Sign of a nation, great and strong To ward her people from foreign wrong: Live in the colors to stand or fall. Hats off! Along the street there comes A blare of bugles, a ruffle of drums; The flag is passing by! MAKERS OF THE FLAG Address delivered on Flag Day, 1914, before the employees of the Department of the Interior, Washington, D. C. FRANKLIN K. LANE THIS morning, as I passed into the Land Office, The Flag dropped me a most cordial salutation, and from its rippling folds I heard it say: "Good morning, Mr. Flag Maker." "I beg your pardon, Old Glory," I said, " aren't you mistaken? I am not the President of the United States, nor a member of Congress, nor even a general in the army. I am only a Government clerk." "I greet you again, Mr. Flag Maker," replied the gay voice, "I know you well. You are the man who worked in the swelter of yesterday straightening out the tangle of that farmer's homestead in Idaho, or perhaps you found the mistake in that Indian contract in Oklahoma, or helped to clear that patent for the hopeful inventor in New York, or pushed the opening of that new ditch in Colorado, or made that mine in Illinois more safe, or brought relief to the old soldier in Wyoming. No matter; whichever one of these beneficent individuals you may happen to be, I give you greeting, Mr. Flag Maker." I was about to pass on, when The Flag stopped me with these words: "Yesterday the President spoke a word that made happier the future of ten million peons in Mexico; but that act looms no larger on the flag than the struggle which the boy in Georgia is making to win the Corn Club prize this summer. "Yesterday the Congress spoke a word which will open the door of Alaska; but a mother in Michigan worked from sunrise until far into the night, to give her boy an education. She, too, is making the flag. "Yesterday we made a new law to prevent financial panics, and yesterday, maybe, a school teacher in Ohio taught his first letters to a boy who will one day write a song that will give cheer to the millions of our race. We are all making the flag." "But," I said impatiently, " these people were only working!" Then came a great shout from The Flag: "The work that we do is the making of the flag. "I am not the flag; not at all. I am but its shadow. "I am whatever you make me, nothing more. "I am your belief in yourself, your dream of what a People may become. "I live a changing life, a life of moods and passions, of heartbreaks and tired muscles. Sometimes I am strong with pride, when men do an honest work, fitting the rails together truly. "Sometimes I droop, for then purpose has gone from me, and cynically I play the coward. "Sometimes I am loud, garish, and full of that ego that blasts judgment. "But always, I am all that you hope to be, and have the courage to try for. "I am song and fear, struggle and panic, and ennobling hope. "I am the day's work of the weakest man, and the largest dream of the most daring. "I am the Constitution and the courts, statutes and the statute makers, soldier and dreadnaught, drayman and street sweep, cook, counselor, and clerk. "I am the battle of yesterday, and the mistake of to-morrow. "I am the mystery of the men who do without knowing why. "I am the clutch of an idea, and the reasoned purpose of resolution. "I am no more than what you believe me to be and I am all that you believe I can be. "I am what you make me, nothing more. "I swing before your eyes as a bright gleam of color, a symbol of yourself, the pictured suggestion of that big thing which makes this nation. My stars and my stripes are your dream and your labors. They are bright with cheer, brilliant with courage, firm with faith, because you have made them so out of your hearts. For you are the makers of the flag and it is well that you glory in the making." THE FLAG OF OUR COUNTRY1 FRANK L. STANTON SHE'S up there - Old Glory - she's waving o'erhead; She dazzles the nations with ripples of red, And she'll wave for us living, or droop o'er us dead She's the flag of our country forever! She's up there — Old Glory -no tyrant-dealt scars, No blur on her brightness-no stain on her stars; The brave blood of heroes hath crimsoned her bars She's the flag of our country forever! THE MEANING OF THE FLAG WOODROW WILSON FRIENDS and fellow citizens: I know of nothing more difficult than to render an adequate tribute to the emblem of our nation. For those of us who have shared that nation's life and felt the beat of its pulse it must be considered a matter of impossibility to express the great things which that emblem embodies. I venture 1 From "Comes One With a Song," copyright, 1899. Used by special permission of the publishers, the Bobbs-Merrill Company. to say that a great many things are said about the flag which very few people stop to analyze. For me the flag does not express a mere body of vague sentiment. The flag of the United States has not been created by rhetorical sentences in declarations of independence and in bills of rights. It has been created by the experience of a great people, and nothing is written upon it that has not been written by their life. It is the embodiment, not of a sentiment, but of a history, and no man can rightly serve under that flag who has not caught some of the meaning of that history. Experience, ladies and gentlemen, is made by men and women. National experience is the product of those who do the living under that flag. It is their living that has created its significance. You do not create the meaning of a national life by any literary exposition of it, but by the actual daily endeavors of a great people to do the tasks of the day and live up to the ideals of honesty and righteousness and just conduct. And as we think of these things, our tribute is to those men who have created this experience. Many of them are known by name to all the world-statesmen, soldiers, merchants, masters of industry, men of letters and of thought who have coined our hearts into action or into words. Of these men we feel that they have shown us the way. They have not been afraid to go before. They have known that they were speaking the thoughts of a great people when they led that great people along the paths of achievement. There was not a single swashbuckler among them. They were men of sober, quiet thought, the more effective because |