new-found land, but because all those who came here believed they
could create upon this continent a new life--a life that should be new
in freedom.

Its vitality was written into our own Mayflower Compact, into the
Declaration of Independence, into the Constitution of the United States,
into the Gettysburg Address.

Those who first came here to carry out the longings of their spirit, and
the millions who followed, and the stock that sprang from them--all
have moved forward constantly and consistently toward an ideal which in
itself has gained stature and clarity with each generation.

The hopes of the Republic cannot forever tolerate either undeserved
poverty or self-serving wealth.

We know that we still have far to go; that we must more greatly build
the security and the opportunity and the knowledge of every citizen, in
the measure justified by the resources and the capacity of the land.

But it is not enough to achieve these purposes alone. It is not enough
to clothe and feed the body of this Nation, and instruct and inform its
mind. For there is also the spirit. And of the three, the greatest is
the spirit.

Without the body and the mind, as all men know, the Nation could not
live.

But if the spirit of America were killed, even though the Nation's body
and mind, constricted in an alien world, lived on, the America we know
would have perished.

That spirit--that faith--speaks to us in our daily lives in ways often
unnoticed, because they seem so obvious. It speaks to us here in
the Capital of the Nation. It speaks to us through the processes of
governing in the sovereignties of 48 States. It speaks to us in our
counties, in our cities, in our towns, and in our villages. It speaks to
us from the other nations of the hemisphere, and from those across the
seas--the enslaved, as well as the free. Sometimes we fail to hear or
heed these voices of freedom because to us the privilege of our freedom
is such an old, old story.

The destiny of America was proclaimed in words of prophecy spoken by our
first President in his first inaugural in 1789--words almost directed,
it would seem, to this year of 1941: "The preservation of the sacred
fire of liberty and the destiny of the republican model of government
are justly considered... deeply,... finally, staked on the experiment
intrusted to the hands of the American people."

If we lose that sacred fire--if we let it be smothered with doubt
and fear--then we shall