Then we hear these significant words:
"I wonder what the Pilgrims if they came
Would say to us, as Freemen? Is our freedom
Their freedom as they left it to our keeping,
Or would they know their own in modern guise?
Across the back of the field to the grand triumphal strains of martial music pass the flags of the allies, so lighted that they show brilliantly. Nearer move the French and British flags, and then all wave and beckon. There follows a hush. Suddenly from far out on the Mayflower a bugle calls in the darkness and light begins to glow on the vessel, but very faintly.
Then again the voice from the Rock is heard: "The path of the Mayflower must be forever free." Forty-eight young women bear the state flags. The pageant ground is now ablaze with lights, and as the wonderful chorus that has carried you on its mighty tide of harmony dies away; the field darkens until there is only light on the Mayflower.
Again the voice from the Rock fills the place with deep sonorous tones, like celestial music, as we listen to these fitting words: "With malice toward none and charity for all it is for us to resolve that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom."
What is there in Europe, or the whole world, in the way of pageants that can compare with this? When we consider its import, viewed in the full, bright light of the rising sun of Liberty; wafted by the delicate electric threads of this busy commercial world which are silently conveying with a certain majesty of movement its significance, we may well say that this celebrated one of the most eventful deeds of man since time began.
"As we go back to that shadowy and evanescent period when history and culture of ancient Chaldea unroll before us, with the overpowering greatness of Assyria followed by the swift rise and fall of Babylon, let us try and extract some truths in regard to the growth of Civilization. Even though nations rise and fall, and races come and go, has not human development been ever upward and onward?"
Let us then look forward to the dawning of a better day. Let us cherish those high ideals of liberty our fore-fathers so dearly bought. Let us put on the strong armor of the Word of God which was to them a shield and a buckler and move forward with firm, steadfast hope toward a brighter dawn of Freedom, that shall exceed that of the present as the light which gleamed from the Mayflower exceeded in brilliancy that of the Old World.
Watching the lights slowly fade on the Mayflower we thought how the Pilgrims had stood on the icy deck of the vessel, with the winds blowing through the masts overhead and the waves roaring about the black hull beneath, while they sang hymns of praise for deliverance from the dangers of the sea.
And the heavy night hung dark
The hills and waters o'er,
When a band of exiles moored their bark
On the wild New England shore.