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 i