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Show The President's Great Speech THE speech delivered before the meeting of , the Daughters of the American Revolution at Washington on Monday last, should be care- I fully read. Indeed it will have to be read twice by the average reader before it can be accurately analyzed and appreciated. It is an old (belief that a man of a certain order of mind must be in love with some woman in order to bring out the best that is in his intellect. It is a safe bet that when on Monday evening the president's fiancee whispered to him her admiration ad-miration of the speech, he whispered back that she was his inspiration, that all the time he was talking the vision of her was before his eyes, her voice was in his .ears, that whatever of charm and rhythm he was able to clothe his speech in came from the ecstacy of the enchantment she bad woven around him. This state of his mind, or rather the soul behind the mind unconsciously gave a sensuous cadence to the exquisite language that fell from his lips. As a literary production the speech is , a perfect classic. The lamp of the study, with ! every trace of smoke and film eliminated shines out divinely. It is the product of years of study of the great -masters of literature until the soul is saturated with their splendors and so assimilated assim-ilated that in giving them a new interpretation all that may have been gross or unclean has been rejected. While as a composition it is perfect, it is the perfection of the university rather than of the statesman, the cold and severe logic of science, jather than the mingled heart and brain production produc-tion which never forgets that man at best is ' finite and always under the sway of impulses, and passions and natural prejudices sometimes strong as life itself. The president's description of the creation of our nation by the' commingling of races on our to soil and of the majesty; of the result because behind be-hind all the inherent rights of man was the chief-est chief-est plank in the platform of our government is Jlne, and his insistance that with the perfect citizen citi-zen the thought must be "our country first, last and all the time" is well enough when properly interpreted, but it does not make clear the whole' situation. Suppose that when the president graduated Irom college, he had decided to spend a year abroad; that he1 had gone to Paris; that there a -wonderful position for life had been offered him; that beside a marvelously beautiful and accomplished accom-plished French lady had consented to bo his wife; , that so surrounded he had determined to make France his home and had accordingly become a French citizen, absolving his allegiance to native na-tive land. Suppose that among his friends there bad been a young Englishman with like tastes and aspirations, and that their friendship had become be-come like that of David and Jonathan "a love stronger than the love of woman" and that this had continued for a score of years; that both had over and over given full expression of their loyalty to France. Then suppose a great war had broken out bef-tween bef-tween Great Britain and the United States, Is it reasonable to suppose that these two men would not have taken a deep interest in it? Is it unreasonable un-reasonable to believe that at last they might have quarreled and fought over it? Suppose the final quarrel had been in a French club, -would it have1 been fair for the native French members to have doubted, because of the quarrel, the true fealty of either to France. To expect that foreign born people in our country will not take a deep interest in the present pres-ent great war, is to expect that a man will forget for-get the mother who bore him and the cradle in which he was rocked. And because true men cannot put aside those memories, to have a suspicion sus-picion that if our country were to be assailed, they would not spring to its defense is not fair. And what we understand by neutrality on the part of Americans is to be neutral, that is to be absolutely fair under the law to all the belligerent belliger-ent powers; not to expect the foreign-born men in our midst, not to be naturally swayed by the birthmarks on their souls, but as Americans for us to present such a front, that at last when the fighting powers shall be enough exhausted to listen to reason, our country may help in the final adjustment. W" V.' '' |