Henry Cabot Lodge (May 12, 1850-November 9, 1924) was a U.S. Senator from Massachusetts, who thwarted Woodrow Wilson's efforts to have the United States submit to the League of Nations. Henry Cabot Lodge addressed the New England Society of Brooklyn, December 21, 1888:
<Let every man honor and love the land of his birth and the race from which he springs...But let us have done with British-Americans and Irish-Americans and German-Americans, and so on, and all be Americans...If a man is going to be an American at all let him be so without any qualifying adjectives; and if he is going to be something else, let him drop the word American from his personal description.> 1850HL001
Henry Cabot Lodge, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Committee, spoke against joining the League of Nation, August 12, 1919:
<The United States is the world's best hope, but if you fetter her in the interests and quarrels of other nations...you will...endanger her very existence. Leave her to march freely through the centuries to come...strong, generous, and confident...Beware how you trifle with your marvelous inheritance; this great land of ordered liberty. For if we stumble and fall, freedom and civilization everywhere will go down in ruin.> 1850HL002
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American Quotations by William J. Federer, 2024, All Rights Reserved, Permission granted to use with acknowledgement.
Endnotes:
1850HL001. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). Henry Cabot Lodge. December 21, 1888, Address titled "The Day We Celebrate," delivered to the New England Society of Brooklyn. Speeches: By Henry Cabot Lodge (Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1892).
1850HL002. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). Henry Cabot Lodge, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Committee, spoke against joining the League of Nation, August 12, 1919. William Safire, Lend Me Your Ears: Great Speeches In History (NY: W.W. Norton & Company, The Cobbett Corporation, 2004), p. 313-314.