rmies, but
with principalities and powers and wickedness in high places? Are we
content to lie still? Does our union mean sympathy, our peace
contentment, our vigor right action, our maturity self-comprehension and
a clear confidence in choosing what we shall do? War fitted us for
action, and action never ceases.

I have been chosen the leader of the Nation. I cannot justify the choice
by any qualities of my own, but so it has come about, and here I stand.
Whom do I command? The ghostly hosts who fought upon these battlefields
long ago and are gone? These gallant gentlemen stricken in years whose
fighting days, are over, their glory won? What are the orders for them,
and who rallies them? I have in my mind another host, whom these set
free of civil strife in order that they might work out in days of peace
and settled order the life of a great Nation. That host is the people
themselves, the great and the small, without class or difference of kind
or race or origin; and undivided in interest, if we have but the vision
to guide and direct them and order their lives aright in what we do. Our
constitutions are their articles of enlistment. The orders of the day
are the laws upon our statute books. What we strive for is their
freedom, their right to lift themselves from day to day and behold the
things they have hoped for, and so make way for still better days for
those whom they love who are to come after them. The recruits are the
little children crowding in. The quartermaster's stores are in the mines
and forests and fields, in the shops and factories. Every day something
must be done to push the campaign forward; and it must be done by plan
and with an eye to some great destiny.

How shall we hold such thoughts in our hearts and not be moved? I would
not have you live even to-day wholly in the past, but would wish to
stand with you in the light that streams upon us now out of that great
day gone by. Here is the nation God has builded by our hands. What shall
we do with it? Who stands ready to act again and always in the spirit of
this day of reunion and hope and patriotic fervor? The day of our
country's life has but broadened into morning. Do not put uniforms by.
Put the harness of the present on. Lift your eyes to the great tracts of
life yet to be conquered in the interest of righteous peace, of that
prosperity which lies in a people's hearts and outlasts all wars and
errors of men. Come, let us be comrades and soldie