Chapter VII: Part 7

There have been periods during which the dissembled eulogies of the able press and my relations with about every politician of every party and every faction have made me feel I would like to know whether I had one friend in New York, and here I feel I have many. [Great applause.] And more than that, gentlemen, I should think ill of myself and think that I was a discredit to the stock from which I sprang if I feared to go on along the path that I deemed right, whether I had few friends or many. [Cries of "Good! Good!" and great applause.]

I am glad to answer to the toast, "The Hollander as an American." The Hollander was a good American, because the Hollander was fitted to be a good citizen. There are two branches of government which must be kept on a high plane, if any nation is to be great. A nation must have laws that are honestly and fearlessly administered, and a nation must be ready, in time of need, to fight [applause], and we men of Dutch descent have here to-night these gentlemen of the same blood as ourselves who represent New York so worthily on the bench, and a Major-General of the Army of the United States. [Applause.]

It seems to me, at times, that the Dutch in America have one or two lessons to teach. We want to teach the very refined and very cultivated men who believe it impossible that the United States can ever be right in a quarrel with another nation--a little of the elementary virtue of patriotism. [Cries of "Good! Good!" and applause.] And we also wish to teach our fellow-citizens that laws are put on the statute books to be enforced [cries of "Hear! Hear!" and applause]; and that if it is not intended they shall be enforced, it is a mistake to put a Dutchman in office to enforce them.

The lines put on the programme underneath my toast begin: "America! half-brother of the world!" America, half-brother of the world--and all Americans full brothers one to the other. That is the way that the line should be concluded. The prime virtue of the Hollander here in America and the way in which he has most done credit to his stock as a Hollander, is that he has ceased to be a Hollander and has become an American, absolutely. [Great applause.] We are not Dutch-Americans. We are not "Americans" with a hyphen before it. We are Americans pure and simple, and we have a right to demand that the other people whose stocks go to compose our great nation, like ourselves, shall cease to be aught else and shall become Americans. [Cries of "Hear! Hear!" and applause.]

And further than that, we have another thing to demand, and that is that if they do honestly and in good faith become Americans, those shall be regarded as infamous who dare to discriminate against them because of creed or because of birthplace. When New Amsterdam had but a few hundred souls, among those few hundred souls no less than eighteen different race-stocks were represented, and almost as many creeds as there were race-stocks, and the great contribution that the Hollander gave to the American people was, as your President has so ably said, the inestimable lesson of complete civil and religious liberty. It would be honor enough for this stock to have been the first to put on American soil the public school, the great engine for grinding out American citizens, the one institution for which Americans should stand more stiffly than for aught other. [Great applause.]

Whenever America has demanded of her sons that they should come to her aid, whether in time of peace or in time of war, the Americans of Dutch stock have been among the first to spring to the aid of the country. We earnestly hope that there will not in the future be any war with any power, but assuredly if there should be such a war one thing may be taken for certain, and that is that every American of Dutch descent will be found on the side of the United States. We give the amplest credit, that some people now, to their shame, grudge to the profession of arms, which we have here to-night represented by a man, who, when he has the title of a Major-General of the Army of the United States [Thomas H. Ruger], has a title as honorable as any that there is on the wide earth. [Applause.] We also need to teach the lesson, that the Hollander taught, of not refusing to do the small things because the day of large things had not yet come or was in the past; of not waiting until the chance may come to distinguish ourselves in arms, and meanwhile neglecting the plain, prosaic duties of citizenship which call upon us every hour, every day of our lives.

The Dutch kept their freedom in the great contest with Spain, not merely because they warred valiantly, but because they did their duty as burghers in their cities, because they strove according to the light that was in them to be good citizens and to act as such. And we all here to-night should strive so to live that we Americans of Dutch descent shall not seem to have shrunk in this respect, compared to our fathers who spoke another tongue and lived under other laws beyond the ocean; so that it shall be acknowledged in the end to be what it is, a discredit to a man if he does not in times of peace do all that in him lies to make the government of the city, the government of the country, better and cleaner by his efforts. [Great applause.]

I spoke of the militant spirit as if it may only be shown in time of war. I think that if any of you gentlemen, no matter how peaceful you may naturally be, and I am very peaceful naturally [laughter], if you would undertake the administration of the Police Department you would have plenty of fighting on hand before you would get through [renewed laughter]; and if you are true to your blood you will try to do the best you can, fighting or not fighting. You will make up your mind that you will make mistakes, because you won't make anything if you don't make some mistakes, and you will go forward according to your lights, utterly heedless of what either politicians or newspapers may say, knowing that if you act as you feel bound according to your conscience to act, you will then at least have the right when you go out of office, however soon [laughter], to feel that you go out without any regret, and to feel that you have, according to your capacity, warred valiantly for what you deemed to be the right. [Great applause.]

