# Our Common Country/Chapter 13

The world has found itself lately very much committed to the idea of fraternity. It is the natural outcome of a new understanding of our relationships. Fraternity is one of the most natural things in life. You have seen it in the organization of men into small groups, of women in their societies. You often see it in the animal world, where nature has somehow implanted love of life and at the same time the love of fraternity and association together, and if you stop to think about it you will discover that in animal life there is the fraternity of protection and mutual advancement. This finds ex​pression in our human relationships in various forms. I do not suppose there is a people in all the world that has so developed the fraternity idea as we have in the United States. I have sometimes wondered how many fraternal orders there are, secret and open.
But we find fraternity in all the walks of life. It is a curious stage in human affairs when we have run really to excess in some forms of organization. It is only a development of the tendencies of men and women of common aspirations to get together to further their very natural interests. In a broader sense we have come a little nearer to a fraternity of nations.
The World War brought us to a new realization, that mankind, after all, is interested in one common purpose, namely, the uplift of mankind. Nations that were once looking at each other in envy and jealousy and rivalry have come ​to understand that their best interests are to be served in mutual advancement, and we have come to the stage in human affairs where we are seeking to put an end to warfare and to conflict and to dwell in a little closer understanding.
I know full well the impelling thoughts in any helpful organization. You seek to advance the standards of individual life; you seek to advance the standards of your common activities. You would not go into an organization if you did not think that, individually and collectively, you would be better off because of the association which you undertake. And at the same time, while that is your impelling thought I know that not a single one of you would go into any fraternity that was ever proposed if you thought it involved the surrender of anything you hold essential to your own individual life.
I recall many an obligation that I have come in contact with in secret orders, and ​there isn't one that ever asked a man to surrender any of his liberties, any of his freedom of thought, any of his freedom of religious belief. And making the application of that point I want to apply it to nations. Just now we are talking very much about associations of the nations of the world. We, of America, gave first the finest illustration that was ever recorded of a fraternity of nations. I like to recall it. I have spoken of it on previous occasions. Some twenty years ago, when America had first planted the flag of this Republic, with every glittering star fixed, as a banner of hope and stability in the Orient, there broke out in China what was known as the Boxer Rebellion. The rebellious Boxers in their warfare endangered all the foreign residents in the city of Peking. It became necessary to send a military expedition to the relief of those beleaguered citizens of the various nations of the earth. And I always like to ​recall that a son of my own State of Ohio led the military expedition, the late General Chaffee. They brought about the relief of the citizens of foreign countries imprisoned in Peking, and in a little while the military forces were withdrawn. Then representatives of the several nations engaged in that expedition sat about a table and figured out the expense of the several countries that had sent military relief. The sum presumably necessary to pay the United States for the protection of its citizens was assessed against China, and a like sum, or proportionate sum, was assessed against the government of China for Germany, for Great Britain, for France, and the other nations involved.
Later on we came to cast up the accounts in detail, and we found that the government of China had paid eight million dollars in money to the United States more than was necessary to recompense us ​for our military endeavors. And the United States returned that money to China, sent back eight million dollars that they had paid us in that award—the first time that such a thing was ever done in the history of the world. That was the first great illustration of a fraternal spirit among nations. And that is why China plants its faith in the example, in the democracy, in the justice of the United States of America. And we are greater to-day by reason of the example which we then set to the world than we could ever hope to be by force of arms, no matter how large our army and navy may be.
An interesting aftermath resulted in the Peace Conference in Paris. China went into the war at our request. I do not know that you recall it but that Oriental people, at the suggestion of the State Department of our country, declared war against the Central Empire, Germany, ​and Austro-Hungary. And when the war settlements came about China sought to be represented at the Peace Conference and they ought to have been represented. For some reason or other they were not. Then they said, "We will trust the United States of America to represent us, with confidence in that great Republic." And yet, somehow in the Peace Conference, through contract secretly made, China had no voice in the settlement and instead of being awarded the freedom of her own people under the gospel of self-determination for which America spoke, several million of her people were delivered over to a rival nation, with the consent and approval of those who spoke for America in Paris. But when that covenant came into the United States Senate, I rejoice that there were Americans in the United States who said "No" and that we did not approve of the Shantung award. And we ​kept the plighted faith in the lesson we taught China some twenty years ago.
Now, the obligation and the fraternal thought, as I said a little while ago, is that you would not enter into any fraternal organization, no matter how high its ideals might be, if you thought it involved the surrender of anything essential to your individual existence. And that is precisely the doctrine I am trying to preach just now for the United States. We want to be high and eminent and influential in the fraternity of nations. We want to play our part in the promotion and maintenance of peace throughout the world; aye, we want this Republic to play its part in assuring justice to all the world and in advancing human kind in every way we can. In America we want to contribute our part through the application of justice rather than the application of force; and if I can have my way of speaking for America we will ​never enter into a fraternity that is founded on force. But we do mean to play our part, our full part, along the lines of justice properly applied.
So with this new international relationship proposition, we are saying that we do not intend to go in so long as it involves the surrender of anything essential to the dignity, freedom of action, freedom of conscience of the United States of America. But we do willingly say that we want to join any association of nations for the promotion of justice, for the felicitation of international conscience; aye, for turning the deliberate, intelligent public opinion of the world upon international controversy so that it may be settled in the applied conscience of nations rather than through military force directed by a council of foreign powers, with capacity to invite, aye, to order the sons of America into war for the protection of the boundaries of nations across the sea. That ​America will never consent to. We have our own destiny to work out, and we in America have been working it out to the astonishment and the admiration, yes, to the inspiration, of all the world.
I have an abiding conviction that America can play her greatest part in the furtherance of mankind by first making sure of the character of our citizenship at home, and then give to the world the American example rather than the word of a Republic assuming to meddle in the affairs of the nations of the earth.
I am infinitely concerned about promoting the spirit of fraternity at home. We of America have made a great Republic. We have developed material America, and we found out in the World War that we needed spiritual America. I never can forget a development during the early days prior to our entrance into the war, when the Senate was discussing the enactment of the armed ship bill. That is, the bill which was to provide for ​arming our merchant ships for their protection against submarine warfare. A citizen of Marion—and I knew him well—wrote me and said: "Senator, why are you so anxious about protecting American rights? Don't you know, sir, there is no such thing as a distinctly American citizen?" This from an American. When I answered him, I said: "Maybe it is true, as you have written me, that there is no such thing as a distinctly American citizen, but if that startling statement be true, then, in God's name, out of this turmoil of the world, out of this travail of civilization, let us have a real American come from Columbia's loins to leave us a race of Americans hereafter."
So the World War brought us to a realization that we had developed material America, we had prospered, we had advanced in education, in art, in world influence and had attained a high place in world eminence, and yet although we are a blend of the peoples of the Old World, ​we had given very little consideration to the development of American spirit. And I am preaching the gospel from this time on of the development of an American soul; from this time on I am preaching the gospel of the maintenance of American spirit, of the development from this time on of a fraternity and a loyalty that will make us all, no matter whence we came, American in every heartbeat.
You can not go on in any other way. Here in America we have no racial entity. We are a blend or a mixture or an association of all the nations of the earth, but, unhappily, up to the time of the war we were very much a collocation of peoples; but from this time on we want to be a fraternity of Americans. From this time on we want to continue to emphasize the necessity for the elevation of the standard of American citizenship, not in spirit alone, but an elevation of the conditions under which men and women live.