ours and we have conquered it by Republican principles and by Republican persistency in the principles of American industry and of America for Americans. (Applause.) ALL POINTS OF THE COMPASS You and I, my friends-you from New England with all its culture and its coldness (laughter), and you from the Middle West who, starting from Ohio, and radiating in every direction, think you are all there is of it (laughter), you from the West who produced on this platform a product of New England transformed to the West through New York, that delivered the best presiding officers speech in oratory, and all that makes up a great speech, that has been heard in many a day in any convention in this country (applause, and cries of 'good, good).' It was a glorious thing to see the fervor of the West and the culture and polish of New England giving us an ammunition wagon from which the spell-binder everywhere can draw the powder to shoot down opposition East and West and North and South. (Applause and laughter.) Many of you I met in convention four years ago. We all feel what little men we were then compared with what we (loud applause)—the statesman and the cowboy (laughter), the accomplished man of affairs and the heroic fighter. The man who has proved great as President, and the fighter who has proved great as Governor. (Applause.) We leave this old town simply to keep on shouting and working to make it unanimous for McKinley and for Roosevelt. CHAPTER XX. "The Party of Live Issues." Address by Henry Cabot Lodge, Permanent Chairman of the Declares the Republican Party to be the Party of Live Issues— S ENATOR LODGE, after being chosen permanent chairman of the convention delivered a powerful and impressive speech, setting forth the splendid accomplishments of the Republican party during the past four years and declaring that these deeds guarantee that the promises of to-day will be fulfilled. His address in full follows: One of the greatest honors that can fall to any American in public life is to be called to preside over a Republican National Convention. How great that honor is you know, but you cannot realize, nor can I express, the gratitude which I feel to you for having conferred it upon me. I can only say to you, in the simplest phrase, that I thank you from the bottom of my heart. "Beggar that I am, I am even poor in thanks, and yet I thank you." We meet again to nominate the next President of the United States. Four years have passed since we nominated the soldier and statesman who is now President, and who is soon to enter upon his second term. Since the Civil War no Presidental term has been so crowded with great events as that which is now drawing to a close. They have been four memorable years. To Republicans they show a record of promises kept, of work done, of unforeseen questions met and answered. To the Democrats they have been generous in the exhibition of unfulfilled predictions, in the ruin of their hopes of calamity, and in futile opposition to the forces of the times and the aspirations of the American people. I wish I could add that they had been equally instructive to our opponents, but while it is true that the Democrats, like the Bourbons, learn 358 nothing, it is only too evident that the familiar comparison cannot be completed, for they forget a great deal which it would be well for them to remember. A COMPARISON In 1897 we took the government and the country from the hands of President Cleveland. His party had abandoned him and were joined to their idols, During the last years of his term we had presented of which he was not one. to us the melancholy spectacle of a President trying to govern without a party. The result was that his policies were in ruin, legislation was at a standstill, and public affairs were in a perilous and incoherent condition. Party responsibility had vanished, and with it all possibility of intelligent action, demanded by the country at home and abroad. It was an interesting but by no means singular display of Democratic unfitness for the practical work of government. To the political student it was instructive, to the country it was extremely painful, to business disastrous. We replaced this political chaos with a President in thorough accord with his party, and the machinery of government began again to move smoothly and effectively. Thus we kept at once our promise of better and more efficient administration. In four months after the inauguration of President McKinley we had passed a tariff bill. For ten years the artificial agitation, in behalf of what was humorously called tariff reform and of what was really free trade, had kept business in a ferment, and had brought a Treasury deficit, paralyzed industries, depression, panic, and, finally, continuous bad times to a degree never before imagined. Would you know the result of our tariff legislation, look about you. Would you measure its success, recollect that it is no longer an issue; that our opponents, free traders as they are, do not dare to make it an issue; that there is not a state in the Union to-day which could be carried for free trade against protection. Never was a policy more fully justified by its works; never was a promise made by any party more absolutely fulfilled. PROMISES MADE AND FULFILLED Dominant among the issues of four years ago' was that of our monetary and financial system. The Republican Party promised to uphold our credit, to protect our currency from revolution, and to maintain the gold standard. We We have been better than our promise. have done so. We have done more. Failing to secure, after honest effort, any encouragement for international bimetallism, we have passed a law strengthening the gold standard and planting it more firmly than ever in our financial system, improving our banking laws, buttressing our credit, and