University of Virginia Library

XIII
AT THE FOUNDERS' DAY BANQUET OF THE
UNION LEAGUE, PHILADELPHIA, NOVEMBER
22, 1902

Mr. President, gentlemen of the Union League:

Forty years ago this Club was founded, in the dark
days of the Civil War, to uphold the hands of Abraham
Lincoln and give aid to those who battled for the Union
and for human liberty. Two years ago President McKinley
came here as your guest to thank you, and through
you all those far-sighted and loyal men who had supported
him in his successful effort to keep untarnished the national
good faith at home and the national honor abroad,
and to bring back to this country the material well-being,
which we now so abundantly enjoy. It was no accident
which made the men of this Club who stood as in a peculiar
sense the champions and upholders of the principles
of Lincoln in the early sixties stand no less stoutly for
those typified in the person of McKinley during the closing
years of the century. The qualities apt to make men
respond to the call of duty in one crisis are also apt to
make them respond to a similar call in a crisis of a different
character. The traits which enabled our people to
pass unscathed through the fiery ordeal of the Civil War
were the traits upon which we had to rely in the less serious,
but yet serious, dangers by which we were menaced
in 1896, 1898, and 1900.

From the very beginning our people have markedly
combined practical capacity for affairs with power of devotion

to an ideal. The lack of either quality would have
rendered the possession of the other of small value. Mere
ability to achieve success in things concerning the body
would not have atoned for the failure to live the life
of high endeavor; and, on the other hand, without a
foundation of those qualities which bring material prosperity
there would be nothing on which the higher life
could be built. The men of the Revolution would have
failed if they had not possessed alike devotion to liberty
and ability (once liberty had been achieved) to show
common-sense and self-restraint in its use. The men of
the great Civil War would have failed had they not possessed
the business capacity which developed and organized
their resources in addition to the stern resolution to
expend these resources as freely as they expended their
blood in furtherance of the great cause for which their
hearts leaped. It is this combination of qualities that has
made our people succeed. Other peoples have been as
devoted to liberty, and yet, because of lack of hardheaded
common-sense and of ability to show restraint
and subordinate individual passions for the general good,
have failed so signally in the struggle of life as to become
a byword among the nations. Yet other peoples, again,
have possessed all possible thrift and business capacity,
but have been trampled under foot, or have played a sordid
and ignoble part in the world, because their business
capacity was unaccompanied by any of the lift toward
nobler things which marks a great and generous nation.
The stern but just rule of judgment for humanity is that
each nation shall be known by its fruits; and if there are
no fruits, if the nation has failed, it matters but little
whether it has failed through meanness of soul or through
lack of robustness of character. We must judge a nation
by the net result of its life and activity. And so we must
judge the policies of those who at any time control the
destinies of a nation.

Therefore I ask you to-night to look at the results of
the policies championed by President McKinley on both
the occasions when he appealed to the people for their suffrages,
and to see how well that appeal has been justified
by the event. Most certainly I do not claim all the good
that has befallen us during the past six years as due solely
to any human policy. No legislation, however wise, no
Administration, however efficient, can secure prosperity
to a people or greatness to a nation. All that can be
done by the lawmaker and the administrator is to give
the best chance possible for the people of the country
themselves to show the stuff that is in them. President
McKinley was elected in 1896 on the specific pledge
that he would keep the financial honor of the nation
untarnished and would put our economic system on a
stable basis, so that our people might be given a chance
to secure the return of prosperity. Both pledges have
been so well kept that, as is but too often the case,
men are beginning to forget how much the keeping of
them has meant. When people have become very prosperous
they tend to become sluggishly indifferent to the
continuation of the policies that brought about their
prosperity. At such times as these it is of course a mere
law of nature that some men prosper more than others,
and too often those who prosper less, in their jealousy of
their more fortunate brethren, forget that all have prospered
somewhat. I ask you soberly to remember that
the complaint made at the present day of our industrial
or economic conditions never takes the form of stating
that any of our people are less well off than they were
seven or eight years back, before President McKinley
came in and his policies had a chance to be applied; but
that the complaint is that some people have received
more than their share of the good things of the world.
There was no such complaint eight years ago, in the summer
of 1894. Complaint was not then that any one had

prospered too much; it was that no one had prospered
enough. Let each one of us think of the affairs of his
own household and his own business, let each of us compare
his standing now with his standing eight years back,
and then let him answer for himself whether it is not true
that the policies for which William McKinley stood in
1896 have justified themselves thrice over by the results
they have brought about.

In 1900 the issues were in part the same, but new ones
had been added. Prosperity had returned; the gold
standard was assured; our tariff was remodelled on the
lines that have marked it at all periods when our wellbeing
was greatest. But, as must often happen, the Presi
dent elected on certain issues was obliged to face others
entirely unforeseen. Rarely indeed have our greatest
men made issues—they have shown their greatness by
meeting them as they arose. President McKinley faced
the problems of the Spanish war and those that followed
it exactly as he had faced the problems of our economic
and financial needs. As a sequel to the war with Spain
we found ourselves in possession of the Philippines under
circumstances which rendered it necessary to subdue a
formidable insurrection which made it impossible for us
with honor or with regard to the welfare of the islands
to withdraw therefrom. The occasion was seized by the
opponents of the President for trying to raise a new
issue, on which they hoped they might be more successful
than on the old. The clamor raised against him was
joined in not only by many honest men who were led
astray by a mistaken view or imperfect knowledge of the
facts, but by all who feared effort, who shrank from the
rough work of endeavor. The campaign of 1900 had to
be fought largely upon the new issue thus raised. President
McKinley met it squarely. Two years and eight
months ago, before his second nomination, he spoke as
follows:

