Commencement Exercises

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1896. Excerpt: ... The American Jingo. By H. S. McC-D. Only on the supposition that legislative bodies, like individuals, are subject to insanity, can we account for recent utterances in the American newspaper and the American Congress. With business unsettled and trade depression chronic, needed legislation has been indefinitely postponed, while the precious hours have been wasted in the abuse of foreign powers and in lurid declaration on war. Men have whipped themselves into an insane fury; reason and justice seem to have " fled to brutish beasts." Legislative slumbers have been disturbed by visions of hostile flying squadrons covering the sea from Newfoundland to the Gulf, and by the awful spectacle of people flying from our coast cities by the light of their burning homes. This war-intoxicated man we call the American Jingo. We can no longer content ourselves with classing him with the bully and the braggart, and thus dismiss him. We must study his spirit, the cause of his being, and the scope of his purposes. The spirit that animates him is the spirit of the savage; he bristles with antagonism; he advocates war for its own sake. He looks backward, not forward; his ideals are Mediaeval, not modern. He would have every seaport a Gibraltar, and the Western Continent engirdled with mighty war ships. He thinks he is patriotic, when he is only partisan.. His motto is, "My country, right or wrong!" For him. the mission of this Kepublic is not, as the fathers supposed, to make our people happy and contented, to deal justly and love mercy, but to regulate the Western Hemisphere, and incidentally the World. No people so rude, so ignorant, or so far removed, but that he would at once incorporate them. He flouts the teachings of history, the laws of heredity, of climate, and ...