The Americanization of Asia is moving rapidly forward. In 1852 Commodore Perry—by a strange providence from Rhode Island—forced open the door into Japan. The shoguns, masters for centuries, lost their power. Then the Mikado for twenty years took their autocratic powers to himself but was compelled after that to give his people a liberal constitutional form of government. The Chinese nation, hoary with age, entered the list of democracies in 1911, becoming the United States of China. The Shah of Persia, after a broken promise which brought on a revolution, gave his people, in 1906, a constitutional form of government. The Young Turks in 1909, after compelling Abdul Hamid II to abdicate, placed Mohammed V on the throne as his successor. Prior to the Great War they had what is at least an approach to the newer constitutional ideals of the modern world.
The lands to the south of us have their struggle toward the same desired goal. The Republic of Mexico needs a religious and educational preparation which will largely solve, among that unassimilated conglomeration of Indians, negroes, and mestizos, the problem of stable government. Let the religious leaders of Mexico, who have tried for centuries with their religious autocratic systems, give way for a single generation to the evangelical churches with their democratic idealisms and the unchained Bible, and then revolutions and immorality will fade away, and the land, so desolated in recent years, will blossom like the rose.
When Napoleon defeated the monarchs of Europe and their system, he shook the confidence of the people of Central and South America in their absent monarchs across the seas. South American nations followed one by one into the class of democracies. Central American States also broke away from their European masters. These lands need the open Bible of the evangelical Christian churches more than our battleships and marines. When superstition is banished by the light which radiates from the Bible, then the republics to the south of us will vie with us in advancement and prosperity.
Absolute monarchy is doomed in Europe and throughout the world. The sword unsheathed by America must not rest in its scabbard until democracy is safe in the world and the world is made safe for democracy. Belgium outraged, France desecrated, Great Britain drained, Russia bleeding slowly to death, and all Europe a shambles, may find in the ideals of Roger Williams healing for their wounds and health for the coming years.
Due honor should be given to every colony builder of the New World. Great were their suffering and sacrifices.
All praise to others of the vanguard then,
To Spain, to France, to Baltimore and Penn.
To Jesuit, Quaker, Puritan, and Priest,
Their toils be crowned, their honors be increased.
Give praise to others early come or late,