Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 10.djvu/293

 ROOSEVELT

��did their work; they left us the splendid heritage we now enjoy. We in our turn have an assured confidence that we shall be able to leave this heritage unwasted and enlarged to our children's children.

To do so, we must show, not merely in great crises, but in the every-day affairs of life, the qualities of practical intelligence, of courage, of hardihood, and endurance, and, above all, the power of devotion to a lofty ideal, which made great the men who founded this Republic in the days of Washington; which made great the men who preserved this Republic in the days of Abraham Lincoln.

II

ON AMERICAN MOTHERHOOD^

(1905)

In our modern industrial civilization there are many and grave dangers to counterbalance the splendors and the triumphs. It is not a good thing to see cities grow at disproportionate speed relativelj^ to the country; for the small land own- ers, the men who own their little homes, and there- fore to a very large extent the men who till farms, the men of the soil, have hitherto made the foundation of lasting national life in every State:

1 From his speech in Washington on March IS, 1905, before the National Congress of 3Iothors. Printed from a copy furnished by the president for this collection in response to a request. 253

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