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SONS OF THE REVOLUTION 
 
 IN THE 
 STATE OF NEW YORK 
 
 ADDRESSES 
 
 delivered by 
 
 Ex-Senator ALBERT J. BEVERIDGE 
 
 OF INDIANA 
 
 ON WASHINGTON'S BIRTHDAY 
 
 FEBRUARY 22, 1921 
 
 (Copyright, 1921, by Sons of the Revolution) 
 
From mezzotint by Wm. Sartain, after Couder. (or Sons of the Revolution. 1891. 
 
 J2- 
 
 c^^^^d^/^^ 
 
ADDRESSES 
 
 DELIVERED BY EX-SENATOR 
 
 ALBERT J. BEVERIDGE 
 
 OF INDIANA 
 
 ON FEBRUARY 22, 1921 
 
 AT THE SECOND 
 
 WASHINGTON'S BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION 
 
 OF THE 
 
 SONS OF THE REVOLUTION 
 AND OTHER PATRIOTIC SOCIETIES 
 
 AT CARNEGIE HALL, NEW YORK 
 
 AND AT THE THIRTY-NINTH ANNUAL BANQUET 
 
 OF THE 
 
 SONS OF THE REVOLUTION 
 
 AT THE HOTEL PLAZA. NEW YORK 
 
 "UNGUARDED GATES" 
 
 BY THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH 
 
b s\ z 
 
 C1A61973I3 
 
 
 29 J92| 
 
 
In 1920, the Sons of the Revolution in the State of New 
 York conceived the idea of holding a popular meeting on the 
 morning of Washington's Birthday. 
 
 With this end in view the New York Society of the Cin- 
 cinnati, Veteran Corps of Artillery, Sons of the American 
 Revolution, The Colonial Dames of America, Daughters of 
 the American Revolution, Daughters of the Revolution, Society 
 of Colonial Wars, Colonial Dames of the State of New York, 
 Daughters of the Cincinnati, and the Military Order of Foreign 
 Wars were invited to join in this movement. 
 
 As a result of this meeting, it was determined to make 
 the function an annual one. 
 
 In 1921 the Tammany Society, New England Society, Mili- 
 tary Order of the World War and the Law and Order Union also 
 joined in the celebration. 
 
 This year we were fortunate in having Ex-Senator Albert 
 J. Beveridge of Indiana to make the address. The Senator 
 also spoke extemporaneously at the Annual Banquet in the 
 evening. 
 
 At the meeting of the Board of Managers, it was resolved 
 that ten thousand copies of both addresses be printed and 
 distributed to the members of the General Society, Sons of the 
 Revolution, and the other Societies that participated, and 
 James Mortimer Montgomery, General President, Robert 
 Olyphant, President of the New York Society, and Henry Rus- 
 sell Drowne, Secretary, were appointed a Committee to supervise 
 the publication. 
 
 It is deemed appropriate at this time to print the poem, 
 "Unguarded Gates," by Thomas Bailey Aldrich, which, through 
 the courtesy of Houghton, Mifflin Company, we are permitted 
 to do. 
 
Address at Carnegie Hall 
 
 By Hon. ALBERT J. BEVERIDGE 
 
 President Olyphanl, Ladies and Gentlemen: 
 
 After all, not many merely human events have changed the 
 destiny of the race; and the learned are in dispute as to which 
 one of these is the most important. For example, the Fall of 
 Rome, the Reformation, the Renaissance, the French Revolu- 
 tion, the overthrow of Napoleon, and in our own time the 
 collapse of Germany and the Russian cataclysm, each has its 
 champions for the primacy. So we Americans may, perhaps, 
 be forgiven our belief that the most important merely human 
 event in the history of the world was the founding of the Amer- 
 ican Nation; and our fervent faith that the most important 
 privilege that can come to merely human beings is the privilege 
 that is ours, of preserving the American Nation, preserving it 
 spiritually as well as in form, in meaning and purpose as well 
 as in name and outward seeming. 
 
 From the landing of the Mayflower, the American Nation 
 was inevitable. The Revolution was not merely a peevish in- 
 cident, due to pique at British imperial policy; the Revolution 
 was the result of profound, irresistible and wholly natural 
 forces that made for a separate, independent and distinctive 
 nation of free men and women working out, on this detached 
 and ocean-bound continent, a scheme of ordered liberty, ab- 
 solutely new to mankind. 
 
 Less than two years after Washington took command, the 
 British Government was eager to stop the war on any terms, 
 excepting only American independence. At the blackest hour 
 
of the Revolution, Washington could yet have had a victor's 
 peace, had he consented that America should remain within 
 the British Empire. To passionate appeals to thus end the 
 war, the only answer made by that captain of our fate was the 
 thunder of the American cannon at Monmouth. So, at last, 
 came the American Nation. 
 
 If, therefore, the Revolution was nothing more than an up- 
 rising against grievances, if it was merely a struggle for rights 
 denied us as British subjects, the last four years of that epic 
 conflict was a senseless and a wicked waste of blood and treasure; 
 and George Washington, instead of being glorious, was infamous. 
 The American continuance of the war, after the British efforts 
 to end it by conceding all demands except American independ- 
 ence, can be justified only upon the ground that the patriots 
 were fighting to establish a new, a distinctive and an absolutely 
 independent nation. On any other ground, Washington and his 
 associates were little, obstinate men, willing to sacrifice the 
 happiness of a people and the destiny of a race in the further- 
 ance of their insect ambitions; and deserving of the bitter, 
 scathing epithets with which British statesmen, the British 
 press, and the British people thenceforth lashed them. 
 
