488

America, as you and your ancestors have known it, and as your descend-
ants must continue to know it, is the ideal of popular government. Under its
unique Constitution we are guaranteed rights and privileges and opportunities
such as no other people on the face of the earth have ever enjoyed. But as
these rights and privileges have been ours to enjoy, so now they are ours to
protect.

For the sake of those to come after us; for the sake of our own self respect
as citizens of the greatest Country the world has eve* known, we can do no less
than safeguard our governmental institutions with all our energy, with all our
effort. I know that the members of the Knights of Pythias and the Pythian
Sisters, true to the ideals which membership in their orders entail, will measure
up to every responsibility of American citizenship.