The weekly Alaska citizen., 1918-08-12
ADDRESS MADE BY PRESIDENT
 JULY FOURTH

Speaking at the tomb of George Washington, at Mount Vernon, on July 4, 1918, President Wilson said : Gentlemen of the Diplomatic Corps and my Fellow Citizens: am happy to draw apart with you to this quiet place of old counsel in order to speak little of the meaning of this day of our Nations Independence. The place seems very still and remote. It is as serene and untouched by the hur- ry of the world as it was in those great days long ago when General Washington was here and held lei surely conference with the men who were to be associated with him in the creation of nation. From these gentle slopes Nhey looked out upon the world and saw it whole, saw it with the light of the future upon it, saw it with modern eyes that turn ed away from a past which men of liberated spirits could no longer en. dure. It is for that reason that we can not feel, even here, in the i'm mediate presence of this sacred tomb, that this is place of death. It was place of achievement A great promise that was meant for all man. kind was here given plan and reality. The associations by which we are here surrounded are the inspiring as- sOciations of that noble death which is only a glorious consummat ion. From this green hillside We also ought to be able to see with con- pretending eyes the world that lies about us and should conceive anew the purposes that must set men free.
 Tt is significant, significan; of their own character and purpose and of the influences they were setting afoot, that Washington and his asso- ciates, like the barons at Runnymede, spoke and acted, not for class, but for people. It has been left for us to see to it that it shall be under stood that they spoke and acted, not for single people only, but for all mankind. They were thinking, not of themselves and of the material in- terests which centered in the little groups of landholders and merchants and men of affairs with whom they were accustomed to act, in Virginia and the colonies to the north and south of her, but of a people which wished to be done with classes and special interests and the authority of men whom they had not themselves chosen to rule over them. They en- tertained no private purpose, desired no peculiar privilege. They were consciously planning that men of every class should be free and Ameri- ca a place to which men out of every nation might resort who wished to share with them the rights and priv ileges of free men. And we take our cue from them, do we not? We intend what they intended We here
 in America believe our participation in this present war to be only the fruitage of what they planted. Our case differs from theirs only in this, that it is our inestimable privilege to concert with men out of every na- tion what shall make not only the liberties of America secure but the liberties of every other people as well. We are happy in the thought that we are permitted to do what they would have done had they been in our place. There must now be set tied once for all what was settled for America in the great age upon whose inspiration we draw today. This is surely a fitting place from which calmly to look out upon our task, that we may fortify our spirits for it's ac complishment. And this Is the ap- propriate place from which to avow, alike to the friends who look on and to the friends with whom we have the happiness to be associated in action. the faith and purpose which which we act.
 This, then, is our conception of the great struggle in which we are engaged. The plot is written plain upon every scene and every act of the supreme tragedy. On the one hand, stand the peoples of the world not only the peoples actually en- gagged, but many others also who suf fer under mastery but can not act; peoples of many races and in every part of the world--the people of stricken Russia still. among the rest, though they are for the moment un- organized and helpless. Opposed to them, masters of many armies, stand an isolated, friendless group of gov ernments who speak no common pur- pose, but only selfish ambitions of their own by which none can profit but themselves, and whose peoples are fuel in their hands; governments which fear their people and yet are for the time their sovereign lords. making every choice for them and