Independence was written in Philadelphia; it was
adopted in this historic building by which we stand. I have just had the
privilege of sitting in the chair of the great man who presided over the
deliberations of those who gave the declaration to the world. My hand
rests at this moment upon the table upon which the declaration was
signed. We can feel that we are almost in the visible and tangible
presence of a great historic transaction.

Have you ever read the Declaration of Independence or attended with
close comprehension to the real character of it when you have heard it
read? If you have, you will know that it is not a Fourth of July
oration. The Declaration of Independence was a document preliminary to
war. It was a vital piece of practical business, not a piece of
rhetoric; and if you will pass beyond those preliminary passages which
we are accustomed to quote about the rights of men and read into the
heart of the document you will see that it is very express and detailed,
that it consists of a series of definite specifications concerning
actual public business of the day. Not the business of our day, for the
matter with which it deals is past, but the business of that first
revolution by which the Nation was set up, the business of 1776. Its
general statements, its general declarations cannot mean anything to us
unless we append to it a similar specific body of particulars as to what
we consider the essential business of our own day.

Liberty does not consist, my fellow-citizens, in mere general
declarations of the rights of man. It consists in the translation of
those declarations into definite action. Therefore, standing here where
the declaration was adopted, reading its businesslike sentences, we
ought to ask ourselves what there is in it for us. There is nothing in
it for us unless we can translate it into the terms of our own
conditions and of our own lives. We must reduce it to what the lawyers
call a bill of particulars. It contains a bill of particulars, but the
bill of particulars of 1776. If we would keep it alive, we must fill it
with a bill of particulars of the year 1914.

The task to which we have constantly to readdress ourselves is the task
of proving that we are worthy of the men who drew this great declaration
and know what they would have done in our circumstances. Patriotism
consists in some very practical things--practical in that they belong to
the life of every day, that they wear no ext