Standard Selections Part 38

Expose the crime, and hunt down the criminal; but remember that even in the case of crime, if it is attacked in sensational, lurid, and untruthful fashion, the attack may do more damage to the public mind than the crime itself. It is because I feel that there should be no rest in the endless war against the forces of evil that I ask that the war be conducted with sanity as well as with resolution. The men with the muck-rakes are often indispensable to the well-being of society; but only if they know when to stop raking the muck, and to look upward to the celestial crown above them, to the crown of worthy endeavor. There are beautiful things above and round about them; and if they gradually grow to feel that the whole world is nothing but muck, their power of usefulness is gone. If the whole picture is painted black, there remains no hue whereby to single out the rascals for distinction from their fellows. Such painting finally induces a kind of moral color-blindness; and people affected by it come to the conclusion that no man is really black, and no man really white, but they are all gray. In other words, they neither believe in the truth of the attack, nor in the honesty of the man who is attacked; they grow as suspicious of the accusation as of the offense; it becomes well-nigh hopeless to stir them either to wrath against wrong-doing or to enthusiasm for what is right; and such a mental att.i.tude in the public gives hope to every knave, and is the despair of honest men.

To a.s.sail the great and admitted evils of our political and industrial life with such crude and sweeping generalizations as to include decent men in the general condemnation means the searing of the public conscience. There results a general att.i.tude either of cynical belief in and indifference to public corruption or else of a distrustful inability to discriminate between the good and the bad. Either att.i.tude is fraught with untold damage to the country as a whole. The fool who has not sense to discriminate between what is good and what is bad is well-nigh as dangerous as the man who does discriminate and yet chooses the bad.

There is nothing more distressing to every good patriot, to every good American, than the hard, scoffing spirit which treats the allegation of dishonesty in a public man as a cause for laughter. Such laughter is worse than the crackling of thorns under a pot, for it denotes not merely the vacant mind, but the heart in which high emotions have been choked before they could grow to fruition.

There is any amount of good in the world, and there never was a time when loftier and more disinterested work for the betterment of mankind was being done than now. The forces that tend for evil are great and terrible, but the forces of truth and love and courage and honesty and generosity and sympathy are also stronger than ever before. It is a foolish and timid, no less than a wicked thing, to blink the fact that the forces of evil are strong, but it is even worse to fail to take into account the strength of the forces that tell for good. Hysterical sensationalism is the very poorest weapon wherewith to fight for lasting righteousness. The men who, with stern sobriety and truth, a.s.sail the many evils of our time, whether in the public press, or in magazines, or in books, are the leaders and allies of all engaged in the work for social and political betterment. But if they give good reason for distrust of what they say, if they chill the ardor of those who demand truth as a primary virtue, they thereby betray the good cause, and play into the hands of the very men against whom they are nominally at war....

At this moment we are pa.s.sing through a period of great unrest--social, political, and industrial unrest. It is of the utmost importance for our future that this should prove to be not the unrest of mere rebelliousness against life, of mere dissatisfaction with the inevitable inequality of conditions, but the unrest of a resolute and eager ambition to secure the betterment of the individual and the nation. So far as this movement of agitation throughout the country takes the form of a fierce discontent with evil, of a determination to punish the authors of evil, whether in industry or politics, the feeling is to be heartily welcomed as a sign of healthy life.

If, on the other hand, it turns into a mere crusade of appet.i.te against appet.i.te, of a contest between the brutal greed of the "have-nots" and the brutal greed of the "haves," then it has no significance for good, but only for evil. If it seeks to establish a line of cleavage, not along the line which divides good men from bad, but along that other line, running at right angles thereto, which divides those who are well off from those who are less well off, then it will be fraught with immeasurable harm to the body politic.

We can no more and no less afford to condone evil in the man of capital than evil in the man of no capital. The wealthy man who exults because there is a failure of justice in the effort to bring some trust magnate to an account for his misdeeds is as bad as, and no worse than, the so-called labor leader who clamorously strives to excite a foul cla.s.s feeling on behalf of some other labor leader who is implicated in murder. One att.i.tude is as bad as the other, and no worse; in each case the accused is ent.i.tled to exact justice; and in neither case is there need of action by others which can be construed into an expression of sympathy for crime.

It is a prime necessity that if the present unrest is to result in permanent good the emotion shall be translated into action, and that the action shall be marked by honesty, sanity and self-restraint. There is mighty little good in a mere spasm of reform. The reform that counts is that which comes through steady, continuous growth; violent emotionalism leads to exhaustion....

The first requisite in the public servants who are to deal in this shape with corporations, whether as legislators or as executives, is honesty.

