MERICA, grand in her splendid isolation, no
less than in her incomparable resources and
militant mightiness, has felt so secure of her
supremacy in the Western hemisphere that
the energies, the talents, and the ambitions
of our people have been devoted to those
peaceful pursuits which have for their
aim personal advancement, national pres-

tige, and a wide dissemination of those principles upon which human liberty and the peaceful development of the world are founded. Our conquests have never been made by sword; our growth as a nation has not been by accretions wasted from weaker powers; our strength is not derived from the blood of victims, and our conscience is not harrowed by spectres of hate and oppression. Thus, content in our national exclusiveness, and punctilious in our sense of justice and humanity, we have been facetiously designated, by Cæsars of militarism, as a nation of shopkeepers and as devotees of commercialism, who, mindful only of dollars, recoil at any suggestion of gunpowder. We have been patient in the face of contumely, self-possessed under painful provocation, but never indifferent to the cry of distress, nor deaf to appeals of the suffering. Other nations, drunk with ambition, glorying in aggrandizement, cannot comprehend the great American Republic, and thus characteristically misjudge our purposes, and condemn the administration of our Government. Our war with Spain has served to disillusion the statesmen of Europe, to quicken their slow intelligence, to flood their darkened understanding, and to give them an appreciation of the magnitude of our capabilities as a nation and our patriotism as a people. It has shown them that while we love money, and are devoted to building up our fortunes, to increasing our benefits, and to enriching our minds, we are more deeply attached to our homes, and that

(ii)

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