In an address in Toronto, Canada, November, 1918, Governor Cox said:  “We consign to posterity an example and inspiration and idealism as lofty as ever stirred the hearts of men.  And then, turning away from the past, we face the sunrise of to-morrow with faith and resolution to make a better world than that of yesterday, and to demonstrate that our heroic defenders have not died in vain.  These are dangerous times to permit the inventive genius of man to go unchecked in matters of armament.  The unspeakable horrors of the war just ended make us instinctively turn our faces away from the possibility of a half-century from now, if our thought is to be turned intensively to the production of things destructive to home life.  With the sea fairly alive with submarines, the air filled with squadrons of flying machines, and the mysteries of nature unfolding before the sustained labor of chemists—­cities and states and nations could be quickly depopulated.  The Prussian conspiracy would not have been possible if the international affairs of the earth had been assigned to a League of Nations.  The play may seem to be altruistic, if not fantastic, but the skeptic is moved by the idea that nations cannot forget selfishness.  If that be true, then the world lacks the fundamental fibers of character to build an enduring civilization.”

In welcoming the returned soldiers of the 166th Infantry in New York in may, 1919, Governor Cox said:  “If peace is to endure, it must be by means of institutions of government whose strength in the right must inspire public confidence.  We solemnly give the pledge of our state that the faith will be kept.”

Economic effects of the defeat of the Treaty of Peace were discussed by Governor Cox at Henderson, Kentucky, in April, 1920.  He said:  “Some of you may not know the effect of the defeat of the Treaty.  While at Mayfield (Ky.) I saw an old farmer who told me he was offered twenty and ten dollars for his tobacco before Christmas, but was forced to sell at six and three dollars.  The tumbling of the foreign exchange and the inability of Italy and other Continental European countries to purchase their tobacco is the cause of Western Kentucky farmers losing millions of dollars.  This resulted from the Republican Senate’s refusal to ratify the peace treaty.  While the Republican dictators of the Senate set the stage for political triumph, they do not care how much tobacco growers or the people at large suffer.

Turning to the patriotic issue of the present campaign, he said at the same time:  “It will be with infinite pleasure that we shall ask the Republican spellbinders if they have kept the faith with the boys who sleep overseas.”