Memorial Day Address at Arlington Cemetery

WHENEVER I seek to interpret the spirit of an occasion like this I am led to reflect upon the seas of memory. We are here today to recall a period of our history which in one sense is so remote that we no longer seem to keep the vital threads of it in our consciousness, and yet is so near that men who played heroic parts in it are still living, are still about us, are still here to receive the homage of our respect and our honor. They belong to an age which is past, to a period the vital questions of which no longer vex the Nation, to a period of which it may be said that certain things which had been questionable in the affairs of the United States were once for all settled, disposed of, put behind us, and in the course of time have almost been forgotten.

It was a singularly complete work that was performed by the processes of blood and iron at the time of the Civil War, and it is singular how the settlement has ruled our spirits since it was made. I see in this very audience men who fought in the Confederate ranks. I see them taking part in these exercises in the same spirit of sincere patriotism that moves those who fought on the side of the Union, and I reflect how singular and how handsome a thing it is that wounds such as then were opened should be so completely healed and that the spirit of America should so prevail over the spirit of division.

It is the all-prevailing and triumphant spirit of America, where, by our common action and consent, Governments are set up and pulled down; where affairs are ruled by common counsel; and where, by the healing processes of peace, all men are united in a common enterprise of liberty and of peace.

And yet, ladies and gentlemen, the very object for which we are met together is to renew in our hearts the spirit that made these things possible. The Union was saved by the processes of the Civil War. That was a crisis which could be handled, it seems, in no other way, but I need not tell you that the peculiarity of this singular and beloved country is that its task—its human task —is apparently never finished; that it is always making and to be made.

And there is at present upon us a crisis which seems to threaten to be a new crisis of division. We know that the war which is to ensue will be a war of spirits and not of arms. We know that the spirit of America is invincible and that no man can abate its power, but we know that that spirit must upon occasion be asserted, and that this is one of the occasions.

America is made up out of all the nations of the world. Look at the rosters of the Civil War. You will see names there drawn from almost every European stock. Not recently, but from the first, America has drawn her blood and her impulse from all the sources of energy that spring at the fountains of every race, and because she is thus compounded out of the peoples of the world her problem is largely a problem of union all the time, a problem of compounding out of many elements a single triumphal force.

The war in Europe has done a very natural thing in America. It has stirred the memories of men drawn from many of the belligerent stocks. It has renewed in them a national feeling which had grown faint under the soothing influence of peace, but which now flares up when it looks as if nation had challenged nation to a final reckoning, and they remember the nations from which they were sprung and know that they are in this life-and-death grapple. It is not singular, my fellow citizens, that this should have occurred, and up to a certain point it is not just that we should criticize it. We have no criticism for men who love the places of their birth and the sources of their origin. We do not wish men to forget their mothers and their fathers, their forbears running back through long, laborious generations which have taken part in the building up of the strength and spirit of other nations. No man quarrels with that.

From such springs of sentiment we all draw some of the handsomest inspirations of our lives. But all that we do criticize is that in some instances—they are not very numerous—but in some instances men have allowed this old ardor of another nationality to overthrow their ardor for the nationality to which they have given their new and voluntary allegiance. And so the United States has again to work out by spiritual process a new union, when men shall not think of what divides them but shall recall what unites them; when men shall not allow old loves to take the place of present allegiances; when men must, on the contrary, translate that very ardor of love of country of their birth into the ardor of love for the country of their adoption and the principles which it represents.

I have no harshness in my heart even for the extremists in this thing which I have been trying in moderate words to describe; but I summon them, and I summon them very solemnly, not to set their purpose against the purpose of America. America must come first in every purpose we entertain, and every man must count upon being cast out of our confidence, cast out even of our tolerance, who does not submit to that great ruling principle.