 Redress of wrongs was, of course, the immediate cause — the 
 instant occasion — that set in motion the armed movement 
 against British rule; but in the smoke of battle the patriots be- 
 held that ineffable vision which became their inspiration, sus- 
 taining them through suffering, desolation and death — the 
 vision of an America unchained, arbiter of her own destiny and 
 charged with the performance of a separate and a sacred 
 mission in the world. 
 
 The military part of his work finished, Washington became 
 the supreme law-giver of his liberated country. It was due to 
 his initiative, steady purpose and compelling influence that the 
 ablest plan ever devised for the co-ordination of stability and 
 freedom, the Constitution of the United States was adopted 
 
 6 
 
as America's fundamental law. He laid aside the sword, 
 yet kept it within easy reach, ever ready to safeguard and 
 defend what it alone had won; for he knew that the man or na- 
 tion that will not fight for imperiled interests, violated rights 
 or insulted honor, will lose them all and ought to lose them all. 
 
 Finally, at the summit of his career, standing on the ultimate 
 heights of experience-tested wisdom, the most august human 
 figure of all time, "alone and unapproachable like a snow-clad 
 peak rising above its fellows in the clear air of morning," as 
 Lord Bryce accurately describes him, Washington gave for the 
 eternal guidance of the Republic the most practical and prophetic 
 chart of national conduct ever drawn by the sagacity and pre- 
 vision of man — the immortal Farewell Address. 
 
 The Mayflower Compact, the Declaration, the Constitution, 
 the Farewell Address — these are the massive and solid corner- 
 stones of the enduring foundation on which the American 
 people have builded their national well-being and security. 
 
 The Farewell Address states not only the final judgment of 
 Washington, but also the settled opinion of every one of that 
 company of statesmen who, by his side, strove to establish our 
 Republic and to make it imperishable — a group of statesmen 
 the like of which the world never before saw or since has seen 
 in a single country at a single time. Moreover, Washington's 
 final advice to America was the only policy on which all these 
 unrivaled masters of statecraft ever agreed; on other ques- 
 tions they sharply divided — on this, and on this alone, all of 
 them were in complete and militant accord. 
 
 No such unanimity of judgment ever before or since, in any 
 country or at any time, concluded the prolonged deliberations 
 of the councils of the wise — for the Farewell Address was the 
 result of almost continuous consultation for nearly four years, 
 and at a period not entirely unlike phases of that from which 
 the world is now emerging. 
 
 The heart of this Decalogue of Americanism is friendship 
 
 7 
 
for all nations, alliance with none. The united conclusion of 
 the founders of the American Republic was, to quote Wash- 
 ington's exact words, that "by interweaving our destiny with 
 that of any part of Europe," we will "entangle our peace and 
 prosperity in the toils of European ambitions, rivalship, interest, 
 humor and caprice." From their own bitter experience and 
 humiliating disillusionment, the Fathers, through Washington, 
 warned us against "the insidious wiles of foreign influence" and 
 "the impostures of pretended patriotism." 
 
 Every word of the Farewell Address might have been written 
 in 1921, so peculiarly applicable is that great state paper to 
 conditions that afflict the American people today. The gravest 
 anti-American influence in Washington's time was foreign propa- 
 ganda; it was in 1796 that he declared that "foreign influence 
 is one of the most baneful foes of Republican Government." 
 From the very beginning America has been the most propa- 
 ganda-ridden country in the world. 
 
 From the very beginning every foreign government, to the 
 exact extent that its interests were affected, and only as its 
 interests were affected, has sought to use the United States for 
 its own advantage. It is vital that Americans bear in mind 
 that foreign propagandists, no matter from what nation they 
 come, always strive to advance foreign interests only, and never 
 to promote American interests. 
 
 Within recent years that ancient process, which so alarmed 
 and angered the poised, fearless and steady Washington, has 
 been renewed with increased power. Presuming on the circum- 
 stance that millions of American citizens are of German blood, 
 the German government, before and during the war, spread its 
 evil propaganda through every channel of American life. When, 
 at last, we realized that deadly peril to our national security, we 
 crushed it beneath the heel of a mighty and a righteous wrath. 
 
 From that demonstration of American sense and spirit, one 
 not familiar with American history — as, alas!, most Americans 
 
 8 
 
are not — would have thought that, for a season at least, we 
 would be permitted to go untroubled by foreign efforts to sway 
 American public sentiment to foreign uses. Yet, at this very 
 moment, more than ever before, foreign propaganda is busy 
 among us; and with a skill, cunning and resourcefulness born 
 of vast experience and meticulous observation. 
 
 At no time since Yorktown, has Washington's foresight been 
 more justified by events than it is today. At no time have we 
 more needed to heed his warning against what he termed "pas- 
 sionate attachments'' for some nations and "inveterate antip- 
 athies'' to others. 
 
 At no time have Americans had greater reason to observe 
 Washington's maxim that "the nation which indulges toward 
 another an habitual hatred or an habitual fondness is in some 
 degree a slave — a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either 
 of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its true interests." 
 
 At no time has his statement been more fully verified that 
 "real patriots, who may resist foreign intrigue, are liable to be- 
 come suspected and odious, while its tools and dupes usurp the 
 applause and confidence of the people to surrender their in- 
 terests." 
 
 At no time have the well-being and security of the United 
 States more thoroughly required that every citizen of the Re- 
 public shall be American, wholly American, and nothing but 
 American — exclusively American in thought, exclusively Ameri- 
 can in sympathy, exclusively American in body, mind and soul, 
 heart so overflowing with patriotic devotion that it can hold 
 no other love. 
 
 Swarms of foreign propagandists are creeping all over Amer- 
 ica, delivering lectures, preaching sermons, giving interviews, 
 writing articles, cajoling those deemed influential with American 
 public sentiment. They infest American journalism, are in- 
 vading American universities, have captured a section of that 
 small but potent group called American "society" — excellent 
 
 9 
 
people, but of the type, familiar to us, whose desire for social 
 recognition in foreign capitals sometimes blinds them to the in- 
 terests of their own country. 
 
