I challenge the doctrine, now being taught, that we must enter into a mad rivalry with the Old World in the building of battleships—the doctrine that the only way to preserve peace is to get ready for wars that ought never to come! It is a barbarous, brutal, unchristian doctrine—the doctrine of the darkness, not the doctrine of the dawn.
Nation after nation, when at the zenith of its power, has proclaimed itself invincible because its army could shake the earth with its tread and its ships could fill the seas, but these nations are dead, and we must build upon a different foundation if we would avoid their fate.
Carlyle, in the closing chapters of his “French Revolution” says that thought is stronger than artillery parks and at last molds the world like soft clay, and then he adds that back of thought is love. Carlyle is right. Love is the greatest power in the world. The nations that are dead boasted that their flag was feared; let it be our boast that our flag is loved. The nations that are dead boasted that people bowed before their flag, let us not be content until our flag represents sentiments so high and holy that the opprest of every land will turn their faces toward that flag and thank God that there is one flag that stands for self-government and for the rights of man.
The enlightened conscience of our nation should proclaim as the country's creed that “righteousness exalteth a nation” and that justice is a nation's surest defense. If there ever was a nation it is ours—if there ever was a time it is now—to put God's truth to the test. With an ocean rolling on either side and a mountain range along either coast that all the armies of the world could never climb we ought not to be afraid to trust in “the wisdom of doing right.”
Our government, conceived in liberty and purchased with blood, can be preserved only by constant vigilance. May we guard it as our children's richest legacy, for what shall it profit our nation if it shall gain the whole world and lose “the spirit that prizes liberty as the heritage of all men in all lands everywhere”?