From Albert J. Beveridge, The Meaning of the Times (Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill-Co., Inc., 1908).
Beveridge served two terms in the U.S. Senate from Indiana (1899-1911). A Republican, he supported American expansion in both the Pacific and the Caribbean against the free silver Democrats. 'The March of the Flag' was a speech given at Indianapolis in his election campaign.
Fellow-Citizens--It is a noble land that God has given us; a land whose coast lines would enclose half the countries of Europe; a land set like a sentinel between the two imperial oceans of the globe; a greater England with a nobler destiny. It is a mighty people that He has planted on this soil; a people sprung from the most master- ful blood of history; a people perpetually revitalized by the virile workingfolk of all the earth; a people imperial by virtue of their power, by right of their institutions, by authority of their heaven-directed purposes, the propagandists and not the misers of liberty. It is a glorious history our God has bestowed upon His chosen people; a history whose keynote was struck by Liberty Bell; a history heroic with faith in our mission and our future; a history of statesmen, who flung the boundaries of the Republic out into unexplored lands and savage wildernesses; a history of soldiers, who carried the flag across blazing deserts and through the ranks of hostile mountains, even to the gates of sunset; a history of multi- plying people, who overran a continent in half a century; a history divinely logical, in the process of whose tremendous reasoning we find ourselves today.
Therefore, in this campaign the question is larger than a party question. It is an American question. It is a world question. Shall the American people con- tinue their resistless march toward the commercial supremacy of the world? Shall free institutions broaden their blessed reign as the children of liberty wax in strength until the empire of our principles is established over the hearts of all mankind? Have we no mission to perform--no duty to discharge to our fellow-man? Has the Almighty Father endowed us with gifts beyond our deserts, and marked us as the people of His peculiar favor, merely to rot in our own self- ishness, as men and nations must who take cowardice for their companion and self for their deity--as China has, as India has, as Egypt has? Shall we be as the man who had one talent and hid it, or as he who had ten talents and used them until they grew to riches. And shall we reap the reward that waits on the discharge of our high duty as the sovereign power of earth; shall we occupy new markets for what our farmers raise, new markets for what our ships shall carry? Shall we avail ourselves of new sources of supply of what we do not raise or make, so that what are luxuries today shall be necessities tommorrow? Shall we conduct the mightiest commerce of history with the best money known to man or shall we use the pauper money of Mexico, China and the Chicago (Democratic Party) platform? Shall we be worthy of our mighty past of progress, brushing aside, as we always have done, the spider webs of technicality, and march ever onward upon the highway of development, to the doing of real deeds, the achievement of real things, and the winning of real victories? In a sentence, shall the American people endorse at the polls the American administration of William McKinley, which, under the guidance of Divine Providence, has started the Republic on its noblest career of prosperity, duty and glory; or shall the American people rebuke that administration, reverse the wheels of history, halt the career of the flag and turn to that purposeless horde of criticism and carping that is assailing the government at Washington? Shall it be McKinley, sound money and a world-conquering commerce, or Bryan, Bailey, Bland, and Blackburn, a bastard currency and a policy of commercial retreat? In the only foreign war that this Nation has had in two gener- ations, will you, the voters of this Republic and the guardians of its good repute, give the other nations of the world to understand that the American people do not approve and endorse the administration that conducted it? These are the questions that you must answer at the polls, and I well know how you will answer them. The thunder of American guns at Santiago and Manila will find its answer in the approval of the voters of the Republic. For the administration of William Mckinley, in both war and peace, will receive the might- iest endorsement of a grateful people ever registered. In both peace and war, for we rely on the new birth of national prosperity as well as on the new birth of national glory. Think of both! Think of our country two years ago, and think of it today! For William McKinley is continuing the policy that Jefferson began, Monroe continued, Seward advanced, Grant promoted, Harrison championed. Hawaii is ours; Puerto Rico is to be ours; at the prayer of its people Cuba will finally be ours; in the islands of the East, even to the gates of Asia, coaling stations are to be ours; at the very least the flag of a liberal government is to float over the Philippines, and it will he the stars and stripes of glory. And the burning question of this campaign is whether the American people will accept the gifts of events; whether they will rise, as lifts their soaring destiny; whether they will proceed along the lines of national development surveyed by the statesmen of our past; or whether, for the first time, the American people doubt their mission, question their fate, prove apostate to the spirit of their race, and halt the ceaseless march of free institutions? The opposition tells us that we ought not to govern a people without their consent. I answer, the rule of liberty that all just government derives its authority from the consent of the governed. applies only to those who are capable of self-government. We govern the Indians without their consent; we govern our Territories without their consent; we govern our children without their consent. I answer, would not the natives of the Philippines prefer the just, humane, civilizing govern- ment of this Republic to the savage, bloody rule of pillage and extortion from which we have rescued them? Do not the blazing fires of joy and the ringing bells of gladness in Puerto Rico prove the welcome of our flag? And regardless of this formula of words made only for enlightened, self-governing peoples, do we owe no duty to the world? Shall we turn these peoples back to the reeking hands from which we have taken them? Shall we save them from those nations, to give them to a self- rule of tragedy? It would be like giving a razor to a babe and telling it to shave itself. It would be like giving a typewriter to an Esquimau and telling him to publish one of the great dailies of the world . . . .