refunding the public debt at 2 per cent. interest. the lowest rate in the world. It was a great work well done. The only argument the Democrats can advance to-day in their own behalf on the money question is that a Republican Senate, in the event of Democratic success, would not permit the repeal of a Republican law. This is a precious argument when looked at with considerate eyes, and quite worthy of the intellects which produced it. Apply it generally. Upon this theory, because we have defeated the soldiers of Spain and sunk her ships we can with safety dispense with the army and the navy which did the work. Take another example. There has been a fire in a great city; it has been checked and extinguished, therefore let us abolish the fire department and cease to insure our homes. Distrust in our currency, the dread of change, the deadly fear of a debased standard were raging four years ago, and business lay prostrate before them. Republican supremacy and Republican legislation have extinguished the fires of doubt and fear, and business has risen triumphant from the ashes. Therefore abolish your fire department, turn out the Republicans and put in power the incendiaries who lighted the flames, and trust to what remains of Republican control to avert fresh disaster. The proposition is its own refutation. The supremacy of the party that has saved the standard of sound money and guarded it by law is as necessary for its security and for the existence of honest wages and of business confidence now as it was in 1896. The moment the Republican party passes from power and the party of free silver and fiat paper comes in, stable currency and the gold standard, the standard of the civilized world, are in imminent and deadly peril. Sound currency and a steady standard of value are to-day safe only in Republican hands. But there were still other questions in 1896. We had already thwarted the efforts of the Cleveland Administration to throw the Hawaiian Islands back to their dethroned Queen and to give England a foothold for her cables in the group. We then said that we would settle finally the Hawaiian question. We have done so. The traditional American policy has been carried out. The flag of the Union floats to-day over the cross-roads of the Pacific. THE RESULts of the SPANISH WAR We promised to deal with the Cuban question. Again comes the reply, we have done so. The long agony of the island is over. Cuba is free. But this great work brought with it events and issues which no man had foreseen, for which no party creed had provided a policy. The crisis came, bringing war in its train. The Republican President and the Republican Congress met the new trial in the old spirit. We fought the war with Spain. The result is history known of all men. We have the perspective now of only a short two years, and yet how clear and bright the great facts stand out, like mountain peaks against the sky, while the gathering darkness of a just oblivion is creep ing fast over the low grounds where lie forgotten the trivial and unimportant things, the criticisms and the fault-findings, which seemed so huge when we still lingered among them. Here they are, these great facts: A war of a hundred days, with many victories and no defeats, with no prisoners taken from us and no advance stayed, with a triumphant outcome startling in its completeness and in its world-wide meaning. Was ever a war more justly entered upon, more quickly fought, more fully won, more thorough in its results? Cuba is free. Spain has been driven from the Western Hemisphere. Fresh glory has come to our arms and crowned our flag. It was the work of the American people, but the Republican party was their instrument. Have we not the right to say, that, here too, even as in the days of Abraham Lincoln, we have fought a good fight, we have kept the faith, we have finished the work? War, however, is ever like the sword of Alexander. It cuts the knots. It is a great solvent and brings many results not to be foreseen. The world forces unchained in war perform in hours the work of years of quiet. Spain sued for peace. How was that peace to be made? The answer to this great question had to be given by the President of the United States. We were victorious in Cuba, Porth Rico, in the Philippines. Should we give those islands back to Spain? Never! was the President's reply. Would any American wish that he had answered otherwise? Should we hand them over to some other power? Never! was again the answer. Would our pride and self-respect as a nation have submitted to any other reply? Should we turn the islands, where we had destroyed all existing sovereignity, loose upon the world to be a prey to domestic anarchy and the helpless spoil of some other nation? Again the inevitable negative. Again the President answered as the nation he represented would have him answer. He boldly took the islands, took them knowing well the burden and the responsibility; took them from a deep sense of duty to ourselves and others, guided by a just foresight as to our future in the East, and with entire faith in the ability of the American people to grapple with the new When future conventions point to the deeds by which the Republican party has made history, they will proclaim with especial pride that under a Republican Administration the war of 1898 was fought, and that the peace with Spain was the work of William McKinley. A PARTY OF LIVE ISSUES So much for the past. We are proud of it, but we do not expect to live upon it, for the Republican party is pre-eminently the party of action, and its march is ever forward. We are not so made that we can be content to retreat or to mark time. The traditions of the early days of our party are sacred to us, and are hostages given to the American people that we will not be unworthy of |