rs monthly where
needed for their support. The production and distribution of food and
fuel have been advanced. The maintenance of industrial peace has been
promoted. The Gloucester fishermen, fifteen thousand shoemakers in
Lynn, the Boston & Maine railroad employees, have had their differences
adjusted. A second million dollars for emergency expenses has been given
the Governor and Council. An efficient State Guard of over ten thousand
men has been organized. Our brave soldiers, their dependents, the great
patriotic public have been protected by the present Government with
every means that ingenuity could devise. We have won the right to
reelection by duty well performed.

Remember this: we are not responsible for the war, we are responsible
for the preparation that enables us to defend our soldiers and ourselves
from savages. Massachusetts is not going to repudiate these patriotic
services. To do so now would mean more than repudiating the Government.
It would mean repudiating the devotion of our brave men in arms,
repudiating the sacrifice of the fathers, mothers, wives, and dear ones
behind, and repudiating the loyalty of the millions who subscribed to
the Liberty Loan,--it would mean repudiating America.

Massachusetts has decided that the path of the Mayflower shall not be
closed. She has decided to sail the seas. She has decided to sail not
under the edict of Potsdam, crimped in narrow lanes seeking safety in
unarmed merchantmen painted in fantastic hues, as the badge of an
infamous servitude, but she has decided to sail under the ancient
Declaration of Independence, choosing what course she will, maintaining
security by the guns of ships of the line, flying at the mast the Stars
and Stripes, forever the emblem of a militant liberty.

XIV

DEDICATION OF TOWN-HOUSE, WESTON

NOVEMBER 27, 1917

I was interested to come out here and take part in the dedication of
this beautiful building in part because my ancestors had lived in this
locality in times gone past, but more especially because I am interested
in the town governments of Massachusetts. You have heard the
town-meeting referred to this evening. It seemed to me that the towns in
this Commonwealth correspond in part to what we might call the
water-tight compartments of the ship of state, and while sometimes our
State Government has wavered, sometimes it has been suspended, and it
has been thought that the people could not care for themselves unde