Burton Jesse Hendrick

“ All during this queer kind of a chase the submarine and the cargo ship were peppering each other with shells, one seriously, the other merely in pretence. The fact that a naval crew, with such a fine target as an exposed submarine, could shoot with a conscious effort not to hit, but merely to lure the enemy to a better position, in itself is an eloquent evidence of the perfect discipline which prevailed in the mystery ship service. Not to aim a fair shot upon the detested vessel, when there was a possibility of hitting it, was almost too much to ask of human nature. ”

“ A wave of depression hangs over the land like a London fog. And everybody on this tired-out side of the world shows a disposition to lean too heavily on us—to depend on us so completely that the fear arises that they may unconsciously relax their own utmost efforts when we begin to fight. ”

“ That was the American Ambassador. It was certainly a strange trick which fortune had played upon Page. He had come to London with no experience in diplomacy. Though the possibility of such an outbreak as this war had been in every man's consciousness for a generation, it had always been as something certain yet remote; most men thought of it as most men think of death—as a fatality which is inevitable, but which is so distant that it never becomes a reality. Thus Page, when he arrived in London, did not have the faintest idea of the experience that awaited him. ”

“ Every period has its outstanding figure and, when the Civil War was approaching its end, one personality had emerged from the humdrum characters of the time—one man who, in energy, imagination, and genius, displayed the forces that were to create a new American world. Although this man employed his great talents in a field, that of railroad transportation, which lies outside the scope of the present volume, yet in this comprehensive view I may take Cornelius Vanderbilt as the symbol that links the old industrial era with the new. ”

“ There is hardly an American doughboy who did not see at least a dozen submarines on his way across the Atlantic; every streak of suds which was caused by a "tide rip," and every swimming porpoise, was immediately mistaken for the wake of a torpedo; and every bit of driftwood, in the fervid imagination of trans-Atlantic voyagers, immediately assumed the shape of a periscope. Yet it is a fact that we knew almost every time a German submarine slunk from its base into the ocean. ”

“ When you wish to win a man to do what you want him to do, you take along a few well-established facts, some reasoning and such-like, but you take along also three or four or five parts of human nature—kindliness, courtesy, and such things—sympathy and a human touch.
If a man be six parts human and four parts of other things, a government, especially a democracy, is seven, or eight, or nine parts human nature. It's the most human thing I know. The best way to manage governments and nations—so long as they are disposed to be friendly—is the way we manage one another. ”

“ Instead of taking advantage of a great public demand to increase his prices, Ford has continuously lowered them. Though his idealism may have led him into an occasional personal absurdity, as a business man he may be taken as the full flower of American manufacturing genius. Possibly America, as a consequence of universal war, is advancing to a higher state of industrial organization; but an economic system is not entirely evil that produces such an industry as that which has made the automobile the servant of millions of Americans. ”

“ The world never saw a finer lot of men than the best of their ruling class. You may search the world and you may search history for finer men than Lord Morley, Sir Edward Grey, Mr. Harcourt, and other members of the present Cabinet. And I meet such men everywhere—gently bred, high-minded, physically fit, intellectually cultivated, patriotic. If the devotion to old forms and the inertia which makes any change almost impossible strike an American as out-of-date, you must remember that in the grand old times of England, they had all these things and had them worse than they are now. ”

“ The apparently sinking merchantman became a volcano of smoke and fire; scores of shells dropped upon the submarine, punching holes in her frail hull, hurling German sailors high into the air, sometimes decapitating them or blowing off their arms or legs. The whole horrible scene lasted only a few seconds before the helpless vessel would take its final plunge to the depths, leaving perhaps two or three survivors, a mass of oil and wood, and still more ghastly wreckage, to mark the spot where another German submarine had paid the penalty of its crimes. ”

“ As they lose their grip, human sympathy has its natural play between nations, and civilization has a chance. With any Emperor of Germany left the war will have been half in vain.
If we (the U.S.A.) cultivate the manly qualities and throw off our cranks and read our own history and be true to our traditions and blood and get some political vigour; then if we emancipate ourselves from the isolation theory and from the landlubber theory—get into the world and build ships, ships, ships, ships, and run them to the ends of the seas, we can dominate the world in trade and in political thought. ”

“ An ancient home of man, the home, too, of beautiful things—buildings, pictures, old places, old traditions, dead civilizations—the place where man rose from barbarism to civilization—it is now bankrupt, its best young men dead, its system of politics and of government a failure, its social structure enslaving and tyrannical—it has little help for us. The American spirit, which is the spirit that concerns itself with making life better for the whole mass of men—that's at home at its best with us. ”

“ It is not surprising that ore can be produced at lower cost in the United States than even in those countries where the most wretched wages are paid. Evidently this one iron field, to say nothing of others already worked, gives a permanence to our steel industry.
Not only did America have the material resources; what is even more important, she had also the men. American industrial history presents few groups more brilliant, more resourceful, and more picturesque than that which, in the early seventies, started to turn these Minnesota ore fields into steel—and into gold. ”