This honesty can be no respecter of persons. There can be no such thing as unilateral honesty. The danger is not really from corrupt corporations; it springs from the corruption itself, whether exercised for or against corporations.

The eighth commandment reads, "Thou shalt not steal." It does not read, "Thou shalt not steal from the rich man." It does not read, "Thou shalt not steal from the poor man." It reads simply and plainly, "Thou shalt not steal." No good whatever will come from that warped and mock morality which denounces the misdeeds of men of wealth and forgets the misdeeds practiced at their expense; which denounces bribery, but blinds itself to blackmail; which foams with rage if a corporation secures favors by improper methods, and merely leers with hideous mirth if the corporation is itself wronged. The only public servant who can be trusted honestly to protect the rights of the public against the misdeed of a corporation is that public man who will just as surely protect the corporation itself from wrongful aggression. If a public man is willing to yield to popular clamor and do wrong to the men of wealth or to rich corporations, it may be set down as certain that if the opportunity comes he will secretly and furtively do wrong to the public in the interest of a corporation.

But, in addition to honesty, we need sanity. No honesty will make a public man useful if that man is timid or foolish, if he is a hot-headed zealot or an impracticable visionary. As we strive for reform we find that it is not at all merely the case of a long uphill pull. On the contrary, there is almost as much of breeching work as of collar work; to depend only on traces means that there will soon be a runaway and an upset. The men of wealth who to-day are trying to prevent the regulation and control of their business in the interest of the public by the proper Government authorities will not succeed, in my judgment, in checking the progress of the movement. But if they did succeed they would find that they had sown the wind and would surely reap the whirlwind, for they would ultimately provoke the violent excesses which accompany a reform coming by convulsion instead of by steady and natural growth.

On the other hand, the wild preachers of unrest and discontent, the wild agitators against the entire existing order, the men who act crookedly, whether because of sinister design or from mere puzzleheadedness, the men who preach destruction without proposing any subst.i.tute for what they intend to destroy, or who propose a subst.i.tute which would be far worse than the existing evils--all these men are the most dangerous opponents of real reform. If they get their way, they will lead the people into a deeper pit than any into which they could fall under the present system. If they fail to get their way, they will still do incalculable harm by provoking the kind of reaction which, in its revolt against the senseless evil of their teaching, would enthrone more securely than ever the very evils which their misguided followers believe they are attacking.

More important than aught else is the development of the broadest sympathy of man for man. The welfare of the wage-worker, the welfare of the tiller of the soil, upon these depend the welfare of the entire country; their good is not to be sought in pulling down others; but their good must be the prime object of all our statesmanship.

Materially we must strive to secure a broader economic opportunity for all men, so that each shall have a better chance to show the stuff of which he is made. Spiritually and ethically we must strive to bring about clean living and right thinking. We appreciate that the things of the body are important; but we appreciate also that the things of the soul are immeasurably more important. The foundation stone of national life is, and ever must be, the high individual character of the average citizen.

FOOTNOTE:

[45] From an address delivered by the President at the laying of the corner-stone of the Office Building of the House of Representatives, April 14, 1906.

MESSAGE TO THE SQUADRON[46]

ADMIRAL HEIHAICHIRO TOGO

The war of twenty months' duration is now a thing of the past, and our united squadron, having completed its functions, is to be herewith dispersed. But our duties as naval men are not at all lightened for that reason. To preserve in perpetuity the fruits of this war, to promote to ever greater heights of prosperity the fortunes of the country, the navy, which, irrespective of peace or war, has to stand between the Empire and shocks from abroad, must always maintain its strength at sea and must be prepared to meet any emergency.

This strength does not consist solely in ships and armaments, it consists also in material ability to utilize such agents. When we understand that one gun that scores a hundred per cent of hits is a match for a hundred of the enemy's guns each of which scores only one per cent, it becomes evident that we sailors must have recourse before everything to the strength which is over and above externals. The triumphs recently won by our navy are largely to be attributed to the habitual training which enabled us to garner the fruits of the fighting.

If, then, we infer the future from the past, we recognize that, though wars may cease, we cannot abandon ourselves to ease and rest. A soldier's whole life is one continuous and unceasing battle, and there is no reason why his responsibilities should vary with the state of the times. In days of crisis he has to display his strength, in days of peace to acc.u.mulate it, thus perpetually and uniquely discharging his duties to the full.

If men calling themselves sailors grasp at the pleasures of peace, they will learn the lesson that, however fine in appearance their engines of war, those, like a house built on the sand, will fall at the first approach of the storm.

