

OUE DIPLOMACY 129

and peaceful expansion lias taken place, due
not to our prowess in war, but to our natural
advantages, and to American skill and enter-
prise as a producing and manufacturing
people. This is an aggressive expansion; for
we go out to meet the nations of the world in
commercial rivalry, not only in neutral zones,
but also in their home markets. We are be-
ginning to hear more and more, and we shall
hear more and more, of reciprocity and retali-
ation and commercial union on the part of
European countries against us or rather
against our export products.

Thus far, under the guidance of a wise, far-
seeing, and tactful diplomacy, which has char-
acterized the administration of Secretary Hay,
we have won signal victories and open doors
in a true spirit of amity and friendship. But
the time has now arrived when, in the lan-
guage of President McKinley in his last mes-
sage to his countrymen: "The period of ex-
clusiveness is past. The expansion of our
trade and commerce is the pressing problem.
Commercial wars are unprofitable. A policy
of good will and friendly trade relations will
prevent reprisals. Eeciprocity treaties are in
harmony with the spirit of the times : measures

130 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

of retaliation are not. If, perchance, some of
our tariffs are no longer needed for revenue
or to encourage and protect our industries at
home, why should they not be employed to ex-
tend and promote our markets abroad?"

With the rapid growth of our foreign com-
merce due to many causes, the country is held
bound and suffering by the narrow views and
the selfish interests which lie at the basis of
much of our tariff legislation; and we shall
probably have to wait for better legislation
until the very contingencies happen of which
President McKinley wisely forewarned us, and
which it was his purpose to forestall and pre-
vent. It is one thing to let loose the greed
and selfishness of commercialism, and quite
another to curb its powers in the interest of
public policy and national honor.

When tariff walls are too high, they ob-
struct egress as well as ingress. Besides, they
become the bulwark for the propagation and
multiplication of trusts to raise prices, as dis-
tinguished from economical combinations
which reduce the cos't of production. Aside
from this, there is the all-important domestic
problem, the basis of all commerce — the har-
monious relations between capital and labor.

OUB DIPLOMACY 131

or between employers and workmen. The
lack of that harmony in Great Britain and in
other countries has contributed more than any
other cause to the lessening of commercial
prosperity. The phrase, "Trade follows the
flag," is attractive on the stump, but in the
light of experience it is false. Trade follows
the course of least resistance. The obstacles
may be natural, as, for instance, the advan-
tages one country possesses over other coun-
tries in respect to raw material, facilities for
manufacture, the skill and intelligence of work-
men, etc. They may be artificial, as in the
case of excessive tariffs or the lack of
banking and transportation facilities, or of
information as to the special tastes and re-
quirements of the importing country. Ex-
perienced consuls, familiar with the trade of
the country and districts wherein they reside,
are the official commercial pickets and out-
posts, and are of vast advantage in directing
the channels of trade. Eapidity of communi-
cation brought about by steam navigation and
by the telegraph have increased the value as
well as the scope of diplomatic functions and
of consular relations to trade expansion; and
every year it is becoming more apparent that

1E2 THE AMEEICAN SPIEIT

we must systematize our foreign service, both
diplomatic and consular, upon a common-sense
basis, where appointments in the first instance
are made for fitness, and not for favoritism,
and where promotions and a fixed tenure de-
pendent upon capacity and good behavior re-
ward efficient services. Silas Larrabee says in
his characteristic phrasing: "Ameriky is up
agin one of them things they call dilemmies.
We call ourselves a world power: we act
like a miser 'ble, narrer-minded, short-sighted,
people. If we 're goin' to keep on in the world-
power business, hadn't we better put on some
world-power clothes, and take on world-power
ways?"

The evil of our present method, or rather
lack of method, of appointment, based almost
entirely on the spoils system, is less apparent,
in the very nature of things, when one party
remains in power for several successive ad-
ministrations than when, through the shifting
of home politics, administrations alternate, as
was the case between 1885 and 1897, under
the successive administrations of Presidents
Cleveland, Harrison, Cleveland, and McKin-
ley, which period has not inaptly been termed
the ''transit period," so far as concerned our

OXJE DIPLOMACY 133

foreign service, in that by far the larger num-
ber of our foreign officials, constituting our
diplomatic and consular officers, were going
and coming from every quarter of the globe,
first Eepublican appointees returning and the
Democrats taking their places, then the Demo-
crats returning and the Republicans taking
their places; and again the Republicans re-
turning and the Democrats taking their places,
and finally, the Democrats returning and the
Republicans taking their places. It was not
only felt, but quite openly declared, at several
foreign capitals, that it was hardly worth while
to enter into any serious negotiations with us ;
for just about the time an agreement could be
reached our representative would be recalled.
At other capitals, negotiations that were not
agreeable to the government to which our
diplomatic representatives were accredited
were purposely protracted with the expecta-
tion, as our national election was approaching,
that a new diplomatic representative, entirely
unfamiliar with the negotiations, would re-
place the former one.

I know it has been argued, and with some
apparent force, that, notwithstanding the spoils
system, our diplomacy has been in the main

134 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

successful; but a critical examination of our
successes will reveal the fact that even our
successes are arguments for a trained and
fixed service. The successes that distinguish
the first period of our history were achieved
before the spoils system had arisen, during the
Confederation and under the administrations
from Washington to John Quincy Adams, when
our best-trained and best-qualified men were
sent abroad, irrespective of partizan consider-
ations. We naturally recall the names of
Franklin, Adams, Jefferson, Jay, Marshall,
Livingston, Monroe, and others, whose serv-
ices in behalf of our country are recorded in
every school history. But even during this
period we must not forget that Napoleon
served us as our greatest diplomat, for, as
Trescot says : ' ' Thus the treaty with England
has yielded to the necessities of the conditions
of hostility between England and France; the
treaty with Spain was the result of the changed
attitude of that power toward England on the
one side and France on the other; and the
treaty with France depended upon the special
relation which France at the moment wished
to assume for her own purposes, towards the
other powers of Europe." Other notable in-

OUK DIPLOMACY 135

stances during later periods may be cited,
when there was immediate and pressing need
for "the right man in the right place," as
was the case when Lincoln sent Charles Fran-
cis Adams to London during the Civil War.
The second reason for our diplomatic suc-
cesses, even after the rise and growth of the
spoils system, is that these successes in the
main were not attained by our diplomatic
representatives abroad, but because, due at
times perhaps to the very defects of our sys-
tem, the negotiations were transferred to
Washington and conducted by the Secretary
of State in person, as was notably the case
under Secretaries Webster, Seward, Fish, and
Hay.

The third reason for our diplomatic suc-
cesses, to employ a Hibernicism, is that they
were not diplomatic successes at all, but due to
another important branch of our government,
wherein such a system as I refer to obtains in
the fullest sense, and which never has been in-
vaded by the spoils system, and seldom even
by favoritism: I refer to the United States
Navy. The employment of the navy in diplo-
matic missions, is, to say the least, not only
very expensive, but hazardous and grave in its

136 THE AMERICAN SPIEIT

possible consequences. We need not cite the
destruction of the Maine in the harbor of
Havana as an illustration of sending men-of-
war on such errands, which missions, even in
times of irritated relations, are euphemistic-
ally designated "to keep up the usual courte-
sies of friendly intercourse."

That the navy sent on diplomatic missions
has time and again in our history achieved
signal successes is largely due, aside from the
effective argument of force, to the fact that
our commanders, commodores, and admirals
grew up in the service for which they were
specially trained, and were frequently better
trained even in international law and in diplo-
macy than our diplomatic representatives. In
naval diplomacy we naturally recall Commo-
dore Decatur's negotiations with the Barbary
States, and Commodore Perry's success in ne-
gotiating our first treaty of amity and com-
merce with Japan, and Admiral Shufeldt, who
negotiated our first treaty with Corea. The
most notable diplomatic success achieved by
ns during the last half -century was the treaty
of Washington (May 8, 1671) for the adjust-
ment of the "Alabama" claims and all the
other unsettled questions between our govern-

OUE DIPLOMACY 137

ment and Great Britain. Besides providing
for the settlement of claims growing out of
Grreat Britain's breach of neutrality during the
Civil War, and laying down three most im-
portant rules of neutrality, it created "the
most important arbitration in which the
United States ever engaged, the most august
and impressive ever held in the world, and the
most lasting in its influence on other na-
tions."^ The negotiations which ultimately
resulted in success, after the failure of the
Johnson-Clarendon treaty and the recall of
Minister Motley, were conducted in Washing-
ton under the immediate guidance of Secretary
Fish, and imder the policy approved as it pro-
gressed by President Grant. The interesting
details leading up to these negotiations, the
divergent views and conflicts between Mr.
Sumner, the chairman of the Committee on
Foreign Affairs of the Senate, and the admin-
istration, have recently had new light thrown
upon them by Charles Francis Adams in his
learned address before the New York Histori-
cal Society.^

2 Foster's "Century of American Diplomacy," p. 424.

3 "Before and after the Treaty of Washington : The Ameri-
can Civil War and the War in the Transvaal," Charles
Francis Adams (1902).

138 THE AMEEICAN SPIEIT

The Court of Arbitration provided for by
the treaty convened in Geneva on December
15, 1871. Count Sclopis, who was unanimously
chosen president of the tribunal, addressing his
colleagues, congratulated them on the felici-
tous occasion upon which they were for the
first time engaged in applying the austere and
calm rules of law to the solution of burning
questions. He said "the meeting of this arbi-
tration signalizes a new policy, which was
henceforth to govern the dealings of civilized
nations, that the United States and the Uhited
Kingdom were giving an example to other na-
tions which would be prolific of best results."

There are other reasons, besides those men-
tioned, why important negotiations affecting
our country, even under the most approved
diplomatic service, must necessarily be trans-
ferred to Washington. Because under the
Constitution a two-third vote of the Senate is
required for the ratification of a treaty, in or-
der to insure favorable action by this co-
ordinate branch of the treaty-making power of
our government, it frequently becomes expedi-
ent for the Executive, through the Secretary
of State or directly, to confer with the Senate
during the pendency of negotiations. The

OUR DIPLOMACY 139

most recent example of the expediency of sucli
a course arose in the case of the first Hay-
Pauncefote treaty, which failed of ratification
by reason of various amendments ; and the suc-
cess which attended the second treaty, which
had been framed after consultation with the
leading senators, and was promptly ratified.
It often requires as much, if not more, diplo-
macy on the part of the President and Secre-
tary of State to secure the cooperation of the
Committee on Foreign Affairs in -the Senate
than to perfect negotiations with the foreign
state. Senator Lodge, in a learned article,
"The Treaty-making Powers of the Senate,"*
summarizes sixty-eight treaties which have
been amended by the Senate, and afterward
ratified; but what number have been nego-
tiated and not ratified is not stated. The lat-
ter class is large, and represents, doubtless,
as much diplomatic ability and skill on the part
of our various Secretaries of State and of our
ministers at foreign courts as those which
were ratified. The discussion of the merits of
such treaties, and the reasons that contributed
to their rejection, would disclose additional
and striking reasons for the removal of our

* Soribner's Magazine, January, 1902.

140 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

foreign service beyond the shifting phases of
polities. Under our present system, when the
executive branch of the government and the
Senate are not in harmony, or, it may be, when
the President and the chairman of the Com-
mittee on Foreign Affairs of the Senate are
not in accord, the treaty -making powers of the
government are suspended. This was the
case under President Grant's first administra-
tion, when the Senate, under the lead of Sena-
tor Sumner, rejected the treaty for the an-
nexation of Santo Domingo as well as the
Johnson-Clarendon treaty ; and it was also the
case in a degree under both the Cleveland ad-
ministrations. For it must be remembered it
only requires a one-third vote in the Senate to
defeat a treaty; and, when personal jeal-
ousies and animosities are added to party divi-
sions, these can readily array in opposition the
required one-third vote and suspend the
treaty-making power. The fact that, for
reasons growing out of our federated system,
our Constitution makes the Senate a coordi-
nate member with the Executive in treaty-
making is an added reason why our diplomatic
service should be placed beyond partizan con-
trol, on the same footing with our naval and

OUE DIPLOMACY 141

military service as to tenure. In all govern-
ments the legislative branch reflects popular
excitement and passion. That such is the case
in legislation and in matters affecting internal
affairs is to be deprecated, but often it is un-
avoidable; and when these violent and tem-
porary agitations are projected into our for-
eign relations, it is particularly unfortunate.
At times the situation becomes critical, when
with a change of administration it leads to the
recall of our diplomatic representative and re-
placing him by a new man lacking both diplo-
matic experience and acquaintance with the
officials and the internal affairs of the govern-
ment to which he is accredited. This is pre-
cisely what has happened on more than one
occasion, just at the time when the relations of
the two countries were most strained, and
when trained experience, which is always de-
sirable, would have been of special value.
That this at times might happen under a regu-
lated diplomatic system is true; but, instead
of being the rule, it would be the exception,
and then only for good cause, and not as now
almost always without cause.

That we have ia this country so long de-
layed in taking our foreign service out of poli-

142 THE AMEEICAN SPIRIT

tics is in part also due to the fact that every
President has, to a greater or less degree, re-
sisted the pressure from the spoilsmen, and
used his own judgment in making the more
important appointments. This is more true
in respect to diplomatic appointments than to
consular offices. I have endeavored to learn
the arguments against the reform of the diplo-
matic and consular service, and against such
measures as the Lodge bill now before Con-
gress, but have been unable to find them. The
fact is, the opposition is not founded on argu-
ment, but on patronage. Patronage does not
yield to argument, but only to pressure.

I believe the time is not distant when every
new market gained by our expanding com-
merce will accentuate that pressure, and that
the reform, so far as concerns our consular
service, cannot be much longer resisted.

The need for the reform of our consular
service has been felt for many years. Even
so early as 1833, President Jackson, evidently
seeing the evils of that spoils system to which
he had given such an impetus, endeavored to
check it in our foreign relations. In his fifth
annual message he said: "I deem it proper to
recomm.end to your notice the revision of our

OUE DIPLOMACY 143

consular service. This has become an im-
portant branch of the public service, inasmuch
as it is intimately connected with the preserva-
tion of our national character abroad, with the
interest of our citizens in foreign countries,
with the regulation and care of our commerce,
and with the protection of our seamen. At the
close of the last session of Congress 1 com-
municated a report from the Secretary of
State upon the subject, to which I now refer
as containing the information which may be
useful in any inquiries that Congress may see
fit to institute with a view to a salutary re-
form of the system."

It is not my purpose here to enter into the
details of the reforms : these are very clearly
understood, and have been variously formu-
lated in bills presented in Congress. This
much, however, I wish to say : we should make
our diplomatic system cooperative, which at
present it is not. By that I mean there should
be a system such as other nations have,
whereby every head of a mission ^s advised of
all negotiations pending at home and at other
capitals affecting the United States, so as to
be on the alert, and be mutually helpful with
such information as is frequently obtainable at

144 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

capitals other than the one where the negotia-
tions are pending. The British Foreign Of-
fice does this hy a system of blue-prints, or
confidentially printed sheets set up in the For-
eign Office, and regularly forwarded to its
heads of missions throughout the world.
This is at most only a detail, but, from my
limited experience, it appears none the less
important.

Another suggestion I would make is that
we should adopt the system of commercial
attaches — that is, commercial experts attached
to our principal diplomatic posts — to study
and report upon the industrial development
and commercial trend of affairs in foreign
countries. It is true, we have an excellent sys-
tem of consular reports; and they are very
helpful. These should be continued, and
should supplement the investigations by the
commercial attaches, who should invariably be
high-class experts. But, so long as the spoils
system dominates, we could not hope that they
would escape the defects of partizan appoint-
ment and uncertain tenure.

General Boulanger, who was sent here to
represent the French army and government
during our YorMown celebration in 1876, told

OUE DIPLOMACY 145

me he was invited to visit our fortifications.
While in California, General Sherman showed
him some of our fortifications on that coast,
and asked the general what he thought of
them. Boulanger said he found the fortifica-
tions very antiquated, but that he replied to
General Sherman they were the best in the
world, because, he added, no country has such
magnificent ditches as the Atlantic and the Pa-
cific. I am not competent to pass an opinion
whether our fortifications are still antiquated;
but I do know that peaceful arm of our gov-
ernment, the diplomatic and consular system,
which often serves as do the ditches, and as
a guard against making enemies, is antiquated
and badly needs modernizing, and that this
can be done with little or no added expendi-
ture.

In concluding these observations on our
diplomacy, which, from the nature of the sub-
ject, had to be desultory, I will quote from that
distinguished authority on international law.
Professor John B. Moore. He says: "With
the growth of power and the extension of boun-
daries there has come an increase of national
responsibilities. ... It remains for us to
carry forward, as our predecessors have car-

146 THE AMEEICAN SPIRIT

ried forward, the great work thus begun, so
that at the close of another century the cause
of free government, free conunerce, and free
seas, may still find in the United States a
champion. ' ' ^

5 "A Hundred Years of American Diplomacy," by John
Bassett Moore (1900).

VIII
THE UNITED STATES AND EUSSIA

vni

THE UNITED STATES AND RUSSIA

NAPOLEON said: "History is a fiction
agreed upon." This definition is more
applicable to diplomatic history than to any
branch of the science, for the reason that di-
plomacy has so many undercurrents whose
sources are concealed from the public eye. It
is doubtless due to the Machiavellian spirit
which guided the diplomacy of nations for so
many years that, even in the most authorita-
tive histories, we so often find the accounts of
diplomatic relations given, not as they were,
but as the adroit schemers intended they
should appear.

The Kishinef massacres in April, 1903,
caused a mighty storm of protest in this coun-
try. The protests voiced by pulpit, press and
mass meetings, were resented by the Eussian
Ambassador at Washington and by the official
classes in St. Petersburg, on the plea that the
United States was under repeated obligations

149

150 THE AMEEIOAN SPIEIT

of gratitude to Eussia because of her ''tradi-
tional friendship" for us, from the very begin-
ning of our national history until the present
time. Many articles appeared in the daily pa-
pers referring to this "traditional friendship,"
and urging that the American public should at
least refrain from siding with the enemies of
Eussia, however appalling might be the rule
of the Eussian bureaucracy. An article ap-
peared in the principal Eussian paper of St.
Petersburg, the Novoe Vremya, headed "Eus-
sia in America," translated as follows:

The United States from time to time enters the
arena of anti-Russian propaganda, which find favor-
able soil in its politically unripe population, with-
out government traditions, and carried away by the
successes of its new imperialistic policy. The Si-
berian prisons, the Manchurian open door, the
Kishineff disorders — all these serve as pretexts for
the anti-Russian meetings so advantageous to 'Rus-
sia's enemies, while Secretary Hay's stubborn.
Anglophilism lends governmental importance to the
claims of the various groups of American traders
and missionaries in the Far East . . . The Russian
Foreign OfSce should publish in English a sketch
of the relations between the Russian and American
governments, beginning with the time of Catharine
and ending with the Spanish- American war.

UNITED STATES AND RUSSIA 151

"When the Monarch was the State, and when
the Monarch's attachments, antagonisms or
desire for revenge were the controlling fac-
tors in international relations, the ruler's com-
mands were supreme, and the national con-
science had to hend to his will. But, even if
the traditional Eussian claim upon the grati-
tude of the United States were well founded,
the enlightened spirit of our age could not
recognize that as a plea in bar against our con-
demnation of shocking wrongs, or against our
withholding our sympathies for the oppressed.

International relations among the modern
states are primarily based, not upon sentiment
or gratitude, but upon self-interests, modified
by a sense of justice and right. However, we
are not here concerned with speculations, but
with historical facts. Let us see what these
facts are.

Under Catharine II, a scheme was formed in
1779, when we were in the most trying period
of our Revolution, for Russia's giving George
III effective assistance against us, on condi-
tion that the English should aid Russia in re-
newed attacks upon the Turks. A part of this
program was, that the Island of Minorca
was to be ceded by England to Russia as a

152 . THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

station for the Russian fleet in the Mediter-
ranean, and as a rendezvous for the insurgent
Greeks. This project was drawn up by Cath-
arine's chief adviser, Count Potemkin, for
presentation to the British Ambassador at
St. Petersburg; but, through the adroitness of
Count Panin, Catharine's Minister for For-
eign Affairs, who favored the French interest
as against the English, the scheme fell through,
thereby causing the Empress to adopt the anti-
British policy of armed neutrality. The na-
ture of Russia's friendship for us at this
period, when we were most in need of the
friendly offices of foreign nations, is disclosed
by Benjamin Franklin, who was then in Paris
as one of our Commissioners to negotiate
peace with Great Britain. He describes with
what friendly satisfaction Russia had learned
of the recognition of our independence by the
States General of Holland. I quote from his
journal : ^

"This day" [June 9, 1782] "I received a letter
from Mr. Dana dated at St. Petersburg, April 29th,
in which is the following passage: 'We yesterday
received the news that the States General, on the
19th of this month, acknowledged the independence

1 Franklin's Works, edited by Bigelow, Vol. 8, p. 89.

UNITED STATES AND RUSSIA 153

of the United States. This event gave a shock here,
and is not v^ell received, as they at least professed
to have flattered themselves that mediation would
have prevented it, and otherwise brought on a par-
tial peace between Britain and Holland.' "

Mr. Francis Dana, afterward Chief Justice
of Massachusetts, was at this time our ac-
credited Minister to Russia. He remained
there about two years asking to be recognized ;
but Russia refused to receive him or to recog-
nize the independence of our country, and this,
too, although the preliminaries of peace had
been signed nine months before. At last
Dana, in September, 1783, being unsuccessful
in his efforts to secure recognition, or to have
Russia recognize the independence of our coun-
try, obtained permission from Congress to re-
turn home.

Some years ago, when Eugene Schuyler was
Secretary of Legation at St. Petersburg, he
made some investigation for George Bancroft,
the historian, and copied and translated some
of the diplomatic correspondence under the
reign of Catharine 11.^ At this time Count
Osterman was Vice-Chancellor, and Prince

2 See Bancroft papers, America, Russia and England, Vol.
2, Lenox Library.

154 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

Demetri Gallitzin was Eussian Ambassador at
tLe Hague. Information reached St. Peters-
burg from the Eussian Ambassador that Mr.
Adams had been received as United States
Minister. The Vice-Chancellor writes to the
Ambassador (May 6, 1782) :

Now that their High Mightinesses have pro-
ceeded to the formal recognition of Mr. Adams as
Minister Plenipotentiary from the United States, I
must instruct you that Her Imperial Highness does
not wish any demonstration on your part that can
lead to the presumption that she approves of this
step. You must then abstain from receiving or
paying visits either to Mr. Adams, or to any other
person accredited from the Colonies which are sepa-
rating from Great Britain.

As a further evidence of Catharine 's feeling
toward America, I will cite the following:
About this time a portrait of "Washington was
sent from the Hague in the Eussian despatch-
bag to Francis Dana, who was then at St.
Petersburg, doubtless as a courtesy to Mr.
Adams. On the receipt of the bag at the Eus-
sian Foreign Office, Count Osterman returned
the portrait to Prince Gallitzin, the Ambassa-
dor at the Hague, with a sharp letter in which
he says : "With your despatch came a portrait

UNITED STATES AND RUSSIA 155

of Washington to be delivered to one Dana, an
American gentleman here; but as this man is
not known to Her Imperial Majesty or Her
ministry, you are commanded by Her Majesty
to return it to the source from which it reached
the courier, together with documents accom-
panying it."

From the same source we learn that, on
May 15, 1780, Sir James Harris, British Am-
bassador at St. Petersburg, writing to Vis-
count Stormont, the British Secretary of State,
after referring to an interview he had with
Prince Potemkin, declared that the Prince sug-
gested that the Secretary of State should ask
the Empress to mediate between Great Britain
and her enemies, and acquaint her "with the
terms on which you wish for an accommoda-
tion for America . . . and you may depend
not only on her not betraying you, but be al-
most certain that she will begin by being your
mediator, and, if she does not succeed, end by
being your ally. ' ' ^ This throws a direct light
upon the motives underlying Catharine's de-
sire to become a mediator, which has been
made much of even by some American histor-

s Bancroft papers, Vol. 2.