“ I have long concluded, for other reasons as well as for this, that these men are the most ignorant men in the whole world; more ignorant—because they are viciously ignorant—than the Negro boys who act as caddies at Pinehurst; more ignorant than the inmates of the Morganton Asylum; more ignorant than sheep or rabbits or idiots. They have been the chief hindrances of our country—worse than traitors, in effect. It is they, in fact, who kept our people ignorant of the Germans, ignorant of the English, ignorant of our own history, ignorant of ourselves. ”

“ But there is one situation in which the destroyer has more than a fighting chance, for the power of the submarine to keep its presence secret lasts only so long as it remains out of action. If it makes no attempt to fight, its presence can hardly ever be detected; but just as soon as it becomes belligerent, it immediately reveals its whereabouts. If it comes to the surface and fires its guns, naturally it advertises to its enemy precisely where it is; but it betrays its location almost as clearly when it discharges a torpedo. ”

“ If we are seeking an ancestral explanation for that moral ruggedness, that quick perception of the difference between right and wrong, that unobscured vision into men and events, and that deep devotion to America and to democracy which formed the fibre of Walter Page's being, we evidently need look no further than his father. But the son had qualities which the older man did not possess—an enthusiasm for literature and learning, a love of the beautiful in Nature and in art, above all a gentleness of temperament and of manner. ”

“ The British Grand Fleet, in fact, is a subject that stands alone in power and value and in difficulties. It classifies itself with nothing else. Since over and over again it has saved these islands from invasion when nothing else could have saved them and since during this war in particular it has saved the world from German conquest—as every Englishman believes—it lies in their reverence and their gratitude and their abiding convictions as a necessary and perpetual shield so long as Great Britain shall endure. ”

“ After a few weeks in a submarine, it grew upon our men that the wonder was not that the Germans had sunk so many merchant ships, but that they had sunk so few. Such an experience emphasized the conviction, which was prevalent in both the British and American navies, that the Germans were not particularly skilful at the occupation which seemed to be so congenial to them. Indeed, there are few things in the world that appear so absolutely helpless as a great merchant ship when observed through the periscope of an under-water boat. ”

“ The streets of London are as lonely and as quiet as the road to Oyster Bay while the Oyster is in South America. It's about as mild here as with you in October and as damp as Sheepshead's Bay in an autumn storm. But such people as you meet complain of the c-o-l-d—the c-o-l-d; and they run into their heatless houses and put on extra waistcoats and furs and throw shawls over their knees and curse Lloyd George and enjoy themselves. They are a great people—even without mint juleps in summer or eggnog in winter ”

“ We must go in with the Allies, not begin a mere single fight against submarines. We must sign the pact of London—not make a separate peace.
We mustn't longer spin dreams about peace, nor leagues to enforce peace, nor the Freedom of the Seas. These things are mere intellectual diversions of minds out of contact with realities. Every political and social ideal we have is at stake. If we make them secure, we'll save Europe from destruction and save ourselves, too. ”

“ What are we going to do with this England and this Empire, presently, when economic forces unmistakably put the leadership of the race in our hands? How can we lead it and use it for the highest purposes of the world and of democracy? We can do what we like if we go about it heartily and with good manners (any man prefers to yield to a gentleman rather than to a rustic) and throw away—gradually—our isolating fears and alternate boasting and bashfulness. ”

“ The danger to the world lies in autocrats and autocracies and privileged classes; and these things have everywhere been dangerous and always will be. There's no security in any part of the world where people cannot think of a government without a king, and there never will be. You cannot conceive of a democracy that will unprovoked set out on a career of conquest. If all our religious missionary zeal and cash could be turned into convincing Europe of this simple and obvious fact, the longest step would be taken for human advancement that has been taken since 1776. ”

“ I wonder if we couldn't serve notice that the land-stealing game is forever ended and that the cleaning up of backward lands is now in order—for the people that live there; and then invite Europe's help to make the tropics as healthful as the Panama Zone?
There's no future in Europe's vision—no long look ahead. They give all their thought to the immediate danger. Consider this Balkan War; all European energy was spent merely to keep the Great Powers at peace. The two wars in the Balkans have simply impoverished the people—left the world that much worse than it was before. ”

“ The United States would stand, as no other nation has ever stood in the world—predominant and unselfish—on the highest ideals ever reached in human government. It is a vision as splendid as the Holy Grael. ”

“ It is by spontaneous courtesy that I have achieved whatever I have achieved, and it is for this that those like me who do like me. Of course, what some of the American newspapers have said is true—that I am too free and too untrained to be a great Ambassador. But the conventional type of Ambassador would not be worth his salt to represent the United States here now, when they are eager to work with us for the peace of the world, if they are convinced of our honour and right-mindedness and the genuineness of our friendship. ”

“ The dream of the American Fathers, therefore, is not yet come true. They fought against organized Privilege exerted from over the sea. In principle it is the same fight that we have made, in our domestic field, during recent decades. Now the same fight has come on a far larger scale than men ever dreamed of before.
It isn't, therefore, for merely doctrinal reasons that we are concerned for the spread of democracy nor merely because a democracy is the only scheme of organization yet wrought out that keeps the door of opportunity open and invites all men to their fullest development. ”