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Show "So Long as There Shall Remain Any Virtue in the Body of the People" By ROBERT SESSIONS, Phillips High School, Birmingham, Ala. tChampion Student Urator of the United States. THE Constitution this heritage of liberty, safeguarded and bequeathed be-queathed in trust to us by the fathers of '87 what shall we of this generation do with it? The answer is clear. We must pass the priceless treasure on, unshackled and secure, to the next generation. genera-tion. The challenge is to you and me and every one who loves this country and enjoys the "blessings and liberty" under the American flag. Soon after the adoption of the Constitution and before it went into effect, Washington, in a letter to La Fayette, wrote these significant words: "The Government can never be in danger of degenerating into a monarchy, an oligarchy, an aristocracy or any other despotic or oppressive form so long as there shall remain any virtue in the body of the people." Ladies and gentlemen, the words of Washington clearly point the way to the task before us. We must maintain virtue in the body of the people. . . . Again we should further the popular means of increasing interest in and reverence for the Constitution of our country so that it will be reverenced no longer as an abstraction, but as a vital thing, understood and valued. Beginning in the home and public schools of the land, we should instill greater respect for law and order, which is not blind acceptance accept-ance of arbitrary control, but willing obedience to what is right and reasonable. We should educate the masses in the duties of good citizenship, citizen-ship, in a better understanding and appreciation of the spirit of the American government, in the broader meanings of patriotism and a stronger devotion to the flag and the glorious things for which it stands. Let there be virtue in the body of the people and we shall hand down -to "our posterity" those 'Tjlessings of liberty" bought with the blood of the patriots of old and preserved by the fathers in the finest example of free government the world has ever known. |