156 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

ians. John Fiske, in Ms "American Revolu-
tion," says:

At the beginning of 1778 Sir James Harris,
afterwards Earl of Malmesbury, was sent as Am-
bassador to St. Petersburg, with instructions to
leave no stone unturned to secure an offensive and
defensive alliance between Russia and Great Brit-
ain, in order to offset and neutralize the alliance
between France and the United States. Negotia-
tions to this end were kept up as long as the war
lasted, but they proved fruitless. "While Catharine
coquetted and temporized, the Prussian Ambassa-
dor had her ear. . . . The weight of France was, of
course, thrown into the same scale, and for four
years the Russian Court was the scene of brisk and
multifarious intrigues. . . . From Prince Potemkin,
one of Catharine's lovers, whose favor Harris
courted, he learned that nothing short of the cession
of Minorca would induce the Empress .to enter into
this desired alliance. Russia was already taking
advantage of the situation to overrun and annex the
Crimea; and the maritime outlook, thus acquired,
made her eager to secure some naval station on the
Mediterranean. Minorca was England's to give.
... It was not, however, until 1781 that the offer
of Minorca was made, and then Catharine had so
far acceded to the general combination against Eng-
land that she could not but refuse it.*

*John Fiske, "The American Revolution," 1897, Vol. 2,
p. 143. W. Eton, in "A Survey of the Turkish Empire"

UNITED STATES AND RUSSIA 157

Before this time, in 1776, as very close
relations existed between Great Britain and
Eussia, it was mucli feared that Great Britain
would be able to draw troops from Eussia to
serve against the Colonic. That there was
ground for this fear is evidenced by a resolu-
tion, passed by the Continental Congress
(December 30, 1776), instructing our commis-
sioners in Europe to guard against this con-
tingency. The resolution is as follows :

That the commissioners be respectively directed
to use every means in their power . . . for prevent-
ing German, Russian and other foreign troops from
being sent to America for hostile purposes.^

General Sir William Howe wrote from New
York (November 30, 1776) to Lord George
Germain that a reenforcement of 15,000
troops was needed, "which I hope may be had
from Eussia, or from Hanover, or from other
German States."*

Theodore Lyman, the best of our early

(London, 1798), says: "The Empress, and particularly Po-
temkin, were very anxious to obtain from His Majesty a
cession of the Island of Minorca, which was intended as a
station for her fleet, and a rendezvous for the Greeks," p.
423. See also Diaries and Correspondence of Sir James
Harris, First Earl of Malmesbury, Vol. 1, pp. 345, 359, 363.

5 American Archives, fourth series. Vol. 3, p. 1617.

e Ibid., p. 926.

158 THE AMEEICAN SPIRIT

writers on our diplomacy, says in reference to
Dana's mission at St. Petersburg, and tlie re-
fusal of the Empress to recognize him, that the
conditions upon which she undertook to re-
ceive Dana were more severe than England
herself exacted:

They amounted to this: "Strike ofE seven years
of your independence; confess that you owe your
independence to the English acknowledgment; an-
nul all acts of sovereignty prior to that time — all
Commissioners and Ministers — treaties with France
and Holland ; and then you will be in a condition to
present yourself at the Court of St. Petersburg. ' ' ^

The Continental Congress, in sending Dana
to St. Petersburg, hoped to enter into the
armed neutrality which Russia was organiz-
ing ; but, as Dana was absolutely ignored, Con-
gress, in May, 1783, adopted a resolution to
the effect that, though it approved the princi-
ples of armed neutrality founded on the liberal
basis of a maintenance of the rights of neutral
nations and of the privileges of commerce, yet
they are unwilling at this juncture to become
a party to a Confederacy which may here-
after too far complicate the interests of the
United States with the politics of Europe.

T "Diplomacy of the United States," by Theodore Lyman,
Jr., Vol. 1.

UNITED STATES AND RUSSIA 159

This resolution is in reality the foundation of
the policy which has controlled the foreign
relations of the United States, and it was
subsequently formulated by Washington in
the language so familiar to American ears,
"Friendly relations with all, entangling alli-
ances with none. ' ' As Lyman says, this is the
only instance in the history of the country in
which the United States volunteered, them-
selves, to become a party to a league of sover-
eigns in Europe. While the principles adopted
by the Northern Confederacy were exceedingly
grateful to the American government, and a
proposal to join it was considered an effectual
mode of hastening the acknowledgment of in-
dependence, in reality it was fortunate that
Dana did not succeed in his mission. Francis
Wharton, editor of the Diplomatic Revolu-
tionary Correspondence, concludes: "That
Catharine was resolutely averse to the Ameri-
can cause until after the definitive peace, there
is now no question."^

Reference is frequently made to the Russian
offer of mediation in 1813 to procure a peace

8 See "Revolutionary Diplomatic Correspondence of the
United States," edited, under the direction of Congress, by
Francis Wharton (Government Printing Office), Vol. 6, pp.
213, 425; Vol. 1, p. 265, etc.

160 THE AJMERICAN SPIEIT

between the United States and Great Britain,
and this incident is cited as a proof of Rus-
sia's friendly interest in the welfare of our
country. It must be remembered, however,
that at that time she was closely leagued with
England in the sixth celebrated coalition
against France. The trade of the Baltic was
greatly embarrassed, and the Russian Eto-
peror looked upon this war with great regret
as opposing the commercial prosperity of the
Russian nation. M. Daschkoff, the Russian
Minister, said:

The peace of Russia with England seemed to
present this immense advantage to the commerce of
nearly all seafaring people, that it freed their rela-
tions from that constraint, from that continual vexa-
tion to which it had been subjected for many years
without interruption.*

The mediation was declined by Great Brit-
ain. Russia was at that time in alliance with
England, her interests were to do all in her
power to bring about peace for the benefit of
her commerce. In view of these facts, it can
hardly be held that she was actuated by the
spirit of friendship for the United States in
her desire to become mediator. On the con-

» Lyman's Diplomacy, Vol. 1, p. 436.

UNITED STATES AND RUSSIA 161

trary, the real explanation of her friendly in-
terest lies in the fact that, Alexander being
at that time in alliance with England to coun-
teract the power of Napoleon, and fearing an
attack from him, Russia naturally desired that
her ally, England, should be freed as speedily
as possible from the American war, so that she
might give her aid to Russia in repelling Na-
poleon. This view of Russia's interest was
confirmed by Robert Goodloe Harper, United
States Senator from Maryland, in his speech
in Philadelphia in 1813. He said :

England and Russia therefore stood alone.
England eould spare nothing for the direct assist-
ance of Russia except the cooperation of a fleet in
the Baltic. Such was the situation of Europe about
the moment of attack; and the war which, at the
same moment, was declared by the United States
against England was so timed, whatever might have
been the intention of the authors, as to have the
efPect of direct and not inconsiderable coopera-
tion with France. . . . This was a great loss to
Russia.^"

Frequent reference is made to Russia's
friendly attitude to us during the Civil War,
and to her sending several war-ships to the

10 Harper's Speech. Pamphlet — Commemoration of Rus-
sian Victories (Philadelphia, 1813).

162 THE AMEEICAN SPIRIT

Atlantic and to the Pacific with "sealed in-
structions. ' ' Much has been made of this, but,
even if such instructions existed, is there any
basis for the conclusion that they were for any
other purpose than to offset England — ^in other
words, that her actions toward us even during
the Civil War, were but moves made by her
upon the chessboard of European diplomacy?
This is borne out by Gideon Welles, who re-
cords in his Diary (I, 480): "The Eussian
Government has thought proper to send its
fleet in American waters for the winter. A
number of their vessels arrived at the Atlan-
tic seaboard some weeks since, and others in
the Pacific have reached San Francisco. It
is a politic move for both Russians and Amer-
icans and is somewhat annoying to France
and England."

A recent writer, referring to this, says that
Prince Gortchakoff, Chancellor of the Empire,
had demanded from the signatory powers of
the Treaty of Paris (1856) the abrogation of
the clause of the Treaty which prohibited Rus-
sia from maintaining an armed navy in the
Black Sea. England and France strongly op-
posed this. The Chancellor, in reply, sent
what came very near to being an ultimatum,

UNITED STATES AND RUSSIA 163

and fearing that this act would be followed by-
hostilities, despatched a portion of his fleet
into neutral waters, so that it would not be
bottled up for destruction, as had once been
the case when Eussia's fleet was in the harbor
of Sebastopol. This same writer declares that
Eussia at that time was without an ally in
Europe; that Nihilism was rampant; that the
nobility was secretly plotting against the life
and throne of the Tsar ; and that the fleet was
sent to the American waters for its own pro-
tection, and not for the benefit of the United
States." Be that as it may, why was the
knowledge of the existence of such instruc-
tions kept from our Government, and why do
not the records disclose, as would be natural
under such circumstances, what those mysteri-
ous "sealed instructions" were, and what
purpose the ships were to serve? That Eus-
sia was our friend during the Civil War, in the
same way that almost all other European pow-
ers were our friends, is true. Turkey was
among the first of the powers to show positive
friendship for us during the Civil War. She

11 Pamphlet — "A Brief Review of Russia's Relations with
America," by a Russian- American Diplomat (Washington,
1903) .

164 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

interdicted pirates in the service of tlie Con-
federacy, making depredations upon the com-
merce of our country, from entering the ports
of the Turkish Empire. This was recognized
by Secretary Seward in his despatch to E.
Joy Morris, then our Minister to Turkey when
on June 2, 1862, he wrote:

The President received with profound satisfac-
tion the decree of His Majesty the Sultan interdict-
ing the entrance of pirates engaged in depredating
upon our commerce into the ports of Turkey. . . .
Nor is the proceeding any the lees entitled to our
grateful acknowledgments because the piratical op-
erations of the insurgents, such as they have been,
have already been brought to an end. It will, on
the contrary, be to the honor of the Sultan that he
took the lead in conceding to the United States
rights which it is now expected will soon be con-
ceded by all the other maritime powers . . . The
Turkish Government has been singularly just and
liberal towards us in this emergency.

That the Russian squadron came here in
1863 on a mission to aid the United States is
both an afterthought and a myth. If the
squadron had come here upon any such mis-
sion, would not our Government have placed
on record its acknowledgment for this great
act of friendship? On the contrary, Russia

UNITED STATES AND RUSSIA 165

was very profuse in the expression of her
thants to ns for the hospitahle reception given
to the fleet and its officers.

Cassius M. Clay, our Minister to St. Peters-
hurg, in his despatch to Secretary Seward of
November 8, 1863, said that His Majesty the
Emperor was "now absent, but no doubt he
would on his return make suitable acknowl-
edgments to our Government of the amicable
reception of his subjects at New York"; that
the Eussian officers had "always been grati-
fied to meet those of the American Navy, and
they would be most happy, should any ships
of war visit Cronstadt, to reciprocate the late
courtesies extended to their countrymen."

When the Russian fleet arrived, Gideon
"Welles, Secretary of the Navy, wrote to Baron
Stoeckl, the Russian Minister at Washington,
a letter which shows that the visit w^s one of
courtesy only:

Navt Depaetment, September 23rd, 1863.

The Department is much gratified to learn that
a squadron of Russian war-vessels is at present off
the harbor of New York, with the intention, it is
supposed, of visiting that city. The presence in
our waters of a squadron belonging to His Imperial
Majesty's navy cannot but be a source of pleasure

166 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

and happiness to our countrymen [sic] . I beg that
you will make known to the Admiral in command
that the facilities of the Brooklyn Navy-yard are at
his disposal for any repairs that the vessels of his
squadron may need, and that any other required
assistance will be gladly extended.

I avail myself of this occasion to extend through
you to the officers of His Majesty's squadron a cor-
dial invitation to visit the Navy-yard. I do not
hesitate to say that it will give Bear- Admiral Pauld-
ing very great pleasure to show them the vessels and
other objects of interest at the Naval station under
his command.^^

After our Minister met the Emperor, he
again reported to Mr. Seward, on August 22,
1864, as follows :

His Majesty told me that he had allowed his
officers lately in the United States to call upon me
en masse, and express their gratitude for the cour-
tesies extended to them in America, all of which was
evidently as a national complim.ent.

France endeavored to bring about a joint
mediation, and invited Russia and England to
unite with her in the attempt, and Russia re-
fused, but that refusal was given after, and not
before, England had refused. Bayard Taylor,

12 This letter, from the files of the Navy Department, was
published in the New York Evening Post, April 18, 1904.

UNITED STATES AND RUSSIA 167

who was acting as Change at St. Petersburg, in
a despatch, dated November 15, 1862, to Secre-
tary Seward, fully confirms this. He wrote as
follows :

While I infer from the above that Russia would,
to a certain extent, be inclined to take part in a
movement which she foresaw to be inevitable on the
part of England and France, rather than permit a
coalition between these two powers from which she
should be wholly excluded, the probable refusal of
the English Government, announced to-day by tele-
graph, relieves me from all apprehension of compli-
cations that might arise from the proposition. I
stated to Prince Gortehakoff, at our recent inter-
view, my belief that England would not accede, and
am very glad to find it so soon confirmed.

Further corroboration of this view is con-
tained in a later despatch from Mr. Taylor to
Secretary Seward, under date of December 17,
1862, in which he said :

Mr. Adams having communicated, in answer to
my confidential letter, an encouraging statement of
the present attitude of England, I took occasion,
in an interview which I had with Prince Gorteha-
koff last week, to read him some portions of it.
This led to a renewed conversation upon American
affairs, and it was very soon evident to me that the
anxiety which His ExceUeney had manifested on

168 THE AMEEICAN SPIEIT

preAdous occasions was beginning to subside. He
still inquired whether some arrangement with the
insurgents which would put an end to the war was
not possible.

Henry Clews, in an article in this Review
in 1904, published a letter to him from Mr.
Gladstone touching upon the attitude of the
English Cabinet during our Civil War, which
completely refutes the charge that England
would have intervened in favor of the Confed-
eracy but for the friendship of Russia toward
us. The letter bears date May 30, 1889, and
is as follows:

As a member of it [the English Cabinet], and
now nearly its sole surviving member, I can state
it never at any time dealt with the subject of recog-
nizing the Southern States in your great Civil War,
except when it learned the proposition of the Em-
peror Napoleon III, and declined to entertain that
proposition without qualification, hesitation, delay,
or dissent. In the debate which took place on Mr.
Roebuck's proposal for that negotiation, Lord Rus-
sell took no part, and could take none, as he was a
member of the House of Lords. I spoke for the
Cabinet. You will, I am sure, be glad to learn that
there is no foundation for a charge which, had it
been true, might have aided in keeping alive angry
sentiments happily gone by.

UNITED STATES AND EUSSIA 169

But there is another side to this story, which,
to use a common phrase, puts the boot on the
other leg.

In the beginning of 1863, affairs in Eussia
were in a very precarious state. An insur-
rection in Poland had broken out to such a
degree that considerable agitation was felt in
all Europe. The French Minister of Foreign
Affairs invited Great Britain, and subse-
quently the United States, to join with France
in bringing about a cessation of hostilities.

In accordance with our policy of strict neu-
trality and of not mixing with the affairs of
European states, Mr. Seward gave a courteous
declination to this invitation. This declina-
tion produced such satisfaction in Eussia that
Prince Gortchakoff published his reply to our
Minister in the Eussian press. I quote a few
passages therefrom:

May 22nd, 1863 — I lost no time in laying before
the Emperor, my august master, the despatch which
you have communicated to me by order of your
Government, and which contains the answer of Mr.
Seward to Mr. Dayton, relative to the recent appli-
cation of the French Government upon the subject
of events in the Kingdom of Poland. His Majesty
the Emperor has been sensibly moved by the senti-
ments of confidence which the Government of the

170 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

United States places in his views and designs in
regard to the general well-being of his Empire.
Such manifestations must strengthen the bonds of
mutual sympathy which unite the two countries,
and constitute a consummation which too much ac-
cords with the aspirations of the Emperor for His
Majesty not to look upon it with pleasure.

The insurrection in Poland at that time was
occupying much more of the attention of the
cabinets of Europe, including Russia, than our
Civil "War. Our Minister in Paris, Mr. Day-
ton, in his despatch to Mr. Seward of Febru-
ary 23, 1863, reports:

The insurrection of Poland has driven Ameri-
can affairs out of view for the moment. A disturb-
ance on the Continent, especially in Central Europe,
is so near at hand, and touches the interests of so
many of the crowned heads of these countries, that
distant events fall out of sight until these more im-
mediate troubles are settled.

Mr. Clay, in his despatch of November 8,
1863, says:

The Russian reception in American waters is
the subject of conversation in all circles; and the
gentry and the common people seem alike to under-
stand and feel the friendly demonstration made at
this time, when France, England and Austria are
attempting, under the pretence of national justice,

UNITED STATES AND RUSSIA 171

to put them under the ban of Christendom for de-
fending the integrity of their Empire."

It has frequently been declared by Eussia
that ber sale to us of Alaska was made out of
friendship for this country. That is another
myth. Charles Sumner, who was chairman of
the Committee on Foreign Affairs in the Sen-
ate when the Alaska treaty came up for rati-
fication, in his great speech in support of the
treaty, under the beading "Reason for Ces-
sion by Russia," said:

Turning from the question of title which time
and testimony have already settled, I meet the in-
quiry, Why does Russia part with possessions asso-
ciated with the reign of her greatest ruler and
filling an important chapter of geographical his-
tory? Here I am without information not open to
others. But I do not forget that the First Napo-
leon, in parting with Louisiana, was controlled by
three several considerations. First, he needed the
purchase-money for his treasury. Secondly, he was
unwilling to leave this distant unguarded territory
a prey to Great Britain, in the event of hostilities,
which seemed at hand. And, thirdly, he was glad,
according to his own remarkable language, 'to estab-
lish forever the power of the United States, and
give England a maritime rival that would sooner or

13 Foreign Relations, 1863, MS. Archives, Department of
State.

172 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

later humble her pride.' Such is the record of his-
tory. Perhaps a similar record may be made here-
after with regard to the present cession. There is
reason to imagine that Russia, with all her great
empire, is financially poor, so that these few millions
may not be unimportani to her. ... It will be for
her advantage not to hold outlying possessions from
which thus far she has obtained no income commen-
surate with the possible expense for her protection.

Sumner, the statesman and the author of
"Prophetic Voices Concerning America," was
certainly correct and almost prophetic in this
instance, for, with the acquisition of Alaska,
the United States did undoubtedly purchase
serious and threatening boundary and fishery
complications with Great Britain, which only
recently were happily settled by arbitration.

It will be remembered that Russia was the
dominant power in the so-called "Holy Al-
liance," whose purpose was to suppress all
forms of popular uprisings, to crush the spirit
of liberty in the Central and South American
Republics, and ultimately, as a logical conse-
quence, to dominate a large part, if not the
whole, of the American Continent.

Russia's relations to the Monroe Doctrine
were not confined to her primacy in the "Holy
Alliance." In the autumn of 1818, J. B. Pro-

UNITED STATES AND RUSSIA 173

vost, the American Commissioner who had
been sent out by the President to receive the
formal delivery of Astoria, stopped on his re-
turn at the port of Monterey, in California,
and while there prepared the report of his mis-
sion. In this report he informed the Presi-
dent of an incident that he regarded as most
serious — which was that, until 1816, the Rus-
sians had no settlement south of the fifty-fifth
degree. But in that year, very probably be-
cause of Humboldt's glowing description of
that region, she had established two colonies,
one at Atooi in the Sandwich Islands, and the
other on the coast of California, a few leagues
from San Francisco.

In February, 1822, the Russian Minister at
Washington, Chevalier Pierre de Politica,
placed in the hands of the Secretary of State
an edict of the Emperor Alexander to the ef-
fect that all rights of commerce, industry and
fishing on the Northwest coast of America,
from Bering Strait to the fifty-first degree,
were exclusively granted to Russian subjects.
Foreign vessels were, therefore, not only not
to land on the coast and islands, but not even
to come within one hundred Italian miles. The
subject was renewed by Politica 's successor,

174 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

Baron de Tuyl; and, one day in July, 1823,
when he called at the State Department,
Adams announced to him "that we should con-
test the right of Russia to any territorial es-
tablishment on this continent, and that we
should assume distinctly the principle that the
American continents are no longer subjects
for any European colonial establishments."

According to McMaster, from whose excel-
lent chapter on the Monroe Doctrine I have
drawn the following statement, when the time
came for Monroe to write his annual message
to Congress, three distinct matters required
the President's serious attention: "the at-
tempt of Russia to colonize in California and
her selection of the fifty-first degree of north
latitude as the southern boundary of Alaska;
the threatened intervention of the Holy Al-
liance in the affairs of South-American Re-
publics ; and the proposition of Canning for a
joint declaration against them."" The Cab-
inet held meeting after meeting to discuss
these matters ; they had before them the opin-
ions of the two living ex-Presidents, Jefferson
and Madison. What was done Adams himself
best describes:

1* "With the Fathers," by John Bach McMaster, pp. 1-54.

UNITED STATES AND RUSSIA 175

I remarked that the communications recently-
received from the Russian Minister, Baron de Tuyl,
afforded, I thought, a very suitable and convenient
opportunity for us to take our stand against the
Holy Alliance, and at the same time to decline the
overture of Great Britain. It would be more
candid, as well as more dignified, to avow our prin-
ciples explicitly to Russia and France, than to come
in as a cockboat in the wake of the British man-of-
war. This idea was acquiesced in on all sides.

It follows as a conclusion that sucli reasons
for gratitude as we may have to Russia are
not for her friendly, but for her hostile, at-
titude toward us, in that these important in-
cidents were mainly the cause of our formulat-
ing and announcing to the world our far-seeing
continental policy.

I have endeavored to present briefly the re-
sults of a careful examination of all accessible
authentic and reliable data bearing upon the
relations of the two countries, from the reign
of Empress Catharine II to the present time.
The inferences and conclusions from these
facts are clear, that, with the exception of
Russia's hostile or unfriendly attitude during
the earlier years of our history, when the
United States was struggling for recognition
as an independent nation, and the "Holy Al-

176 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

lianee" incident, the relations between Russia
and the United States have been ■unifonnly
normal and friendly; each nation, as against
the other, on all occasions and during periods
of war, has strictly observed its neutral obli-
gations, as was incumbent upon it under the
laws of nations between friendly powers. To
infer that the United States is under obliga-
tions of gratitude to Russia for any special
acts of friendship shown, other than such as
the laws of neutrality have imposed, is to sub-
stitute a myth and the fulsome language of
ceremonial functions for historical facts.

IX

OUR COMMEECIAL AGE

IX

OUE COMMEECIAL AGE

GEOEGIA was founded in a military age,
and no colony in ancient or in modern
times had a nobler beginning or a more phil-
anthropic founder than the colony of Georgia.
His was the first great effort to alleviate the
social and economic condition of the poorer
classes. The people whom the great Ogle-
thorpe brought with him, and those who fol-
lowed in his path, had been racked and crushed
— some by economic oppression, others by re-
ligious persecution. The colonists, though
coming from different countries of the old
world — Britons, Moravians, and Salzburgers
— ^were welded together by a common heritage
of suffering. By the direction of Oglethorpe,
both slavery and rum were prohibited. Sa-
vannah began as a dry town, and it has re-
cently reverted, in honor of the principles of
its founder, to its primeval dryness. So his-
tory repeats itself. Oh, what woes unnum-

179

180 THE AMERICAN SPIEIT

bered might have been spared the whole South-
land if the cardinal principles of Oglethorpe
could have been preserved and extended. He
knew, aside from all humanitarian considera-
tions, what slavery and militarism meant.
They dignified idleness, and degraded produc-
tive occupations. One of the greatest bless-
ings of our industrial and commercial age is
the fact that it has dignified labor, and in dig-
nifying labor has unlocked the mainspring of
personal initiative, energy, and enterprise,
which lie at the basis of our wonderful growth
and prosperity.

The example of the people of the United
States, not only in the liberty they enjoy but
in enfranchising the workingman, and in giv-
ing him the material rewards of labor, as well
as the honors that true merit deserves, has
wielded a powerful influence in every civilized
land. Barons, counts, dukes, and lords come
to us from foreign lands, craving the hands of
the fair daughters of our captains of industry,
and do not reject the millions that their fath-
ers, the homy-handed sons of toil, have ac-
cumulated.

Our age and generation are preeminently
commercial, and the people of the United

OUR COMMEECIAL AGE 181

States are in the forefront, both, in the rewards
they reap and in the prosperity they enjoy.
The spirit of commerce has contributed more
than all other causes toward bringing together
the various sections of this great nation, which,
in its growth and development, in its neces-
sities and expansion, has wiped out sectional-
ism and made us one united people.

The classes engaged in industry and com-
merce, says the historian Lecky, have been the
steady supporters of English liberty. Yes,
commerce in its modern development is based
upon mutuality, and every ship that carries
its products to foreign climes is a messenger
of peace and good will. Commerce thrives
along the highways of peace, and it speaks the
universal language of peace. No agency is
working more steadily toward the ideals of in-
ternational peace than the agencies of com-
merce. Appreciating all this as I do, and ap-
preciating also the fact that the ideal condition
for all nations would be to save the millions
they are now spending on armies and navies
and use them in promoting the economic wel-
fare of the masses; yet so long as other
nations, though progressing toward that ideal,
are far from its realization, a great country

182 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

such as ours, with, a tremendous seacoast and
with great international interests, can best
serve the cause of peace and hasten the ideal
condition by a navy adequate in strength and
efficiency to give it the proper weight in the
promotion of peace in the council of nations.

