peace and settled order the life of a great Nation.  That host is the people themselves, the great and the small, without class or difference of kind or race or origin; and undivided in interest, if we have but the vision to guide and direct them and order their lives aright in what we do.  Our constitutions are their articles of enlistment.  The orders of the day are the laws upon our statute books.  What we strive for is their freedom, their right to lift themselves from day to day and behold the things they have hoped for, and so make way for still better days for those whom they love who are to come after them.  The recruits are the little children crowding in.  The quartermaster’s stores are in the mines and forests and fields, in the shops and factories.  Every day something must be done to push the campaign forward; and it must be done by plan and with an eye to some great destiny.

How shall we hold such thoughts in our hearts and not be moved?  I would not have you live even to-day wholly in the past, but would wish to stand with you in the light that streams upon us now out of that great day gone by.  Here is the nation God has builded by our hands.  What shall we do with it?  Who stands ready to act again and always in the spirit of this day of reunion and hope and patriotic fervor?  The day of our country’s life has but broadened into morning.  Do not put uniforms by.  Put the harness of the present on.  Lift your eyes to the great tracts of life yet to be conquered in the interest of righteous peace, of that prosperity which lies in a people’s hearts and outlasts all wars and errors of men.  Come, let us be comrades and soldiers yet to serve our fellow-men in quiet counsel, where the blare of trumpets is neither heard nor heeded and where the things are done which make blessed the nations of the world in peace and righteousness and love.

[C] The speech was made from a rostrum in the National Cemetery, on the battlefield.

ADDRESS ON MEXICAN AFFAIRS

[Delivered at a joint session of the two Houses of Congress, August 27, 1913.]

GENTLEMEN OF THE CONGRESS: 

It is clearly my duty to lay before you, very fully and without reservation, the facts concerning our present relations with the Republic of Mexico.  The deplorable posture of affairs in Mexico I need not describe,[D] but I deem it my duty to speak very frankly of what this Government has done and should seek to do in fulfillment of its obligation to Mexico herself, as a friend and neighbor, and to American citizens whose lives and vital interests are daily affected by the distressing conditions which now obtain beyond our southern border.