But what are the purposes of America? Do you not see that there is another significance in the fact that we are made up out of all the peoples of the world? The significance of that fact is that we are not going to devote our nationality to the same mistaken aggressive purposes that some other nationalities have been devoted to; that because we are made up, and consciously made up, out of all the great family of mankind, we are champions of the rights of mankind.

We are not only ready to co-operate, but we are ready to fight against any aggression, whether from without or from within. But we must guard ourselves against the sort of aggression which would be unworthy of America. We are ready to fight for our rights when those rights are coincident with the rights of man and humanity. It was to set those rights up, to vindicate them, to offer a home to every man who believed in them, that America was created and her Government set up. We have kept our doors open because we did not think we in conscience could close them against men who wanted to join their force with ours in vindicating the claim of mankind to liberty and justice.

America does not want any additional territory. She does not want any selfish advantage over any other nation in the world, but she does wish every nation in the world to understand what she stands for and to respect what she stands for; and I can not conceive of any men of any blood or origin failing to feel an enthusiasm for the things that America stands for, or failing to see that they are indefinitely elevated above any purpose of aggression or selfish advantage.

I said the other evening in another place that one of the principles which America held dear was that small and weak States had as much right to their sovereignty and independence as large and strong States. She believes that because strength and weakness have nothing to do with her principles. Her principles are for the rights and liberties of mankind, and this is the haven which we have offered to those who believe that sublime and sacred creed of humanity.

And I also said that I believed that the people of the United States were ready to become partners in any alliance of the nations that would guarantee public right above selfish aggression. Some of the public prints have reminded me, as if I needed to be reminded, of what General Washington warned us against. He warned us against entangling alliances. I shall never myself consent to an entangling alliance, but I would gladly assent to a disentangling alliance—an alliance which would disentangle the peoples of the world from those combinations in which they seek their own separate and private interests and unite the people of the world to preserve the peace of the world upon a basis of common right and justice. There is liberty there, not limitation. There is freedom, not entanglement. There is the achievement of the highest things for which the United States has declared its principle.

We have been engaged recently, my fellow citizens, in discussing the processes of preparedness. I have been trying to explain to you what we are getting prepared for, and I want to point out to you the only process of preparation which is possible for the United States. It is possible for the United States to get ready only if the men of suitable age and strength will volunteer to get ready.

I heard the president of the United States Chamber of Commerce report the other evening on a referendum to 750 of the chambers of commerce of the United States upon the question of preparedness, and he reported that 99 per cent of them had voted in favor of preparedness. Very well, now, we are going to apply the acid test to these gentlemen, and the acid test is this: Will they give the young men in their employment freedom to volunteer for this thing? I wish the referendum had included that, because that is the essence of the matter.

It is all very well to say that somebody else must prepare, but are the business men of this country ready themselves to lend a hand and sacrifice an interest in order that we may get ready? We shall have an answer to that question in the next few months. A bill is lying upon my table now, ready to be signed, which bristles all over with that interrogation point, and I want all the business men of the country to see that interrogation point staring them in the face. I have heard a great many people talk about universal training. Universal voluntary training, with all my heart, if you wish it, but America does not wish anything but the compulsion of the spirit of America.

I, for my part, do not entertain any serious doubt of the answer to these questions, because I suppose there is no place in the world where the compulsion of public opinion is more imperative than it is in the United States. You know yourself how you behave when you think nobody is watching. And now all the people of the United States are watching each other. There never was such a blazing spotlight upon the conduct and principles of every American as each one of us now walks and blinks in.

And as this spotlight sweeps its relentless rays across every square mile of the territory of the United States, I know a great many men, even when they do not want to, are going to stand up and say, ‘Here.’ Because America is roused, roused to a self-consciousness and a national self-consciousness such as she has not had in a generation.

And this spirit is going out conquering and to conquer until, it may be, in the Providence of God, a new light is lifted up in America which shall throw the rays of liberty and justice far abroad upon every sea, and even upon the lands which now wallow in darkness and refuse to see the light.