That is what I mean by saying we have no hampering ambitions.
We do not want anything that does not belong to us. Isn't a nation in
that position free to serve other nations, and isn't a nation like that
ready to form some part of the assessing opinion of the world?
My interest in the neutrality of the United States is not the petty
desire to keep out of trouble. To judge by my experience I have never
been able to keep out of trouble. I have never looked for it, but I have
always found it. I do not want to walk around trouble. If any man wants
a scrap--that is, an interesting scrap and worth while--I am his man. I
warn him that he is not going to draw me into the scrap for his
advertisement, but if he is looking for trouble--that is, the trouble of
men in general--and I can help a little, why, then, I am in for it. But
I am interested in neutrality because there is something so much
greater to do than fight, because there is something, there is a
distinction waiting for this nation that no nation has ever yet got.
That is the distinction of absolute self-control and self-mastery.
Whom do you admire most among your friends? The irritable man? The man
out of whom you can get a "rise" without trying? The man who will fight
at the drop of the hat, whether he knows what the hat is dropped for or
not?
Don't you admire and don't you fear, if you have to contest with him,
the self-mastered man who watches you with calm eye and comes in only
when you have carried the thing so far that you must be disposed of?
That is the man you respect.
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