We say the North and the South, the East
and the West — their interests are one eco-
nomically, politically and commercially. It is
that reason, and because of this commercial
expansion, with the network of railroads run-
ning from the Atlantic to the Pacific and from
the Lakes to the Gulf, carrying the products
of the mines, the farms, and the factories from
ocean to ocean, which cross both oceans to the
markets of Europe and the Orient, that has
necessitated a wider interpretation of the com-
merce clauses of the Constitution than was re-
quired or foreseen by those who carried on the
infant industries of the thirteen original
States. To restrict those clauses to the con-
ditions that existed when the Constitution was
adopted would discredit not only the wise
statesmanship of our day but the spirit and
prophetic vision of the founders of our Repub-
lic, who boldly led the way in expanding our
national domain, bv reason of which we have

OUR COMMEECIAL AGE 183

grown from a nation of three millions to a na-
tion of ninety millions in the course of four
generations. This tremendous growth, the
greatest marvel in national development, has
brought in its train great duties and great re-
sponsibilities. The generations that have
gone before us have organized and developed
equal rights throughout the length and breadth
of the land. Our care must be that the gate-
way of opportunity to these blessings shall not
be obstructed, by either the tyranny of capital
or the tyranny of labor.

The commercial development of the South,
as distinguished from the production of agri-
cultural staples, is of comparatively recent
growth, and for that reason it is all the more
remarkable. Since 1870 the railways of the
South have grown from 12,500 to 61,600 miles ;
in other words, they have practically quintu-
pled in length, while those of the other parts
of the United States have only quadrupled.
Take the cotton manufacturing industry. In
the same period of time it grew from eleven
millions to one hundred and sixty-three mil-
lions. In the same period the value of all
manufactures produced in the South has
grown from two hundred and seventy-eight

184 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

millions to 1,526 millions, nearly double as
much in percentage as the rest of the country.
In the period from 1900 to 1906, the number
of national banks and individual deposits
in national banks have increased more than
one hundred per cent, while the deposits in
the banking institutions of the country as a
whole have increased only eighty per cent.
In the State of Georgia the growth has been
equally gratifying. The value of cotton man-
ufactures from 1870 to 1905 grew from three
and one-half millions to thirty-five millions,
and the total value of manufactures during
the same period grew from thirty-one millions
to one hundred and fifty-one millions ; and the
value of exports passing out of the port of
Savannah from thirty millions in 1870 to
more than sixty-three millions in the fiscal
year 1907.

I have referred to this, not to glorify your
greatness, but rather to direct attention to fu-
ture possibilities. Great as this growth has
been, Georgia's opportunities for the future
will certainly be largely increased by the con-
struction and opening of the Panama Canal.
The market for cotton goods in Latin Amer-
ica amounts to one hundred millions a year,

OUR COMMERCIAL AGE 185

and with the opening of that canal the entire
Pacific frontage of Latin America, the total
imports of which amount to more than six
hundred millions, will present attractive mar-
kets.

Another important matter, in this connec-
tion, is deserving of immediate attention.
We may have the products of the farm and
the factory in abundance; we may spend mil-
lions upon waterways and upon harbors, and
millions again upon what will prove to be
the greatest and most far-reaching commer-
cial enterprise that any nation has ever under-
taken — the construction of the Panama Canal
— ^but the benefits from them will never ade-
quately flow to us unless we control the means
of transportation to carry our products and
our mails in our own ships, under our own
flag, by the most direct route to the markets
that we seek to cultivate.

Commerce is reciprocal, and the ships that
go to the South and Central American mar-
kets to carry the products that we sell must
return with products which the people of
those countries sell to us. All the great mari-
time powers, whether their economic policy is
free trade or protection, create and maintain

186 THE AMEEICAN SPIRIT

fast freight and fast passenger lines to their
foreign markets by means of liberal postal
payments. Sixty years ago, when onr com-
merce was insignificant, President Polk rec-
ommended subventions, and Congress granted
them. These subventions were, on a moder-
ate and limited scale, reestablished in the pos-
tal law of 1891, and what is demanded now is
that that postal law be extended so that our
commerce and our passengers will not be com-
pelled to go to the markets on this continent
by way of Europe, and by twice crossing the
Atlantic Ocean. There is a bill before Con-
gress, the purpose of which is to extend this
subvention so as to make it effective in reach-
ing the markets on this continent and along
the Pacific Ocean, namely, to give the same
postal subvention that is provided for under
the law of 1891 and adapt it to ships that ply
in those waters, or, in other words, to give
four dollars a ton per mile to vessels of the
second class on routes 4,000 miles or more in
length, outward voyage, to South America, to
the Philippines, to Japan, to China, and to
Australasia. To accomplish this will require
no more than the profit that the Government
is now making on its foreign mail contracts.

OUE COMMEKCIAL AGE 187

The actual cost to the Government last year
of the ocean-mail service to foreign countries,
other than Canada and Mexico, was in round
numbers three million dollars, while the pro-
ceeds realized by the Government from pos-
tage between the United States and foreign
countries, other than Canada and Mexico, was
a little in excess of six millions, leaving a
profit of a little more than three million dol-
lars per annum. The commerce of the coun-
try yields to the Government this three mil-
lion dollars in postage alone, and all that is
asked is that this three million dollars be de-
voted to extending the commerce of the coun-
try in American bottoms sailing under the
American flag. This is the commercial end
of the proposition.

The need of auxiliary vessels in time of
war for military service is indispensable, both
for the Army and for the Navy. Not many
months ago it became necessary to dispatch a
small force of American troops to Cuba.
They were sent under the British flag. The
peaceful and magnificent voyage that our pow-
erful fleet of warships is now making from
the Atlantic to the Pacific would have been
impeded, if not made prohibitive, unless we

188 THE AMEEICAN SPIRIT

had secured the shelter of foreign flags to
carry the necessary coal.

This is not a party question in any sense
of the word. It is a question affecting the
commerce of the entire country, its mail serv-
ice, and the necessities of the nation, and of
insuring adequate naval protection in time of
war.

In the old South the industries were chiefly
agricultural, and therefore were sectionalized.
But the new South is fast developing its man-
ufacturing possibilities and nationalizing its
industries, and its commerce is an integral
part both of the domestic commerce of the na-
tion and of our commerce with the world. It
has been truthfully said that the scepter of
nations has passed from camps to commerce,
and is controlled, not by the booted and
spurred captains of dragoons, but by the cap-
tains of capital and enterprise.

For many years past the greatest commer-
cial nations of the world, recognizing that not
only the power of the nation but the well be-
ing of the people depends upon its industries
and its commerce, have encouraged by liberal
appropriations a close and cooperative rela-
tionship between governmental agencies and

OUK COMMERCIAL AGE 189

commercial organizations. The Department
over wMcli it is my privilege to preside was
established in 1903, in response to that same
purpose to afford such help as the Govern-
ment can properly give to the encouragement
and development of commerce at home and
abroad. With the view of making that coop-
eration practical and effective, I summoned to
Washington for consultation delegates from
commercial organizations in the larger cities
of the country. Several of the commercial
cities of the South were represented at that
conference, and the plan developed was to or-
ganize a National Council of Commerce, rep-
resenting every section of the country and
every industrial and commercial organization,
with a bureau at Washington, under capable
administration, which should be in constant
touch with those governmental departments,
such as the Department of Commerce and
Labor, the State Department, the Interior
Department, and the Department of Agri-
culture, which come into direct touch with the
industries of the country and with its do-
mestic and foreign commerce. No country
has more enterprising, more capable, or better
trained men in its business and its commerce

190 THE AMERICAN SPIEIT

than we have, and therefore all the greater is
the need that there should be a close relation-
ship between the Government and the com-
mercial bodies of the country, for the ad-
vancement and development of its great busi-
ness interests. We require a body such as
Great Britain has, such as Germany has,
which, when it speaks, voices the true commer-
cial interest of the country, unhampered by
selfish interests or sectional claims, or politi-
cal limitations.

For the proper development of our indus-
tries we need an adequate supply of the best
kind of labor, and in order to obtain that sup-
ply we must make the standard of wage at-
tractive to that class, to the skilled and enter-
prising immigrants that continually come to
us from foreign shores. It is rather the
vogue now to speak against the immigrant
and immigration, forgetting what we are and
what we owe to the twenty-five million willing
workers that have come to us in the past hun-
dred years to develop the great possibilities
of this country and make us the great nation
that we are. All honor to the descendants of
the Puritan and Pilgrim fathers; but in hon-
oring them let us not withhold our high ap-

OUR COMMERCIAL AGE 191

preciation and meed of praise for the immi-
grants who have come to xis in the succeeding
decades. They and their children, in peace
and in war, have proved no less true and noble
Americans than those who preceded them in
time but did not surpass them in the love of
our common country. Yes, we welcome the
immigrant to our country, the self-respecting
and honest-minded alien, no matter from what
country he comes, who is willing to share with
us not only the blessings but also the duties
and responsibilities of our great country; but
they, as well as all our people, must under-
stand that in this land of liberty, equality,
and justice there is no room for socialism,
communism, collectivism, or any other form
of "ism" than Americanism, which rests upon
the Ten Commandments, the Declaration of
Independence, and the Constitution of the
United States.

COMMEECE AND INTERNATIONAL RE-
LATIONS

COMMERCE AND INTEENATIONAL RE-
LATIONS

THIS meeting of representative men from
the great mercantile communities of the
country to consider a further extension of our
foreign commerce, and especially of our ex-
port trade, is characteristic of the true Amer-
ican spirit which counts even its greatest suc-
cess as a mere stimulus to further conquest.
Not content with the fact that our exports of
domestic products have doubled in the past
decade, while those of Germany, our most
active rival, have increased seventy-five per
cent., those of the United Kingdom less than
fifty per cent., and those of France forty per
cent., we find representatives of the great in-
dustries and commercial interests of all parts
of the country meeting here to consider ways
and means for the development still further
of that export trade which has placed the
United States in the front rank of nations as

195

196 THE AMEEICAN SPIEIT

an exporter of domestic products. The two
questions of paramount importance present-
ing themselves to the delegates to this Con-
vention are:

First. What has been the cause of the phe-
nomenal growth in our exports? and

Second. What may we do to continue and
still further develop that growth?

In answer to the first question, it may be
stated as an accepted fact that our growth in
the volume of exports is attributable to the
ever increasing demand abroad for such arti-
cles as cotton, iron, copper, timber, and coal,
with which nature has supplied us so bounti-
fully.

The answer to the second question is more
involved. There are many great factors to be
considered in the solution of this problem so
vital to the future welfare of our country,
some of which are exceedingly important and
are entitled to far more consideration than is
usually accorded to them in our study of the
subject.

I refer to the friendly sentiment or good
will of foreign nations, which in my opinion
is a greater economic and international factor
than is generally recognized; and also to an-

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 197

other factor, one which comes in close con-
junction with the former — that of immigra-
tion — ^which as a commercial stimulus draws
after it and reflects back to the mother coun-
try a greater commercial intercourse and com-
mercial good will than we perhaps realize.

The friendly sentiment that exists between
nations, while due in many cases to descent
from a common stock- and to the presence in
one country of many former citizens of an-
other, is also due to the existence of that other
commercial factor, invested capital. The
friendly sentiment existing between the
United States and all English-speaking na-
tions is, of course, the result, to a great ex-
tent, of a common parentage and the use of a
common language as a medium, of intercourse.
In the case of our dealings with the Germanic
nations there is not only the close relation-
ship between the Anglo-Saxon and the Ger-
manic, but also the presence in this country of
millions of representatives of those nations.

The number of immigrants admitted into
the United States from Germany alone since
1820 exceeds five millions, and the number of
natives of that country residing in the United
States at the present time is nearly three mil-

198 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

lions. The number of Austrians residing in
the United States at the date of the last cen-
sus was more than a quarter of a million; of
natives of Holland, more than a hundred thou-
sand ; and of natives of Norway, Sweden, and
Denmark, more than a million; while of na-
tives of the United Kingdom the total in 1900
was two and three-quarter millions, and of
Canada more than a million.

But this closeness of sentiment and of com-
mercial intercourse, which to a high degree is
the result of the presence in the United States
of millions of people and billions of capital
from foreign countries, is not only affected
but aided by similar conditions applying, in a
much smaller degree to be sure, to American
citizens and American capital in foreign
countries. The latest available statistics in-
dicate that the number of natives of the
United States who are now residing in some
part of the United Kingdom is approximately
thirty thousand.

The German census of 1900 showed the
presence of about eighteen thousand of our
citizens residing in Germany. The Mexican
census showed nearly sixteen thousand Amer-
icans residing in Mexico in 1900, and the Ca-

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 199

nadian census of 1901 showed about forty-one
thousand natives of the United States resid-
ing in Canada. The fact that subsequent
Canadian records show a migration of twen-
ty-five thousand to forty-five thousand per
annum from the United States to Canada
suggests that the number of our own people
now residing in the Dominion is probably
more than a hundred thousand.

Our consul-general to Mexico reported, two
or three years ago, that more than five hun-
dred million dollars of American capital was
invested in that country; and persons well ac-
quainted with the movements of investments
out of the United States are of the opinion
that this sum has since been increased at the
rate of perhaps a hundred million dollars pei-
annum, and that the total American capital
now invested in Mexico approximates eight
hundred million dollars. Reports from our
consuls in Canada, and from other available
records, indicate that the investment of Amer-
ican capital among our neighbors on the north
is also to be measured by hundreds of mil-
lions of dollars.

Our consul-general in Cuba has indicated
that in his opinion the amount of American

200 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

capital there invested is between one hundred
and two hundred million dollars, and a study
of tMs subject -recently made by the Bureau
of Statistics develops the fact that probably
a hundred million of American capital have
been invested in the Hawaiian Islands, and
from ten to fifteen million dollars in Porto
Rico. In the great countries of Europe,
where capital is plentiful, American inven-
tions and American skill in manufacturing
and management have combined with local
capital to develop great industrial enter-
prises, which have strengthened the cordial-
ity of sentiment already existing between the
two peoples.

Let us see whether the existence of these
factors, of a favorable sentiment strength-
ened by the presence in each nation of per-
sonal and financial representatives of the
other, has been followed by a growth and
maintenance of cordial commercial relation-
ship. What country is the most important
customer for American exports? The United
Kingdom, having with us a common language,
and of whose people we had in 1900 two and
three-quarter millions in the United States,
and to which we have sent thirty thousand of

INTEENATIONAL EELATIONS 201

our own people to become permanent resi-
dents of its own communities.

What nation is next in importance in both
our export and our import trade? Grermany,
of whose people we had in 1900 two and two-
third millions, and to-day have perhaps as
many as three millions and in which country
probably twenty thousand Americans now re-
side as part of its communities. What is the
next country in rank in our export trade?
Canada, of whose people we had in 1900 over
a million, and in whose commimities probably
a hundred thousand former citizens of the
United States now reside, and in which are
invested large sums of American capital.
Still another country with which our trade re-
lations have grown with wonderful rapidity is
Mexico, which takes two-thirds of its imports
from us and sends three-fourths of its exports
to us, and in which country probably twenty
thousand former citizens of the United States
reside and hundreds of millions of American
capital are invested, while the number of for-
mer citizens of Mexico now residing in the
United States is more than a hundred thou-
sand.

Take the reverse side of the picture. We

202 THE AMERICAN SPIEIT

often wonder that our trade with France, with
which our relations have always been cordial,
grows so slowly, and that we supply only
about ten per cent, of its imports, while to
Germany we supply fourteen per cent., to the
United Kingdom twenty-five per cent., and
to Canada sixty per cent, of their imports.
"While this apparently anomalous condition is
doubtless due in part to the restrictive policy
of France, may it not also be due in some de-
gree to the fact that the total number of
French residing in the United States in 1900
was but one hundred and four thousand, as
compared with two and two-third millions
from Germany, two and three-fourth millions
from the United Kingdom, and more than a
million from Canada?

We have been surprised at the very rapid
growth of our trade with Italy in recent years,
which has expanded from practically forty
million dollars in 1896 to nearly ninety mil-
lions at the present time ; but when we realize
that the number of Italians in the United
States in 1900 was nearly a half million, and
that the number has grown with phenomenal
rapidity in recent years, we find in the grati-
fying enlargement of our trade relations with

INTEENATIONAL RELATIONS 203

that country an additional argument support-
ing the theory that closeness of relationship
between the people of the two countries is an
important factor in the development of com-
mercial relations.

The number of Eussians in the United
States in 1900 was nearly half a million, and
the increase since then has been very great.
The value of our exports to Eussia has more
than doubled in the past decade, and the value
of our imports from that country has more
than quadrupled. "We have wondered, and
with reason, at the slow growth of our ex-
ports to our South American neighbors, and
especially at their small value when compared
with the large amount represented by our im-
ports from that section of the world. But do
we take sufficiently into consideration the fact
that the South American countries are peo-
pled by races less closely akin to us in na-
tionality and in language than those previ-
ously mentioned, and that American citizens
and American capital are seldom found in
those communities?

These countries are generously populated
with Europeans and are enjoying the benefi-
cial effects of their capital. The number of

204 THE AMERICAN SPIEIT

people from Soutli America residing in the
United States in 1900 was fewer than five
thousand, as compared with more than one
hundred thousand from Mexico, over a million
from Canada, two and two-third millions from
Germany, and two and three-quarter millions
from the United Kingdom.

"What are the conclusions to be drawn from
these facts and figures in their relation to our
foreign trade? Clearly, that the sentiment of
friendship as well as that of cordiality which
has accompanied the development of com-
merce with those countries with which our
commercial intercourse is greatest and most
satisfactory should be continued and fostered.
The presence in the United States of capital
from foreign countries and the presence in
such countries of American capital surely
strengthens commercial relations between the
nations, while the presence of industrious citi-
zens from those countries has doubtless been
of great aid in developing the many industries
that have made us the most wealthy and pros-
perous nation of the world, as well as the
greatest manufacturing nation, and placed us
in the front rank of exporters of domestic
products and of manufactures.

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 205

n our personal relationships witli the rep-
entatives of the various nations, in the
sular and diplomatic relationship with
se countries, and in the relation of our
t^ernment to such nations and their people,

may continually and materially aid and
engthen that wonderful commercial devel-
nent, the prosperity and growth of which
I heen our pride. It is a growth that we

striving to develop still further. For the
•pose of properly expanding and enlarging
• trade relations, it is of the highest im-
•tance that the executive branch of our
v^ernment charged with the cultivation of
jndly relations with foreign nations shall

be hampered by any narrowness or short-
htedness on the part of our law-makers,
ler national or in the separate States, for
ry obstacle that is placed in the way of
mdly international relations is bound to re-
t and act as a check upon our foreign com-
rce, and at the same time upon our wage-
rkers, of whom so many are employed in
ustries and manufactures engaged in ex-
%, As it has been shown that the move-
it of population from one country to an-
er is one of the forerunners of interna-

206 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

tional trade, as well as a great factor in
promoting it, we must have a care not to put
unreasonable eliecks upon that migration.

Our trade with China grew with rapidity
so long as the exclusion law was clearly un-
derstood to apply only to the coolie class.
Her merchants and travelers and representa-
tive people visited this country freely and
sent their sons to be educated at our schools,
colleges, and universities. In like manner
Americans visited China freely, and the num-
ber of our people residing in that country in-
creased from fewer than thirteen hundred in
1894 to more than three thousand and two
hundred in 1904.

Our exports to China grew from less than
five million dollars in 1895 to more than fifty
millions in 1905, and while we believe that the
diminution of more than twenty millions in
that trade in 1906 was due, in some degree, to
the fact that the trade of 1905 was abnormally
large, there can be no doubt that it was due
in some part to the recent trade boycotts, re-
sulting from the feeling on the part of the
Chinese that their representative people do
not receive proper treatment when they apply
for admission to the United States^ go ap-

INTERNATIONAL EELATIONS 207

ent was this fact that President Roosevelt,
a message to Congress a year ago, urged
enactment of a Chinese admission act, say-

Ihinese students, business and professional men
ill kinds — not only merchants, but bankers, doc-
1, manufacturers, professors, travelers, and the
— should be encouraged to come here and be
ited on precisely the same footing that we treat
ients, business men, travelers, and the like, of
iT nations. Our laws and treaties should be
ned, not so as to put these people in the excepted
ises, but to state that we will admit all Chinese,
3pt Chinese of the coolie class, Chinese skilled
mskilled laborers. There would not be the least
ger that any such provision would result in any
xation of the law about laborers. These will,
.er all conditions, be kept out absolutely. But it
. be more easy to see that both justice and
rtesy are shown, as they ought to be shown, to
;r Chinese, if the law or treaty is framed as above
gested.

)ur trade with Japan has also shown a re-
rkable growth in recent years, during
ch time a feeling of deep friendship has
eloped between that wonderful race and
own. Her people have been welcomed to
the privileges and immunities enjoyed by
most favored nation, except that of actual

208 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

citizensHp. The privileges of Americans re-
siding in Japan, the number of whom has
nearly doubled in the past decade, have cor-
respondingly increased.

Our great silk manufactories, which employ
thousands of workmen and disburse more
than thirty millions a year in wages, have
drawn largely for their raw material upon
Japan, sending her nearly forty million dol-
lars for raw silk in the year just ended. In
turn, Japan has purchased freely of the
products of our farms and factories, so that
our exports -to that country have grown from
less than eight million dollars in 1896 to more
than thirty-eight millions in 1906. In view of
these flattering commercial relations with the
dominant power in the Far East, it is a mat-,
ter of serious regret that recent incidents in
a single community of this country — a com-
munity which has profited greatly by the en-
largement of our trade with Japan — should
have endangered the cordiality of relations
under which that trade has been developed.

While this occurrence is too recent to have
had as yet a perceptible effect upon trade re-
lations, it requires no stretch of imagination
to foresee that unless these deplorable inci-

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 209

ts are satisfactorily adjusted, they will
e a disastrous influence upon our future
ie with that country. On this subject the
isident, in my opinion, voiced the sentiment
the great mass of our people when he said
lis recent message to Congress :

Tot only miast we treat all nations fairly, but
must treat with justice and good will all immi-
Qts who come here under the law. Whether they
Catholic or Protestant, Jew or Gentile ; whether
Y come from England or Germany, Russia,
an, or Italy, matters nothing. All we have a
it to question is the man's conduct. If he is
est and upright in his dealings with his neigh-
and with the State, then he is entitled to respect
I good treatment. Especially do we need to re-
nber our duty to the stranger within our gates,
is the sure mark of a low civilization, a low
•ality, to abuse or discriminate against or in any
7 humiliate such stranger who has come here law-
y and who is conducting himself properly. To
lember this is incumbent on every American
zen, and it is of course peculiarly incumbent on
[y Government official, whether of the nation or
the several States.

nternational courtesy is as essential to
jrnational good will as is a similar rela-
iship between individuals, and the conse-

210 THE AMERICAN SPIEIT

quences in the former case are far more se-
rious and permanent. The mercliants and
manufacturers of our country can perform no
more valuable service to the nation and in the
promotion of our foreign commerce than in
strengthening public sentiment to support the
Government in cultivating those good relations
with other nations which are so essential to
good will and good trade relations.

And this thought, namely, that the growth
in trade relations is attributable, in some de-
gree at least, to cordiality of international re-
lationship and of relationship between our
own people and those of the nations with which
we come into business contact, suggests that
the future success of our manufacturers and
exporters rests largely in their own hands.

The Government can do certain things. It
can maintain, for instance, a great Depart-
ment, such as that of Commerce and Labor ; it
can record the movement of articles into and
out of the country, and the names of the coun-
tries from which the imports come and to
which the exports go ; it can show the growth
in exports of various articles, and the demand
in a given country for the same; it can send
its consuls and special representatives to the

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 211

ious nations of the world to learn what
rkets exist for our goods, and how these
st be made and packed and sold to meet
requirements of those markets ; but it can
bring to you that close personal relation-
p with people of these nations which is so
ential if you are to obtain the greatest
asure of success.

low have the great manufacturing and ex-
■ting nations of Europe obtained their suc-
s in the markets of the world? By send-
special representatives to solicit foreign
de, by establishing banking and other fa-
ties necessary therefor, and by cultivating
I maintaining friendly relations with such
ntries. And when I say special repre-
tatives, I mean men representing the man-
cturer, and so familiar with his own
ividual methods of production and com-
fce that they can present to him the details
the existing trade opportunities and the
cesses to which he must adapt his own ex-
ng methods in order to make his goods
ible in the communities in question. These
things which the Government can not do
you — ^things that you must do for your-
-^es.

