754 State Papers and Addresses

ST. MARY'S COUNTY TOURNAMENT

September 27, 1942

Leonardtown

Today chivalry still rules here in St Mary's County, although it has become
a forgotten term in the relationships between nations.

It is well that, particularly in such times as these, the people of this section
of Maryland can pause in their usual routine of life to recall for a few moments
the glories of the chivalry of other days, days when courtesy and humanity, and
deference to the weak and aged and oppressed, ruled the hearts of men.

Where once occasional tournaments such as this were all we had to remind
us of the chivalry of past ages, today many thousands of America's youth are
embarked on a tournament of chivalry that eclipses any chivalric display the
world has ever known.

On remote islands and throughout the vast expanse of the seven seas, in
the air and under the water, gallant young men, our relatives, our friends, are
tilting their lances at a foe so utterly devoid of chivalry and of the instincts of
humanity, as to defy understanding by decent people. And these young men
are faring forth not merely to defend their own homes and families, their very
persons, against the lust of war-mad militarists, but they are carrying aloft
the torch of hope to millions enslaved peoples throughout the world, whose last
hope for salvation now is in America and in her sons now battling throughout
the world.

Today we see America in a world-wide tournament of chivalry, the out-
come of which will effect every citizen of the world for many years to come.
And the outcome, let me add, important as it is to everyone of us, is by no means
assured. The foes arrayed against us are too strong, too ruthless, to be over-
come except by the most concentrated effort of all the people of America, a con-
centrated all-out effort, the maximum of which has not yet been achieved.

Why is America at war? There are physical causes and there are morale
causes. Let us consider the latter first. By our very nature, by the consecrated
blood of our forefathers, by our creeds and covenants, we are the moral enemy
of all tyranny. We are the moral opponents of any nation or any government
which sets itself up as master of mankind.

For it is our National faith that men shall be free, and not be slaves; that
they shall be equal before one another as they are equal in the sight of God, and
not be subsevient to false godheads of military might or political overbearance.

We are the spiritual antagonists of racial hatreds and religious intolerance;
of promise-breakers, of all who would trample and annihilate the dignity of man
the wide world over.

Nor are these moral issues by any means one-sided. Our dislike for dic-
tators is as nothing compared with their blood-hungry loathing of us. For as