Intellectually our progress compares with our prosperity.  The opportunity for education is not only large, but it is well used.  The school is everywhere.  Ignorance is a disgrace.  The turrets of college and university dot the land.  Their student bodies were never so large.  Science and invention, literature and art flourish.

There is higher standard of justice in all the affairs of life than in the past.  Our commercial transactions are on a higher plane.  There is a moral standard that runs through all the avenues of our life that has lifted it into a new position and gives to men a keener sense of honor in all things.  There has come to be a new realization of the brotherhood of man, a new significance to religion.  The war aroused a new patriotism, and revealed the strength of our moral power.

The issue in Massachusetts is whether these conditions can endure.  Will men realize their blessing and exhibit the resolution to support and defend the foundation on which they rest?  Having saved Europe are we ready to surrender America?  Having beaten the foe from without are we to fall a victim to the foe from within?

All of this is put in question by the issue of this campaign.  That one fundamental issue is the support of the Government in its determination to maintain order.  On that all of these opportunities depend.

There can be no material prosperity without order.  Stores and banks could not open.  Factories could not run, railways could not operate.  What was the value of plate glass and goods, the value of real estate in Boston at three o’clock, A.M., September 10?  Unless the people vote to sustain order that value is gone entirely.  Business is ended.

On order depends all intellectual progress.  Without it all schools close, libraries are empty, education stops.  Disorder was the forerunner of the Dark Ages.

Without order the moral progress of the people would be lost.  With the schools would go the churches.  There could be no assemblages for worship, no services even for the departed, piety would be swallowed up in viciousness.

I have understated the result of disorder.  Man has not the imagination, the ability to overstate it.  There are those who aim to bring about exactly this result.  I propose at all times to resist them with all the power at the command of the Chief Executive of Massachusetts.

Naturally the question arises, what shall we do to defend our birthright?  In the first place everybody must take a more active part in public affairs.  It will not do for men to send, they must go.  It is not enough to draw a check.  Good government cannot be bought, it has to be given.  Office has great opportunities for doing wrong, but equal chance for doing right.  Unless good citizens hold office bad citizens will.  People see the office-holder rather than the Government.  Let the worth of the office-holder speak the worth of the government.  The voice of the people speaks by the voice of the individual.  Duty is not collective, it is personal.  Let every inhabitant make known his determination to support law and order.  That duty is supreme.