Defending the World's Right to Democracy
By James Hamilton Lewis
United States Senator from Illinois
[From a Recent Speech in the United States Senate]
No democracy was ever founded in any Government of earth that did not have to fight to continue its existence or maintain its ideals. Hear Goethe proclaim to Prussia, "Those who have liberty must fight to keep it." The test of every free land that tries out its worthiness or unworthiness to exist as a Government of freedom has been its willingness or refusal to fight and die for its faith. No Government that has not exhibited a capacity to sacrifice all it has for the theory for which it was founded, and to prove its ability to protect and perpetuate the institutions it has created, has ever yet existed for a length of time sufficient to be recorded in history as having fostered liberty or transmitted democracy to men. No Government has yet been accorded by civilization a place among the nations of the earth until it had first demonstrated its worthiness to administer justice by doing justice to itself, and then to prove its power in conflict to overcome its natural enemies, whether from within or without. * * *
Our United States, too, must pass under the rod. America's institutions of freedom, inspiring mankind to her example and awakening oppressed lands to follow her course if they would know liberty, inflamed the souls of the royal rulers of Prussia with fear and fired them to war of destruction upon all that America stood for and was living for. * * *
Whatever riches America has amassed from her industry, whatever wealth gathered from her commerce, what harvests garnered from her fields, are all as but the least of offering compared to that which she brings to civilization in the growth of liberty, the perfection of justice, and the expansion of freedom with which she has been able by her example and her power, through her religion and her generosities, to endow mankind. Other nations have risen in triumph of power and lived for a while in the glory of arms, but by selfish achievement—conquest through the slash of swords—they have fallen. As these wrenched victory by strength and success by power, they but showed the way to the rival wherein to multiply and by these same standards prevail. That which was victor yesterday was the conquered of today, and thus one after the other the powerful nations of the world, resting only upon the achievement of riches, the multiplication of wealth, and the power of the sword, have broken and melted away, leaving nothing enduring to which mankind appeals as example to follow or the children of men turn to as gods to be worshipped or praised. Hear Ruskin echoing this truth:
Riches of Tyre, Thebes, and Carthage; yea, I say also the once Rome and great Persia are left for our beholding in the periods of their decline. They are ghosts upon the sands of the sea. Theirs was power, riches, grandeur; much for a country—nothing for man. They rose; they shined, yea glowed, laughed, persecuted, and oppressed, and then they died, and man asks not, where are they? nor cares that they live not among nations. As among men, there is to nations a justice of God and the vengeance of time.
Mr. President, refined civilization as it increases in its purpose of equality among men and justice to all peoples scorns the suggestion of accepting these dead nations of the past as models of national education or guides of personal conduct. The people of the modern world shun them and hold as their boast before earth how they disdain to pattern after them, and turning the face of all those that are new and hopeful to the one standard, approach the United States of America, and bowing in admiration, ask but to follow her past growth, hold her guiding hand, and walk beside her in the light of approving heaven.
Then who are they who misrepresent the purpose of democracy under Wilson that they may defeat all democracy to all men? These charge that America, under Wilson, would continue war to force Governments and people of foreign lands to take our form of government. Let the world know that as George Washington fought for democracy as a right to America and Thomas Jefferson proclaimed it as a necessity to mankind, while Lincoln made it his creed of emancipation for all color and all climes—so, too, Wilson fights for democracy as a right of the whole world. The promise of Wilson to "make the world safe for democracy" is no threat to make the world take democracy. It is but the assurance of the effort to give to the world its chance to take democracy. This war of America is the announcement that we, by our entrance into the conflict, will prevent any despot from depriving any people of the right to exercise their free will in rejecting despotism and choosing democracy. The United States does not fight to force any Government to adopt the theory of our Government, nor does the United States fight to force any foreign people to take our form of government against any form of government they may choose for themselves. But America does fight to prevent any foreign Government from thwarting any land from enjoying democracy if it so wills by the voice of its own people. And this United States fights now and will ever fight to the expenditure of its last dollar and the sacrifice of every son, rather than submit to any monarch wresting our democracy from us, to the death of our liberty and the end of our Republic.