Harvey Ellsworth Newbranch

“ Bryan is a typical one. It is more than a type; it is an ideal. The simplicity of the life his family leads, the wholesomeness of the atmosphere, the absence of affectation, the presence of a democracy that includes courtesy, gentleness, amiability, and cordiality invariably impresses one. The home life of a man is the mirror of his character; and in its limpid depths one sees the secret springs of thought and reads the heart aright. That that of Mr. Bryan reflects with truthful fidelity is a fact within the knowledge of all who know the man and revere the woman. ”

“ Chairman, is a noble sentiment and points the direction to the true policy for a free people. It must be by beneficent laws; it must be by a just government which a free people can love and upon which they can rely that the nation is to be preserved. We can not put our safety in a great navy; we can not put our safety in expensive fortifications along a seacoast thousands of miles in extent, nor can we put our safety in a great standing army that would absorb in idleness the toil of the men it protects. ”

“ Good riddance to it all, to conspiracy and conspirators, and to the foul menace of repudiation and anarchy against the honor and life of the Republic. The people have dismissed it with no uncertain tones. Hereafter let there be whatever controversies men may please about the tariff, about the currency, about the Monroe doctrine, and all the rest. But let there never again be a proposition to repeal the moral law, to garble the Constitution, and to replace the Stars and Stripes with the red rag of anarchy. On those other topics honest men may honestly differ, in full loyalty to the Republic. ”

“ How different Washington’s definition of destiny from the Republican definition! The Republicans say that this nation is in the hands of destiny; Washington believed that not only the destiny of our own nation but the destiny of the Republican form of government throughout the world was entrusted to American hands. Immeasurable responsibility! The destiny of this Republic is in the hands of its own people, and upon the success of the experiment here rests the hope of humanity. No exterior force can disturb this Republic, and no foreign influence should be permitted to change its course. ”

“ Did not the English government promise that the colonists should have the largest measure of self-government consistent with their welfare and English duties? Did not the Spanish government promise to give to the Cubans the largest measure of self-government consistent with their welfare and Spanish duties? The whole difference between a monarchy and a republic may be summed up in one sentence. In a monarchy, the king gives to the people what he believes to be a good government; in a republic the people secure for themselves what they believe to be a good government. ”

“ The permanent chairman of the last Republican National convention presented the pecuniary argument in all its baldness, when he said:
“We make no hypocritical pretense of being interested in the Philippines solely on account of others. While we regard the welfare of those people as a sacred trust, we regard the welfare of the American people first. We see our duty to ourselves as well as to others. We believe in trade expansion. By every legitimate means within the province of government and constitution, we mean to stimulate the expansion of our trade and open new markets.” ”

“ But if it were possible to obliterate every word written or spoken in defense of the principles set forth in the Declaration of Independence, a war of conquest would still leave its legacy of perpetual hatred, for it was God Himself who placed in every human heart the love of liberty. He never made a race of people so low in the scale of civilization or intelligence that it would welcome a foreign master. ”

“ If there is poison in the blood of the hand it will ultimately reach the heart. It is equally true that forcible Christianity, if planted under the American flag in the faraway orient, will sooner or later be transplanted upon American soil. If true Christianity consists in carrying out in our daily lives the teachings of Christ, who will say that we are commanded to civilize with dynamite and proselyte with the sword? He who would declare the divine will must prove his authority either by Holy Writ or by evidence of a special dispensation. Imperialism finds no warrant in the Bible. ”

“ And so with the nation. It is of age, and it can do what it pleases; it can spurn the traditions of the past; it can repudiate the principles upon which the nation rests; it can employ force instead of reason; it can substitute might for right; it can conquer weaker people; it can exploit their lands, appropriate their property, and kill their people; but it can not repeal the moral law or escape the punishment decreed for the violation of human rights. ”

“ The fact that the Cubans were bravely fighting for liberty, that their rebellion was against the exactions of an old world monarchy, even as ours had been, won them an instinctive sympathy that grew stronger each day and that finally swept like a tidal wave into the cabinet meetings at Washington, bearing the demands of the people of the United States for the intervention of our government in Cuba’s behalf. ”

“ The purpose of government, it has held, is to protect man in his personal rights against the unjust encroachments of his neighbors. But, according to the Democratic idea, government should not interfere to arbitrarily promote the interests of any class of its citizens at the expense of any other class. All should be left, protected against illegal encroachment, but otherwise unmolested, to work out their own salvation. In other words, Democracy believes that government to be best which governs least. ”

“ Franklin, whose learning, wisdom, and virtue are a part of the priceless legacy bequeathed to us from the Revolutionary days, expressed the same idea in even stronger language when he said:
“Justice is as strictly due between neighbor nations as between neighbor citizens. A highwayman is as much a robber when he plunders in a gang as when single; and the nation that makes an unjust war is only a great gang.” ”

“ Nebraska, standing midway between the oceans, will contribute her full share toward the protection of our sea coast; her sons will support the flag at home and abroad, wherever the honor and the interests of the nation may require. Nebraska will hold up the hands of the government while the battle rages, and when the war clouds roll away her voice will be heard pleading for the maintenance of those ideas which inspired the founders of our government and gave the nation its proud eminence among the nations of the earth. ”

“ I may be in error, but in my judgment our nation is in greater danger just now than Cuba. Our people defended Cuba against foreign arms; now they must defend themselves and their country against a foreign idea—the colonial idea of European nations. Heretofore greed has perverted the government and used its instrumentalities for private gains, but now the very foundation principles of our government are assaulted. ”

