_My Fellow-Citizens_:
I trust I need hardly say how great is my pleasure at speaking in this
historic capital of your historic State—the State than which no other
has contributed a larger proportion to the leadership of the nation;
for on the honor roll of those American worthies whose greatness is not
only for the age but for all time, not only for one nation but for all
the world, on this honor roll Virginia’s name stands above all others.
And in greeting all of you, I know that no one will grudge my saying a
special word of acknowledgment to the veterans of the Civil War. A man
would indeed be but a poor American who could without a thrill witness
the way in which, in city after city in the North as in the South, on
every public occasion, the men who wore the blue and the men who wore
the gray now march and stand shoulder to shoulder, giving tangible
proof that we are all now in fact as well as in name a reunited people,
a people infinitely richer because of the priceless memories left to
all Americans by you men who fought in the great war. Last Memorial
Day I spoke in Brooklyn, at the unveiling of the statue of a Northern
general, under the auspices of the Grand Army of the Republic, and that
great audience cheered every allusion to the valor and self-devotion of
the men who followed Lee as heartily as they cheered every allusion to
the valor and self-devotion of the men who followed Grant. The wounds
left by the great civil war have long healed, but its memories remain.
Think of it, oh, my countrymen, think of the good fortune that is
ours! That whereas every other war of modern times has left feelings
of rancor and bitterness to keep asunder the combatants, our great war
has left to the sons and daughters of the men who fought, on whichever
side they fought, the same right to feel the keenest pride in the
great deeds alike of the men who fought on one side and of the men who
fought on the other. The proud self-sacrifice, the resolute and daring
courage, the high and steadfast devotion to the right as each man
saw it, whether Northerner or Southerner, these qualities render all
Americans forever the debtors of those who in the dark days from ’61 to
’65 proved their truth by their endeavor. Here around Richmond, here
in your own State, there lies battlefield after battlefield, rendered
forever memorable by the men who counted death as but a little thing
when weighed in the balance against doing their duty as it was given
them to see it. These men have left us of the younger generation not
merely the memory of what they did in war, but of what they did in
peace. Foreign observers predicted that when such a great war closed
it would be impossible for the hundreds of thousands of combatants to
return to the paths of peace. They predicted ceaseless disorder, wild
turbulence, the alternation of anarchy and despotism. But the good
sense and self-restraint of the average American citizen falsified
these prophecies. The great armies disbanded and the private in the
ranks, like the officer who had commanded him, went back to take up the
threads of his life where he had dropped them when the call to arms
came. It was a wonderful, a marvelous thing, in a country consecrated
to peace with but an infinitesimal regular army, to develop so quickly
the huge hosts which confronted one another between the James and
the Potomac and along the Mississippi and its tributaries. But it was
an even more wonderful, an even more marvelous thing, how these great
hosts, once their work done, resolved themselves into the general
fabric of the Nation.
Great though the meed of praise is which is due the South for the
soldierly valor her sons displayed during the four years of war, I
think that even greater praise is due to her for what her people
have accomplished in the forty years of peace which followed. For
forty years the South has made not merely a courageous, but at times
a desperate struggle, as she has striven for moral and material
well-being. Her success has been extraordinary, and all citizens of
our common country should feel joy and pride in it; for any great
deed done or any fine qualities shown by one group of Americans of
necessity reflects credit upon all Americans. Only a heroic people
could have battled successfully against the conditions with which the
people of the South found themselves face to face at the end of the
Civil War. There had been utter destruction and disaster, and wholly
new business and social problems had to be faced with the scantiest
means. The economic and political fabric had to be readjusted in the
midst of dire want, of grinding poverty. The future of the broken,
war-swept South seemed beyond hope, and if her sons and daughters had
been of weaker fibre there would in very truth have been no hope. But
the men and the sons of the men who had faced with unfaltering front
every alternation of good and evil fortune from Manassas to Appomattox,
and the women, their wives and mothers, whose courage and endurance
had reached an even higher heroic level—these men and these women
set themselves undauntedly to the great task before them. For twenty
years the struggle was hard and at times doubtful. Then the splendid
qualities of your manhood and womanhood told, as they were bound to
tell, and the wealth of your extraordinary natural resources began to
be shown. Now the teeming riches of mine and field and factory attest
the prosperity of those who are all the stronger because of the trials
and struggles through which this prosperity has come. You stand loyally
to your traditions and memories; you also stand loyally for our great
common country of to-day and for our common flag, which symbolizes all
that is brightest and most hopeful for the future of mankind; you face
the new age in the spirit of the age. Alike in your material and in
your spiritual and intellectual development you stand abreast of the
foremost in the world’s progress.
