The Wilmington morning star., 1940-11-12

WASHINGTON, Nov. II. ~
The text of President Roosevelt
Armistice day speech at the tomb
of The Unknown Soldier:
On this day which commemor'
ates the end of fighting between
human beings in a world war II
is permissible for me to search
far back in the history of civil
~zation in order to visualize impor'
tant trends.
On the great seal of the United
States which, for a century ano
a half, has reposed in the loving
care of a long line of secretaries
of state of the United States ap-
pear these words:
"Novus ordo seclorum' which,
means: "A new order of the ages
In almost every century since
the day that recorded history be-
gan, people have thought that they
are creating or establishing some
kind of new order of the ages"
Few "New Orders"
But in the scheme of civiliza-
ton from which ours descends l
suppose that we a properly rec
ognize that in $500 years there
have been only a very few new
orders" in the development of hui
man living under a thing called
government.
Without question, the philosophy
Of orderly government in which,
the governed had some form of
voice in a civilized society goes
back to the days of ancient Greece
We must remember, however, that
while the philosophy of democra-
cy was there first expressed in
words and on paper, the practice of
it was by no means consistent,
and was confined to a relatively
small number of human beings
and to a relatively small geogra-
phical area.
We came to the age of Rome-an
age of a strange admixture of cleo
tons and laws and military con-
quest and personal dictatorship. 1t
was an age which extended the
civilization of the period to the
greater part of the then known
world. 1t was an age which forced
its own conception of laws and its
ways of life on millions of less
civilized people who previously had
lived under tribal custom or cen
tralized direction. Definitely, Rome
was an age.
With Rome's collapse and the
overrunning of Europe by vast pop
ulation movements from farther
East, orderly progress d%eteriorat-
&c, and the sword drove learning
into hiding. That dark period could
hardly be called an age because it
was an interim between ages.
Then, with the reawakening Of a
thousand years ago, with the cru
sades, the feudal system, the guilds
the kings and the renaissance, that
age which Immediately preceded
our WI vas born and grew and
flourished. That was a n era of
enormous distinction-arts and lit
erature and education and explor-
ation-marching armies, barons,,
and empires. Human security was
still non-existent,-democracy was
not permitted.
Era of 1776
Towards it's close, however, the
appearance of tiny movements in
tiny places, led by tiny people fore
cast the next vast step forward
the r of 1776-the age in which,
thank God, we still live.
Those beginnings originated, it
is true, in the old world-among
the PHILOSOPHERS, among the seek
ers of many kinds of freedom for
hidden by those who governed.
Those beginnings found their
first development in the colonies
that were organized along the sea-
board of North American there, by
the processes of trial and error,
democracy as it has since been
accepted in so many lands, had
its birth and its training.
There came into being the first
far-flung government in all tn e
world whose cardinal principle was
democracy-the United States of
America.
We must accept that as fact be-
cause, truly and fundamentally,
it was a new order-nothing like
it had ever been seen before. We
must accept it because the new
order spread into almost every
part of the civilized world.
1t spread in many forms-and
over the next century almost all
peoples had acquired some form of
popular expression of opinion, some
form of election, of franchise, of
the right to be heard. The Amer
icas and the British Isles led the
world in spreading the gospel of
democracy among peoples great
and small.
And the world as a whole felt
with much right that it had dis
carded feudalism, conquest and
IL