and of woody wilderness,
And shaped it into hills of hope for man,
Must providence its beautiful creation
With altruistic love and tenderness;
So that all tribes of man, what'er their hue,
Have each a hill where it can touch the star
That it has followed with its mental growth."
Such a program is rendered imperative by the inexorability of the law
of race, which nullifies any attempts to force assimilation:
"It is a foolish, futile thing
To try to shape society by codes,
Vetoed by Nature. Nature trumpets forth
No edict, through the instinct of a race,
Proclaiming certain territory hers
And warning all encroaching powers therefrom,
Without the ordering out of her reserves
To see to it the edict is enforced.
Let politics keep off forbidden shores."
If any powers preserve in a policy of oppression, our duty is plain:
"To teach the barbarous tribes throughout the globe,
Christian or Turk, that all humanity
Is territory sheltered by our flag;
That butchery must cease throughout the world;
That, having ended human slavery,
Old glory has a mission from on high
To stop the slaughter of the smiling babe,
The pale, crazed mother, weak, defenseless sire,
All places on the habitable globe."
Finally to render feasible the ideal development of all peoples, and
put an end to war, America must bring about a league of all nations.
It develops on us--
"To get the races by degrees together
To talk their grievance over, in a voice
As gentle as a woman's....
There is no education in the world
Like human contact for mankind's advance;
All differences, then, adjust themselves;
But when two races are estranged by hate,
They grow so deaf to one another's rights,
That it soon comes to pass that either has
To use the trumpet of artillery
In order to be heard at all."
Recently, Doyle wrote the following lines. Their application is obvious:
"Vault Godward, Poet. What though few may climb
The mountain and the star on trail of thee?
Thy wing-flash beams toward man, and if it be
True inspiration--whether thought sublime,
Or fervor for the truth, or liberty--
Thy light will reach the earth in goodly time."
What wonder that from so lofty an outlook his searching eye should
pierce the tragedy of "The Jews in Russia"--or elsewhere--should pierce
even the revenges that Time would ring in, and rest on a vision of
righteous peace!
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