'died that "government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth." This was the pregnant and prescient thought of our great Commoner, whose hands still showed the knots of toil, whose heart beat for the common people from whom he had risen, and who never spoke until he had patiently heard and digested the other's side. In ten words, Lincoln gave us the watchword and the keynote, the whole history and the present meaning of how our nation has in the spirit of the Declaration of Independence applied and developed the purposive functions of our federal and state governments for the general and social welfare. Through all the turmoil of our history as a democracy there has always been one guiding star which led us ongovernment for the people. This great, enlightening but largely subconscious thought has raised our ideals and enabled us to put behind us our crimes, blunders and mistakes, to purify our politics and improve our treatment of our neighbor. It has given us year by year stronger and more trusted governments. It has made us to-day the greatest government of and by the people. Now, without hope of reward, we must strive to do our part in making the world safe for democracy, so that every nation, great or small, may have indeed in the highest sense a government for the people-not merely a Prussian proletariatocracy. Lincoln's creed was but an incomparable phrasing and condensation of the words of the Declaration of Independence. Those words make it plain that our colonist forefathers did not merely advance their standards so as to insist that their governments should prevent oppression and provide political liberty. They took that for granted. They went much further and insisted that all men were created equal, and with the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; that governments were instituted to secure these rights; that such governments were to be of and by the people, and on such principles and in such form as would seem most likely to work for the people and effect their safety and happiness; and that the chief and truly important functions of a government were the purposive. The keynote words of the great fundamental documents of our political liberty point to the origin and justification of the idealistic humanitarianism of our governmental theories, and show the line to which we have honestly attempted to hew. But they are the absolute antithesis and confutation of Marx's materialism; and that is the battle-field on which we shall fight. Can it be that in its greatest crisis, American Democracy will fail the world; that its light will go out; that the American people will prove too recreant to safeguard and extend the canons of liberty for which our forefathers fought and died? To us, to-day, from the past, come the immortal words of Lincoln, spurring us to our duty, not alone for American Democracy, but for democracy throughout the world. Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. "Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of it as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. "But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have conse crated it far above our poor power to add or to detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us-that from these honored dead we take full measure of devotion-that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth." Index Academies, 151, 152. nial aid to agriculture, 164; admitted, 132; illiteracy, functions, 19, 20, 113-148; Annapolis Convention, 195, Anti-Saloon League, 18, 269, 270, 303, 304. -290. Arizona, land methods, 109. 217. Associations, growth of private Baltimore, banks of, 134. ulation, 17, 18, 257-259, Banks, in early times, 72, 84, 257; early bank credits, 86. Bills of credit, by colonies, Bills, Department of, 190. Biological Survey, 171, 172. Bland, Richard, 116. Bolshevism, outward sore of Socialism, 6, 7; legitimate |