International Sympathy

Throughout the whole civilized world the news of the attack upon President McKinley was received with great concern, and his death brought forth expressions of sympathy and good-will for the people of the United States. In ceremonial ways the death of the President was recognized in almost every foreign land. In England, especially, deep feel- [394][395] ing was manifested by the King, the imperial government, the various municipal authorities, and the people as a whole. The press, with remarkable concurrence, showed an intelligent understanding of the high character and beneficent aims of President McKinley, and many finely phrased comments appeared in the European newspapers upon those touching evidences of a true and noble inner life that were revealed in the last utterances of the martyred statesman. In his Buffalo address, Mr. McKinley had shown how steam and electricity had served to bring the peoples of the world near together; and the expressions of the world on Mr. McKinley’s death proved, in their turn, how much better the world had become in its broader sympathies and its more fraternal spirit through the closer and more accurate knowledge that the age of steam, electricity, and international expositions had made possible. In spite of the rivalries of the great modern nations for political empire and commercial growth, the era of international harmony and of the brotherhood of man is coming visibly nearer; and the universal mourning for the American President last month was in its various manifestations and expressions a remarkable evidence of rapid progress in the fraternizing of the nations. There was much sympathy expressed abroad when Lincoln was shot, and also twenty years ago, at the time of the assassination of Garfield. But in those times America seemed far away, and American affairs were very little understood in Europe.