Part 8

It is not my purpose here to discuss at length the career of the mighty King and mighty General whose statue we have just received. In all history no other great commander save only Hannibal fought so long against such terrible odds, and while Hannibal finally failed, Frederick finally triumphed. In almost every battle he fought against great odds, and he almost always won the victory. When defeated he rose to an even greater altitude than when victorious. The memory of the Seven Years’ War will last as long as there lives in mankind the love of heroism, and its operations will be studied to the minutest detail as long as the world sees a soldier worthy of the name. It is difficult to know whether to admire most the victories of Leuthen and Prague, Rossbach and Zorndorf, or the heartbreaking campaigns after Kunersdorf, when the great King, after having been beaten to the ground by the banded might of Europe, yet rose again and by an exhibition of skill, tenacity, energy, and daring such as had never before been seen united in one person, finally wrested triumph from defeat. Not only must the military scholar always turn to the career of Frederick the Great for lessons in strategy and tactics; not only must the military administrator always turn to his career for lessons in organizing success; not only will the lover of heroism read the tales of his mighty feats as long as mankind cares for heroic deeds; but even those who are not attracted by the valor of the soldier must yet, for the sake of the greatness of the man, ponder and admire the lessons taught by his undaunted resolution, his inflexible tenacity of purpose, his farsighted grasp of lofty possibilities, and his unflinching, unyielding determination in following the path he had marked out. It is eminently fitting that the statue of this iron soldier, this born leader of men, should find a place in this War College; for when soldierly genius and soldierly heroism reach the highest point of achievement the man in whom they are displayed grows to belong not merely to the nation from which he sprang, but to all nations capable of showing, and therefore capable of appreciating, the virile and masterful virtues which alone make victors in those dread struggles where resort is at last had to the arbitrament of arms.

But, Mr. Ambassador, in accepting the statue given us to-day through you from the German Emperor, I accept it not merely because it is the statue of a mighty and terrible soldier, but I accept it as a symbol of the ties of friendship and goodwill which I trust as the years go on will bind ever closer together the American and the German peoples. There is kinship of blood between the two nations. We of the United States are of mixed stock. In our veins runs the blood of almost all the peoples of middle, northern, and western Europe. We already have a history of which we feel that we have the right to be legitimately proud, and yet our nationality is still in the formative period. Nearly three centuries have elapsed since the landing of the English at Jamestown marked the beginning of what has since grown into the United States.

During these three centuries streams of newcomers from many different countries abroad have in each generation contributed to swell the increase of our people. Soon after the English settled in Virginia and New England, the Hollander settled at the mouth of the Hudson and the Swede at the mouth of the Delaware. Even in Colonial days the German element had become very strong among our people in various parts of this country; the Irish element was predominant in the foothills of the Alleghenies; French Huguenots were numerous. By the time of the Declaration of Independence that process of fusion which has gone on ever since was well under way. From the beginning of our national history men of German origin or German parentage played a distinguished part in the affairs both of peace and of war. In the Revolutionary War one of the leading generals was Muhlenberg, an American of German descent, just as among the soldiers from abroad who came to aid us one of the most prominent was the German, Steuben. Muhlenberg was the first Speaker of the House of Representatives; and the battle which in the Revolution saved the valley of the Mohawk to the American cause was fought under the lead of the German, Herkimer. As all the different races here tend rapidly to fuse together, it is rarely possible after one or two generations to draw a sharp line between the various elements; but there is no student of our national conditions who has failed to appreciate what an invaluable element in our composite stock the German is. Here, on this platform, Mr. Ambassador, among those present to-day are many men partly or wholly of German blood, and among the officers of the Army and Navy who have listened to you and who now join with me in greeting you there are many whose fathers or grandfathers were born in Germany, and not a few who themselves first saw the light there.

Each nation has its allotted tasks to do; each nation has its peculiar difficulties to encounter; and as the peoples of the world tend to become more closely knit together alike for good and for evil, it becomes ever more important to all that each should prosper; for the prosperity of one is normally not a sign of menace but a sign of hope for the rest. 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 to do away with all racial and religious animosities among the various stocks. In both efforts we have met with an astonishing measure of success. As the years go by it becomes not harder but easier to live in peace and goodwill among ourselves; and I firmly believe that it will also become not harder but easier to dwell in peace and friendship with the other nations of the earth. A young people, a people of composite stock, we have kinship with many different nations, but we are identical with none of them, and are developing a separate national stock as we have already developed a separate national life. We have in our veins the blood of the Englishman, the Irishman, and the Welshman, the German and the Frenchman, the Scotchman, the Dutchman, the Scandinavian, the Italian, the Magyar, the Finn, the Slav, so that to each of the great powers of the Old World we can claim a more or less distant kinship by blood; and to each strain of blood we owe some peculiar quality in our national life or national character. As such is the case it is natural that we should have a peculiar feeling of nearness to each of many peoples across the water. We most earnestly wish not only to keep unbroken our friendship for each, but so far as we can without giving offence by an appearance of meddling, to seek to bring about a better understanding and a broader spirit of fair dealing and toleration among all nations. It has been my great pleasure, Mr. Ambassador, in pursuance of this object, recently to take with you the first steps in the negotiation of a treaty of friendly arbitration between Germany and the United States.

