sion on our part to say that we are privileged to stand for what every nation would wish to stand for, and speak for those things which all humanity must desire.

When I think of the flag which those ships carry, the only touch of color about them, the only thing that moves as if it had a subtle spirit in it in their solid structure, it seems to me that I see alternate strips of parchment upon which are written the rights of liberty and justice, and stripes of blood spilt to vindicate those rights; and, then, in the corner a prediction of the blue serene into which every nation may swim which stands for these things.

The mission of America is the only thing that a sailor or a soldier should think about. He has nothing to do with the formulation of her policy. He is to support her policy whatever it is; but he is to support her policy in the spirit of herself, and the strength of our polity is that we who for the time being administer the affairs of this Nation do not originate her spirit. We attempt to embody it; we attempt to realize it in action; we are dominated by it, we do not dictate it.

So with every man in arms who serves the Nation; he stands and waits to do the thing which the Nation desires. Those who represent America sometimes seem to forget her programmes, but the people never forget them. It is as startling as it is touching to see how whenever you touch a principle you touch the hearts of the people of the United States. They listen to your debates of policy, they determine which party they will prefer to power, they choose and prefer as between men, but their real affection, their real force, their real irresistible momentum is for the ideas which men embody. I never go on the streets of a great city without feeling that somehow I do not confer elsewhere than on the streets with the great spirit of the people themselves, going about their business, attending to the things which immediately concern them, and yet carrying a treasure at their hearts all the while, ready to be stirred not only as individuals but as members of a great union of hearts that constitutes a patriotic people. This sight in the river touches me merely as a symbol of all this; and it quickens the pulse of every man who realizes these things to have anything to do with them. When a crisis occurs in this country, gentlemen, it is as if you put your hand on the pulse of a dynamo, it is as if the things that you were in connection with were spiritually bred, as if you had nothing to do with them except, if you listen truly, to speak the things that you hear.

These things now brood over the river; this spirit now moves with the men who represent the Nation in the Navy; these things will move upon the waters in the maneuvers-no threat lifted against any man, against any nation, against any interest, but just a great solemn

evidence that the force of America is the force of moral principle, that there is nothing else that she loves, and that there is nothing else for which she will contend.

[At the Pan-American Financial Conference, Pan-American Building, Washington, D. C., May 24, 1915.]

MR. CHAIRMAN, GENTLEMEN OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLICS, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: The part that falls to me this morning is a very simple one, but a very delightful one. It is to bid you a very hearty welcome indeed to this conference. The welcome is the more hearty because we are convinced that a conference like this will result in the things that we most desire. I am sure that those who have this conference in charge have already made plain to you its purpose and its spirit. Its purpose is to draw the American Republics together by bonds of common interest and of mutual understanding; and we comprehend, I hope, just what the meaning of that is. There can be no sort of union of interest if there is a purpose of exploitation by any one of the parties to a great conference of this sort. The basis of successful commercial intercourse is common interest, not selfish interest. It is an actual interchange of services and of values: it is based upon reciprocal relations and not selfish relations. It is based upon those things upon which all successful economic intercourse must be based, because selfishness breeds suspicion; suspicion, hostility; and hostility, failure. We are not, therefore, trying to make use of each other, but we are trying to be of use to one another.

It is very surprising to me, it is even a source of mortification, that a conference like this should have been so long delayed, that it should never have occurred before, that it should have required a crisis of the world to show the Americas how truly they were neighbors to one another. If there is any one happy circumstance, gentlemen, arising out of the present distressing condition of the world, it is that it has revealed us to one another: it has shown us what it means to be neighbors. And I cannot help harboring the hope, the very high hope, that by this commerce of minds with one another, as well as commerce in goods, we may show the world in part the path to peace. It would be a very great thing if the Americas could add to the distinction which they already wear this of showing the way to peace, to permanent peace.

The way to peace for us, at any rate, is manifest. It is the kind of rivalry which does not involve aggression. It is the knowledge that men can be of the greatest service to one another, and nations of the greatest service to one another, when the jealousy between them is merely a jealousy of excellence, and when the basis of their

intercourse is friendship. There is only one way in which we wish to take advantage of you and that is by making better goods, by doing the things that we seek to do for each other better, if we can, than you do them, and so spurring you on, if we might, by so handsome a jealousy as that to excel us. I am so keenly aware that the basis of personal friendship is this competition in excellence, that I am perfectly certain that this is the only basis for the friendship of nations, this handsome rivalry, this rivalry in which there is no dislike, this rivalry in which there is nothing but the hope of a common elevation in great enterprises which we can undertake in common. There is one thing that stands in our way among others—for you are more conversant with the circumstances than I am; the thing I have chiefly in mind is the physical lack of means of communication, the lack of vehicles, the lack of ships, the lack of established routes of trade, the lack of those things which are absolutely necessary if we are to have true commercial and intimate commercial relations with one another; and I am perfectly clear in my judgment that if private capital cannot soon enter upon the adventure of establishing these physical means of communication, the government must undertake to do so. We cannot indefinitely stand apart and need each other for the lack of what can easily be supplied, and if one instrumentality cannot supply it, then another must be found which will supply it. We cannot know each other unless we see each other; we cannot deal with each other unless we communicate with each other. So soon as we communicate and are upon a familiar footing of intercourse, we shall understand one another, and the bonds between the Americas will be such bonds that no influence that the world may produce in the future will ever break them.

