Address on the 150th Anniversary of the Surrender of General Cornwallis at Yorktown, Virginia.

Our guests and my fellow countrymen:

No person here present, no schoolchild of the millions listening in on this occasion, needs reminder of the significance of the Battle of Yorktown. If we judge it by the standard of battles in which the contrary result would have essentially varied the whole course of history, then it becomes one of the very few decisive battles in the history of the world.

Six years of war for independence had sorely exhausted the resources, depleted the forces, and sapped the support of that group of men whose genius gave freedom to our country. With the inroads the mother country had made in subjection of the northern colonies, it is extremely doubtful if the struggle for independence could have succeeded had Washington lost at Yorktown. Certainly with the victory at Yorktown, our independence was won.

In military history, Yorktown is distinguished as one of the great battles in which land and sea forces coordinated. The naval cooperation was furnished by France, herself also at war with Great Britain. For that cooperation we have held during these 150 years a grateful remembrance. That sentiment, continuing down through our history, finally flowered in the cooperation which the American people gave to France in their defense against an overwhelming enemy. The presence of Marshal Petain and General Pershing here today symbolizes this second comradeship in arms, so magnificently begun by De Grasse, Lafayette, and Rochambeau.

We assemble here to celebrate a victory for our own independence, but not essentially a victory over the British. The long span of history will interpret the American War for Independence and this battle more in the light of a struggle amongst English-speaking people for the establishment in government of an extension of a common philosophy of human rights begun at Runnymede. The principles and ideas for which America contended had many adherents and much sympathy in England at that time. The victory of the Americans gave impulse to the new order throughout the world; and while the sovereignties of America and England definitely diverged at Yorktown, yet the march of the ideals for which the Americans fought also went forward and triumphed in England itself.

The common acceptance of many of these principles has aligned the English-speaking people side by side for a century of peace, concord, sympathy, and devotion to a liberty defined and assured under a reign of law. The triumph of these new ideas in America strengthened the impulses for liberty in France.

"It is not to be doubted," wrote Lafayette, in sending the keys of the Bastille to Washington, "that the principles of America opened the Bastille."

Our purpose today is to pay homage to a glorious event in our national history. Among many benedictions offered to us by this ceremony, one is renewed acquaintance with the spirit of George Washington. The campaign which led to its final climax here established his military genius. It was the crown of victory which placed his name among the great commanders of all time.

It is not too much to say that without Washington the war for independence would not have been won.

Washington's greatness was far more than a great general; it lay in his soul and his character. Of him, in sober, critical judgment, a gifted modern historian, James Truslow Adams, has written: "In the travail of war and revolution, America had brought forth a man to be ranked with the greatest and noblest of any age in all the world. There have been no greater generals in the field and statesmen in the cabinet in our own and other nations. There has been no greater character. When we think of Washington, it is not as a military leader, nor as executive or diplomat. We think of the man who by sheer force of character held a divided and disorganized country together until victory was achieved, and who, after peace was won, still held his disunited countrymen by their love and respect and admiration for himself until a nation was welded into enduring strength and unity."

This national shrine stands for more than a glorious battle. It is a shrine which symbolizes things of the spirit. The victory of Yorktown was a victory for mankind. It was another blaze in the great trail of human freedom. Through these ideas and ideals the minds of a people were liberated, their exertions and accomplishments stimulated.

The primary national consequence of the independence we finally won here was the release of our national mind from all hampering restraints put upon us by subjection to another nation and an older civilization. Here America became free to be America. We acquired the opportunity for unrestrained development of a government and culture that should be our own. It has made possible the realization of those visions of government and organized society which arose among us as a result of individuality of temperment born of the frontiers of a new continent.

If we look back over these 150 years, we see our Nation marking progress with every decade. From these communities of 3 million people scattered along the Atlantic seaboard, it has grown to more than 120 million. It has marked the full sweep of the continent to the Pacific Ocean with magnificent cities, homes, and farms, with a degree of comfort and security hitherto unknown in human history. It has grown in education and knowledge, from which invention and discovery have been accelerated, with every year bringing a harvest of new comforts and inspirations. It has unfolded a great experiment in human society, builded new and powerful institutions born of new ideas and new ideals, new visions of human relations. It has attained a wider diffusion of liberty and happiness and more of material things than humanity has ever known before. It has attained a security amongst nations by which no thought ever comes that an enemy may step within our borders.

While temporary dislocations have come to us because of the World War, we must not forget that our forefathers met similar obstacles to progress time and again, and yet the Nation has swept forward to ever increasing strength. The unparalleled rise of America has not been the result of riches in lands, forests, or mines; it sprung from the ideas and ideals which liberated minds and stimulated the spirits of men. In those ideas and ideals are the soul of the people. No American can review this vast pageant of progress without confidence and faith, without courage, strength, and resolution for the future.

Selfishness is poison in the veins of human life. Wholehearted unselfishness makes the real beauty of holiness for men and nations. In hard times we are always tempted to think we must shut up our hearts of fellowship and human feeling, that we must look out for ourselves. But in hard times we must open our hearts and consider our neighbors and brothers. We are coming to our national thanksgiving festival, but we cannot fitly give thanks to the Father of us all if we close our eyes to our brother whom we see to be in need. Hearts that are grateful toward God must not be hard toward their fellow men. We are all of us His children and must now bear ourselves toward our brothers as His children should. Thus only may we look for His "Well done." And those words I want the United States now to hear.