Charles C. Cook

“ We move through life, with our backs toward, to the engine, and see all that we see after it has passed. The reason, the imagination, with their creative powers, picture for themselves the world that lies before, but so swift and so unremitting is our progress, that the new revelations constantly pouring in alter the premises before a conclusion can be reached. Only the most gifted geniuses can draw in the vaguest outline a picture of the future which the flight of time will prove to be true. ”

“ Is there anything in the English or American past, to justify us in believing that they will part more willingly with wealth than with power? Are we not shortsightedly preparing for calamities far more destructive, and more enduring than the political murders of the last thirty years? ”

“ And to-day, it is an almost accepted view, that the least difference between the savage and the civilized man is the difference in morality. It follows that morality has played no conspicuous part in the process of selection; that the extermination of others does little or nothing to improve the character of those who survived; and finally, since Japan has put on European civilization as easily as a Japanese can put on a suit of English clothes, that civilization is a varnish, spread over the material beneath. ”

“ The moral coward is he who sacrifices what he believes to be the higher from fear, who sacrifices his inner self to save his skin. If we hold our political rights dear above all else, if we think our manhood involved, let us be ready to give up wealth, comfort, and even life itself in their defense ”

“ Dutch and English vessels have fought desperately at sea, in the past, and to-day, Dutch and English are face to face in South Africa; England and America have fought two wars; the Northern and Southern states of this country have fought one. As far back as we can go the same condition reveals itself; Greece humiliates her sister Persia, and falls before her more powerful sister, Rome: the barbarians who sack Rome in the fifth century and the Romans themselves are of the same Aryan stock: so are the English and Russians, who seem about to grapple in a deadly struggle to-day. ”

“ It is hard to keep plodding along the narrow path, when fields of wealth and power stretch away on either side, but, happily for us, these are about all fenced in, even the great Sahara desert is fenced in. We cannot be tyrants if we would, nor can we despoil our fellows for they are as poor as we. Our road is made smooth before us. God has not led us into temptation. We ought then to come nearer than other peoples to a Christian life, to that better community, where one half of the world is not happy while the other half is miserable. ”

“ Why then, should we otherwise regard long life in a whole people? Do we applaud the superior strength or cunning of Cain, or pretend that the discovery of gun-powder strengthened the arm of the good? No, neither loyalty, nor victory is the true test;—it is by their fruits that God will know them. ”

“ A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF THE NEGRO PROBLEM [1] Living as we do in the midst of a people, which, if not of unmixed English blood, is at least English in institutions, language and laws, where can we better read our destiny than in the pages of English history? “In our own hearts,” some will at once answer. But no, the thread of our fate is, to-day, more in the hands of the American people than in our own.
The three nations, which have in modern times, most startled the world by their progress, are England, the United States, and Japan. ”

“ National, state, even municipal organization is denied us. The village is the highest unit of population in which we may hope to develop our political instincts. The village gave birth to literature, manners and customs; as indeed it did to all institutions, political and social; for, let us not forget, that for centuries, the western European peoples, so powerful to-day, had, except in time of war, no other life than that of villagers. Deeper yet in our nature the family has its source. ”

“ England was chiefly hand-made, the United States, and above all Japan, have been made by machinery. Richly endowed with human genius, as with natural resources, only time enough was needed to transplant modern political institutions, and economic and industrial machinery, and to train natives in their use, to enable Japan to raise herself, in one generation, high in the scale of progressive nations. ”

“ In the early years of the seventeenth century, a part of the English people, impatient of the restrictions of their time, founded upon this continent a new and more rapidly progressive civilization than that which they left behind them in their old homes. But this was no beginning, only an acceleration of the movement, which had already placed England among the foremost powers of the earth. ”

“ During the past forty years a great many people in western countries have been deeply impressed by Darwin’s view of the animal and vegetable worlds as the theatre of a struggle for existence in which the fittest have survived; and have applied this doctrine unrestrictedly to the life of man. A deep tinge of Darwinism seems to have spread itself over our own discussions, and two schools are rising in our midst, one advocating an active, the other a passive part in the struggle. ”

“ That we have not quite forgotten our early lessons, our fidelity to our leaders in battle and devotion to our cause, have put beyond question. It has been more than once shown that there are men among us who can charge up a hill in the face of a withering fire; but who among us is capable of jumping into the air, and falling with both knees upon a fellow-student in a college foot-ball game; or of using against a savage tribe, as England proposed to do, the mutilating dum dum bullet, forbidden by the rules of civilized warfare, but too expensive to throw away? ”

“ Let us find our model less in the conquering Saxon and more in the dying Saviour. Christ died that we may live; and for the same purpose all created life has passed away. Let us so live that when the last man goes from the earth, he will, no matter what his race or color, owe a part of the good there is in him, of the hope there is for him, to our influence. Our life cannot be too brief for this influence to be exerted ”

“ But quiet, earnest, trained workers, who will help to improve our family life, and bring into communion even small groups of families, are destined to be the pioneers of our civilization.
To confer any lasting benefit upon our people, however, patient deliberation and foresight are needed. I appeal to our unselfish men and women no longer to limit their discussions to the events which this month or year brings forth. The present is always a bad time for consideration. What hunter can aim his gun at a bird which rises from beneath his feet? ”

“ He who seeks to maintain himself in his social privileges and political rights must have in reserve abundant means of subsistence, and beyond this, rugged manhood. If he is going to defend himself in the possession of anything which another covets, he must be prepared to fight down the whole decline from civilization to savagery. ”

