It has taken on a new significance because Captain Whitefield was true to the call of humanity, because a Japanese boy was true to his call of duty.
Calvin Coolidge
The Public Record
Calvin Coolidge was the 30th President of the United States, serving from 1923 to 1929. A member of the Republican Party, he was known for his quiet demeanor and strong support for business and limited government. Coolidge's presidency is often associated with the economic prosperity of the Roaring Twenties, and he famously advocated for a hands-off approach to the economy, believing that government should interfere as little as possible in the lives of citizens and businesses.
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America seeks rather, by giving of her strength for the service of the weak, a place in eternity.
America follows no such delusion as a place in the sun for the strong by the destruction of the weak.
Are not the men of to-day, the entire Nation of to-day, living in accordance with the significance of that name, and by their service and sacrifice redeeming mankind from the forces that make for everlasting destruction?
Were not the men who stood at Bunker Hill bearing light to the world by their sacrifices?
We must never neglect the military preparation again, but we may as well recognize that we have had a preparation without which arms in our hands would very much resemble in purpose those now arrayed against us.
We had a mental, a moral, a spiritual training that fitted us equally with any other people to engage in this great contest which after all is a contest of ideas as well as of arms.
Has not our Nation been raised up and strengthened, trained and prepared, to meet the great sacrifice that must be made now to save the world from despotism?
Not being beasts, but men, we choose the sacrifice.
We could approve and join in the scramble to the jungle, or we could resist and sacrifice ourselves to save an erring nation.
The Prussian military despotism has abandoned the law of civilization for the law of barbarism.
The proud shaft which rises over their battlefield and the bronze form of Joseph Warren in your square are not monuments to expediency or success, they are monuments to righteousness.
Men put the women and children in the lifeboats before they themselves will leave the sinking ship.
It does not mean the survival of the fittest, it means the sacrifice of the fittest.
It is not an earthly law, it is a divine law.
The law of progress and civilization is not the law of the jungle.
It is not the light of human reason but the darkness of the wisdom of the serpent.
It holds that the weak must serve the strong, which is the law of slavery, it applies the law of the animal world to mankind and puts science above morals.
This philosophy denies the doctrine of equality and holds that government is not based on consent but on compulsion.
It was an example of the great law of human progress and civilization.
It established for all time how men ought to act toward each other in the governmental relation.
The successful solution of this problem was the crowning glory of a century and a half of America.
The eighteenth century was the era of the development of political rights.
Liberty, the rights of man against tyranny, the rights of kings, was in the air.
But the conflict between freedom and privilege was inevitable.
Politicians like Calvin Coolidge
