The strongest point of America has always been the spirit of her people. She has amassed a national wealth which has become a wonder to the world. She has built up a great army and a magnificent navy. She has gained a place in the councils of the great world powers. She has never reached a place, however, where she can afford to place such reliance upon any other power as upon that of the spirit and ideals of her people. American guns were only an incident in the Revolution. They would have been failing weapons in the hands of many. They won their cause, however, because they were carried in the hands of men whose souls were throbbing with the power of a great conviction. They had the toughness, the courage, the bravery, and the nerve of the pioneer, but they had more than all these. They had the consciousness of a worthy cause. They knew they were fighting for all that was dear to them. They had homes to defend, a principle to vindicate, and a future to achieve. These things enabled them to show the world how men can fight when all that they are has been staked on the struggle. We still need guns and armies, but we need never hope to graduate from the fundamental necessity for sturdy and courageous men. The kind of men who have been our salvation in the past and who are our hope for the future are always found where habits of plain and rugged simplicity prevail. However sophisticated our thinking may become, we need to ever cultivate the kind of physical frames which are developed by plain living and high thinking. Where Rome placed softness and self-indulgence we must always keep the simple and wholesome ideals which proved so mighty in the lives of our fathers. Another thing to be noted about the Monument is the fact that it stands foursquare to all the winds. Its ideal of plainness decreed that it should be so. There are no tricky twists in its plan. Its architecture has no place for merely decorative turns. There is not a deceptive line nor a hint of anything superficial. The habit of being real deserves a place among the chiefest of all virtues. No one ever gained anything by any measure of pretense and unreality. No nation ever bettered either itself or the world by any process of deception and sham. We can no more outgrow the necessity for truth and honor than we can outdistance that for plain living and high thinking. In accordance with this long-standing characteristic, America is leading the world in its stand against shady intrigues and secret treaties. When that principle has been vindicated in the conduct of the nations we shall begin to be able to feel that Mars has been left behind the chariot of civilization forever.