|
 "....
Twice in my lifetime the long arm of destiny
has reached across the oceans and involved
the entire life and manhood of the United
States in a deadly struggle.
There was no use in saying "We don't want
it; we won’t have it; our forebears left
Europe to avoid these quarrels; we have
founded a new world which has no contact
with the old.
"There was no use in that. The long arm
reaches out remorselessly, and every one's
existence, environment, and outlook undergo
a swift and irresistible change.
What is the explanation, Mr. President,
of these strange facts, and what are the
deep laws to which they respond?
I will offer you one explanation - there
are others, but one will suffice.
The price of greatness
is responsibility.
If the people of the United States had continued
in a mediocre station, struggling with the
wilderness, absorbed in their own affairs,
and a factor of no consequence in the movement
of the world, they might have remained forgotten
and undisturbed beyond their protecting
oceans:
but one cannot rise to be in many ways the
leading community in the civilised world
without being involved in its problems,
without being convulsed by its agonies and
inspired by its causes.
If this has been proved in the past, as
it has been, it will become indisputable
in the future.
The people of the United States cannot escape
world responsibility.
Although we live in a period so tumultuous
that little can be predicted, we may be
quite sure that this process will be intensified
with every forward step the United States
make in wealth and in power.
Not only are the responsibilities of this
great Republic growing, but the world over
which they range is itself contracting in
relation to our powers of locomotion at
a positively alarming rate.
We have learned to fly. What prodigious
changes are involved in that new accomplishment!
Man has parted company with his trusty friend
the horse and has sailed into the azure
with the eagles, eagles being represented
by the infernal (loud laughter) - I mean
internal -combustion engine.
Where, then, are those broad oceans, those
vast staring deserts? They are shrinking
beneath our very eyes.
Even elderly Parliamentarians like myself
are forced to acquire a high degree of mobility.
But to the youth of America, as to the youth
of all the Britains, I say "You cannot stop."
There is no halting-place at this point.
We have now reached a stage in the journey
where there can be no pause. We must go
on.
It must be world anarchy or world order.
Throughout all this ordeal and struggle
which is characteristic of our age, you
will find in the British Commonwealth and
Empire good comrades to whom you are united
by other ties besides those of State policy
and public need.
To a large extent, they are the ties of
blood and history. Naturally I, a child
of both worlds, am conscious of these.
... Tyranny is our foe, whatever trappings
or disguise it wears, whatever language
it speaks, be it external or internal, we
must forever be on our guard, ever mobilised,
ever vigilant, always ready to spring at
its throat.
In all this, we march together.
Not
only do we march and strive shoulder to
shoulder at this moment under the fire of
the enemy on the fields of war or in the
air, but also in those realms of thought
which are consecrated to the rights and
the dignity of man.... "
|
