The Penn's Grove record., 1916-09-08
Be Big Americans
CONTINUED from page u

Be Big Americans
Continued from page II
in the building of highroads such as the
country has been feeling after for a
century. We have sought to ~equalize
taxation by means of an equitable in
come tax. We have taken the steps
that ought to have been taken at the
outset to open up the resources Of
Alaska. We have provided for nation
al defense upon a scale never before
seriously proposed upon the response
bility of an entire political party. We
have driven the tariff lobby from cover
and obliged it to substitute argument
for private influence.
A RECORD OF PROMISE KEPT.
This extraordinary recital must
sound like a platform, a list of sanguine
promises, but it is not. 1t is a record
of promises made four years ago and
now actually redeemed in constructive
legislation. We have in four years come
very near carrying out the platform of
the Progressive party as well as our
own, for we also are progressives."
hEf
PROGRESS
This program, Mr.. Wilson declared,
was resisted at every step by interests
which the Republican party had fostered
at the expense of the country, interests
which had fought the reform of the
banking and currency system and which
were now planning for the amendment
of the federal reserve act by the con-
centration of control in a single bank
which the "old familiar group of bank
ers" can keep under their eye and direc-
ton. But while the "big men, who
used to write the tariffs and command
the assistance of the treasury have been
hostile-all but a few with vision-the
average business man knows that he has
been delivered unless the party that con-
suited only the "big men, should return
to power. They still select its candi-
dates and dictate its policy, he said.
TRULY NEUTRAL.
Concerning foreign affairs, we have
been neutral because it was the tradi-
tonal policy of the United States to
stand aloof from European politics, Mr..
Wilson declared. Property rights of our
citizens can be INDICATED by claims for
damages, but the fundamental rights of
humanity cannot be.
"The loss of life is irreparable. Mel
Their can direct violations of a nations
sovereignty await vindication in suits
for damages. That nation that violates
these essential rights must expect to
be checked and called to account by
direct challenge and resistance. 1t at
once makes the quarrel in part our own.
These are plain principles, and we have
never lost sight of them or departed
from them. The passion and intrigues
of certain active groups and combina-
tons OF men among us who were born
under foreign flags injected the poison
of disloyalty into our own most critical
affairs, laid violent hands upon many
of our industries and subjected us to
the shame of divisions of sentiment and
purpose in which America was con-
demned and forgotten. 1t is part of the
business of this year of reckoning and
settlement to speak plainly and act with
unmistakable purpose in rebuke of these
things in order that they may be forever
hereafter impossible. l am the candi-
date of a party, but l am above all
things else an American citizen. 1
neither seek the favor nor fear the dis
pleasure of that small alien element
among us which puts loyalty to any for
eign power before loyalty to the United
States"
AGAINST MEXICAN EXPLORERS.
Concerning Mexico the president stat
ed that we believed that small and
weak states have the right to expect to
be dealt with exactly as big and pow
erful states would be. Our recent pur-
suit of bandits into Mexican territory
was no violation of that principle. We
ventured to enter Mexican territory
only because there were no military
forces in Mexico that could protect
our border from hostile attack and our
W people from violence.
Many serious wrongs against the prop
erty, many irreparable wrongs against
the persons of Americans have been
committed within the territory of Mex
leo herself during this confused revolu-
ton, but we could not act directly in
that matter ourselves without denying
Mexicans the right to any revolution at
all which disturbed US and making the
emancipation of her W people await
our interest and convenience.
"The people of Mexico have not been
suffered to own their own country or
direct their own institutions. Outsid-
ers, men out of other nations and with
interests too often alien to their own,
have dictated what their privileges and
opportunities should be and who should
control their land, their lives and their
resources-some of them Americans,
pressing for things they could never have
got in their W country. The Next
can people are entitled to attempt their