The Art of Public Speaking
no longer needed for revenue or to encourage and protect our industries
at home, why should they not be employed to extend and promote our
markets abroad? Then, too, we have inadequate steamship service. New
lines of steamships have already been put in commission between the
Pacific coast ports of the United States and those on the western coasts
of Mexico and Central and South America. These should be followed up
with direct steamship lines between the western coast of the United
States and South American ports. One of the needs of the times is direct
commercial lines from our vast fields of production to the fields of
consumption that we have but barely touched. Next in advantage to having
the thing to sell is to have the conveyance to carry it to the buyer. We
must encourage our merchant marine. We must have more ships. They must
be under the American flag; built and manned and owned by Americans.
These will not only be profitable in a commercial sense; they will be
messengers of peace and amity wherever they go.
We must build the Isthmian canal, which will unite the two oceans and
give a straight line of water communication with the western coasts of
Central and South America and Mexico. The construction of a Pacific
cable can not be longer postponed. In the furtherance of these objects
of national interest and concern you are performing an important part.
This Exposition would have touched the heart of that American statesman
whose mind was ever alert and thought ever constant for a larger
commerce and a truer fraternity of the republics of the New World. His
broad American spirit is felt and manifested here. He needs no
identification to an assemblage of Americans anywhere, for the name of
Blaine is inseparably associated with the Pan-American movement which
finds here practical and substantial expression, and which we all hope
will be firmly advanced by the Pan-American Congress that assembles this
autumn in the capital of Mexico. The good work will go on. It can not be
stopped. Those buildings will disappear; this creation of art and beauty
and industry will perish from sight, but their influence will remain to
"make it live beyond its too short living with praises and
thanksgiving." Who can tell the new thoughts that have been awakened,
the ambitions fired and the high achievements that will be wrought
through this Exposition?
Gentlemen, let us ever remember that our interest is in concord, not
conflict; and that our real eminence rests in the victories of peace,
not those of war. We hope that all who are represented here may be moved
to higher and nobler efforts for their own and the world's good, and
that out of this city may come not only greater commerce and trade for
us all, but, more essential than these, relations of mutual respect,
confidence and friendship which will deepen and endure. Our earnest
prayer is that God will graciously vouchsafe prosperity, happiness and
peace to all our neighbors, and like blessings to all the peoples and
powers of earth.
_JOHN HAY_
TRIBUTE TO MCKINLEY
From his memorial address at a joint session of the Senate and House of
Representatives on February 27, 1903.
For the third time the Congress of the United States are assembled to
commemorate the life and the death of a president slain by the hand of
an assassin. The attention of the future historian will be attracted to
the features which reappear with startling sameness in all three of
these awful crimes: the uselessness, the utter lack of consequence of
the act; the obscurity, the insignificance of the criminal; the
blamelessness--so far as in our sphere of existence the best of men may
be held blameless--of the victim. Not one of our murdered presidents had
an enemy in the world; they were all of such preeminent purity of life
that no pretext could be given for the attack of passional crime; they
were all men of democratic instincts, who could never have offended the
most jealous advocates of equity; they were of kindly and generous
nature, to whom wrong or injustice was impossible; of moderate fortune,
whose slender means nobody could envy. They were men of austere virtue,
of tender heart, of eminent abilities, which they had devoted with
single minds to the good of the Republic. If ever men walked before God
and man without blame, it was these three rulers of our people. The only
temptation to attack their lives offered was their gentle radiance--to
eyes hating the light, that was offense enough.
The stupid uselessness of such an infamy affronts the common sense of
the world. One can conceive how the death of a dictator may change the
political conditions of an empire; how the extinction of a narrowing
line of kings may bring in an alien dynasty. But in a well-ordered
Republic like ours the ruler may fall, but the State feels no tremor.
Our beloved and revered leader is gone--but the natural process of our
laws provides us a successor, identical in purpose and ideals, nourished
by the same teachings, inspired by the same principles, pledged by
tender affection as well as by high loyalty to carry to completion the
immense task committed to his hands, and to smite with iron severity
every manifestation of that hideous crime which his mild predecessor,
with his dying breath, forgave. The sayings of celestial wisdom have no
date; the words that reach us, over two thousand years, out of the
darkest hour of gloom the world has ever known, are true to life to-day:
"They know not what they do." The blow struck at our dear friend and
ruler was as deadly as blind hate could make it; but the blow struck at
anarchy was deadlier still.