 Worst of all, our common schools are being made culture 
 beds of non-American ideas. School histories have been written 
 for our children which not only suppress or misstate vital facts, 
 but actually set forth as historical truths, recent European 
 views of the origin, nature and mission of the United States. 
 Most of our school histories are still fairly accurate, still 
 predominantly American; but some new ones — and an increas- 
 ing number — might well have been written at the direction 
 of certain foreign governments. 
 
 If it be said that such an educational policy is advisable to 
 the readjustment of our international relations, the answer is 
 that no wise or righteous cause requires the falsification of 
 history. For example, a school history for Southern children is 
 in manuscript, awaiting publication, which tells the facts about 
 Sherman's march to the sea; on the other hand, the horrible 
 truth has been printed about the treatment of Union soldiers 
 in Confederate prisons and prison camps. Concede, merely for 
 argument's sake, that, in the interest of a reunited nation, 
 it would be better if these circumstances were forgotten; even 
 so, will anybody contend that our school histories should inform 
 our children that Sherman disturbed nothing and left abundance 
 behind him; or that Union soldiers in Confederate prisons and 
 prison camps were supplied with wholesome food and feather- 
 bedsP 
 
 Yet this is the theory upon which some school books are being 
 written and printed about the struggle for American Independ- 
 ence and the founding and development of the American Nation. 
 If American parents realized the attempts that are being made 
 through school histories to falsely teach our children parts of 
 the story of our country and thus prevent their exclusive de- 
 votion to America, there would be such a sustained outburst 
 
 10 
 
of patriotic public sentiment as would paralyze these efforts to 
 poison, at their profound sources, the very springs of our national 
 being. 
 
 Every sensible American wants the most cordial relations with 
 other nations, especially with those who were our comrades in 
 arms during the war with Germany. But those relations must 
 be sound and honest; and foreign propaganda that strives to 
 extinguish the spirit of American nationalism and attempts 
 to jam down our throats the ancient mess of "common interests," 
 dished up in Washington's day and detected and denounced by 
 him, is as stupid as it is outrageous. Such methods delay and 
 prevent the very end sought to be secured by them, since 
 Americans who heartily wish for international good feeling 
 and ardently hope for the coming of what Mr. Beck so elo- 
 quently terms the "spiritual empire" of kindred nations, resent 
 such methods and will resist them to the uttermost. All that 
 we ask is to be let alone to develop our national life and work 
 out our national destiny for ourselves. 
 
 If the Farewell Address had never been written, still the basic 
 facts of American life today would compel the immediate adop- 
 tion of the exact foreign policy devised by the founders of our 
 Republic and announced by Washington more than a century 
 and a quarter ago. For if that policy was wise and necessary 
 then it is infinitely wiser and more necessary now. 
 
 What are the basic facts of American life todayP They are 
 our geographical situation and, even more commanding, the 
 racial structure of our population — a structure which is in 
 startling contrast with that existing when the Farewell Address 
 was delivered. Then we were a thousand times more homo- 
 geneous than we are now— contrasted with our present racial 
 make-up, we were then one people in language, blood and origin; 
 today we are a collection of racial groups, not one of which out- 
 numbers all the others. 
 
 Today millions of Americans are of Italian blood, millions of 
 
 11 
 
Polish blood, millions of Scandinavian blood, tens of millions 
 of Irish blood and other tens of millions of German blood. 
 We have myriads of Greek blood; and swarms of our citizens 
 came from Russia, Belgium, and the Balkans. We of British 
 origin — I am of Scotch blood myself — no longer are in the ma- 
 jority; and our comparative numerical strength steadily declines. 
 
 Thus the American Nation is unlike any other on earth. 
 Our supreme task is to weld our various racial elements into a 
 single people of one blood and one language, with a single 
 national consciousness exclusively American. Any policy that 
 tends to draw our racial groups together is good for America; 
 any policy that tends to draw our racial groups asunder is bad 
 for America. This plain truth is the vital principle of Ameri- 
 can foreign statesmanship. 
 
 That is why any political association whatever, with any 
 foreign government whatever, is as foolish as it is unpatriotic; 
 the moment such an international proposal is even suggested, 
 the welding process not only stops but is reversed; the moment 
 we interfere or even are asked to interfere or in any way mix up 
 in foreign political broils or problems, that moment America's 
 citizenship is divided into hostile camps on purely racial lines 
 — we become a racial madhouse, convulsed by racial fury instead 
 of being a mighty and harmonious nation whose people are in- 
 spired by single-hearted devotion to the Republic. 
 
 Human nature makes this result inevitable; and existing facts, 
 as ominous as they are obvious, establish it beyond dispute. 
 It is useless to scold, stupid to denounce. America's foreign 
 policy is fixed by fundamental certainties which, for genera- 
 tions, no power in the universe can remove; and that policy is 
 so accurately stated in the Farewell Address, that devout men 
 and women may well see in it the hand of God. 
 
 Scarcely a day passes but there are urged upon us international 
 schemes which can be dealt with only by the Washingtonian 
 policy, interpreted in the light of the present racial structure of 
 
 12 
 
our citizenship. Take, for example, the attractive proposal so 
 ardently advocated by many excellent and patriotic people for 
 the permanent political solidarity of the European allies and 
 the United States. Everybody knows that such an arrange- 
 ment would be bitterly resented by prodigious numbers of Amer- 
 icans—perhaps a majority; and not only as individuals but as 
 members of vast racial organizations. 
 
