264 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



world. Remember that never again can war be considered private 

 business. Remember that never again can America or any other 

 nation complacently fold its hands, declare its neutrality, and say 

 that war is only the business of the participants. The arteries of 

 international intercourse have become too intricate for that sort of 

 thing. We have seen that a single spark can set the whole structure 

 of civilization aflame. Play safe with the world on fire? There is 

 no saf et>' anywhere in a disordered world ! Do you know, my 

 friends, what we once thought of as independence is almost a thing 

 of the past? I suppose that Robinson Crusoe was the most inde- 

 pendent man that ever lived, but thank God, the days of Robinson 

 Crusoe have gone. Think of it, you got up this morning from be- 

 tween a couple of cotton sheets that were grown on a plantation in 

 Mississippi and were manufactured in Connecticut, and they came 

 to you. Your cover was a couple of woolen blankets that came from 

 the sheep in Wyoming and Montana, were manufactured in Xew 

 England, and came to you. Your shoes once adorned the back of 

 a Texas steer and were manufactured in Massachusetts. You 

 walked downstairs on treads of lumber which was milled in the 

 forests of Oregon. You sat down at a breakfast table with a linen 

 cover that grew in the flax fields of Canada. You ate grape fruit for 

 breakfast that grew in Florida. You ate breakfast food that came 

 from a farm in Nebraska and was manufactured at Battle Creek. 

 ^Michigan. You drank tea that came from Japan or coffee that 

 came from Brazil, out of a cup that came from China. You put in 

 sugar that came from Cuba, with a spoon that was mined in Nevada, 

 and every hour of the day and every hour of the year, whether you 

 will it or not, you are helplessly and hopelessly dependent on some- 

 body else. And so this may be applied on a larger scale, because 

 autocracy abroad threatens democracy at home, and bolshevism any- 

 where is a direct menace to the stability of our own institutions. 



You who are responsible for the success of a fair are never going 

 to be able to measure the success of that fair by the height of the 

 wall with which you surround your grounds. The success of that 

 institution is going to be measured by what you give to the people 

 that come into the gates in return for their money. The watchword 

 and keynote of the world today is co-operation and sen-ice, and 

 never again will any nation be able to measure its greatness by the 

 size of its army or the strength of its navy. But the greatness of 

 ever}' nation must rest upon its ability and disposition to render 

 service, service to humanity and to the world. 



