Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: clean future and a free hand. Let us trust posterity as much as we revere ancestry. Otherwise, we discredit both. America is to-day the young man of the nations, eager for his work, and with that work waiting to be done. We will not tie his hands. We will not bind his future. Mr. President, I propose this sentiment: " America, the young man of the Nations, the proudest development of the Puritan spirit. Give him a clean future and a free hand, and he will make of this new epoch the beginning of mankind's golden age." Our Recent Diplomacy. Hon. John Hay. Abridged. Used by permission. THERE was a time when diplomacy was a science of intrigue and falsehood, of traps and mines and countermines. The word " Machia- velic " has become an adjective in our common speech, signifying fraudulent craft and guile; but Machiavel was as honest a man as his time justified or required. The King of Spain wrote to the King of France after the massacre of St. Bartholomew congratulating him upon the splendid dissimulation with which that stroke of policy had been accomplished. In the last generation it was thought a remarkable advance in straightforward diplomacy when Prince Bismarck recognized the advantage of telling the truth, even at the risk of misleading his adversary. We have generally told squarely what we wanted, announced early in negotiation what we were willing to give, and allowed the other side to accept or reject our terms. We have been met by the representatives of other powers in the same spirit of frankness and sincerity. There is nothing like straightforwardness to beget its like. The comparative simplicity of our diplomatic methods would be a matter of necessity if it were not of choice. Secret treaties, reserved clauses, private understandings, are impossible to us....