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 accre
tions 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 exclusive-
ness, 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
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