The Art of Public Speaking Part 59

76. CREDULITY VS. FAITH.

77. WHAT IS HUMOR?

78. USE AND ABUSE OF THE CARTOON.

79. THE PULPIT IN POLITICS.

80. ARE COLLEGES GROWING TOO LARGE?

81. THE DOOM OF ABSOLUTISM.

82. SHALL WOMAN HELP KEEP HOUSE FOR TOWN, CITY, STATE, AND NATION?

83. THE EDUCATIONAL TEST FOR SUFFRAGE.

84. THE PROPERTY TEST FOR SUFFRAGE.

85. THE MENACE OF THE PLUTOCRAT.

86. THE COST OF HIGH LIVING.

87. THE COST OF CONVENIENCES.

88. WASTE IN AMERICAN LIFE.

89. THE EFFECT OF THE PHOTOPLAY ON THE "LEGITIMATE" THEATRE.

90. ROOM FOR THE KICKER.

100. THE NEED FOR TRAINED DIPLOMATS.

101. THE SHADOW OF THE IRON CHANCELLOR.

102. THE TYRANNY OF THE CROWD.

103. IS OUR TRIAL BY JURY SATISFACTORY?

104. THE HIGH COST OF SECURING JUSTICE.

105. THE NEED FOR SPEEDIER COURT TRIALS.

106. TRIUMPHS OF THE AMERICAN ENGINEER.

107. GOETHALS AND GORGAS.

108. PUBLIC EDUCATION MAKES SERVICE TO THE PUBLIC A DUTY.

109. MAN OWES HIS LIFE TO THE COMMON GOOD.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 36: It must be remembered that the phrasing of the subject will not necessarily serve for the t.i.tle.]

APPENDIX D

SPEECHES FOR STUDY AND PRACTISE

_NEWELL DWIGHT HILLIS_

BRAVE LITTLE BELGIUM

Delivered in Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, N.Y., October 18, 1914. Used by permission.

Long ago Plato made a distinction between the occasions of war and the causes of war. The occasions of war lie upon the surface, and are known and read of all men, while the causes of war are embedded in racial antagonisms, in political and economic controversies. Narrative historians portray the occasions of war; philosophic historians, the secret and hidden causes. Thus the spark of fire that falls is the occasion of an explosion, but the cause of the havoc is the relation between charcoal, niter and saltpeter. The occasion of the Civil War was the firing upon Fort Sumter. The cause was the collision between the ideals of the Union presented by Daniel Webster and the secession taught by Calhoun. The occasion of the American Revolution was the Stamp Tax; the cause was the conviction on the part of our forefathers that men who had freedom in wors.h.i.+p carried also the capacity for self-government.

The occasion of the French Revolution was the purchase of a diamond necklace for Queen Marie Antoinette at a time when the treasury was exhausted; the cause of the revolution was feudalism. Not otherwise, the occasion of the great conflict that is now shaking our earth was the a.s.sa.s.sination of an Austrian boy and girl, but the cause is embedded in racial antagonisms and economic compet.i.tion.

As for Russia, the cause of the war was her desire to obtain the Bosphorus--and an open seaport, which is the prize offered for her attack upon Germany. As for Austria, the cause of the war is her fear of the growing power of the Balkan States, and the progressive slicing away of her territory. As for France, the cause of the war is the instinct of self-preservation, that resists an invading host. As for Germany, the cause is her deep-seated conviction that every country has a moral right to the mouth of its greatest river; unable to compete with England, by roundabout sea routes and a Kiel Ca.n.a.l, she wants to use the route that nature digged for her through the mouth of the Rhine. As for England, the motherland is fighting to recover her sense of security. During the Napoleonic wars the second William Pitt explained the quadrupling of the taxes, the increase of the navy, and the sending of an English army against France, by the statement that justification of this proposed war is the "Preservation of England's sense of security." Ten years ago England lost her sense of security. Today she is not seeking to preserve, but to recover, the lost sense of security. She proposes to do this by destroying Germany's ironclads, demobilizing her army, wiping out her forts, and the part.i.tion of her provinces. The occasions of the war vary, with the color of the paper--"white" and "gray" and "blue"--but the causes of this war are embedded in racial antagonisms and economic and political differences.

WHY LITTLE BELGIUM HAS THE CENTER OF THE STAGE

Tonight our study concerns little Belgium, her people, and their part in this conflict. Be the reasons what they may, this little land stands in the center of the stage and holds the limelight. Once more David, armed with a sling, has gone up against ten Goliaths. It is an amazing spectacle, this, one of the smallest of the States, battling with the largest of the giants! Belgium has a standing army of 42,000 men, and Germany, with three reserves, perhaps 7,000,000 or 8,000,000. Without waiting for any a.s.sistance, this little Belgium band went up against 2,000,000. It is as if a honey bee had decided to attack an eagle come to loot its honeycomb. It is as if an antelope had turned against a lion. Belgium has but 11,000 square miles of land, less than the States of Ma.s.sachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut. Her population is 7,500,000, less than the single State of New York. You could put twenty-two Belgiums in our single State of Texas. Much of her soil is thin; her handicaps are heavy, but the industry of her people has turned the whole land into one vast flower and vegetable garden. The soil of Minnesota and the Dakotas is new soil, and yet our farmers there average but fifteen bushels of wheat to the acre. Belgium's soil has been used for centuries, but it averages thirty-seven bushels of wheat to the acre. If we grow twenty-four bushels of barley on an acre of ground, Belgium grows fifty; she produces 300 bushels of potatoes, where the Maine farmer harvests 90 bushels. Belgium's average population per square mile has risen to 645 people. If Americans practised intensive farming; if the population of Texas were as dense as it is in Belgium--100,000,000 of the United States, Canada and Central America could all move to Texas, while if our entire country was as densely populated as Belgium's, everybody in the world could live comfortably within the limits of our country.