“ Summing up then, the conditions favoring English progress at its beginning: we have a people, instinct with the love of freedom and power, subjected to law by desire for victory in war, and kept obedient by bewilderment of machinery. Forced to reconcile themselves to Norman usurpation of all power in church and state, they devote themselves to the acquisition of wealth, and, because of their insular position and small territory, end in commercial supremacy and colonial expansion. ”

“ Such conditions favor the strong, and, like the body of soldiers which, while advancing over the smooth road, keeps its line unbroken, but when obliged to cross a muddy, ploughed field, breaks up into a straggling file, the commonwealth of ancient Germany, with its wonderful equality and community, had so changed its form under pressure of the conditions attending the conquest of the Britons, that monarchy and slavery, and the accumulation by individuals of wealth and power, had, even before the Norman invasion, become permanent features of the society. ”

“ To fight against almost insuperable odds, as we must, can be justified only by a cause which we cannot without degradation surrender, and can in no other way maintain. If we give up our political rights for love of peace, and because our gentler nature does not goad us on to return blow for blow, we forfeit none of our self-respect ”

“ European ships established commercial relations with the islands; and Christian missionaries hurried into this promising new field. Japan, in thirty years had passed from obscurity to fame, and no longer doomed to be the prey of other nations, she had a voice in that great council, which decides the destinies of mankind. By a not unnatural coincidence, she has been attracted to that other island power, Great Britain, and it is to England that her debt is greatest; for in political and economic progress, England is the model of the world. ”

“ Since both opportunity and disposition, therefore, are wanting, which would enable us to enter upon a political career, we must be content to live here, a voiceless figure at the council-board of the American nation. And yet, a mere element in the population (“Negroes and Indians untaxed”) we will never consent to be.
When de Toqueville wrote upon Democracy in America, he made the Negro problem a part of the history of civilization, and it has continued to increase in importance, as in difficulty, down to the present day. ”

“ The English people are, through their American descendants, our teachers in everything, and their lessons we eagerly and unquestioningly learn and practice. But we ought now, fairly and candidly to consider how far we may realize with our dispositions and our circumstances, the greatness which England has achieved. Could we colonize Cuba, our environing conditions would be favorable to political and economic development. Cuba is an island, fertile and, for commerce, almost ideal in its situation. ”

“ I have often thought that in the words, “The poor always ye have with you,” is contained, far from a curse, the greatest pledge of the world’s salvation; for except that hunger, cold, sorrow and disease walk among us, the bond of sympathy which binds us to our fellow-man slackens, and the heart grows dead and cold. ”

“ In the cities, where so many of us now live, the village community is no longer available, and the replacing of it is one of the serious tasks before us. Men who will help to solve this and other like problems are desperately needed. Without armies and without government as we are, leaders, whether statesmen diplomats, politicians or orators, we can well depense with; without national life of any sort, national organizations to control our political, social, religious, literary or scientific affairs may easily be spared. ”

“ The basis upon which the historic monogamous family rests is reverence for parents and respect for women: the basis upon which the village community rests is the common ownership of land;—and it is in just those great countries of Europe, where common ownership of land longest prevailed, namely, in Russia and Germany, that great cities are fewest and the inequality of wealth, least. In such village communities we would be strong enough to resist single handed aggression, yet too weak to warrant persecution ”

“ But at such a crisis in our lives let us make no avoidable mistake; let us not say that our self-respect is in peril, when we mean our pride. To strike back, even in self-defence, is to turn our backs to the path which Christ pointed out to us. ”

“ Their aim is the same, survival, but our part in the struggle must be, they say, a humble, or at least, an inconspicuous one. We should stoop to conquer, one tells us; while another, phrasing technically the same thought, says, we must march along the path of least resistance. ”

“ Or, can we not, remaining here, share in the management of this splendid country, exercising the powers and fulfilling the duties of government in those states where we are in the majority, and influencing the government of other states where our numbers are not so great? ”

“ The Romanized Britons, their vitals eaten out by the corrosive civilization which they had adopted, were slaughtered like sheep on their borders, by the uncivilized tribes, until in desperation, they invited North German pirate chiefs to Britain to protect them. ”

“ Upon those of the able man, who never tries to do his best, or upon the ill-born, ill-bred creature’s only, whose best is so little above society’s arbitrary passing mark, that to slip at all is to fall below it? ”

“ Is thrift taxed, which seems able to bear, or prodigality, which spares nothing? Do we tax clear-headed temperance, or the wretched drunkard, whose starving wife and babes, by reason of the penny of internal revenue, lose one more crust of bread? ”

“ Prominent among these was an early consciousness of national existence, which gave some purpose to three centuries of otherwise meaningless bloodshed.
As the insulation of England was the most striking among the favorable circumstances, so love of independence became the distinguishing feature of the English character, belonging alike to the Saxon of the time of Tacitus and the Englishman of to-day. The effect of this instinct has been to invigorate all of the members of the society ”

“ The game they preserved and shot, the dinners they ate and gave, the borough interests they strengthened, the little Babylons they severally builded by the glory of their might are all melted, or melting back into the primeval chaos, as man’s merely selfish endeavors are bound to do. ”

“ This vicious practice has been common in all ages. But now, let pompous etiquette be done away with, and simplicity become our first object. Kioto is in an-out-of-the way position, and is unfit to be the seat of government! ”

“ Of the little guidance which is needed, a part we may get from others, a part from ourselves. From the English, before their entrance upon their progressive stage, we may learn the importance of two bonds, that of the family, and that of the neighborhood. ”