step, which, taken to-day, may lead to assured victory, taken to-morrow may barely avert disaster. All the Allies have discovered that. It was a new country for us all. It was trackless, mapless. We had to go by instinct. But we found the way, and I am so glad that you are sending your great naval and military experts here, just to exchange experience with men who have been through all the dreary, anxious crises of the last three years. America has helped us even to win the battle of Arras. Do you know that these guns which destroyed the German trenches, shattered the barbed wire-I remember, with some friends of mine whom I see here, arranging to order the machines to make those guns from America. Not all of them-you got your share, but only a share, a glorious share. So that America has also had her training. She has been making guns, making ammunition, giving us machinery to prepare both; she has supplied us with steel, and she has got all that organization and she has got that wonderful facility, adaptability, and resourcefulness of the great people which inhabits that great continent. Ah! It was a bad day for military autocracy in Prussia when it challenged the great Republic of the West. We know what America can do, and we also know that now she is in it she will do it. She will wage an effective and successful war. There is something more important. She will insure a beneficent peace. I attach great importance—and I am the last man in the world, knowing for three years what our difficulties have been, what our anxieties have been, and what our fears have been-I am the last man to say that the succor which is given to us from America is not something in itself to rejoice in, and to rejoice in greatly. But I don't mind saying that I rejoice even more in the knowledge that America is going to win the right to be at the conference table when the terms of peace are being discussed. That conference will settle the destiny of nations-the course of human life-for God knows how many ages. It would have been tragic for mankind if America had not been there, and there with all the influence, all the power, and the right which she has now won by flinging herself into this great struggle. I can see peace coming now-not a peace which will be the beginning of war; not a peace which will be an endless preparation for strife and bloodshed; but a real peace. The world is an old world. It has never had peace. It has been rocking and swaying like an ocean, and Europe -poor Europe!-has always lived under the menace of the sword. When this war began, two-thirds of Europe were under autocratic rule. It is the other way about now, and democracy means peace. The democracy of France did not want war; the democracy of Italy hesitated long before they entered the war; the democracy of this country shrank from itshrank and shuddered-and never would have entered the caldron had it not been for the invasion of Belgium. The democracies sought peace; strove for peace. If Prussia had been a democracy there would have been no war. Strange things have happened in this war. things to come, and they are coming rapidly. There are stranger There are times in history when this world spins so leisurely along its destined course that it seems for centuries to be at a standstill; but there are also times when it rushes along at a giddy pace, covering the track of centuries in a year. Those are the times we are living in now. Six weeks ago Russia was an autocracy; she now is one of the most advanced democracies in the world. To-day we are waging the most devastating war that the world has ever seen; to-morrow-perhaps not a distant tomorrow-war may be abolished forever from the category of human crimes. This may be something like the fierce outburst of winter which we are now witnessing before the complete triumph of the sun. It is written of those gallant men who won that victory on Monday-men from Canada, from Australia, and from this old country, which has proved that in spite of its age it is not decrepit-it is written of those gallant men that they attacked with the dawn-fit work for the dawn!-to drive out of forty miles of French soil those miscreants who had defiled it for three years. "They attacked with the dawn." 6 Significant phrase! The breaking up of the dark rule of the Turk, which for centuries has clouded the sunniest land in the world, the freeing of Russia from an oppression which has covered it like a shroud for so long, the great declaration of President Wilson, coming with the might of the great nation which he represents into the struggle for liberty, are heralds of the dawn. "They attacked with the dawn," and these men are marching forward in the full radiance of that dawn, and soon Frenchmen and Americans. British, Italians, Russians, yea, and Serbians, Belgians, Montenegrins, will march into the full light of a perfect day. Notes on America's Entrance Into the War The three wars which Prussia waged for conquest before the World War were: (1) The Danish War (1864), in which, through the aid of Austria, Schleswig and Holstein were wrested from Denmark. (2) The "Six Weeks' War" with Austria (1866), which grew out of dividing the spoils of the former war. As a result Prussia increased her territory one-half. (3) The Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871), by means of which she gained AlsaceLorraine. 2 The French Foreign Minister was Delcassé. The event referred to was in connection with the First Morocco crisis of 1905-1906. The German ambas sador to France in demanding the dismissal of M. Delcassé said, "His policy is a menace to Germany, and you may rest assured we shall not wait for it to be realized.” 3 The sinking of the Lusitania, May 7. 1915. 4 The sinking of the Susser, March 24, 1916. 5 How do these golfing terms apply? 