In closing, let me thank you, and through you the German Emperor and the German people, for this statue, which I accept in the name of the American people; a people claiming blood kinship with your own; a people owing much to Germany; a people which, though with a national history far shorter than that of your people, nevertheless, like your people, is proud of the great deeds of its past, and is confident in the majesty of its future. I most earnestly pray that in the coming years these two great nations shall move on toward their several destinies knit together by ties of the heartiest friendship and goodwill.

REMARKS AT ST. PATRICK’S CHURCH, WASHINGTON, D. C., NOV. 20, 1904

_Cardinal Gibbons, Father Stafford, and you, my Fellow-Americans_:

It is a great pleasure to me to be present with you to-day to assist at the dedication of the school, hall, and rectory of this Parish, a Parish whose one hundred and tenth anniversary we also now celebrate; for this Parish was founded six years before the national capital was placed in the present District of Columbia. I am glad indeed to have been introduced, Cardinal Gibbons, by you, the spiritual representative in a peculiar sense of that Bishop Carroll who played so illustrious a part in the affairs of the Church, and whose kinsfolk played as illustrious a part in the affairs of the Nation at the dawning of this Government. In greeting all of you I wish to say that I am especially glad to see the children present. You know I believe in children. I want to see enough of them and of the right kind.

I wish to-day, in the very brief remarks that I have to make, to dwell upon this thought—the thought that ought to be in the mind of every man and woman here, the thought that while in this country we need wise laws honestly and fearlessly executed, and while we can not afford to tolerate anything but the highest standard in the public service of the Government, yet that in the last analysis the future of the country must depend upon the quality of the individual home, of the individual man or woman in that home. The future of this country depends upon the way in which the average man and the average woman in it does his or her duty, and that very largely depends upon the way in which the average boy or girl is brought up. Therefore, a peculiar responsibility rests upon those whose lifework it is to see to the spiritual welfare of our people and upon those who make it their lifework to try to train the citizens of the future so that they shall be worthy of that future. In wishing you well to-day, I wish you well in doing the most important work which is allotted to any of our people to do. The rules of good citizenship are tolerably simple. The trouble is not in finding them out; the trouble is in living up to them after they have been found out. I think we all of us know fairly well what qualities they are which in their sum make up the type of character we like to see in man or wife, son or daughter; but I am afraid we do not always see them as well developed as we would like to. I wish to see in the average American citizen the development of the two sets of qualities which we can roughly indicate as sweetness and strength—the qualities on the one hand which make the man able to hold his own, and those which on the other hand make him jealous for the rights of others just as much as for his own rights. We must have both sets of qualities. In the first place, the man must have the power to hold his own. You probably know that I do not care very much for the coward or the moral weakling. I want each of you boys, and the girls just as much, and each of you young men and young women, to have the qualities without which people may be amiable and pleasant while things go well, but without which they can not succeed in times of stern trial. I wish to see in the man manliness, in the woman womanliness. I wish to see courage, perseverance, the willingness to face work, to face, you men, if it is necessary, danger, the determination not to shrink back when temporarily beaten in life, as each one will be now and then, but to come up again and wrest triumph from defeat. I want to see you men strong men and brave men, and in addition I wish to see each man of you feel that his strength and his courage but make him the worse unless to that strength and courage are joined the qualities of tenderness toward those he loves, who are dependent upon him, and of right dealing with all his neighbors.

Finally, I want to congratulate all of us here on certain successes that we have achieved in the century and a quarter that has gone by of our American life. We have difficulties enough, and we are a long ways short of perfection. I do not see any immediate danger of our growing too good; there is ample room for effort yet left. But we have achieved certain results, we have succeeded in measurably realizing certain ideals. We have grown to accept it as an axiomatic truth of our American life that the man is to be treated on his worth as a man, without regard to the accidents of his position; that this is not a Government designed to favor the rich man as such, or the poor man as such, but that it is designed to favor every man, rich or poor, if he is a decent man who acts fairly by his fellows. We have grown to realize that part of the foundations upon which our liberty rests is the right of each man to worship his Creator according to the dictates of his conscience, and the duty of each man to respect his fellow who so worships Him. And, oh! my countrymen, one of the best auguries for the future of this country, for the future of this mighty and majestic Nation of ours, lies in the fact that we have grown to regard one another, that we brothers have grown to regard one another, with a broad and kindly charity, and to realize the field for human endeavor is wide, that the field for charitable, philanthropic, religious work is wide, and that while a corner of it remains untilled we do a dreadful wrong if we fail to welcome the work done in that field by every man, no matter what his creed, provided only he works with a lofty sense of his duty to God and his duty to his neighbor.

