Page:Frank David Ely -Why defend the nation? Sound Americanism... (1924).pdf/21

Rh and as we see, day after day, our country affording homes of peace and joy and plenty and gladness to over a hundred millions of our countrymen, while just across the sea destitution and suffering prevail in many lands—lands where new and strange ideas of government have gained alarming credence among despairing peoples filled only with a natural desire to ease their sufferings and improve their position, but whose efforts have resulted in their more complete undoing—it behooves us the more to look to our own safety and to the safety and prosperity of those we shall leave behind us here, and to know just where our course leads.

Ours is a country of the people and for the people, where the people rule through direct representation. From its very origin it has been a land of the free and a home for the oppressed of other and less happy lands. What it has been it must always be, and this is best assured by holding fast to those principles, ideals, and traditions that are purely American and adherence to which has brought wealth, gladness, prosperity and peace to the land. Liberty and freedom, truth and justice have been our watchwords. Respect for the will of the majority and for the rights of the minority; respect for law and established institutions; respect for other men's opinions and beliefs; respect for the processes of evolution as against those of revolution; and respect for the dignity of labor with complete freedom to engage therein as we desire, and to worship according to the dictates of our own conscience with no man or set of men to say us nay—there are some of the ideals which have served in the building of this Nation, and which all true Americans cherish; and, please God, let us all by our united effort, and by His aid, assure that America shall ever go forward, ever a land of liberty for her sons and for all others who here gain asylum.

Such a heritage as ours seldom comes to any people. Once gained, it must be insured to all posterity by the wisdom, foresight, and unflinching courage of generation after generation as these in turn succeed to the temporary charge as well as to the blessings thereof, so long as time and the world shall endure.

Despite ancient and inherited prejudices detrimental to the