244 POLITICAL LIFE-XII 



showing the injustice of the charge so constantly made 

 against President McKinley, of hostility to Germany and 

 German interests. Nothing could be more absurd than 

 such an imputation. The very opposite was the case. 



I also gave a farewell address to a great assemblage of 

 students at Cornell University, my topic being ' ' The True 

 Conduct of Student Life" ; but in the course of my speech, 

 having alluded to the importance of sobriety of judgment, 

 I tested by it sundry political contentions which were 

 strongly made on both sides, alluding especially to Gold- 

 win Smith's very earnest declaration that one of the 

 greatest dangers to our nation arises from plutocracy. 

 I took pains to show that the whole spirit of our laws 

 is in favor of the rapid dispersion of great properties, 

 and that, within the remembrance of many present, a 

 large number of the greatest fortunes in the United States 

 had been widely dispersed. As to other declarations re- 

 garding dangers arising from the acquisition of foreign 

 territory and the like, I insisted that all these dangers were 

 as nothing compared to one of which we were then having 

 a striking illustration namely, demagogism ; and I urged, 

 what I have long deeply felt, that the main source of 

 danger to republican institutions is now, and always has 

 been, the demagogism which seeks to array labor against 

 capital, employee against employer, profession against 

 profession, class against class, section against section. I 

 mentioned the name of no one ; but it must have been clear 

 to all present how deeply I felt regarding the issues which 

 each party represented, and especially regarding the resort 

 to the lowest form of demagogism which Mr. Bryan was 

 then making, in the desperate attempt to save his falling 

 fortunes. 



During this stay in America I made two visits to Wash- 

 ington to confer with the President and the State Depart- 

 ment. The first of these was during the hottest weather I 

 have ever known. There were few people at the capital 

 who could leave it, and at the Arlington Hotel there 

 were not more than a dozen guests. All were distressed 