These, then, are the qualities that I should claim for the Hollander as an American: In the first place, that he has cast himself without reservation into the current of American life; that he is an American, pure and simple, and nothing else. In the next place, that he works hand in hand and shoulder to shoulder with his fellow Americans, without any regard to differences of creed or to differences of race and religion, if only they are good Americans. [Great applause.] In the third place, that he is willing, when the need shall arise, to fight for his country; and in the fourth place, and finally, that he recognizes that this is a country of laws and not men, that it is his duty as an honest citizen to uphold the laws, to strive for honesty, to strive for a decent administration, and to do all that in him lies, by incessant, patient work in our government, municipal or national, to bring about the day when it shall be taken as a matter of course that every public official is to execute a law honestly, and that no capacity in a public officer shall atone if he is personally dishonest. [Tremendous applause.]

* * * * *

TRUE AMERICANISM AND EXPANSION

[Speech of Theodore Roosevelt at the nineteenth annual dinner of
the New England Society in the City of Brooklyn, December 21, 1898.
The President, William B. Davenport, in calling upon Theodore
Roosevelt to speak to the toast, "The Day we Celebrate," said: "For
many years we have been celebrating this day and looking at
ourselves through Yankee eyes. To-night it is to be given us to see
ourselves as others see us. We have with us one of whom it may be
said, to paraphrase the epitaph in the Welsh churchyard:--

'A Dutchman born, at Harvard bred,
In Cuba travelled, but not yet dead.'

In response to this toast, I have the honor of introducing Hon.
Theodore Roosevelt."]

MR. PRESIDENT, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:--The gentleman on my right, with the unmistakably Puritan name of McKelway, in the issue of the "Eagle" to-night alluded to me as a Yankeeized Hollander. I am a middling good Yankee. I always felt that at these dinners of the New England Society, to which I come a trifle more readily than to any other like affairs, I and the president of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick, who is also invariably in attendance, represent, what you would say, the victims tied to the wheels of the Roman chariot of triumph. You see I am half Irish myself, and, as I told a New England Senator with whom I am intimate, when he remarked that the Dutch had been conquered by the New Englanders, "the Irish have avenged us."

I want to say to you seriously, and, singularly enough, right along the lines of the admirable speech made by your President, a few words on the day we celebrate and what it means.

As the years go by, this nation will realize more and more that the year that has just passed has given to every American the right to hold his head higher as a citizen of the great Republic, which has taken a long stride forward toward its proper place among the nations of the world. I have scant sympathy with this mock humanitarianism, a mock humanitarianism which is no more alien to the spirit of true religion than it is to the true spirit of civilization, which would prevent the great, free, liberty and order-loving races of the earth doing their duty in the world's waste spaces because there must needs be some rough surgery at the outset. I do not speak simply of my own country. I hold that throughout the world every man who strives to be both efficient and moral--and neither quality is worth anything without the other--that every man should realize that it is for the interests of mankind to have the higher supplant the lower life. Small indeed is my sympathy with those people who bemoan the fact, sometimes in prose, sometimes in even weaker verse, that the champions of civilization and of righteousness have overcome the champions of barbarism or of an outworn tyranny, whether the conflict be fought by the Russian heralds of civilization in Turkestan, by the English champion of the higher life in the Eastern world, or by the men who upheld the Stars and Stripes as they freed the people of the tropic islands of the sea from the mediæval tyranny of Spain.

I do not ask that you look at this policy from a merely national standpoint, although if you are good Americans you must look from the national standpoint first. I ask that you look at it from the standpoint of civilization, from the standpoint of righteousness, and realize that it is better for the men who are as yet ages behind us in the struggle upward that they be helped upward, and that it does not cease to be better for them, merely because it is better for us also. As I say, cast aside the selfish view. Consider whether or not it is better that the brutal barbarism of northern Asia should be supplanted by the civilization of Russia, which has not yet risen to what we of the Occident are proud to claim as our standard, but which, as it stands, is tens of centuries in advance of that of the races it supplants. Again, from the standpoint of the outsider, look at the improvement worked by the Englishmen in all the islands of the sea and all the places on the dark continents where the British flag has been planted; seriously consider the enormous, the incalculable betterment that comes at this moment to ninety-five per cent. of the people who have been cowering under the inconceivably inhuman rule of Mahdism in the Sudan because it has been supplanted by the reign of law and of justice. I ask you to read the accounts of the Catholic missionary priests, the Austrian priests who suffered under Mahdism, to read in their words what they have suffered under conditions that have gone back to the stone age in the middle of the nineteenth century. Then you will realize that the Sirdar and his troops were fighting the battle of righteousness as truly as ever it was fought by your ancestors and mine two or three or four centuries ago.

