Article October 20, 1898 Issue

OUR DUTY TO NATIONALIZE

Rev. Dr. Lamson on the War's Problems.

President Lamson of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, in his annual address, after reviewing the work of the Board, said:—

"In the three months' war patriotism declared itself a missionary by saying to its unnationalized, denationalized neighbors, We will aid you in becoming national. We pity a people among whom patriotism is impossible. They do not live half a life who are without patriotic imagination. The beginning of our war with Spain was the height of unreason. Judged by the standard of serious, conservative wisdom, it appeared as the insanity of jingoism, a pugilistic enthusiasm, a revenge for the loss of a battleship, a sympathy for suffering. But in all this confusion of motives there was a power and spirit that American political science had not made part of its system.

"We thought only of the neighbor, Cuba. Then came what seemed the accident of Manila, an accident luminous with heroism and made coronal by success. The question, Who is our neighbor? became, Who is not our neighbor? and Luzon, the island of an Oriental sea, comes into the field of view and is set beside Cuba, both neighbors, both in our world. What ought we to do with them? How shall we love our neighbors as ourselves? No President, nor party, nor commission, nor political economist can answer.

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