TWENTIETH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART VII 617 



But those old familiar days are gone, and each one of us now is linked 

 up inevitably to a great world situation. And when we come to think 

 of them, 1 want to speak very briefly of three great eras in the life of 

 this nation. What are they? First, the era before the civil war. Do 

 you know the great thing for you and me to learn today, that we must 

 take home, that you must take home as an organization, that I must take 

 home to my heart and consciousness, is that I am linked up, that I am 

 interdependent, that I am one of so many units in the commercial, agri- 

 cultural, industrial life of the world, and that I cannot prosper alone, 

 and that I have no right to strike out for my own prosperity only, for- 

 getting the great relationships in which I walk through life. That truth 

 has been brought home to us! You know that none of us was born with 

 the consciousness of our internation relation. What was the first move 

 toward the discovery of America? It was old Marco Polo, the Italian. 

 He wasn't satisfied with staying in Italy; he wanted to see the world, so 

 he went off toward the far east to Siam, where he made many discoveries, 

 and on his return he wrote a book, and a copy of that book came into the 

 hands of Columbus. Then Columbus became dissatisfied with staying in 

 his own land, and believing that the relation of his country to the other 

 portions of the great world were of importance to his nation he started 

 out in his little vessels to sail the great unknown seas to the west, and 

 his cry was "Sail on! Sail on! and on!" something new, something dif- 

 ferent, something hidden; and he found it. Not only Columbus, but the 

 Puritans, when they came and established colonies upon our eastern 

 coast, did they try to hold it to themselves? No! They welcomed the 

 Danes; they welcomed the Germans; they welcomed the French; they 

 opened their hearts and the doorways of the nation to all of the world 

 that they who wished might come here to build up a new kind of civi- 

 lization. It was an international outlook, wasn't it? But they were 

 thinking, too, how all men might share and have some relation to this 

 great new nation that was then being born. Not only so, but in the 

 revolutionary war itself, it wasn't something that just happened upon 

 American soil, because we drew to that struggle Kosciuszko from Po- 

 land; old Von Steuben, who was on the staff of Frederick the Great, we 

 drew from Prussia; we drew Rochembeau and Lafayette from France; 

 we struck a light back there in those revolutionary days which was seen 

 all about the rim of the globe, wherever civilized man lived. High it 

 was held aloft, searing its ideals into the life of the world, and our great 

 experiment in government became a symbol of the thought that lay in 

 the hearts of those who loved freedom — all about the rim of the globe. 

 And then our treaty of peace in 1783 was signed not in our country, but 

 was signed in that hall of mirrors at Versailles, that great hall. When 

 I think of Versailles I feel like pausing a moment and thinking of the 

 advance of civilization since the time of Louis XIV. It was Louis IV in 

 1681, I believe, who stood in that palace of Versailles — that wondrously 

 beautiful palace that cost $100,000,000 — and in answer to the complaints 

 of his people that he was wasteful of their money, he cried, "The state! 

 I am the state!" There absolutism spoke at Versailles. Then a hun- 

 dred years wheeled by and in 1783, in the same palace of Versailles, was 

 signed the terms of peace between British and American representatives 



