ke home.

I like the German fir-woods, in green battalions drilled;
I like the gardens of Versailles with flashing fountains filled;
But, oh, to take your hand, my dear, and ramble for a day
In the friendly western woodland where Nature has her way!

I know that Europe's wonderful, yet something seems to lack:
The Past is too much with her, and the people looking back.
But the glory of the Present is to make the Future free--
We love our land for what she is and what she is to be.

_Oh, it's home again, and home again, America for me!
I want a ship that's westward bound to plough the rolling sea,
To the blessed Land of Room Enough beyond the ocean bars,
Where the air is full of sunlight and the flag is full of stars._

Henry van Dyke

AMERICA FIRST

The following address was delivered by President Wilson at the
celebration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Daughters of the
American Revolution, Washington, D. C., October 11th, 1915. It is
given here by special permission of the president.

MADAM PRESIDENT AND LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:--Again it is my very great
privilege to welcome you to the city of Washington and to the
hospitalities of the Capital. May I admit a point of ignorance? I was
surprised to learn that this association is so young, and that an
association so young should devote itself wholly to memory I cannot
believe. For to me the duties to which you are consecrated are more than
the duties and the pride of memory.

There is a very great thrill to be had from the memories of the American
Revolution, but the American Revolution was a beginning, not a
consummation, and the duty laid upon us by that beginning is the duty of
bringing the things then begun to a noble triumph of completion. For it
seems to me that the peculiarity of patriotism in America is that it is
not a mere sentiment. It is an active principle of conduct. It is
something that was born into the world, not to please it but to
regenerate it. It is something that was born into the world to replace
systems that had preceded it and to bring men out upon a new plane of
privilege. The glory of the men whose memories you honor and perpetuate
is that they saw this vision, and it was a vision of the future. It was
a vision of great days to come when a little handful of three million
people upon the borders of a single sea should have become a great
multitude of free men and women spreading across a great c