NINETEENTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART III ISl 



They sailed and sailed, as winds might blow, 



Until at last the blanched mate said: 

 'Why, now not even God would know 



Should I and all my men fall dead. 

 These very winds forget their way, 



For God from these dread seas is gone. 

 Now speak, brave Adm'r'l; speak and say — " 



He said, "Sail on! sail on! and on!" 



They sailed. They sailed. Then spake the mate: 



"This mad sea shows his teeth tonight. 

 He curls his lip, he lies in wait, 



With lifted teeth, as if to bite! 

 Brave Adm'r'l, say but one good word: 



What shall we do when hope is gone?" 

 The words leapt like a leaping sword : 



"Sail on! sail on! sail on! and on!" 



Then, pale and worn, he kept his deck, 



And peered through darkness. Ah, that night 

 Of all dark nights! And then a speck — 



A light! A light! A light! A light! 

 It grew, a starlit flag unfurled! 



It grew to be Time's burst of dawn. 

 He gained a world; he gave that world 



Its grandest lesson: "On! Sail on!" 



That is the spirit of Columbus, and the men of this great continent 

 have taken on that spirit of initiative and daring, willingness to enter 

 new fields, willingness to try new plans, willingness to enter upon great 

 ventures. Vision has been the thing that has marked the men of this 

 nation. You may take the Puritans of 1620. They did not try to hold 

 New England to themselves. They did not try to hold it for themselves 

 or their own people only. They welcomed the Danes, tbe Dutch, the 

 French, the Germans, the Swedes. They were then willing to try the 

 germ of the new nation; they were willing to try it with a half dozen 

 or more races in their midst. That was a daring thing. Then they 

 came on to our great Revolution, when they dared to stand up in the 

 face of history and announce the revolutionary doctrine that all men 

 are created equal, and that government gets its right to govern from 

 the consent of the governed. That was the daring principle that they 

 launched in the world, which has gone on and on, with its leavening in- 

 fluence until the Central Empires, the greatest military autocracies in 

 the history of the world, and the smaller monarchical nations about them 

 have given up and the victory of democracy now resounds in the corri- 

 dors of the world. 



That doctrine has come to stay, and whether or not this is the peak 

 of an era and the world is henceforth going down into chaos, whether 

 that is true or not, is the problem of the democratic peoples of the world 

 — to provide for the safety of the world. And how shall we do it? There 

 is one great way, and the only way. It is the point that the governor 

 hinted at tonight when he said that we must have national interest in 



