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remember that the untempted and the effortless should be cautious in passing too heavy judgment upon their brethren who may show hardness, who may be guilty of shortcomings, but who nevertheless do the great deeds by which mankind advances. These pioneers of Methodism had the strong, militant virtues which go to the accomplishment of such great deeds. Now and then they betrayed the shortcomings natural to men of their type; but their shortcomings seem small indeed when we place beside them the magnitude of the work they achieved.

And now, friends, in celebrating the wonderful growth of Methodism, in rejoicing at the good it has done to the country and to mankind, I need hardly ask a body like this to remember that the greatness of the fathers becomes to the children a shameful thing if they use it only as an excuse for inaction instead of as a spur to effort for noble aims. I speak to you not only as Methodists-I speak to you as American citizens. The pioneer days are over. We now all of us form parts of a great civilized nation, with a complex industrial and social life and infinite possibilities both for good and for evil. The instruments with which, and the surroundings in which, we work, have changed immeasurably from what they were in the days when the rough backwoods preachers ministered to the moral and spiritual needs of their rough backwoods congregations. But if we are to succeed, the spirit in which we do our work must be the same as the spirit in which they did theirs. These men drove forward, and fought their way upward, to success, because their sense of duty was in their hearts, in the very marrow of their bones. It was not with them something to be considered as a mere adjunct to their theology, standing separate and apart from their daily life. They had it with them week days as well as Sundays. They did not divorce the spiritual from the secular. They did not

have one kind of conscience for one side of their lives and another for another.

If we are to succeed as a nation we must have the same spirit in us. We must be absolutely practical, of course, and must face facts as they are. The pioneer preachers of Methodism could not have held their own for a fortnight if they had not shown an intense practicality of spirit, if they had not possessed the broadest and deepest sympathy for, and understanding of, their fellowmen. But in addition to the hard, practical commonsense needed by each of us in life, we must have a lift toward lofty things or we shall be lost, individually, and collectively as a nation. Life is not easy, and least of all is it easy for either the man or the nation that aspires to do great deeds. In the century opening, the play of the infinitely far-reaching forces and tendencies which go to make up our social system bids fair to be even fiercer in its activity than in the century which has just closed. If during this century the men of high and fine moral sense show themselves weaklings; if they possess only that cloistered virtue which shrinks shuddering from contact with the raw facts of actual life; if they dare not go down into the hurly-burly where the men of might contend for the mastery; if they stand aside from the pressure and conflict; then as surely as the sun rises and sets all of our great material progress, all the multiplication of the physical agencies which tend for our comfort and enjoyment, will go for naught and our civilization will become a brutal sham and mockery. If we are to do as I believe we shall and will do, if we are to advance in broad humanity, in kindliness, in the spirit of brotherhood, exactly as we advance in our conquest over the hidden forces of nature, it must be by developing strength in virtue and virtue in strength, by breeding and training men who shall be both good and strong, both gentle and valiant-men who scorn wrong-doing and who at the same

time have both the courage and the strength to strive mightily for the right. Wesley accomplished so much for mankind because he refused to leave the stronger, manlier qualities to be availed of only in the interest of evil. The church he founded has throughout its career been a church for the poor as well as for the rich and has known no distinction of persons. It has been a church whose members, if true to the teachings of its founder, have sought for no greater privilege than to spend and be spent in the interest of the higher life, who have prided themselves, not on shirking rough duty, but on undertaking it and carrying it to a successful conclusion.

I come here to-night to greet you and to pay my tribute to your past because you have deserved well of mankind, because you have striven with strength and courage to bring nearer the day when peace and justice shall obtain among the peoples of the earth.

XVI

AT CHICAGO, ILLINOIS, APRIL 2, 1903

Mr. Chairman, ladies, and gentlemen:

To-day I wish to speak to you, not merely about the Monroe Doctrine, but about our entire position in the Western Hemisphere - a position so peculiar and predominant that out of it has grown the acceptance of the Monroe Doctrine as a cardinal feature of our foreign policy; and in particular I wish to point out what has been done during the lifetime of the last Congress to make good our position in accordance with this historic policy.

Ever since the time when we definitely extended our boundaries westward to the Pacific and southward to the Gulf, since the time when the old Spanish and Portuguese colonies to the south of us asserted their independence, our nation has insisted that because of its primacy in strength among the nations of the Western Hemisphere it has certain duties and responsibilities which oblige it to take a leading part thereon. We hold that our interests in this hemisphere are greater than those of any European power possibly can be, and that our duty to ourselves and to the weaker republics who are our neighbors requires us to see that none of the great military powers from across the seas shall encroach upon the territory of the American republics or acquire control thereover.

This policy, therefore, not only forbids us to acquiesce in such territorial acquisition, but also causes us to object

to the acquirement of a control which would in its effect be equal to territorial aggrandizement. This is why the United States has steadily believed that the construction of the great Isthmian canal, the building of which is to stand as the greatest material feat of the twentieth century, greater than any similar feat in any preceding century, should be done by no foreign nation but by ourselves. The canal must of necessity go through the territory of one of our smaller sister republics. We have been scrupulously careful to abstain from perpetrating any wrong upon any of these republics in this matter. We do not wish to interfere with their rights in the least, but, while carefully safeguarding them, to build the canal ourselves under provisions which will enable us, if necessary, to police and protect it, and to guarantee its neutrality, we being the sole guarantor. Our intention was steadfast; we desired action taken so that the canal could. always be used by us in time of peace and war alike, and in time of war could never be used to our detriment by any nation which was hostile to us. Such action, by the circumstances surrounding it, was necessarily for the benefit and not the detriment of the adjacent American republics.

After considerably more than half of a century these objects have been exactly fulfilled by the legislation and treaties of the last two years. Two years ago we were no further advanced toward the construction of the Isthmian canal on our terms than we had been during the preceding eighty years. By the Hay-Pauncefote treaty, ratified in December, 1901, an old treaty with Great Britain, which had been held to stand in the way, was abrogated and it was agreed that the canal should be constructed under the auspices of the Government of the United States, and that this Government should have the exclusive right to regulate and manage it, becoming the sole guarantor of its neutrality.

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