We English-Speaking People Must Stand Together
Here, too, a choice is not permitted us. The desperate condition of the world is forcing our minds and hearts. The demand is given to us who speak English: "CO-OPERATE, OR PERISH WITH A PERISHING WORLD."
This broken world can not be put upon the path of peace and prosperity without the most careful and courageous leadership. Modern industrial and commercial conditions, in a word, the machine process, has thrown all the nations of the world together. If we can not separate ourselves from the other nations, if all the world must eventually march in the same direction, the only practical question relates to the direction of the march. Are we to be saved together, or are we going to fall together into the pit of a new sequence of the Dark Ages? The great masses of the colored races, mostly unfitted for self rule, must be protected, civilized, educated, and led onward and upward toward the best that they can do. On the other hand lies the dread alternative of a military imperium which might eventually organize the whole of China and India. If we do not organize the world for peace, it is not impossible to conceive that twenty-five years of astute propaganda might win all these seven hundred and fifty millions to the militaristic leadership of Japan. A great Indian nationalist leader recently said that no one fact had so aroused and encouraged the spirit of India as the present brilliant role of the Japanese nation. Such a pan-Asiatic movement might very likely draw Russia, Germany and several other European nations into a new and terrible alliance. The poor and the dejected always seem to find cause enough to pick a quarrel with the rich and the powerful. I repeat, if the English-speaking people will not undertake together the task of giving ordered progress and freedom to the world, upon what nation or nations is the duty to devolve? We have rejected, rightly or wrongly, the League of Nations. What next?
In this connection the happy solution of the age-worn Irish question makes straight the way. While the Irish in the home-land were in rebellion against Britain, the political waters of every English-speaking country in the world were made muddy. Peace in Ireland makes our task of co-partnership with the British Empire easier and simpler. Indeed, directly after the signatures were attached to the British treaty of peace with Ireland, a distinguished Irish leader remarked that he hoped to see America cooperate with all the other English-speaking people who are united through the British Empire.
Let us glance briefly at some essential conclusions to which the reduction of naval armaments inevitably leads. The American and the British navies are to be made about equal. In ten years time an almost perfect equality will be secured. These two navies, taken together, will of course dominate the seven oceans. The only naval power which will remotely compare to either is that of Japan. Because of our wealth and population, also because of our industries, production and commerce, the United States and the British will have no immediate rivals. Together, we can declare the world's peace. Together, we can give the world a decent measure of order. We include, of course, the practically independent and rapidly growing nations of Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. It will be readily seen how much greater is our power, a united power, for good than any other possible combination of nations in the world. Here, tossed about in a sea of color, lies the white man's hope. Here, too, is large hope for all the world. Under the world peace we can establish the forces that make for international justice which will at last be given a chance to function; while under the threat of war every sort of inhuman and barbaric force will win its way. Given an assured peace and better minds and gentler hearts among our English-speaking people will never be silenced. They will triumph in our own countries first. They will save the world as a matter of course. On the other hand, world anarchy and world war will always submerge every liberal voice and every progressive policy among all nations, ourselves included.
We need no formal alliance with the British to bring these things to pass. The alliance of the American with the British people is formed by all the qualities we have in common. These are already more powerful than any document. The theory that competition for the world's trade makes co-partnership in everything and anything impossible for us is a piece of ignorant nonsense. All our better humanity is crying out the command that trade keep to its rightful place in human affairs. If this Anglo-American understanding could have been possible ten years ago there would have been no World War. At that time we in America were not ready for co-operation. If we are not entirely ready for it to-day, then under the Providence of Almighty God, and being responsible to Him alone, those of us who see the light must make all ready for it.
With every forward step we try to take toward the peace and the salvation of the world, we shall find, at first, blocking our way and attempting to push us back, our great foreign cities. The war, in so far as we Americans ourselves are concerned, has not liberated us from this tyranny of the foreign vote. It is, in large part, still mobilized on the wrong side of almost every public question we can think of. However, we may now expect this influence to slowly give way to better knowledge and wiser counsels. With the Irish question finally settled, our Irish fellow-citizens here will have no further occasion to oppose the British at every step. Our German voters, too, may soon come to learn that Germany cannot be saved if the world be lost. If we American-born citizens can only attain sufficient unity to once for all ignore the foreign vote, and rule ourselves intelligently, we shall soon discover that vote has ceased to be a danger. But it will not cease to curse America for fifty years if it is not met with the firmness of a united American will. Let us draw a line about the foreign sections and about the hyphenated votes, and declare our absolute independence of them. During the war this foreign vote was silenced and nullified. So it will be again as soon as we speak our national mind with certainty of purpose.
Illustration: God is our Refuge and Strength