A BRILLIANT SPEECH.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 3297, 16 August 1911, Page 7

A BRILLIANT SPEECH.

SUN AND STARS NEVER QUARREL

. Here is an extract from a very brilliant speech by the Japanese Ambassador to the United! Statesi —Baron Uchida —which has attracted much attention, in New York:

“Gentlemen,” the feaid', “have you ever considered those two flags, the flags of our countries? Have you failed to note that the patriot fathers who designed them/ have mad© it. forever impossible for us to fight ?

“There have been wars of the Cross and the Crescent, of the Red Rose and the White, but the Sun and the Stars have never quarrelled in their courses, neither shall the two flags which bear those celestial emblems /ever be carried at the heads of hostile armies. It is unthinkable, impossible: They talk of rivalry, of the control of the Pacific ; as if an ocean whose area is greater than that of all the continents combined could ever be controlled by any one Power. My people may be ambitious, but they have no ambition so great as that. “No, our ambition is not to see our flag ‘dominate the Pacific,’ , but to see the firmament that arches over that ocean hung with the mingled splendors of our two banners—the starspangled ensign of America and. the sun-flag of Japan—lit with morning effulgence and jewelled with starry radiance. Sooner shall the Day' and the Night fly to arms to decide who should' rule that Sea of Peace than the two great nations that dwell on its opposite shores fall out over the destinies assigned to each by Nature’s laws. “There is one glory of the sun and another glory of the moon, and one star differeth from another star in glory, but there is room in the ample gulfs of the sky—there is room,” concluded Baron Uchida, “in the spacious purposes of history—for the glory of all!”

“These words, spoken at a banquet in New. York given in celebration of the ratification of the new treaty between the United States and Japan, ought to put to shame the exclamations of short-sighted jingoes,” says the “World’s Work.” The Ambassador pointed to the two flags that hung draped behind the toastmaster’s chair when he made this speech. Quoting the Ambassador the “World’s Work” says: “ 'The spacious purposes of history’ how such a- cosmic vision of events reduces to insignificance the shrewish scoldings of shrunken-souled ‘patriots’ who Jive to incite suspicion, spread misunderstanding, and stir up trouble!”