At the outset I wish to say a word of special greeting to the representatives of the foreign governments here present. They have come to assist us in celebrating what was in very truth the birthday of this nation, for it was here that the colonists first settled, whose incoming, whose growth from their own loins and by the addi10 tion of newcomers from abroad, was to make the people which one hundred sixty-nine years later assumed the solemn responsibilities and weighty duties of complete independence.

In welcoming all of you I must say a special word, first to the representa tive of the people of Great Britain and Ireland. The fact that so many of our people, of whom as it happens I 20 myself am one, have but a very small

portion of English blood in our veins. in no way alters the other fact that this nation was founded by Englishmen, by the Cavalier and the Puritan. Their tongue, law, literature, the fund of their common thought, made an inheritance which all of us share, and marked deep the lines along which we have developed. It was the men of 30 English stock who did most in casting the mold into which our national character was run.

Let me furthermore greet all of you, the representatives of the people of continental Europe. From almost every nation of Europe we have drawn some part of our blood, some part of our traits. This mixture of blood has gone on from the beginning, and with 40 it has gone on a kind of development unexampled among peoples of the stock from which we spring; and hence today we differ sharply from, and yet

in some ways are fundamentally akin to, all of the nations of Europe.

Again, let me bid you welcome, representatives of our sister Republics of this continent. In the larger aspect, your interests and ours are identical. Your problems and ours are 30 in large part the same; and as we strive to settle them, I pledge you herewith on the part of this nation the heartiest friendship and good will.

Finally, let me say a special word of greeting to those representatives of the Asiatic nations who make up that newest East which is yet the most ancient East, the East of time immemorial. In particular, let me ex- 60 press a word of hearty welcome to the representative of the mighty island empire of Japan; that empire, which, in learning from the West, has shown that it had so much, so very much, to teach the West in return.

To all of you here gathered I express my thanks for your coming, and I extend to you my earnest wishes for the welfare of your several nations. 70 The world has moved so far that it is no longer necessary to believe that one nation can rise only by thrusting another down. All far-sighted statesmen, all true patriots, now earnestly wish that the leading nations of mankind, as in their several ways they struggle constantly toward a higher civilization, a higher humanity, may advance hand in hand, united only in 80 a generous rivalry to see which can best do its allotted work in the world. I believe that there is a rising tide in human thought which tends for righteous international peace; a tide which it behooves us to guide through ra

and all of us here present can well afford to take to heart St. Paul's counsel: "If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men."

We have met today to celebrate the opening of the Exposition which itself commemorates the first permanent 10 settlement of men of our stock in Virginia, the first beginning of what has since become this mighty Republic. Three hundred years ago a handful of English adventurers, who had crossed the ocean in what we should now call cockle-boats, as clumsy as they were frail, landed in the great wooded wilderness, the Indian-haunted waste, which then stretched down to the 20 water's edge along the entire Atlantic coast. They were not the first men of European race to settle in what is now the United States, for there were already Spanish settlements in Florida and on the headwaters of the Rio Grande; and the French, who at almost the same time were struggling up the St. Lawrence, were likewise destined to form permanent settlements on the 30 Great Lakes and in the valley of the Mississippi before the people of English stock went westward of the Alleghenies. Moreover, both the Dutch and the Swedes were shortly to found colonies between the two sets of English colonies, those that grew up around the Potomac and those that grew up on what is now the New England coast. Nevertheless, this landing at 40 Jamestown possesses for us of the United States an altogether peculiar significance, and this without regard to our several origins. The men who landed at Jamestown and those who, thirteen years later, landed at Plymouth, all of English stock, and their fellow-settlers who during the next few decades streamed in after them, were those who took the lead in shaping the

onial and revolutionary days. It was they who bent into definite shape our nation while it was still young enough most easily, most readily, to take on the characteristics which were to become part of its permanent life habit.