Distance and oceans are no longer arguements. The fact that all the territory our fathers bought and seized is contiguous is no longer an argument. In 1819 Florida was further from New York,than Puerto Rico is from Chicago today; Texas further from Washington in 1845 than Hawaii is from Boston in 1898. California more accessible in 1847 than the Philippines are now. Gibraltar is further from London than Havana is from Washington; Melbourne is further from Liverpool than Manila is from San Francisco. The ocean does not separate us fromi the lands of our duty and desire-- the ocean to join us, a river never to be dredged, a canal never to be repaired. Steam joins us; electricity joins us;.the very elements are in league with our destiny. Cuba not contiguous! Our navy will make them contiguous forever.
But there is a difference. We did not need the Western Mississippi valley when we acquired it, nor Florida, nor Texas, nor California, nor the royal pro- vinces of the far Northwest. We had no emigrants to people this vast wilderness, no money to develop it, even no highways to cover it. No trade awaited us in its savage vastnesses. Our productions were not greater than our internal trade. There was not one reason for the land lust of our statesmen from Jefferson to Harrison other than the prophet and the Saxon within them. But toddy, we are raising more than we can consume. Today, we are making more than we can use. Therefore, we must find new markets for our produce, new occupation for our capital, new work for our labor. And so, while we did not need the territory taken during the past century at the time it was acquired, we do need what we have taken in 1898, and we need it now. Think of the thou- sands of Americans who will pour into Hawaii and Puerto Rico when the Republic's laws cover those islands with justice and safety. Think of the tens of thousands of Americans who will build a soap-and-water, common school civilization of energy and industry in Cuba, when a government of law replaces the double reign of anarchy and tyranny. Think of the prosperous millions that em- press of islands will support when obedient to the law of political gravitation, her people ask for the highest honor liberty can bestow--the sacred order of the stars and stripes, the citizenship of the great Republic!
What does all this mean for every one of us? First of all, it means opportunity for all the glorious young manhood of the Republic. It means that the resources and the commerce of those immensely rich dominions will be increased as much as American energy is greater than Spanish sloth; for Americans, henceforth, will monopolize those resources and that commerce. In Cuba, alone, there are 15,000,000 acres of forest unacquainted with the ax. There are exhaustless mines of iron. There are priceless deposits of manganese. There are millions of acres yet unexplored. The resources of Puerto Rico have only been trifled with. The resources of the Philippines have hardly been touched by the finger tips of modern methods. And they produce what we cannot, and they con- sume what we produce--the very predestination of reci- procity. And William McKinley intends that their trade shall be ours. It means an opportunity for the rich man to do something with his money, besides hoarding it or lending it. It means occupation for cvcry workingman in the country at wages which the development of new resources, the launching of new enterprises, the monopoly of new markets always brings. Cuba is as large as Pennsylvania, and is the richest spot on all the globe. Hawaii is as large as New Jersey; Puerto Rico half as large as Hawaii; the Phili-ppines larger than all New England, New York, New Jersey and Delaware. The trade of these islands, developed as we will develop it, will set every reaper in the Republic singing, every furnace spouting the flames of industry . . . .
Now on the threshold of our career as the first power of earth, is the time to permanently adjust our system of finance. The American people have the most tremendous tasks of history to perform. They have the mightiest commerce of the world to conduct. They can- not halt their progress of wealth and power to unsettle their money system at the command of ignorance. Think of Great Britain becoming the commercial monarch of the world with her financial system periodically assailed' Think of Holland, or Germany, or France, yet sending their flag in every sea, with their money at the mercy of politicians seeking for an issue! Sixteen to one is passed in our career. Why go back to it, like the victim of opium to his deadly pipe? Now, when new rivers of gold are pouring through the fields of business, is not enough gold, is swept away. Why mumble the mean- ingless phrases of-a tale that is told when the golden awaits us and God's command is on us? There are so many real things to be done--canals to be dug, rail- ways to be laid, forests to be felled, cities to be built, unviolated.fields to be tilled, priceless markets to be won, ships to be launched, peoples to be saved, civilization to be proclaimed and the flag of liberty flung to the eager air of every sea. Is this an hour to waste upon triflers with Nature's laws? Is this a season to give our destiny over to word motigors and prosperity wreckers? No! It is an hour to remember your duty to the home. It is a moment to realize the opportunies Fate has opened to this favored people and to you. It is a time to bethink you of your Nation and its sovereignty of the seas. It is a time to remember that the God of our fathers is our God and that the gifts and the duties He gave to them, enriched and multiplied, He renews to us, their children. It is a time to sustain that devoted man, servant of the people and of the most high God, who is guiding the Republic out into the ocean of infinite possibilities. It is a time to cheer the beloved President of God's chosen people, till the whole world is vocal with American loyalty to the American government and William McKinley, its head and chief.
Fellow-Americans, we are God's chosen people Yonder at Bunker Hill and Yorktown His providence was above us. At New Orleans and on ensanguined seas His hand sustained us. Abraham Lincolm was His minister, and His was the altar of freedom the boys in blue-set up on a hundred smoking battlefields. His power directed Dewey in the east, and He delivered the Spanish fleet into our hands on Liberty's natal day as lie delivered the elder Armada into the hands of our English sires two centuries ago. His great purposes are revealed in the progress of the flag, which surpasses the intentions of Congresses,and Cabinets, and leads us, like a holier pillar of cloud by day and pillar of fire by night, into situations unforeseen by finite wisdom and duties unexpected by the unprophetic heart of selfishness. The American people cannot use a dishonest medium of exchange; it is ours to execute the purposes of a fate that has driven us to be greater than our small intentions. We cannot retreat from any soil where Providence has unftirled-our banner; it is ours to save that soil for liberty,- and civilization. For liberty and civilization and God's promises fulfilled, the flag must henceforth be the symbol and the sign to all mankind.