Albuquerque citizen. [volume] (Albuquerque, N.M.) 1907-1909, 1908-05-16
GREAT TRIUMPH
IN THIS CENTURY
Pleads Against Race Suicide. Says
That With High Type of Ameri.
Can Citizenship Nation viii
Prosper as Never a Nation
Has Before.

washington, May l6.-The trustees
OF the American University, which is
IN course of construction near this
city, had as their guests today Presi-
dent Roosevelt. Vice President Fair
banks and Senator Dolliver, who are
all to speak. More than one thousand
Methodists, who are attending the
general conference of the Methodist
church at Baltimore, were also pres
ent.
In his speech to the visiting Metho-
DIST delegates President Roosevelt
said:
1t is a pleasure to be with you to-
day and to bid you welcome on behalf
of the nation, here in the capital of
the nation. Important though the
Methodist church is in many lands,
there is none in which it has played
so great and peculiar a part as here
in the United States. Its history is
indissolubly interviewer with the his
Tory Of our country for the six score
years since the constitutional conven-
ton made us really a nation. Metho-
diSm in America entered on its period
OF rapid growth just about the time
Of Washington's first presidency. It's
essential democracy, its fiery and rest
less energy of spirit and the wide
play that it gave to Individual initia-
tive, all tended 10 make IT peculiarly.
coDgenidi To a hardy and virile folk.
democratic to the core, prizing indi-
vldual Independence above all earth
~ possessions, and engaged in the
rough and stern work of conquering
continent. Methodism spread even
among the old communities and the
long settled districts of the Atlantic
tide water; but it's phenomenal
SroWth was from the regions west
ward. The whole country is under a
debt of gratitude to the Methodist
circuit riders, the Methodist pioneer
preachers, whose movement westward
kept pace with the movement of the
frontier, who shared all the hardships
in the life of the frontiersman, while
at the same time ministering to that
frontiersman's spiritual needs and
seeing that his pressing material
cares and the hard and grinding, pow
erty of his life did not wholly extin-
Suish the divine fire within his soul
such was your work in the past; and
your work in the present is as great;
for the need and opportunity for ser
vice widen as the field of national in
teresL "idens. 1t is not true in this
country that the poor have grown
poorer; but it is true that in many
sections, and particularly in our large
cities, the rich have grown 50 very
much richer as to widen the gulf be-
tween the man of very large means
and the man who makes each days
livelihood by that days work, and
those who with sincerity, and efh-
cheney, and deep conviction, Dand to-
gether for mutual help, are those who
can do most to keep the gulf from
becoming too wide. True religion,
through church organizations, through
philapthropic organizations, in all the
field of kindred endeavor, can mani
fest itself as effectively In the crowd
ed and complex life of today as in the
pioneer yesterdays, and the souls Of
men need the light now, and strive
blindly toward it, as they needed it,
ana strOye toward it in the vanished
past. 1t is your task TO do the work
OF the Lord on the farm and in the
mine, in the cOuntingroOm and the
factory, in the car shops ana beside
the blasting furnaces just AZ it was
the task Of your spiritual forebears
to wrestle for the souls Of the men
and women who dWeit on the stump
dotted clearings In the wilderness.
No nation in the world has more ,
right than ours to look with proud
toward the future. No
where else has the experiment Of I
democratic government, OF govern
ment by the people and for the peo- |
pie, Of government based on the prin- I,
ciple of treating each man on his in /
nate worth as a man, been tried on so |
vast scale as with US. ami on the |
whole the experiment has been more /
successful than anywhere else. More |
over, on the whole, / think II can be |
said that We have grown better and |
not worse; for II there ia mucn evil, /
good also greatly abounds. and if .
wrong grows, so in even greater I
measure grows the stern sense Of .
right before which wrong must event ,
Ially yield. II would be both un- |
manly and unwarran,el 10 become |
OF despair.ng about the !
nations future. Clear-eyed and far
sighted men who are both brave Of
1eart and cool Of head while not for
moment refusing 10 see and ack-
lowledge the many evils around us,