Evening Republican, Volume 59, Number 114, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 June 1917 — Effort to Purchase Friendship of Other Nations Is Futile Policy [ARTICLE]

Effort to Purchase Friendship of Other Nations Is Futile Policy

By PORTER EMERSON BROWNE

Among the mistakes naturarto a government that has been at peace as long as has that of the United States, none is more fatal toward world respect than the effort to purchase the friendship of other nations by cash, or equivalent, consideration. . - Governments, like individuals, are respected not because of what they have, but because of what they are. Governments that are strong, honest, intelligent and honorable are respected automatically, just as afe citizens possessing the same qualities. Friendship and respect are not purchasable commodities. If they were, they’d be on sale, like eggs or buttonhooks or small pea beans, and a man could drop into the nearest department store and say, “Send me up sixteen friends, mostly blondes, and a couple of yards of respect that won’t ravel or crock.” We of the United States must learn that we can’t buy the friendship and respect of other nations. We must earn it. And we can’t earn it vicariously. We must earn it by the strength of our characters, the loftiness of our aims, the cleanness of our souls, and the fineness of our national honor. c; ;■ j To do otherwise is to emulate the sap-headed son of wealth who thinks, by buying wine for everybody, he is accumulating friends. People may drink the wine. But they do so while saying to themselves, “The ipoor sucker I I Wonder what~lisinme"frick"he’ll try next/Uv Men and women are liked and respected because they are honest, honorable, fearless and clean. Nations are liked for the same qualities. Whereby, if the United States wants the friendship and respect of other nations, let it appeal to those other nations on the basis, and the only basis, that makes friendship and respect possible.