EXERCISES
Show how an appeal to the feelings could be made in the following. To what particular feeling or feelings would you appeal in each case?
1. Try to gain your parents' permission to attend college.
2. Urge a friend to give up card playing.
3. Try to persuade your teachers not to give so long lessons.
4. Persuade others to aid an unfortunate family living in our community.
5. Induce the school board to give you a good gymnasium.
6. Persuade a tramp to give up his mode of life.
7. Try to get some one to buy your old bicycle.
8. Urge your country to act in behalf of some oppressed people.
9. Urge a resident of your town to give something for a public park.
+Theme CVII.+—Write out one of the preceding.
(Consider what you have written with reference to coherence and climax.)
+201. Argument with Persuasion.+—In some cases we are sure that our hearers are already convinced as to the truth of a proposition. Then there is no need of argument and persuasion is used alone, but more frequently both are used. Argument naturally precedes persuasion, but with few exceptions the two are intermixed and even so blended as to be scarcely distinguishable, the one from the other. A good example of the use of both forms is found in the speech of Antony over the dead body of Caesar in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. Read the speech and note the argument and persuasion given in it. What three arguments does Antony advance to prove that Caesar was not ambitious? Does he draw conclusions or leave that for his listeners to do? Where is there an appeal to their pity? To their curiosity? To their gratitude? What is the result in each case of the various appeals?
In the following examples note the argument and persuasion. Remember that persuasion commences when we begin to urge to action. Notice what feelings are appealed to in the persuasive parts of the speeches.
They tell us, Sir, that we are weak, unable to cope with so formidable an adversary. But, when shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week, or the next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed and when a British guard shall be stationed in every house? Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance, by lying supinely on our backs and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot? Sir, we are not weak, if we make a proper use of the means which the God of nature hath placed in our power. Three millions of people, armed in the holy cause of liberty, and in such a country as that which we possess, are invincible by any force which our enemy can send against us. Besides, Sir, we shall not fight our battles alone. There is a just God who presides over the destinies of nations; and who will raise up friends to fight our battles for us. The battle, Sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave. Besides, Sir, we have no election. If we were base enough to desire it, it is now too late to retire from the contest. There is no retreat, but in submission and slavery. Our chains are forged! Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston! The war is inevitable—and let it come! I repeat it, Sir, let it come!—It is vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry peace, peace—but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field. Why stand we here, idle? Is life so dear, is peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death.
—Patrick Henry.
The pictures in the American newspapers of the starving reconcentrados are true. They can all be duplicated by the thousands. I never before saw, and please God, I may never again see, so deplorable a sight as the reconcentrados in the suburbs of Matanzas. I can never forget to my dying day the hopeless anguish in their despairing eyes. Huddled about their little bark huts, they raised no voice of appeal to us for alms as we went among them…. Men, women, and children stand silent, famishing with hunger. Their only appeal comes from their sad eyes, through which one looks as through an open window into their agonizing souls.
The Government of Spain has not appropriated and will not appropriate one dollar to save these people. They are now being attended and nursed and administered to by the charity of the United States. Think of the spectacle! We are feeding the citizens of Spain; we are nursing their sick; we are saving such as can be saved, and yet there are those who still say it is right for us to send food, but we must keep hands off. I say that the time has come when muskets ought to go with the food….
The time for action has, then, come. No greater reason for it can exist to-morrow than exists to-day. Every hour's delay only adds another chapter to the awful story of misery and death. Only one power can intervene—the United States of America. Ours is the one great nation of the New World, the mother of American republics. She holds a position of trust and responsibility toward the peoples and the affairs of the whole Western Hemisphere.
Mr. President, there is only one action possible, if any is taken—that is, intervention for the independence of the island. But we cannot intervene and save Cuba without the exercise of force, and force means war; war means blood. The lowly Nazarene on the shores of Galilee preached the divine doctrine of love, "Peace on earth, good will toward men." Not peace on earth at the expense of liberty and humanity. Not good will toward men who despoil, enslave, degrade, and starve to death their fellow-men. I believe in the doctrine of Christ, I believe in the doctrine of peace; but, Mr. President, men must have liberty before there can come abiding peace.
Intervention means force. Force means war. War means blood. But it will be God's force. When has a battle for humanity and liberty ever been won except by force? What barricade of wrong, injustice, and oppression has ever been carried except by force? Force compelled the signature of unwilling royalty to the great Magna Charta; force put life into the Declaration of Independence and made effective the Emancipation Proclamation; force beat with naked hands upon the iron gateway of the Bastile and made reprisal in one awful hour for centuries of kingly crime; force waved the flag of revolution over Bunker Hill and marked the snows of Valley Forge with blood-stained feet; force held the broken line at Shiloh, climbed the flame-swept hill at Chattanooga, and stormed the clouds on Lookout heights; force marched with Sherman to the sea, rode with Sheridan in the valley of Shenandoah, and gave Grant victory at Appomattox; force saved the Union, kept the stars in the flag, made "niggers" men.
Others may hesitate, others may procrastinate, others may plead for further diplomatic negotiations, which means delay; but for me, I am ready to act now, and for my action I am ready to answer to my conscience, my country, and my God.
—John Mellen Thurston: Speech in United States Senate, March, 1898.