When in ancient times we conquered Korea that country remained over four hundred years under our control, only to be lost by j.a.pan as soon as our navy had declined. Again, when under the sway of the Tokugawa in modern days our armaments were neglected, the coming of a few American ships threw us into distress. On the other hand, the British navy, which won the battles of the Nile and of Trafalgar, not only made England as secure as a great mountain, but also by thenceforth carefully maintaining its strength and keeping it on a level with the world's progress has safeguarded that country's interests and promoted its fortunes.

Such lessons, whether ancient or modern, occidental or oriental, though to some extent they are the outcome of political happenings, must be regarded as in the main the natural result of whether the soldier remembers war in the day of peace. We naval men who have survived the war must plan future developments and seek not to fall behind the progress of the time. If, keeping the instructions of our Sovereign ever graven on our hearts, we serve him earnestly and diligently, and putting forth our full strength await what the hour may bring forth, we shall then have discharged our great duty of perpetually guarding our country.

FOOTNOTE:

[46] Address at the dispersal of the squadron at the close of the Russo-j.a.panese war.

THE MINUTE MAN

GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS

Citizens of a great, free, and prosperous country, we come hither to honor the men, our fathers, who on this spot struck the first blow in the contest which made our country independent. Here, beneath the hills they trod, by the peaceful river on whose sh.o.r.es they dwelt, amidst the fields that they sowed and reaped, we come to tell their story, to try ourselves by their lofty standard, to know if we are their worthy children; and, standing reverently where they stood and fought and died, to swear before G.o.d and each other, that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

The minute man of the Revolution! And who was he? He was the husband and father, who left the plough in the furrow, the hammer on the bench, and, kissing his wife and children, marched to die or to be free! He was the old, the middle-aged, the young. He was Captain Miles, of Acton, who reproved his men for jesting on the march! He was Deacon Josiah Haines, of Sudbury, eighty years old, who marched with his company to South Bridge, at Concord, then joined in that hot pursuit to Lexington, and fell as gloriously as Warren at Bunker Hill. He was James Hayward, of Acton, twenty-two years old, foremost in that deadly race from Charlestown to Concord, who raised his piece at the same moment with a British soldier, each exclaiming, "You are a dead man!" The Briton dropped, shot through the heart. Hayward fell mortally wounded.

"Father," said he, "I started with forty b.a.l.l.s; I have three left. I never did such a day's work before. Tell mother not to mourn too much; and tell her whom I love more than my mother that I am not sorry I turned out."

The last living link with the Revolution has long been broken; and we who stand here to-day have a sympathy with the men at the old North Bridge, which those who preceded us here at earlier celebrations could not know. With them war was a name and a tradition. When they a.s.sembled to celebrate this day, they saw a little group of tottering forms, whose pride was that, before living memory, they had been minute men of American Independence.

But with us, how changed! War is no longer a tradition, half romantic and obscure. It has ravaged how many of our homes, it has wrung how many of the hearts before me? North and South, we know the pang. We do not count around us a few feeble veterans of the contest, but we are girt with a cloud of witnesses. Behold them here to-day, sharing in these pious and peaceful rites, the honored citizens whose glory it is that they were minute men of American liberty and union! These men of to-day interpret to us, with resistless eloquence, the men and the times we commemorate. Now, if never before, we understand the Revolution. Now, we know the secrets of those old hearts and homes.

No royal governor sits in yon stately capitol; no hostile fleet for many a year has vexed the waters of our coast; nor is any army but our own ever likely to tread our soil. Not such are our enemies to-day. They do not come proudly stepping to the drum-beat, with bayonets flashing in the morning sun. But wherever party spirit shall strain the ancient guarantees of freedom, or bigotry and ignorance of caste shall strike at equal rights, or corruption shall poison the very springs of national life, there, minute men of liberty, are your Lexington Green and Concord Bridge! And, as you love your country and your kind, and would have your children rise up and call you blessed, spare not the enemy! Over the hills, out of the earth, down from the clouds, pour in resistless might!

Fire from every rock and tree, from door and window, from hearth-stone and chamber; hang upon his flank and rear from morn to sunset, and so through a land blazing with holy indignation, hurl the hordes of ignorance and corruption and injustice back, back in utter defeat and ruin.

A MORE PERFECT UNION[47]

GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS

Upon this field consecrated by American valor we meet to consecrate ourselves to American union. In this hallowed ground lie buried, not only brave soldiers of the blue and the gray, but the pa.s.sions of war, the jealousies of sections, and the bitter root of all our national differences, human slavery. Here long and angry controversies of political dogma, of material interest, and of local pride and tradition, came to their decisive struggle. As the fate of Christendom was determined at Tours, that of American Independence at Saratoga, and that of modern Europe at Waterloo, the destiny of the American Union was decided at Gettysburg. A hundred other famous fields there are of the same American bravery in the same tremendous strife; fields whose proud and terrible tale history and song will never tire of telling. But it is here that the struggle touched its highest point. Here broke the fiery crest of that invading wave of war.