How many countries can join with us in the community of a kindred
sorrow! I will not speak of those distant regions where assassination
enters into the daily life of government. But among the nations bound to
us by the ties of familiar intercourse--who can forget that wise and
mild autocrat who had earned the proud title of the liberator? that
enlightened and magnanimous citizen whom France still mourns? that brave
and chivalrous king of Italy who only lived for his people? and, saddest
of all, that lovely and sorrowing empress, whose harmless life could
hardly have excited the animosity of a demon? Against that devilish
spirit nothing avails,--neither virtue nor patriotism, nor age nor
youth, nor conscience nor pity. We can not even say that education is a
sufficient safeguard against this baleful evil,--for most of the
wretches whose crimes have so shocked humanity in recent years were men
not unlettered, who have gone from the common schools, through murder to
the scaffold.
The life of William McKinley was, from his birth to his death, typically
American. There is no environment, I should say, anywhere else in the
world which could produce just such a character. He was born into that
way of life which elsewhere is called the middle class, but which in
this country is so nearly universal as to make of other classes an
almost negligible quantity. He was neither rich nor poor, neither proud
nor humble; he knew no hunger he was not sure of satisfying, no luxury
which could enervate mind or body. His parents were sober, God-fearing
people; intelligent and upright, without pretension and without
humility. He grew up in the company of boys like himself, wholesome,
honest, self-respecting. They looked down on nobody; they never felt it
possible they could be looked down upon. Their houses were the homes of
probity, piety, patriotism. They learned in the admirable school readers
of fifty years ago the lessons of heroic and splendid life which have
come down from the past. They read in their weekly newspapers the story
of the world's progress, in which they were eager to take part, and of
the sins and wrongs of civilization with which they burned to do battle.
It was a serious and thoughtful time. The boys of that day felt dimly,
but deeply, that days of sharp struggle and high achievement were before
them. They looked at life with the wondering yet resolute eyes of a
young esquire in his vigil of arms. They felt a time was coming when to
them should be addressed the stern admonition of the Apostle, "Quit you
like men; be strong."
The men who are living to-day and were young in 1860 will never forget
the glory and glamour that filled the earth and the sky when the long
twilight of doubt and uncertainty was ending and the time for action had
come. A speech by Abraham Lincoln was an event not only of high moral
significance, but of far-reaching importance; the drilling of a militia
company by Ellsworth attracted national attention; the fluttering of the
flag in the clear sky drew tears from the eyes of young men.
Patriotism, which had been a rhetorical expression, became a passionate
emotion, in which instinct, logic and feeling were fused. The country
was worth saving; it could be saved only by fire; no sacrifice was too
great; the young men of the country were ready for the sacrifice; come
weal, come woe, they were ready.
At seventeen years of age William McKinley heard this summons of his
country. He was the sort of youth to whom a military life in ordinary
times would possess no attractions. His nature was far different from
that of the ordinary soldier. He had other dreams of life, its prizes
and pleasures, than that of marches and battles. But to his mind there
was no choice or question. The banner floating in the morning breeze was
the beckoning gesture of his country. The thrilling notes of the trumpet
called him--him and none other--into the ranks. His portrait in his
first uniform is familiar to you all--the short, stocky figure; the
quiet, thoughtful face; the deep, dark eyes. It is the face of a lad who
could not stay at home when he thought he was needed in the field. He
was of the stuff of which good soldiers are made. Had he been ten years
older he would have entered at the head of a company and come out at the
head of a division. But he did what he could. He enlisted as a private;
he learned to obey. His serious, sensible ways, his prompt, alert
efficiency soon attracted the attention of his superiors. He was so
faithful in little things that they gave him more and more to do. He was
untiring in camp and on the march; swift, cool and fearless in fight. He
left the army with field rank when the war ended, brevetted by President
Lincoln for gallantry in battle.
In coming years when men seek to draw the moral of our great Civil War,
nothing will seem to them so admirable in all the history of our two
magnificent armies as the way in which the war came to a close. When the
Confederate army saw the time had come, they acknowledged the pitiless
logic of facts and ceased fighting. When the army of the Union saw it
was no longer needed, without a murmur or question, making no terms,
asking no return, in the flush of victory and fulness of might, it laid
down its arms and melted back into the mass of peaceful citizens. There
is no event since the nation was born which has so proved its solid
capacity for self-government. Both sections share equally in that crown
of glory. They had held a debate of incomparable importance and had
fought it out with equal energy. A conclusion had been reached--and it
is to the everlasting honor of both sides that they each knew when the
war was over and the hour of a lasting peace had struck. We may admire
the desperate daring of others who prefer annihilation to compromise,
but the palm of common sense, and, I will say, of enlightened
patriotism, belongs to the men like Grant and Lee, who knew when they
had fought enough for honor and for country.
So it came naturally about that in 1876--the beginning of the second
century of the Republic--he began, by an election to Congress, his