e of every sea; and everywhere, as the
luminous symbol of resistless and beneficent power, they have led the
brave to victory and to glory. They have floated over our cradles; let
it be our prayer and our struggle that they shall float over our graves.

FOOTNOTE:

[35] By permission of the publishers, Fords, Howard & Hulbert.

THE AMERICAN PEOPLE[36]

ALBERT J. BEVERIDGE

The day for the provincial and the transient has passed in American
statesmanship. To-day our destiny is brooding over every sea. We are
dealing with the world and with the unborn years. We are dealing with
the larger duties that ever crowned and burdened human brows. American
statesmanship must be as broad as American destiny and as brave as
American duty. And American statesmanship will be all this if it draws
its inspiration from the masterful American people and their imperial
history.

For the American people have never taken fear for a counselor. They
have never taken doubt for a guide. They have obeyed the impulses of
their blood. They have hearkened to the voice of our God. They have
surmounted insuperable obstacles on the wings of a mighty faith; they
have solved insoluble problems by the sovereign rule of liberty; they
have made the bosom of the ocean and the heart of the wilderness their
home; they have subdued nature and told history a new tale. Let American
statesmanship listen to the heart-beats of the American people in the
present hour and there will be no confusion, no hesitation, no craven
doubt. The faith of the Mayflower, as it sailed into the storm-fringed
horizon, is with us yet. The courage of Lexington and Bunker Hill is
with us yet. The spirit of Hamilton and Jefferson and Jackson and Seward
and Grant is with us yet. The unconquerable heart of the pioneer still
beats within American breasts, and the American flag advances still in
its ceaseless and imperial progress, with law and order and Christian
civilization trooping beneath its sacred folds.

The American people are the propagandists and not the misers of liberty.
He who no longer believes in the vitality of the American people, in the
immortality and saving grace of free institutions, in the imperial
greatness of American destiny, belongs not in the councils of the
American Nation, but in the somber Cabinets of the decaying races of the
world. The American people are not perishing; they are just beginning
their real career. The full sunrise of the day whic