 We of British descent would do the same thing ourselves if 
 the situation were reversed; and therefore we cannot complain 
 of the state of mind of our fellow-citizens whose racial origin 
 differs from our own. Suppose, for example, these racial groups 
 that oppose permanent American union with the European 
 allies, were to advocate the same sort of connection with their 
 favorite nations. Would we submit to itP Would we tolerate 
 itP No! we would fight it to the death. 
 
 Everybody knows that such a matter could not be kept out of 
 American politics; and that immense groups of our citizens 
 would be torn with hatred for one another by purely foreign 
 and wholly un-American causes. Did I say that we all know 
 that such questions could not be kept out of politicsP We 
 know that they are in politics this very minute— and never 
 in my life have 1 weighed my words more carefully or spoken 
 more solemnly than when I say this: friends, unless we Americans 
 immediately return to the broad highway of American national- 
 ism, the time is almost here when our American elections will 
 be settled by foreign and not by American considerations. 
 
 It does not require the vision of a seer to behold, even so soon 
 as the next presidential campaign, each of the national chairmen 
 of the two great political parties behind locked doors at their 
 party headquarters here in New York, meeting the heads of 
 great racial organizations and bargaining with those leaders 
 tor the mass vote of their members; bargaining on what terms- 
 American termsP No! but on what an incoming administra- 
 tion might be pledged to do with reference to particular foreign 
 countries, or combinations of foreign countries. 
 
 13 
 
Infinitely more important to us than any international solidar- 
 ity, is American solidarity. American solidarity! — that is our 
 herculean and enduring task, our tremendous, intricate and con- 
 tinuing problem, beside which other tasks and problems are 
 small, simple, transient and fleeting. 
 
 Or, take the most incessant demand now made upon us — the 
 cancellation of our war loans, or, by some of the many devices 
 constantly put forward, the extinction of debts due us from 
 European Nations. We cannot solve such a problem by eco- 
 nomics only, or by generosity only, or by any of the reasons so 
 skillfully advanced, or by all these considerations put together — 
 not even though some of them, standing alone, were sound. We 
 also must take into account the effect upon the racial groups of 
 which America's population is composed. 
 
 Comparison is made of the war-debts of America and of the 
 European nations that opposed Germany, with the war-debts 
 of the States that conducted our Revolution; and we are told 
 that the international war obligations of today must be pooled 
 at the very least. But if that were tried we should have, not 
 the resistance of States on grounds of State pride, State jealousy 
 and State resentment, such as was made to Hamilton's plan; 
 but the resistance of racial groups of citizens on grounds of racial 
 pride, racial jealousy and racial resentment. Moreover, no 
 informed American, whatever his origin, will for a moment ad- 
 mit the historical precedent on which the pooling scheme is 
 advanced. 
 
 It is said that we ought, unconditionally, to cancel the war 
 indebtedness of other nations to us, because all fought in the 
 same cause. But is that trueP Do the war treaties show that 
 other nations entered the conflict for identical reasonsP As to 
 ourselves — did not Congress declare that we made war on Ger- 
 many because Germany had been and was making war on us 
 — and is not Congress the only power that can declare war or, 
 with authority, state the reasons for doing soP 
 
 14 
 
Upon the ground taken by Congress, the American Nation 
 was united as never before in our history. Would this have been 
 the case had Congress stated the reason now advanced for our 
 drawing the swordP Could the declaration of war have been 
 passed at all, had it been based upon that reasonP And what 
 was the understanding of our soldiersP 
 
 Go — as I have done from Maine to California — go ask the 
 men who did the fighting whether they went to battle for 
 "world purposes" or to maintain the interests, rights and honor 
 of America, violated, outraged and insulted by an arrogant, 
 ruthless, wicked government. A thousand to one, the men who 
 did the fighting will tell you that they went to war to whip 
 Germany, their country's enemy, and not to make America the 
 wet nurse of newly incubated nations or the drudge and pro- 
 vider of ancient and conquest-swollen governments. Our men 
 who did the fighting will tell you that they alone would have 
 fought Germany for the sole reason stated by Congress — yes, 
 and any country whatever that assailed America as Germany 
 assailed America. 
 
 What would George Washington have done in this situation. 3 
 Washington was always watchful of American interests only; so 
 was every one of the founders of this Republic. If Washington 
 and his confreres were in charge of the Nation's business today, 
 do you suppose that they would even discuss the pooling of 
 international debts or the cancellation of American loansP 
 Yet we recognize the difficulty and hardship of payment; and 
 therefore, grievous as the burden of taxation on our own peo- 
 ple is and will be in carrying the awful load of debt piled upon 
 them to get the billions loaned to other nations, cannot a method 
 of financial adjustment be found that will recompense us to 
 some extent and prevent much bad feelingP 
 
 Consider the following suggestion, offered with hesitation 
 and only as a possible way out; for if some other method is not 
 devised, America's loans to European nations will never be can- 
 celled except by payment in full and payment in money. 
 
 15 
 
We loaned to Great Britain about $4,500,000,000, all but 
 one-eighteenth of which she re-loaned to her allies; and in addi- 
 tion, we also loaned to them more than as much again as we 
 loaned to Great Britain. As spoils of war, Great Britain ac- 
 quired the most extensive territorial accessions in the history 
 of conquest; while the other leading nations at war with Ger- 
 many, excepting only the United States, vastly extended their 
 territorial possessions — and we are glad they did. Moreover, 
 Great Britain's hold on the world's trade is greatly strengthened, 
 while America's situation as to foreign commerce is desperate. 
 
