It is your duty not only to reflect public opinion, but to lead it.  Whether we are to enter a new era in Massachusetts depends upon you.  The lessons of the war are plain.  Can we carry them on into peace?  Can we still act on the principle that there is no sacrifice too great to maintain the right?  Shall we continue to advocate and practise thrift and industry?  Shall we require unswerving loyalty to our country?  These are the foundations of all greatness.

Let there be a purpose in all your legislation to recognize the right of man to be well born, well nurtured, well educated, well employed, and well paid.  This is no gospel of ease and selfishness, or class distinction, but a gospel of effort and service, of universal application.

Such results cannot be secured at once, but they should be ever before us.  The world has assumed burdens that will bear heavily on all peoples.  We shall not escape our share.  But whatever may be our trials, however difficult our tasks, they are only the problems of peace, and a victorious peace.  The war is over.  Whatever the call of duty now we should remember with gratitude that it is nothing compared with the heavy sacrifice so lately made.  The genius and fortitude which conquered then cannot now fail.

XXV

STATEMENT ON THE DEATH OF THEODORE ROOSEVELT

The people of our Commonwealth have learned with profound sorrow of the death of Theodore Roosevelt.  No other citizen of the Nation would have brought in so large a degree the feeling of a common loss.  During the almost eight years he was President, the people came to see in him a reflection of their ideals of the true Americanism.

He was the advocate of every good cause.  He awakened the moral purpose of the Nation and raised the standard of public service.  He appealed to the imagination of youth and satisfied the judgment of maturity.  In him Massachusetts saw an exponent of her own ideals.

In token of the love and reverence which all the people bore him, I urge that the national and state flags be flown at half-mast throughout the Commonwealth until after his funeral, and that, when next the people gather for public worship, his loss be marked with proper ceremony.

XXVI

LINCOLN DAY PROCLAMATION

JANUARY 30, 1919

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts By His Excellency Calvin Coolidge, Governor

A PROCLAMATION