REMARKS INTRODUCING REV. CHARLES WAGNER, AT THE LAFAYETTE OPERA HOUSE, WASHINGTON, D. C., NOV. 22, 1904

_Mr. Macfarland, Mr. Wagner, Men and Women of Washington_:

This is the first and will be the only time during my Presidency that I shall ever introduce a speaker to an audience; and I am more than glad to do it in this instance, because if there is one book which I should like to have read as a tract, and also, what is not invariably true of tracts, as an interesting tract, by all our people, it is “The Simple Life,” written by Mr. Wagner. There are other books which he has written from which we can gain great good, but I know of no other book written of recent years anywhere, here or abroad, which contains so much that we of America ought to take to our hearts as is contained in “The Simple Life.” I like the book because it does not merely preach to the rich, and does not merely preach to the poor. It is a very easy thing to address a section of the community in reprobation of the forms of vice to which it is not prone. What we need to have impressed upon us is that it is not usually the root principle of the vice that varies with variation in social conditions, but that it is the manifestation of the vice that varies; and Mr. Wagner has well brought out the great fundamental truth that the brutal arrogance of a rich man who looks down upon a poor man because he is poor, and the brutal envy and hatred felt by a poor man toward a rich man merely because he is rich, are at bottom twin manifestations of the same vice. They are simply different sides of the same shield. The arrogance that looks down in the one case, the envy that hates in the other, are really exhibitions of the same mean, base, and unlovely spirit which happens in one case to be in different surroundings from what it is in the other case. The kind of man who would be arrogant in one case is precisely the kind of man who would be envious and filled with hatred in the other. The ideal should be the just, the generous, the broad-minded man who is as incapable of arrogance if rich as he is of malignant envy and hatred if poor.

No republic can permanently exist when it becomes a republic of classes, where the man feels not the interest of the whole people, but the interest of the particular class to which he belongs, or fancies that he belongs, as being of prime importance. In antiquity, republics failed as they did because they tended to become either a republic of the few who exploited the many, or a republic of the many who plundered the few, and in either case the end of the republic was inevitable; just as much so in one case as in the other, and no more so in one case than in the other. We can keep this Republic true to the principles of those who founded, and of those who afterward preserved it, we can keep it a Republic at all, only by remembering that we must live up to the theory of its founders, to the theory, of treating each man on his worth as a man; neither holding it for nor against him that he occupies any particular station in life, so long as he does his duty fairly and well by his fellows and by the Nation as a whole.

So much for the general philosophy taught so admirably in Mr. Wagner’s book—I might say books, but I am thinking especially of “The Simple Life,” because that has been the book that has appealed to me particularly. Now, a word with special reference to his address to this audience, to the Young Men’s Christian Association: The profound regard which I have always felt for those responsible for the work of the Young Men’s Christian Association and the Young Women’s Christian Association, is largely because they have practically realized, or at least have striven practically to realize, the ideal of adherence to the text which reads, “Be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only.” If you here to-day came here only with the idea of passing a pleasant afternoon and then go home and do not actually practice somewhat of what Mr. Wagner preaches and practices, then small will be the use of your coming. It is not of the slightest use to hear the word if you do not try to put it into effect afterward. The Young Men’s Christian Associations have accomplished so much because those who have managed them have tried practically to do their part in bringing about what is expressed in the phrase “the fatherhood of God, and the brotherhood of men.” We can act individually or we can act by associations. I intend this afternoon to illustrate by a couple of examples what I mean by a man acting individually, and what I mean by a man acting in associations with his fellows. I hesitated whether I would use, as I shall use, the names of the people whom I meant, but I came to the conclusion that I would, because the worth of an example consists very largely in the knowledge that the example is a real one.

I have been immensely interested for a number of years in the working of the Civic Club in New York, which has been started and superintended by Mr. Norton Goddard. It is a club on the East Side of New York City, the range of whose membership includes a big district of the city, extending from about Lexington Avenue to the East River. Mr. Goddard realized that such work can be done to best advantage only upon condition of there being genuine and hearty sympathy among those doing it. There are a great many people so made in this world (I think most of us come under the category) that they would resent being patronized about as much as being wronged. Great good can never be done if it is attempted in a patronizing spirit. Mr. Goddard realized that the work could be done efficiently only on condition of getting into close and hearty touch with the people through whom and with whom he was to work. In consequence, this Civic Club was founded, and it has gradually extended its operations until now the entire club membership of three or four thousand men practically form a committee of betterment in social and civic life; a committee spread throughout that district, each member keeping a sharp lookout over the fortunes of all his immediate neighbors, of all of those of his neighborhood who do not come within the ken of some other member of the club. Therefore, any case of great destitution, of great suffering, in the district, almost inevitably comes to the attention of some member of the club, who then reports it at headquarters, so that steps can be taken to alleviate the misery; and I have reason to believe that there has been in consequence a very sensible general uplifting, a general increase of happiness, throughout the district. If we had a sufficient number of clubs of this kind throughout our great cities, while we would not by any means have solved all of the terrible problems that press upon us for solution in connection with municipal misgovernment and with the overcrowding, misery, vice, disease, and poverty of great cities, yet we would have taken a long stride forward in the right direction toward their solution. So much for the example that I use to illustrate what I mean by work in combination.