The Morris County chronicle. [volume] (Morristown, N.J.) 1877-1915, 1908-11-24
THANKSGIVING PROCLAMATION

Once again the season is at hand
when, according to the ancient custom
Of our people, it becomes the duty of
( the President to appoint a day of
| prayer and of thanksgiving to God.
| Year by year this nation grows in
strength and worldly power. During
| the century and quarter that has
| elapsed since our entry into the circle
of Independent peoples we have grown
and proSpered,s lin material things to a
degree never known before, and not
now known in any other country. The
thirteen colonies which struggled
along the Seacost of the Atlantic and
were hemmed in but a few miles west
of tidewater by the Indian haunted
wilderness, have been transformed in
to the mightieSt republic which the
world has ever seen. Its domains
stretch across the continent from one
to the other of the two greatest
oceans, and it exercises dominion alike
in the arctic and tropic realms. The
growth of wealth and population has
surpassed even the growth in terri
tory. Nowhere else in the world is
the average of individual comfort and
material well-being as high as in our
fortunate land.
For the very reason that in material
well-being we have thus abounded, we
owe it to the Almighty to show equal
progress in moral and spiritual things.
With nation. as with the individuals
who make up a nation, material we'll
being is an indispensable foundation.
But the foundation avails nothing by
itself. The life is wasted. and worse
than wasted, which is spent in piling,,
heap upon heap, those things which
minister merely to the pleasure of the
body and to the power that rests only
on wealth.
Upon material well-being as found
alton must be raised the structure of
the lofty life of the spirit, if this ma
tion is properly to fulfil its great mis-
sion and to accomplish all that we so
ardently hope and desire. The things
Of the body are good the things of the
intellect better but best of all are the
things of the soul; for, in the nation
as in the individual, in the long run it
is character that counts. Let us
therefore as people set our faces reso-
lutely against evil, and with broad
charity, with kindness and good will
toward all men, but with unfiinching
determination to smite down wrong,
strive with all the strength that is
given US for Righteousness in public
and in private life.
Now, therefore, /, Theodore Roose-
welt, President of the United States,
do set apart Thursday, the 10Th day OF
November next, as a day of general
thanksgiving and prayer, and on that
day recommend that the people shall
cease from their daily work, and, in
their homes or in their churches, meet
devoutly to thank the Almighty for
the many and great blessings they
have received in the past, and to pray
that they may be given strength so to
order their lives as to deserve a con-
of these blessings in the
future.
In witness whereof 1 have hereunto
set my hand and caused the seal of tho
United States to be affixed.
Done at the city of Washington, this
thirty-frst day of October in the year
of our Lord one Thousand nine hundred
and eight, and of the Independence of
the United States, the one hundred
and thirty-third.
THEODORE ROOSEVELT,
By the President,
Alvey A. Adee,
Acting Secretary of State.