not sap his faith. He will probably seek truly to know himself and others, and with fraternal insight to enter into the world's work, to share the joys of accomplishment, and to help in the bearing of the burdens of misery. He will be free from the prejudice of occupation or of residence. He will not look askance either at city or at country. For him any honest work will be honorable, and those who are toiling with their hands will not be merely economic factors of work, but human beings of like passions and possessed of the "certain inalienable rights." Neither birth nor station, neither circumstance nor vocation, will win or prevent the esteem to which fidelity, honesty, and sincerity are alone entitled. He will look neither up nor down, but with even eye will seek to read the hearts of men.

WHAT THE FLAG MEANS

CHARLES E. HUGHES

[An address in presenting a flag to the honor members of a graduating class at a school in Washington, June, 1916.]

This flag means more than association and reward. It is the symbol of our national unity, our national endeavor, our national aspiration. It tells you of the struggle for independence, of union preserved, of liberty. And union one and inseparable, of the sacrifices of brave men and women to whom the ideals and honor of this nation have been dearer than life.

It means America first; it means an undivided allegiance. It means America united, strong and efficient, equal to her tasks. It means that you cannot be saved by the valor and devotion of your ancestors; that to each generation comes its patriotic duty; and that upon your willingness to sacrifice and endure as those before you have sacrificed and endured rests the national hope.

It speaks of equal rights; of the inspiration of free institutions exemplified and vindicated; of liberty under law intelligently conceived and impartially administered.

There is not a thread in it but scorns self-indulgence, weakness, and rapacity. It is eloquent of our community interests, outweighing all divergences of opinion, and of our common destiny.

Given as a prize to those of the highest standing, it happily enforces the lesson that intelligence and zeal must go together, that discipline must accompany emotions, and that we must ultimately rely upon enlightened opinion.

THE MORAL REGENERATION OF AMERICAN

BUSINESS

ALBERT J. BEVERIDGE

[From The Meaning of the Times; copyright, 1908; reprinted by special permission of the publishers, the Bobbs-Merrill Company. This address sets forth the strong desire of earnest men to correct the evils that have appeared in the wake of great industrial expansion. It has the spirit of resoluteness and of optimism. In such a spirit lies the hope of the future.]

THE meaning of the times is the organization of honesty. We are in a moral movement, not a political phase. Ours is a period of history, not a moment of passion. The Nation is writing into law for all men to obey those rules of fair dealing which, without any law, most men already obey.

It is said that we need no such statutes. But you Yale men, who so often win in athletics, know that you cannot leave the game to the mind, will, or moral sense of any man or set of men. So you make rules of the game, which every man must obey. The purpose of these rules is order and fair play. A game won by fraud is not a victory, but a disgrace. These rules apply equally to all. Nobody can be above the rules of the game, no matter how strong or wise he is. If any man among you took the stand that he would play the game by his own notions, instead of by the rules which govern all the rest of you, you would apply those rules to him harder than to anybody else; or else you would not let him play at all.

This simple example shows how wrong it is to let exceptional men do big business in their own way regardless of law, instead of having common rules for making them do business in everybody's way in obedience to law. It shows how necessary it is to make the extraordinary man do business by the same rules by which the ordinary man must do business. That, and only that, is what we started to do in the laws we have passed; what we will keep on doing until the work is finished. This is the meaning of the times a meaning that is simple and plain, just as the meaning of every historic movement has been simple and plain. All great things, all things that last, are simple and plain. The Bismarck period in Germany meant the unity of the German people; all other matters connected with it were mere incidents of the march and not the march itself. The Washington movement in America was mainly nationhood; everything had to give way to that, whether British or Hessian bayonets without, or local and selfish ideas within. The meaning of the Lincoln movement was mainly supremacy of the general will of all the people over the local will of some of the people - the never-dying and ever-growing idea that we are one people with one flag, instead of many peoples with many flags; and as time goes on, all the problems of our Civil War, important as they appeared, are seen to be little when we look at them side by side with this overwhelming issue.

So all great movements have had a plain and simple meaning a clear principle running straight through and explaining their every phase. And every one of these movements went on until its meaning was thoroughly worked out. All of them were resisted by the wrongs which these movements had come to make right. Able and wicked men who fattened on those evils resisted them with money, pen, and sword; and even good men saw with the eye of the hour instead of the eye of the future, grew weak and faint-hearted, and sometimes thought it better to endure the things which hurt the people than to suffer the pains that come with their cure.

For nothing wrong is ever made right without pain. There is no such thing as a comfortable reform. Suffering is the price of putting righteousness in the place of wrong. But it is worth the price. Valley Forge was terrible, but the birth of the Republic was worth a thousand Valley Forges. Vicksburg and the Wilderness were fearful, but the unity of the American people was cheap at the cost of those red years, those storms of death, those fields of blood.

Throughout all these great movements for the betterment of man there were seasons of despair, and the despair of the good was strengthened by the courage of the bad. So in our Revolution we see Washington and his patriots surrounded within his own camp by scheme and plot to end the struggle; but Washington and his patriots kept straight on, and in the end they won. In Lincoln's day even pure and able men said of the seceding states, "Let the erring sisters go"; and a political party nominated for President a Union general upon a platform that "the war is a failure." Lincoln and those who thought that nothing could fail which was right, and nothing could win which was wrong, went straight on, and in the end they won.

So we see that our own movement to-day is just like every other similar movement throughout all history. It, too, is fought by the same kind of forces that fought the same kind of movements in the past. It, too, has its dark hour when those who have battled for it lose their nerve, and when those who oppose it come to the fight with fresh bravery and skill. It, too, has its plain and simple meaning the organization of honesty; or as I named it two years ago, the moral regeneration of American business. This is the clear light by which all the laws we have passed and intend to pass may be read easily, and by which future generations will behold and understand our times.

Each of these movements grew out of conditions, and so does ours. We have been busy with material things, making money, building railroads, sinking mines, occupying land;

busy with trade and the development of resources. All this was good. But finally we became so busy with material things that we forgot ideal things; so busy with results that we forgot methods. Development of resources too often became exploitation of resources; trade too often became trickery; government too often became graft; building industry too often became juggling with industry; the praiseworthy spirit of gain by fair methods too often gave way to the evil spirit of gain by any methods.

Men felled and sawed into lumber forests belonging to the Nation, and called it enterprise; men sold poisoned food and diseased meat to the people and called it business; men watered stocks, overcharged the people to make the stocks pay dividends, and called it finance; men forced secret rebates from railroads, built prosperous plants upon the fraud, and called it industry; men bought the mastery of cities and states, got corrupt privileges and contracts, and called it government; men purchased high office, and called it career.

When we stopped the robbery of the Nation's forests the robbers called it paternalism; when we stopped the sale of poisoned food and diseased meats the sellers called it socialism; when we are trying to stop stock-juggling, criminal rebates and the like the jugglers call it a raid on prosperity; when we try to stop government by graft and politics by purchase, those who grow rich by graft or go to high places by purchase call our work interference with private affairs in the one case, and assault upon respectability in the other case.

With us in America, the fight is between interests which do not want fair play on the one hand, and the people who mean that everybody shall play fair on the other hand. Here and now, as everywhere and at all times, the people are winning and will completely win. But it is a hard fight. Every man is needed. Especially young men like yourselves are needed. If the Nation were at war and it may be at war before many years every one of us would gladly give his blood and life