Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1901-03-23
Whitman & Adams Company,

| tentative before us-cithcr We must
take up our share of the responsible
ties of keeping the modern world in
order or we must cease to profit by
what other nations are doing in this
/ direction. We cannot honorably any
| longer take the profits and refuse to
I pay our share az the expenses. We
/ must either call our ships home. refuse
/ to permit American capital ANA Amcri-
/ can energy To assist in the develop
ment Of undevcloped countries. send
| for our missionaries and close our
| churches and schools in semi-civilized
or barbarous countries. refuse to allow
| our books to be translated into
| Chinese. and rigdly limit ourselves to
| our own territory in trade. religion
| science, art. education and philan-
/ thropy: or we must accept our share
| Of the responsibility of living in the
world and dealing freely with the race
in the great fellowship OF humanity
To take our share Of the work Of the
world and bear our share Of its
burdens will involve dangers and en-
tail expense; but when did a decent
man or a respectable people ever settle
: a question Of duty by a nice calcula-
ton of expense, or decide the question
of accepting new responsibility by a
consideration of the risks involved?
Brave mon do not barter with duty
nor trade with responsibilities. This
country has a work to do in the
modern world which it cannot escape,
and ought to rejoice in accepting as
its service to humanity. The perils
which may face it through greater in
timacy with the older nations are
small compared with the perils of de-
tachmcnt and isolation which have
been steadily growing during the last
two decades. Nothing could be more
disastrous for the higher civilization in
this country in the long run than the
feeling that we have no common cause
with the older nations; that we are
committed to permanent antagonism
to the other peoples who make up our
race; that the history of the past has
no lessons in government or finance
for us to learn; that we are powerful
enough to set the laws of trade at de-
fiance: that we can, at our will, make
all things new. This provincial feel
ing. this fostering of old antagonsms
which can survive only in a soil of
iSipiuh't, tiilS sell eNplOlta-
ton of our achievements and char
acter this rank growth of a feeling Of
superiority to other peoples. this con-
tlnual defamation about liberty while
the country is stained from end to end
with lawlessness-these are signs of
the partial development. the unhealthy
egotism, the Indifference to larger re-
lationships, which grow readily in iso-
latlon and detachment.
We are members of the great family
of nations. to all of which we are
deeply indebted for knowledge, truth, |
political experience, and service of |
many kinds; we have been more fortu- |
nate in our conditions than many of !
these older peoples, but we are not a |
WHIT better; and we have still much to !
DO before we can claim equality with
them in magnitude and quality of ser
vice to the spiritual development of the /
race. We need their help and they /,
need ours. We are commanded by I
our opportunities-whic are the voice |
OF God-to take up new burdens and |
enter upon a newer and "a greater life
Ihose who hold back and cry out that !
the ways of the fathers" are being
iorsaken see neither their own time
nor the times of the fathers. The