 Great Britain owns most of the West Indies — that chain of 
 islands that guard the Gulf of Mexico; she also owns the Ber- 
 mudas to our Southeast, and a small but strategic part of Cen- 
 tral America, called British Honduras. None of these pos- 
 sessions are of the slightest value to her except as naval sta- 
 tions; and, even as naval stations, they are of no use to her ex- 
 cept as bases for attack upon us, which is, of course, unthinka- 
 ble. But these possessions are worth considerable to us as out- 
 posts of defense. 
 
 Would it not be wise for Great Britain to reduce her debt by 
 transferring to the United States these essentially and naturally 
 American islands, and her holdings in Central AmericaP Would 
 not such an exchange go far to quiet mutually hostile clamor and 
 to strengthen mutual trust and esteemP 
 
 Since the payment of American loans to other governments 
 will be, increasingly, a source of dispute and irritation where 
 only concord and good-will should exist, does not the idea of 
 the exchange of British possessions at our very doors for the re- 
 duction of Great Britain's debt to us, deserve the serious con- 
 sideration of the statesmen and people of both countries. 3 
 
 France, like Great Britain, has a far-flung colonial empire — 
 next to that of her mighty and triumphant ally, the most ex- 
 tensive and profitable aggregation of dependencies on earth, in 
 area much larger than the United States, including all our terri- 
 
 10 
 
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tories and possessions. Insignificant items of her colonial pos- 
 sessions are her West Indian Islands, part of the chain most of 
 which Great Britain owns. These islands are worthless to 
 France, but of some value to us — not much, but some. Might 
 they not be utilized, with mutual advantage to France and 
 America, in the reduction of French indebtedness. 3 
 
 As a cold financial transaction, the transfer of these islands 
 to the United States would go but a little way toward extinguish- 
 ing France's obligations; but would it not be good policy to 
 cancel part of our loans to our sister Republic in exchange for 
 Martinique, Guadeloupe and St. MartinP Would not such an 
 arrangement be far-seeing and broad-minded statesmanship on 
 both sidesP Would it not relieve France's monetary distress, 
 raise her purchasing power, and save her self-respect which 
 shrinks from the thought of accepting almsP 
 
 These are, of course, only tentative suggestions as to possi- 
 ble solutions of a part of our international financial problem- 
 solutions that might, perhaps, check and reduce irritation here 
 and in Europe, keep down racial discontent among our own 
 citizens, and aid in the restoration of America to that broad, solid 
 and plain highway upon which alone she can successfully pur- 
 sue her interests and achieve her mission. 
 
 No man, no nation can fully live without the purifying and 
 vitalizing power of a great ideal. Such an ideal cannot spring 
 from unsubstantial fancy, cannot be born of artifice, is never the 
 child of hate. It can come only from the heart of nature, only 
 from fundamental circumstances, only from a just conception 
 of that man or nation's true mission in the world. The useful- 
 ness to mankind of an Edison or a Shakespeare would have 
 been destroyed had either tried to do the work for which alone 
 the other was peculiarly fitted. 
 
 How is it with America. 3 Her people came from many coun- 
 tries, and are blood relatives of many nations. They occupy 
 a continent midway between Europe and Asia, a situation per- 
 
 17 
 
feet either for peaceful intercourse or for defensive war. Nature 
 and Providence have placed us on the throne of the world, be- 
 yond and above the jealousies, hatreds and ambitions of ancient 
 peoples, if only we will not cast into boiling and poisonous for- 
 eign cauldrons the gifts of God. 
 
 Our divinely appointed task is, therefore, to create a new race 
 among mankind — a race compounded of the most virile human 
 elements of the old world — a distinctive race, akin to the peo- 
 ple of every other nation, yet unlike those of any other nation — 
 a race that shall be known to the world and to history as ex- 
 clusively American. Our divinely ordained mission is to de- 
 velop and exercise, by friendship with all and partnership with 
 none, a moral influence circling the globe, and impossible to any 
 other human power that ever existed or can exist. 
 
 So our ideal is America — America the impartial and the 
 just; America the beneficent and the free; America the righteous 
 and the wise; America the fearless and independent; America 
 as planned by our fathers and to be perfected by our children; 
 America the mightiest force for good that ever was or is or will 
 be throughout the earth; America, "among the nations bright 
 beyond compare," our only passion and our only love; the 
 America beheld in the exalted and, pray God, the prophetic 
 vision of George Washington. 
 
 18 
 
Informal Remarks at the Banquet 
 
 By Hon. ALBERT J. BEVERIDGE 
 
 Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen: 
 
 When President Olyphant was polite enough to write me, 
 asking me to stay overnight and speak for a little while, I wrote 
 back, I thought, with equal politeness, that I would be glad to 
 do so, and thanked him for the compliment; but said that what 
 I would have to say would have to be brief; and he, not to be 
 outdone in politeness, wrote back and said, "That will be all 
 right; the briefer, the better." (Laughter.) 
 
 I haven't anything prepared. Your press representative 
 asked me for my manuscript. I told him I hadn't any; that I 
 got off all the manuscript I had in me this morning. It makes 
 me feel like apologizing in the beginning, because I don't like 
 to hear an extemporaneous speech, and 1 don't like to make 
 one. My observation has been that the extemporaneous speaker 
 seldom says anything, and never gets through saying it. 
 (Laughter.) Very much like the description of the sentences of 
 that great lawyer and statesman, William M. Everett, who 
 used sentences about as long as Henry James. One day, when 
 he was arguing a great railroad case before the Supreme Court, 
 he got tangled up in one of his interminable sentences and 
 stopped and said, "Your Honors will perceive that my sen- 
 tences are like this railroad— they lack terminal facilities." 
 (Laughter.) 
 
 But the fact that I haven't anything prepared ought to give 
 you some comfort because it assuredly saves you from the fate 
 that Dooley said, I visited on the Senate the first time I spoke 
 there. Dooley told Hennessy about that event, and said: 
 
 19 
 
 'r""-"r 
 
"Then up 'ris' young Sinator Beveridge and proceeded to de- 
 liver a few hundred thousand carefully prepared extemporaneous 
 remarks." (Laughter.) 
 