212 THE AMEKICAN SPIRIT

The world's imports of manufactures now
aggregate, in round terms, five billion dollars
in value, and of that amount we are at present
contributing but seven hundred millions, or
about fourteen per cent., although we are the
world's greatest producer of all the important
articles used in manufacturing, such as cot-
ton, iron, copper, timber, and coal, the last of
which furnishes the power necessary to trans-
form the others into the finished products.

We also have the world's greatest system of
railways with which to assemble these raw
materials and carry them to the water's edge.
Whether our Government should aid in devel-
oping a great merchant marine for carrying
these products, already cheaply transported,
from the water's edge to the principal foreign
markets, or whether such aid should be con-
fined to those sections with which our trade
has shown little development and to which
foreign capital is offering us no direct system
of transportation, is a matter yet to be de-
termined.

But certain it is that whatever the Govern-
ment may do in aid of our foreign commerce,
or in collecting general information regarding
trade opportunities in foreign countries, the

INTEENATIONAL RELATIONS 213

1 opportunity of success in those markets
ts with our producers and exporters, who by
ding their personal representatives among
se people will not only obtain for them-
res the information necessary to that trade,
, at the same time, will aid in developing
t international sentiment and close rela-
iship which have proved so important a
tor in our commercial relations with the
ntries where our greatest success has been
lined.

XI

COMMEECE AND LABOR

XI
COMMERCE AND LABOE

AS we survej^ tlie history of modern times
we can not fail to distinguish, that what
the Germans call the Zeitgeist, or the aspira-
tions of nations, has changed from period to
period. First, the Reformation ; then the long
and bloody years of struggle for ecclesiastical
domination under political guise, or political
domination under ecclesiastical guise. Fol-
lowing this period, and to a large extent by
reason of it, arose the hunger for conquest led
by ambitious sovereigns, and often disguised
so that their most wicked schemes of spolia-
tion were clothed in the garb of sanctified
phrases of benevolent purposes. This period
again was followed by the spirit of conquest
pure and simple, under the domination of
might, led by the booted and spurred general.
During all these years commerce lacked both
opportunity and encouragement ; in fact, it was
looked upon as the trade and occupation of an
inferior and degraded element of the popula-

217

218 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

tion. Handicrafts, except when they were ap-
plied to forging instruments of war, had lost
their dignity, and Holland, which was rapidly
growing in power and wealth through the ex-
tension of her commerce over all the seas, was
contemptuously referred to by Louis XIV as
"a nation of shopkeepers," a term that, in no
spirit of compliment, was subsequently applied
to England and still later to us.

The spirit of commerce, which is as far re-
moved from "commercialism" as patriotism
is from the spoils system, is the most whole-
some stimulus that has yet pervaded the na-
tions, because it rests upon mutuality and upon
economic laws; it is constructive and not de-
structive, and it promotes the welfare and
happiness of nations, as well as international
peace and good will.

As the Secretary of Commerce and Labor
— the youngest but not the least important
Department of our Government — I deem it no
less a pleasure than a privilege to appear be-
fore the great captains of our industrial age
and country. I stand here before a group of
men who within comparatively a few years
have brought the industries of our country to
the front rant of the great manufacturing na-

COMMERCE AND LABOR 219

tions. Less than half a century ago our na-
tion ranked fourth in manufactures, while to-
day it stands at the head of the list. The in-
vestments of capital in these industries have
grown from a billion dollars in 1860 to about
fourteen billions in 1905. The wages and sal-
aries paid have risen in that period from little
more than one-third of a billion to more than
three billions, and the value of the manufac-
tures produced from less than two billions to
practically seventeen billions. A group of
men who have produced such splendid results
in less than half a century, and who are to-day
successfully managing a business representing
one-eighth of the entire wealth of the country,
giving employment to more than six million
persons, representing more than one-fourth
of the homes of the nation, needs no guidance
from the Department of Commerce and Labor,
but merely the assurance of its sympathetic
cooperation, coupled with the determination
to enforce the laws that guarantee to all inter-
ests and to all individuals their rights and
privileges, and to protect them from unjust
encroachment on the part of any other inter-
ests or individuals.
Our total exports in the fiscal year about to

220 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

end will aggregate nearly two billions of dol-
lars, and of that enormous sum more than
seven hundred millions, or about forty per
cent, of the total, will be composed of manu-
factures. In developing this great industry,
in which such rapid strides have been made in
comparatively a few years, we have enjoyed
peculiar advantages, in the plentiful supply of
materials furnished by nature, such as cotton,
iron, copper, wood, and coal, and in our re-
markable transportation facilities. But all
these would not have enabled us to develop
such marvelous results were it not for another
factor, equally important, namely, the brawn
and muscle of our laboring classes, which are
equipped with intelligent skill by reason of the
opportunities afforded to rich and poor alike
in this free and liberty-loving land. While we
had abundance of raw material, we have al-
ways been short in the supply of labor, and,
but for the fact that this need could be sup-
plied from beyond our borders, our industries
would to-day be in their infant stage.

We should not fail to recognize the enor-
mous advantages we have drawn from immi-
gration. Twenty-five million willing workers
have come to the United States to cooperate

COMMEECE AND LABOR 221

in our industries during tlie past century, and
more tlian half of the persons to-day engaged
in our manufacturing and mechanical indus-
tries are of alien birth or natives of alien par-
entage. The census of 1900 shows that more
than thirty per cent, of the persons so engaged
in that year were of foreign birth, and in ad-
dition twenty-five per cent, were natives of
foreign parentage — so large has been the draft
that we have made upon other nations in build-
ing up our great manufacturing industries.

Another consideration should not be lost
sight of. Not only have we attracted this
large and needful supply of labor, but with
them have come hundreds of new industries
from other countries, which their skill has
planted and their industry has developed. As
an example of many, let us take the silk in-
dustry, now ranking among the first in the
world, employing eighty thousand workmen,
paying twenty-seven million dollars annually
for wages, and bringing in each year sixty
million dollars' worth of raw materials from
Japan and elsewhere, and turning out annually
from its factories one hundred and thirty-
three million dollars' worth of finished prod-
ucts. The same may be said of the cotton-mill

222 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

industry, which, only a little more than a cen-
tury ago was established by the Englishman
Samuel Slater, and so was the first wool-card-
ing machinery by Arthur Scofield. The con-
fectionery industry, which now turns out
nearly one hundred million dollars' worth of
products from its factories annually, and pays
twelve million dollars a year for wages, was
largely, if not entirely, developed by men of
foreign birth; and so was the glass cutting
and staining industry, which turns out prod-
ucts amounting to more than thirteen millions
a year and pays four and a half millions a year
in wages to its employees. The same may be
said of many other of our industries, not a few
of which have been brought over in more re-
cent years by immigrants who come from
countries that are often characterized as the
undesirable. Our census shows that those
sections of our country which contain the
largest percentage of foreign birth are found
to contain also the largest percentage of man-
ufacturing industries.

An unprejudiced study of immigration justi-
fies me in saying that the evils are temporary
and local, while the benefits are permanent and
national. The flow of immigration to our

COMMERCE AND LABOR 223

shores is not alone, an index of our prosperity,
but also a significant element of tlie causes of
our prosperity. Had the anti-foreign or
"Know-Nothing" spirit prevailed half a cen-
tury ago, the energy and enterprises that have
produced our great manufacturing and com-
mercial development would have been driven
to other lands. The restrictions that have
been incorporated in our laws, due to the con-
servative judgment of the members of our last
Congress, are salutary and wise. So was the
law that raised the standard for acquisition of
the high privileges of American citizenship,
by demanding that no one shall be naturalized
who is unable to speak and understand our
language, or has not an elementary knowledge
of our Constitution and form of government.
This law and the immigration laws are in-
trusted for their administration to the De-
partment of Commerce and Labor; and you
may be assured they will be administered by
me and I hope they will always be administered
equitably and justly, in the true American
spirit, with good will to all and with malic©
toward none.

The Department of Commerce and Labor is
one of the largest of our great governmental

224 THE AMEEICAN SPIEIT

Departments. It touches the national life in
so many aspects that I can not here refer to
more than one or two spheres of its activity.
As its name implies, it has to do with com-
merce and with labor in their broadest accepta-
tion. It has under its jurisdiction, besides
immigration and naturalization, almost the en-
tire economic spheres of the Government —
with the exception of the tariff and monetary
affairs — such as the fisheries, steamboat-in-
spection and light-houses, labor in all its as-
pects, coasts, harbors and shipping, standards,
manufactures and corporations, statistics and
the census.

A word about the relations of the Depart-
ment to corporations. Due to the extraor-
dinary commercial development to which I
have just referred, and to the commercial
forces which in the past half century, in the
natural course of development, have brought
about a tremendous concentration of capital,
the old legal methods of individual and part-
nership management were wholly inadequate,
and it was necessary to employ that artificial
legal entity known as a corporation, in order
properly to handle this concentration of cap-
ital, which is so necessary to carry out the

COMMEECE AND LABOR 225

work of developing the physical resources of
our country. The growth of this industrial
development has been more rapid under the
pressure of the promoter and the financier
than the development and adjustment of the
laws that are necessary to guard the interests
of the individual investor as well as the rights
and interests of competing industries and of
the general public. By reason also of this rapid
development toward attaining industrial su-
premacy, the old personal responsibility that
obtained when business was managed by indi-
viduals or by partnerships, has been almost
wholly sacrificed. This loss of responsibility
is a very important factor, and doubtless ex-
plains many present evils. Perhaps no rem-
edy will be more effective, in its first and pri-
mary stages, to eliminate the evils that flow
from this lack of personal responsibility and
to restore the equivalent for it than to insure
publicity — ^not superficial publicity, but thor-
ough and drastic publicity, which can be had
only through governmental agency. This is
one of the main functions of the Bureau of
Corporations. The striking effects of pub-
licity may be best illustrated by the work of
this Bureau in a single instance. The simple

226 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

publication by the Bureau of Corporations,
after painstaking and laborious investigation,
of the great system of railway rebates that
were enjoyed, sometimes by favor, and some-
times by force, by the Standard Oil Company,
was followed at once by the voluntary cancel-
lation by the railroads, without the issue of a
single court process, of every secret discrimi-
natory rate set forth in the report of the Bu-
reau. The result of this probably has been
the most sweeping reform, and certainly the
most necessary, that ever has taken place in
railway management.

Regarding the combination of power, in
respect to which so much misinformation has
gone abroad throughout the land, let me say
a word. It is not the existence of this com-
bination of power, but the improper use of
such power, that should be regulated. Combi-
nation is not in itself an evil. The methods
by which a combination is arrived at, or by
which it is maintained or operated, if those
methods are inequitable or unfair, should not
only be exposed, but should be drastically
dealt with. A corporation desiring to per-
petuate its domination may use its combina-
tion power to give better service — that is a

COMMERCE AND LABOE 227

public good — but when tbat power is used to
prevent any one else from giving a like service
or tbe best service it can, then its combination
power is being used as an encroachment upon
the rights of others and against the public wel-
fare. It is not within the power or proper
sphere of government to equalize competitors,
but it is within the power and proper sphere
of government to equalize the opportunities of
competitors. It is the sphere of government
to keep open equally to all men the avenues of
commercial development, to maintain the op-
portunity for competition, and to prevent the
use of unfair means that diminish or destroy
such equal opportunity.

Most of the strife between capital and labor
would disappear if it were more fully recog-
nized that a high rate of wages, within eco-
nomic limitations, is a powerful lever to reach
a low cost of production, which practically
rules to-day in the industries of the United
States. I hope that another year you will
have with you at your annual festivities a rep-
resentation of the great labor groups who
rightly share with you the credit for our won-
derful industrial development; who have
shared and are entitled to share more and

228 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

more with you, according to the measure of
their deserts, the prosperity that has crowned
your and their joint labors. In no country in
the world are the standard of labor and the
standard of life among the wage-earning
classes higher, and I hope the country may
have your aid and cooperation in hastening
the day when the honest individual will be
permitted more and more to enjoy the fruits
of constant industry and the advantages of his
own labor, free alike from the tyranny of his
own class and of the inequitable exactions of
the employer class. The cheapest labor is
that labor which is most productive, "and the
more the forces of cultivated intelligence, con-
scientiousness, and hopefulness shall infuse
themselves into human industry, the more
abundant and valuable the results, the greater
the sum of human happiness, and the more
stable the political institutions of a country." '
No greater, more important, and vital ques-
tion has ever come forward for solution than
the relation between capital and labor. It is
to-day agitating the parliaments of all enlight-
ened nations, and is receiving the thoughtful

1 Thomas F. Bayard's introduction to "The Economy of
High Wages," by J. Schoenhof.

COMMERCE AND LABOR 229

attention of statesmen and legislators, who
recognized that the plane of solution lies high
above the narrow pathways of selfish interest.
No one has addressed himself to this great
and pressing subject with more philosophical
foresight and practical application, and with
a more fearless espousal of the right, than.
President Roosevelt. His messages to Con-
gress, his public speeches, and his advocacy
of the passage of laws, all evidence a wise,
consistent, and determined plan to safeguard
the rights of capital on the one side and to re-
dress the justified grievances of the masses
on the other, and to use the full power of the
Government, without fear and without favor,
to prevent injustice on the one side as well
as on the other. The work of the Department
of Commerce and Labor has been conditioned
upon this theory — a fair treatment alike for
labor and for capital.

XII

THE PEACE OF NATIONS AND PEACE
WITHIN NATIONS

xn

THE PEACE OF NATIONS AND PEACE
WITHIN NATIONS

NATIONS, like individuals, pass through
stages of development, and each stage of
that development is characterized by different
and often varying aspirations. Beginning
with modern times, with the Keformation, the
nations were held under the spell of ecclesias-
tical domination, which produced the so-called
religious wars that culminated with the Thirty
Tears' War and the Treaty of Westphalia.
This was followed by the hunger for power,
which rose to its height under the infuriated
heroism of the Napoleonic wars ; after this fol-
lowed the period of industrialism and trade-
expansion, at the height of which we now find
ourselves. This last period, which has wit-
nessed the development of great industrial
combinations, has also witnessed the develop-
ment of the powers of the wage-earners under
organized labor. This development, to which

233

234 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

the most advanced nations of the world owe
the wonderful growth of their material pros-
perity, brings with it many advantages, but
it also brings serious dangers, which, if not
regulated by humane considerations and by
the spirit of equity and justice, threaten the
most serious class conflicts.

Unrest and dissatisfaction at home breed an-
tagonisms abroad. A nation that is happy
and contented within its borders is never a
menace to neighboring nations. Its chief dan-
ger lies in not being able to protect itself
against the discontent of other nations, and
nothing contributes more to peace abroad than
peace at home. Often has a nation gone to
war, or been driven into it, by reason of in-
ternal discontent, compelling it, as it were, to
choose war without as the lesser evil, in order
to avert revolution within its borders.

On the 10th of December last the committee
elected by the Norwegian Storthing, under the
will of Alfred Bemhard Nobel, for the distri-
bution of the Peace Prize "to be awarded to
the person who shall have most or best pro-
moted the fraternity of nations and the abol-
ishment or diminution of standing armies and
the formation and increase of peace con-

THE PEACE OF NATIONS 235

gresses," selected as its recipient Theodore
Roosevelt, President of tlie United States ; and
the people throughout this country and from
one end of the world to the other applauded
the selection. They recognized that he first,
among presidents, kings, and emperors, opened
the doors of the Hague Tribunal; that he,
through his tactful initiative and mediation,
brought about peace between Japan and Rus-
sia; and that he was the first to summon the
second great peace congress, and in the inter-
est of international good will resigned the
high privilege to the Emperor of Russia. By
these separate acts he thrice deserved the
gratitude of the peace-loving world and thrice
justified the award of the Storthing.

Fully as important as peace among nations
is peace within nations. A people who are
subjected to unreasonable restrictions upon
"life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,"
and are compelled to live under such condi-
tions that they can not earn their daily bread,
become revolutionary. He who had inter-
vened and brought about an equitable adjust-
ment in the greatest industrial struggle of
modern times — the anthracite-coal strike — ■
dedicated the Nobel Peace Prize to the promo-

236 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

tion of industrial peace, and by an act of Con-
gress approved on the 2nd of March last this
Foundation for the Promotion of Industrial
Peace was made perpetual, with the purpose
of aiding the industrial forces to arrive at a
peaceful adjustment of their reciprocal rights
on a basis of humanity and justice. In The-
odore Roosevelt are united the historical fore-
sight of a Jefferson and the humane consider-
ation of a Lincoln for the welfare of the
masses. He is ever as watchful to protect the
poor man as well as the rich man in his rights
as he is to restrain them from committing
wrong.

The growth of commerce and industry which
marks our industrial age has contributed tre-
mendously to the community of nations. The
much decried commercial spirit is the surest
guaranty for peace. Before its development
the panoplied statesmen believed that the
weaker and poorer other countries were the
stronger and mightier would be their own ; but
the economics of commerce have shown that
the wealth and progress of other lands are a
direct source of wealth and progress of one's
own land.

The wealth and happiness of nations are

THE PEACE OF NATIONS 237

based upon factors that are international as
well as intranational ; in other words, they de-
pend not only upon domestic commerce, but
also and to an equal degree upon foreign com-
merce. As an illustration, we have only to
take into consideration the fact that within the
past fifty years the foreign commerce of the
United States has grown more than 400 per
cent.— from 783 millions in 1856 to 2,636 mil-
lions in 1905.

Quite as important as the limitation of arm-
aments is the raising of the standards of in-
ternational morality. Let the nations exact
the same standard from one another that they
exact from their own subjects, substituting in-
ternational morality for international expedi-
ency, and they will have, instead of the
arbitrament of war, the arbitrament of law.
The first step to this end is to improve and ex-
pand the laws of neutral obligations. Why
should a nation be permitted to go to war to
collect a debt at the mouth of cannon when
that same nation will not allow its own sub-
jects to collect debts from one another with
swords and pistols? The Drago Doctrine is
in the interest of international morality. The
casuistry of international pettifogism has

238 THE AMEEICAN SPIRIT

whittled down the principles of international
law. Neutral rights have been expanded in
the interest of greed, and neutral obligations
have been cramped and distorted, so that, as
the law stands now, neutral nations may not
sell ships of war and arms to belligerents, but
the subjects of neutral nations may do so.
Neutral nations may not grant loans and sub-
sidies to belligerents, but the banker subjects
of neutral nations may do so. The doctrine
recognized under all systems of law, facit per
alia facit per se, does not apply to interna-
tional relations, because international rela-
tions still carry the taint of unmoral prece-
dents and piratical plunder,

"The true end of every great and free
people should be self-respecting peace. . . .
Probably no other great nation of the world is
so anxious for peace as we are." These are
the sentiments of President Eoosevelt in his
message to the Fifty-seventh Congress. The
argument that war will kill war is about as
sane as would be the assertion that contagion
will cure disease. The best guarantee for
peace is peace; and behind the world's diplo-
macy stands ever open the door of the Hague
Tribunal, whose permanent mission — the

THE PEACE OF NATIONS 239

peaceful adjustment of international differ-
ences — can not fail to have an ever-increasing
voice in the chancelries of nations and in ele-
vating the international morality of the civil-
ized world.

XIII

EELIGIOUS LIBERTY IN THE
UNITED STATES

xni

RELIGIOUS LIBERTY IN THE
UNITED STATES

THIS is an historical occasion, a link in the
chain of development of our country's his-
tory; it takes us back within fifteen years of the
death of the founder of the colony, which was
the youngest, and in many respects the no-
blest in its foundation, of the thirteen Anaer-
ican colonies.

In this, the opening of the twentieth cen-
tury, we have come upon a new era which is
the heritor of all the past. The inalienable
rights of man, which were formulated in the
eighteenth century, and which were incorpo-
rated in fundamental laws and practically ap-
plied under legislative enactments, have
reached a further stage, the stage of inalien-
able duties. The duty that might owes to
right, the rich to the poor, the employer to
the employee, to afford equal opportunities to
all, freed frpm artificial barriers, from class

243

244 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

distinctions and from religious proscriptions.
No institutions liave contributed more toward
equalizing those opportunities and toward en-
dowing the sons and daughters of the wage-
earners equally with those of wage-payers,
than the institutions of education in our land.
They are the great levelers, in the sense of
making the pathway of success not a royal
road, but a democratic highway, where the re-
wards wait upon merit.

The three greatest, most visioned, and pic-
turesque founders of the colonies that became
the thirteen original States were, Roger Wil-
liams, the Pioneer of religious liberty, William
Penn, the Proprietor of peace and good-will,
and General James Edward Oglethorpe, the
benevolent Apostle of equal opportunity and
philanthropy, who founded Georgia to open
the gates of freedom to the unfortunate
debtor, which gates he kept wide open to re-
ceive the oppressed from every land, and held
firmly closed against every form of persecution
and slavery. To his colony came not alone
the unfortunate debtors who by thousands
were yearly confined to the pest-breeding
dungeons of Fleet prison, Newgate, and Old
Bailey, but also the poor persecuted Salzbur-

EELIGIOUS LIBERTY 245

gers, and some of the ill-fated Jews wlio had
escaped the fangs and fires of the Inquisition
m. Spain and Portugal. Oglethorpe placed a
most liberal construction upon his charter, be-
yond the tenor of its provisions and the in-
structions of the trustees. Having made per-
sonal sacrifices to establish and organize the
colony, he felt justified in following the dic-
tates of his benevolent purposes by removing
all restrictions; he extended a welcome to all
men irrespective of creed or race, and assigned
to them lands and secured them in the price-
less blessings of civil and religious liberty.

Georgia was not alone the colony of refuge,
but the rampart of Anglo-Saxon civilization
against French hostility on the one side, and
on the other against intolerant Spain, which
had desecrated this Continent by transplant-
ing here the horrors of the Inquisition, and
endeavored to propagate her power by arous-
ing the savagery of the peaceful Indians
against the new settlers. Dr. Johnson, in his
beautiful lines, doubtless refers to the dual
purposes in Georgia's foundation:

Has heaven reserved, in pity to the poor,
No pathless waste, or undiscovered shore,
No secret island in the boundless main,

246 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

No peaceful desert yet unclaimed by Spain?
Quick let us rise, the happy seat explore,
And bear oppression's insolence no more.

It is to be remarked that these three foun-
ders, who in their benevolence and liberality
had so many points of resemblance, were ex-
ceptional also in cultivating peaceful rela-
tions with the neighboring Indian tribes, and
in receiving aid and protection from them.
The fact is, the same spirit of justice and
benevolence which these founders engrafted
upon their original settlements were extended
to the Red Man, whose rights were respected,
and whose claims to human justice were rec-
ognized. In our dealings with this pictur-
esque people, how much more glorious are
our victories of peace than our victories of
slaughter, and what a flood of light they shed
upon the noble character and enlightened pur-
poses of these immortal founders of Rhode
Island, Pennsylvania, and Georgia.

In 1890 a bill was introduced in your legis-
lature to discontinue the annual State grant to
the University, based upon the theory, as
stated by the mover of that bill, "that there
was no longer any use for the University ; that
there were plenty of denominational colleges

EELIGIOUS LIBERTY 247

in Georgia to educate all our young men, and
they should be allowed to do that work. ' ' The
discussion that followed this proposal gave
rise to a controversy, which brought up the
subject of the Development of religious liberty
in the United States, and the position of the
University was most ably, learnedly, and suc-
cessfully sustained by N. J. Hammond, then
the chairman of your Board of Trustees.
Taking as my theme the one suggested by this
discussion, I shall endeavor to trace in outline
the development of religious liberty in the
United States.

Colonization in all ages was due either to
conquest, to commerce, or to causes of con-
science. The vast extension of the Greek and
Eoman empires under Alexander and Caasar
arose out of the first of these causes. The
great power of the Venetian republic in the
thirteenth century was owing to its commer-
cial spirit. The early colonization of North
America is chiefly to be attributed to causes
of conscience. Persecution has ever been an
active colonizer, and has usually supplied an
element well adapted for the purpose of build-
ing up a cultured and enlightened community.
In every age it was not the worst, but, accord-

248 THE AMERICAN SPIEIT

ing to the real measure of worth, rather the
best among a people, who, true to their con-
sciences, sacrificed their temporal advantages
upon the altar of their faith.

