The President is made responsible for everything, especially for hard times. Of course his supporters claim credit for good crops, so that perhaps it is not so unfair to charge him with responsibility for bad crops and for everything else that happens wrong during his term. Every President strives to do the best he can for the country. It is a great task, one of the heaviest in the world. A man does not really know, until he gets out of the office, what the strain is. And, therefore, knowing that he is struggling to do the best he can, while he may differ with you, while he may do things that seem to you absurd, consider that he is there, elected by the American people, as your representative, and remember that while he is in office he is entitled to your respect. Now, don't be flippant in regard to him. Don't think it shows you to be a big man to criticise him or speak contemptuously of him. You may differ with his policy, but always maintain a profound respect for a man who represents the majesty and the sovereignty of the American people.
CHAPTER IV
THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES
We are living at a time when political and social conditions are a bit chaotic, and it is a little difficult to distinguish between the symptoms that are ephemeral and those which are permanent. What we must do is to try to make things better and to save from the past the things which are good. It is often true that a movement that is excessive and destructive in one way, ends by being the basis of great progress after reaction from its excesses has left what is valuable in it.
Our American Revolution, which we are accustomed to regard as quite important—and it was for us—did not really represent a great world change such as was represented in the French Revolution. It grew out of a very unwise, selfish colonial policy on the part of Great Britain. We were right and wise in putting it through, and our ancestors demonstrated great courage and great tenacity in fighting it. It certainly gave us independence and an opportunity for expansion that we should not otherwise have had. But the pap that we have been brought up on with respect to the tremendous outrages which Great Britain inflicted on us was sweetened a little bit. If you would see the other side, read Trevelyan's "American Revolution." In this you will see that while the right was certainly with us, we were not quite so much outraged as it seemed in our earlier childhood studies. The American Revolution did as much good for England as it did for us, because it taught her proper colonial policy, and today the colonial policy of Great Britain is one of the greatest instances of statesmanship in history. In her dealing with Canada, with Australia and with the South African Republic, she has given them such self-government that, far from wishing to sever the bond with the mother country, they cherish it.
The French Revolution indicated a very much more important movement among peoples. It developed awful excesses. The wild declarations and extremes practiced by the Committee of Safety in the French Revolution were revolting to any man affected by ordinary humane considerations and had in fact a remarkable effect in strengthening conservatism in England. Indeed, they caused the issue and the bitter personal quarrel between the one-time warm associates, Burke and Fox. The natural result of those excesses was to be expected. It took the shape of the man on horseback. The imperial control of Napoleon led the French people into a military waste of strength which has affected the French race even down to the present time. Yet Napoleon, by building up his Code Napoleon, and by spreading over Europe the idea that the people were the basis of government, profoundly affected political conceptions and conditions. There followed a reaction in the Holy Alliance, which was a combination to maintain the Divine Right of Kings, and then the spirit of the French Revolution reasserted itself in 1830. In fact from then on until now the movement toward more and more popular government has gone on continuously in France, Germany, Austria and elsewhere. It is spreading today even more widely than it ever did before, and every country, even Russia, has to count the cost with respect to the will of the people.
When I went through Russia after the Russian-Japanese War, I met one of the leading diplomats of that country who greeted me with, "Well, how do you like it?" "How do I like what?" I asked. "How do you like helping Japan to lick Russia?" Those were the homely expressions that he used. To which I replied, "We did not help Japan to lick Russia." "But," he said, "you did in effect. Your people and your press sympathized and they expressed the kindly sympathy that counts for so much at such a time." "The government cannot control our people," I responded. "They think for themselves and express themselves as they see fit. We cannot control the press in our country, but we have observed all the laws of neutrality with respect to the war, and if some of the people expressed themselves in favor of Japan, it was only because they were in favor of the under dog in the fight." "Why did you give up?" I inquired further; "You were getting stronger and stronger." "Yes," he said, "we had to fight at the end of a 5,000-mile, single-track railway, but handicapped as we were, we got our forces out there ready to fight and we could have gone in and beaten the Japanese." "Why didn't you?" I asked. "Why did you make peace?" "The trouble is," he explained, "we were living on a volcano at home. Our people were opposed to the war, and we did not go on, lest the throne would be a forfeit." This is only an indication that even in the country that is supposed to represent the most absolute of empires, the people are manifesting a control. The Douma was given too much power at first, so that universal suffrage was necessarily a failure in the condition of the people at that time. But the Douma now is gradually acquiring useful power and in the course of the next twenty-five or fifty years Russia will probably have a popular constitutional government. We have had democracy in this country for one hundred and twenty-five years, or indeed for two hundred and twenty-five years. It is now proposed to have more democracy to supply the present defects of our existing democracy. This is one phase of the present situation that I wish to discuss. Another is the spread of the fraternal spirit, the desire of one to help another, the actual improvement and increase in the brotherhood of man which we are seeing in society, and a third is trades-unionism, its essence and what is to be hoped for or feared from it.
If you will read a book like Chamberlain on "The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century," especially the preface, which is written by a man who uses a better style than Chamberlain, you will find that he attempts to summarize the progress of the previous eighteen centuries as a predicate for the strides of human civilization in the nineteenth. As he minimizes the effect of one century and then another, you note how few centuries, in his judgment, play any part in the onward march, and you are discouraged as to what one man can do to help along any movement that shall really be world-wide or permanent.