I think you can now understand that I admire what other nations have done in this regard, and, therefore, that you will believe that I speak with sincerity when I speak of what we ourselves have done. Thank heaven that we of this generation, to whom was denied the chance of taking part in the greatest struggle for righteousness that this century has seen, the great Civil War, have at least been given the chance to see our country take part in the world movement that has gone on around about us. Of course it was partly for our own interest, but it was also largely a purely disinterested movement. It is a good thing for this nation that it should be lifted up beyond simply material matters. It is a good thing for us that we should have interests outside of our own borders. It is a good thing for us that we must look outward; that we must consider more than the question of exports and imports; that we must consider more than whether or not in one decade we have increased one and a half per cent. more than the average rate of increase in wealth or not. It is a good thing that we of this nation should keep in mind, and should have vividly brought before us the fact to which your ancestors, Mr. President and members of this Society, owe their greatness; that while it pays a people to pay heed to material matters, it pays infinitely better to treat material as absolutely second to moral considerations. I am glad for the sake of America that we have seen the American Army and the American Navy driving the Spaniard from the Western world. I am glad that the descendants of the Puritan and the Hollander should have completed the work begun, when Drake and Hawkins and Frobisher singed the beard of the King of Spain, and William the Silent fought to the death to free Holland. I am glad we did it for our own sake, but I am infinitely more glad because we did it to free the people of the islands of the sea and tried to do good to them.

I have told you why I am glad, because of what we have done. Let me add my final word as to why I am anxious about it. We have driven out the Spaniards. This did not prove for this nation a very serious task. Now we are approaching the really serious task. Now it behooves us to show that we are capable of doing infinitely better the work which we blame the Spaniards for doing so badly; and woe to us unless we do show not merely a slight but a well-nigh immeasurable improvement! We have assumed heavy burdens, heavy responsibilities. I have no sympathy with the men who cry out against our assuming them. If this great nation, if this nation with its wealth, with its continental vastness of domain, with its glorious history, with its memory of Washington and Lincoln, of its statesmen and soldiers and sailors, the builders and the wielders of commonwealths, if this nation is to stand cowering back because it is afraid to undertake tasks lest they prove too formidable, we may well suppose that the decadence of our race has begun. No; the tasks are difficult, and all the more for that reason let us gird up our loins and go out to do them. But let us meet them, realizing their difficulty; not in a spirit of levity, but in a spirit of sincere and earnest desire to do our duty as it is given us to see our duty. Let us not do it in the spirit of sentimentality, not saying we must at once give universal suffrage to the people of the Philippines--they are unfit for it. Do not let us mistake the shadow for the substance. We have got to show the practical common sense which was combined with the fervent religion of the Puritan; the combination which gave him the chance to establish here that little group of commonwealths which more than any others have shaped the spirit and destiny of this nation; we must show both qualities.

Gentlemen, if one of the islands which we have acquired is not fit to govern itself, then we must govern it until it is fit. If you cannot govern it according to the principles of the New England town meeting--because the Philippine Islander is not a New Englander--if you cannot govern it according to these principles, then find out the principles upon which you can govern it, and apply those principles. Fortunately, while we can and ought with wisdom to look abroad for examples, and to profit by the experience of other nations, we are already producing, even in this brief period, material of the proper character within our own border, men of our own people, who are showing us what to do with these islands. A New Englander, a man who would be entitled to belong to this Society, a man who is in sympathy with all that is best and most characteristic of the New England spirit, both because of his attitude in war and of his attitude toward civic morality in time of peace, is at present giving us a good object lesson in administering those tropic provinces. I allude to my former commander, the present Governor-General of Santiago, Major-General Leonard Wood. General Wood has before him about as difficult a task as man could well have. He is now intrusted with the supreme government of a province which has been torn by the most hideously cruel of all possible civil wars for the last three years, which has been brought down to a condition of savage anarchy, and from which our armies, when they expelled the armies of Spain, expelled the last authoritative representatives of what order there still was in the province. To him fell the task of keeping order, of preventing the insurgent visiting upon the Spaniard his own terrible wrongs, of preventing the taking of that revenge which to his wild nature seemed eminently justifiable, the preserving of the rights of property, of keeping unharmed the people who had been pacific, and yet of gradually giving over the administration of the island to the people who had fought for its freedom, just as fast as, and no faster than, they proved that they could be trusted with it. He has gone about that task, devoted himself to it, body and soul, spending his strength, his courage, and perseverance, and in the face of incredible obstacles he has accomplished very, very much.

Now, if we are going to administer the government of the West Indies Islands which we have acquired, and the Philippines, in a way that will be a credit to us and to our institutions, we must see that they are administered by the General Woods. We have got to make up our minds that we can only send our best men there; that we must then leave them as largely unhampered as may be. We must exact good results from them, but give them a large liberty in the methods of reaching these results. If we treat those islands as the spoil of the politician, we shall tread again the path which Spain has trod before, and we shall show ourselves infinitely more blameworthy than Spain, for we shall sin against the light, seeing the light.