 So I told President Olyphant, as I rose here, that in view of 
 the fact that this wasn't prepared, that although I was resolved 
 not to speak longer than two or three minutes, God knows when 
 I would get through. (Laughter.) 
 
 I am reminded of the recent visit I made to this town to ad- 
 dress the Bar Association of the City of New York. I got to 
 speaking on the development of the American Constitution, 
 that old-fashioned document which, thank God, is coming into 
 style again (applause); and 1 understand that it has been a 
 matter of considerable debate since then, between members 
 of the Bar Association, as to whether I spoke ten or twelve min- 
 utes short of three hours. (Laughter.) 
 
 I am tempted to repeat part of the argument of my thesis 
 of this morning, which is the melancholy fact that we are not 
 a people in the sense that the French or Italians or Germans 
 or English or Japanese are a people, but rather a collection of 
 racial groups, which is the reason why our foreign policy can- 
 not possibly be what another country's is. But since I am 
 on this subject, I am reminded of an incident that occurred 
 during the war, that may illustrate it even better than an 
 argument. Doubtless you have heard it. 
 
 It is the story of an Irish Sergeant who was calling the roll 
 of his Company: "RocozziP" "Here!" Check. "DuBoisP" 
 "Here!" Check. "SmirnoffP" "Here!" Check. "Schwartz- 
 ensteinP" "Here!" Check. "FlanaganP — thank God for that 
 good American name!" (Laughter.) Yet all of these soldiers 
 were good Americans; but they naturally get fussed up when 
 the United States mixes up in foreign politics. 
 
 Now the eloquent doctor has said that that supreme man, 
 George Washington, who brought about the Constitution more 
 than any other human power, was not satisfied with it. Well, 
 
 20 
 
I suppose that is true. Hardly anybody was satisfied with it. 
 Those master makers of our fundamental law — which they did 
 not draw from any other source that is human! — were not 
 satisfied. But what of it? 
 
 "The hand that rounded Peter's dome 
 And groined the aisles of ancient Rome, 
 Wrought in a sad sincerity 
 Himself from God he could not free; 
 The conscious stone to beauty grew; 
 He builded better than he knew!" (Applause.) 
 
 I am down for a few remarks about The American Constitu- 
 tion. I beg that you shall not be alarmed at that subject. I 
 am not going to speak at length on the Eighteenth Amendment. 
 (Laughter.) And so far as that is concerned, if George Wash- 
 ington was dissatisfied with the original document, I wonder 
 what his state of mind would be today. (Laughter.) The 
 enthusiasm with which that remark is received, would seem to 
 indicate that it has a hidden meaning that we don't know any- 
 thing about in the Middle West; and it convinces me that per- 
 haps it was of an eminent lawyer of New York and not of Chi- 
 cago, of whom the story is told on good authority, that two or 
 three weeks ago, when it was sleety, he was walking down the 
 street with some companions and slipped and fell on his hip. 
 He jumped up and, feeling something running down his leg, ex- 
 claimed, "My God! I hope that's blood." (Laughter.) 
 
 Now of course we have been debating the Constitution for 
 about one hundred and thirty-five years, and therefore I am 
 not going to prolong the discussion (laughter) by any disagree- 
 ment with my good friend here, although I might point out that 
 of course the "common law" was never adopted by the United 
 States as a nation, but only by the states, and that that very 
 conflict was one of the mighty issues of one of the most important 
 presidential elections that ever occurred in the country. I 
 will say a few words about this Constitution. I am not going to 
 
 21 
 
imitate the theological method to which our friend referred and 
 go into a disquisition about our entire Constitutional theory, 
 but will touch two or three high spots. 
 
 There are two respects in which our Constitution (I guess 
 everybody will agree to this) is absolutely indigenous. It is dis- 
 tinctively American, with no other constitutional law or method 
 on earth that in the least resembles it. The first is, in our 
 American Constitutional doctrine the courts have the power to 
 overthrow acts of Congress or legislatures. That has well 
 been called the cornerstone of American jurisprudence. The 
 courts of no other country in the world have that power, or 
 anything like it. And when that greatest jurist and states- 
 man of all time, John Marshall, decided that there must be 
 some power in this country that could say definitively and with 
 final authority what is and what is not law, and that that power 
 should be the courts, the Constitution was amended, and perma- 
 nently amended, as though precisely that statement had been 
 written into it. 
 
 Now that feature of our law has suffered more attack, for a 
 longer period, than any other but one, and that one I shall 
 mention in a minute. From 1800 until now, there has been 
 a persistent, intermittent, but nevertheless never-ceasing at- 
 tack upon the power of the American courts over legislation — 
 and if any of you gentlemen think that those attacks have 
 ended, you will change your minds before this present decade 
 has expired; I see even now, indications of undoubted renewal 
 of the attacks on our courts. 
 
 The argument against this power is old. I must confess, 
 there was a time when it appealed to me. It has been said, 
 and is said now, that this is an autocratic power; that to give 
 judges the power over legislation passed by the representatives 
 of the people is to make them not only judges but also legisla- 
 tors; that such power isn't necessary to the protection of prop- 
 erty or of individual liberty, or of the rights of minorities; in 
 
proof of this we are pointed to the omnipotent Parliament of 
 Great Britain, whose acts no court dare interfere with ; and we are 
 told to look upon the security of property and the sanctity of 
 individual liberty, and the maintenance of rights of minorities 
 in England, as a conclusive proof that our American judicial 
 power over legislation is neither wise, just, nor consistent with 
 the spirit of liberty. Now that does seem to be an attractive, 
 and, at first thought, an unanswerable argument, does it notP 
 
 But think deeper. Friends, has democracy in England yet 
 faced its testP What is it that heretofore has made property 
 secure and the rights of minorities intact, and individual liberty 
 safe in that country? Well, I think all authorities are agreed 
 that it is the prevision, moderation, wisdom, and restraint of the 
 ablest, most far-seeing body of men which ever, in one country, 
 continuously through generations, shaped the policy of an empire, 
 — the hereditary ruling class of England. (Applause.) 
 
