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men accustomed to look at the larger and loftier side of public life. It has been of even greater benefit to India and Egypt. And finally, and most of all, it has advanced the cause of civilization. So, if we do our duty aright in the Philippines, we will add to that national renown which is the highest and finest part of national life; will greatly benefit the people of the Philippine Islands; and, above all, we will play our part well in the great work of uplifting mankind. But to do this work, keep ever in mind that we must show in a high degree the qualities of courage, of honesty, and of good judgment. Resistance must be stamped out. The first and all-important work to be done is to establish the supremacy of our flag. We must put down armed resistance before we can accomplish anything else, and there should be no parleying, no faltering in dealing with our foe. As for those in our own country who encourage the foe, we can afford contemptuously to disregard them; but it must be remembered that their utterances are saved from being treasonable merely from the fact that they are despicable.

When once we have put down armed resistance, when once our rule is acknowledged, then an even more difficult task will begin, for then we must see to it that the islands are administered with absolute honesty and with good judgment. If we let the public service of the islands be turned into the prey of the spoils politician we shall have begun to tread the path which Spain trod to her own destruction. We must send out there only good and able men, chosen for their fitness and not because of their partisan service, and these men must not only administer impartial justice to the natives and serve their own government with honesty and fidelity, but must show the utmost tact and firmness, remembering that with such people as those with whom we are to deal weakness is the greatest of crimes, and that next to weakness comes lack of consideration for their principles and prejudices.

I preach to you, then, my countrymen, that our country calls not for the life of ease, but for the life of strenuous endeavor. The Twentieth century looms before us big with the fate of many nations. If we stand idly by, if we seek merely swollen, slothful ease, and ignoble peace, if we shrink from the hard contests where men must win at

hazard of their lives and at the risk of all they hold dear, then the bolder and stronger peoples will pass us by and will win for themselves the domination of the world. Let us therefore boldly face the life of strife, resolute to do our duty well and manfully; resolute to uphold righteousness by deed and by word; resolute to be both honest and brave, to serve high ideals, yet to use practical methods. Above all, let us shrink from no strife, moral or physical, within or without the nation, provided we are certain that the strife is justified; for it is only through strife, through hard and dangerous endeavor, that we shall ultimately win the goal of true national greatness.

LORD ROSEBERY

ROBERT BURNS

[Address of 'Archibald Philip Primrose, Earl of Rosebery, statesman, orator, British Prime Minister 1894-95 (born in London, May 7, 1847; -), delivered in St. Andrew's Hall, Glasgow, July 21, 1896, being the occasion of the Burns Centenary celebration at Dumfries, Scotland.]

I cannot perhaps deny that to-day has been a labor, but it has been a labor of love. [The speaker had delivered an address in the morning before the tomb of Burns, at Dumfries.] It is, it must be, a source of joy and pride to see our champion Scotsman receive the honor and admiration and affection of humanity, to see as I have seen this morning the long processions bringing homage and tribute to the conquering dead. But these have only been signs and symptoms of world-wide reverence and devotion. (That generous and immortal soul pervades the universe to-day. In the humming city and in the crowd of men, in the backwood and in the swamp, where the sentinel paces the black frontier or the sailor smokes the evening pipe, or where, above all, the farmer and his men pursue their summer toil, whether under the Stars and Stripes or under the Union Jack, the thought and sympathy of men are directed to Robert Burns.

I have sometimes asked myself, if a roll-call of fame were read over at the beginning of every century, how many men of eminence would answer a second time to their names. But of our poet there is no doubt or question. The adsum of Burns rings out clear and unchallenged. There are few before him on the list, and we cannot now conceive a list without him. He towers high,

and yet he lived in an age when the average was sublime. It sometimes seems to me as if the whole Eighteenth century was a constant preparation for a constant working up to the great drama of the Revolution which closed it. The scenery is all complete when the time arrivesthe dark volcanic country, the hungry, desperate people, the firefly nobles, the concentrated splendor of the Court; in the midst, in her place as heroine, the dazzling queen; and during lone previous years brooding nature has been producing not merely the immediate actors, but figures worthy of the scene. What a glittering procession it is! We can only mark some of the principal figures. Burke leads the way by seniority; then come Fox, and Goethe, Nelson and Mozart, Schiller, Pitt and Burns, Wellington and Napoleon, and among these Titans Burns is a conspicuous figure a figure which appeals most of all to the imagination and affection of mankind. Napoleon looms larger to the imagination, but on the affection he has no hold. It is in the combination of the two powers that Burns is supreme. What is his secret? What is his secret? We are always discussing him and endeavoring to find it out. Perhaps, like the latent virtue of some medical baths, it may never be satisfactorily explained, but at any rate let us discuss him again.

That is, I presume, our object to-night. What pleasanter or more familiar occupation can there be for Scotsmen? But the Scotsmen who enjoy it have generally, perhaps, more time than I. Pardon, then, the imperfections of my speech, for I speak of a subject which no one can altogether compass, and which a busy man has. perhaps, no right to attempt.

The clue to Burns' extraordinary hold on mankind is possibly a complicated one. It has, perhaps, many developments. If so, we have no time to consider it to-night; but I personally believe the causes are, like most great causes, simple, though it might take long to point out all the ways in which they operate. The secret, as it seems to me, lies in two words inspiration and sympathy. But if I wished to prove my contention I should go on quoting from his poems all night, and his admirers would still declare that I had omitted the best passages. I must proceed, then, in a more summary way. There seem to be

two great natural forces in British literature-I use the safe adjective of "British" [laughter and applause]—and your applause shows me that I was right to do so. [Renewed applause.] I use it partly because hardly any of Burns' poetry is strictly English, partly because he hated and was perhaps the first to protest against the use of the word English as including Scottish. There are, I say, two great forces, which seem sheer inspiration and nothing else I mean Shakespeare and Burns This is not the place or the time to speak of the miracle called Shakespeare, but one must say a word of the miracle called Burns.

Try and reconstruct Burns as he was a peasant born in a cottage that no sanitary inspector in these days would tolerate for a moment [laughter]; struggling with desperate effort against pauperism, almost in vain; snatching at scraps of learning in the intervals of toil, as it were with his teeth; a heavy, silent, lad, proud of his plough. All of a sudden, without preface or warning, he breaks out into exquisite song like a nightingale from the brushwood, and continues singing as sweetly, in nightingale pauses, till he dies. The nightingale sings because he cannot help it. He can only sing exquisitely, because he knows no other. So it was with Burns. What is this but inspiration? One can no more measure or reason about it than measure or reason about Niagara, and, remember, the poetry is only a fragment of Burns. Amazing as it may seem, all contemporary testimony is unanimous that the man was far more wonderful than his works. will be the misfortune of Burns' reputation," writes an accomplished lady, who might well have judged him harshly, "in the records of literature, not only to future generations and to foreign countries, but even with his native Scotland and a number of his contemporaries, that he has been regarded as a poet and nothing but a poet. Poetry," she continues-" I appeal to all who had the advantage of being personally acquainted with him-was actually not his forte. None certainly ever outshone Burns in the charms-the sorcery I would almost call it— of fascinating conversation, the spontaneous eloquence of social argument, or the unstudied poignancy of brilliant. repartee," and she goes on to describe the almost super

“It

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