THE ART OF PUBLIC SPEAKING. J. BERG ESENWEIN DALE CARNAGEY. Читать онлайн. Newlib. NEWLIB.NET

Автор: J. BERG ESENWEIN DALE CARNAGEY
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pity me, I have seen them; they will remain in my

      mind forever--and this is almost the twentieth century. Christ

      died nineteen hundred years ago, and Spain is a Christian

      nation. She has set up more crosses in more lands, beneath more

      skies, and under them has butchered more people than all the

      other nations of the earth combined. Europe may tolerate her

      existence as long as the people of the Old World wish. God grant

      that before another Christmas morning the last vestige of

      Spanish tyranny and oppression will have vanished from the

      Western Hemisphere!...

      The time for action has come. No greater reason for it can exist

      to-morrow than exists to-day. Every hour's delay only adds

      another chapter to the awful story of misery and death. Only one

      power can intervene--the United States of America. Ours is the

      one great nation in the world, the mother of American republics.

      She holds a position of trust and responsibility toward the

      peoples and affairs of the whole Western Hemisphere. It was her

      glorious example which inspired the patriots of Cuba to raise

      the flag of liberty in her eternal hills. We cannot refuse to

      accept this responsibility which the God of the universe has

      placed upon us as the one great power in the New World. We must

      act! What shall our action be?

      Against the intervention of the United States in this holy cause

      there is but one voice of dissent; that voice is the voice of

      the money-changers. They fear war! Not because of any Christian

      or ennobling sentiment against war and in favor of peace, but

      because they fear that a declaration of war, or the intervention

      which might result in war, would have a depressing effect upon

      the stock market. Let them go. They do not represent American

      sentiment; they do not represent American patriotism. Let them

      take their chances as they can. Their weal or woe is of but

      little importance to the liberty-loving people of the United

      States. They will not do the fighting; their blood will not

      flow; they will keep on dealing in options on human life. Let

      the men whose loyalty is to the dollar stand aside while the men

      whose loyalty is to the flag come to the front.

      Mr. President, there is only one action possible, if any is

      taken; that is, intervention for the independence of the island.

      But we cannot intervene and save Cuba without the exercise of

      force, and force means war; war means blood. The lowly Nazarene

      on the shores of Galilee preached the divine doctrine of love,

      "Peace on earth, good will toward men." Not peace on earth at

      the expense of liberty and humanity. Not good will toward men

      who despoil, enslave, degrade, and starve to death their

      fellow-men. I believe in the doctrine of Christ. I believe in

      the doctrine of peace; but, Mr. President, men must have liberty

      before there can come abiding peace.

      Intervention means force. Force means war. War means blood. But

      it will be God's force. When has a battle for humanity and

      liberty ever been won except by force? What barricade of wrong,

      injustice, and oppression has ever been carried except by force?

      Force compelled the signature of unwilling royalty to the great

      Magna Charta; force put life into the Declaration of

      Independence and made effective the Emancipation Proclamation;

      force beat with naked hands upon the iron gateway of the Bastile

      and made reprisal in one awful hour for centuries of kingly

      crime; force waved the flag of revolution over Bunker Hill and

      marked the snows of Valley Forge with blood-stained feet; force

      held the broken line of Shiloh, climbed the flame-swept hill at

      Chattanooga, and stormed the clouds on Lookout Heights; force

      marched with Sherman to the sea, rode with Sheridan in the

      valley of the Shenandoah, and gave Grant victory at Appomattox;

      force saved the Union, kept the stars in the flag, made

      "niggers" men. The time for God's force has come again. Let the

      impassioned lips of American patriots once more take up the

      song:--

      "In the beauty of the lilies, Christ was born across the sea.

      With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me;

      As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free.

      While God is marching on."

      Others may hesitate, others may procrastinate, others may plead

      for further diplomatic negotiation, which means delay; but for

      me, I am ready to act now, and for my action I am ready to

      answer to my conscience, my country, and my God.

      --JAMES MELLEN THURSTON.

      PAUSE AND POWER

      The true business of the literary artist is to plait or weave

      his meaning, involving it around itself; so that each sentence,

      by successive phrases, shall first come into a kind of knot, and

      then, after a moment of suspended meaning, solve and clear

      itself.

      --GEORGE SAINTSBURY, on _English Prose Style_, in _Miscellaneous

      Essays_.

      ... pause ... has a distinctive value, expressed in silence; in

      other words, while the voice is waiting, the music of the

      movement is going on ... To manage it, with its delicacies and

      compensations, requires that same fineness of ear on which we

      must depend for all faultless prose rhythm. When there is no

      compensation, when the pause is inadvertent ... there is a sense

      of jolting and lack, as if some pin or fastening had fallen out.

      --JOHN FRANKLIN GENUNG, _The Working Principles of Rhetoric_.

      Pause, in public speech, is not mere silence--it is silence made

      designedly eloquent.

      When a man says: "I-uh-it is with profound-ah-pleasure that-er-I have

      been