THE LIFE OF THE PEOPLE

And yet, little Belgium has no gold or silver mines, and all the treasures of copper and zinc and lead and anthracite and oil have been denied her. The gold is in the heart of her people. No other land holds a race more prudent, industrious and thrifty! It is a land where everybody works. In the winter when the sun does not rise until half past seven, the Belgian cottages have lights in their windows at five, and the people are ready for an eleven-hour day. As a rule all children work after 12 years of age. The exquisite pointed lace that has made Belgium famous, is wrought by women who fulfill the tasks of the household fulfilled by American women, and then begins their task upon the exquisite laces that have sent their name and fame throughout the world. Their wages are low, their work hard, but their life is so peaceful and prosperous that few Belgians ever emigrate to foreign countries. Of late they have made their education compulsory, their schools free. It is doubtful whether any other country has made a greater success of their system of transportation. You will pay 50 cents to journey some twenty odd miles out to Roslyn, on our Long Island railroad, but in Belgium a commuter journeys twenty miles in to the factory and back again every night and makes the six double daily journeys at an entire cost of 37-1/2 cents per week, less than the amount that you pay for the journey one way for a like distance in this country. Out of this has come Belgium's prosperity. She has the money to buy goods from other countries, and she has the property to export to foreign lands. Last year the United States, with its hundred millions of people, imported less than $2,000,000,000, and exported $2,500,000,000.

If our people had been as prosperous per capita as Belgium, we would have purchased from other countries $12,000,000,000 worth of goods and exported $10,000,000,000.

So largely have we been dependent upon Belgium that many of the engines used in digging the Panama Ca.n.a.l came from the c.o.c.kerill works that produce two thousands of these engines every year in Liege. It is often said that the Belgians have the best courts in existence. The Supreme Court of Little Belgium has but one Justice. Without waiting for an appeal, just as soon as a decision has been reached by a lower Court, while the matters are still fresh in mind and all the witnesses and facts readily obtainable, this Supreme Justice reviews all the objections raised on either side and without a motion from anyone pa.s.ses on the decision of the inferior court. On the other hand, the lower courts are open to an immediate settlement of disputes between the wage earners, and newsboys and fishermen are almost daily seen going to the judge for a decision regarding a dispute over five or ten cents. When the judge has cross-questioned both sides, without the presence of attorneys, or the necessity of serving a process, or raising a dollar and a quarter, as here, the poorest of the poor have their wrongs righted. It is said that not one decision out of one hundred is appealed, thus calling for the existence of an attorney.

To all other inst.i.tutions organized in the interest of the wage earner has been added the national savings bank system, that makes loans to men of small means, that enables the farmer and the working man to buy a little garden and build a house, while at the same time insuring the working man against accident and sickness. Belgium is a poor man's country, it has been said, because inst.i.tutions have been administered in the interest of the men of small affairs.

THE GREAT BELGIUM PLAIN IN HISTORY

But the inst.i.tutions of Belgium and the industrial prosperity of her people alone are not equal to the explanation of her unique heroism.

Long ago, in his Commentaries, Julius Caesar said that Gaul was inhabited by three tribes, the Belgae, the Aquitani, the Celts, "of whom the Belgae were the bravest." History will show that Belgians have courage as their native right, for only the brave could have survived. The southeastern part of Belgium is a series of rock plains, and if these plains have been her good fortune in times of peace, they have furnished the battlefields of Western Europe for two thousand years. Northern France and Western Germany are rough, jagged and wooded, but the Belgian plains were ideal battlefields. For this reason the generals of Germany and of France have usually met and struggled for the mastery on these wide Belgian plains. On one of these grounds Julius Caesar won the first battle that is recorded. Then came King Clovis and the French, with their campaigns; toward these plains also the Saracens were hurrying when a.s.saulted by Charles Martel. On the Belgian plains the Dutch burghers and the Spanish armies, led by b.l.o.o.d.y Alva, fought out their battle. Hither, too, came Napoleon, and the great mound of Waterloo is the monument to the Duke of Wellington's victory. It was to the Belgian plains, also, that the German general, last August, rushed his troops.

Every college and every city searches for some level spot of land where the contest between opposing teams may be held, and for more than two thousand years the Belgian plain has been the scene of the great battles between the warring nations of Western Europe.

Now, out of all these collisions there has come a hardy race, inured to peril, rich in fort.i.tude, loyalty, patience, thrift, self-reliance and persevering faith. For five hundred years the Belgian children and youth have been brought up upon the deeds of n.o.ble renown, achieved by their ancestors. If Julius Caesar were here today he would wear Belgium's bravery like a bright sword, girded to his thigh. And when this brave little people, with a standing army of forty-two thousand men, single-handed defied two millions of Germans, it tells us that Ajax has come back once more to defy the G.o.d of lightnings.