The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1915-04-21

The United States has no racfaJ no n1enturn- It has no history back of it which makes it run all its energtes and all it's ambitions in one particu- lar drecdon; and America. is particl- larly free in this, that she has no hampering ambitions as world pow CT.
 If we have been obliged by cir cumstances in the past to take terri tory which we otherwise would not have thought of taking I believe I am right in saying that we have con- s1dered it out 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 trustees of the great business for those to whom it does really belong, trustees ready to hand over the cos business seems to make that possible and feasible.
 That is what Ifmean by saying we have no hanpering ambitions We do not want anything that does not 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 oKSin- ion of the world |?
 My interest in the neutrality of the United States is not the petty desire to keep ou4 of trouble have never looked for it, but have always found it. I do not want to walk around trouble.
 eff any man wants a scrap that is an interesting scrap and worth while, I 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 trou- ble of men in general-and can help a Httles 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 a 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 a rise without trying? The man who will fight attthe drop of the hat, whether he knows what the hat is dropped for not?
 Don't you admire and don't you fear, if you have to contest with him, the self-rnastered 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?
 
 the man who you know has at bottom a much more fundamental and ter ribIe courage than the irritable fight ing man.
 Courage of Moral Force.
 ''Now, I covet for America this splendid courage of reserve moral force, and I 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 fa1sehood. 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 se1f-possession. sfWe ought not to deal in stuff of that kind. We ought not to permit things of that sort to use up the electrical energy of the wires, because its energy is maIign, it's energy is not of the truth. it's energy is of mischief.
 Ut is possible to sift truth I have known some things to go out on the wires as true when there was only one man or group of men who could have told the or1gfnators of the re-