Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 12.djvu/485

OUR NEW POSSESSIONS. 46$ we must all believe. Doubtless also noble exhibitions of courage and skill have illustrated the war. Always, thank God, the human creature of our blood, in such emergencies, can be counted on for these things. Doubtless also it was the distinction of our own nation to bring about these great results. But let us not too quickly exult in that. It does not at all follow that we have any- thing to be proud of. It may still be true that our real place in this business is a discreditable one. Personally I think it is. " God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform." He makes the wrath of man to praise him. Not seldom great and beneficent ends come about through the folly, the moral weak- ness, the thoughtlessness, the wickedness of nations, — through their lack of noble qualities, as well as through the conscious exercise of virtue and self-restraint. I think that history will find this to be true in the case of the late war ; for, to say no worse of it, it was a war, with all its awful concomitants, which we, a strong nation, forced upon a feeble one while it was on its knees, ready to surrender everything of substance, if only it might save its pride. But the events of last year, of this hell of war, " as in the best it is," have slipped by into the vast cavern of the past, and it is useless to lament them. There they stand, fixed forever and unchangeable. " Not the gods can shake the past. Flies-to the adamantine door, Bolted down for evermore. None can re-enter there. . . . To bind or unbind, add what lacked, . . • Alter or mend eternal fact." It is not the war, then, that is to be the subject for our reflec- tions to-night, whatever we may think of it, but the portentous consequences of the war; these great and unwelcome questions about the treaty and the island dependencies. In speaking of these questions, we must again recognize accom- plished facts. No longer can we claim our old good fortune of being able to work out a great destiny by ourselves, here in this western world. In my judgment it was a bad mistake to throw away our wonderful inherited felicity, in being removed from end- less complications with the politics of other continents. Had we appreciated our great opportunity and been worthy of it, we might