52 



and rrince Rupert as between Chesapeake Bay and the Gulf of St. Law- 

 rence, it will be when San Francisco is the capital of Japanese or Chinese 

 America. 



Whatever may be the changes and chances of the coming centuries, 

 ours is a big country. We are not to blame for its bigness, and we must 

 accept its awkward bulk and make the best of it. To live in a large coun- 

 try requires large mindedness. The American i^eople have fallen heir to 

 the largest fortune in natural resources and virgin lands that ever came 

 to any people in the world's hi.sitory. It is an opportunity larger than 

 can ever come again on this planet. Every influence tends to foster in us 

 a spirit of extravagance and arrogance. If we can survive the period of 

 adolescent exultation and riot, and with spirit undiramed and powers in- 

 tact, attain a sober and dignified maturity, all geographic influences con- 

 spire to make the Atlantic provinces of North America the home of a 

 people united in blood, spirit, economics, government, institutions and 

 civilization, equal in number to the population of Europe, and to make 

 that people not only dominant in North America but able to divide with 

 Europe the hegemony in the confederation of the world. 



Let me cap my climax with the words of a French sociologist, Ed- 

 mond Desmolins, who places in the United States and Canada the home 

 par excellence of the development of the particularist social formation, 

 where the Baltic and Teutonic peoples, expanding upon new and vacant 

 lands, are able not only to develop freely, normally and without foreign 

 influence, but also to acquire an ever increasing i)ersonal initiative. "By 

 the processes of private life alone," he says, "they have established and will 

 maintain parliaments, self-government and the predominance of the indi- 

 vidual over the State. They absorb, assimilate or eliminate numerous and 

 diverse elements from the old world. They are a society of intense life, of 

 individual energ>' and aptitude for progress raised to their maximum. 

 They are the society of the future." 



And what of Indiana'/ The prepotent geographic quality of Indiana is 

 Its centrality. It is not in the center of North America, but near the cen- 

 ter of its richest province. We, here at Indianapolis, are nearly midway 

 between the critical line of the 100th meridian and the Atlantic coast, be- 

 tween the Laurentian peneplain and the gulf coastal plain, between the 

 Appalachians and the Mississippi, between Lake Michigan and the Ohio, 

 between the July isotherm of 70° and the January isotherm of 50', be- 