The President says that this is New England doctrine. So it is. It is Dutch doctrine, too. It is the doctrine of sound Americanism, the doctrine of common sense and common morality. I am an expansionist. I am glad we have acquired the islands we have acquired. I am not a bit afraid of the responsibilities which we have incurred; but neither am I blind to how heavy those responsibilities are. In closing my speech, I ask each of you to remember that he cannot shove the blame on others entirely, if things go wrong. This is a government by the people, and the people are to blame ultimately if they are misrepresented, just exactly as much as if their worst passions, their worst desires are represented; for in the one case it is their supineness that is represented exactly as in the other case it is their vice. Let each man here strive to make his weight felt on the side of decency and morality. Let each man here make his weight felt in supporting a truly American policy, a policy which decrees that we shall be free and shall hold our own in the face of other nations, but which decrees also that we shall be just, and that the peoples whose administration we have taken over shall have their condition made better and not worse by the fact that they have come under our sway.

LORD ROSEBERY

(ARCHIBALD PHILIP PRIMROSE)

PORTRAIT AND LANDSCAPE PAINTING

[Speech of Lord Rosebery at the annual banquet of the Royal
Academy, London, May 5, 1894. Sir Frederic Leighton, President of
the Royal Academy, was in the chair, and in proposing "The Health
of Her Majesty's Ministers," to which Lord Rosebery replied, he
said: "No function could be more lofty, no problem is more complex
than the governance of our Empire, so vast and various in land and
folk as that which owns the sceptre of the Queen. No toast,
therefore, claims a more respectful reception than that to which I
now invite your cordial response--the health of the eminent
statesmen in whose hands that problem lies--Her Majesty's
Ministers. And not admiration only for high and various endowments,
but memories also of a most sparkling speech delivered twelve
months ago at this table, sharpens the gratification with which I
call for response on the brilliant statesman who heads Her
Majesty's Government, the Earl of Rosebery."]

YOUR ROYAL HIGHNESS, MY LORDS, AND GENTLEMEN: No one, I think, can respond unmoved for the first time in such an assembly as this in the character in which I now stand before you. You have alluded, sir, to the speech which I delivered here last year. But I have to confess with a feeling of melancholy that since that period I have made a change for the worse. [Laughter.] I have had to exchange all those dreams of imagination to which I then alluded, which are, I believe, the proper concomitants of the Foreign Office intelligently wielded, and which, I have no doubt, my noble friend on my right sees in imagination as I did then--I have had to exchange all those dreams for the dreary and immediate prose of life--all the more dreary prose because a great deal of it is my own.

(_ARCHIBALD PHILIP PRIMROSE_)

_Photogravure after a photograph from life_]

There is one function, however, which has already devolved upon me, and which is not without interest for this Academy. My great predecessor, much to my regret, left in my hands the appointment of a successor to Sir Frederick Burton. That has cost me probably more trouble and travail than any other act of this young administration. [Laughter.] I have sought, and I have abundantly received, counsels, and it is after long consideration, and with the most earnest and conscientious desire to do not what is most agreeable to individuals themselves, but what is best for art in general, that I have nominated Mr. Poynter to succeed Sir Frederick Burton. [Cheers.]

I have at the same time made a change in the minute relating to the conditions of that post, which to a greater extent than was formerly the case associates the trustees of the National Gallery in the work of selection with the new director. The trustees have been hitherto rather those flies on the wheel of which we read in ancient fable. It is now proposed to make them working wheels, and to make them work well and co-operatively with the new director. ["Hear! Hear!"] I hope that this arrangement will be satisfactory in its results. But, Mr. President, I have long thought, as an individual, that the task of a Minister or of a Government in co-operating with the Royal Academy, and with those who have art at heart, ought not to end with a mere appointment of this description. I take a larger view of the responsibilities of my office, and I should be glad to offer to you with great respect a few suggestions that have recently occurred to me with regard to the present position of English art, which I regard with some misgivings.

There is, first, the subject of portraiture. I am deeply concerned for the future condition of portrait-painting. It is not, as you may imagine, with any distrust whatever of those distinguished men who take a part in that branch of art; it is much more for the subjects that I am concerned. [Laughter.] And it is not so much with the subjects as with that important part of the subject which was illustrated in the famous work "Sartor Resartus," by the great Carlyle, that I chiefly trouble myself. How can it be that any man should make a decent portrait of his fellow-man in these days? No one can entertain so vindictive a hatred of his fellow-creature as to wish to paint him in the costume in which I am now addressing you. [Laughter.] I believe that that costume is practically dropped for all purposes of portraiture; and if that be so, in what costume is the Englishman of the present century to descend to remotest posterity through the vehicle of the gifted artists whom I see around me? We are not all sufficiently fortunate to be the Chancellor of the University. [Laughter and cheers.] We have not always even the happy chance to be a municipal dignitary, with a costume which I will not at present characterize. [Laughter.] We are not all of us masters of hounds; and I think that the robes of a peer, unattractive in their æsthetic aspect, have lost something of their popularity. [Laughter.] Again, the black velvet coat, with which we are accustomed to associate deep thought and artistic instincts, has become a little faded. [Laughter.]

