is easy. We have shown that we could do what was hard, and the pride that ought to dwell in your hearts to-night 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.

[In Old Census Building, Washington, D. C., Before Veterans of the G. A. R., in Annual Encampment, Sept. 28, 1915.]

It is a singular thing that men of a single generation should have witnessed what you have witnessed in the crowded fifty years which you celebrate to-night. You took part when you were young men in a struggle, the meaning of which, I dare say, you thought would not be revealed during your lifetime, and yet more has happened in the making of this nation in your lifetime than has ever happened in the making of any other nation in the lifetime of a dozen generations.

You have seen many things which have made this nation one of the representative nations of the world, with regard to the modern spirit of that world, and you have the satisfaction, which, I dare say, few soldiers have ever had, of looking back upon a war absolutely unique in this, that, instead of destroying, it has healed; that, instead of making a permanent division, it has made a permanent union.

This nation was from the beginning a spiritual enterprise, and you have seen the 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 and show that the spirit of man sometimes springs to great enterprises that are even greater than his own mind had conceived.

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 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 wish 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 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 rights. 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, at 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 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.

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 all catch, from the spirit of this occasion à new consecration to the high duties of American citizenship.

[Before the Civilian Advisory Board of the Navy, at the White House. Washington, D. C., Oct. 7, 1915.]

There is very little that I can say to you, except to give you a very cordial welcome and to express my very great pleasure in this association of laymen with the Government. But I do want to say this:

I think the whole nation is convinced that we ought to be prepared, not for war, but for defense, and very adequately prepared, and that the preparation for defense is not merely a technical matter, that it

is not a matter that the Army and Navy alone can take care of, but a matter in which we must have the co-operation of the best brains and knowledge of the country, outside the official service of the Government, as well as inside.

For my part, I feel that it is only in the spirit of a true democracy that we get together to lend such voluntary aid, the sort of aid that comes from interest, from a knowledge of the varied circumstances that are involved in handling a nation.

I want you to feel, those of you who are coming to the assistance of the professional officers of the Government, that we have a very serious purpose, that we have not asked you to associate yourself with us except for a very definite and practical purpose-to get you to give us your best independent thoughts as to how we ought to make ready for any duty that may fall upon the nation.

I do not have to expound it to you; you know as well as I do the spirit of America. The spirit of America is one of peace, but one of independence. It is a spirit that is profoundly concerned with peace, because it can express itself best only in peace. It is the spirit of peace and good-will and of human freedom; but it is also the spirit of a nation that is self-conscious, that knows and loves its mission in the world and that knows that it must command the respect of the world.

So it seems to me that we are not working as those who would change anything of America, but only as those who would safeguard everything in America. I know that you will enter into conference with the officers of the Navy in that spirit and with that feeling, and it makes me proud, gentlemen, that the busy men of America-the men who stand at the front of their professions—should be willing in this way to associate themselves voluntarily with the Government in the task in which it needs all sorts of expert and serious advice.

Nothing ought to be done in this by any single group of persons; everything ought to be done by all of us, united together, and I welcome this association in the most serious and grateful spirit.

[Before the Daughters of the American Revolution, in Memorial Continental Hall, Washington, D. C., Oct. 11, 1915.]

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 leave it, but to regenerate it. It is something that was born into the world.

to replace systems that had preceded it, to bring them out upon a new plane of privilege.

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 heretofore 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 I think fascinates 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 been free to shine upon us and prosper our undertakings, we did not realize how hard the task of liberty is and how rare the privilege of liberty is, and men were drawn out of every climate and out of every race because of an irresistible attraction of their spirits to the American ideal. They thought of America as lifting, like that great statue, in the harbor of New York, a torch to light the pathway of men to the things that they desire, and men of all sorts and conditions struggled toward that light and came to our shores with an eager desire to realize it and a hunger for it such as some of us no longer felt, for we were as if we were satiated and sated and were indulging ourselves after a fashion that did not belong to the ascetic devotion of the early devotees of those great principles. So they came to remind us of what we had promised ourselves and through ourselves had promised mankind. All men came to us and said, "Where is the bread of life with which you promised to feed us, and have you partaken of it yourselves?"

For my part, I believe that the constant renewal of this people out of foreign stocks has been a constant source of reminder to this people of what the inducement was that was offered to men who would come and be of our number. Now we have come to a time of special stress and test. There never was a time when we needed more clearly to conserve the principles of our own patriotism than this present time. The rest of the world from which our politics were drawn seems for the time in the crucible, and no man can predict what will come out of that crucible. We stand apart unembroiled, conscious of our own principles, conscious of what we hope and purpose so far as our powers permit for the world at large, and it is necessary that we should consolidate the American principle. Every political action, every social action, should have for its object in America at this time to challenge the spirit of America; to ask that every man and woman who thinks first of America should rally to the standards of our life. There have been some among us who have not thought first of America, who have thought to use the might of America in some matter not of America's originative, and they have forgotten that the first duty of a nation is to express its principles in the action of the family of nations. and not to seek to aid and abet any rival or contrary ideal.

Neutrality is a negative word. It is a word that does not express what America ought to feel. America has a heart, and that heart throbs with all sorts of intense sympathies, but America has schooled its heart to love the things that America believes in, and it ought to devote itself only to the things that America believes in, and, believing that America stands apart in its ideals, it ought not to allow itself to be drawn, so far as its heart is concerned, into anybody's quarrel. Not because it does not understand the quarrel, not because it does not in its head assess the merits of the controversy, but because America has promised the world to stand apart and maintain certain principles of action which are grounded in law and in justice. We are not trying to keep out of trouble, we are trying to preserve the foundations upon which peace can be rebuilt. Peace can be rebuilt only upon the ancient and accepted principles of international law, only upon those things which remind nations of their duties to each other and, deeper than that, of their duties to mankind and to humanity.

America has a great cause which is not confined to the American Continent. It is the cause of humanity itself. I do not mean in anything that I say to imply a judgment upon any nation or upon any policy, for my object here this afternoon is not to sit in judgment upon anybody but ourselves and to challenge you to assist all of us who are trying to make America conscious of nothing so much as