"Gentlemen, God has America in his direct keeping, and lets it work out its destinies in accordance with His own wishes and for His own purpose. When the time came and Europe needed an outlet for its surplus energy, God let down the bars and America was discovered. Then little colonies of enterprising and progressive men, seeking freedom from troubles and oppressions of their native land, founded homes along the Atlantic coast. He had let down the bars again for his own purposes. These men struggled and fought and progressed in civilization and liberty until the time came when again the bars were let down and we had the Revolution, and the colonies became a nation. Again the bars went down, and then came the Mexican war, giving the nation the room necessary for its expansion, the space necessary for the homes of the millions from the Old World who sought the freedom of the New. From Atlantic to Pacific that little fringe of people of the colonial times had evolved until they were a great nation. We needed the precious metals, and gold and silver were found sufficient for our purposes. God had let down the bars. But one thing remained, one canker and sore, one great evil which threatened and worried and troubled, but God in His own good time again let down the bars and it was forever swept away, for He allowed the rebellion. He gave humanity and justice and right the victory. He restored the Union, He will heal the sores, He will lead the people to its final destiny as the advance guard of civilization, progress and the upbuilding and elevation of mankind, and in good time the bars will be again let down for the benefit of humanity—when or why we know not, but He knows."
In the light of recent events, the utterances of these two great men are certainly deserving of the utmost consideration. Both of them really seem to be seers, who, from their observations of the past, saw visions of the future for the native land they loved so well.
The Paris Figaro, in a remarkable article, says that, willingly or forcibly, America must belong to the Americans. The New World must gird up its loins and be ready to fulfill its mission. And this must be done by force when persuasion is not sufficient. And when the Americans shall have rejoined Europe in some portion of Asia, concludes the Figaro, and closed the ring of white civilization around the globe, will they stop or can they stop? That is the secret of the future. Its solution will depend upon what they will find before them—a Europe torn and divided, or, as it has been said, the United States of Europe. At all events, they will have the right to be proud, because they will have carried out their destiny.
Now to turn to an opinion by an Englishman, and be it remembered that England stood by us in a remarkable way from the very beginning of the Spanish-American war and undoubtedly prevented the other European nations from interfering.
The opinion we are about to give is from the pen of Mr. Henry Norman, the special commissioner of the London Chronicle.
Among other things, Mr. Norman says in an article entitled "A War-Made New America":
"The vision of a new Heaven and a new earth is still unfulfilled, but there is a new America. The second American Revolution has occurred, and its consequences may be as great as those of the first. The American people are as sensitive to emotional or intellectual stimulus as a photographic film is to light, but they are also to a remarkable degree, a people of second thoughts. Their nerves are quick, but their convictions are slow. The apparent change was so great and so unexpected that at first I could not bring myself to believe in its reality or its endurance. Unless all signs fail, however, or I fail to interpret them, the old America, the America obedient to the traditions of the founders of the republic, is passing away, and a new America, an America standing armed, alert and exigent in the arena of the world-struggle, is taking its place.
"The change is three-fold:
"I. The United States is about to take its place among the great armed powers of the world.
"II. By the seizure and retention of territory not only not contiguous to the borders of the republic, but remote from them, the United States becomes a colonizing nation, and enters the field of international rivalries.