We are still battling, and we still need it. And at times our
contests still inevitably take the physical form. One may earnestly pray
for peace; one may even pay his dues to the Peace Society and still
realize that to preserve peace we may have to use the sword.

Northward, across the Canadian border, good men[11] are striving even now
to keep us in peace and to assure peace to a neighbor severely torn by
internal conflict. Can any of us doubt that our good friend and
fellow-citizen--nay, can anyone doubt that our neighbors of the Southern
Continent--are doing their best to save human lives, to preserve our young
men and the young men of Mexico to build and operate machines, to raise
crops and to rebuild and beautify cities, instead of sending them to fill
soldiers' graves, as our bravest and best did in the "sixties?" And yet,
should they succeed, as God grant they may, who can doubt that what will
give strength and effect to their decisions will be the possibility of
force, exerted in a righteous cause, symbolized by the flag? Who can be
sorry that back of the flag there are earnest men; nay, that there are
ships there, and guns? One need not be a Jingo; one can hate war and love
peace with all one's heart and yet rejoice that the flag symbolizes
authority--the ability to back up a decision without which the mind itself
cannot decide in calmness and impartiality.

[11] United States and "A-B-C" Commissions on the State of Mexico.

Surely, to say that the flag stands for the exertion of force, is only to
say that it stands for peace; for it is by force only, or by the
possibility of it, that peace is assured and maintained.

These are a few of the many things for which our flag of the Stars and
Stripes stands. We are right to doff our hats when it passes; we are right
to love it and to reverence it, for in so doing we are reverencing union,
patriotism, liberty and justice. That it shall never become an empty
symbol; that it shall never wave over a land disunited, animated by hate,
shackled by indifference and feebleness, permeated by injustice, unable to
exert that salutary strength which alone can preserve peace without and
within--this is for us to see and for our children and grandchildren. We
must not only exercise that "eternal vigilance" of which the fathers
spoke, but we must be eternally ready, eternally active. The Star-Spangled
Banner! Long may it wave over a land whose sons and daughters are both
fre