OUR NATION DRIFTING IN THE WRONG DIRECTION.
By William Penniman
The following, which we clip from the St. Louis Republic of August 29, contains, much condensed, truthful and comprehensive thought in respect to the present condition of our country, showing how history is repeating itself in regard to the nations of the Old World, and is also somewhat prophetic of the downfall of our nation. Being also from an eminent thinker, it has the more right, and we deem it worthy of publication in the SIGNS OF THE TIMES. It is from an address delivered in Ashfield, Mass., August 25, at the twentieth annual dinner in aid of Sanderson Academy, by Prof. Charles Elliott Norton, professor emeritus of fine arts of Harvard University. His subject was “The War Just Closed”:— “Our hearts have been heavy with a new weight of care, and the very brightness of the sunshine has but deepened by contrast the cloud of our sorrowful thoughts—sorrowful that our nation should have turned its back upon its old ideals, and, standing at the parting of the ways, should have chosen the ancient path, familiar to the Old World, worn by the bloody feet of hapless generations, and which has never led to anything but ill—the path of aggressive war, of foreign conquest, of alien territorial aggrandizement—the path that leads from trouble to trouble. “The black and brutal visage of war has indeed been lightened up from time to time during the summer by the gallant deeds of our men in service, and by the good conduct and marvelous good fortune of our navy, and by the general temper of humanity displayed so soon as the actual fight was over by both officers and men. But it has taken on a deeper shade of gloom from the needless sufferings which our brave soldiers have had to endure from the lack of due provision for their needs alike in camp, on field, and in hospital. It has been a miserable spectacle of incompetency, for which account must be rendered and penalty enacted.” After a review of the events leading up to the war, Prof. Norton said:— “Peace has nominally come. The actual conflict has ended, but less than 100 days of war has resulted in a revolution in the United States. The foundations on which the republic has rested have been unsettled; the principles upon which the government depends have been violated; we have undertaken obligations which neither our institutions nor our national character enable us properly to discharge; we, the one great non-military power in the world, have suddenly joined the ranks of the nations burdened with great armies and navies; we have burdened ourselves with an enormous additional debt, and with an enormous increase of annual expenditures, a permanent oppressive tax upon the industry of the people; and, further, whatever disposition may be made of the Philippines, we are already, through holding them and claiming the right to dispose of them, brought into entangling relations with the nations of the Old World, and run the risk of losing the inestimable boon which has hitherto been ours—of freedom in the complications of the international politics of the Old World, and of remaining the independent masters of our own fortunes. It is, indeed, a momentous revolution.”