Works: American ideals, with a biographical sketch by Francis Vinton Greene; Administration-Civil service

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Review of Reviews Publishing Company, 1897

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Page 287 - All of us lift our heads higher because those of our countrymen whose trade it is to meet danger have met it well a"nd bravely. All of us are poorer for every base or ignoble deed done by an American, for every instance of selfishness or weakness or folly on the part of the people as a whole. We are all worse off when any of us fails at any point in his duty toward the State in time of peace, or his duty toward the State in time of war. If ever we had to meet defeat at the hands of a foreign foe,...
Page 50 - We Americans can only do our allotted task well if we face it stead3 VOL. I. ily and bravely, seeing but not fearing the dangers. Above all we must stand shoulder to shoulder, not asking as to the ancestry or creed of our comrades, but only demanding that they be in very truth Americans, and that we all work together, heart, hand, and head, for the honor and the greatness of our common country.
Page 283 - Asia, should determine to assert its position in those lands wherein we feel that our influence should be supreme, there is but one way in which we can effectively interfere. Diplomacy is utterly useless where there is no force behind it ; the diplomat is the servant, not the master, of the soldier.
Page 48 - But I wish to be distinctly understood on one point. Americanism is a question of spirit, conviction, and purpose, not of creed or birthplace.
Page 265 - In this country there is not the slightest danger of an over-development of warlike spirit, and there never has been any such danger. In all our history there has never been a time when preparedness for war was any menace to peace. On the contrary, * Address as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, before the Naval War College, June, 1807.
Page 251 - The man who loves other countries as much as his own stands on a level with the man who loves other women as much as he loves his own wife. One is as worthless a creature as the other.
Page 267 - All the great masterful races have been fighting races, and the minute that a race loses the hard fighting virtues, then, no matter what else it may retain, no matter how skilled in commerce and finance, in science or art, it has lost its proud right to stand as the equal of the best. Cowardice in a race, as in an individual, is the unpardonable sin, and a wilful failure to prepare for danger may in its effects be as bad as cowardice.
Page 345 - A perfectly stupid race can never rise to a very high plane; the negro, for instance, has been kept down as much by lack of intellectual development as anything else.
Page 34 - Americanism" can be used to express the antithesis of what is unwholesome and undesirable. In the first place we wish to be broadly American and national, as opposed to being local or sectional. We do not wish, in politics, in literature, or in art, to develop that unwholesome parochial spirit, that over-exaltation of the little community at the expense of the great nation, which produces what has been described as the patriotism of the village, the patriotism of the belfry.
Page 25 - There is not in the world a more ignoble character than the mere money-getting American, insensible to every duty, regardless of every principle, bent only on amassing a fortune, and putting his fortune only to the basest uses — whether these uses be to speculate in stocks and wreck railroads himself, or to allow his son to lead a life of foolish and expensive idleness and gross debauchery, or to purchase some scoundrel of high social position, foreign or native, for his daughter.

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