spirits of the two once divided sections of this country absolutely united. A war which seemed as if it had the seed of every kind of bitterness in it has seen a single generation put bitterness absolutely out of its heart, and you feel, as I am sure the men who fought against you feel, that you were comrades even then, though you did not know it, and that now you know that you are comrades in a common love for a country which you are equally eager to serve.

This is a miracle of the spirit, so far as national history is concerned. This is one of the very few wars in which in one sense everybody engaged may take pride. Some wars are to be regretted; some wars mar the annals of history; but some wars, contrasted with those, make those annals distinguished, show that the spirit of man sometimes springs to great enterprises that are even greater than his own mind had conceived.

So it seems to me that, standing in a presence like this, no man, whether he be in the public service or in the ranks of private citizens merely, can fail to feel the challenge to his own heart, can fail to feel the challenge to a new consecration to the things that we all believe in. The thing that sinks deepest in my heart as I try to realize the memories that must be crowding upon you is this: You set the Nation free for that great career of development, of unhampered development, which the world has witnessed since the Civil War, but for my own part I would not be proud of the extraordinary physical development of this country, of its extraordinary development in material wealth and financial power, did I not believe that the people of the United States wished all of this power devoted to ideal ends. There have been other nations as rich as we; there have been other nations as powerful; there have been other nations as spirited; but I hope we

shall never forget that we created this Nation, not to serve ourselves, but to serve mankind.

I love this country because it is my home, but every man loves his home. It does not suffice that I should be attached to it because it contains the places and the persons whom I love because it contains the threads of my own life. That does not suffice for patriotic duty. I should also love it, and I hope I do love it, as a great instrument for the uplift of mankind; and what you, gentlemen, have to remind us of as you look back through a lifetime to the great war in which you took part is that you fought that this instrument meant for the service of mankind should not be impaired either in its material or in its spiritual power.

I hope I may say without even an implication of criticism upon any other great people in the world that it has always seemed to me that the people of the United States wished to be regarded as devoted to the promotion of particular principles of human right. The United States were founded, not to provide free homes, but to assert human rights. This flag meant a great enterprise of the human spirit. Nobody, no large bodies of men, in the time that flag was first set up believed with a very firm belief in the efficacy of democracy. Do you realize that only so long ago as the time of the American Revolution democracy was regarded as an experiment in the world and we were regarded as rash experimenters? But we not only believed in it; we showed that our belief was well founded and that a nation as powerful as any in the world could be erected upon the will of the people; that, indeed, there was a power in such a nation that dwelt in no other nation unless also in that other nation the spirit of the people prevailed.

Democracy is the most difficult form of government,

because it is the form under which you have to persuade the largest number of persons to do anything in particular. But I think we were the more pleased to undertake it because it is difficult. Anybody can do what is easy. We have shown that we could do what was hard, and the pride that ought to dwell in your hearts tonight is that you saw to it that that experiment was brought to the day of its triumphant demonstration. We now know, and the world knows, that the thing that we then undertook, rash as it seemed, has been practicable, and that we have set up in the world a government maintained and promoted by the general conscience and the general conviction.

So I stand here, not to welcome you to the Nation's capital as if I were your host, but merely to welcome you to your own capital, because I am, and am proud to be, your servant. I hope I shall catch, as I hope we shall all catch, from the spirit of this occasion a new consecration to the high duties of American citizenship.

ADDRESS TO THE DAUGHTERS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

Washington, October 11, 1915

MADAM PRESIDENT AND LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:

Again it is my very great privilege to welcome you to the City of Washington and to the hospitalities of the Capital. May I admit a point of ignorance? I was surprised to learn that this association is so young, and that an association so young should devote itself wholly to memory I can not believe. For to me the duties to which you are consecrated are more than the duties and the pride of memory.

There is a very great thrill to be had from the memories of the American Revolution, but the American Revolution was a beginning, not a consummation, and the duty laid upon us by that beginning is the duty of bringing the things then begun to a noble triumph of completion. For it seems to me that the peculiarity of patriotism in America is that it is not a mere sentiment. It is an active principle of conduct. It is something that was born into the world, not to please it but to regenerate it. It is something that was born into the world to replace systems that had preceded it and to bring men out upon a new plane of privilege. The glory of the men whose memories you honor and perpetuate is that they saw this vision, and it was a vision of the future. It was a vision of great days to come when a little handful of three million people upon the borders of a single sea should have become a great multitude of free men and women spreading across a great continent, dominating the shores of two oceans, and sending West as well as East the influences of individual freedom. These things were consciously in their minds as they framed the great Government which was

born out of the American Revolution; and every time we gather to perpetuate their memories it is incumbent upon us that we should be worthy of recalling them and that we should endeavor by every means in our power to emulate their example.

The American Revolution was the birth of a nation; it was the creation of a great free republic based upon traditions of personal liberty which theretofore had been confined to a single little island, but which it was purposed should spread to all mankind. And the singular fascination of American history is that it has been a process of constant re-creation, of making over again in each generation the thing which was conceived at first. You know how peculiarly necessary that has been in our case, because America has not grown by the mere multiplication of the original stock. It is easy to preserve tradition with continuity of blood; it is easy in a single family to remember the origins of the race and the purposes of its organization; but it is not so easy when that race is constantly being renewed and augmented from other sources, from stocks that did not carry or originate the same principles.

So from generation to generation strangers have had to be indoctrinated with the principles of the American family, and the wonder and the beauty of it all has been that the infection has been so generously easy. For the principles of liberty are united with the principles of hope. Every individual, as well as every Nation, wishes to realize the best thing that is in him, the best thing that can be conceived out of the materials of which his spirit is constructed. It has happened in a way that faseinates the imagination that we have not only been augmented by additions from outside, but that we have been greatly stimulated by those additions. Living in the easy prosperity of a free people, knowing that the sun had always