Speech

♦I / HOH. CHARLES S. HAIfLIN (Boston, Ma«»). MU. CHAIRMAN AND LADIES AND GENTLEMENS I cannot adequately express the pleasure with which I have listened to the eloquent and able addresses that ;e have heard here. I can truthfully say that I would travel half around the world to hear the address Riven us yesterday hy Dr. Abbott (Applause) and I can as truth­ fully add that, having reached that distant point, I would gladly complete the circuit without rest or sleep to he hack in time for the learned and eloquent address we have just heard from His Eminence, Cardinal Gibbons. (Applause.) I was not among those who ere invited to be present here to deliver any address; I as­ sumed that the task, the golden task of silence, was to have been imposed on me, and I came a listener and not a speaker, for I think in every well ordered co vent ion or convocation it is necessary to have a number of good, faithful listeners, and such I supposed was the task to be assigned to me. But having been call­ ed upon at a half hour's notice to say something, I feel that to decline would not only be a discourtesy to our host to whom we owe so much, but would.as well, seem an ungracious refusal to join in this important discussion, and therefore I gladly contribute my mite, and I assure you it will be as small as the widow's mite of old. It demands preparation, my friends,-whatever may be the need of preparation for war, it certainly demands preparation to be able to speak on the great subject of peace. I feel that the good work that this conference has done could not adequately be expressed, Digitized for FRASER http://fraser.stlouisfed.org/ Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis * -H 2 - - if a man were to "be given hour® to devote to this subject alone. You have done much through the inspiration and leadership of our host of today, you have done much to mould public opinion, and I certainly hope that he, at least, will live to see the full fruit­ ion of the regard of his and your labors. (/Vpplause), I am vlad to record myself as among those,-and I believe they constitute a majority of the people of our country,-who be­ lieve that the principles of publio and private morality are one and the same. (Applause). We believe that what is right and just for an individual should be right and just for a nation; and con­ versely, a course of action which is wrong, unjust and immoral for the individual is wrong, unjust and immoral for a nation. (Applause). In harmony with this view, my friends, we see today, as compared with the past, a great difference in the relation of nations one to the other, just as we see a precisely similar dif­ ference in the relations of individuals one to the other. If we go back to the early English philosophers, 7re find prominent the writings of the philosopher Hobhes, who thought men were almost wild beasts, that life was a struggle of one man against the other; that society was simply armed neutrality and that the exact measure of the gain of one man was the exact measure of the loss of the other. But, my friends, there has been since those days a great development in philosophic thought. First came the Earl of Shaftesbury, who called attention to sympathy as a bond between men,-a recognition of the kindly association rather than of com­ petition between men, and of their fellow feeling rather than of Digitized for FRASER http://fraser.stlouisfed.org/ Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis their envie#, hatred* and jealousies. Next came the philosophy of Bentham recognizing a conception of an enlarged self; he spoke of the greatest good of the greatest number,-a distinct recognition of the common dependence of one man upon another. That conception was carried further by John Stuart Mill; and finally in the great German philosopher, Kant, we see the recognition of a broader self, a universal self, the brotherhood of mankind. So it has been with nations. It is not so long back in history to a time when nation* looked upon one another as eternal foes; the national maxim seemed to be the survival of the fittest and the measure of the gain of one nation was considered to be but the exact measure of the loss of the other. Today, however,-largely through the influence of societies and convocations such as this,-we see an active concept­ ion of the broader national self, precisely 2.3 we recognize the conception of a broader individual self,-a unity of national, as well as of individual fellowship. Now, my friends, we hear a great deal said about the ne­ cessity for preparation for war. I confess that does not appeal to me. Of course, there must be some preparation for defuncs a­ gainst unjust aggression, but 'hen I hear this war cry continually dinned in my ears in and out of Congress, I cannot help feeling it is better for a nation not to be absolutely prepared for war, not to have its gun* shotted and even aimed at some other great nation. I belie/s there is nothing that so tends to calm, sober judgment and thought before action as the feeling that, after all, we are Digitized for FRASER http://fraser.stlouisfed.org/ Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis t 4 - - not absolutely prepared for war, with shotted guns, awaiting the hysterical command of some excited chief. (Applause). I hope this meeting will send, with one united voice, a request to the President of the United States, to use every en­ deavor to have the Hague Tribunal take up the question of limita­ tion of armaments. (Applause). There may be subjects here upon which wo differ, but I want to speak and aek for action alogg the great lines on which we all agree, because where we speak with united voice, we speak with force and strength and we send a mes­ sage not only over this country, but over the civilized world. Vre should record here our agreements and leave our disagreements to $0 discussed and thrashed out and merged into agreements perhaps at some time in the future. (Applause), I very well remember, and you all remember the Columbia Exposition at Chicago in 1893; the Court of Honor surrounded by those beautiful buildings and the Peristyle, and back of it the beautiful water of the lake. On that Peristyle were written in letters of gold, the sacred words,-"And ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free." Let us seek that truth; let us know that truth and let us crystallize it by strengthening the Hague Tribunal, by establishing a Congress of nations; and that tiuth,cr,vs ,aiiizsd into the laws of international p)eace,will free us from barbaric conceptions of national power and will conduce to tne greatest benefit of the individual, the state, the nation, and of all mankind. (Applause). Digitized for FRASER http://fraser.stlouisfed.org/ Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis

Charles S. Hamlin (1906, May 30). Speech. Speeches, Federal Reserve. https://whenthefedspeaks.com/doc/speech_19060531_hamlin

@misc{wtfs_speech_19060531_hamlin,
  author = {Charles S. Hamlin},
  title = {Speech},
  year = {1906},
  month = {May},
  howpublished = {Speeches, Federal Reserve},
  url = {https://whenthefedspeaks.com/doc/speech_19060531_hamlin},
  note = {Retrieved via When the Fed Speaks corpus}
}