The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1898-12-15
present-Day sn>i-ghts.
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Our New Sw y:-Heve you ever
met q youth who wa, !, e - thor
oughly round out ai, 'rho!e
course of preparation hvfore h~iu2
thrust into duty? He is - y,,re cseat-
ure. There comes to most of us fore
ing out into wider work while some
ends hang around what we are still
doing. Nature seems to have little
patience with those who are destined
to do something more than the pres
ent task, and she often brushes aside
the preparation and announces that
the new duty will be it's own teacher
and more practical one than endless
preliminary work would be- 1t is
somewhat like learning to swim-five
minutesin in actual water is more than
five hours Of swinging the hand and
of frog-legging theoretically.
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None can da.e say that 6ur hun~
dred and twenty-five years of life as a
nation has enabled us to meet all our
problems and get our work table clear
ed and clean for the reception of a
wider task. We have not yet so much
as settled in equity our duty to the
red man; we have nowhere near
learned what we meant by claiming
for ail-life, liberty and the pursuit of
happiness-we grant still liberty for
hands to remain idle that would like
to work, liberty for life to be living
death of gradual starvation, liberty
for vice to flourish while virtue goes
empty away; we have not yet assimi-
lated the diverse. elements that have
fed our national life, and we have here
there and yonder fester-spOts of oppo-
sition to our government and its ideals;
we have not yet taught the men that
we freed to be worthy OF all that their
freedom meant or have we yet come
to understand how the two races-both
equally entitled TO residence here-can
dwell side by side in accord; we have
not yet risen in our might to rebuke
selfish legislation or still more selfish
and unpatriotic bosses.
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1t will rest upon us to maintain in
sight Of the world good order among
those who have hitherto been strang-
ers to as. No favoring eyes, save of
those who speak our tongue, will rest
upon us. No condoning difficulties
will be taken as an excuse for mis-
management. The success or failure
of American civilization and the ideals
it stands for, will be estimated by sue
cess or failure in impressing that civ
ilization and those ideals upon mil
lions that have lived in the utter
blackness of darkness where no liber-
ty was. At the very outset we shall
be compelled to deny to millions whom
we shall govern the ballot that has
hitherto been the palladium of our
liberties and the medium for voicing
our will. We shall have under our
protection as a weak but actual por-
tion of ourselves millions of savages
and semi-savages who are absolutely
ignorant Of what human aspiration
and human freedom mean. Within
the limits OF our domain will swarm
by myriads those who can scarcely
tell their right hand from their left
and whose minds are sunk in the leth-
argy of idolatry or the confusion of
superstition. They will be helpless
to compete with our nineteenth CEN
turY intelligence and yet the weakest
among them will be entitled to safe
guard from opposition and wrong and
injustice-social commercial and DO
litical.
Further than all this-as though it
were not enough to make us shrink
into hulnility-our relations.with all
the governments of the world will be-
NN4AiS liISi CcSollSSiN SCuSIblNG. w @ are
no longer to be regarded as an Ameri-
can power; and that will cause inter
national jealousies and suspicious
over every act; for fear that we dis
turb the nice adjustments of the in
ternationai balances.
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Over against all the fearful and ex-
acting task that lies before us, what
shall We set Of encouragement?
The brains of those who think and
the hearts of those who love even our
measure of human liberty, thrill with
belief in our destiny Graded in re-
moteness, tended by those who choose
exile for freedoms sake, nurtured by
devout and devoted men whose heads
were endangered by the pledge of
their hands, sustained and maintain
ed through trials from without and
almost volcanic disruptions from with
in, it is not for naught that our great
branch of the race that loves human
freedom has been brought thus far.
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