pity me, I have seen them; they will remain in my
mind forever--and this is almost the twentieth century. Christ
died nineteen hundred years ago, and Spain is a Christian
nation. She has set up more crosses in more lands, beneath more
skies, and under them has butchered more people than all the
other nations of the earth combined. Europe may tolerate her
existence as long as the people of the Old World wish. God grant
that before another Christmas morning the last vestige of
Spanish tyranny and oppression will have vanished from the
Western Hemisphere!...
The time for action has come. No greater reason for it can exist
to-morrow than exists to-day. Every hour's delay only adds
another chapter to the awful story of misery and death. Only one
power can intervene--the United States of America. Ours is the
one great nation in the world, the mother of American republics.
She holds a position of trust and responsibility toward the
peoples and affairs of the whole Western Hemisphere. It was her
glorious example which inspired the patriots of Cuba to raise
the flag of liberty in her eternal hills. We cannot refuse to
accept this responsibility which the God of the universe has
placed upon us as the one great power in the New World. We must
act! What shall our action be?
Against the intervention of the United States in this holy cause
there is but one voice of dissent; that voice is the voice of
the money-changers. They fear war! Not because of any Christian
or ennobling sentiment against war and in favor of peace, but
because they fear that a declaration of war, or the intervention
which might result in war, would have a depressing effect upon
the stock market. Let them go. They do not represent American
sentiment; they do not represent American patriotism. Let them
take their chances as they can. Their weal or woe is of but
little importance to the liberty-loving people of the United
States. They will not do the fighting; their blood will not
flow; they will keep on dealing in options on human life. Let
the men whose loyalty is to the dollar stand aside while the men
whose loyalty is to the flag come to the front.
Mr. President, there is only one action possible, if any is
taken; that is, intervention for the independence of the island.
But we cannot intervene and save Cuba without the exercise of
force, and force means war; war means blood. The lowly Nazarene
on the shores of Galilee preached the divine doctrine of love,
"Peace on earth, good will toward men." Not peace on earth at
the expense of liberty and humanity. Not good will toward men
who despoil, enslave, degrade, and starve to death their
fellow-men. I believe in the doctrine of Christ. I believe in
the doctrine of peace; but, Mr. President, men must have liberty
before there can come abiding peace.
Intervention means force. Force means war. War means blood. But
it will be God's force. When has a battle for humanity and
liberty ever been won except by force? What barricade of wrong,
injustice, and oppression has ever been carried except by force?
Force compelled the signature of unwilling royalty to the great
Magna Charta; force put life into the Declaration of
Independence and made effective the Emancipation Proclamation;
force beat with naked hands upon the iron gateway of the Bastile
and made reprisal in one awful hour for centuries of kingly
crime; force waved the flag of revolution over Bunker Hill and
marked the snows of Valley Forge with blood-stained feet; force
held the broken line of Shiloh, climbed the flame-swept hill at
Chattanooga, and stormed the clouds on Lookout Heights; force
marched with Sherman to the sea, rode with Sheridan in the
valley of the Shenandoah, and gave Grant victory at Appomattox;
force saved the Union, kept the stars in the flag, made
"niggers" men. The time for God's force has come again. Let the
impassioned lips of American patriots once more take up the
song:--
"In the beauty of the lilies, Christ was born across the sea.
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me;
As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free.
While God is marching on."
Others may hesitate, others may procrastinate, others may plead
for further diplomatic negotiation, which means delay; but for
me, I am ready to act now, and for my action I am ready to
answer to my conscience, my country, and my God.
--JAMES MELLEN THURSTON.
PAUSE AND POWER
The true business of the literary artist is to plait or weave
his meaning, involving it around itself; so that each sentence,
by successive phrases, shall first come into a kind of knot, and
then, after a moment of suspended meaning, solve and clear
itself.
--GEORGE SAINTSBURY, on _English Prose Style_, in _Miscellaneous
Essays_.
... pause ... has a distinctive value, expressed in silence; in
other words, while the voice is waiting, the music of the
movement is going on ... To manage it, with its delicacies and
compensations, requires that same fineness of ear on which we
must depend for all faultless prose rhythm. When there is no
compensation, when the pause is inadvertent ... there is a sense
of jolting and lack, as if some pin or fastening had fallen out.
--JOHN FRANKLIN GENUNG, _The Working Principles of Rhetoric_.
Pause, in public speech, is not mere silence--it is silence made
designedly eloquent.
When a man says: "I-uh-it is with profound-ah-pleasure that-er-I have
been