The Palatka news and advertiser., 1916-09-08

strength and our resources for the
anxious and difficult days of restora-
tion and healing which must follow,
when peace will have to build its
house anew.
Cannot Decline to Arbitrate.
The right of our own citizens of
course became involved; that was in
evitable. Where they did this was
our guiding principle: that property
rights can be vindicated by claims
for damages and no modern nation
can decline to arbitrate such claims;
but the fundamental rights of human
ity cannot be. The loss of life is
irreparable. Neither can direct vio-
lations of nations sovereignty
await vindication in suits for dam
ages. The nation that violates these
essential rights must expect to be
checked and called to account by di-
rect 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, whatever the
stress or the perplexity of circum-
stances or the provocation to hasty
resentment The record is clear and
consistent throughout and stands dis
tinct and definite for anyone to judge
who wishes to know the truth about
it.
The seas were not broad enough to
keen the infection of the conflict out
of our own politics. The passions
and intrigues of certain active
groups and combinations of men
amongst us who were born under for
eign flags injected the poison of dis
loyalty into our own most critical at
fairs, laid violent hands upon many
of our industries, and subjected us
to the shame of divisions of senti.
ment and purpose in which Ameri-
ca was contemned 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 here
after impossible am the candidate
of a party, but | am above all things
an American citizen. neither seek
the favour nor fear the displeasure
of that small alien element amongst
us which puts loyalty to any foreign
power before loyalty to the United
States.
While Europe was at war our own
continent one of our own neighbors,
was shaken by revolution. In that
matter, too, principle was plain and it
was imperative that we should live up
to it if we were to deserve the trust
of any real partisan of the right as
free men see it. We have professed
to believe, and we do believe. that
the people of small and weak states
have the right to expect to be dealt
with exactly as the people of big and
powerful states would be. We have
acted upon that principle in dealing
with the people of Mexico.
Our recent pursuit 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 bor-
der from hostile attack and our peo-
pie from violence, and we have COM
mitted there no single act of hostili-
ty or interference even with the SOW
ereign authority of the Republic of
Mexico herself. 1t was a plain case
of the violation of our own sover-
eignity which could not wait to be
vidcated by damages and for which
there was no remedy. The authori-
ties of Mexico were powerless to
prevent it.
Many serious wrongs against the
many irreparable wrongs
against persons of Americans have
been committed within the territory
of Mexico herself during this con-
fused revolution, wrongs which could
not be effectually checked so long as
there was no constituted power in
Mexico which was in a position to
check them. We could not act direct
ly in that matter ourselves without
denying MeXicans the right to any
revolution at all which disturbed US
and making the emancipation of her
own people await our own interest
and convenience.
For it is their emancipation that
they are seeking,-blindly, it may be,
and as yet Intellectually, but with pro- =
found and passionate purpose and G
within their unquestionable right, ap-
ply what true American principle
you will, Amy principle that an AM q
arican would publicly avow. The
people of Mexico have not been suf-
fered to own their own country or di-
rect their own institutions. Outsiders,
men out of other nations and with in
terests 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 l.
pressing for things they
could never have got in their own
country. The Mexican people are
entitled to attempt their liberty from
such influences; and so long as I have
anything to do with the action of our
rreat government l shall do every
thing in my power to prevent anyone
7taniing in their way. l know that
his is hard for some persons to un-
lerStand; but it is not hard for the
nlain people of the United States to
understand. 1t is hard doctrine only I
or those who wish to get something