"I am the day's work of the weakest man and the largest dream of the most daring. I am the Constitution and the courts, statutes and statute-makers, soldier and dreadnaught, drayman and street-sweep, cook, counselor and clerk. I swing before your eyes as a bright gleam of color, the pictured suggestion of that big thing which makes this nation. My stars and stripes are your dream and your labors. They are bright with cheer, brilliant with courage, firm with faith, because you have made them so,—for you are the makers of the Flag."
This is no mere sentimental fancy.
The thrill of the flag is best understood by those who have seen it on a foreign shore; but the deepest thrill of all comes on beholding the flag which bears the marks of shot and shell.
A little boy of six, who had been considered in his family as unemotional, was one day riding with his mother past a public building, gaily decorated with bunting. Among the unstained banners above the entrance hung a cluster of old battle-flags. The child gazed at them with the greatest interest. Then he turned suddenly to his mother.
"Which do you like best, mother?" he asked. "The bright new flags, or the old, ragged flags that have been in the battle?"
"Which do you like best?" she said.
"Oh," he replied, while his little lip quivered, "I like best the old, ragged flags that have been in the battle,—don't you?"
This child had been brought up from infancy upon the stories and poems of the patriots of the past, but he had never shown before such a marked effect from them. This effect grew with his years.
The most stolid and selfish child can be made into a fervid patriot, I firmly believe, by a proper use of the great patriotic literature.
Until within a short time, some of us have deprecated the idea of filling the minds of our children with visions of killing and of killers, however brave and noble. But we have learned that, as long as there are barbarians in the world threatening to overwhelm civilization, the arts of war must still be practiced. History has described civilizations as good as ours, perhaps better, which were destroyed by barbarians, physically stronger than the gentler races which they attacked. So long as powerful tribes exist, covetous of the wealth and the territory of their neighbors, and willing to trample down everybody and everything else to get them, what can we do but fight?