 Macaulay declared that it was this influence that has always 
 stood between ordered liberty and ravaging license in the United 
 Kingdom. But the English hereditary ruling class is fast dis- 
 appearing. It received its death wound in 1911, when, under 
 the leadership of that greatest Parliamentarian since Gladstone, 
 Herbert Asquith, the House of Lords was practically over- 
 thrown; and while the hereditary ruling class of Great Britain 
 is now dominant in her foreign affairs, its days are numbered 
 in her domestic affairs. 
 
 Only a few years — five, or ten at the most — and that re- 
 straint will be gone; and then, when the majority can compel 
 the enactment into law of its sudden whim, born of its temporary 
 passion, what then will become of individual liberty, what then 
 will become of the security of property, what then will become 
 of the rights of minoritiesP When that moment comes (and it is 
 almost here), English democracy for the first time will face its 
 real crisis and endure its real test — and then it is not impossi- 
 
 23 
 
ble that they will wish that they had the American system of 
 just and impartial courts, that shall be above administrations, 
 Congresses, Parliaments and mobs, and majorities, and minori- 
 ties, and every other human power, to stand for righteousness 
 and justice and liberty and law. (Applause.) 
 
 Just one other point of difference. Ours is the only Constitu- 
 tion — and I am just leaving these two points in your mind to- 
 night because both of them are going to be subject to imme- 
 diate attack; I have named one part of our Constitutional law 
 which is unlike that of any other country in the world that ever 
 existed; I think I am right about that; I will name another. 
 
 Under our Constitution, no state, no municipality, etc., can . 
 
 pass any law or ordinance violating the obligations of contract. 
 And again, under the great Chief Justice, in two decisions that 
 were epochal, as critical points in our history as any battle 
 that was ever fought — Fletcher versus Peck, and the Dart- 
 mouth College cases — it was decided (and it is our Constitutional 
 law now) that that applied not only to the contract between 
 man and man, but also to contracts between a corporate body 
 and a municipality, or even a so-called sovereign state ; that when 
 a municipality, through its agents, or a state, through its duly 
 elected representatives, made a contract with either an indi- 
 vidual or a corporation, that that contract was under the sacred 
 protection of the Constitution of the Nation. 
 
 That doctrine has been furiously assailed; it has been modi- 
 fied somewhat, but whether wisely only history can tell. There 
 was a time when even I thought that it seemed harsh; and the 
 surface argument against it apparently is unanswerable and 
 most persuasive, especially to the unthinking and emotional. 
 It is said, with immense plausibility, "What! shall corrupt alder- 
 men or corrupt members of a legislature be permitted to barter 
 away the 'patrimony of a people,' and that people to be without 
 redressP" That is a very attractive argument; but go deeper, 
 
 24 
 
search for the foundations of this peculiar and distinctive fea- 
 ture of our American Constitutional law, and what does it mean. 3 
 
 It means this: first that our American idea of economic 
 civilization is founded on good faith, on the plighted word, on 
 the sacredness of contract; second, that the security and justice 
 of our government begin with the citizen himself, at the polls; 
 and that if he be so negligent and careless and ignorant and in- 
 different as to allow machines or politicians to put into office, to 
 represent him, dishonest or slothful or cowardly or ignorant 
 men, then the citizen cannot escape the consequences of his own 
 act in government any more than he can in law, in a court of 
 justice. 
 
 It means that if we want our government properly adminis- 
 tered and our public property securely and wisely taken care of, 
 then we who boast of our "liberty" shall exercise it and go to the 
 polls and elect honorable, wise, industrious, well-informed and 
 brave men — and that is the only way to save "the patrimony of 
 the people." (Applause.) The people may not be slothful in the 
 exercise of their own civic duties and then expect the courts to 
 relieve them of the consequences of their own acts. (Applause.) 
 
 I was inspired to mention these two things because of intima- 
 tions that I have heard from time to time, that after all our Con- 
 stitution is not peculiar, not distinctively American. I could go 
 on for a great length of time, but I am citing these merely as 
 examples, that you may remember at least these two instances 
 where the fundamental law of the American Republic is abso- 
 lutely distinctive and utterly unlike that of any other law on 
 earth, that ever existed on earth. (Great Applause.) 
 
 I have about made up my mind during these recent years 
 that I have been giving all the research I could to the American 
 Constitution and the foundations of the Nation, that after all, 
 with all its defects (and all human things are defective), never- 
 theless the American Constitution is, as I said this morning, 
 the ablest and the wisest plan for the co-ordination of stability 
 
and freedom that ever has been formed by the sagacity and pre- 
 vision of man. (Applause.) I am convinced that the American 
 Government, with all its defects, is the best form of government 
 that the human race has ever known! (Cheers.) 
 
 And as to the Constitution, just this one final word. I don't 
 think I can give the thought to you any better than to relate a 
 little correspondence I had with a young newspaper man in a 
 certain city where I had spoken. He was reporting my remarks 
 before the Bar Association, on the Development of the American 
 Constitution under Marshall; and I had a letter from him. He 
 is a very brilliant young man, just as sincere as he is 
 brilliant, and he said that up to that very moment he had 
 always followed me in the positions I had taken in public affairs, 
 but from that moment he would have to part company with me; 
 that the idea of making a fetish out of the Constitution was not 
 only unreasonable but abhorrent; that neither governments nor 
 Constitutions were divine; that the people were not made for the 
 Constitution, but the Constitution was made for the people; 
 and therefore it must be, as governments must be, subject to 
 any change that is necessary for their welfare — and all that 
 sort of thing. 
 