I am told, and told four or five times every day in speeches delivered in various parts of the country, that I have no right to offer a criticism without offering a suggestive remedy. Well, Sir Frederic, I am prepared to offer my remedy for what it is worth, and for that reason I ask your co-operation. Why should not a committee of the Royal Academy gather together in order to find some chaste and interesting national costume, in which the distinguished men of the nineteenth century might descend to posterity without the drawbacks which I have pointed out? Robespierre had such a costume designed, and other great sumptuary legislators have had the same idea in their minds; and I would not push the suggestion so far as to imply that we should be compelled to wear this costume in ordinary life. It might be one kept to gratify the artistic instincts of those to whom we sit. [Laughter.] And I will make a practical suggestion by which this costume--when you, sir, have selected it--might be associated with the ordinary run of life. It might be made an official costume of a justice of the peace, and in that way the great mass of our fellow-countrymen, with only a few and insignificant exceptions, of whom I am one, might descend to remotest posterity in a graceful, becoming, and official costume. [Laughter.]

I pass on from that, because I should not limit myself to portraiture in a great survey of this kind; and I may say that I am seriously concerned for the prospects of landscape painting in this country. I have of late been doing a great deal of light travelling in behalf of the respectable firm which I represent [laughter], and I beg at once to give notice, in the hearing of the noble marquis who is more to your left [Lord Salisbury], that I now nail to the counter any proposal to call me a political bagman as wanting in originality and wit. [Laughter.]

But I have been doing a certain amount of light travelling in behalf of our excellent and creditable firm. The other day, on returning from Manchester, I was deeply and hideously impressed with the fact that all along that line of railway which we traversed, the whole of a pleasing landscape was entirely ruined by appeals to the public to save their constitutions but ruin their æsthetic senses by a constant application of a particular form of pill. [Laughter and cheers.]

Now, Sir Frederic, I view that prospect with the gravest misgiving. What is to become of our English landscape if it is to be simply a sanitary or advertising appliance? [Laughter.] I appeal to my right honorable friend the Chancellor of the Duchy [James Bryce], who sits opposite to me. His whole heart is bound up in a proposition for obtaining free access to the mountains of the Highlands. But what advantage will it be to him, or to those whose case he so justly and eloquently espouses, if at the top of Schiehallion, or any other mountain which you may have in your mind's eye, the bewildered climber can only find an advertisement of some remedy of the description of which I have mentioned [cheers], an advertisement of a kind common, I am sorry to say, in the United States--and I speak with reverence in the presence of the ambassador of that great community--but it would be in the Highlands distressing to the deer and infinitely perplexing even to the British tourist. [Laughter and cheers.]

But I turned my eyes mentally from the land, and I said that, after all, the great painter of the present may turn to the sea, and there at least he is safe. There are effects on the ocean which no one can ruin, which not even a pill can impair. [Laughter.] But I was informed in confidence--it caused me some distress--that the same enterprising firm which has placarded our rural recesses, has offered a mainsail free of expense to every ship that will accept it, on condition that it bears the same hideous legend upon it to which I have referred. [Laughter.] Think, Mr. President, of the feelings of the illustrious Turner if he returned to life to see the luggers and the coasting ships which he has made so glorious in his paintings, converted into a simple vehicle for the advertisement of a quack medicine--although I will not say "quack," because that is actionable [laughter]--I will say of a medicine of which I do not know the properties. [Laughter.]

But I turned my eyes beyond the land and ocean, and I turned them to the heavens, and I said, "There, at any rate, we are safe." The painter of the present may turn his eye from the land and ocean, but in the skies he can always find some great effect which cannot be polluted. At this moment I looked from the railway-carriage window, and I saw the skeleton of a gigantic tower arising. It had apparently been abandoned at a lofty stage, possibly in consequence of the workmen having found that they spoke different languages at the height at which they had arrived. [Laughter.] I made inquiries, and I found that it was the enterprise of a great speculator, who resides himself on a mountain, and who is equally prepared to bore under the ocean or ascend into the heavens. I was given to understand that this admirable erection comprised all the delights of a celestial occupation without any detachment from terrestrial pursuits. [Laughter.] But I am bound to say that if buildings of that kind are to cover this country, and if they are to be joined to the advertising efforts to which I have alluded, neither earth, nor sea, nor sky in Great Britain will be fit subject for any painter. [Cheers.]