“ Is the sunlight of full citizenship to be enjoyed by the people of the United States, and the twilight of semi-citizenship endured by the people of Porto Rico, while the thick darkness of perpetual vassalage covers the Philippines? The Porto Rico tariff law asserts the doctrine that the operation of the Constitution is confined to the forty-five states. The Democratic party disputes this doctrine and denounces it as repugnant to both the letter and spirit of our organic law. There is no place in our system of government for the deposit of arbitrary and irresponsible power. ”

“ Behold a republic in which civil and religious liberty stimulate all to earnest endeavor, and in which the law restrains every hand uplifted for a neighbor’s injury—a republic in which every citizen 147is a sovereign but in which no one cares to wear a crown. Behold a republic standing erect while empires all around are bowed beneath the weight of their own armaments—a republic whose flag is loved while other flags are only feared. ”

“ Let us consider briefly the reasons which have been given in support of an imperialistic policy. Some say that it is our duty to hold the Philippine Islands. But duty is not an argument; it is a conclusion. To ascertain what our duty is in any emergency, we must apply well settled and generally accepted principles. It is our duty to avoid stealing, no matter whether the thing to be stolen is of great or little value. It is our duty to avoid killing a human being, no matter where the human being lives or to what race or class he belongs. ”

“ And even so, of necessity, it is most difficult for us who live in the American republic, at this century’s sunset, to be able or even willing rightly to appreciate the full import of movements in the advancement or retarding of which each bears howsoever humble a part. Too frequently in politics, as in battle, men do fiercely strive with blinded eyes and deafened ears, and they sometimes wildly strike at him who is their friend. ”

“ Bryan is not averse to the employment of the thoughts of others wherever they add force and attractiveness to the argument in hand. Accordingly, we find his speeches interspersed with quotations from some of the best writers in both prose and poetry, but in each instance the quotation has a natural fitness for the place in which it is found. There are some productions which pass for oratory that are mere mechanisms—the offspring of minds cold and plodding without a ray of genius to illumine their path. The work of genius springs spontaneously from the depths of the heart ruled by purity. ”

“ When Lord Howe asserted that the acts of parliament, which brought on the Revolution, were necessary to prevent American trade from passing into foreign channels, Franklin replied:
“To me it seems that neither the obtaining nor retaining of any trade, how valuable soever, is an object for which men may justly spill each other’s blood; that the true and sure means of extending and securing commerce are the goodness and cheapness of commodities, and that the profits of no trade can ever be equal to the expense of compelling it and holding it by fleets and armies. ”

“ The safety of our farmers and our laborers is not in special legislation, but in equal and just laws that bear alike on every man. The great masses of our people are interested, not in getting their hands into other people’s pockets, but in keeping the hands of other people out of their pockets. Let me, in parting, express the hope that you and I may be instrumental in bringing our Government back to better laws which will give equal treatment without regard to creed or condition. ”

“ He can disregard the teachings of his parents; he can trample upon all that he has been taught to consider sacred; he can disobey the laws of the state, the laws of society, and the laws of God. He can stamp failure upon his life and make his very existence a curse to his fellow men, and he can bring his father and mother in sorrow to the grave ”

“ All this agitation against trusts is against merely the business machinery employed to take from the public what the government in its tariff laws says it is proper and suitable they should have. It is the government, through its tariff laws, which plunders the people, and the trusts, etc., are merely the machinery for doing it. ”

“ Lincoln said that the safety of this nation was not in its fleets, its armies, its forts, but in the spirit which prizes liberty as the heritage of all men, in all lands, everywhere, and he warned his countrymen that they could not destroy this spirit without planting the seeds of despotism at their own doors. ”

“ Our flag still floats over our dead, but when the treaty with Mexico was signed, American authority withdrew to the Rio Grande, and I venture the opinion that during the last fifty years the people of Mexico have made more progress under the stimulus of independence and self-government than they would have made under a carpet bag government held in place by bayonets. The United States and Mexico, friendly republics, are each stronger and happier than they would have been had the former been cursed and the latter crushed by an imperialistic policy, disguised as “benevolent assimilation.” ”

“ Property rights are most secure when human rights are most respected. Democracy strives for a civilization in which every member of society will share according to his merits.
No one has a right to expect from society more than a fair compensation for the service which he renders to society. If he secures more it is at the expense of someone else. It is no injustice to him to prevent his doing injustice to another. To him who would, either through class legislation or in the absence of necessary legislation, trespass upon the rights of another the Democratic party says, “Thou shalt not.” ”

“ My friends, we declare that this nation is able to legislate for its own people on every question, without waiting for the aid or consent of any other nation on earth.... It is the issue of 1776 over again. Our ancestors, when but three millions in number, had the courage to declare their political independence of every other nation. Shall we, their descendants, when we have grown to seventy millions, declare that we are less independent than our forefathers? ”

“ Within the last few months hundreds of thousands of American citizens have come to see William Jennings Bryan in a new light. As a result, while they no longer believe him a demagogue, some still hesitate to accept him as a statesman. While they have ceased to denounce him as an anarchist, some are slow to realize that he stands with Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln as one of the great conservators of American institutions. ”

“ The characteristic that distinguishes the Filipinos from all other Asiatic races is their fierce, inherent love for liberty. For three hundred years they had been intermittently battling with the Spaniard to regain what they had lost, and the palm of victory was within their eager reach on the day that Dewey’s guns first thundered across Manila bay. Knowing as they did that the United States had gone to war to secure liberty for the Cubans, why should they doubt the securing of their own liberty as well? ”