6"They attacked with the dawn." The reference is to the battle of Vimy Ridge. SPEECH GIVEN IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE Introducing Baron Moncheur, the Head of the Belgian Commission, June 22, 1917 THOMAS R. MARSHALL (1854- ) Senators, since that far-off, unrecorded hour when our ancestors began their slow westward movement, unnumbered and unremembered, thousands have died upon the field of battle for love, for hate, for liberty, for conquest, as freemen or as slaves. Every note in the gamut of human passion has been written in the anvil chorus of war. Many have struck the redeeming blow for their own country, but few have unsheathed their swords without the hope of self-aggrandizement. It remained for little Belgium to write in the blood of her martyred sons and daughters a new page in the annals of diplomacy, to inscribe thereon that the dishonor of a people is the aggregate of the selfishness of its citizens; that the honor of a people is the aggregate of the self-sacrifice of its citizens; that treaties are made to be kept, not broken; that a people may dare to walk through "the valley of the shadow of death," touching elbows with their convictions, but they dare not climb to the mountain tops of safety if thereby they walk over the dead bodies of their high ideals; that a people may safely die if thereby they can compel an unwilling world to toss upon their new-made graves the white lily of a blameless life. Here, Senators, ends all I know, and here begins what I believe: Belgium shall arise. The long night of her weeping shall end; the morning of a day of joy shall break over her desolated homes, her devastated fields, and her profaned altars. When it breaks, humanity will learn that when mankind gambles with truth and honor and humanity, the dice of the gods are always loaded. To me, in all profane history, there is no sadder, sweeter, sublimer character than Sidney Carton. Dreamer of dreams, he walked his lonely, only way. In all the history of nations there is no sadder, sweeter, sublimer story than the story of Belgium. Doer of deeds, she, too, has walked her lonely, only way-the via dolorosa that leads to duty, death, and glory. Out of the depths and across the deeps the representatives of the remnant of her people and the guardians of her honor have come to us this day. I present to you the chairman of that mission, Baron Moncheur. SOME SPEECHES FOR OPTIONAL READINGS Note-Give name of speech, the speaker, the occasion for its deliverance, and a brief summary of the main points brought out. "Farewell Address" (September 19, 1796).. George Washington "Speech on a Resolution to Put Virginia into a State of Defense” (1775).. Patrick Henry "On Conciliation with America" (1775)..... Edmund Burke Speech at Cooper Institute (1860). The First Inaugural Address (1861). Thomas B. Macaulay Carl Schurz Abraham Lincoln ....Abraham Lincoln The Last Public Address (April 11, 1865).. Abraham Lincoln "Toussaint L'Ouverture" (1861).. "The New South" (1886).. “Address at a Meeting in Behalf of the Chil dren's Aid Society" (1892)... "America's Love of Peace”. "The Pan-American Spirit" "The Puritan Spirit" "Americanism" Wendell Phillips Henry W. Grady Phillips Brooks Elihu Root Albert J. Beveridge George William Curtis Henry Van Dyke "Apostrophe to the American Flag"...... Maria Sanford Miscellaneous Prose Forms.-It was stated in the introductory chapter of this book that not everything that has been written or printed is to be regarded as real literature. Only that which is artistic and appeals to our love for the beautiful, the true, and the good things of life and of the spirit can be called literature in its truest sense. Literature in this narrower meaning would thus exclude many useful writings that have as their only purpose the setting forth of facts as such. There are some works of a practical nature like histories, biographies, books of travel, autobiographies, letters, journals, memoirs, or even scientific and philosophical works, that may be regarded as true literature although written for an entirely different purpose. It is, however, only when such writings are expressed in beautiful and fitting language and appeal to the imagination and emotions, as well as to the understanding, that they may be so regarded. An Example of Miscellaneous Literature. EXTRACT FROM THE PASTORAL LETTER OF CARDINAL MERCIER, DECEMBER 25, 1914 My dearest brethren, I desire to utter, in your name and my own, the gratitude of those whose age, vocation, and social conditions cause them to benefit by the heroism of others, without bearing in it any active part. If any man had rescued you from shipwreck or from fire, you would assuredly hold yourselves bound to him by a debt of everlasting thankfulness. But it is not one man, it is two hundred and fifty thousand men, who fought, who suffered, who fell for you, so that Belgium might keep her independence, her dynasty, her patriotic unity; so that after the vicissitudes of battle she might rise nobler, purer, more erect, and more glorious than before. In your name I sent them the greeting of our fraternal sympathy and our assurance that not only do we pray for the success of their arms and for the eternal welfare of their souls, but that we also accept for their sake all the distress, whether physical or moral, that falls to our own share in the oppression that hourly besets us, and all that the future may have in store for us, in humiliation for a time, in anxiety, and in sorrow. In the day of final victory we shall be in honor; it is just that to-day we should all be in grief. Oh, all too easily do I understand how natural instinct rebels against the evils that have fallen upon Belgium; the spontaneous thought of mankind is ever that virtue should have its instantaneous crown, and injustice its immediate retribution. But the ways of God are not our ways. Providence gives free way, for a time measured by divine wisdom, to human passions and the conflict of desires. God, being eternal, is patient. The last word is the word of mercy, and it belongs to those who believe in love. |