JOHN HENRY BARROWS

[Extracts from a speech delivered at the Peace Jubilee, Chicago, November 19, 1898.]

I.

THE NATIONAL PEACE JUBILEE

THE year that has gone has been one of surprises. A few months ago and the thoughts of the American people were fastened on the wrongs and sufferings inflicted by Spain in the West Indies; we were thinking of Cuba and the insurgents and the starving reconcentrados. Then came the beginning of a necessary and righteous war, and suddenly, on a May morning, the old miracle of Concord and Lexington was repeated; thousands of miles away a shot was fired, and our attention was summoned across the widest of oceans to the shores of the greatest of continents. America was instantly expanded, her arms were lengthened, and the hopes with which Columbus sailed forth four centuries ago, to find the East Indies, were strangely realized by those dwelling in the land which Columbus brought to the attention of mankind. America became an Asiatic power. The echoes of the artillery in the harbor of Manila brought the great continent seven thousand miles nearer to our shores. God spake in his providence. It was done, and the destinies of the greatest of republics were indissolubly united to the moral and material fortunes of eight hundred millions of human beings on the other side of the world. There

has been no parallel to this sudden expansion of national obligation and opportunity in all the annals of mankind, and a half century hence it will be seen that the greatest moment in American history since Lincoln's proclamation of emancipation was that moment on a May morning when Admiral Dewey, on the flagship Olympia gave the signal for the opening of the fateful battle.

The war of the revolution accomplished much in making a nation out of jealous colonies, overcoming hostile and provincializing forces. The forming of the Constitution continued the process, but developed antagonisms centring in slavery and in the centrifugal and denationalizing doctrine of State sovereignty. There was a long crisis and a titanic conflict, but the triumph which came after the bloody strife of civil. war was a partial triumph. The national life was saved, but the wounds were not healed. The South was justly proud of her men, of her leaders, of her courage, of her devotion to what she deemed right. She lost much, but resolutely toiling on and recognizing the new order as inevitable, she regained much, and best of all, has come to realize that there is a God in history who overrules and brings events to pass more wisely than we could have planned. And to me the most grateful result of our struggle for the liberation of Cuba has been the healing of divisions between North and South, and the cementing of bonds which bind us into an indissoluble and glorious unity.

I am not praising the martial spirit; I am not glorifying war; but the victories of human rights have largely been victories of the battle-field. Marathon made Europe Greek, and not Asiatic; Tours made Europe Christian, and not Moslem; Naseby and Dunbar made English-speaking nations free, and not slaves; Quebec made America Saxon and modern, and not autocratic and mediæval; Saratoga and Yorktown made America

American, and not British; and Gettysburg proved that "a nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the sublime proposition that all men are equal" can long endure. I believe that Manila and Santiago will rank in history among the decisive battles of the world. Ours was a war for humanity, which the greater statesmen for fifty years have felt was inevitable. In our complacent prosperity we gave little heed to the helpless condition of the oppressed at our doors. It was only when the state of things became intolerable that the nation said these outrages must cease. The invincible proof that war was necessary, and that even the President's humane and skilful diplomacy could not have averted it, is this: Spain could not be trusted. The false, tortuous, and cruel policy of the Spaniard does not need to be rehearsed. The horrors of the Spanish occupancy of the Antilles do not need to be pictured again. Other nations may have been unable to comprehend our motives; they may have taunted us with selfishness and jingoism; but we know that the spirit which inaugurated our intervention was the spirit of humanity.

Other nations may not have understood that there is any unselfishness still left among men; but England, God bless her, was our friend, and has been drawn into closer fellowship with us than ever before in her history. The universality and the continuance of English good-will in the last six months are proof that it is genuine. They are proud of us. They recognize in us what is best in themselves. An American living in Yokohama writes to me that the old English habit and temper of offensive superiority is altogether gone. And surely this is a miracle hardly paralleled in our century! We have in many things a kinship with Great Britain. Outside the area of Anglo-Saxon liberty there has been but little understanding of true Americanism; the spirit of the nation whom Lowell described as

She of the open soul and open door." On the continent of Europe America is usually thought of as merely a fat, prosperous, conceited, lawless, unedu'cated mass of vulgar people.

But the recent war has struck this great mass of ignorance and prejudice and has shown that we are strong where we were thought to be weak. Our good fighters have done more to open the eyes of Europe than our good scholars. Dewey's victory in Manila, the heroism of Santiago, the splendid shooting and seamanship which destroyed the fleet of Cervera, have brought more to American prestige than our wealth, our schools, our libraries, and our prosperity had accomplished. It may be a shameful fact, for it shows how primitive, how uninstructed, how material, is the average European mind. I am glad that these results have been achieved; not because I like to please a braggart Americanism, but because I am glad that the way is open for a better understanding of what is best in America. I love to have America recognized in her true glory, for I believe that America means the future of the race. It means toleration, education, freedom, justice, equality, and opportunity for vast areas that have been desolated or undeveloped.

II.

RESULTS OF THE SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR

GLORIOUS results have come from this last great struggle between the Middle Ages and the Declaration of Independence, between the Inquisition and the common school, between the rack and toleration, between the Duke of Alva and George Washington, between Philip the Second and Abraham Lincoln. Spain discovered

America twice, once in 1492, and again in this year of wonders, 1898. We have come to discover ourselves and what we represent. We have come to care for all parts of our country. We are fired with a patriotism which burns all the way from Alaska to Florida, and from Washington to Honolulu. We are determined to bring the eastern and western coasts of our country close together, through the digging of the Nicaragua Canal. We shall bind Chicago and Manila into closer fellowship by electric wires beneath the seas. We have forsaken the policy of selfish isolation, and come to realize our world-mission in these days when God has made us a world-power.

With the solemn sense of our new responsibility I thank God that America has widened westward across the Pacific, which is to be the chief highway of the world's future commerce. I am glad that in Hawaii and the Ladrones and the Philippines we have stepping-stones for American ideas over to the greatest and most populous side of the world. The great event of the twentieth century is to be the uplifting of Asia and thus the unitizing of the globe. Woe be to our western world, as Captain Mahan has indicated, if the great Asiatic nations become equipped with our arms and become rich with our inventions, and are not in harmony with our ideas and our ideals. The road is still open between Pekin and Vienna for new Asiatic hordes to press into Europe, and if an army of millions of Asiatics follows the path of Genghis Khan and Tamerlane, armed with Maxim guns and modern rifles, who knows if Christian civilization will be able to push back the red wave of destruction.

We have seen the rehabilitation of Japan, a great military and naval power; but thanks to Christian forces, Japan is not altogether out of harmony with western ideals. The great conflict of the future is to be between civilization, represented by pure homes,