Be patriotic. Study the questions that have a bearing upon the well-being of the people. In the past hundred years, more than twenty-three million foreigners have settled in this land. Many are God-fearing men, but many more are entirely out of harmony with our principles and institutions. Truly America is
“The mother with the ever open door,
The feet of many nations on her floor,
And room for all the world about her knees.”
Of the seventy million inhabitants twenty-five per cent. are yet in gross ignorance, thirteen per cent. cannot read the ballots they cast, and thousands of such are annually coming to our shores, imbued with the notions, failings and vices of their native lands. True patriotism desires and labors not only for a free people, but an educated one.
To be patriotic requires candor. We must be fair in our judgment of others who may differ from us concerning methods of dealing with some vital questions which are always before the nation. We do not always see and understand alike, but we must strive to promote and preserve the integrity of the nation. In the opening hours of the French Revolution Mirabeau roused the rabble of Paris, which whirled the social order into chaos, provoking Madame Roland’s dying words, “Oh, liberty, what crimes are done in thy name!” We have Mirabeaus here, but as educated lovers of our country, we must antagonize wrong, uphold right, and defend the principles of the Declaration of Independence.
To be patriotic in the true sense is to permeate every question with Christianity. It was religious liberty that became the mother of political liberty in England. De Toqueville said, “America’s liberty considers Christianity the guardian angel of her struggle and victory, the cradle of her life, the Divine source of her right.” “God and my country” is the true patriot’s cry. In the words of the almost forgotten Oliver Ellsworth to the Grand Jury of Savannah in 1779, “Let us rear an empire sacred to the rights of men; and commend a government of reason to the nations of the earth.”