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Show PATRIOTISM A nation is math; "'rent, not by its fruitful acres, but by the men who cultivate culti-vate them; not by its great forests, but by the men who nso tliem; not by its mines, but by the men who work in them; not by its railways, but by the men who build and run them. America was a great land when Columbus discovered it; Americans have made of it a great Nation. Na-tion. In 177(1 our fathers had a vision of a new Nation "conceived in liberty anil dedicated dedi-cated to the proposition that all men are created equal." Without an army they fought the greafest of existing world empires that they might realize this vision. A thin! of a century later, without with-out a navy and 'ought the greatest navy in the world that they migl't win for their Nation the freedom of the seas. Half a century Inter they fought through an unparalleled Civil War that they might establish for all time on this continent conti-nent the inalienable right of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. A third of a. century later they fought to emanci-. pate a neighbor, and, victory won, gave back Cuba to the Cubans, sent an army of schoolmasters to educate for liberty the Filipinos, asked no war indemnity from their vanquished enemy, but paid him liberally for his property. Meanwhile Mean-while they offered land freely to any farmer who would live upon and cultivate culti-vate it, opened to foreign immigrants on equal terms the door of industrial opportunity, op-portunity, shared with them political equality, and provided by universal taxation tax-ation for universal education. The cynic who can see in this history only a theme for his egotistical satire is no true American, whatever Iris parentage, parent-age, whatever his birthplace.- He who looks with pride upon this history which his fathers have written by their heroic deeds, who accepts with gratitude the inheritance which they have bequeathed to him, and who -highly resolves to preserve pre-serve this inheritance unimpaired and to pass it on to his decendants enlarged and enriched, is a true American, be his birthplace or his parentage what it may. Lyman Abbott. |