There is one circumstance connected with this program which ought to be very plainly stated.  It was resisted at every step by the interests which the Republican Party had catered to and fostered at the expense of the country, and these same interests are now earnestly praying for a reaction which will save their privileges,—­for the restoration of their sworn friends to power before it is too late to recover what they have lost.  They fought with particular desperation and infinite resourcefulness the reform of the banking and currency system, knowing that to be the citadel of their control; and most anxiously are they hoping and planning for the amendment of the Federal Reserve Act by the concentration of control in a single bank which the old familiar group of bankers can keep under their eye and direction.  But while the “big men” who used to write the tariffs and command the assistance of the Treasury have been hostile,—­all but a few with vision,—­the average business man knows that he has been delivered, and that the fear that was once every day in his heart, that the men who controlled credit and directed enterprise from the committee rooms of Congress would crush him, is there no more, and will not return,—­unless the party that consulted only the “big men” should return to power,—­the party of masterly inactivity and cunning resourcefulness in standing pat to resist change.

The Republican Party is just the party that cannot meet the new conditions of a new age.  It does not know the way and it does not wish new conditions.  It tried to break away from the old leaders and could not.  They still select its candidates and dictate its policy, still resist change, still hanker after the old conditions, still know no methods of encouraging business but the old methods.  When it changes its leaders and its purposes and brings its ideas up to date it will have the right to ask the American people to give it power again; but not until then.  A new age, an age of revolutionary change, needs new purposes and new ideas.

In foreign affairs we have been guided by principles clearly conceived and consistently lived up to.  Perhaps they have not been fully comprehended because they have hitherto governed international affairs only in theory, not in practice.  They are simple, obvious, easily stated, and fundamental to American ideals.

We have been neutral not only because it was the fixed and traditional policy of the United States to stand aloof from the politics of Europe and because we had had no part either of action or of policy in the influences which brought on the present war, but also because it was manifestly our duty to prevent, if it were possible, the indefinite extension of the fires of hate and desolation kindled by that terrible conflict and seek to serve mankind by reserving cur strength and our resources for the anxious and difficult days of restoration and healing which must follow, when peace will have to build its house anew.