OCR Text |
Show Our Highest Interest THE appeal put out by the Carnegie peace endowment en-dowment trustees reads as follows: Tho greatest interest of the United States as u free nation is to represent worthily before the world the principles of civil and religious liberty and the public efficiency and well being which those principles develop and thereby to promote the adoption of these principles the world over. This is of great material as well as great moral interest. In comparison with this large interest, in-terest, the interest of the United States in its coastwise vessels Blnks into insignificance. By securing the repeal of that part of the act of congress on the Panama canal which provided pro-vided for the exemption of the coastwise vessels ves-sels from the payment of tolls the American people peo-ple would embrace a precious opportunity toprove that they understood their highest interests and recognize their duty to promote it "for the benefit bene-fit of mankind." That board of trustees is made up of most illustrious names, but they mistake the highest high-est interest of the United States. Its very highest high-est interest is due the American people and government, gov-ernment, not to create universal peace, but to make war unnecessary. Nature does not cure its wrongs by poultices, but by blisters. Its agents are the earthquake, the storm, the glacier; it keeps tho earth and the sea pure by the currents it keeps in motion in the sea and on the land; oven the sunbeams are mighty working forces. Of course it is our nation's interest "to represent .worthily before the world the principles of civil and religious liberty, but a more worthy interest is to set forth the right and have the world un derstand that justice to ourselves and the world is what we are striving for. It has been England's determination since before be-fore Waterloo was fought to have "Britania rule the wave." A law passed by the fathers a century ago has enabled us to make a showing of American ships in the coast trade of our country. Thb chief desire and design of England in insisting that our coast ships shall pay toll to our own canal, is to neutralize that law. The present administration ad-ministration in our country is but the agent of the party that has never had the comprehension to see that the amount we annually pay to foreign ships in fares and freights, is sufficient in itself to keep our country practically drained of money so long as it is continued; that the money thus paid out is lost to us forever; that the annual interest so lost is sufficient, could it be spent on our own shipping, to restore our merchant marine in ten years, and give us the new power which we need in order to impress upon the world that our free government is so caparisoned that "we can worthily worth-ily represent before tho world the principles of civil and religious liberty. Our nation has yet much to do at home to reconcile the differences among our own people. One thing needed is to make places for more skill ed workers Were our merchant marine restored, it would of itself give half a million more men employment and that would represent five per cent of our working force. It would, too, open all the continent to the south of us to our intellectual and physical workers. It would, moreover, be a per- I petual notice to all the nations that while we I want the world to enjoy the same civil and religi- I ous liberty that our people enjoy, we do not hope 1 to bring it about by cringing or begging or through a base surrender of our distinct rights j Had Great Britain built unaided the Suez canal and owned it, does any one inlagine she J would havo charged her ships, plying between Jngland and Australia and India, tolls? And were a similar treaty to tho Hay-Paunce fote treaty cited to her as a reason why she should charge such ships tolls, would not her instant and sharp reply be, "That has no reference refer-ence to our own ships running between our own ports, and there is nothing to arbitrate." |