f reorganization. But we met with hardly
anything but criticism from the bankers of the country; we met with
hardly anything but resistance from the majority of those at least who
spoke at all concerning the matter. And yet so soon as that act was
passed there was a universal chorus of applause, and the very men who
had opposed the measure joined in that applause. If it was wrong the day
before it was passed, why was it right the day after it was passed?
Where had been the candor of criticism not only, but the concert of
counsel which makes legislative action vigorous and safe and successful?

It is not patriotic to concert measures against one another; it is
patriotic to concert measures for one another.

In one sense the Declaration of Independence has lost its significance.
It has lost its significance as a declaration of national independence.
Nobody outside of America believed when it was uttered that we could
make good our independence; now nobody anywhere would dare to doubt that
we are independent and can maintain our independence. As a declaration
of independence, therefore, it is a mere historic document. Our
independence is a fact so stupendous that it can be measured only by the
size and energy and variety and wealth and power of one of the greatest
nations in the world. But it is one thing to be independent and it is
another thing to know what to do with your independence. It is one thing
to come to your majority and another thing to know what you are going to
do with your life and your energies; and one of the most serious
questions for sober-minded men to address themselves to in the United
States is this: What are we going to do with the influence and power of
this great Nation? Are we going to play the old role of using that power
for our aggrandizement and material benefit only? You know what that may
mean. It may upon occasion mean that we shall use it to make the
peoples of other nations suffer in the way in which we said it was
intolerable to suffer when we uttered our Declaration of Independence.

The Department of State at Washington is constantly called upon to back
up the commercial enterprises and the industrial enterprises of the
United States in foreign countries, and it at one time went so far in
that direction that all its diplomacy came to be designated as "dollar
diplomacy." It was called upon to support every man who wanted to earn
anything anywhere if he was an American. But there ough