Yet let us remember that while this early English colonial stock has left deeper than all others upon our 60 national life the mark of its strong twin individualities, the mark of the Cavalier and of the Puritan-nevertheless, this stock, not only from its environment but also from the presence with it of other stocks, almost from the beginning began to be differentiated strongly from any European people. As I have already said, about the time the first English settlers 70 landed here, the Frenchman and the Spaniard, the Swede and the Dutchman, also came hither as permanent dwellers, who left their seed behind them to help shape and partially to inherit our national life. The German, the Irishman, and the Scotchman came later, but still in colonial times. Before the outbreak of the Revolution the American people, not only because 80 of their surroundings, physical and spiritual, but because of the mixture of blood that had already begun to take place, represented a new and distinct ethnic type. This type has never been fixed in blood. All through the colonial days new waves of immigration from time to time swept hither across the ocean, now from one country, now from another. The 90 same thing has gone on ever since our birth as a nation; and for the last sixty years the tide of immigration has been at the full. The newcomers are soon absorbed into our eager national life, and are radically and profoundly changed thereby, the rapidity of their assimilation being marvel

ous.

But each group of newcomers, as it adds its blood to the life, also changes it somewhat, and this change and growth and development have gone on steadily, generation by generation, throughout three centuries.

The pioneers of our people who first landed on these shores on that eventful day three centuries ago had 10 before them a task which during the early years was of heartbreaking danger and difficulty. The conquest of a new continent is iron work. People who dwell in old civilizations and find that therein so much of humanity's lot is hard, are apt to complain against the conditions as being solely due to man and speak as if life could be made easy and 20 simple if there were but a virgin continent in which to work. It is true that the pioneer life was simpler, but it was certainly not easier. As a matter of fact, the first work of the pioneers in taking possession of a lonely wilderness is so rough, so hard, so dangerous, that all but the strongest spirits fail. The early iron days of such a conquest search out alike the 30 weak in body and the weak in soul.

In the warfare against the rugged sternness of primeval Nature, only those can conquer who are themselves unconquerable. It is not until the first bitter years have passed that the life becomes easy enough to invite a mass of newcomers, and so great are the risk, hardship, and toil of the early years that there always exists a threat 40 of lapsing back from civilization.

The history of the pioneers of Jamestown, of the founders of Virginia, illustrates the truth of all this. Famine and pestilence and war menaced the little band of daring men who had planted themselves alone on the edge of a frowning continent. Moreover, as men ever find, whether in the tiniest frontier community or

in the vastest and most highly organ- 50 ized and complex civilized society, their worst foes were in their own bosoms. Dissension, distrust, the inability of some to work and the unwillingness of others, jealousy, arrogance and envy, folly and lazinessin short, all the shortcomings with which we have to grapple now, were faced by

faced by those pioneers, and at moments threatened their whole enter- 60 prise with absolute ruin. It was some time before the ground on which they had landed supported them, in spite of its potential fertility, and they looked across the sea for supplies. At one moment so hopeless did they become that the whole colony embarked, and was only saved from abandoning the country by the opportune arrival of help from abroad.

70

At last they took root in the land, and were already prospering when the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth. In a few years a great inflow of settlers began. Four of the present states of New England were founded. Virginia waxed apace. The Carolinas grew up to the south of it, and Maryland to the north of it. The Dutch colonies between, which had already absorbed so the Swedish, were in their turn absorbed by the English. Pennsylvania was founded and, later still, Georgia. There were many wars with the Indians and with the dauntless captains whose banners bore the lilies of France. At last the British flag flew without a rival in all eastern North America. Then came the successful struggle for national independence. 90

For half a century after we became a separate nation there was comparatively little immigration to this country. Then the tide once again set hither, and has flowed in ever-increasing size until in each of the last three years a greater number of people came to these shores than had landed on

them during the entire colonial period. Generation by generation these people have been absorbed into the national life. Generally their sons, almost always their grandsons, are indistinguishable from one another and from their fellow-Americans descended from the colonial stock. For all alike the problems of our existence 10 are fundamentally the same, and for all alike these problems change from generation to generation.

