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Real estate record and builders' guide: [v. 99, no. 2552: Articles]: February 10, 1917

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AND NEW YORK, FEBRUARY 10, 1917 PRESENT-DAY EVENTS INSPIRE PATRIOTISM Hon. Martin W. Littleton, In His Address at the Annual Banquet of The Real Estate Board, Arouses Enthusiasm* THERE is no subject at this hour upon which it is needful that I should detain you more than a moment. Your city, your State and your Nation have been presented with clearness, with em¬ phasis and with patriotic fervor. There has never been a time and hour when we should feel more inclined to solemn re¬ flection. The ir.ingled sensations of the day have served to remind us of things which have been long forgotten. The thrills have brought to us memories that had almost passed away. We can re¬ member to-night what yesterday we had almost forgotten. We think now of the things which we read in our school books of years gone by. By the rude bridge that arched the flood Their flag to April's breeze unfurled; Here the embattled farmers stood And fired a shot heard round the world. We can remember now the majestic Declaration of Independence which of late we have too indifferently considered. To-night we can repeat with veneration and respect the philosophy of that De¬ claration which set on fire the political literature of the world, and by which na¬ tion after nation, and people after people, have been inspired to learn its philosophy and to march with the blazing light of its advancing civilization. "We hold these truths to be self- evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that air.ong these are life, lib¬ erty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, govern¬ ments are instituted among men, de¬ riving their just powers from the consent of the governed." To-night we are williiig to dwell upon the deep significance of this proclamation of our political philosophy. To-night we are willing to hear retold the story which is written imperishably in our history of the heroism and conduct of those who went before us, and before the week is past man after man in this com¬ munity will be cherishing the memories of Washington and his gallant men. They will recall the Battle of Long Island and of Harlem Heights, and the retreat up the beautiful Hudson. They will be able to see through the cold and bitter winter scenes the track of the blood-stained inarch of the first American soldiers. Our memory will burn with the recol¬ lection of events that tried men's souls, because we are called upon now to con¬ template and may be to confront an epoch, a crisis, an era surpassing in dan¬ ger, if not in results, any era within the history of the Anglo-Saxon race. It has been said tonight that Democ¬ racy is a matter of spirit and of the soul. Let me add this definite thing—that ours is a definitive country, with a definitive ideal and definitive purpose springing from a definitive philosophy. It was the neglect of that ideal and the ignorance of that philosophy, and the dis¬ regard of that purpose, that brought the cataclysm in Europe. It was the age- old blunder that civilization continues to make that created the situation in which the world finds itself today. It was the absolutism Of government. It was the ♦It must be remembered tbat on the day of the evening on which this address was delivered President Wilson handed Count Von Bernstorff his passport. HON. MARTIN W. LITTLETON. abolition of all restraints upon govern¬ ment as an agency. It was the deposit of all sovereignty in the government without a fi.xed limitation. It v^as the failure to preserve and protect by some great organic instrument the individuality and its attributes of life, of person, of liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is the final and full fruition of uncon¬ trolled and uncontrollable and sublimated force. We have neglected our own ideal; we have forgotten to impress and reimpress tlie definitive character of our own insti¬ tutions, that ideal our fathers wrought from ail the knowledge of the imperious and dangerous ways of the absolutism of the past, the absolutism which was the curse of the Caesars, the fault of the Athenian democracy, the rage of the French revolution and which is em¬ bodied in the Kaiserism of Germany. It was to avoid these errors, to escape from this doctrine of force, to emanci¬ pate the government from the curse of unrestrained power that our fathers set down in the philosophy of our nation the doctrine that the right to life, lib¬ erty and the pursuit of happiness was an inalienable right. It belonged to man before there was a government. It was twin-born with him, and it is his and will remain his after there ceases to be a government. These are the attributes of the individual which no government could encroach upon. These are the ob¬ jects to protect and secure which govern¬ ment was necessary, and the only way in which a government could protect these sacred objects of its care and so¬ licitude was that that government should be a definitely limited one, ordained and established by the Constitution of the United States. This Constitution was adopted in all the magnificent measure of its power; this Declaration of Independence was ut¬ tered in all the flaming glory of a new found liberty in order that we might pos¬ sess here on this continent what other nations had failed to achieve. Here we have atteinpted to set up tmder this flag an equipoise between authority and lib¬ erty; here we have attempted what Pro¬ fessor Burgess has so happily called "The Reconciliation of Government with Liberty," and we have proclaimed to all. the world that no government is fit to govern if in it is reposed absolute sover¬ eignty, and that no government is fit to. govern except as the limited agency of man. It was the passionate philosophy of the Declaration of Independence, it was the cool distribution of adjusted power in the Constitution that life, liberty and the. pursuit of happiness was the end and that government was the means. Indi¬ vidualism in the full exercise of its ge¬ nius for invention, in its liberty of ac¬ tion, in its quest for wealth, in its do¬ minion over property was the end; Gov-, ernment, the limited restrained agency and means to that end. This is the defin¬ itive ideal in our country. Over against such an ideal what has Germany done? She created modern mu¬ nicipalities, she abolished poverty, she provided the old age pension, she organ-^ ized her workmen's exchanges, she built an empire that resembles nothing so much as a great Corliss engine; but in. doing this she destroyed the priceless at-, tribute of the individual. She submerged the three great civilizing sacred things which constitute the very foundation- stones of our Republic—life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And then hurl¬ ing herself as the embodiment of un¬ restrained force into a war, led by the mailed hands of her ruthless warriors,, stimulated by the cruel doctrine of her ruthless philosophers, she has forcd upoa the aspiring Republic of France, in which the blazing light of democracy was burn¬ ing, an era of disorder in which France must imitate her exair.ple by dismantling, at least for a time, her own Republic. She caused a parliamentary democracy like England to substitute the power of government in place of the rights of in¬ dividuals. And whatever of hope was rising in the dark regions of Russia for the liberty of the individual has been for the time eclipsed. It is unrestrained power of Kaisers. Czars and Kings that makes war. It was to destroy that unrestrained power that limited agency of a constitutional government was erected on our shores. This is the ideal which we should be prepared to defend. The hour may come and we may be put to the test. But ours is not only an obligation—it is a prom-- ise. and the fulfilment of that promise will be to preserve for all ages to come this definitive ideal of a great Republic whose chiefest attribute is a Constitu¬ tion limiting the power of the govern¬ ment in favor of the liberty of the indi¬ vidual. With this as our mission, and with such a history; with this as our object and with such a past; and with this as our obligation and with such a future,- and with one hundred millions of people,' here whom we cannot doubt and whOr will not permit us to doubt them, surely," the trial of civilization for all ages is- upon us. That obli.gation and that duty, has been beautifully expressed in the. sweet and simple felicity of the old Greek poet: Defend this land your common parent and dearest nurse. Who on her fostering soil. Upheld with bounteous care your in^ fant steps, And trained you to this service That your hand in her defense Might lift the faithful shield.