As a declaration
of independence, therefore, it is a mere historic document. Our
independence is a fact so stupendous that it can be measured only by the
size and energy and variety and wealth and power of one of the greatest
nations in the world. But it is one thing to be independent and it is
another thing to know what to do with your independence. It is one thing
to come to your majority and another thing to know what you are going to
do with your life and your energies; and one of the most serious
questions for sober-minded men to address themselves to in the United
States is this: What are we going to do with the influence and power of
this great Nation? Are we going to play the old role of using that power
for our aggrandizement and material benefit only? You know what that may
mean. It may upon occasion mean that we shall use it to make the
peoples of other nations suffer in the way in which we said it was
intolerable to suffer when we uttered our Declaration of Independence.
The Department of State at Washington is constantly called upon to back
up the commercial enterprises and the industrial enterprises of the
United States in foreign countries, and it at one time went so far in
that direction that all its diplomacy came to be designated as "dollar
diplomacy.
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