The cradle of religious liberty has been
rocked by the worst passions of mankind.
Until comparatively recent times, every sect
was intolerant from conviction, and held it as
a sacred duty to banish or burn the unrepent-
ant heretics. Even heretics, when they be-
came dominant, were not less intolerant to-
ward their former orthodox persecutors. Do
unto others as others have done unto you, was
the rule of persecutors; or, as David Harum
says, "do unto the other feller the way he 'd
like to do unto you — and do it fust." The
stigma of heresy, whatever it may signify
ecclesiastically, was historically the penalty
for dissent exacted by the State religion from
conscientious sectaries. "I never knew the
time in England," said Milton, "when men of
truest religion were not counted sectaries."
The statesmen who framed our Constitution
were too well read in the history of other gov-
ernments, and had before them too clearly the
sufferings of the people in their colonial state,
not to anticipate and dread the abuse of au-

RELIGIOUS LIBERTY 249

thority resulting from the greed of power and
the selfishness of sects, therefore they wisely
guarded against this contingency by express
enactment that "No religious test shall ever
be required as a qualification to any office or
public trust under the United States."

When the Constitution was submitted for
ratification to the several States, considerable
uneasiness was manifested at the failure of
Pinckney's resolution in the Federal Con-
vention that "The Legislature of the United
States shall pass no law on the subject of re-
ligion;" and upon ratifying the instrument,
the New Hampshire, New York, and Virginia
conventions urged the adoption of an amend-
ment to that effect.

The conventions of the several States that
were held in 1777 and in 1778 reflected the
conflicting sentiments then entertained on the
question of religious tests. The exclusion of
such tests as a qualification for public office
was opposed in those States which required
such tests, under the fear that without them
the Federal Government "might pass into the
hands of Roman Catholics, Jews, or infidels."
It was alleged that, as the Constitution stood,
the Pope of Rome might become President of

250 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

the United States, and a pamphlet setting
forth that objection was circulated. In the
North Carolina Constitutional Convention,
James Iredell, who was the leader of the Fed-
eralists, and was afterward by President
Washington appointed a Justice of the Su-
preme Court, referring to the subject, said:
"I met by accident with a pamphlet this morn-
ing, in which the author states there is a very
serious danger that the Pope might be elected
President. I confess this never struck me be-
fore, and if the author had read all the qualifi-
cations of a President, perhaps his fear might
have been quieted. No man but a native, or
who has resided fourteen years in America,
can be chosen President. I know not all the
qualifications for Pope, but I believe he must
be taken from the College of Cardinals, and
probably there are many previous steps neces-
sary before he arrives at this dignity. A na-
tive American must have very singular good
fortune who, after residing fourteen years in
his own country, should come to Europe, en-
ter Romish orders, obtain the promotion of
cardinal, afterward that of Pope, and at
length be so much in the confidence of his coun-
try as to be elected President. It would be

EELiaiOUS LIBERTY 251

still more extraordinary if hie should give up
Ms popedom for our presidency."

On the other hand, while several States
adopted the Constitution, the majority in their
respective conventions had the apprehension
that this clause of the Constitution did not go
far enough, and therefore they proposed
amendments guaranteeing religious freedom
and other fundamental rights. The strongest
opposition to the abolition of religious tests
was in Massachusetts, where the Congrega-
tional was the established church; while the
greatest apprehension that the exclusion of re-
ligious tests, as contained in the Constitution,
was insufficient, and that a more explicit guar-
antee against the establishment of religion was
demanded, was in Virginia and Rhode Island.
The first Congress of the United States under
the Constitution met in the City of New
York on April 6th, 1789. In the session of
June 8th, the House of Representatives, on
motion of James Madison of Virginia, took
into consideration the various amendments to
the Federal Constitution that were suggested
and desired by several of the States. Madi-
son moved the appointment of a select
committee to report preliminary amendments,

252 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

and supported tlie motion by a forcible speech,
urging as a reason chiefly the duty of Con-
gress to remove all apprehensions of an inten-
tion to deprive the people "of the liberty for
which they valiantly fought and honorably
bled." Congress accordingly sent twelve
amendments to the Legislatures of the several
States for ratification, and ten of these were
duly ratified. The first is the clause, "Con-
gress shall make no law respecting an estab-
lishment of religion or prohibiting the free ex-
ercise thereof."

Brief as these two provisions of our Consti-
tution are, they proclaim religious liberty in
its broadest acceptation as the fundamental
right of every one in America, be he citizen or
alien. By incorporating these provisions in
their Constitution, the American people were
the first to set the world the example of en-
tirely separating the institution which has for
its object the support of religion from its po-
litical government.

Before the Revolution the dominant sects in
the various colonies were distributed as fol-
lows : The Puritans in Massachusetts, the Bap-
tists in Rhode Island, the Congregationalists
in Connecticut; the Dutch and Swedish Prot-

EELiaiOUS LIBEETT 253

estants in New Jersey; the Anglicans in New
York; the Quakers in Pennsylvania; the
Catholics in Baltimore; the Cavaliers in Vir-
ginia; the Baptists, Methodists, Qn'akers, and
Presbyterians in North Carolina; the Hugue-
nots and Episcopalians in South Carolina, and
the Methodists in Georgia. With the excep-
tion of Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Rhode
Island, some form of religious establishment
had existed in all the colonies.

Let us tarry a moment in Ehode Island, the
land where the banner of religious liberty was
first unfurled. In the mid-winter of 1636 a
solitary pilgrim might have been seen wander-
ing through the primeval forests of New Eng-
land, an exile from the territory of the Massa-
chusetts Puritans, seeking a place of refuge
from ecclesiastical tyranny, where he and all
men might worship God according to the dic-
tates of their consciences. At that time there
was no such land in the whole civilized world.
The colonists of Virginia were strict conform-
ists to the rites of the Church of England.
There was less freedom there than in England.
The settled portions of New England were
domineered over by the Puritans and Pilgrim
fathers, who left their English homes to es-

254 THE AMEKICAN SPIEIT

cape ecclesiastical tyranny, only to set up a
tyranny of their own. This pilgrim, the first
true type of an American freeman, the trusted
and trustworthy friend of the savage Indian,
the benefactor of all mankind, was Eoger Wil-
liams, who accomplished what no one before
this ever had the courage and wisdom, com-
bined with a conviction of the broadest liberty,
even to attempt — to found a purely secular
State " as a shelter for the poor and the perse-
cuted according to their several persuasions."

The time, let us hope, is not far off, when all
civilized people, even in the remotest comers
of the world, will recognize the truth and
power of the principles that throw around the
name of Roger Williams a halo of imperish-
able glory.

It is not surprising that the Eoman Catho-
lics, who in Protestant England were pro-
scribed as a class, should eagerly direct their
eyes to the new world for a place of refuge.
Lord Baltimore had become a devout convert
to Eomanism. By reason of his high official
position and his being in the good graces of
James I, he succeeded in obtaining a charter
for Maryland which embodied a very broad
conception of toleration. There was no limi-

EELIGIOUS LIBERTY 265

tation of the freedom of conscience, save only
tliat Christianity was made the law of the
land. This was a great step in the direction
of full liberty in matters of religion, and a cen-
tury in advance of his time, or of the New
England colonies and Virginia. The same
reasons that impelled the Pilgrims, the Puri-
tans, and the Catholics to look to the Western
continent as a harbor of refuge from ecclesias-
tical tyranny, operated with increased force
upon the Quakers, who were exposed to al-
most universal persecution, hatred and con^
tempt, not only by the prelatical party, but
also by the dissenters. The laws agreed upon
in England far their government in Pennsyl-
vania provided for equal tolerance of all sects
and creeds that recognized a deity, whereby
both Jew and Gentile were to be protected in
belief and in form of worship. These laws
went a step farther than those of Maryland
in their approach to religious liberty, yet not
so far as those of Rhode Island, for rational-
ists and atheists were discriminated against.
The colonists, however, shortly after the arri-
val of William Penn, took a backward step,
showing that Penn's followers were not as lib-
eral as he, for by the enactments known as the

256 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

"Great Law of Chester," agreed upon in 1682,
religious toleration was curtailed by provid-
ing that all the officers of the colony should
be only such as professed belief in the Chris-
tian religion.

The perpetual strife that had existed in
England between the prelatical party and the
Puritans was not of such a nature as to engen-
der toleration. The contention was chiefly
about ceremonies, and when the Puritans suc-
ceeded to power, great as their sufferings had
been, they did not rise to the height of a prin-
ciple, but were content to rest on the plane of
their persecutors. The Puritans who sought
New England were not actuated altogether by
humane or liberal motives. They sought lib-
erty of worship for themselves and for them-
selves only; they appropriated the lands of
the Indians, and then slaughtered them when
they were driven to rebellion; dissenting
Christians whom they could not convert or
convince they exiled; in their eyes, toleration
was heresy and civil liberty a crime.

The Virginia colonists, on the other hand,
were neither exiles nor refugees. They did
not come to the shores of Virginia to organize
liberty or to Christianize the heathens, but to

EELIGIOUS LIBERTY 257

dig gold and cultivate tobacco. A story is told
of an official, to whom a Virginia delegation
had commended a measure for the good of
the souls, replying: "Damn your souls, grow
tobacco." Their first charter is evidence that
they were nothing more or less than a mercan-
tile corporation of the South Sea bubble phase,
of which the King was the head, and over
which he reserved absolute legislative author-
ity with the hope of an ultimate revenue.
"Eeligion was established according to the
doctrine and the rites of the Church of Eng-
land within the realm, and no emigrant might
avow dissent, or affect the superstitions of the
Church of Eome, or withdraw his allegiance
from King James."

It is plainly evident that neither the Angli-
cans of Virginia nor the Puritans of New Eng-
land — both of whom had modeled their civil
polity to conserve State-churchism — ^were
likely to advance the cause of religious liberty,
if left to themselves, as they hoped to be ; on
the contrary, their aims and efforts, as evinced
by their laws and regulations, were directed to
achieve the opposite result. The rise of that
religious liberty which was destined to illume
the Western World, must be searched for else-

258 THE AMEEICAN SPIRIT

where, and whatever credit rightly belongs to
these two sects is due to their violent efforts
to repress, rather than to establish liberty in
matters of conscience. Here, as in all commn-
nities, liberty came creeping in with the dis-
senting minorities.

Passing over the intermediate evidences of
intolerance embodied in the early laws and
regulations of the various colonies, let us ex-
amine, for a moment, the constitutions of sev-
eral of the Colonies in respect to religion, just
prior to the framing of our national Constitu-
tion, which afford a striking illustration of the
intolerance of the various sects that were then
dominant. Congregationalism still continued
to be the established religion in Massachusetts,
in New Hampshire, and in Connecticut. The
church of England had the civil support in all
the Southern colonies, and partially in New
York and New Jersey. In Massachusetts the
Legislature expressly authorized and im-
pliedly required compulsory attendance at
church and the civil support of the ministers.
Heavy penalties were prescribed against all
who might question the Divine inspiration of
any book of the New or Old Testament, and
the old laws against blasphemy were revived.

RELIGIOUS LIBERTY 259

Similar laws remained in force in Connecticut,
and were re-enacted in New Hampshire. By
the second constitution of South Carolina,
Protestantism was declared to be the estab-
lished religion of the State. The constitution
of Maryland contained authority to levy a gen-
eral and equal tax for the support of the
Christian religion. In several of the States
religious tests for public office were still re-
tained. In New Hampshire, New Jersey,
North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia,
the chief officers of the State were required to
be Protestants. In Massachusetts and in
Maryland all office-holders were required to
declare their belief in the Christian religion.
In South Carolina they must believe in a fu-
ture state of rewards and punishments. In
North Carolina and Pennsylvania they were
required to acknowledge the inspiration of the
New and the Old Testament, and in Delaware
to believe in the Trinity.

The agitation for the overthrow of the estab-
lished church and for complete separation of
Church and State was first begun and success-
fully effected in Virginia, a State where we
should least have expected it, where the
Church was most closely allied with the civil

260 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

powers, where it was most firmly seated and
had more privileges than elsewhere, and
where its restrictions upon dissenters were
most exacting. By the several acts of the Vir-
ginia Assembly, it was made penal for parents
to refuse to have their children baptized.
They had prohibited as unlawful the assem-
bling of Quakers, and such as were within the
colony were subject to imprisonment until they
should abjure the country, and on their third
return they were liable to the penalty of
death.

Under the guiding spirit of Thomas Jeffer-
son, the first Assembly of Virginia repealed
all such obnoxious laws as were still on the
statute-books. He continued his onslaught
upon the established church for more than
nine years, assisted by Patrick Henry and
James Madison and the leaders of the more
liberal sects, until the problem of religious
liberty was solved in all its completeness.
"These nine years of Virginia's debates,"
says the biographer of Jefferson, "have per-
ished, but something of their heat and strenu-
ous vigor survives in his 'Notes on Virginia,'
written toward the end of the Revolutionary
War, and circulated a year before the final tri-

EELIGIOUS LIBERTY 261

umph. of religious freedom." These vigorous
utterances were the arsenal from which the
advocates of religious liberty drew their
weapons for fifty years until the last remain-
ing union between Church and State was sev-
ered. "Opinion," said Mr. Jefferson, "is
something with which the government has
nothing to do. It does me no injury for my
neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no
god. It is error alone which needs the sup-
port of government ; truth can stand by itself.
Millions of innocent men, women, and children
since the introduction of Christianity have
been burnt, tortured, fined, and imprisoned,
yet we have not once advanced an inch toward
uniformity. What has been the effect? To
make one-half the world fools, and the other
half hypocrites. ' '

That the passage of the act for the estab-
lishment of religious liberty, together with the
arguments contained in the "Notes on Vir-
ginia," had a far-reaching effect and great
weight in the Federal Convention which as-
sembled in May, 1787, in the City of Phila-
delphia, for the purpose of framing a constitu-
tion, can hardly be doubted, especially when we
take into consideration the fact that Virginia

262 THE AMEEICAN SPIRIT

was tfie banner State, represented in the con-
vention by Madison and Mason, both, of whom
had been collaborators with Jefferson.

It is a cause of congratulation that our coun-
try has given the world at large and the gov-
ernments of Europe proof of the fact, by
actual trial, that neither Church nor State is
benefited by being united; on the contrary,
they both flourish best in the atmosphere of
freedom.^

If we were to single out the men who, from
the beginning of our colonial state until the
present time, have aiost eminently contributed
to fostering and securing religious freedom,

^ Jeflferson to James Madison.

Paris, December 16, 1786.

"The Virginia act for religious freedom has been received
with infinite approbation in Europe, and propagated with
enthusiasm, I do not mean by the governments, but by the
individuals who compose them. It has been translated into
French and Italian, has been sent to most of the courts of
Europe, and has been the best evidence of the falsehood
of those reports which stated us to be in anarchy. It is
inserted in the new Encyclopedia, and is appearing in most
of the publications respecting America. In fact, it is com-
fortable to see the standard of reason at length erected,
after so many ages, during which the human mind has been
held in vassalage by kings, priests and nobles; and it is
honorable for us to have produced the first legislature who
had the courage to declare that the reason of man may be
trusted with the formation of our own opinions."

Jefferson's Works, Vol. 2, p. 67, 1853, Washington, D. C.

EELIGIOUS LIBERTY 263

who have made this country of ours the haven
of refuge from ecclesiastical tyranny and per-
secution, who have set an example more puis-
sant than army or navy for freeing the con-
science of men from civil interference, and
have leavened the mass of intolerance wher-
ever the name of America is known, I should
mention first the Baptist, Eoger Williams,
who maintained the principle that the civil
powers have no right to meddle in matters of
conscience, and who founded a State with that
principle as its comer-stone. I should men-
tion second the Catholic, Lord Baltimore, pro-
prietor of Maryland, to whom belongs the
credit of having established liberty in matters
of worship which was second only to Ehode
Island. I should name third, the Quaker,
Penn, whose golden motto was, "We must
yield the liberties we demand." Fourth on
the list is Thomas Jefferson, the "arch infi-
del," as he has been termed by some religious
writers, who overthrew the established church
in his own State, and then, with prophetic
statesmanship, made it impossible for any
church to establish itself under our national
Constitution, or in any way to abridge the
rights of conscience.

264 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

There are many other bright names in our
history, such as Henry, Mason, Madison, and
Franklin, who contributed to the same good
end, besides the champions who led to victory
in the various States, among whom were many
devout and learned ministers of the several
denominations.

"Religious liberty," in the language of Mr.
Thomas F. Bayard, when Secretary of State,
"is the chief corner-stone of the American
system of government, and provisions for its
security are imbedded in the written charter
and interwoven in the moral fabric of our
laws. Anything that tends to invade a right
so essential and sacred must be carefully
guarded against, and I am satisfied that my
countrymen, ever mindful of the sufferings
and sacrifices necessary to obtain it, will never
consent to its impairment for any reason or
under any pretext whatever."

On November 4th, 1796, during the Presiden-
cy of Washington, a treaty was concluded with
Tripoli, which was ratified by the Senate, un-
der the Presidency of John Adams, on June
7th, 1797, wherein it is provided: "As the gov-
ernment of the United States is not in any
sense founded on the Christian religion; as it

EELIGIOUS LIBEETY 265

has itself no character of enmity against the
laws, religion or tranquillity of Mussulmans
. .' . it is declared by the parties that no pre-
text arising from religious opinions shall ever
produce an interruption of harmony existing
between the two countries." "This dis-
claimer by Washington," says Eev. Dr. Sam-
uel T. Spear, an able writer on Constitu-
tional law, "in negotiating, and by the Senate
in confirming, the treaty with Tripoli, was not
designed to disparage the Christian religion,
or indicate any hostility thereto, but to set
forth the fact, so apparent in the Constitution
itself, that the government of the United
States was not founded upon that religion,
and hence did not embody or assert any of its
doctrines. The language of this article in the
treaty was used for a purpose, and that pur-
pose was in exact correspondence with the fact
as contained in the Constitution itself. Chris-
tianity, though the prevalent religion of the
people when the Constitution was adopted, is
unknown to it."

This subject has been in some form or other
before the courts in several States, and no-
where more directly at issue and more learn-
edly considered than in the case of Minor

266 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

against the Board of Education of the City of
Cincinnati. The School Board was repre-
sented by George Hoadley, late Governor of
Ohio, Stanley Matthews, afterward Associate
Justice of the United States Supreme Court,
and Judge Stallo, who in a most scholarly
presentation of the entire question, addressing
himself to the claim by the plaintiffs that
Christianity was a part of the law of the State,
concluded in these words :

Christianity was part of the law of Massachu-
setts two hundred and thirty years ago when Boger
"Williams was cited before the General Court for
preaching the doctrine of liberty of conscience, and
was sent into the wilderness in midwinter for that
offense, when Quakers were banished and Quaker-
esses hanged ; it was a part of the law of the State
of New York, where the penalty of death was
threatened to be inflicted on Catholic priests for
bringing the sacrament to the dying faithful ; it was
part of the common law of Virginia, where dis-
senters were required to build the churches of the
Anglicans; but it is not to-day a part of the com-
mon law of Ohio, or, indeed, of any State in the
Union that I know of.

Mr. Lecky, in his "Rationalism in Europe,"
says: "In one age the persecutor burnt the
heretic; in another he crushed him with penal

EELIGIOUS LIBERTY 267

laws; in a third h.e withheld from him places
of emolument; in a fourth, he subjected him
to the ex-communication of society. Each
stage of advancing toleration marks a stage
of the decline of the spirit of dogmatism and
of the increase of the spirit of truth."

That there are vestiges and distinct traces
of this infection even at this day in our own
country, I hardly need point out. The people
in this country, through severe trials and con-
flicts, have successfully expelled from their
civil polity all distinctions of creed and caste,
in consonance with the great declaration of
the men of 76, that all men are created equal.
And they did this in the face of the govern-
ments and the customs of the civilized world,
at a time when under all forms of polity the
relations which men bore to one another rested
upon distinctions of birth and privileges estab-
lished by law, at a time when democracy, such
as they organized, based upon manhood suf-
frage, was looked upon as the dream of the
theorist, suitable only to the wild Indian dwell-
ing in pristine barbarism. On these broad
and humane principles, and by reason thereof,
the American people have built up a nation
and achieved a prosperity which outstrips the

268 THE AMEKICAN SPIRIT

prophecies of most enthusiastic admirers.
They have done this in the face of ancient
and hereditary prejudices that were as old
and as firmly set as the pyramids. It is espe-
cially fitting, more than that, it is the duty of
every American man and woman to free their
own minds from ancient hatred and hereditary
prejudices, and to instil in the minds of their
children the humane principles that underlie
our civil State. Let them bear in mind that
just so sacred as religion is, so is every one's
right to choose the one by which his hopes and
his aspirations shall be guided ; and that every
distinction and proscription based upon the de-
nial of this sacred right is as much in conflict
with true religion as with true democracy.

Hon. J. L. M. Curry, in his valuable essay,
"Establishment and Disestablishment," very
correctly "says: "In the United States, it can-
not be too frequently or strongly reaffirmed,
churches or denominations or sects are on a
plane of undistinguishable equality before the
law. The government cannot interfere with
their doctrines, discipline, worship, or the ap-
pointment or support of the clergy. It is
sheer impertinence, insolent assumption, to
talk of any American citizens as dissenters or

EELIGIOUS LIBERTY 269

non-conformists, or for any denomination to
arrogate to itself the name of the 'Church of
the United States'; or for any ecclesiastical
functionary to sign himself 'the Bishop of
Pennsylvania' or of any other State."

"We can say now," says Charles W. Eliot,
the scholarly President of Harvard Uni-
versity, in his work entitled, "American Con-
tributions to Civilization," "as we look back
on the history of Europe, how fortunate it was
that the colonization of North America by
Europeans was deferred until after the period
of the Reformation, and especially until after
the Elizabethan period in England, the Luther
period in Germany, and the splendid struggle
of the Dutch for liberty in Holland. The
founders of New England and New York were
men who had imbibed the principles of resist-
ance both to arbitrary civil power and to uni-
versal ecclesiastical authority. Li the United
States, religious toleration is better imder-
stood and more firmly established than in
any other nation. It is not only embodied
in legislation, but also completely recognized
in the habits and customs of good society.
Elsewhere it may be a long road from legal to
gocial recognition of religious liberty, as the

270 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

example of England shows. This recognition
alone would mean, to any competent student
of history, that the United States had made
an unexampled contribution to the reconcilia-
tion of just governmental power with just free-
dom for the individual, inasmuch as the par-
tial establishment of religious toleration has
been the main work of civilization during the
past four centuries. In view of this charac-
teristic and infinitely beneficent contribution
to human happiness and progress, how pitiable
seem the temporary outbursts of bigotry and
fanaticism which have occasionally marred the
fair record of our country in regard to re-
ligious toleration!"

The spirit that guided the work of the foun-
ders of our government was not one that was
crushed and screwed into sectarian molds by
the decrees of intolerant councils, and by the
subtleties of ingenious priests; it recognizes
the value of every creed, but rises above them
all. The grand and noble purpose was to
establish justice, promote the general welfare,
and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves
and our posterity. This is the lesson of the
development of civil as well as religious liberty
in the United States.

XIV

THE FIEST SETTLEMENT OF THE
JEWS IN THE UNITED STATES

xrv

THE FIRST SETTLEMENT OF THE
JEWS IN THE UNITED STATES

' ¥71 EW greater calamities," says Lecky,
JL "can befall a nation than to cut herself
off, as France did in her great revolution, from
all vital connection with her own past." Here
in this historic hall, dedicated by that great
commoner, James Otis, as "The Cradle of
Liberty, " were held those town meetings throb-
bing with the nascent principles of democracy.
Herein also, where a decade later Samuel
Adams and Joseph Warren first organized re-
sistance to arbitrary government, it is most
fitting and proper to celebrate an historical
event, insignificant in itself, yet whose threads
dyed in the blood of martyrs for soul-liberty,
find a fitting place in the composite fabric of
our continent's history and in the development
of our civil and religious liberties. The his-
torian of the persecution of the Jews, Dr. Kay-
serling, says: "Where the history of the Jews

273

274 THE AMEEICAN SPIRIT

in Spain ends, their history in America be-
gins ; the Inquisition is the last chapter of the
confessors of Judaism on the Pyrenan Penin-
sula and their first chapter on the continent of
the "Western hemisphere " The expulsion of
the Jews from Spain and Portugal, and the
discovery of America, are linked together not
only as contemporaneous events, but also in
some important contributory relations. Emi-
lio Castelar, in his "History of Columbus,"
says that as soon as Luis Santangel, the comp-
troller-general of Aragon, "one of those an-
tique Jews wTio have so greatly helped to en-
lighten the Christian world," heard of the dis-
missal of Columbus, he prevailed upon the
Queen to order his return, and when she com-
plained of the emptiness of the Castilian
treasury, Santangel assured her majesty of
the flourishing state of the Aragonese finances
— doubtless, says the historian, because of the
revenues derived from the confiscation of the
property of the expelled Jews. From the
archives of Simancas, which are still pre-
served at Seville, it is clear that Santangel,
whom the historian has named the Beacons-
field of his time, and whose uncle of the same
name, and other kinsmen, died at the stake in

FIEST SETTLEMENT OF JEWS 275

Saragossa, not only was instrumental in con-
nection with Juan Cabrera, also of Jewish lin-
eage, in successfully interposing in behalf of
Columbus, but it is proven beyond question
that out of his personal belongings he ad-
vanced the money that made the voyage of dis-
covery possible. Furthermore, the first and
second letters of Columbus narrating the facts
of his great discoveries were addressed to
Santangel and his brother-in-law, also a Mar-
rano, or secret Jew, Gabriel Sanches.

