War is only a sort of dramatic representation, a sort of dramatic symbol of a thousand forms of duty. I fancy that it is just as hard to do your duty when men are sneering at you as when they are shooting at you.
There is no indispensable man. The government will not collapse and go to pieces if any one of the gentlemen who are seeking to be entrusted with its guidance should be left at home.
You have just taken an oath of allegiance to the United States. Of allegiance to whom? Of allegiance to no one, unless it be God. Certainly not of allegiance to those who temporarily represent this great government. You have taken an oath of allegiance to a great ideal, to a great body of principles, to a great hope of the human race.
The Constitution of the United States is not a mere lawyers' document. It is a vehicle of life, and its spirit is always the spirit of the age. Its prescriptions are clear and we know what they arebut life is always your last and most authoritative critic.
My dream is that as the years go by and the world knows more and more of America, itwill turn to America for those moral inspirations that lie at the basis of all freedomthat America will come into the full light of the day when all shall know that she puts human rights above all other rights, and that her flag is the flag not only of America but of humanity.
A radical is one of whom people say ''He goes too far.'' A conservative, on the other hand, is one who ''doesn't go far enough.'' Then there is the reactionary, ''one who doesn't go at all.'' All these terms are more or less objectionable, wherefore we have
I believe in human liberty as I believe in the wine of life. There is no salvation for men in the pitiful condescension of industrial masters. Guardians have no place in a land of freemen.