In the colonial period, and for at least a century after its close, the conquest of the continent, the expansion of our people westward, to the Alleghenies, then to the Mississippi, then to the Pacific, was always one of the most important tasks, and sometimes 20 the most important, in our national life. Behind the first settlers the conditions grew easier, and in the oldersettled regions of all the colonies life speedily assumed much of comfort and something of luxury; and though generally it was on a much more democratic basis than life in the Old World, it was by no means democratic when judged by our modern standards; and 30 here and there, as in the tidewater regions of Virginia, a genuine aristocracy grew and flourished. But the men who first broke ground in the virgin wilderness, whether on the Atlantic coast, or in the interior, fought hard for mere life. In the early stages the frontiersman had to do battle with the savage, and when the savage was vanquished, there remained the harder 40 strain of war with the hostile forces of soil and climate, with flood, fever, and famine. There was sickness, and bitter weather; there were no roads; there was a complete lack of all but the very roughest and most absolute necessaries. Under such circumstances the men and women who made ready the continent for civilization were able themselves to spend but little time in

doing aught but the rough work which 50 was to make smooth the ways of their successors. In consequence observers whose insight was spoiled by lack of sympathy always found both the settlers and their lives unattractive and repellent. In Martin Chuzzlewit the description of America, culminating in the description of the frontier town of Eden, was true and lifelike from the standpoint of one content to look 60 merely at the outer shell; and yet it was a community like Eden that gave birth to Abraham Lincoln; it was men such as were therein described from whose loins Andrew Jackson sprang.

Hitherto each generation among us has had its allotted task, now heavier, now lighter. In the Revolutionary War the business was to achieve independence. Immediately afterwards 70 there was an even more momentous task: that to achieve the national unity and the capacity for orderly development, without which our liberty, our independence, would have been a curse and not a blessing. In each of these two contests, while there were many great leaders from many different states, it is but fair to say that the foremost place was taken by the sol- 80 diers and the statesmen of Virginia; and to Virginia was reserved the honor of producing the hero of both movements, the hero of the war, and of the peace that made good the results of the war-George Washington; while the two great political tendencies of the time can be symbolized by the names of two other great Virginians-Jefferson and Marshall-from one of whom 90 we inherit the abiding trust in the people which is the foundation stone of democracy, and from the other the power to develop on behalf of the people a coherent and powerful government, a genuine and representative nationality.

56. Martin Chuzzlewit, a novel by Dickens.

Two generations passed before the second great crisis of our history had to be faced. Then came the Civil War, terrible and bitter in itself and in its aftermath, but a struggle from which the nation finally emerged united in fact as well as in name, united forever. Oh, my hearers, my fellow countrymen, great indeed has been our good 10 fortune; for as time clears away the mists that once shrouded brother from brother and made each look "as through a glass darkly" at the other, we can all feel the same pride in the valor, the devotion and the fealty toward the right as it was given to each to see the right, shown alike by the men who wore the blue and by the men who wore the gray. Rich and 20 prosperous though we are as a people,

the proudest heritage that each of us has, no matter where he may dwell, North or South, East or West, is the immaterial heritage of feeling, the right to claim as his own all the valor

12. as through a glass darkly. See Romans xiii, 12.

and all the steadfast devotion to duty shown by the men of both the great armies, of the soldiers whose leader was Grant and the soldiers whose leader was Lee. The men and the 30 women of the Civil War did their duty bravely and well in the days that were dark and terrible and splendid. We, their descendants, who pay proud homage to their memories, and glory in the feats of might of one side no less than of the other, need to keep steadily in mind that the homage which counts is the homage of heart and of hand, and not of the lips, the homage of 40 deeds and not of words only. We, too, in our turn, must prove our truth by our endeavor. We must show ourselves worthy sons of the men of the mighty days by the way in which we meet the problems of our own time. We carry our heads high because our fathers did well in the years that tried men's souls; and we must in our turn so bear ourselves that the children who 50 come after us may feel that we too have done our duty.