Washington was charged with the heroic task of making the thirteen colonies safe for “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness;” Lincoln’s patriotic mission was to unchain this Ideal for all America: and Wilson’s sublime conception was to make the world “safe for democracy,” that its peace might be planted on “the trusted foundations of liberty.”
A mind-union upon human meaning as an ideal is necessary for the patriotism of America. The right to life means that the making of right life has a right way. Those who deny the meaning of America divest themselves of all claims in reason upon the rights of life defined in American history. The American kingdom of right is perfecting itself as rapidly as minds can be mobilized for its sublime task. The war-message extending the definition of American freedom says:
“We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest, no dominion. We seek no indemnities for ourselves, no material compensation for the sacrifices we shall freely make. We are but one of the champions of the rights of mankind. We shall be satisfied when those rights have been made as secure as the faith and the freedom of the nations can make them.”
And, finally, the duty of every American, worthy of America, enters the third epoch of American history, as did the patriot duty of Washington and Lincoln in their time. The message concludes in these measured terms:
“It is a fearful thing to lead this great, peaceful people into war—into the most terrible and disastrous of all wars, civilization itself seeming to be in the balance.
“But the right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for the things which we have always carried nearest our hearts—for democracy, for the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own Governments, for the rights and liberties of small nations, for a universal dominion of right by such a concert of free peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free.
“To such a task we can dedicate our lives and our fortunes, everything that we are and everything that we have, with the pride of those who know that the day has come when America is privileged to spend her blood and her might for the principles that gave her birth and happiness and the peace which she has treasured. God helping her, she can do no other.”
The world in its social evolution has come on through its immemorial struggle to the crisis in its history, where civilization, as liberty in moral law, can progress further only as the forces of humanity are organized “to make the world safe for democracy.” The final truth is that the world will be made safe for democracy when democracy is made safe for the individual. All political creeds, religious interests and moral ideals, must have this democracy in which to work, before they can become free to develop their own truth.
Autocratic egotism, whether framed in national or personal will, among many or few, must perish from the earth, with all its spoils and masteries, before there can be any possible “government of the people, for the people and by the people.” As “a house divided against itself cannot stand,” so, a civilization cannot stand whose humanity is divided into the three special interests known to us as individuals, the nation and an alien world.