What, then, is the part of Her Majesty's Government in this critical and difficult circumstance? We have--no, I will not say we have, because there would be a protest on the left--but different governments have added allotments to the attractions of rural neighborhoods. I venture to think that an allotment is not an unpicturesque thing. Certainly, small holdings are more picturesque than large holdings, but I do not say that from the point of view in which Sydney Smith said that the difference between the picturesque and the beautiful was that the rector's horse was beautiful, and that the curate's horse was picturesque. [Laughter.] I simply mean that a small holding is more picturesque than a large holding, and I think we may hope that the parish councils, if they meet, as they did in primeval times, under the shade of some large spreading oak, and not in the public house which we so much fear, as their headquarters, may yet add a picturesque feature to the rural landscape of Great Britain.

But there is one feature at which a government can always aim as adding to the landscape of Great Britain. In a very famous but too little read novel, "Pelham," by the late Lord Lytton, there is a passage which always struck me greatly. It is where Pelham goes to see an uncle from whom he is to inherit a great estate, and he asks what the uncle has done to beautify that exquisite spot. The uncle says that he has done nothing but added the most beautiful feature of landscape, which is happy faces. Well, the Government in its immediate neighborhood has little to do with making happy faces. [Laughter.] It certainly does not make its opponents happy, except on rare occasions when it leaves office, and it is not always so fortunate as to make its supporters happy. [Laughter.] But I believe that in this country all governments do aim in their various ways and methods at making a happy population around them; and in that respect, in adding happy faces to the landscape, whether we fail or whether we succeed, we have a good-will in the work, and I am quite sure we have the hearty encouragement of the great and brilliant assembly which I address. [Loud cheers.]

GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA

FRIEND AND FOE

[Speech of George Augustus Sala at a banquet given in his honor by
the Lotos Club, January 10, 1885. The President, Whitelaw Reid, sat
at the centre table, having on his right hand the guest of the
evening. He said, in welcoming Mr. Sala: "The last time we met here
it was my pleasant duty to give your welcome to an old friend. Now
you make it my duty--still a pleasant one--to give your welcome to
an old enemy. ["Hear! Hear!"] Yes; an old enemy! We shall get on
better with the facts by admitting them at the outset. Our guest
was more or less against us in the great struggle twenty years ago
in which everybody now wishes to be thought to have been with us.
He did not believe this nation would down the slaveholders'
rebellion and he did not want it to; and he wrote frankly as he
believed and wished. [Laughter.] He never made any disguise about
it then or since; and for that, at least, we think the better of
him! [Applause.] He came of a slaveholding family; many personal
and social influences drew him toward those of our countrymen who
were on the wrong side; and now that it is all over, we bear no
malice! [Applause.] More than that; we are heartily glad to see
him. The statute of limitations runs in his favor; and his old
opinions are outlawed. He revisited the country long after the
war--and he changed his mind about it. He thought a great deal
better of us; and we in turn found his letters a great deal
pleasanter reading. We like a man who can change his mind
[applause]; and if a bit of international frankness may be
permitted in the good-fellowship of this board, perhaps I may
venture to add that we particularly like to discover that trait in
an Englishman! [Applause and laughter.] We've changed our minds--at
least about some things. We've not only forgiven our countrymen;
whom our guest used to sympathize with; but we have put--and are
getting ready to put--the most of them into office! What we are
most anxious about just now is, whether they are going to forgive
us! Seriously, gentlemen, we are very glad to see Mr. Sala here
again. He was a veteran in the profession in which so many of you
are interested, worthily wearing the laurels won in many fields,
and enjoying the association, esteem, and trust of a great master
whose fame the world holds precious, when the most of us were
fledglings. We all know him as a wit, a man of letters, and a man
of the world. Some of us have known him also in that pleasanter
character of all clubmen described in the old phrase, 'a jolly
good fellow.' On the other side of the Atlantic the grasp he gives
an American hand is a warm one; and we do not mean that in New York
he shall feel away from home. I give you, gentlemen, 'The health
and prosperity of George Augustus Sala.'"]

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN OF THE LOTOS CLUB: I am under the deepest feeling of gratitude to Mr. Whitelaw Reid for having torn the mask from the face of the stealthy conspirator, for having exposed the wily plotter and insidious libeller, and defied the malignant Copperhead. [Applause.] I thought that I had long ago been choked with that venom; but no, it rises still and poisons all that belongs to his otherwise happy condition. Gentlemen, I am indeed an enemy of the United States. I am he who has come here to requite your hospitalities with unfounded calumny and to bite the hand that has fed me. Unfortunately there are so many hands that have fed me that it will take me from this time until to-morrow morning to bite all the friendly hands.

With regard to events that took place twenty years ago and of which I was an interested spectator, I may say that albeit I was mistaken; but the mistake was partaken of by many hundred thousands of my fellow-countrymen, who had not the courage subsequently to avow that they had been mistaken, but yet set to curry favor with the North by saying that they had always been their friends. The only apology--if apology I should choose to make--would be this: that that which I had to say against you I said while I was in your midst, when I was living at the Brevoort House; and when my letters came weekly back from England; and when it was quite in your power to have ridden me out on a rail or to have inflicted on me any of the ordinary visitations which a malignant Copperhead was supposed to deserve. But you did not do so, and I remember that when I left New York, I had quite as many good, kind, cordial friends on the Union League side as I had on the Democratic side. I would say further that when I came to publish my letters I found that there were many statements which I had made, which seemed to me to have been hasty and inconsiderate, and I did my best to modify them; and I did not wait until I got home to malign the people from whom I had received hospitality.

