general import in it that would not as a wise rule of national conduct apply to the circumstances of to-day. What is it that has given to Washington's farewell address an authority that was revered by all until our recent victories made so many of us drunk with wild ambitions? Not only the prestige of Washington's name, great as that was and should ever remain. No, it was the fact that under a respectful observance of those teachings this Republic has grown from the most modest beginnings into a Union spanning this vast continent, our people having multiplied from a handful to 75,000, 000; we have risen from poverty to a wealth the sum of which the imagination can hardly grasp; this American nation has become one of the greatest and most powerful on earth, and, continuing in the same course, will surely become the greatest and most powerful of all. Not Washington's name alone gave his teachings their dignity and weight; it was the practical results of his policy that secured to it, until now, the intelligent approbation of the American people. And unless we have completely lost our senses, we shall never despise and reject as mere 'nursery rhymes' the words of wisdom left us by the greatest of Americans, following which the American people have achieved a splendor of development without parallel in the history of mankind."

The grave responsibility we have assumed, that of bringing freedom to the oppressed, calls us to act with conscience and with caution. We are no longer a child nation, a band of irresponsible human colts, but mature men, capable of wielding the strongest influence humanity has felt, We must shun folly. We must despise greed. We must turn from glitter and cant and sham. We must hate injustice as we have hated intolerance and oppression. We must never forget among the nations we alone stand for the individual man.

The greatness of a nation lies not in its bigness but in its justice, in the wisdom and virtue of its people, and in the prosperity of their individual affairs. The nation exists for its men, never the men for the nation. "I cannot help thinking of you as you deserve," said Thoreau; "O, ye governments! The only government that I recognize and it matters not how few are at the head of it or how small is its army-is that which establishes justice in the land, never that which establishes injustice." The will of free men to be just, one towards another, is our final guarantee that "government of the people, for the people, by the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

CF THE