only distinction that America has.  Other nations have been strong, other nations have piled wealth as high as the sky, but they have come into disgrace because they used their force and their wealth for the oppression of mankind and their own aggrandizement; and America will not bring glory to herself, but disgrace, by following the beaten paths of history.  We must strike out upon new paths, and we must count upon you gentlemen to be the explorers who will carry this spirit and spread this message all over the seas and in every port of the civilized world.

You see, therefore, why I said that when I faced you I felt there was a special significance.  I am not present on an occasion when you are about to scatter on various errands.  You are all going on the same errand, and I like to feel bound with you in one common organization for the glory of America.  And her glory goes deeper than all the tinsel, goes deeper than the sound of guns and the clash of sabers; it goes down to the very foundations of those things that have made the spirit of men free and happy and content.

THE MEANING OF LIBERTY

[Address at Independence Hall, Philadelphia, July 4, 1914.]

MR. CHAIRMAN AND FELLOW-CITIZENS: 

We are assembled to celebrate the one hundred and thirty-eighth anniversary of the birth of the United States.  I suppose that we can more vividly realize the circumstances of that birth standing on this historic spot than it would be possible to realize them anywhere else.  The Declaration of Independence was written in Philadelphia; it was adopted in this historic building by which we stand.  I have just had the privilege of sitting in the chair of the great man who presided over the deliberations of those who gave the declaration to the world.  My hand rests at this moment upon the table upon which the declaration was signed.  We can feel that we are almost in the visible and tangible presence of a great historic transaction.

Have you ever read the Declaration of Independence or attended with close comprehension to the real character of it when you have heard it read?  If you have, you will know that it is not a Fourth of July oration.  The Declaration of Independence was a document preliminary to war.  It was a vital piece of practical business, not a piece of rhetoric; and if you will pass beyond those preliminary passages which we are accustomed to quote about the rights of men and read into the heart of the document you will see that it is very express and detailed, that it consists of a series of definite specifications concerning actual public business of the day.  Not the business of our day, for the matter with which it deals is past, but the business of that first revolution by which the Nation was set up, the business of 1776.  Its general statements, its general declarations cannot mean anything to us unless we append to it a similar specific body of particulars as to what we consider the essential business of our own day.