Reforestation has an importance far above the attention it usually secures.  A special committee of the Senate is investigating this need, and I shall welcome a constructive policy based on their report.

It is 100 years since our country announced the Monroe doctrine.  This principle has been ever since, and is now, one of the main foundations of our foreign relations.  It must be maintained.  But in maintaining it we must not be forgetful that a great change has taken place.  We are no longer a weak Nation, thinking mainly of defense, dreading foreign imposition.  We are great and powerful.  New powers bring new responsibilities.  Our ditty then was to protect ourselves.  Added to that, our duty now is to help give stability to the world.  We want idealism.  We want that vision which lifts men and nations above themselves.  These are virtues by reason of their own merit.  But they must not be cloistered; they must not be impractical; they must not be ineffective.

The world has had enough of the curse of hatred and selfishness, of destruction and war.  It has had enough of the wrongful use of material power.  For the healing of the nations there must be good will and charity, confidence and peace.  The time has come for a more practical use of moral power, and more reliance upon the principle that right makes its own might.  Our authority among the nations must be represented by justice and mercy.  It is necessary not only to have faith, but to make sacrifices for our faith.  The spiritual forces of the world make all its final determinations.  It is with these voices that America should speak.  Whenever they declare a righteous purpose there need be no doubt that they will be heard.  America has taken her place in the world as a Republic—­free, independent, powerful.  The best service that can be rendered to humanity is the assurance that this place will be maintained.

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State of the Union Address
Calvin Coolidge
December 3, 1924

To the Congress of the United States: 

The present state of the Union, upon which it is customary for the President to report to the Congress under the provisions of the Constitution, is such that it may be regarded with encouragement and satisfaction by every American.  Our country is almost unique in its ability to discharge fully and promptly all its obligations at home and abroad, and provide for all its inhabitants an increase in material resources, in intellectual vigor and in moral power.  The Nation holds a position unsurpassed in all former human experience.  This does not mean that we do not have any problems.  It is elementary that the increasing breadth of our experience necessarily increases the problems of our national life.  But it does mean that if all will but apply ourselves industriously and honestly, we have ample powers with which to meet our problems and provide for I heir speedy solution.  I do not profess that we can secure an era of perfection in human existence, but we can provide an era of peace and prosperity, attended with freedom and justice and made more and more satisfying by the ministrations of the charities and humanities of life.