The Manning times. [volume] (Manning, Clarendon County, S.C.) 1884-current, 1915-04-28
trated this great lesson.

edly as knowing and comprehending
and embodying them all. 1t is IN
that sense that l mean that America
is a mediating nation. The opinion
of America. the action of America is
ready to turn and free to turn in any
direction.
Did you ever reflect upon how al
most all other nations, almost every
other nation, has through long ceI-
turies been headed in one direction?
That is not true of the United States.
The United States has nc racial mo-
me1tum. It has no history back of 1t
which makes it run all its energies
and ali it's ambitions in one particular
direction; and America is particularly
free in this, that she has no hamper
ing ambitions as world power.
''If we have been obliged by cir
cumstances, in the past, to take ter
ritory which we otherwise would not
have thought of taking, I believe I
am right in saying that we have con-
sidered it our duty to administer that
territory, not for ourselves, but for
the people living in it, and to put this
burden upon our consciences, not to
think that this thing is ours for our
use, but to regard ourselves as trus-
tees OF the great business for those to
whom it does really belong, trustees
ready to hand over the cosmic trust
at any time, when the business seems
to make that possible and feasible.
That is what I mean by saying we
have no hampering ambitions. We
do not want anything that does mot
belong to US. Isn't nation in that
position free to serve other nations,
and isn't a nation like that ready to
form some part Of the assessing opin-
ion of the world?
my interest in the neutrality OF
the United States is not the petty de-
sire to keep out Of trouble. I have
never looked for it, but have always
found it. ] do not want to walk
around trouble. If any man wants a
scrap that is an interesting scrap and
worth while, I am his man. I warn
him that he is not going to draw me
into the scrap for his advancement,
but if he is looking for trouble, that
is, the trouble of men in general, and
I can help little, why then I am in
for it.
But am interested in neutrality
because there is something so much
greater to do than fight, because
| there is something, there is dis
tinction waiting for this nation that
no nation has ever yet got. That is
the distinction of absolute self-con-
troll and self-mastery. Whom do you
admire most among your friends?
The irritable man. The man out OF
| whom you can get a rise without
| trying? The man who will fight at
the drop of the hat, whether he
knows what the hat is dropped for OF
not?
Don't you admire and don't you
fear, if you have to contest with him
| the self-mastered man who watches
you with calm eye and comes in only
when you have carried the thing SC
far that you must be disposed? That
is the man you must respect. That
is the man you know has at the bot
tom much more fundamental and ter.
rible courage than the irritable, fight:
ing man.
''Now I covet for America this
splendid courage Of reserve moral
force and I wanted to point out tc
you gentlemen simply this: There is
news and news. There is what is
called news from Turtle bay tina,
turns out to be falsehood; at any rate
in what it is said to signify, and
which, if you could get the nation tc
believe it true, might disturb oul
equilibrium and our self-posSeSSion
We ought not to deal in stuff of tha,
kind. We ought not to permit things
of that sort to use up the electrica
energy of the wires, because its ener.
gy is malign, its energy is not of the
truth, its energy is of mischief. 1t is
possible to sift through them.
81 have known some things to &C
out on the wires as. true when there
was only one man or one group Of
men who could have told the origina'
tors of the report whether it was true
or not, and they were not asked
whether it was true or not, for fear
it might not be true. That sort OF
report ought not to 90 out over the
| wires
There is generally, if not always
somebody who knows whether thai
thing is so or not and in these days
above all other days, we ought to
take particular pains to resort to the
one small group of men or to the one
man, if there be but one, who knows
whether those things are true or not
| The world ought to know the truth,
but the world ought not at this peri
Cd of unstable equilibrium to be dis
turbed by imaginative combinations
Of circumstances, or rather by circum-
stances stated in combination which
do not belong in common.
"For you are holding now, I be-
lieve, you and gentlemen engaged
like you, the balance in your hand.
This unstable equilibrium rests upon
scales that are in your hands. For
the food of opinion, as I began by
! saying, is the news of the day. l
have known many a man go off at a
tangent on information that was not
reliable Indeed, that describes the
majority of men. The world is held
stable by the man who waits for the
next day to find out whether the re-
port was true or not.
eve can not afford, therefore, to
let the rumors Of irresponsible per-
sons and origin get into the atmos-
phere Of the United States. We are
trustees for what I venture to say is
the greatest heritage that any nation
ever had the love of justice and
righteousness and human liberty, for
fundamentally those are the things
to which America is addicted and to
which she is devoted. There are
groups of selfish men in the United
States. there are coteries where sin
lister things are purported, but the
great heart of the American people is
Just as sound and true as it ever was
And it is a single heart: it is the
heart of America. 1t is not heart
made up of sections selected out Of
other countries.
$50 that what try to remind my
self of every day when I am almost
overcome by perpleXities, what I try
+o reooember is what the people at