It should insist that our finance and currency concern not alone the large traders, merchants and bankers of our land, but that they are intimately and every day related to the well-being of our people in all conditions of life, and that, therefore, if any adjustments are necessary they should be made in such manner as shall certainly maintain the soundness of our people’s earnings and the security of their savings. It should enjoin respect for the law as the quality that cements the fabric of organized society and makes possible a government by the people. And in every sentence and every line of this creed of good citizenship the lesson should be taught that our country is a beautiful and productive field to be cultivated by loyal Americans, who, with weapons near at hand, whether they sow and reap or whether they rest, will always be prepared to resist those who attempt to despoil by day and pilfer in the night. In the day when all shadows shall have passed away and when good citizenship shall have made sure the safety, permanence and happiness of our nation, how small will appear the strifes of selfishness in our civic life, and how petty will seem the machinations of degraded politics. There shall be set over against them in that time a reverent sense of coöperation in Heaven’s plans for our people’s greatness, and the joyous pride of standing among those who, in the comradeship of American good citizenship, have so protected and defended our heritage of self-government that our treasures are safe in the citadel of patriotism, “where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal.” PATRIOTISM AND HOLIDAY OBSERVANCE [Illustration] PATRIOTISM AND HOLIDAY OBSERVANCE The American people are but little given to the observance of public holidays. This statement cannot be disposed of by the allegation that our national history is too brief to allow the accumulation of days deserving civic commemoration. Though it is true that our life as a people, according to the standard measuring the existence of nations, has been a short one, it has been filled with glorious achievements; and, though it must be conceded that it is not given to us to see in the magnifying mirage of antiquity the exaggerated forms of American heroes, yet in the bright and normal light shed upon our beginning and growth are seen grand and heroic men who have won imperishable honor and deserve our everlasting remembrance. We cannot, therefore, excuse a lack of commemorative inclination and a languid interest in recalling the notable incidents of our country’s past under the plea of a lack of commemorative material; nor can we in this way explain our neglect adequately to observe days which have actually been set apart for the especial manifestation of our loving appreciation of the lives and the deeds of Americans who, in crises of our birth and development, have sublimely wrought and nobly endured.