Palisadian., 1915-04-24
America, is ready to turn and free
to turn in any direction.
No Racial Momentum

Did you ever reflect upon how
almost all other nations, almost every
other nation, has through long cen
turies been headed in one direction .?
That is not true of the United States.
The UnitedStates has no racial mo-
mentum. 1t has no history back of
1t which makes it run all it's energies
and all its 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 circum-
stances, or have considered ourselves
to be obliged by circumstances, in the
past to take territory which we other
wise would not have thought of tax
ing, | believe | am right in saying
that we have considered 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 re-
gard ourselves as trustees of the
great business for those to whom it
does really belong, trustees ready to
hand it over to the cestui que trust
at any time, when the business seems
to make that possible and feasible.
That is what | mean by saying we
have no hampering ambitions. We
do not want anything that does no.
belong to us. Isn't nation in that
position free to serve other nations,
and isn't nation like that ready to
form some part of the assessing
opinion of the world?
My interest in the neutrality of the
United States is not the petty desire
to keep out of trouble. | 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, l am his man. | warn
him that he is not going to draw me
into the scrap for his advertisement,
but if he is looking for trouble that
is the trouble of men in general and
| can help a little, why then, | am
in for it.
Self Control and Self Mastery
But l am interested in neutrality
because there is something so much
greater to do than fight, because
there is something, there is distinc-
ton waiting for this nation that no
nation has ever yet got. That is the
distinction of absolute self-control
and self-mastery. Whom do you
admire most among your friends ?
The irritable man? The man out of
whom you can get rise" without
trying? The man who will fight at
the drop of the hat, whether he
knows what the hat is dropped for
or 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 so far
that you must be disposed of? That
is the man you respect. That is the
man who you know has at bottom a
much more fundamental and terrible
courage than the irritable, fighting
man.
Americas Reserve Moral Force
Now, | covet for America this
splendid courage of reserve moral
force, and l wanted to point out to
you gentlemen simply this: There
is news and news. There is what is
called news from Turtle Bay that
turns out to be a falsehood, at any
rate in what it is said to signify, and
which, if you could get the nation to
believe it true, might disturb our
equilibrium and our self-possessio
We ought not to deal in stuff of that
kind. We ought not to permit things
of that sort to use up the electrical
ho re
energy is malign, its energy is not of
the truth, its energy is of mischief.
1t is possible to sift truth.
| have known something to go out
on the wires as true when there was
only one man or one group of men
who could have told the originators 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 go over the wires.
There is generally, if not always,
somebody who knows whether that
thing is so or not, and in these days,
above all other days, we ought to take
small group of men or the man,
II Cnefe De DuC one, VIII hlloWo
whether those things are true or not.
News as Food of Opinion
The world ought to know the truth,
but the world ought not at this
period of unstable equilibrium to be
disturbed by rumor, ought not to dis
turbed by imaginative combinations
of circumstances, or, rather, by cir
cumstances stated in combination
which do not belong in combination.
For we are holding-not |, but you
and gentlemen engaged like you--
the balance in your hand. This un-
stable 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. | have known
many a man to go off at 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 report was
true or not.
irresponsible RumOrs
We cannot afford, therefore, to let
the rumors of irresponsible persons
and origins get into the atmosphere
of the United States. We are trustees