When we should be ready and willing to fight we could settle that question, but not before.
Henry Cabot Lodge
The Public Record
Henry Cabot Lodge was an American politician, historian, lawyer, and statesman from Massachusetts. A member of the Republican Party, he served in the United States Senate from 1893 to 1924 and is best known for his positions on foreign policy. He voted in favor of American entry into World War I and his successful crusade against Woodrow Wilson's Treaty of Versailles ensured that the United States never joined the League of Nations. His penned conditions against that treaty, known collectively as the Lodge Reservations, influenced the structure of the modern United Nations.
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England defeated us in various battles, ravaged our coasts, and burned our capital; while we whipped her frigates and lake flotillas, and repulsed her Peninsula veterans with heavy slaughter at New Orleans.
It was a stupid thing to do, for if England desired to have peace with us, as her making the treaty indicated, she should not have renewed the most irritating of all her past performances before we had had opportunity even to sign and…
In such a state of feeling, artificially stimulated and ingeniously misled, the most brilliant diplomatic triumph would have had but slight chance of approval.
Jay's moderate achievement was better than his enemies expected, but it was sufficient for their purpose, and the popular fury blazed up and ran through the country, like a whirlwind of fire over the parched prairie.
If the United States could only have time without making undue sacrifice, they could pass beyond the stage when a foreign war with its consequent suffering and debt would endanger our national existence.
If they could only have time to grow into a nation, there would be no difficulty in settling all their disputes with other people satisfactorily, either by war or negotiation.
It is melancholy to think that American parties should have entered upon their first struggle purely on questions of foreign politics.
The only explanation is to repeat that we were still colonists in all but name and allegiance, and it was Washington's task not only to establish a dignified and independent policy of his own abroad, but to beat down colonial politics at…
Such an opinion is indeed unavoidable, for a public man must have faith that his own measures are the best for the country, and if he did not, he would be but a faint-hearted representative, unfit to govern and unable to lead.
History has agreed with Washington in his view of the work of his administration, and has set it down as essential to the right and successful foundation of the government.
He flung aside the suggestion of supreme power, not simply as dishonorable and unpatriotic, but because such a result would have defeated the one great and noble object at which he aimed.