This is one of the historic fields of the world, and to us Americans no other has an interest so profound. Marathon and Arbela, Worcester and Valmy, even our own Bunker Hill and Saratoga and Yorktown, fields of undying fame, have not for us a significance so vital and so beneficent as this field of Gettysburg. Around its chief and central interest gather a.s.sociations of felicitous significance. Like the House of Delegates in Williamsburg, where Patrick Henry roused Virginia to resistance; like Faneuil Hall in Boston, where Samuel Adams lifted New England to independence; like Carpenter's Hall in Philadelphia, where the Continental Congress a.s.sembled, this field is invested with the undying charm of famous words fitly spoken. While yet the echoes of the battle might have seemed to linger in the awed and grieving air, stood the sad and patient and devoted man, whose burden was greater than that of any man of his generation, and as greatly borne as any solemn responsibility in human history. Upon this field he spoke the few simple words which enshrine the significance of the great controversy and which have become a part of this historic scene, to endure with the memory of Gettysburg, and to touch the heart and exalt the hope of every American from the gulf to the lakes and from ocean to ocean, so long as this valley shall smile with spring and glow with autumn, and day and night and seed time and harvest shall not fail.

To-day his prophetic vision is fulfilled. The murmur of these hosts of peace encamped upon this field of war, this universal voice of friendly greeting and congratulation, these cheers of the gray echoing the cheers of the blue, what are they but the answering music of those chords of memory; the swelling chorus of the Union responding to the better angels of our nature? If there be joy in Heaven this day, it is in the heart of Abraham Lincoln as he looks down upon this field of Gettysburg.

But that the glory of this day, and of America, and of human nature, may be full, it is the veterans and survivors of the armies whose tremendous conflict interpreted the Const.i.tution, who to-day, here upon the field of battle and upon its twenty-fifth anniversary, clasp friendly hands of sympathy to salute a common victory. This is a spectacle without precedent in history. No field of the cloth of gold, or of the grounded arms, no splendid scene of the royal adjustment of conquests, the diplomatic settlement of treaties, or the papal incitement of crusades, rivals in moral grandeur and significance this simple pageant.

The sun of Gettysburg rose on the 1st of July and saw the army of the gray already advancing in line of battle; the army of the blue still hastening eagerly forward and converging to this point. The glory of midsummer filled this landscape as if nature had arrayed a fitting scene for a transcendent event. Once more the unquailing lines so long arrayed against each other stood face to face. Once more the inexpressible emotion mingled of yearning memory, of fond affection, of dread foreboding, of high hope, of patriotic enthusiasm and of stern resolve, swept for a moment over thousands of brave hearts, and the next instant the overwhelming storm of battle burst. For three long, proud, immortal days it raged and swayed, the earth trembling, the air quivering, the sky obscured; with shouting charge, and rattling volley, the thundering cannonade piling the ground with mangled and bleeding blue and gray, the old, the young, but always and everywhere the devoted and the brave.

Doubtful the battle hung and paused. Then a formidable bolt of war was forged on yonder wooded height and launched with withering blasts and roar of fire against the foe. It was a living bolt and sped as if resistless. It reached and touched the flaming line of the embattled blue. It pierced the line. For one brief moment in the sharp agony of mortal strife it held its own. It was the supreme moment of the peril of the Union. It was the heroic crisis of the war. But the fiery force was spent. In one last, wild, tumultuous struggle brave men dashed headlong against men as brave, and the next moment that awful bolt of daring courage was melted in the fervent heat of an equal valor, and the battle of Gettysburg was fought.

If the rising sun of the Fourth of July, 1863, looked upon a sad and unwonted scene, a desolated battlefield, upon which the combatants upon either side had been American citizens, yet those combatants could they have seen aright would have hailed that day as more glorious than ever before. For as the children of Israel beheld Moses descending amid the clouds and thunder of the sacred mount bearing the divinely illuminated law, so from that smoking and blood-drenched field on which all hope of future union might seem to have perished utterly, they would have seen a more perfect union rising, with the const.i.tution at last immutably interpreted, and they would have heard, before they were uttered by human lips, the words of which Gettysburg is the immortal pledge to mankind, government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

FOOTNOTE:

[47] Delivered at Gettysburg, July 3, 1888. The occasion was a reunion of the Blue and the Gray on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the great battle.