If I am selfish for America, I at least hope that my selfishness is enlightened. The selfishness that hurts the other party is not enlightened selfishness. If I were acting upon a mere ground of selfishness, I would seek to benefit the other party and so tie him to myself; so that even if you were to suspect me of selfishness, I hope you will also suspect me of intelligence and of knowing the only safe way for the establishment of the things which we covet, as well as the establishment of the things which we desire and which we would feel honored if we could earn and win.

I have said these things because they will perhaps enable you to understand how far from formal my welcome to this body is. It is a welcome from the heart, it is a welcome from the head; it is a welcome inspired by what I hope are the highest ambitions of those who live in these two great continents, who seek to set an example to the world in freedom of institutions, freedom of trade, and intelligence of mutual service.

[At G. A. R. Celebration of the Semi-centennial of the Grand Parade of the Union Troops Returning North in 1865, held at Camp Emery, in Washington, D. C., Sept. 27, 1915.]

MR. CHAIRMAN, GENTLEMEN OF THE GRAND ARMY OF THE REpublic, Ladies and GentlemEN: I bid you a very cordial welcome to the capital of the Nation, and yet I feel that it is not necessary to bid you welcome here, because you know that the welcome is always warm and always waiting for you.

One could not stand in this presence without many moving thoughts. It is a singular thing that men of a single generation should have witnessed what you have witnessed in the crowded fifty years which you celebrate to-night. You took part when you were young men in a struggle the meaning of which, I dare say, you thought would not be revealed during your lifetime, and yet more has happened in the making of this Nation in your lifetime than has ever happened in the making of any other nation in the lifetime of a dozen generations.

The Nation in which you now live is not the Nation for whose union you fought. You have seen many things come about which have made this Nation one of the representative nations of the world with regard to the modern spirit of that world, and you have the satisfaction, which I dare say few soldiers have ever had, of looking back upon a war absolutely unique in this, that instead of destroying it healed, that instead of making a permanent division it made a permanent union. You have seen something more interesting than that, because there is a sense in which the things of the heart are more interesting than the things of the mind. This Nation was from the beginning a spiritual enterprise, and you have seen the spirits of the two once divided sections of this country absolutely united. A war which seemed as if it had the seed of every kind of bitterness in it has seen a single generation put bitterness absolutely out of its heart, and you feel, as I am sure the men who fought against you feel, that you were comrades even then, though you did not know it, and that now you know that you are comrades in a common love for a country which you are equally eager to serve.

This is a miracle of the spirit, so far as national history is concerned. This is one of the very few wars in which in one sense everybody engaged may take pride. Some wars are to be regretted; some wars mar the annals of history; but some wars, contrasted with those, make those annals distinguished, show that the spirit of man sometimes springs to great enterprises that are even greater than his own mind had conceived.

So it seems to me that, standing in a presence like this, no man, whether he be in the public service or in the ranks of private citizens

merely, can fail to feel the challenge to his own heart, can fail to feel the challenge to a new consecration to the things that we all believe in. The thing that sinks deepest in my heart as I try to realize the memories that must be crowding upon you is this: You set the Nation free for that great career of development, of unhampered development, which the world has witnessed since the Civil War; but for my own part I would not be proud of the extraordinary physical development of this country, of its extraordinary development in material wealth and financial power, did I not believe that the people of the United States wished all of this power devoted to ideal ends. There have been other nations as rich as we; there have been other nations as powerful; there have been other nations as spirited; but I hope we shall never forget that we created this Nation, not to serve ourselves, but to serve mankind.

I love this country because it is my home, but every man loves his home. It does not suffice that I should be attached to it because it contains the places and the persons whom I love-because it contains the threads of my own life. That does not suffice for patriotic duty. I should also love it, and I hope I do love it, as a great instrument for the uplift of mankind; and what you, gentlemen, have to remind us of as you look back through a lifetime to the great war in which you took part is that you fought that this instrument meant for the service of mankind should not be impaired either in its material or in its spiritual power.

I hope I may say without even an implication of criticism upon any other great people in the world that it has always seemed to me that the people of the United States wished to be regarded as devoted to the promotion of particular principles of human right. The United States were founded, not to provide free homes, but to assert human rights. This flag meant a great enterprise of the human spirit. Nobody, no large bodies of men, in the time that flag was first set up believed with a very firm belief in the efficacy of democracy. Do you realize that only so long ago as the time of the American Revolution democracy was regarded as an experiment in the world and we were regarded as rash experimenters? But we not only believed in it; we showed that our belief was well founded and that a nation as powerful as any in the world could be erected upon the will of the people; that, indeed, there was a power in such a nation that dwelt in no other nation unless also in that other nation the spirit of the people prevailed.

Democracy is the most difficult form of government, because it is the form under which you have to persuade the largest number of persons to do anything in particular. But I think we were the more pleased to undertake it because it is difficult. Anybody can do what