The Mena weekly star., 1908-11-05
ALL ID GIVE THANKS
PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT ISSUES HIS ANNUAL PROCLAIM
 TON OF EVENT.
NAMES LAST THURSDAY IN NOVEMBER
Steady Growth of Nation in Power, Wealth and Population Pointed Out by Chief Executive-Wants All to So Order Their Lives That the eles- sings May Continue.

Washington, Nov. 3.-The president issued the annual Thanksgiving proc lamation Saturday, in which he point ed out the steady growth of the ma tion in strength, worldly power, wealth and population, and that our average of individual comfort and well. being is higher than that of any other country in the world For this, he de- clares, Americans owe it to the Al mighty to show equal progress in moral and spiritual things. The proc lamation follows:
 "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 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 in material things to a degree never known before and not now known in any other country. The l3 colonies which struggled along the seacoast of the Atlantic and were hemmed in but a few miles west of tidewater by the Indian-haunted will derness have been transformed into the mightiest republic which the world has ever seen.
 Its domains stretch across the con tinent from one to the other of the dominion alike in the Arctic and tropic realms. The growth in wealth and population has surpassed even the growth in territory. 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 ma terial we'll being we have thus abound ed, we owe to the Almighty to show equal progress in moral and spiritual things. With a nation, as with the in dividuals who make up a nation, ma terial well-being is an indispensable foundation. But the foundation avails nothing by itself. That life is wasted, and worse than wasted, which is spent in piling heap on 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 foun. dation must be raised the structure of the lofty life of the spirit if this na' tion is properly to fulfill 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 na- tion, as in the individual, in the long run, it is character that counts. Let us, therefore, as a people, set our faces resolutely against evil, and with broad charity, with kindliness and good will l toward all men, but with unfiinching determination to smite wrong strive with all the strength that is given us for righteousness in public and private life.
 Now, therefore. I, Theodore Roose welt, president of the United States 1 do set apart Thanksgiving day, the twenty-sixth day of November, next, as day of general thanksgiving and prayer, and on that day I recommend that the people shall cease from theii daily work in their homes or in their l 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 ne gi,en strength so to order their lives as to deserve continuation of these blessings in the future. Theodore l Roosevelt"