16 time when books were few, and there was no telegraph, or steamships or railways, much less can it contain itself in this age when the great and manifold sensitiveness of society is a complete organism, endowed with nerves, arteries, heart and brain, that is to say, with a conscious soul. England moves against the Transvaal; Russia against Turkey or Japan; even Nicaragua, seemingly so isolated from the rest of the world, suffers convulsions, and every civilized country palpitates simultaneously desiring the triumph of either one side or the other, or seeking the intervention of the Powers to arrest the incidental slaughter. The pains, pleasures and desires of humanity, are expressed through vibrating or spiritual movements traveling unimpeded from one end of the land to the other. Who in the world was not interested in the liberty of Dreyfus?
In the days of Washington or of Lincoln, for example, although Cuba might have agitated to secure its independence, the American government would never have interfered in its war against Spain, because the different states of the Union would not have desired such action.
Nevertheless, the truly prophetic doctrine of Monroe had taken root in the national soul of the United States. This doctrine was cherished, as are all great principles of government, because it was the expression of the sentiment and aspiration, at first latent, but subsequently tangible, of the people of the United States, based upon the imperious necessity of protecting the New World from conquest by Europe.
How we have grieved and suffered, because the states of the north were compelled to meet in bloody conflict