It is too late to do much about it now. The good people of the Indian Rights Association try to do something; but in spite of them, what little harm can still be done is being done through dishonest Indian agents and the mean machinery of politics. If you care to know more of the long, bad story, there is a book by Helen Hunt Jackson, A Century of Dishonor; it is not new. It assembles and sets forth what had been perpetrated up to the time when it was written. A second volume could be added now. I have dwelt upon this matter here for a very definite reason, closely connected with my main purpose. It’s a favorite trick of our anti-British friends to call England a “land-grabber.” The way in which England has grabbed land right along, all over the world, is monstrous, they say. England has stolen what belonged to whites, and blacks, and bronzes, and yellows, wherever she could lay her hands upon it, they say. England is a criminal. They repeat this with great satisfaction, this land-grabbing indictment. Most of them know little or nothing of the facts, couldn’t tell you the history of a single case. But what are the facts to the man who asks, “What has England done in this war, anyway?” The word “land-grabber” has been passed to him by German and Sinn Fein propaganda, and he merely parrots it forth. He couldn’t discuss it at all. “Look at the Boers,” he may know enough to reply, if you remind him that England’s land-grabbing was done a good while ago. Well, we shall certainly look at the Boers in due time, but just now we must look at ourselves. I suppose that the American who denounces England for her land-grabbing has forgotten, or else has never known, how we grabbed Florida from Spain. The pittance that we paid Spain in one of the Florida transactions never went to her. The story is a plain tale of land-grabbing; and there are several other plain tales that show us to have been land-grabbers, if you will read the facts with an honest mind. I shall not tell them here. The case of the Indian is enough in the way of an instance. Our own hands are by no means clean. It is not for us to denounce England as a land-grabber. You cannot hate statistics more than I do. But at times there is no dodging them, and this is one of the times. In 1803 we paid Napoleon Bonaparte fifteen millions for what was then called Louisiana. Napoleon had his title to this land from Spain. Spain had it from France. France had it--how? She had it because La Salle, a Frenchman, sailed down the Mississippi River. This gave him title to the land. There were people on the bank already, long before La Salle came by.