All the funeral orations which have been pronounced since the obsequies over Abel have never put life into a corpse, and all the efforts to revive the League of Nations by oratory in the Senate will be equally futile. This is a Government of the people. If the people have anything to say in the Government of the United States, then the League of Nations was condemned to death and executed on the second day of last November; and the Democratic Party came very near suffering the same fate at the same time.
From a party which had polled a popular majority of, I think, over a million votes only four years before, which had been in charge of the executive department of the Government during a great and successful war, we ended, or are in a few hours to end, our grip or control of the executive department at the mandate of more than seven million above a majority of the people.
Gentlemen may expend all of the time and energy they possess in seeking for other causes for this defeat, but he is blind indeed and deaf indeed who does not know that the Democratic ship went on the rocks because its captain was trying to steer us into the false harbor of internationalism.
What other great mistakes did the Democratic party make? If there were mistakes made in the conduct of the war, they were mistakes made by our military or our naval chieftains, or they were mistakes made by that great body of civilians who came to the aid of the Government in its time of stress, and who came equally from both parties.
What great mistake did the Democratic Party make in handling the financial affairs of the country? There may have been blunders and errors, but for every law that was passed Republicans voted, and in the execution of those laws to a very large extent Republicans participated.
A calm survey of the field, a calm reading of the issues must convince every candid man that the great issue decided by the American people was whether we would abandon the ancient policies of this Government, policies so well laid down by George Washington in his immortal farewell address, or whether we should adhere to those policies. The American people answered in thundering tones. Yet we find men standing on the floor of the Senate today, repeating upon this floor the speeches they made on the hustings when they were talking about the beauty of dreams and the glory of visions.
We had a eulogy on dreams here a few minutes ago. Every time we use the illustration or speak of the futility of dreams, meaning to describe the impractical, we are immediately told that every great thing originated in a dream. I deny the proposition. Since the days of the prophets, nothing has ever originated in a dream that has been of any good to anyone. Things originate in ideas, and there are mighty few men who have any lucid intervals when they are sound asleep. An idea is not a dream. It may be something new, but if it is of any value it is a sound thought and not an idle dream, not the vagary of a disordered intellect nor the drivel of a brain that is steeped in slumber.
I have been accused this afternoon of being practical. What is it to be practical? It is to pick one's course of conduct to suit the facts of life and not the dreams of life. It is to make one's ideas and one's plans so that they will work out. If they work out, they are practical. If they will not work out, they are impractical, and there is nothing in the world that is of the slightest value unless it will work out and bring direct results. If we could just get rid of the little oratorical vaporings and begin to talk with something of mathematical certainty, we would not have so much trouble to arrive at correct conclusions.
We hear a great deal of talk about idealism, the idealism of America, the idealism of men. There are two conceptions of idealism. If by idealism is meant that a man is so exalted in his purposes that he disregards his own interests from any selfish standpoint and endeavors to benefit other people without trying to benefit himself, that kind of idealism is admirable in an individual. But if by idealism is meant that a man follows visions and dreams, that he does things that are impractical, that will not work out, then that kind of idealism is closely associated with insanity.