In order to obtain the crews to man the
caravels of Columbus, it was necessary to
throw open the doors of the prisons of Palos
and other seaports. Within their dungeon
walls were found many members of the
hunted and expelled race, and it is not sur-
prising that to such men the dangers of the
unknown seas would be an attractive escape
from their pitiable condition. It is known
that the interpreter, the surgeon, and the
physician of the fleet, besides several sailors
who were with Columbus on his first voyage,
were Jews. Castelar says: "It chanced that
one of the last vessels transporting into exile
the Jews expelled from Spain by religious in-
tolerance of which the recently created and

276 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

odious tribunal of the faith, was the embodi-
ment, passed by the little fleet bound in search
of another world, whose new bom creation
should afford a haven to the quickening
principle of human liberty and be a temple
reared to the God of enfranchised and re-
deemed conscience. . . . The accursed spirit
of reaction was wreaking one of its stupen-
dous and futile crimes in that very hour when
the genius of liberty was searching the waves
for the land that must needs arise to offer an
unstained abode for the ideals of progress."

Among the earliest and certainly the most
enlightened colonists who came to this conti-
nent, to South America, and to the islands in
the Atlantic, were many Jews who left Spain
and Portugal in order to escape the rack and
the stake of the merciless bloodhounds of the
Holy Office. The number of the children and
grandchildren of those Jews who had been
burnt and condemned by the Inquisition, and
who settled on the American continent shortly
after the discovery, was so large that in 1511
Queen Johanna considered it necessary to
take measures against them.

In 1620, when the Dutch West India Com-
pany was formed, Jews became influential

FIRST SETTLEMENT OP JEWS 277

stockholders, and subsequently were directors
therein; and in 1654, when the Dutch colony
of Brazil came under Portuguese control,
many thousand Jews had again to seek a new
place of refuge. In September of that year
twenty-three of these fugitives arrived at
New Amsterdam. They did not receive a
hearty welcome by the not over-amiable Dutch
Governor, Peter Stuyvesant, whose concep-
tion of our future metropolis wag to make it
a comfortable little Dutch village with a mo-
nopoly of fur trade with the Indians. When,
six months later, the Governor endeavored to
expel the newcomer he was reprimanded by
the directors of the Company in Holland, and
instructed that the right of the Jews to live
unmolested within the colony was unreserv-
edly granted, because to prohibit them "would
be unreasonable and unfair, especially be-
cause of the considerable loss they had sus-
tained in the capture of Brazil, and because
of the large amount of capital they had in-
vested in the shares of the company."

This is the beginning of the first Jewish set-
tlement within the limits of the United States,
the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of
which we are commemorating to-night. The

278 THE AMERICAN SPIEIT

same year, 1655, through the persistent efforts
of Menasseh Ben Israel, through the kindly
favor of the tolerant Oliver Cromwell, the
Jews regained admission into Great Britain,
from which country they had been expelled in
1290 under Edward I. Here it should be noted
that one of the foremost advocates for the re-
admission of the Jews into Great Britain was
Koger Williams, that immortal pioneer of soul-
liberty, the first true type of an American
freeman, who was then in London to obtain a
new charter, uniting the several Rhode Island
towns, and to secure and safeguard those ines-
timable blessings to which he consecrated his
life, under which "all men may walk as their
conscience persuades them, every one in the
name of his God."

Three and a half decades before the Santa
Catarina brought to our shores the little
band of hunted and despoiled fugitives from
Brazil, another little bark had plowed its
way in midwinter through the stormy ocean,
wafted by the airs of heaven to yon bleak
coast. There she landed her little crew of
refugees — men, women, and children — on Ply-
mouth Rock, that stepping-stone 'to the temple
of our liberties, whose capstone, bathed in the

FIRST SETTLEMENT OF JEWS 279

blood of their descendants, was placed two
hundred and forty years later by the hands of
the immortal liberator, Abraham Lincoln.
They were purists without priests or priestly
orders, separated from the national church,
but at one with their God, and drawing their
inspiration directly from the Bible, not from
the catechism of Archbishop Laud, but from
the open Bible of Moses and Luther. They
were in all a hundred souls, whom two hundred
years of struggle for freedom had prepared
for this voyage. They studied the Old Testa-
ment in order the better to understand the
New. From the former they drew their civil
polity; from the latter their church discipline
and ceremonials. Moses was their law-giver,
the Pentateuch their code, and Israel under the
Judges their ideal of popular government.
The path of the crusaders to recover the holy
sepulchre was dyed with the blood of the
hunted professors of Judaism ; and from a ha-
tred organized by the church against "the peo-
ple of the Book," the Book itself fell into dis-
esteem — a feeling that was carried over with
many of the Eoman rites into the early Prot-
estant church. With the rise of the Puritans,
and their struggle for independence and free-

280 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

dom from ecclesiastical tyranny, came a re-
vival of tlie study of the Old Testament, of
Hebrew and of Hebraic learning. With the
American Puritans especially, the Mosaic code
and the Hebrew commonwealth were living
realities, so intense was their interest, so ear-
nest was their religious life. No architect
drew his plans with more fidelity of purpose
to reconstruct a building after an ancient
model, than did the Puritans study this Bibli-
cal code and the Hebraic form of government
which they endeavored to apply literally to
their New Canaan. Elsewhere I have dwelt in
detail upon the Hebraic mortar that cemented
the foundations of our American democracy,
and told how through the windows of the
Puritan churches the new West looked back to
the old East.

It was only a few years after their first set-
tlement in New York when several of the fugi-
tives and others who had arrived from over
sea settled in Newport, where they were hos-
pitably received in consonance with the spirit
of the colony's founder, Roger Williams. With
these early Puritans, austere in manner and
with a church polity exacting and narrow, call-
ing no man master, and with a deep sense of

FIRST SETTLEMENT OF JEWS 281

equality before God, it was but a step to equal-
ity among one another, and tlius they built up
their civil state upon a purely religious, demo-
cratic foundation. As Lecky says: "It is at
least an historical fact, that in the great ma-
jority of instances the early Protestant de-
fenders of civil liberty derived their political
principles chiefly from the Old Testament, and
the defenders of despotism from the New."

The American Jews, as loyal and faithful
citizens, have shared willingly in all the trials
our country has passed through, from the days
of the Revolution until the present time, and
she has found none more ready than they to
make every sacrifice that true patriotism de-
manded. During the Revolution there were
only a few hundred Jews within the limits of
the United States, yet in the Continental army
— not to speak of the ranks — there were two
colonels. Colonel Baum of Pennsylvania, and
the other Colonel Pranks, who was closely as-
sociated with Washington, and was the bearer
of the treaty of peace to England. Thomas
Wentworth Higginson relates that in 1788 in
Philadelphia, in honor of the adoption of the
Constitution, a rabbi and two Christian minis-
ters marched side by side, "really," are his

282 THE AMEEICAN SPIEIT

words, "constituting the first parliament of
religions in tHs country." In our Civil War
more than seven thousand names of Jewish
patriots have been identified, and in our lesser
war with Spain two thousand and seven hun-
dred participated, and several regiments were
formed, but their services were not required.

The criticism is often made that the Jews
are clannish, and do not amalgamate with the
rest of the population. This is only partly
true. Clannish they are, not from choice, but
from self-respect. They have amalgamated as
far as the delicacy of social relations has justi-
fied, and there are not a few of the very best
families in this and in other cities who have
evidences of that amalgamation in their veins.
John Howard Payne, who gave us that song
which never fails to thrill a patriot's heart,
"Home, Sweet Home," was the son of a Jew-
ish mother. No people, ancient or modem,
have made so great sacrifices for spiritual
ideas and ideals as the Jews ; the longest trail
of martyrdom in all history is crimsoned with
their blood. jGreorge Eliot, quoting the histor-
ian Zunz, says in "Daniel Deronda": "If
there are ranks in suffering, Israel takes prece-
dence of all the nations ; if the duration of sor-

FIRST SETTLEMENT OF JEWS 283

rows, and the patience with which they are
borne, ennoble, the Jews are among the aris-
tocracy of every land ; if a literature is called
rich in the possession of a few classic tragedies,
what shall we say to a national tragedy lasting
for fifteen hundred years, in which the poets
and the actors were also the heroes?"

It is sad and a cause for regret that we must
direct attention to the mournful pictures op-
pression has engraved in blood upon the pages
of history ; but alas ! every day brings to our
doors the haggard and hunted faces of fugi-
tives from oppression. The Armenians, among
the earliest professors of Christianity, once a
proud and noble race, whose numbers have
been decimated time and again by organized
massacres, daily reach our shores, and give
thanks to God that they are sheltered beneath
the Stars and Stripes, far beyond the reach
of their Russian and Ottoman oppressors.
Only yesterday we read with throbbing hearts
of the massacre of thousands of helpless
men, women and children in Odessa, Kief,
Kishinef, and a hundred other cities, towns
and hamlets throughout Russia. So long
as these terrible outbreaks of religious fa-
naticism and class hatred disgrace our age

284 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

and our civilization, let us not forget the ever-
lasting meaning of the imprint the feet of the
Pilgrims made upon our continent, that it shall
ever be a "shelter for the poor and the perse-
cuted." To bar out these refugees from po-
litical oppression or religious intolerance, who
bring a love of liberty hallowed by sacrifices
made upon the altar of an enlightened con-
science, though their pockets be empty, is a
grievous wrong, and in violation of the spirit
of our origin and development as a free peo-
ple; for they too, have God's right to tread
upon American soil, which the Pilgrims have
sanctified as the home of the refugee.

Ay, call it holy ground,

The soil where first they trod ;
They have left unstained what there they found —

Freedom to worship God.

XV

AMERICA AND THE SPIRIT OF AMERI-
CAN JUDAISM

XV

AMERICA AND THE SPIRIT OF AMERI-
CAN JUDAISM

THE spirit of American Judaism first as-
serted itself wlieii Stuyvesant, the Grover-
nor of New Amsterdam, would not permit the
few Jews who had emigrated from Portugal to
unite with the other burghers in standing
guard for the protection of their homes.
When the tax-collector came to Asser Levy to
demand a tax on this account, he asked
whether that tax was imposed on all the resi-
dents of New Amsterdam. "No," was the re-
ply, "it is only imposed upon the Jews, he-
cause they do not stand guard ! " "I have not
asked to be exempted," replied Asser Levy.
"I am not only willing, but I demand the right
to stand guard." That right the Jews have
asserted and exercised as officers in the ranks
of the Continental army and in every crisis of
our national history from that time until the

present day.

287

288 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

The American spirit and the spirit of Amer-
ican Judaism were nurtured in the same cradle
of liberty, and were united in origin, in ideals,
and in historical development. The closing
chapter of the chronicles of the Jews on the
Iberian peninsula forms the opening chapter of
their history on this Continent. It was Luis
Santangel, "the Beaconsfield of his time," as-
sisted by his kinsman Gabriel Sanches, the
Royal Treasurer of Aragon, who advanced out
of his own purse seventeen thousand florins
which made the voyages of Columbus possible.
Luis de Torres, the interpreter as well as the
surgeon and the physician of the little fleet,
and several of the sailors who were with Col-
umbus on his first voyage, as shown by the
record, were Jews.

Looking back through this vista of more
than four centuries, we have reason to remem-
ber with justified gratitude the foresight and
signal services of those Spanish Jews who had
the wisdom to divine the far-reaching possi-
bilities of the plans of the great navigator,
whom the King and the Queen, the Dukes and
Grandees united in regarding as merely "a
visionary babbler" or, worse than this, as "a
scheming adventurer." The royal patrons

AMERICAN JUDAISM 289

were finally won over by the hope that Colum-
bus might discover new treasures of gold and
precious stones to enrich the Spanish crown.
But not so with the Jewish patrons, who
caused Columbus, or, as he was then called,
Christopher Colon, to be recalled, and who,
without security and without interest, ad-
vanced the money to fit out his caravels, since
they saw, as by a divine inspiration, the prom-
ise and possibility of the discovery of another
world, which, in the words of the late Emilio
Castelar — the historian, statesman, and one
time President of Spain — "would afford to the
quickening principles of human liberty a tem-
ple reared to the God of enfranchised and re-
deemed conscience, a land that would offer an
unstained abode to the ideals of progress."
Fortunately, the records of these transactions
are still preserved in the archives of Simancas
in Seville.

It is idle to speculate upon hypothetical the-
ories in the face of the facts of history. Of
course, America would have been discovered
and colonized had Columbus never lived, but
had the streams of the beginnings of American
history flown from other sources in other di-
rections, it would be futile even to make an im-

290 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

aginative forecast of the effect they would
have produced upon the history and develop-
ment of this Continent. The merciless intol-
erance of an ecclesiastical system and the hor-
ror of its persecutions stimulated the earliest
immigration, and subsequently brought about
the Reformation in Saxon and Anglo-Saxon
lands, and the same spirit drove to our shores
the Pilgrim and the Puritan fathers; which
chain of circumstances destined this country
from the very beginning to be the land of the
immigrant and a home for the fugitive and the
persecuted.

The difference between government by kings
and nobles and government under a Democ-
racy is, that the former rests upon the power
to compel obedience, while the latter rests es-
sentially upon the sacrifice by the individual
for the community, based upon the ideals of
right and justice. If the Pilgrims, the Puri-
tans, and the Huguenots brought with them, as
they certainly did, the remembrance of suffer-
ings for ideals and the spirit of sacrifice, how
much longer was that remembrance, and with
how much greater intensity did that spirit
glow in the souls of the Jews, whose whole his-
tory is a record of martyrdom, of suffering.

AMERICAN JUDAISM 291

and of sacrifice for the ideals of civil and re-
ligious liberty; concerning whom it has been
said: "Of all the races and nations of man-
kind which quarter the arms of Liberty on the
shields of their honor, none has a better title to
that decoration than the Jews."

The spirit of Judaism became the mother
spirit of Puritanism in Old England; and the
history of Israel and its democratic model un-
der the Judges inspired and guided the Pil-
grims and Puritans in their wandering hither
and in laying the foundation of their common-
wealths in New England. The piety and
learning of the Jews bridged the chasm of the
middle ages; and the torch they bore amidst
trials and sufferings lighted the pathway from
the ancient to the modern world.

"The historical power of the prophets of
Israel," says James Darmesteter, "is ex-
hausted neither by Judaism nor by Christian-
ity, and they hold a reserve force for the bene-
fit of the coming century. The twentieth
century is better prepared than the nineteen
preceding it to understand them." While
Zionism is a pious hope and a vision out of
despair in countries where the victims of op-
pression are still counted by millions, the re-

292 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

publicanism of the United States is the nearest
approach to the ideals of the prophets of Is-
rael that ever has been incorporated in the
form of a State. The founders of our govern-
ment converted the dreams of philosophers
into a political system — a government by the
people, for the people, whereunder the rights
of man became the rights of men, secured and
guaranteed by a written constitution. Ours is
peculiarly a promised land wherein the spirit
of the teachings of the ancient prophets in-
spired the work of the fathers of our country.

American liberty demands of no man the
abandonment of his conscientious convictions ;
on the contrary, it had its birth, not in the nar-
rowness of uniformity, but in the breadth of
diversity, which patriotism fuses together into
a conscious harmony for the highest welfare of
all. The Protestant, the Catholic, and the
Jew, each and all need the support and the sus-
taining power of their religion to develop their
moral natures and to keep alive the spirit of
self-sacrifice which American patriotism de-
mands of every man, whatever may be his
creed or race, who is worthy to enjoy the bless-
ings of American citizenship.

I do not wish to be misunderstood as claim-

AMERICAN JUDAISM 293

ing any special merit for the Jews as Ameri-
ican citizens which is not equally possessed by
the Americans of other creeds. They have the
good as well as the bad among them, the noble
and the ignoble, the worthy and the unworthy.
They have the qualities as well as the defects
of their fellow-citizens. In a word, they are
not any less patriotic Americans because they
are Jews, nor any less loyal Jews because they
are primarily patriotic Americans.

The Jew is neither a newcomer nor an
alien in this country or on this continent;
his Americanism is as original and ancient as
that of any race or people with the exception of
the. American Indian and other aborigines. He
came in the caravels of Columbus, and he
knocked at the gates of New Amsterdam only
thirty-five years after the Pilgrim Fathers
stepped ashore on Plymouth Eock.

XVI

A COLLEGE COMMENCEMENT IN TUR-
KEY

XVI

A COLLEGE COMMENCEMENT IN TUR-
KEY

TWENTY-THEEE years ago, when I first
represented the United States at this cap-
ital [Constantinople], it was my privilege to
preside at the commencement of Robert Col-
lege. Since that time this College has con-
tinued to grow both in the number of its stu-
dents and of its faculty; and year by year it
has sent forth increasing classes of young men
who have enjoyed the benefits of its educa-
tional facilities. This College was originally
founded by the munificence of an American
merchant, whose aim was to bring to the young
men of the Orient the advantages of our Amer-
ican system of higher education, so as to fit
them to promote the welfare and the best in-
terests of this Empire. The purpose that the
founders of this institution had in view —
Christopher Robert, the munificent, and Cyrus
Hamlin, its first President and the organizer

297

298 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

of its plan and scope — was purely benevolent.
It was not to advance America in Turkey, but
to bring to Turkey some of the elements that
have made the United States the equal of any
nation on the globe. That country has no po-
litical objects or aims, and never will have, in
this Empire. She seeks for her citizens equal
rights, the same that she accords to such citi-
zens and subjects of other countries as make
their homes in our country. Nowhere in the
world was the new regime of Turkey more sin-
cerely welcomed than in the United States.

This College was not founded, nor has it
been sustained, by any subvention from the
American Government, but, like our universi-
ties at home, it has been supported from first
to last by the munificence of private individu-
als; and only last year, John S. Kennedy, of
New York, a Scotchman by origin and an
American in spirit and munificence, who for
many years was President of the Board of
Trustees, left a part of his large fortune for
its development. One of the first extensions
to be made, will be the establishment and
equipment of an engineering and electrical de-
partment, where the young men of the Balkan
States and of this Empire may have the op-

COMMENCEMENT IN TURKEY 299

portunity of fitting themselves to advance the
economic interests of this and the neighboring
countries, to develop their resources, and to
equip this Empire with those mighty forces
which, under a liberal government, will bring
happiness and wealth to its people.

Young gentlemen, both graduates and un-
der-graduates, I wish you to bear in mind that
the opportunities for education are of no
consequence unless you have the energy, the
industry, and the will to take advantage of
them. There is a limit to what others can do
for you. Andrew Carnegie, who by thrift, in-
dustry and ability, amassed one of the greatest
fortunes of the world, and whose practical
benevolent work has probably been greater
than that of any single man in all history, said
that in trying to help others, all that we can
do is to place the ladder against the wall; the
climbing has to be done by the individual him-
self, no one can mount the ladder for him.

This day marks your commencement. Here-
tofore your professors and tutors have shown
you what to do and how to do it; from this
time you take your places in the greater world,
and you will have to rely upon yourselves and
do for yourselves. The task is not easy, and

300 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

often the rewards are long deferred. There is
no royal road to knowledge or to genuine suc-
cess. Kings fail, while the patient struggling
toiler often achieves a fame that outshines the
glory of kings. The more difficult the path,
the greater the struggle, and often the richer
are the rewards.

Knowledge and success are democratic.
Favoritism, the smile of kings, and the privi-
leges of family may bestow title and position,
but they cannot bestow knowledge or the suc-
cess that is based on knowledge. These must
be won by individual effort ; these are rewards
that cannot be confined to birth, rank, or sta-
tion, but belong exclusively to the toilers, that
privileged class whose ranks are open to all,
and where success awaits him who is able to
achieve it — that class from whose loins have
sprung ninety-nine out of every hundred of
the men whose names are recorded on the
world's roll of fame, from Homer to Shake-
speare, from Mohammed to Luther, and from
Pericles to Washington.

The path to success is not a royal road
through which you can drive two abreast, nor
can you climb it on a donkey's back. Some
try it that way ; but it does not take the world

COMMENCEMENT IN TUEKEY 301

long to discover that two donkeys are travel-
ing the same path. You must especially have
a care not to handicap yourselves with any
obstructions or incumbrances, but to expend
your energies wisely, for along that path no
hostages can be given to fortune. You must
economize your money and your time; and if
you have no money, by all means economize
your time by filling it with useful occupations,
for frivolous fatigues and self-indulgence are
the sirens that wreck countless thousands on
the barren rocks.

Learn, young gentlemen, to depend upon
yourselves, and avoid falling into the habit of
blaming others for your own defects and your
own defeats. The unsuccessful always cast
the blame upon the wrong person. The man
who holds himself responsible has discovered
the right person to rely upon, the one who can
be depended upon, in season and out of sea-
son, in sunshine and in storm, to do his best.
The man who learns how to help himself best
can always command willing hands to help
h;m do better. Those who fail to learn this
are those who fill the world's poorhouses.
Success is not won by the choice of the profes-
sion or calling you adopt — these are mere in-

302 THE AMERICAN SPIEIT

cidents — but by the amount of energy, indus-
try, and ability you devote to your careers.
The late famous railway king of America be-
gan life as a caiquejee ^ on the Hudson Eiver.
The greatest President of the United States
since Washington began life as a day laborer
on a farm, earning a heshlik ^ a day. A son
of toil, from the poorest of the poor, beset with
countless obstacles, with no family or friends
to help him, his own father shiftless, his asso-
ciates shiftless, grown almost to manhood be-
fore he had acquired the rudiments of a
common-school education, yet with a hopeful
and sunny temperament, with a tireless energy
and an iron purpose, he strode onward and
upward until he reached the highest pinnacle,
from which he struck the shackles from 4,000,-
000 slaves, and, with a firm hand and a pure
heart, guided the American people through the
most trying times in the history of the coun-
try. Such was Abraham Lincoln.

The opportunities that here have been given
to you to enjoy, in a country where those op-
portunities as yet are limited, devolve upon
you exceptional responsibilities to serve your

1 Turkish for boatman.

* A Turkish coin worth about 20 cents.

COMMENCEMENT IN TUEKEY 303

country and to advance her best interests.
Education, learning, the mental weapons to
enable one to achieve success, can be used for
evil as well as for good; therefore, unless
education is based upon character, upon truth,
honesty and justice, the possessor of those
qualities becomes the ally of wrong and dark-
ness instead of right and light. I am sure that
this principle has been instilled in you by
every member of the faculty, and by the spirit
of this institution ; and unless you hold fast to
that spirit, all that you have learned will be
like "pearls thrown before swine." I trust
you will not leave here with the idea that book-
learning alone is education. I have known the
most ignorant men, from all useful and prac-
tical points of view, who have had college
education; and many most useful and in-
formed men who have Deen deprived of edu-
cational opportunities. I cannot illustrate
this better than by the following incident. A
story is told that in the middle of last cen-
tury the first Vanderbilt visited London at
the time when Lord Palmerston was Premier.
Our Minister to the Court of Saint James was
George M. Dallas. At that time the American
clipper ship was the best built vessel that trav-

304 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

ersed the ocean ; and Vanderbilt was the larg-
est owner of those great sailing-ships. Lord
Palmerston asked our Minister for many de-
tails regarding the clipper ships, which were
the admiration of all nations, and our Minister
replied that he was not informed in regard to
the details, but suggested that Mr. Vanderbilt,
who was then in London, could give the infor-
mation. A few days afterward Lord Palmer-
ston summoned Vanderbilt, and put to him a
great many questions regarding the construc-
tion of the ships, to which Vanderbilt was able
to give accurate and definite answers. Van-
derbilt was what is called a self-educated man.
He was a poor boy, and began early in life to
earn his living. He grew in knowledge and in
experience with his business, and he spoke
English with no grammatical accuracy. Lord
Palmerston, after this interview with Vander-
bilt, met Dallas, and expressed his great grati-
fication for the information so readily given to
him, and then he added: "It is a pity that Van-
derbilt, who possesses so great a mind, seems
to be so poorly educated." Dallas repeated
to Vanderbilt the gratification that Lord Palm-
erston had expressed, and in frankness added
the remark about education that his Lordship

COMMENCEMENT IN TURKEY 305

had made. Vanderbilt replied: "You tell
Lord Palmerston that if I had learned educa-
tion I would not have learned anything else."
In other words, there is, in some important
respects, a difference between knowledge and
book-learning; and there may be much book-
learniag with very little knowledge. No man
can ever amount to much, no matter how much
learning he may have absorbed, unless he has
a well-regulated ambition to perform the du-
ties that are before him. I would compare a
man with much learning and without ambition
to a furnace filled with coal, but which has no
adequate flue to give the fire a living draft.

