The general idea he has expressed therein of the principles of democratic régime, of its severe trials and accidental mistakes, of the virtues which sustain popular government, and of the public education that must prepare and secure it, reveals to us the secret of the prosperity and welfare of the freest and most flourishing republic that has ever existed, and how it has reached the preponderant rank it now occupies among nations.
The noble purpose of our powerful sister of the North, who with a persevering and ever steadfast persistency presses on, is the endeavor to combine continental interests lacking sufficient cohesion, and to promote their common development, thus seeking to reach "the complete rule of justice and peace among nations in lieu of force and war."
These words of Mr. Root contain, in their severe simplicity, a complete statement of his mission of friendship and advice. He seeks to stimulate the common aim of harmonizing the several interests on a permanent basis upon which is to be established the uniform rule of our common existence, the rule of justice never subservient to private and selfish convenience; a barrier against the arbitrary and brutal decisions of force, nearly always dissembled under plausible forms and motives of international tradition.
There exists a fundamental sentiment which opposes the cumulus of violence and usurpation, which in a great degree constitutes historic international law and corrects the deductions made from purely speculative theories,—a sentiment we accept without demur, and which is asserted like the axioms that serve as the basis and foundation of all reasoning and as a rule inspiring human actions.
This concept is that of a law of coexistence, an intuition of the universal conscience, which all human society upholds by reason of the sole fact of its existence.
But the completely empiric and egotistical manner in which nations have understood and applied the right of sovereign independence in their outward dealings, has, up to the present time, been the almost insuperable obstacle to the universal establishment of a rule of justice which governs, in a permanent and uniform manner, the concourse of interests; each state following one of its own modeling, in accordance with the power it holds and the ambitions it is thereby enabled to pursue.
This tendency, whether open or covert, hardly restrained by the formalities of modern civilization, which seldom succeeds in masking the painful reality, has created the singular spectacle witnessed at the present time,—that is, the undefined aggravation of a military situation which absorbs the greater part of the resources of nations, wrung from the labor of humanity.
The constant fear of armed aggression has brought about political alliances of a purely transitory character, which assure nothing and, in truth, mean nothing but the mutual imputation of violence and outrage, unhappily but too well demonstrated as justifiable motives for apprehension, by reason of the ominous antecedents of an international régime founded on the supremacy of power.
This precarious guaranty, the fruit of an unsteady and purely political combination which may undergo the most unexpected alterations, cannot assure a stable situation, because it is not in itself the constitution of a common, strong, and commanding law; but, on the contrary, is the distrust of the efficacy of the latter and a certain traditional disdain for a humane and peaceful solution of international affairs.
When the anxiety of danger or an unforeseen obstacle does not prevent recourse to arms, war breaks out if the motive is simply the securing of an advantage sustained by a military power which the country chosen as the object of aggression cannot forcibly check.