 I was greatly touched and I answered him at considerable 
 length, busy as I was, because I knew first of all that he was 
 honest, and second, that he represented accurately a great and 
 a growing public sentiment now prevailing increasingly, espe- 
 cially among our young men, and I said to him: "Without any 
 argument about these axioms upon which we all agree, let me 
 point this out to you: That we are now entering upon the most 
 serious decade in American history, not excepting that of the 
 Civil War; that you as a newspaper man certainly know that 
 within the ten years which have now begun, we shall hear more 
 extravagant doctrines preached than we have heard advocated 
 since our Constitution was adopted. Perhaps some of the doc- 
 trines will be sound; but others will be annihilative, and what 
 
 26 
 
we have to do is to keep calm judgment and clear vision — and 
 how shall we do thatP Don't you see, my boy, that there is 
 one thing that is absolutely essential, and that is that we shall 
 have something firm on which we can plant our feet, from which 
 we can take our bearings, from which we can make accurate 
 surveys as to what is true and what is false; some Rock of Ages 
 within whose shadow we can retain sanity — and what have we 
 here in America to answer that essential purpose excepting only 
 the Constitution of the United StatesP" (Great Applause.) 
 
 "Don't you see that that is the reason why, for at least these 
 coming ten years the 'worship' of the Constitution is not too 
 strong a word for the emotion with which we should regard our 
 fundamental lawP" 
 
 I was made happy when I got a letter back from that young 
 man, saying, "Yes, I see it — I see it at last! It was so obvious 
 and clear that that was the reason I didn't see it. You are 
 right in standing by the Constitution, and I will stand with 
 you to the end!" (Applause.) 
 
 Then I wrote him — I must apologize now; I am speaking with 
 more feeling than I usually feel or show. I said, "I am going 
 to ask you to commit to memory these lines, the only immortal 
 lines that Longfellow ever wrote" — and he told me when I saw 
 him last, that he had done it. The lines have steadied me in 
 the midst of many a hurricane. I wish they might be written not 
 only over every fireside in the land, but on the heart of every 
 citizen of the Republic; his lines which I honestly and firmly 
 believe were inspired of God, addressed to the American Nation 
 and the Constitution of our American Fathers. You will recall 
 them when I mention the first line. Longfellow says: 
 
 "Thou, too, sail on, Oh Ship of State! 
 Sail on, Oh Nation, proud and great! 
 Humanity with all its fears, 
 With all its hopes of coming years, 
 Is hanging breathless on Thy Fate! 
 
 27 
 
"We know what Master laid Thy Keel, 
 What workmen wrought Thy Ribs of Steel, 
 
 What anvils rang, what hammers beat, 
 
 In what a forge and what a heat 
 Were shaped the Anchors of our Hope. 
 
 "Fear not each sudden sound and shock, 
 'Tis of the wave and not the rock; 
 'Tis but the flapping of the sail 
 And not a rent made by the gale; 
 
 In spite of rock and tempest's roar, 
 In spite of false lights on the shore, 
 Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea." — America! 
 
 (Cheering and prolonged applause.) 
 
 28 
 
Unguarded Gates 
 
 Wide open and unguarded stand our gates, 
 
 Names of the four winds, North, South, East and West; 
 
 Portals that lead to an enchanted land 
 
 Of cities, forests, fields of living gold, 
 
 Vast prairies, lordly summits touched with snow, 
 
 Majestic rivers sweeping proudly past 
 
 The Arab's date palm and the Norseman's pine— 
 
 A realm wherein are fruits of every zone, 
 
 Airs of all climes, for, lo! throughout the year 
 
 The red rose blossoms somewhere — a rich land 
 
 A later Eden planted on the wilds, 
 
 With not an inch of earth within its bound 
 
 But if a slave's foot press it sets him free. 
 
 Here it is written, Toil shall have its wage, 
 
 And Honor honor, and the humblest man 
 
 Stand level with the highest in the law. 
 
 Of such a land have men in dungeons dreamed, 
 
 And with the visions brightening in their eyes 
 
 Gone smiling to the faggot and the sword. 
 
 Wide open and unguarded stand our gates, 
 
 And through them presses a wild motley throng — 
 
 Men from the Volga and the Tartar steppes, 
 
 Featureless figures of the Hoang-Ho, 
 
 Malayan, Scythian, Teuton, Kelt and Slav, 
 
 Flying the old worlds poverty and scorn; 
 
 These bringing with them unknown gods and rites — 
 
 Those, tiger passions, here to stretch their claws. 
 
 In street and alley what strange tongues are loud 
 
 Accents of menace alien to our air, 
 
 Voices that once the Tower of Babel knew! 
 
 29 
 
O Liberty, white goddess! is it well 
 To leave the gates unguardedP On thy breast 
 Fold Sorrow's children, soothe the hurts of fate, 
 Lift the downtrodden, but with hand of steel 
 Stay those who to thy sacred portals come 
 To waste the gifts of freedom. Have a care 
 Lest from thy brow the clustered stars be torn 
 And trampled in the dust. For so of old, 
 The thronging Goth and Vandal trampled Rome, 
 And where the temples of the Caesars stood 
 The lean wolf unmolested made her lair. 
 
 Thomas Bailey Aldrich. 
 
 By permission of, and by special arrangement with, Houghton, Mifflin Company, 
 the authorized publishers. 
 
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