In April, 1909, the people, under the leader-
ship of great and wise men, accomplished, as
by a stroke, one of the greatest reforms that
ever have been witnessed in the history of na-
tions. The most crushing form of absolutism
was overthrown, and a modern government,
under a constitution and a parliament of the
people, with responsible ministers, and under
a kind and patriotic sovereign, was consti-
tuted. Individual liberty was made secure,
the depressing and corrupt spy system was
abolished, all men were permitted to breathe
freely, and the national life of Turkey began

306 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

anew. All this happened only a year ago ; and
a year is but a day in the history of nations.
There are many who find fault with the Gov-
ernment, and complain that so little material
progress has been made. It is true that the
economic welfare of the people has as yet been
very little advanced ; but that is quite natural.
It behooves all to have patience and support
the hands of the Government ; in other words,
this is the time for patriotism, and not for
fault-finding. What this country needs, and
what every country must have if based upon
a parliamentary system, is enlightened public
opinion; and there is no higher duty incum-
bent upon educated men, there is no more
urgent call for patriotism, than to educate
public opinion; to point out the advantages of
the new system, to preach patience and tolera-
tion among the different creeds and races, to
unify the people and to teach them to select
the best men to represent them in Parliament.
In the words of Scripture: "Love mercy, do
justly, and walk humbly with thy God. ' ' How
beautiful are the words of the poet, which in
this land of many creeds and races have a spe-
cial application :

COMMENCEMENT IN TURKEY 307

Shall I ask the brave soldier who fights by my
side

In the cause of mankind, if our creeds agree?
Shall I cast off the friend I have valued and tried,

If he kneels not before the same altar with me ?

XVII

EOOSEVELT: HIS CATHOLICITY AND
STATESMANSHIP

XVII

EOOSEVELT: HIS CATHOLICITY AND

STATESMANSHIP

'fTlHIS government was formed with, as
A its basic idea, the principle of treating
each man on his worth as a man, of paying no
heed as to whether he was rich or poor, no
heed to his creed or his social standing, but
only to the way in which he performed his duty
to himself, to his neighbor, to the State."
This quotation from one of Mr. Eoosevelt's
addresses expresses, better than any words of
mine, the catholic spirit which has ever actu-
ated him in public as well as in private life.
Most men have either race, religious, or na-
tional prejudices. Some are able to overcome
them. Eoosevelt seemed to me never to have
had any occasion to overcome such prejudices,
as they never found lodgment either in his
heart or his mind. . His attitude toward the
subject of immigration has ever been just,
broad and humane, recognizing fully and gen-

311

312 THE AMEBICAN SPIRIT

erously the contributions the newcomers have
made and are making to our national life.

He is fond of dwelling upon our composite
citizenship and the benefits that our country,
from the earliest times, has derived from the
newcomers. At the Saengerfest in 1903, in
Baltimore, in commending the German immi-
gration, he said:

Throughout our career of development the Ger-
man immigration to this country went steadily-
onward, and they who came here played an ever-
increasing part in the history of our people — a part
that culminated in the Civil War : for every lover of
the Union must ever hear in mind what was done in
this commonwealth, as in the commonwealth of Mis-
souri, by the folk of German birth or origin who
served so loyally the flag that was theirs by m-
heritance or adoption.

In his address at the unveiling of the statue
of Frederick the Great he paid a beautiful
tribute to the men of German origin and par-
entage who contributed so largely to our na-
tional development, both in war and in peace,
from the beginning of our history. Among
others he singled out John Peter Muhlenberg,
a general in the Revolutionary War, and after-
ward a member of the first House of Repre-

ROOSEVELT 313

sentatives; Nicholas Herkimer, the command-
ing general who won for us one of the decisive
battles of the war and saved the Valley of the
Mohawk to the American cause ; and the mag-
nificent services rendered by the gallant Baron
Steuben.

He rebuked again and again that form
of sectionalism and narrow-mindedness that
would make an invidious distinction among
our people according to the country from
which they or their ancestors came. Ee-
f erring to this spirit of separateness, he said :

Here on this Continent, where it is absolutely
essential that the different peoples coming to our
shores should not remain separate, but should fuse
into one, our unceasing effort is to strive to keep
and profit by the good that each race brings to our
shores, and at the same time do away with all racial
and religious animosities among the various stocks.

In an address at the White House, ia wel-
coming the Grerman veterans of our Civil War,
he declared that, of the many strains that
make up our common stock, none has given us
better Americans than those of German birth
and blood ; that the reverence a man preserves
for his native land or the land of his fathers,
instead of militating against his loving and

314 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

doing Ms full duty by the land of Ms adoption,
should help him to be a better and more patri-
otic citizen, "If a man is a good son, he is
apt to make a good husband; and the quality
that makes a man reverence the country of his
birth, is apt to be the quality that makes him
a good citizen in the land of Ms adoption."
Referring to the relationship between Ger-
many and the United States, he said that the
ties that unite them are many and close, and
"it must be a prime object of our statesman-
ship to knit the two nations ever closer to-
gether. In no country is there a warmer ad-
miration for Germany and for Germany's
exalted ruler, Emperor William, than here in
America."

To portray adequately the catholicity of
Roosevelt would necessitate the writing of Ms
public life. I have only selected a few pas-
sages at random from several of his addresses.
The spirit of sectarianism was never more
emphatically rebuked than by him after the
last national election, in replying to letters
addressed to him during the campaign, by
some writers, who urged against Mr. Taf t that
he was a Unitarian, and by others, that mem-
bers of Ms family were suspected of being

ROOSEVELT 315

members of the Catholic Church. This letter
of President Eoosevelt's deserves to be treas-
ured side by side with the most hallowed doc-
uments of our history. To quote only a single
clause, he said:

In my cabinet at the present time there sit, side
by side, Catholic and Protestant, Christian and Jew,
each man chosen because, in my belief, he is pecul-
iarly fit to exercise, on behalf of all our people, the
duties of the office to which I have appointed him.
In no case does this man's religious belief in any
way influence his discharge of his duties, save as it
makes him more eager to act justly and uprightly
in his relations to all men.

We are as yet too near to the Eoosevelt
administration, to its objects, tendencies and
achievements, to estimate properly its perma-
nent impress and effect upon the country and
the life of our people.

Following the French Eevolution, and gen-
erally throughout Europe after the uprising of
the people in 1848, the growth of the capitalist
class began. That growth developed the mod-
em commercial spirit which produced results
the most beneficent of any era in modern times.
The commercial spirit was democratic; it
rooted out old class prejudices, and tore down

316 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

the political barriers that enchained the
masses. It dignified labor, and elevated the
laborer from serfdom to a free agent, with
rights as distinguished from restricted benevo-
lent privileges such as the master concedes to
his servants. In the wake of this change, and
largely by reason of it, came those marvelous
mechanical inventions in every sphere of in-
dustry which multiplied a hundred-fold the
productiveness of human effort. The power
of the capitalists, which grew with increased
production, rested upon the growing intelli-
gence of labor, and with this intelligence was
developed organization, and then came de-
mands on the part of the wage-earners for
shorter hours, better wages, and higher stand-
ards of life and living; in other words, a striv-
ing for better conditions, for "social justice"
— ^in the graphic language of President Roose-
velt, a demand for a "square deal." This
square deal signifies equal justice to all, guard-
ing the rights of capital and at the same time
checking the greed of the capitalist, preventing
the encroachment of corporate power upon
governmental functions, and opening wide the
highways of opportunity for the individual
American, protecting him in his economic

ROOSEVELT 317

rights, and redressing Ms "justified griev-
ances" in the light of the modern standards of
life and his requirements as a free agent in a
free community.

Our country in its development has passed
through two distinct political stages. First,
its national construction period under the
fathers. After that the civil rights, or pre-
servative period, and now we are in the third
stage, the period of "social justice." By the
providence of God, and the wisdom of our peo-
ple, each of these periods developed and
hrought to the presidential chair the philoso-
pher and statesman equipped with the quali-
ties of heart and mind to lead the country
through storm and stress, amid calumny and
abuse, to a higher and broader plane of right-
eous democracy. Washington and Lincoln,
the leaders of the first two periods, have
passed into history. The third period is in
process of development, its leader is still in the
prime of life, and the ship is sailing by the
soundings and the chart this great pilot has
made.

The struggle for "social justice" is making
itself felt in Great Britain, Germany, and
France, in all enlightened lands. It can not be

318 THE AMEKICAN SPIRIT

ignored, nor can it be suppressed; but with
humane foresight and statesmanly wisdom it
can be guided. The disturbing strivings of
one age, when wisely directed, become often
the constructive and preservative forces of the
ages that follow. The problems of this strug-
gle are not purely economical. The old laws
of the economists of the eighteenth century, of
supply and demand, when applied to modern
life and living, to wages and labor, disre-
garded the human side and worked social in-
justice, which our new and enlarged industrial
system intensifies and magnifies. To preserve
the benefits and to correct the evils of this
modern industrial development, to prevent it
from crushing under its iron wheels the oppor-
tunities and prospects of the plain people, that
is the problem of "social justice."

The measures formulated into law, and rec-
ommended and advocated with such power and
force by President Roosevelt in his message to
Congress, and in his public addresses during
the seven years of his administration, were de-
voted to this great problem. Every measure
and policy of the Roosevelt administration was
based not alone upon moral convictions, but
upon a statesmanlike forethought and forecast

EOOSEVELT 319

for the future of the country. That he en-
countered the violent opposition of the power-
ful corporations whose expanded vested inter-
ests not only eliminated competition but
contracted individual rights, was to be ex-
pected and foreseen. All reforms and reform-
ers have encountered the reactionaries of priv-
ilege and power, who persuaded themselves
that their vested interests, however acquired
and however administered, were vested rights.
These reactionaries, when not checked and
made obedient to the legitimate demands and
needs of the many, have produced a strong
revolutionary movement at the other end of the
social system. None of our Presidents has pos-
sessed, in an equal degree, a mind so enriched
with an historian's knowledge of the past,
combined with a statesman's foresight of the
future, as Eoosevelt. His measures have all
been conceived under the guidance and inspi-
ration of this dual equipment of retrospective
knowledge of national growth and prospective
insight into national tendencies. With that
confidence and deep sympathy for the plain
people of our country, upon whose judgment
and sense of justice all our great Presidents,
in times of transition and stress, placed their

320 THE AMERICAN SPIEIT

ultimate reliance, Eoosevelt has vitalized and
appealed to the public conscience of the nation
and "has given an impulse to ways of think-
ing about life and policies that will ultimately
bear fruit in a broader democracy, and in-
creased recognition of human rights, and the
establishment of a wider justice on a firmer
basis of morality and civilization." ^

Though born an aristocrat, as that term is
used among us, by his life and rugged experi-
ence among the pioneers of our Western
plains, and because of his open-mindedness,
his wide human sympathies, Theodore Eoose-
velt, if we may judge from the record of his
wonderful career, which is but half run, has
made an impress upon the life of the nation
that marks him as the foremost champion of
social justice. Differ with him as you may as
to details, and criticize the power and tremen-
dous energy with which he drove forward his
uplifting measures, all must recognize the
effectiveness of his high purpose in directing
the material forces of our economic age, so as
to broaden and better the opportunities of life
and living for the average American — ^man,
woman, and child.

1 Sydney Brooks in the Fortnightly Review, April, 1909.

XVIII
BAEON MAUEICE DE HIESCH

XVIII
BAEON MAUEICE DE HIESCH

WHEN the news was flashed across the
ocean that Baron de Hirsch was dead,
it caused a pang of sorrow over the four quar-
ters of the earth. Men stopped, with hushed
breath and heavy hearts, and silently paid
homage to him whose benefactions circled the
globe from the pyramids to the Golden Gate.
Baron de Hirsch cannot be measured by ordi-
nary standards; his activity was both varied
and colossal, whether as financier, organizer,
railroad constructor, diplomat, statesman, man
of the world, or philanthropist. But as the
rivulets run into rivers, and the rivers flow
into the ocean, so did all these qualities culmi-
nate in equipping him with the resources,
power, and capacity of becoming the leader of
a gigantic exodus of his fellow religionists.
He had a wonderful capacity for making
money, but more wonderful still was his
heaven-given impulse to do the most good with

323

324 THE AMEEICAN SPIEIT

it. His gigantic enterprises in constructing
those arteries of civilization, the railroads,
through benighted lands, through Russia,
Eoumania, and Turkey, brought him into close
relations not only with the Czar and the Sul-
tan, with ministers and diplomats, but also
with the humblest hewers-of-wood and draw-
ers-of -water, the men who plied the shovel and
wielded the pickaxe in making the road-bed
for his iron horses.

A few details of family history, and a brief
reference to his numerous benefactions, may
precede a fuller consideration of Baron de
Hirsch's philanthropic aims and methods.
He was born on December 9th, 1831. His
grandfather, Jacob Hirsch, born in Bavaria in
1764, founded the financial eminence of the
family, was appointed royal Bavarian court
banker, and was raised to the rank of the no-
bility. He was a man of generous nature and
great public spirit, and in him the noble bias
for philanthropy which distinguished his son
and grandson was notably shown in many
charitable works. His second son, Joseph,
succeeded the father as court banker, and by
his ability and enterprise greatly increased
the financial and commercial importance of the

BAEON MAUEICE DE HIESCH 325

family. King Louis n raised Mm to the
hereditary baronage in recognition of "his
fidelity to the throne and in acknowledgment
of his many useful works." His eldest son,
Baron Maurice de Hirsch, the subject of this
sketch, after a plain but sound education and
some time spent in his father's counting-house,
engaged in business on his own account. In
1855, having married a daughter of Senator
Bisehoffsheim, of Brussels, he became a mem-
ber of the banking house of Bisehoffsheim and
Goldschmidt. He soon became the master
mind of the bank, and from this time his finan-
cial, commercial, and railroad enterprises were
a record of unbroken successes scarcely paral-
leled. But in the midst of these successes his
generous heart and alert mind kept in close
touch with plans, broadly conceived and skil-
fully realized, for uplifting his fellowmen.

He was probably most generally known and
esteemed in England, although he prized his
connection with Austria-Hungary, of which he
was a domiciled subject and where he had his
chief place of residence. His benefactions in
England were for the general good, including
splendid gifts to hospitals and other chari-
table institutions. Vienna, Buda-Pesth, Cra-

326 THE AMERICAN SPIEIT

cow, Lemberg, and other cities also benefited
by tbe Baron's generosity. The Alliance
Israelite Universelle, an association founded
for the education of Jews in the East, has also
derived practical support from the Baron's
munificence. On learning that the funds of '
the Alliance had proved insufficient for the
maintenance of its schools, he presented a
large sum to supply deficits, continued his aid
for several years, and in 1889 consolidated his
donations and replaced them by a fund whose
annual income of $80,000 is used in the mainte-
nance of elementary and apprenticing schools.

It was in behalf of plans for Jewish emigra-
tion and colonization, however, that his most
earnest efforts were enlisted. He endowed a
trust fund for the benefit of Eussian Jews who
had settled in the United States, and also es-
tablished a colony of Eussian Jews in the Ca-
nadian Northwest. His chief concern, as is
well-known, was for the betterment of his op-
pressed co-religionists in Eussia.

With the accession of the late Czar came a
policy of reaction, devised with the finesse of
the nineteenth century, but outstripping in its
diabolical purposes the barbarity of the Mid-
dle Ages. The inspirer of this ungodly cm-

BAEON MAUEICE DE HIESCH 327

sade against five millions of peaceful, unof-
fending, and loyal subjects, is the Chief Pro-
curator of the Holy Synod of the Eussian
Orthodox Church. When asked how those in-
famous "May laws," which embody his policy,
would rid Eussia of five million Jews, he is
reputed to have answered, "One third will be
driven into exile, one third will be forced to
conversion, and one third will die of hunger."
This was in 1881 and 1882, and the enforce-
ment of those laws has been accompanied by
pillage, burning, and death. Baron de Hirsch
was then fifty years of age, engrossed in his
many affairs. To the surprise of every one
he stopped, in mid-career, . marshaled his re-
sources, and turned his. active brain and tire-
less energy to the problem of reclaiming his
suffering co-religionists from humiliation
worse than slavery, from starvation and de-
struction. His first move was to offer to the
Czar, through this same Chief of the Holy
Synod, fifty million francs for education in
Eussia, to be applied without distinction of
creed or race, hoping that the dissemination
of education, mechanical and mental, would in
the end induce a better condition, from the
lowest to the highest of the Czar's subjects.

328 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

Russian autocracy, wMch was framing laws to
limit, not to extend, the advantages of educa-
tion, rejected the munificent offer unless Baron
de Hirsch would remove his conditions and
permit the expenditure to be made as the
Czar and his ministers saw fit. But Baron de
Hirsch was too well-acquainted with Russian
officials to part with his money in order to line
the pockets and adorn the palaces of the per-
secuting Russian ministers of state.

The great philanthropist, in his affinities,
friendships, and associations, was neither
Christian nor Jew, but cosmopolitan. Creed
lines had no significance for him. He was
already well-known for his generous contribu-
tions in many directions and for many causes.
The misery, and not the race or the religion
of the Russian Jews, attached Baron de Hirsch
to their cause and summoned him, as by a
voice from God, to assume the colossal task of
devising plans and pouring out his treasures
with endless munificence for colonizing them in
other lands. In a magazine article published
five years ago, he said :

In relieving human suffering I never ask whether
the cry of necessity comes from a being who belongs
to my own faith or not; but what is more natural

BARON MAURICE DE HIRSCH 329

than that I should find my highest purpose in bring-
ing to the followers of Judaism, who have been
oppressed for a thousand years, who are starving
in misery, the possibility of a physical and moral
regeneration? — than that I should try to free them,
to build them up into capable citizens, and thus
furnish humanity with much new and valuable ma-
terial? Every page in the history of the Jews
teaches us that in thinking this I am following no
Utopian theory, and I am confident that such a
result can be attained.

Here let me say in answer to some evil-dis-
posed critics who, incapable of adequately ap-
preciating the magnificent unselfishness of the
man and the boundless scope of his philan-
thropy, have attributed his enormous benefac-
tions to the bereavement he had suffered in
the death of his only son — a handsome young
man of brilliant promise — that he had begun
to devote his energies to the self-imposed task
of his life before this calamity befell him.
For years he had given annually very large
sums to maintain ordinary and trade schools,
hospitals, and asylums throughout the Oriental
countries. He had maintained hospitals and
had given large sums of money for relief dur-
ing the Russo-TurMsh war, and had sent one
million francs to the Empress of Russia for

330 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

charitable purposes. He had begun negotia-
tions for a foundation, whicli was enlarged to
twenty-five million francs, for educational in-
stitutions in Galicia consisting of forty insti-
tutions, wherein five thousand pupils, without
distinction of creed, are being instructed. He
had hoped that his son — ^who doubtless would
have realized the hope had he been spared —
would make it the aim of his life to carry for-
ward and perfect his projected works of
benevolence and philanthropy. The loss of
this promising son was a severe blow to him,
and doubtless had the effect of enlarging and
extending his benefactions. On one occasion
when it was remarked that Baron de Hirsch
had lost his son and heir, he replied: "My
son I have lost, but not my heir; humanity is
my heir. ' '

Following an interview, partly true and
partly not, a rumor was circulated that he held
that the Jews of Russia should abandon their
faith and become Christians. To correct this
he sent a reply to some gentlemen in England,
therein declaring he had hoped that he had
given too many proofs of his devotion to
Judaism and to the Jews to be suspected of
hostility to a people he had defended with so

BAEON MAURICE DE HIRSCH 331

mucli spirit and supported with Ms resources.
Profoundly afflicted at seeing so many of his
co-religionists reduced to misery by reason of
religious or racial hatred, he desired simply
and plainly to tell the anti-Semites that perse-
cution intensified religious sentiments and
defeated the very objects they sought to attain.
He added, "Remove every barrier, admit your
Jewish compatriots to every right and the ad-
vantages of social life, and there will be more
chances for effecting the fusion which they ap-
pear desirous of bringing about."

To perfecting and carrying forward his plan
of relief, Baron de Hirsch, cosmopolitan as he
was, speaking half a dozen languages with
readiness, and on terms of intimacy with many
of the rulers and statesmen of Europe, applied
all his vast powers and opportunities. There
is little doubt that his social relations with
princes and statesmen, philosophers and liter-
ary men, were, in many instances, cultivated
as influential channels to further his philan-
thropic plans, just as an ambassador, singly
devoted to his country's welfare, utilizes so-
cial life to advance interests committed to his
charge. That such was his purpose, and not
to gratify any personal ambition, is shown by

332 THE AMEEICAN SPIKIT

the absence of vanity in Ms nature. No ap-
peals made to him to set aside funds, or to
make public donations, for the erection of
buildings and monuments to perpetuate his
name, ever enticed him to divert his money
from his plans of philanthropy. He was not
an ascetic, but rather a Sybarite. He loved
fine horses, equipages, and the luxuries of
life. Whatever he undertook he did on a large
scale, whether as financier, as philanthropist,
or as an owner of racers. Even his pleasures
contributed to charitable enterprises. His
winnings on the turf and the proceeds from the
sale of his horses, aggregating half a million
dollars, he distributed among the London hos-
pitals.

It is quite impossible to give a complete
list of Baron de Hirsch's benefactions, but the
following are probably the best known : Jewish
Colonization Association, $50,000,000; De
Hirsch Trust for the United States, $2,500,000;
Trust Fund for education in Gralicia, $5,-
000,000; Fund for assistance of tradesmen in
Vienna and Buda-Pesth, $1,455,000; Fund for
the Hungarian poor, $1,455,000, Turf win-
nings during 1891-4, distributed for charitable
purposes, $500,000; Gift to the Empress of

BAEON MAURICE DE HIRSCH 333

Russia for charitable purposes during Russo-
Ttirkisli war, $200,000; Gifts in 1893 to Lon-
don hospitals and other charities, $200,000;
Gifts to Alliance Israelite Universelle,
$400,000; Proceeds of the sale of his son's rac-
ing stud, distributed among charities, $60,000.
These alone araount to the enormous sum of
nearly $62,000,000.

His constant care was, not to overcrowd the
lands to which his army emigrated; he did
more than all restrictive laws have done to
regulate the exodus and the immigration, to
select men who would apply themselves to
handicrafts and principally to agriculture.
He had an abiding faith that the Jews of Rus-
sia, if properly directed, would again become
tillers of the earth, as their forefathers had
been in Babylon and Judea. He never tired
of dwelling upon the importance of directing
the immigrants in these channels exclusively,
so that they would become a part of the sturdy
yeomanry of the countries wherein they
settled, and would realize the promise of
peace and security contained in the Book of
Micah: "But they shall sit every man under
his vine and under his fig tree ; and none shall
make them afraid. " These views were clearly

334 THE AMEEICAN SPIRIT

and forcibly expressed by Baron de Hirscli in
The Forum for August, 1891. He wrote:
"In the lands where Jews have been per-
mitted to acquire landed property, where they
have found opportunity to devote themselves
to agriculture, they have proved themselves ex-
cellent farmers. For example, in Hungary
they form a very large part of the tillers of
the soil, and this fact is acknowledged to such
an extent that the high Catholic clergy in Hun-
gary almost exclusively have Jews as tenants
on mortmain properties, and almost all large
landholders give preference to the Jews on
account of their industry, their rectitude, and
their dexterity. These are facts that cannot
be hid, and have force, so that the anti-Semitic
movement, which for a long time flourished in
Hungary, must expire. It will expire because
every one sees that so important a factor in
the productive activity of the country, espe-
cially in agriculture, cannot be spared. My
own personal experience, too, has led me to
recognize that the Jews have very good ability
in agriculture. I have seen this personally in
the Jewish agricultural colonies of Turkey,
and the reports from the expedition that I
have sent to the Argentine Eepublic plainly

BARON MAURICE DE HIESCH 335

show the same fact. These convictions led me
to my activity to better the unhappy lot of
the poor down-trodden Jews, and my efforts
shall show that the Jews have not lost the agri-
cultural qualities that their forefathers pos-
sessed. I shall try to make for them a new
home in different lands, where, as free farm-
ers, on their own soil, they can make them-
selves useful to the country."

