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Show 306 307 The effect would be more salutary. What we want is more exposition and less warships." \Vell, that is what 1 call statesmanship. I wish that Mr. Higinbotham were in Congress. Isle has stated precisely the issue of the hour-friendship versus battleship. Which does true statesmanship prescribe? Which ship does America wish to float -statesmanship, friendship, or the battleship? The Hague con- ventions, in their whole spirit and purpose, command the one; the old Adam of false patriotism and national greed and pride will struggle to thwart that purpose to the last. There can be but one issue, for this is a world of growing reason and human- ity; but it is for the reasonable men of this safe and strong republic to lead the world in hastcning' the era of justice. We must be unremitting in pushing to farther perfection the legal machinery. \\'e must insist upon arbitration treaties so broad as to pledge reference to The Hague of every dispute whatever not settled by regular diplomatic negt'itiation-thus leaving no loop- hole for the mischief-maker‘s talk about "vital interests" and "honor." But we must face the fact that our chief problem now is a moral one. All the conventions in the world are good for nothing unless the parties to them are in earliest unless they trust each other. unless they seek together to translate the spirit of their conventions into life. The implication and imperative of the Ilague conventions are clear; the question of how and when we shall respect them is now a question of national char- the enmity that politicians and some newspapers tried to stir up for their own purposes. The people were all anxious to see the ships. It was a mixture of curiosity and statesmanship, and the trades union people and all other people had the same feeling at that time. The irritation of armaments comes from those who have the armaments and want to use them on something. They are not satisfied to shoot cannon balls that cost probably three hundred dollars at rocks in Magdalena Bay. They want to hit something, to see it wiggle. We had an example of irritation of this kind in Samoa some years ago. You may remember that an American battleship and a British ship lay in that harbor and had nothing to do, while Dewey and his ships were havingr glory over in the Philippines. I'inally the American and English battleships shelled the town of Apia, and the matter finally went up for arbitration to Europe. These two great nations, Great Britain and the United States, were compelled by the Court of Arbitration to pay for all the damages inllicted by them. They were treated, in fact, just as any other marauder would have been treated. They simply presented their case. paid their bill and went home, sadder and more or less wiser, and they would have been wiser still if the newspapers had exploited it. I haven't seen as much anywhere as I have said tonight. I do not mean to present the next speaker. There is only one Jenkin Lloyd Jones, and he is in Chicago. acter. Armaments as Irritants THE CHAIRMAN: Some time ago I had a letter from a friend in Boston who was very much worried lest the advent of the fleet in San Francisco was goingr to stir up the trades union people and other people in San Francisco and cause them to make attacks upon the Japanese. I thought that that would not be one of the forms which the armament agitation would assume, and I was quite sure of that, for when the great white pageant of ships in San Francisco Bay took place the trades union people were just as happy over the arrival of the ships as anybody else, and the Japanese were shouting "Banzai" and other things without any display of enmity whatever, because there was no enmity except JENKlN Lion) JONI'..\' "A fig tree looking: upon figs becomes fruitful," says the Arabian proverb. "The sheep thirsteth whenever it sees water," says the \Velsh proverb. "A soft answer tnrneth away wrath, but a grievous Word stirreth up anger," says the Ilehrew proverb. "Likerproduces like" is a fundamental axiom of science. The Creel; matron haunted the places of noble statuary, spent hours in contemplating the benign features and manly proportions of Apollo as carved out of spotless marble by the chisel of the master, that her unborn child might take on the matchless form and the perfect countenance, with" AMI" |