But I have been indeed an enemy to the United States; so much so that when I came here again in 1879-80 with my wife, the enemy was received on all sides with the greatest kindness and cordiality. So much am I an enemy to the United States, that for years while I was connected with the weekly paper called "The Echo" there was hardly a week when I did not receive scores of letters from Americans from every part of the Union--from down South, from the West, the North, and the East--full of kindly matter and expressions bearing out the idea that I am a friend rather than an enemy to the United States. And I know perfectly well that there is no American who comes to London, be he lawyer, diplomatist, actor, artist, or man of letters, but I am always glad to see him, and always glad to show him, that, although an enemy, I still retain some feelings of gratitude toward my friends in the United States.

I have seen it stated in one of your remarkably versatile and "Graphic" journals that I have boasted of having come here with the idea of making some money in the United States. But bless your hearts and souls, gentlemen of the Lotos Club, I assure you that I have no such idea! [Laughter.] I am really speaking to you seriously when I say that it was by merest accident that upon taking my ticket for Australia, I was told by my energetic manager that I might see a most interesting and picturesque country by crossing the Rocky Mountains and embarking at San Francisco, instead of going by way of the Suez Canal and the Red Sea. I had seen your Rocky Mountains, it is true, but I had seen them in March; and now I shall see them at the end of January, and that is really one of the main purposes of my journey. If from time to time in my passage I do deliver a few incoherent utterances, these utterances will not be prompted by any desire for pelf. That is far from my thoughts, but still if anyone wants to pay two dollars, or seventy-five cents, to hear those incoherent utterances you may be assured that my managers and myself will do our utmost to devote the funds accruing therefrom to purposes of mercy and of charity. [Applause.] I am sure you believe every word that I say; and that Australia is my objective. [Laughter.]

But, seriously, I only conclude by saying that I do not believe a word of what your President has said. He does not believe now that for the past twenty years I have been and am an enemy of the United States. We were blinded, many of us, for the time being; we took a wrong lane for the time, just as many of your tourists and many of your Radicals have taken the wrong lane in England; but I think that differences of opinion should never alter friendships. And when we consider the number of years that have elapsed; when we consider that the wounds which I saw red and gaping and bleeding are now healed, scarcely leaving a scar, I think that the enemy might now be regarded as a friend; and that whatever unkind feelings were begotten in that terrible time should be now buried in the Red Sea of oblivion. [Applause.] There never before was a time when it was so expedient for England to say to America: "Don't quarrel!"

England is surrounded by enemies--by real enemies who hate her. Why? Because she tries to be honest; and she tries to be free. She is hated by Germans; and Germany equally hates the institutions of this country, because she sees the blood and the bone of intelligent Germany coming to the United States and becoming capable citizens, instead of carrying the needle-musket at home. She is hated by France, because France has got a Republic which she calls democratic and social, but which is still a tyranny--and the worst of all tyrannies, because the tyrant is a mob. I do not disguise the fact that we are surrounded by foes of every description; and for that reason and because blood is thicker than water, I say to Americans that, inasmuch as we have atoned for past offences (the Alabama and all other difficulties having been settled), no other difficulty should be permitted to rise; and if there be a place in all the world where real peace may be secured and perfect freedom reign, England and America should there join hands as against all the world in arms. [Applause.]

I have nothing more to say, except to entreat you to pardon my somewhat serious utterances because of the many painful reminiscences which your good-natured sarcasm has brought to my lips, although softened by the kindly and genial terms in which you have received me, and I beg you to accept the grateful expression of my heartfelt gratitude for this glorious reception. [Applause.]

LORD SALISBURY

(ROBERT ARTHUR TALBOT GASCOYNE-CECIL)

KITCHENER IN AFRICA

[Speech of Robert Cecil, Marquis of Salisbury, at a banquet given
in honor of Lord Horatio Herbert Kitchener, by the Lord Mayor of
London, Right Hon. Horatio David Davies, at the Mansion House,
London, November 4, 1898.]