In the prosecution of his plans he searched
in every direction for reliable and responsible
agents, men who combined brain with heart
for the work, especially avoiding those who
clamored for lucrative employment, who
stormed his door and filled his mails with
applications. He cared not to what religious
sect such agents belonged; he wanted men,
true men of capacity, whose hearts throbbed
with philanthropic impulses. His most valued
assistant in all his work was his wife, with
whom he took counsel and to whom he imparted
every detail, who read his letters and assisted
in his correspondence, who accompanied him
in his travels and shared his every hope and
encouragement — for discouragement he never
entertained. Baroness de Hirsch is a remark-
able woman, kind, gentle, accomplished, and

336 THE AMEEICAN SPIRIT

most simple in her tastes. She is a Lady
Bountiful wherever she goes, and spends a
large part of her separate fortune in main-
taining schools, asylums, and hospitals, which
she visits personally and directs with discrimi-
nation and judgment. At Constantinople, I
have known her day after day to visit the
poorer quarters of the city — and they are very
poor — and relieve with her own hands the
misery and poverty among Mohammedans,
Christians, and Jews.

Until his death, ten years ago, one of the
most efficient of Baron de Hirsch's agents was
the Chevalier Veneziani, who installed several
Masonic lodges in the Orient and expended
large sums of money for the Baron in estab-
lishing hospitals, homes, and schools. The
Baron was instrumental in inducing Hall
Caine, author of "The Manxman," to visit
Eussia a few years ago for the purpose of
studying the condition of the peasants and the
lower classes. Mr. Caine, it is believed, made
a report to the Baron, but he was so impressed,
or depressed, with the sadness of the condi-
tions he there found, that he has not as yet
been able to write and publish the result of his
observations. Mr. Arnold White, an authority

BAEON MAUEICE DE HIKSCH 337

on sociological questions, who has had much
experience among the lower classes in London
and on the Continent, was sent by Baron de
Hirsch on a mission to Eussia. He selected
Mr. White because of that experience and in
spite of the fact that the latter in his writings
had shown himself rather prejudiced against
his cause. The Baron wanted hght, not senti-
ment, to guide him in his vast plans, believing
as he did that permanent good is only defeated
by the temporary expedients that sentiment
interposes. He realized that colonizing was
like planting trees — it required time to bear
fruit; his hopes rested upon the children of
the emigrants and upon the succeeding gener-
ation. The forty years in the wilderness
might be shortened, but not escaped, until the
Promised Land should give its blessings.

Baron de Hirsch 's noble work does not cease
with his death, but rests on carefully planned
foundations, administered by agents whom he
chose in the several countries. His idea was,
that in time the work would be self-acting and
that the first comers, after they were settled
and had reached a certain degree of independ-
ence, would attract others to themselves and
lead out more and more of their brethren, so

338 THE AMEEICAN SPIRIT

that in another generation Russia, freed in
part from the activity and energy of the Jews,
would learn to appreciate their economic
value, or like another Spain, meet her deserved
fate and become a helpless victim of her own
intolerance.

The Baron never took part in politics in any
form; they were not to his taste. He doubt-
less recognized that favoring one side would
array the other side against his project for the
relief of the Russian Jews. He admired men
with courage and firmness for the right, and
when he learned of Mr. Cleveland's election
to the Presidency in 1892 he wrote me a let-
ter expressing his congratulations to the coun-
try in selecting as its Chief Executive a man
of liberal views and large heart, who stood
firmly upon his convictions as against expedi-
ency or policy.

Baron de Hirsch is the Napoleon of this
great exodus; and for every life that great
Liberator of the Jews of France lost in his
Russian campaign. Baron de Hirsch has led
out two lives, whose children's children will
not forget Russia, but will swell the ranks of
the sons of liberty, and in the end will triumph
where Napoleon failed. There is something

BAKON MAUEICE DE HIESCH 339

greater than autocratic power or the power of
armies or of navies — and that is the aroused
indignation of the civilized world. Before the
altar of eternal right and justice kings must
bend the knee and dynasties molder into dust —

For freedom's battle, once begun,
Bequeathed by bleeding sire to son,
Though baffled oft, is ever won. "■

XIX

GENEEAL BAEON T. KUEOKI OF THE
JAPANESE AEMY

XIX

GENERAL. BARON T. KUROKI OF THE
JAPANESE ARMY

' A LL mankind loves a lover," and the
mjL. whole world honors a hero, especially
if his laurels have been won in a just cause.
France had her Napoleon, England her Well-
ington, Germany her Moltke, America had her
Grant and has her Dewey, and Japan has her
Kuroki. Self-preservation is the first law of
nations as well as of nature; and even those
of us who took part in the great Peace Con-
gress that only a few weeks ago echoed its
messages of hope from so many platforms,
must recognize the potency and necessity of
that law of nations.

More important than the limitation of arma-
ments is limitation of the causes of war, and
this can be done best by infusing into interna-
tional relations the hypodermic solution of in-
ternational morality. Within the memory of
the living, the so-called code of honor be-

343

344 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

tween individuals has practically disap-
peared, and the code of law has replaced
it, to the credit of onr civilization. A like
transformation is taking place in the field
of international ethics, so that the so-called
doctrine of expediency based upon might is
fast giving way to the principles of interna-
tional relations based upon right.

No country and no people in the history of
ancient or modern civilization has ever gone
through a more rapid renaissance than the
Island Kingdom of Japan, and that is because
"this child of the world's old age" had been
brought up by parents who had lived through
centuries of development and civilization,
which served her as a springboard to leap
within a generation from out of her oriental
slumbers to the front rank among nations. It
was but half a century ago that the United
States, through Commodore Perry, took Japan
by the hand and led her out of her oriental
seclusion and showed her the triumphs of our
western civilization and introduced her with
proverbial American hospitality to the council-
board of western nations. From that time to
this, the closest relations of amity and friend-
ship have continued between our country and

GENEEAL BARON T. KUROKI 345

Japan, Thirty years later our country fol-
lowed Great Britain in recognizing the won-
derful progress in all that constitutes a civil-
ized nation by conceding to Japan the full
rights of an independent nation, and in con-
senting to the abolition of extraterritorial
privileges, and endowing her with full and
complete judicial autonomy. The Government
and people of Japan, not unmindful of the
good will and sponsorship of our country, are
too wise to permit the San Francisco school
incident, which was fostered by ignorance and
propagated by injustice, to cloud their just
appreciation of the enlightened spirit of
American institutions.

Japan, alone among nations, has given the
world an example how a people can throw
off the shackles of an oppressive autocracy
and endow itself with all the safeguards of
liberty and justice under a constitutional form
of government, by following along the paths
of peaceful evolution, instead of going through
the terrible struggles and devastation of bloody
revolutions. Japan is the land of liberty, civil
and religious. Her religious liberty is even
far in advance of nations who pride them-
selves upon this most precious of national vir-

346 THE AMEKICAN SPIRIT

tues. Her people have no prejudices based
upon religious or ecclesiastical grounds, and
all men of every cliurcli and creed are free to
worship their God in accordance with the dic-
tates of their own conscience, in the fullest
and widest acceptation of the meaning of re-
ligious liberty.

Japan, which has learned much from the
"West, has even more to teach the West. Per-
sistency, self-control, and preparedness are
among her national qualities; her officers ex-
emplify the highest skill united with the high-
est patriotism; her soldiers, while reckless in
their bravery in sacrificing their own lives, are
uniformly humane even to their enemies, and
no nation is served by a more competent dip-
lomatic body — men of reliability, judgment,
and moderation. We heartily welcome her
conquering hero, who has fought battles that
will rank among the greatest in history, and
whose army has never met with defeat. What
is the message that this great and modest hero
brings to us? Permit me to quote his own
words: "The Japanese people love peace and
want peace. They fought for peace, which
without fighting could not have been. My na-
tion wants peace — ^peace in which to develop.

GENERAL BARON T. KUROKI 347

We have no other desire. The profession it
is my fate to follow is noble only in that it is
sometimes useful in establishing conditions in
which peace may be maintained and the arts
of peace may flourish." Nobler sentiments
never fell from the lips of a conquering hero.
They will stand beside those that were uttered
by the hero of Appomattox, who said, "Let us
have peace."

General Kuroki, may the memory of your
glorious victories, which have shed so much
honor upon the armies of Japan, give to her
people unending years of peace, happiness, and
prosperity.

CAEDINAL FAELET

CABDINAL FAELET

WHEN I walked along Fifth Avenue a f ew
nights ago I saw Saint Patrick's Cathe-
dral illuminated in honor of Cardinal Farley.
Its Gothic doors and windows, its facades,
arches and spires were one blaze of light,
shedding its brilliant rays over the city. This
emblematically suggested to my mind that
when a good man rises to greatness and ex-
alted place, his glory belongs not exclusively
to one church, to one sect, to one district, but
to all churches, to the people at large, to this
great city, to the nation over which has spread
the influence of his career and his beneficent
services. For that reason we receive with
joy and glorification the noble priest who has
come back to us from Eome with his Cardinal
investiture. We are all proud and happy that
this signal recognition has been given by the
Holy Father to an eminent and distinguished

351

352 THE AMEEICAN SPIRIT

American whose whole life has been consecra-
ted to benevolent work and patriotic services.
As Cardinal Gibbons said of our distin-
guished guest a few evenings ago, ''although
not a politician, his Eminence is a statesman
and a patriot. He is a lover of his country,
and we need Cardinal Farley to protect us
against the evils of sedition and other dangers
that beset us." And may I say further, we
need Cardinal Farley, whose career has been
a blessing from a humble priest to a prince of
the church, whose fifty years of service have
been devoted to guiding the rich in paths of
righteousness, and to uplifting the poor and
making their lives more happy and hopeful,
all the time building the bulwarks of peace and
order, the fatherhood of God and the brother-
hood of man. We need a constant and fuller
appreciation of the blessings of opportunity
and life that are ours under our free demo-
cratic institutions. We need a broader toler-
ance intensified by a generous respect for one
another's religious convictions in accord with
the spirit of our history and the institutions of
our government — a spirit that first took root in
the Baptist colony of Rhode Island, and in the
Catholic colony of Maryland, and later was

CARDINAL FARLEY 353

incorporated into the laws of the State of Vir-
ginia, in the Statute of Religious Freedom
penned by the immortal hand of Thomas Jef-
ferson.

Our democracy, which has changed our form
of government, has likewise changed our social
life, our relations one to another, and given
us a more hopeful outlook ; it has also changed,
not lessened but rather intensified, our appre-
ciation of religion, and instead of blind sub-
serviency has given us an intelligent esteem
and fuller appreciation of the character and
services of our religious leaders.

Radicalism in the United States gets little
support from our people, because with awak-
ened intelligence they learn to know that the
rights of each consonant with the liberty of all
lay at the basis of our system of democracy.
All appeals to class feeling, or to sectarianism,
as a basis of support or favor in our economic,
social and public life, are promptly resented
by our people of all creeds as inimical to the
spirit of fair play in our democracy, who over-
whelm the demagogue and fanatic with con-
tempt and condemnation.

The spirit of bigotry was never more force-
fully and authoritatively rebuked than by

354 THE AMEEICAN SPIKIT

President Roosevelt after the last national
election, in reply to letters addressed to him
during the campaign with a purpose of influ-
encing the election by the writers, some of
whom urged against Mr. Taft that he was a
Unitarian, and others that members of his
family were suspected of being members of
the Catholic Church. In his reply, which was
widely published in the press of the country,
President Roosevelt said:

You stated that the mass of the voters that are
not Catholics will not support a man for any office,
especially for President of the United States, who
is a Roman Catholic. I believe when you say this
you foully slander your fellow countrymen. I do
not for one moment believe that the mass of our
fellow-citizens, or any considerable number of our
fellow-citizens, can be influenced by such narrow
bigotry as to refuse to vote for any thoroughly up-
right and fit man because he happens to have a
particular religious creed. Such a consideration
should never be treated as a reason for either sup-
porting or opposing a candidate for a political
office ... I believe that this Republic will endure
for many centuries. If so, there will doubtless be
among the Presidents, Protestants and Catholics,
and very probably at some time Jews. I have con-
sistently tried, while President, to act in relation to
my fellow-Americans of Catholic faith as I hope

CAEDINAL FARLEY 355

that any future President, who happens to be a
Catholic, will act toward his feUow-Americans of
Protestant faith.

This, my friends, is the true American doc-
trine exemplifying the spirit of the founders
of our democracy, upon which our Eepublio
was builded and by which alone it can be pre-
served to shed its continuing blessings upon
us and our descendants from generation to
generation.

XXI

WILLIAM LYNE WILSON:
A TEIBUTE

XXI
WILLIAM LYNE WILSON: A TRIBUTE

WILLIAM LYNE WILSON was born in
Jefferson county, Virginia (which is
now West Virginia), on May 3, 1843. He
died at Lexington, Virginia, on October 17,
1900, in his fifty-eighth year. He was edu-
cated at Charlestown Academy and Columbian
College, Washington, D. C, where he was
graduated in 1860. After graduation Mr. Wil-
son attended the University of Virginia ; but
when the war broke out, he enlisted as a pri-
vate in the Confederate army, and he contin-
ued as such until the end. After the war he
became professor of Latin in Columbian Uni-
versity, and shortly afterward he married Miss
Huntington, daughter of the Greek professor
in that University.

When the "iron-clad oath" was repealed in
West Virginia, Mr. Wilson returned to
Charlestown and there practised law until
1882, when he accepted the presidency of West

359

360 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

Virginia University. Only two weeks after
accepting this office, through one of those con-
tingencies that often happen in our political
life, he was induced to accept the nomination as
the candidate of his party for Congress, and
he was elected by a bare majority of nine votes.
He continued in Congress for six successive
terms until 1895, when, by reason of his con-
spicuous advocacy of tariff reform and the
change of sentiment following that agitation
in many parts of the country, he was defeated.
As chairman of the Ways and Means Com-
mittee of the House of Representatives he
framed the law known as the Wilson Bill ; but
because of the hopeless division of his party,
it was mutilated by four hundred amendments,
so that, as finally passed, it no longer em-
bodied the principles, but at best only a rem-
nant of the tendency, for which the Demo-
cratic Party had contended.

In 1895 he was appointed Postmaster Gen-
eral in President Cleveland's cabinet, and at
the expiration of his term he was elected
President of Washington and Lee University
at Lexington, which office he held when he died.

This is a brief outline of the life of a man
who filled every place he held with conspicu-

WILLIAM LYNE WILSON 361

ous modesty and rare ability. He was known
as the Scholar in Politics, since throughout
his public career he displayed such scholarly
research and thorough understanding of the
questions that came up for consideration.

William L. Wilson was a remarkable man,
an ideal official; he typified all that is best in
American statesmanship — a scholar by incli-
nation, by temperament and by training — a
statesman by the breadth, the depth and the
soundness of his views, which were never ob-
scured by temporary phases or by party ex-
pediency. With his thorough and accurate
knowledge of the political development of the
country, he possessed the rare faculty of con-
vincing oratory which appealed with sugges-
tive force and power to the minds of his fel-
low citizens, whether on the stump in his na-
tive district or in the halls of Congress, or
before public assemblages in many cities.
Though he was in the forefront in some of the
most hotly contested issues that have agitated
political parties during the past twenty years,
yet the sweetness of his character and broad-
ness of his views, which reflected themselves
in his every utterance, had a charm to elevate
even his opponents above the petty wrangles

362 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

and bitternesses engendered by party strife.
He never said an unkind word, and never did
an inconsiderate act. No man ever went from
the halls of Congress carrying with him a
higher measure of esteem and affection from
his colleagues on both sides of the house than
William L. Wilson.

This is not the time or place to discuss the
correctness of his conclusions on tariff ques-
tions ; but this much must be said even by those
who differed with him, that his philosoph-
ical and scholarly arguments have a perma-
nent value for the proper study of the princi-
ples that underlie revenue legislation, as well
as whether under a democratic government it
be just and equitable to levy imposts for pur-
poses of protection as distinguished from the
needs for economical administration. He had
the statesman's instinct for searching out the
fundamental principles of every public ques-
tion, and the methods and mental qualities of
a philosopher to measure those principles by
the permanent standards of equity and justice.
To the public good, he gave his untiring
efforts, and he has enriched the public serv-
ice by a life's work of high ideals, of broad
and constructive statesmanship, and by un-

WILLIAM LYNE WILSON 363

swerving loyalty and unselfish devotion to
public duty, whicli will enshrine Ms memory
among the foremost scholarly leaders of polit-
ical thought in our country during the closing
years of the nineteenth century.

xxn

EDWARD MOESE SHEPAED:
A TRIBUTE

•xxn

EDWARD MORSE SHEPARD:
A TRIBUTE

EMERSON said of Lord Chatham that
those who listened to him always felt
there was something higher, nobler, finer, in
the man than in anything he said. So it often
is with those exceptional and remarkable per-
sonages who exert the widest influence upon
their surroundings — the largest part of their
power is latent, a reserve force. This re-
serve force few possessed in a higher degree
than Edward M. Shepard. It made itself felt
not only in his conversation, but also in his
public addresses and equally in his writings.
This silent power, which was so apparent to
those who knew our friend, was the effulgence
of his pure, noble, and inspiring character, and
of his unswerving devotion to right as God
gave him to see the right.

He was a Democrat by tradition, by convic-
tion, and by sympathy with the struggling

367

368 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

masses. In one of his addresses he summed
up his political creed in the following words:
"The Government should make the least pos-
sible demand upon the citizen, and the citizen
the least possible demand upon the Govern-
ment."

While in his life and in his nature he was
ever helpful, most generously helpful to others,
especially to young men who came to him for
advice and guidance, politically in his writings
and addresses he continually dwelt upon the
independence of citizenship, insisting that the
individual should have the pride of self-sup-
port and refuse, whether by device or through
the power of majorities, to east his burden
upon others.

His highest aim in life was to render serv-
ice. He was innately modest and retiring, and
the principal attraction that public office had
for him was the opportunity it afforded to
render the greatest possible service to his fel-
low-men. This fact is evident in his many
public addresses, and in his political speeches,
many of which were delivered in heated cam-
paigns, and nowhere do we find that he ever
descended from principles to personalities;
they were, without exception, elevated, free

EDWAED MOESE SHEPAED 369

from invective and personal bitterness; Ms
opponents were never his foes, and with that
generosity of temperament which he displayed
upon all occasions, he attributed to his oppo-
nents the same rectitude of purpose that ever
actuated and guided him. His appeals were
always to the intellect, and never to the pas-
sions or prejudices of his auditors. He was
preeminently the scholar and philosopher in
politics as in all his public activities. He was
never a carping critic, but a leader, instructor
and guide. He was ever ready to give his
time, his thoughts and his voice, amid the en-
grossing occupation of an exacting profession,
in educating people to a better understanding
of their rights and duties under our democratic
system of government. He was most tolerant,
socially, politically and religiously. His deep-
ly religious and spiritually tolerant attitude
of mind was made most apparent in his splen-
did defense of Dr. Crapsey, who was tried
for heresy. His argument will remain as a
chapter of light and leading in the ecclesiasti-
cal history of our day.

We cannot but regret that he did not give
us more from his pen, which wrote the history
of Van Buren and his times, which in scholar-

370 THE AMEEICAN SPIEIT

ship, style, and clearness of vision of past po-
litical events is a real contribution to our na-
tional history and political literature. He
took part in many political contests, wherein
he won moral victories that will last and will
reward his brave and chivalrous efforts with
the crown of gratitude for his courageous
stand against unrighteous greed and political
corruption.

When these buildings were dedicated, I was
privileged to take part with Mr. Shepard in
the ceremonies, and no one could fail to ob-
serve the pleasure and pride he felt in the ful
filment of his long cherished wish to see this
great people's college suitably housed and
equipped for its high and noble functions. No
son of any university gave more of his heart
and soul, thought and time to the development
of his college than he gave to this, his Alma
Mater, not only because it was his Alma Ma-
ter, but because it is the people's university
of this great metropolitan city, destined to
train thousands to useful citizenship.

His devotion to education here and else-
where will be his living monument. Just as
Jefferson directed that there should be in-
scribed upon his tomb, not his service as a

EDWAED MORSE SHEPAED 371

public officer, as a minister of state, as a dip-
lomat, and as President, but as the founder of
the university of his commonwealth, so let the
world remember Edward M. Shepard as the
guardian of higher education for the masses,
the true democrat, the friend of the sons of
the people.

xxni

JOHN HAY: A TRIBUTE

xxm

JOHN HAY: A TEIBUTE

it

ON Fame's eternal camping-ground" his
memory is guarded, and no memorial we
can consecrate, no words we may utter, can
add to his laurels or to the glory of his
achievements. His services to his country are
imperishably recorded upon the pages of our
national history. Our country has been pecul-
iarly fortunate in the leaders of its policies
during its critical periods; the public serv-
ices of Jefferson, John Quincy Adams, Seward,
and Hay mark notable epochs in our foreign
relations. Each in his time extended the hori-
zon of our nation's power and influence, and
each interpreted her "manifest destiny" so as
to throw additional safeguards around our in-
stitutions, and to vitalize the spirit of freedom.
It is at times impossible to understand
properly the exceptional achievements and ex-
traordinary lives of some men unless we recog-

375

376 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

nize a Superior Power that guided their genius
and their footsteps for the accomplishment of
their transcendent tasks. Certainly, Lincoln
belonged to this class. The young secretary
■whom he took with him from Springfield was
cast in a more refined and delicate mold than
his rugged chief, yet the same spirit that glowed
in the great heart of the one, animated with its
light and warmth the sympathetic soul of the
other. For many years, as the alert and tact-
ful Secretary of Legation in the leading capi-
tals of the old world, John Hay acquired a
knowledge of the intricacies of diplomacy and
the susceptibilities of European chancelleries,
which proved of inestimable value during the
seven important and trying years when he
held the portfolio of State.

I will not speak of John Hay's distinction
as poet, historian, and litterateur ; I will only
touch in brief outline upon his diplomatic
achievements. The cardinal principles of his
foreign policy were the Monroe Doctrine and
the Golden Rule. In the carrying forward of
these principles under the sympathetic guid-
ance of his chiefs — McKjnley and Roosevelt —
he discarded the traditional diplomatic meth-
ods ; sincerity and directness characterized all

JOHN HAY 377

his negotiations, and the nations soon learned
to rely upon his every act and representation
with justified confidence. Because of this,
without even the instrument of a formal treaty,
he secured the "Open Door" and the "Ad-
ministrative Entity" of China, the partition of
which, had it not heen arrested, contained the
elements of world-wide and world-involving
war.

The Venezuela controversy, the Alaska-
Boundary contention, and the Clayton-Bulwer
Treaty that lay across the path of the Isth-
mian Canal, he led to equitahle and peaceful
solution ; and he confounded the pessimists and
scoffers by injecting life and action into the
inanimate body of the newly created world's
court, the International Tribunal at The Hague.
He was at the helm of the nation's diplomacy,
as our country moved through rocks and shoals
from comparative obscurity to a position of
primacy among the powers of the world. The
prestige this acquired power had given he used
as it should always be used, for no selfish pur-
poses, and for no narrow ends, but to draw to
the attention of nations the duties which their
close inter-relations not only justified but
necessitated.

378 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

He emphasized the principle of internation-
alism, that national wrongs are of interna-
tional concern, and that suffering from op-
pression in one country often casts its pitiahle
wreckage upon the hospitable shores of other
lands, however far removed. His Russian and
Roumanian Notes will remain as classics in
the "Diplomacy of Humanity" — a diplomacy
which received its greatest impetus from his
magic pen and his humane soul. "It is the
prerogative of an injured State," are his
words, "to point out the evil and to make re-
monstrance ; for with nations, as with individ-
uals, the social law holds good, that the right
of each is bounded by the right of the neigh-
bor."

It may be asked, "Why have we assembled
here in the temple of our ancient people, whose
history and sacred law run back to the dawn
of time and enshrine the memories of Moses
and the Prophets? — a people whose records
are crimsoned with national tragedies running
through two thousand years, from Titus to
Nicholas II? It is because America recog-
nizes in John Hay a personality whose visioned
eyes windowed the soul of a prophet, whose
lips worded the majestic imagery of the

JOHN HAY 379

Psalmists, and whose patriotic heart throbbed
with the divine spirit of the Golden Eule.

In conclusion let me quote the final stanza
of his beautiful psalm-

Whenever man oppresses men

Beneath the liberal sun,
Lord, be there ; Thine arm made bare,

Thy righteous will be done.