And now, my fellow-citizens, my fellow-Americans, exactly as all of
us, whether we live in the East or the West, in the North or the
South, have the right merely as Americans to feel pride in every
great deed done by any American in the past, and exactly as we are
knit together by this common heritage of memories, so we are knit
together, by the bond of our common duties in the present, our common
interest in the future. Many and great problems lie before us. If we
treat the mighty memories of the past merely as excuses for sitting
lazily down in the present, or for standing aside from the rough
work of the world, then these memories will prove a curse instead of
a blessing. But if we treat them as I believe we shall treat them,
not as excuses for inaction, but as incentives to make us show that
we are worthy of our fathers and of our fathers’ fathers, then in
truth the deeds of the past will not have been wasted, for they shall
bring forth fruit a hundred-fold in the present generation. We of
this Nation, we, the citizens of this mighty and wonderful Republic,
stretching across a continent between the two greatest oceans, enjoy
extraordinary privileges, and as our opportunity is great, therefore
our responsibility is great. We have duties to perform both abroad and
at home, and we can not shirk either set of duties and fully retain our
self-respect.
In foreign affairs we must make up our minds that, whether we wish it
or not, we are a great people and must play a great part in the world.
It is not open to us to choose whether we will play that great part or
not. We have to play it; all we can decide is whether we shall play it
well or ill. And I have too much confidence in my countrymen to doubt
what the decision will be. Our mission in the world should be one of
peace, but not the peace of cravens, the peace granted contemptuously
to those who purchase it by surrendering the right. No! Our voice
must be effective for peace because it is raised for righteousness
first and for peace only as the handmaiden of righteousness. We must be
scrupulous in respecting the rights of the weak, and no less careful to
make it evident that we do not act through fear of the strong. We must
be scrupulous in doing justice to others and scrupulous in exacting
justice for ourselves. We must beware equally of that sinister and
cynical teaching which would persuade us to disregard ethical standards
in international relations, and of the no less hurtful folly which
would stop the whole work of civilization by a well-meant but silly
persistency in trying to apply to peoples unfitted for them those
theories of government and of national action which are only suited
for the most advanced races. In particular, we must remember that in
undertaking to build the Panama Canal we have necessarily undertaken
to police the seas at either end of it; and this means that we have
a peculiar interest in the preservation of order in the coasts and
islands of the Caribbean. I firmly believe that by a little wise and
generous aid we can help even the most backward of the peoples in
these coasts and islands forward along the path of orderly liberty so
that they can stand alone. If we decline to give them such help the
result will be bad both for them and for us; and will in the end in all
probability cause us to face humiliation or bloodshed.
The problems that face us abroad are important, but the problems that
face us at home are even more important. The extraordinary growth
of industrialism during the last half century brings every civilized
people face to face with the gravest social and economic questions.
This is an age of combination among capitalists and combination among
wage-workers. It is idle to try to prevent such combinations. Our
efforts should be to see that they work for the good and not for the
harm of the body politic. New devices of law are necessary from time to
time in order to meet the changed and changing conditions. But after
all we will do well to remember that, although the problems to be
solved change from generation to generation, the spirit in which their
solution must be attempted remains forever the same. It is in peace
as it is in war. Tactics change and weapons change. The Continental
troops in their blue and buff, who fought under Washington and Greene
and Wayne, differed entirely in arms and in training from those who
in blue or gray faced one another in the armies of Grant and of Lee,
of Sherman and of Johnston. And now the sons of these same Union and
Confederate veterans, who serve in our gallant little army of to-day,
wear a different uniform, carry a different weapon, and practice
different tactics. But the soul of the soldier has remained the same
throughout, and the qualities which drove forward to victory or to
death the men of ’76 and the men of ’61 are the very qualities which
the men of to-day must keep unchanged if in the hour of need the honor
of the Nation is to be kept untarnished. So it is in civil life. This
Government was formed with as its basic idea the principle of treating
each man on his worth as a man, of paying no heed to whether he was
rich or poor, no heed to his creed or his social standing, but only to
the way in which he performed his duty to himself, to his neighbor, to
the state. From this principle we can not afford to vary by so much as
a hand’s breadth. Many republics have risen in the past, and some of
them flourished long, but sooner or later they fell; and the cause most
potent in bringing about their fall was in almost all cases the fact
that they grew to be governments in the interest of a class instead of
governments in the interest of all. It made no difference as to which
class it was that thus wrested to its own advantage the governmental
machinery. It was ultimately as fatal to the cause of freedom whether
it was the rich who oppressed the poor or the poor who plundered the
rich. The crime of brutal disregard of the rights of others is as much
a crime when it manifests itself in the shape of greed and brutal
arrogance on the one side, as when it manifests itself in the shape of
envy and lawless violence on the other. Our aim must be to deal justice
to each man; no more and no less. This purpose must find its expression
and support not merely in our collective action through the agencies of
the Government, but in our social attitude. Rich man and poor man must
alike feel that on the one hand they are protected by law and that on
the other hand they are responsible to the law; for each is entitled
to be fairly dealt with by his neighbor and by the State; and if we as
citizens of this Nation are true to ourselves and to the traditions of
our forefathers such fair measure of justice shall always be dealt to
each man; so that as far as we can bring it about each shall receive
his dues, each shall be given the chance to show the stuff there is
in him, shall be secured against wrong, and in turn prevented from
wronging others. More than this no man is entitled to, and less than
this no man shall have.