We believe that the century of free government which the
American people have enjoyed has not rendered them irresolute
and faithless, but has fitted them for the great task of lifting
up and assisting to better conditions and larger liberty
those distant peoples who through the issue of battle have
become our wards. Let us fear not. There is no occasion
for faint hearts, no excuse for regrets. Nations do not grow
in strength, the cause of liberty and law is not advanced by
the doing of easy things. The harder the task the greater will
be the result, the benefit, and the honor. To doubt our power
to accomplish it is to lose faith in the soundness and strength
of our popular institutions. . . . We have the new care
and cannot shift it. And, breaking up the camp of ease and
isolation, let us bravely and hopefully and soberly continue
the march of faithful service, and falter not until the work is
done. . . . The burden is our opportunity. The opportunity
is greater than the burden.

There spoke the man who preached the gospel of hope
as well as the gospel of duty, and on the issue thus fairly
drawn between those who said we would do our new
work well and triumphantly and those who said we would
fail lamentably in the effort, the contest was joined. We
won. And now I ask you, two years after the victory,
to look across the seas and judge for yourselves whether
or not the promise has been kept. The prophets of disaster
have seen their predictions so completely falsified
by the event that it is actually difficult to arouse even a
passing interest in their failure. To answer them now,
to review their attack on our army, is of merely academic
interest. They played their brief part of obstruction and
clamor; they said their say; and the current of our life
went over them and they sank under it as did their predecessors
who, thirty-six years before, had declared that
another and greater war was a failure, that another and
greater struggle for true liberty was only a contest for
subjugation in which the United States could never succeed.

The insurrection among the Filipinos has been
absolutely quelled. The war has been brought to an end
sooner than even the most sanguine of us dared to hope.
The world has not in recent years seen any military task
done with more soldierly energy and ability; and done,
moreover, in a spirit of great humanity. The strain on
the army was terrible, for the conditions of climate and
soil made their work harassing to an extraordinary degree,
and the foes in the field were treacherous and cruel,
not merely toward our men, but toward the great multitude
of peaceful islanders who welcomed 'our rule.
Under the strain of well-nigh intolerable provocation
there were shameful instances, as must happen in all
wars, where the soldiers forgot themselves, and retaliated
evil for evil. There were one hundred thousand of our
men in the Philippines, a hundred thousand hired for a
small sum a month apiece, put there under conditions
that strained their nerves to the breaking point, and some
of the hundred thousand did what they ought not to have
done. But out of a hundred thousand men at home,
have all been faultless? Every effort has been made to
detect such cases, to punish the offenders, and to prevent
any recurrence of the deed. It is a cruel injustice to the
gallant men who fought so well in the Philippines not to
recognize that these instances were exceptional, and that
the American troops who served in the far-off tropic
islands deserve praise the same in kind that has always
been given to those who have well and valiantly fought
for the honor of our common flag and common country.
The work of civil administration has kept pace with the
work of military administration, and when on July 4th
last amnesty and peace were declared throughout the
islands the civil government assumed the complete control.
Peace and order now prevail and a greater measure
of prosperity and of happiness than the Filipinos have
ever hitherto known in all their dark and checkered
history; and each one of them has a greater measure of
liberty, a greater chance of happiness, and greater safety
for his life and property than he or his forefathers have
ever before known.

Thus we have met each task that has confronted us
during the past six years. Thus we have kept every
promise made in 1896 and 1900. We have a right to be
proud of the memories of the last six years. But we
must remember that each victory only opens the chance
for a new struggle; that the remembrance of triumphs
achieved in the past is of use chiefly if it spurs us to fresh
effort in the present. No nation has ever prospered as
we are prospering now, and we must see to it that by
our own folly we do not mar this prosperity. Yet we
must see to it also that wherever wrong flourishes it be
repressed. It is not the habit of our people to shirk
issues, but squarely to face them. It is not the habit of
our people to treat a good record in the past as anything
but a reason for expecting an even better record in the
present; and no administration, gentlemen, should ask to
be judged save on those lines. The tremendous growth
of our industrialism has brought to the front many problems
with which we must deal; and I trust that we shall
deal with them along the lines indicated in speech and in
action by that profound jurist and upright and fearless
public servant who represents Pennsylvania in the Cabinet
—Attorney-General Knox. The question of the so-called
trusts is but one of the questions we must meet in connection
with our industrial system. There are many of
them and they are serious; but they can and will be met.
Time may be needed for making the solution perfect;
but it is idle to tell this people that we have not the
power to solve such a problem as that of exercising adequate
supervision over the great industrial combinations
of to-day. We have the power and we shall find out the
way. We shall not act hastily or recklessly; but we have

firmly made up our minds that a solution, and a right
solution, shall be found, and found it will be.

No nation as great as ours can expect to escape the
penalty of greatness, for greatness does not come without
trouble and labor. There are problems ahead of us
at home and problems abroad, because such problems are
incident to the working out of a great national career.
We do not shrink from them. Scant is our patience with
those who preach the gospel of craven weakness. No
nation under the sun ever yet played a part worth playing
if it feared its fate overmuch—if it did not have the
courage to be great. We of America, we, the sons of a
nation yet in the pride of its lusty youth, spurn the
teachings of distrust, spurn the creed of failure and despair.
We know that the future is ours if we have in us
the manhood to grasp it, and we enter the new century
girding our loins for the contest before us, rejoicing in
the struggle, and resolute so to bear ourselves that the
nation's future shall even surpass her glorious past.