A nation’s flag did not always mean all this to those who gazed upon it.  In very old times the flag was for the soldier alone and had no more meaning for the ordinary citizen than a helmet or a spear.  When the soldier saw it uplifted in the thick of the battle he rallied to it.  Then the flag became the personal emblem of a king or a prince, whether in battle or not; then it was used to mark what belonged to the government of a country.  It is still so used in many parts of Europe, where the display of a flag on a building marks it as government property, as our flag does when it is used on a post office or a custom-house.  Nowhere but in our own country is the flag used as the general symbol of patriotic feeling and displayed alike by soldier and citizen, by Government office and private dwelling.  So it comes about that the stars and stripes means to us all that his eagles did to the Roman soldier; all that the great Oriflamme did to the medieval Frenchman; all that the Union Jack now means to the Briton or the tri-color to the Frenchman—­and more, very much more, beside.

What ideas, then, does the flag stand for?  First, it stands for union.  It was conceived in union, it was dipped in blood to preserve union, and for union it still stands.  Its thirteen stripes remind us of that gallant little strip of united colonies along the Atlantic shore that threw down the gage of battle to Britain a century and a half ago.  Its stars are symbols of the wider union that now is.  Both may be held to signify the great truth that in singleness of purpose among many there is effective strength that no one by himself can hope to achieve.  Our union of States was formed in fear of foreign aggression; we have need of it still though our foes be of our own household.  If we are ever to govern our cities properly, hold the balance evenly betwixt capital and labor, develop our great natural resources without undue generosity on the one hand or parsimony on the other—­solve the thousand and one problems that rise to confront us on every hand—­we shall never accomplish these things by struggling singly—­one man at a time or even one State at a time, but by concerted, united effort, the perfect union of which our flag is a symbol, and which we need to-day even more than we did in 1776 or 1861.

We stand on the threshold of an effort to alter our city government.  Whether that effort should or should not succeed, every citizen must decide for himself, with the aid of such intelligence and judgment as it has pleased God to give him.  But if he should decide in its favor, be certain that his individual vote at the polls will go a very little way toward bringing his desires to pass.  We are governed by majorities, and a majority is a union of many.  He who would win must not only vote, but work.  Our flag, with its assemblages of stripes and stars, is a perpetual reminder that by the union of the many, and not merely by the rectitude of the individual, are policies altered and charters changed.