Although the colony of Plymouth began as a pure democracy under which all the men were convened to decide executive and judicial questions, the increase of population and its diffusion over a wider territory necessarily led to the transaction of official business through chosen representatives. The representative system was thus established by the Pilgrims in New England perhaps more firmly than elsewhere, and it became the cardinal principle of whatever efficiency, strength and stability our republican governments now have. This system is menaced by the enthusiasm for change and by the fads of recent years, such as the initiative, the referendum, the recall and direct primaries. In these political nostrums has been revived the crude notion that the masses, inexperienced as they are in the difficult and complex problems of government, are instinctively better qualified to guide than the educated few who are trained, instructed and competent, and who, acting as the representatives of all, are bound in good conscience and sound policy to consider and protect the rights of the minority, of the individual, of the humble and weak, against the arbitrary will or selfish interest or prejudice of the majority. There is no time to-night, even if your patience would bear with me longer, to trace the growth of the political principles which we find in the history of the Plymouth colony and underlying the experiment in republican government there initiated under the Mayflower Compact. If the tree is to be judged by its fruit, the framing of that compact in 1620 was one of the most important events in the history of the American people, and the document itself is one of the most interesting and inspiring of American constitutional documents. But I feel that I may appropriately suggest to you questions which are of immediate and urgent concern to us all, and they are whether the quickening and stirring message of the Mayflower has really endured--whether the sterling qualities of the Pilgrim and the Puritan have survived--whether the descendants of the Pilgrims have inherited and can perpetuate the invincible spirit, the unconquerable moral energy, the indomitable steadfastness of their ancestors--and whether these qualities are available in our own day to guide the nation safely and wisely through the inevitable crisis which we are approaching as the whole civilization of Europe is being daily more and more engulfed in the abyss of this awful war. These are problems which our generation must face sooner or later. And who should be better qualified to guide us--for it is leadership that we need--than men who inherit the spirit and the traditions of the Pilgrim and the Puritan?