The finest speech that for many years has been delivered by a college man to other college men was that made last spring by Judge Holmes, himself a gallant soldier of the Civil War, in that hall which Harvard has erected to commemorate those of her sons who perished when the North strove with the South. It should be graven on the heart of every college man, for it has in it that lift of the soul toward things heroic that makes the eyes burn and the veins thrill. It must be read in its entirety, for no quotation could do justice to its fine scorn of the mere money-maker, its lofty fealty to a noble ideal, and, above all, its splendid love of country and splendid praise of the valor of those who strive on stricken fields that the honor of their nation may be upheld.
It is strange, indeed, that in a country where words like those of Judge Holmes can be spoken, there should exist men who actually oppose the building of a navy by the United States, nay, even more, actually oppose so much as the strengthening of the coast defences, on the ground that they prefer to have this country too feeble to resent any insult, in order that it may owe its safety to the contemptuous forbearance which it is hoped this feebleness will inspire in foreign powers. No Tammany alderman, no venal legislator, no demagogue or corrupt politician, ever strove more effectively than these men are striving to degrade the nation and to make one ashamed of the name of America. When we remember that among them there are college graduates, it is a relief to remember that the leaders on the side of manliness and of love of country are also college graduates. Every believer in scholarship and in a liberal education, every believer in the robust qualities of heart, mind, and body without which cultivation and refinement are of no avail, must rejoice to think that, in the present crisis, college men have been prominent among the leaders whose far-sighted statesmanship and resolute love of country have made those of us who are really Americans proud of the nation. Secretary Olney is a graduate of Brown; Senator Lodge, who took the lead in the Senate on this matter, is a graduate of Harvard; and no less than three members of the Boundary Commission are graduates of Yale.
FOOTNOTES:
[19] The Bachelor of Arts, March, 1896.
XII
WASHINGTON’S FORGOTTEN MAXIM[20]
A century has passed since Washington wrote “To be prepared for war is the most effectual means to promote peace.” We pay to this maxim the lip loyalty we so often pay to Washington’s words; but it has never sunk deep into our hearts. Indeed of late years many persons have refused it even the poor tribute of lip loyalty, and prate about the iniquity of war as if somehow that was a justification for refusing to take the steps which can alone in the long run prevent war or avert the dreadful disasters it brings in its train. The truth of the maxim is so obvious to every man of really far-sighted patriotism that its mere statement seems trite and useless; and it is not over-creditable to either our intelligence or our love of country that there should be, as there is, need to dwell upon and amplify such a truism.
In this country there is not the slightest danger of an over-development of warlike spirit, and there never has been any such danger. In all our history there has never been a time when preparedness for war was any menace to peace. On the contrary, again and again we have owed peace to the fact that we were prepared for war; and in the only contest which we have had with a European power since the Revolution, the war of 1812, the struggle and all its attendant disasters, were due solely to the fact that we were not prepared to face, and were not ready instantly to resent, an attack upon our honor and interest; while the glorious triumphs at sea which redeemed that war were due to the few preparations which we had actually made. We are a great peaceful nation; a nation of merchants and manufacturers, of farmers and mechanics; a nation of workingmen, who labor incessantly with head or hand. It is idle to talk of such a nation ever being led into a course of wanton aggression or conflict with military powers by the possession of a sufficient navy.