Washington's Birthday in Honolulu: 1903 Editorial

In commemoration of President’s Day we share the following editorial published in the 1903 edition of Honolulu’s Sunday Advertiser commemorating George Washington’s birthday:

George Washington was a starched and be-wigged aristocrat of the old English school who, in his mature years, threw class privileges behind him and became a democrat. Though brought up with reverence for kingly power he not only made single-minded war upon his sovereign to establish popular rights but he refused the crown of the people’s empire he had helped to found and, by declining a third term in the presidency, set a definite limit to the ambitions of the Executive.

Herein lies his title to greatness –his right to be remembered by the nation on the 22d day of February of each year. He was not one of the world’s great generals. Usually he was beaten or foiled in battle and but for the timely aid of the French he might have lost the war. The constructive statemenship of the revolutionary period may be credited, chiefly, to Franklin, Jefferson, Hamilton, and the elder Adams. But Washington was needed to keep true the great purpose of the revolutionary movement and he did it when everyone else seemed to falter. As President he continued the work begun in the field; and to him may be credited the refusal of the infant republic to invite the peril of a second war with Great Britain when Citizen Genet came to plead for it in the name of America’s old ally, the French King.

As the typical democrat in his politics if not in his antecedents; as patriot who never despaired of the republic; as the firm and incorruptible administrator, Washington found a part to play which abler generals and more brilliant statesmen might not have performed so well. And as time goes on one realizes more strongly how important it was to future generations and to the world, to have the destinies of the revolutionary movement in such hands. Had Washington been a Caesar, who always won his battles, or a Bismarck, who played with chancellories, the new republic might have taken an irretrievable roads towards militarism and a disturbance of the peace; but the nation was chastened on the way to its triumphs and so became content with the isolated place in affairs and the quiet growth in strength and virtue which were needed to fulfill its later missions.