because it was hopeless. Yonder once grew the oaks and pines under whose sheltering branches McPherson fell, our best beloved, our Lycidas, "dead ere his prime." Verily, we are on historic ground. Here our annals grow tired of common things and touch the highest themes. They make classic not simply that which is venerable, but those highest of human attributes—courage, constancy and faith. Here we

know, for a certainty, that a power beyond our controlling, an insistence outside of our own little plans, has made us one.

I am the less reluctant to speak of these things because I know you give back thought for thought, greeting for greeting and heart for heart. Not long ago, at the great jubilee in Chicago, two distinguished citizens of Georgia brought us messages that will not be forgotten. Listening to the eloquent words of Judge Speer and Clark Howell we felt, as we had never felt before, that American patriotism is, and must ever be, national. They made us know that it is not an idle sentiment, but a pervasive force, which is, in Shakespeare's exquisite phrase, " as broad and general as the casing air."

It was my fortune to be born in a harsher clime than this, where ice and snow are yearly guests, often outstaying their welcome. But gentlemen, the North Star is not so cold as some have thought, and its unchanging light from the days of Ulysses has guided mariners through perilous seas to sweet home-ports. There are legends and sagas that tell how, centuries ago, the Norsemen sailed on voyages to the Atlantic's western rim. We who are of New England origin are perhaps of kin to them, for in our veins the dominant blood flows from the north. And yet I do not think it counts for much whether we are Norman or Saxon or Dane. The United States has little need of ancestry; it is in the highest sense its own progenitor and its own suf

ficient reason. If we sing the same battle-hymns and by the fireside recite the same ballads, the question of lineage need not trouble us. Have you not read how Englishmen fought against each other for red roses and white, and again, how some stood for the king and some for the parliament; but when they looked back through battle-mists to the days of old they all sawAgincourt? So, too there was a time when some who are here to-night did not love each other overmuch, and yet, when the stress was fiercest and the fires seemed ready to consume, neither side gave up its memory of Lexington and Yorktown. Tradition, language, literature, common hopes and common interests make a nation, and these are a thousand times stronger than the sanctions of written charters or the authority of blood.

The American flag is beautiful in itself, but its colors inspire only as they symbolize the majesty, the power, and the honor of the American people. Think of the past year! North and South lose their significance when Manila and Santiago tell their story. Who cares from whence came the heroes who led and the heroes who followed? Alabama shall not claim Wheeler nor Vermont assert that Dewey is hers alone. What is Illinois? What is Georgia? They are great, but only great because they are parts of a greater nation.

II.

SOVEREIGNTY FOLLOWS THE FLAG

THE Spanish War was not the war of any State, but of all the States; it was the war of a nation strong in its high sense of right, and strong because it held in its keeping the cause of justice and humanity. American sovereignty follows the American flag. If it leads

across western seas to the east, or floats over the Oregon washing the foam of two oceans from her prow as she speeds onward to the fight, the national spirit sails with it to the uttermost. To-day the New Union faces new duties. Wars are never exactly what men foresee. The dominion of the Republic has been enormously enlarged, but it was not the lust of conquest that brought it about. It was the logic of events that were greater than men. We may trust the United States, and we may trust the deliberate judgment of its people. Thinking of all that is past, considering the present and its problems, our look must yet be forward, as is the habit of brave men and of statesmen who are fit to rule. Hamlet is not the true type of American character. In the high policy and conduct of nations what they may means often what they must.

Speaking in the presence of the President of the United States, whom we honor for what he is and for what he represents, we all unite in acknowledging his sincerity of purpose, his wisdom, and the high patriotism which by day and by night has guided him in difficult situations and unexpected emergencies. I know of no duty which can rest more solemnly upon the American people than that of sustaining and strengthening him in the great responsibilities he is bearing so bravely and so well. Statesmanship does not require absolute foreknowledge, but it does require the rare ability to meet conditions as they arise. When Dewey sailed into the bay he readjusted in an hour the policies and aims of a century. He changed the balance and equilibrium of nations, and served notice, with every shot he fired, that henceforth the United States must be counted.

We have entered new fields, as advancing nations always do; we have assumed new duties, as living nations always must. It may, indeed, be true that our fathers did not write out on parchment what must be

done if, by the fortunes of war, our flag should be carried to islands and seas remote. But, gentlemen, the flag cannot come down. The institutions and the polity of a free republic are equal to new conditions, or they are worthless. A nation that cannot keep pace with what its own arms have accomplished is already catalogued with the incapable and the degenerate. The New Union, which war has welded more firmly together, summons us and leads us forward. It does not invite responsibilities nor shrink from them. History has been busy in these last eventful months, interfusing all the elements of our national life, so that the parts forget that they are parts, and remember only an indissoluble, indivisible, indestructible Union.

REDFIELD PROCTOR

[Extracts from a speech delivered in the Senate of the United States, March 17, 1898.]

I.

THE CONDITION OF CUBA

HAVANA, the great city and capital of the island, is, in the eyes of the Spaniards and many Cubans, all Cuba, as much as Paris is France. Everything seems to go on much as usual there. Quiet prevails, and except for the frequent squads of soldiers marching to guard and police-duty and their abounding presence in all public places, one sees few signs of war. Outside Havana all is changed. It is not peace nor is it war. It is desolation and distress, misery and starvation. Every town and village is surrounded by a "trocha" (trench), a sort of rifle-pit. These trochas have at every corner and at frequent intervals along the sides what are there called forts, but which are really small block-houses, many of them more like large sentry-boxes, loopholed for musketry, and with a guard of from two to ten soldiers in each. The purpose of these trochas is to keep the reconcentrados in as well as to keep the insurgents out. From all the surrounding country the people have been driven into these fortified towns, which are virtually prison-yards, and held there to subsist as they can. When they reached the towns, they were allowed to build huts of palm