Civil War. "It is governed by the law of growth as men and nations are governed. What a glory to the nation are the achievements of its great soldiers, sailors, and statesmen! They are the seed-corn of the future."

III.

OUR COMMERCIAL RELATIONS

THE old Washington policy of extending our commercial relations, but having as little political alliance with foreign powers as possible, is still imperative. This has been our policy, and in my judgment it should continue to be. We desire to be at peace with all the world. We are at peace with all nations-with Great Britain, the mother-country; with Germany, whose people have cast their lot with us and are numbered by millions; France, Russia, Austria, and now with Spain, and I might add the South American republics, Japan and China. We are not ambitious for conquest of territory. We desire as a Christian nation to benefit mankind. We love liberty, and we will rejoice as the nations, one and all, shall give greater comfort and liberty to the great masses of the people. It should be the duty of government to lift up the people to a plane of greater happiness from generation to generation. The whole course and history of the United States furnish sufficient guarantee for the continuance and maintenance of those humane and liberal principles upon which our system was founded. There need be no fear that the justice of our people will ever permit any policy of tyranny to be established anywhere under the shadow of the American flag.

This Government prefers to be a conservator of peace rather than to encourage or engage in war. The people of this country prefer to be promoters of indus

try and commerce rather than be engaged in bloody conflict. We are ambitious to unfurl our sails and send our products into every harbor on every sea. At no time since the sun rose on the Constitutional Government of the United States has our commerce with foreign nations been so great as in 1898. We are growing rapidly to appreciate the world-power of commerce.

The commerce of the world produces the impulse which largely controls the peace of the world. In no better way can the United States, as a republic, make its power felt. The extension of its commerce means the extension of its power in the world. The ships of all nations seek our shores and bear away our products and manufactures to all lands. Our locomotives are sent to England, Russia, and China. Our machinery and other products will soon reach the markets of all the nations. And this interchange and transportation of industries, extending around the world, will do more to spread peace and enlightenment over both hemispheres than all other agencies, and make this Republic from year to year a greater world-power.

The nations are becoming, as time passes, nearer to each other. Here in our nation's capital we celebrate the end of war in a Jubilee of Peace. The nations of the world are in session at the capital of the Netherlands in the interest of the peace of the world. My prayer is that the time may come when "nations shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more," and that "they shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning-hooks."

[From a speech delivered at Detroit, February 22, 1898.]

OUR relations with Spain have from the foundation NEG. of this Government ever been exceedingly vexatious. We have suffered from her procrastinating diplomacy always. While nothing of an overt act of war has ever transpired between the two nations, there have been several occasions when they have been perilously near that act. There has been raging for the last three years upon the island of Cuba an insurrection of Cubans, striving for nationality and liberty, which has been met by Spain with measures of unexampled atrocity and horror that have profoundly stirred the indignation of the human race, and particularly of the United States. These are the plain facts, plainly stated, and it is well to state them plainly. Such things have transpired before in this world; in Poland; in Hungary; horrible and unexampled massacres have been perpetrated in Armenia.

But my friends, I propose now to speak to you COL? a few moments from the head, and not entirely from the heart, and want all of you to listen to me in the same spirit. It would be no easy task for a more accomplished speaker than I am to fire your indignation and precipitate your judgment to conclusions which the interests of your own country will not warrant. However profoundly our sympathies may be stirred, and

the majestic force of our moral influence may go out to sustain any people struggling for liberty, or in protest against the infliction of horrors upon them, we are still brought back to the question: What is for the best interests of the people of the United States, their honor and their dignity? What would George Washington say if he were dealing with this question to-day? No entangling alliances, no complications with foreign powers. When the South American republics revolted in 1810, the questions of the relation of those countries to ours were treated by James Monroe and John Quincy Adams, and there were brought to bear upon those statesmen-the history of those times reads much like the present-the imperious clamors of an excited and sympathetic people for an action in that direction which was not required by the interests of the American people, and would not be justified by the laws of nations.

And accordingly, upon a scene where history duplicated the events of recent years, it was not until 1824 or 1825 that this country recognized the independence, or even the belligerency, of those striving nations. And history has justified the wisdom of that course. Where American interests are attacked, where the hand of arbitrary power is laid upon an American citizen, where our national honor or dignity are affronted, and reparation is denied, then, I say, as we all said in the early days of the rebellion, when the question was asked: "Is it peace or war?" "Better war, by land and by sea, war with a thousand battles, and shaking a hundred thrones."7

But so long, my fellow-citizens, as no American citizen is incarcerated or deprived of his liberty, so long as not a single American interest is invaded-speaking from the head, and not from the heart (for God knows my heart beats as warmly for them as the heart of any person in this room)-speaking for the interests

of my own country, I implore this audience to be moderate in what we do or what we purpose. I am not commissioned here to bring you any word. I am speaking now of my own personal convictions, solely. I have seen that faithful, well-poised, Christian gentleman and statesman, William McKinley, weighing in the balances this weighty question. I have seen him disturbed by that awful calamity that has recently befallen this nation. I have seen him weighing these questions, with admiration and approval. It has always been a propensity of the American people, in times like these, to drive their President. It is part of their privilege, and perhaps it is well that it should be so. A large proportion of the American people endeavored to drive George Washington into a war with France, at the close of the last century. A large portion of the American people endeavored to drive James Monroe and John Quincy Adams into a war with Spain, in the first twenty-five years of the present century.

Let us take the advice of Captain Sigsbee, and suspend our judgment upon recent matters. If it shall be found that sinister event, and our dark forebodings and apprehensions are justified by the investigation, then I assure you, my fellow-citizens, that the administration of William McKinley will not be found wanting in any act which will conduce to the dignity of this nation. Does any man suppose-or if he undertakes to suppose, I beg him to stop and think—that William McKinley, the boy-soldier who stood as a volunteer upon the fiery ridges of battle in the dark days of this Government; that John Sherman, a name built like masonry into the perpetuity of our institutions; that your own townsman, Russell A. Alger, that John D. Long, the Secretary of the Navy, that the Senate of the United States and the House of Representatives lightly feel or slightly put aside these great questions? It is mighty easy, my fellow-citizens, with no sense of responsibility upon