Page:William Howard Taft - America Can't Quit (1919).djvu/33

 ciples. Then they invite the support of the people, and if a majority of the people support the party, it carries out the will of the majority. That is the only way you can interpret the will of the majority into governmental action. That is what popular government is. But there are certain issues that arise above party, that transcend all parties and all party triumphs that are merely temporary. Those issues usually grow out of something very fundamental. This issue is as fundamental as the Declaration of Independence, the constitution of the United States or the issues of the Civil War. And speaking of the Constitution, I beg of you to go back and read the discussions on that instrument, and see how much it was abused and what dangers were anticipated in working it out. By great men, too. Men who, if they were alive today, would be glad to wipe out what they said about the Constitution.

With this issue so transcendent; an issue that grows out of the international relations, we may well say that when we step across the frontier, when we go down beyond low water mark and confront the nations of the world, we stand neither as Democrats nor as Republicans, but as Americans.

My friend, suppose you were a Senator, or suppose you had a power to influence a Senator and you influenced him against the League. Suppose the League came in and it worked those benefits that we believe it will work and twenty-five years later, after that had been demonstrated, your grand-son should come up to you and say, "Grand-dad, why did you vote against the League?" Suppose you are a man who voted against the League because you hate Mr. Wilson—men have told me that they hated Mr. Wilson and so they were going to vote against the League. I said to one the other day, "My dear Sir, don't you see how utterly illogical and absurd you are? Why, you are allowing yourself to be influenced by a man whom you hate, to oppose something you would otherwise support. Just think, you magnify and allow your personal feelings towards him and his influence upon you to be so great that you do not examine the merits of a question which concerns your country and the world." Now when this grand-son of yours, twenty-five years from now, should come up to you (and you had voted against the League because you hated Wilson) and when he should ask you in the light of the beneficial operation of the League, "Grand-dad, why did you vote against the League?" What will you tell him? You will do one of two things; you will either say, "Run away, Grand-son, you do not understand those issues" or else you will lie about it.