f her
liberties; they have faith in her great destiny as the leader of an
emancipated world. They respond, as did their ancestors, to the great
truths of liberty, equality, and fraternity that inspired the eighteenth
century.

The tradition of America is a hope, a faith, a conviction, a burning
endeavor, centering in an ideal of liberty and justice for the human
race.

Patrick Henry voiced this ideal when, a passionate appeal for freedom
being interrupted by cries of "Treason, treason!" he faced the objector
with the declaration, "If this be treason, make the most of it!"

Eighteenth century Europe, struggling against religious and political
tyranny, looked to America as the land of Freedom. America to them meant
liberty. "What Athens was in miniature, America will be in magnitude,"
wrote Tom Paine. "The one was the wonder of the ancient world; the other
is becoming the admiration, the model of the present." ("The Rights of
Man," Part II, Chapter 3.) The promise of 1776 was voiced by men who
felt a consuming passion for freedom; a divine discontent with anything
less than the highest possible justice; a hatred of tyranny, oppression
and every form of special privilege and vested wrong. They yearned over
the future and hoped grandly for the human race.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] "It is, Sir, the people's constitution, the people's government,
made for the people, made by the people, and answerable to the
people."--Daniel Webster's reply to Hayne, 1830. "Speeches and
Orations." E. P. Whipple, Boston, Little, Brown and Co., p. 257.

[2] Tom Paine held ardently to this doctrine, "It is always the interest
of a far greater number of people in a Nation to have things right than
to let them remain wrong; and when public matters are open to debate,
and the public judgment free, it will not decide wrong unless it decides
too hastily!" "Rights of Man," Part II, Ch. 4.

[3] "Rights of Man," Thomas Paine. Part II, Chapter 3.

II. THE COURSE OF EMPIRE

1. _Promise and Fulfillment_

A vast gulf yawns between the inspiring promise that a handful of men
and women made to the world in 1776, and the fulfillment of that promise
that is embodied in twentieth century American life. The pre-war
indifference to the loss of liberty; the gradual encroachments on the
rights of free speech, and free assemblage and of free press; the
war-time suppressions, tyrannies, and denials of justice; the subsequent
activities of city, state, and