done, not only to missionaries, but also to other citizens. Those dilatory, oriental governments, embarrassed by so many difficult problems of internal administration, do not willingly act except under some pressure. And pressure which is not war and which will probably not lead to war, can be brought to bear by diplomatic and naval agencies. Our government was never in so good a condition to pursue such a policy. It has a prestige among oriental nations before unknown. Its voice, when it speaks with an imperative tone, will now be heard. The question for it is far larger than a missionary question. An influential American citizen has lately written me from an oriental country where our requests have received little attention, saying: "If our government proposes to do nothing for American citizens they should say so and turn us over to the care of the British embassy." Such language as that makes one's blood tingle and stirs us to ask afresh, not alone as friends of missionaries, but as American citizens, what policy will our nation adopt to secure the rights of all our countrymen of whatever pursuit who are dwelling under treaty guarantees in China and Turkey? The friends of missions ask no exceptional favors from the government. They simply seek for such protection as their fellowcitizens need. It is, of course, for our government to say at what time and by 'what methods it shall act. It is sometimes wise and even necessary for a government to postpone seeking a settlement of difficulties with a foreign power, even when it is clear that a settlement is highly desirable. Great exigencies may require delays. We must exercise the patience which patriotism calls for. But we may be permitted without impropriety to express our desire and our opinion that our government should find some way to make it absolutely clear to oriental countries that it intends to secure the protection for all our citizens, including missionaries, to which they are entitled by treaties and by international law. AMERICAN SLAVERY JOHN BRIGHT Slavery has been as we all know the huge, foul blot upon the fame of the American Republic. It is an outrage against human right and against divine law, but the pride, the passion of man, will not permit its peaceable extinction. Is not this war the penalty which inexorable justice exacts from America, North and South, for the enormous guilt of cherishing that frightful iniquity of slavery for the last eighty years? The leaders of this revolt propose this monstrous thing, that over a territory forty times as large as England the blight and curse of slavery shall be forever perpetuated. I cannot believe that such a fate can befall that fair land, stricken as it now is with the ravages of war. I cannot believe that civilization in its journey with the sun will sink into endless night to gratify the ambition of leaders of this revolt, who seek to "Wade through slaughter to a throne, And shut the gates of mercy on mankind." I have a far other and brighter vision before my gaze. It may be but a vision, but I will cherish it. I see one vast confederation stretching from the frozen North in unbroken line to the glowing South, and from the wild billows of the Atlantic, westward to the calmer waters of the Pacific main, and I see one people, and one law, and one language, and one faith, and over all that wide continent the home of freedom and a refuge for the oppressed of every race and of every clime. THE ARMENIAN MASSACRES WILLIAM E. GLADSTONE Ladies and Gentlemen, Before I come to the resolution which I have undertaken to move, there are certain subjects which I wish to clear out of the way. There are most impor tant distinctions to be drawn on the ground that the sufferers under the present misrule and the horribly accumulated outrages of the last two years are our own fellow-Christians. But we do not prosecute the cause we have in hand upon the ground that they are our fellow-Christians. This is no crusade against Mohammedanism. This is no declaration of an altered policy or sentiment as regards our Mohammedan fellow-subjects in India. Nay, more; I will say that it is no declaration of universal condemnation of the Mohammedans of the Turkish Empire. On the contrary, amid the dismal and heartrending reports of which we have had to read and hear so much, one of the rare touches of comfort and relief has been that in spite of the perpetration of massacres by the agents of the Government, in spite of the countenance given to massacre by the highest authority, there have been good and generous Mohammedans who have resisted these misdeeds to the uttermost of their power, who have established for themselves a claim to our sympathy and our admiration. Although it is true that those persons are Christians on whose behalf we move, I confidently affirm, and you will back me in my affirmation, that if instead of being Christians they were themselves Mohammedans, Hindus, Buddhists, or Confucianists they would have precisely the same claims upon our support; and the motives which have brought us here to-day would be incumbent upon us with the same force and with the same sacredness that we recognize at the present moment. There is another distinction, gentlemen, less conspicuous, that I would wish to draw your attention to. You have been discouraged by the attitude or by the tone of several of the Continental Governments. Do not too hastily assume that in that attitude and tone they are faithful representatives of the people whom they rule. The ground on which we stand here is not British nor European, but human. Nothing narrower than humanity could pretend for a moment justly to represent it. It may have occurred to some that atrocities which it is hardly possible to exaggerate have been boldly denied; and we are told by the Government of Turkey that the destruction of life which has taken place is not the work of either the Sultan or his agents, but is the work of revolutionaries and agitators. In answer to this we may say that we do not rely upon the reports of revolutionaries or agitators. We rely upon the responsible reports of our public men. Nay, more; while we know that there are those among the six Powers who have shown every disposition to treat the case of the Sultan with all the leniency, with all the friendship that they could, yet every one of them concurs in the statements upon which we stand, and in giving an entire denial to counter-statements of the Turkish Government. The guilt of massacre, and not of massacre only but of every other horror that has been transacted, rests upon that Government. And to the guilt of massacre is added the impudence of denial, and this process will continue — how long? Just as long as you, as Europe, are contented to hear it. Recollect that eighteen months or more have passed since the first of those gigantic massacres was perpetrated, and when that occurrence took place it was thought to be so extraordinary that it was without precedent in the past; for Bulgaria becomes pale by the side of Armenia. But alas! that massacre, gigantic as it was, has been followed up so that one has grown into a series. To the work of murder was added the work of lust, the work of torture, the work of pillage, the work of starvation, and every accessory that it was possible for human wickedness to devise. To all other manifestations which had formerly been displayed in the face of the world there was added consummate insolence. Come what may, let us extract ourselves from an ambiguous position. Let us have nothing to do with countenance of, and so renounce and condemn, neutrality; and let us present ourselves to Her Majesty's Ministers, promising them in good faith our ungrudging and our enthusiastic support in every effort which they may make to express by word and by deed their detestation of acts, not yet perhaps having reached their consummation, but which already have come to such a magnitude and such a depth of atrocity that they constitute the most terrible and most monstrous series of proceedings that have ever been recorded in the dismal and deplorable history of human crime. BATTLE HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC 1 JULIA WARD HOWE 1 Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord; stored; He hath loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible swift sword: His truth is marching on. I have seen Him in the watchfires of a hundred circling camps; They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps; I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps: His day is marching on. I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel: "As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal, Let the hero born of woman crush the serpent with his heel, Since God is marching on." He hath sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat, He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment seat. Oh! be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet! Our God is marching on. 1 By special permission of the author. |