What our government needs now is a National band in Washington.
America is a Tune.
America is not a formula. America is not statistics, even graphic statistics. A great nation cannot be made, cannot be discovered, and then be laid coldly together like a census. America is a Tune. It must be sung together.
The next thing statesmen are going to learn in this country is that from a practical point of view in making a great nation only our Tune in America and only our singing our Tune can save us. A great nation can be made out of the truth about us. The truth may be—must be probably,—plain. But the truth must sing.
It will not be the government that first gets the truth that will govern us. The government that gets the truth big enough to sing first, and sings it, will be the government that will govern us. The political party in this country that will first be practical with the people, and that will first get what it wants, will be the political party that first takes Literature seriously. Our first great practical government is going to see how a great book, searching the heart of a nation, expressing and singing the men in it, governs a people. Being a President in a day like this, if it does not consist in being a poet, consists in being the kind of President who can be, at least, in partnership with a poet.
It is not every President who can be his own David, who can rule with one hand and write psalms and chants for his people with the other.
The call is out, the people have put in their order to the authors of America, to the boys in the colleges, and to the young women in the great schools—Our President wants a book.
Before much time has passed, he is going to have one.
Being a President in this country has never been expressed in a book.
The President is going to have a book that expresses him to the people and that says what he is trying to do. He will live confidentially with the book. It shall be in his times of trial and loneliness like a great people coming to him softly. He shall feel with such a book, be it day or night, the nation by him, by his desk, by his bedside, by his silence, by his questioning, standing by, and lifting.