“I believe that we will.  Oh, men, if I might make it plain to you that it seems to me I stand on the very rim of creation and I am speaking there to an angel who has never yet been able to see light.  I said:  ‘Angel, what are you doing here?’ and he said:  ’I was placed here when God created this world’; and he said:  ’God sent me to look down upon this world and report to him at one special time, and that one time only,’ and I said:  ’What was to be the nature of that report?’ He said:  ’God made man in His own image and God Himself is a being of knowledge, love, truth, democracy, and peace,’ and He said to that angel, ’Don’t you ever leave that world until you see dawn, until you see that man has come up to the place where he will begin to measure up to what I expected of him,’ and that angel said to me, ’I have sat here through all the ages and I have seen times when I thought that the sunlight of God’s great knowledge and love and truth was going to come over the hills and then some being like the Kaiser or Alexander or Napoleon or some one that was of a Bolsheviki type would rise up and retard it and the sun could never rise,’ but he said:  ’Thank God on April 6, 1917, I reported back to God when America entered this war that I had seen the dawn.’ (Applause.)

“As little as you dream, maybe when you came here and as little as you thought about it in the commitment of time, I believe to-day that we stand on the dawn of the realization of the republic of man which is nothing short of the Kingdom of God on earth when men shall be men.”  (Applause.)

“So the first thing we are to do to-day is to get a great spirit, men, a great spirit that we can carry back.  All the other questions will be ironed out in due time.  Everything will be straightened out when we realize that five million men are going to be organized with the same spirit of love and loyalty and devotion and sacrifice and democracy that characterized their lives on the battlefield.  They will never rest until they make this whole world bloom in love, democracy, peace and prosperity and equality and brotherhood for all mankind.  That is what we are going to do and that is what this assembly means to-day.  It is the world’s great opportunity and your privilege to share with it.

“Now, then, I want to say that the soldier spirit is going to be my spirit and I believe it is going to be your spirit.  When Wilson and the other men called us to the war, I was glad and ready immediately to offer my life because of the great principle.  I said to those men last night in that Executive Committee and I mean it to-day, I’d gladly lay down my life to-day if laying down my life meant that this Legion should live and fulfill my dreams of its service to the country for these next fifty years. (Applause.) So do you think I want anything to come up here that would disrupt this body?  Never!  Do you think I want to make a fiery speech about something because it is my personal conviction?  No, I have a hundred