MY LORD MAYOR, YOUR ROYAL HIGHNESS, MY LORDS, AND GENTLEMEN:--The task has been placed in my hands of proposing the toast of the evening: "The Health of the Sirdar." [Loud cheers.] It is the proud prerogative of this city that, without any mandate from the Constitution, without any legal sanction it yet has the privilege of sealing by its approval the reputation and renown of the great men whom this country produces; and the honors which it confers are as much valued and as much desired as any which are given in this country. [Cheers.] It has won that position not because it has been given to it, but because it has shown discrimination and earnestness and because it has united the suffrage of the people in the approval of the course that it has taken and of the honors it has bestowed. [Cheers.] My Lord Mayor, it is in reference to that function which you have performed to-day and the most brilliant reception which has been accorded to the Sirdar that I now do your bidding and propose his health. [Cheers.] But if the task would be in any circumstances arduous and alarming, it is much more so because all that can be said in his behalf has already been said by more eloquent tongues than mine. I have little hope that I can add anything to the picture that has been already drawn [allusion to previous speeches made by the Earl of Cambridge, Lord Lansdowne, and Lord Rosebery], but no one can wonder at the vast enthusiasm by which the career of this great soldier has been received in this city. It is not merely his own personal qualities that have achieved it. It is also the strange dramatic interest of the circumstances, and the conditions under which his laurels have been won. [Cheers.]

It has been a long campaign, the first part of which we do not look back to with so much pleasure because we had undertaken a fearful task without a full knowledge of the conditions we had to satisfy or the real character of the foes to whom we were opposed. ["Hear! Hear!"] The remembrance of that heroic figure whose virtues and whose death are impressed so deeply upon the memory of the whole of the present generation of Englishmen, the vicissitudes of those anxious campaigns in which the most splendid deeds of gallantry were achieved are yet fresh in the minds of the English people and Lord Rosebery has not exaggerated when he has said that the debt was felt deeply in the mind of every Englishman, however little they might talk of it at the time and when the opportunity arrived with what eagerness, in spite of any possible discouragement--with what eagerness the opportunity was seized. [Cheers.] It was a campaign--the campaign which your gallant guest has won--it was a campaign marked by circumstances which have seldom marked a campaign in the history of the world. [Cheers.] I suppose that wonderful combination of all achievements and discoveries of modern science, in support of the gallantry and well-tried strategy of a British leader--I suppose these things have not been seen in our history before. [Cheers.] But the note of this campaign was that the Sirdar not only won the battles which he was set to fight, but he furnished himself the instruments by which they were won, or rather, I should say, he was the last and perhaps by the nature of the circumstances the most efficient of a list of distinguished men whose task it has been to rescue the Egyptian army from inefficiency and contempt in order to put it on the pinnacle of glory it occupies now. [Cheers.]

I remember in our debates during that terrible campaign of 1884-85 a distinguished member of the Government of that day observing with respect to Egyptian troops that they were splendid soldiers if only they would not run away. [Laughter.]

It was a quaint way of putting it, but it was very accurate. They had splendid physique; they had great fidelity and loyalty to their chiefs; they had many of the qualities of the soldier, but like men who had been recruited under the slave whip, and who had been accustomed to the methods of despotism, they had not that courage which can only be obtained by freedom and by united military training. [Cheers.] What they lacked has been supplied to them, and the Egyptian army, as it has issued from the hands of Sir Evelyn Wood, Sir Francis Grenfell, and the Sirdar, is a magnificent specimen of the motive power of the English leader. [Cheers.] We do not reflect on it, yet if we have any interest in the administrative processes that go on in various parts of the Empire we cannot help being impressed by the fact that numbers on numbers of educated young men, who at home, in this country, would show no very conspicuous qualities except those we are accustomed to look for in an English gentleman, yet, if thrown on their own resources, and bidden to govern and control and guide large bodies of men of another race, they never or hardly ever fall short of the task which has been given to them; but they will make of that body of promising material splendid regiments by which the Empire of England is extended and sustained. [Cheers.]

It is one of the great qualities of the Sirdar that he has been able to direct the races that are under him, to make them effective and loyal soldiers, to attach them to himself, and insure their good conduct in the field of battle. [Cheers.] He has many other qualities upon which I might dilate if time permitted. Lord Cromer, who I am glad to see Lord Rosebery noted as one who ought to have his full share in any honors you confer on those who have built up Egyptian prosperity, who is one of the finest administrators the British race has ever produced--Lord Cromer is in the habit of saying that the Sirdar has almost missed his vocation, and that if he was not one of the first generals in the world, he would be one of the first Chancellors of the Exchequer. [Laughter and cheers.] I daresay many people think it a small thing that a soldier should be able to save money [laughter], but it is not so if you will only conceive for yourselves the agony of mind with which in former times the Chancellors of the Exchequer or financial members of the Council have received from time to time accounts of brilliant victories, knowing all the time what a terrible effect upon the ultimate balance of the budget those victories will entail. [Laughter.] It is a hazardous thing to say, but I am almost inclined to believe that the Sirdar is the only general that has fought a campaign for £300,000 less than he originally promised to do it. [Laughter.] It is a very great quality, and if it existed more generally, I think that terror which financiers entertain of soldiers, and that contempt which soldiers entertain for financiers would not be so frequently felt. ["Hear! Hear!" and laughter.]