to-day
whether you are descended from William the Conqueror or not! No one
will care in America whether your ancestor came over in the Mayflower,
or whether he signed the Declaration of Independence! Every American
has a chance to-day of signing a far greater declaration than that
great one of '76--the declaration of personal willingness to sacrifice
all on the altar of liberty. In England, in America, in Australia, in
all the countries of the world in the days that are to be, men and
women will make their boast in this one thing, or have no cause for
boasting at all, of the part that they had in this fight, the greatest
fight that has ever been waged for liberty, for righteousness, and for
the virtue of womanhood.

What a splendid opportunity it is for us to be able to personally pay
the price of liberty. How easy to forget that freedom has either to be
earned by ourselves or enjoyed because some one else has paid the price
for us. Had we not forgotten in our countries that the democracy that
we boast of is no credit to us because it was won by the blood of other
men? Men died that we might be able to govern ourselves! Women
carried heart-ache and loneliness to the grave that we might make our
own laws!

Liberty! Such an easy word to mouth, but how precious in the sight of
God! Liberty is one of the treasures of heaven and only committed to
men at great cost, lest they should undervalue it.

In these great and wonderful times there has been given to us the
glorious opportunity to earn our own liberty, to prove our own personal
right to citizenship in a free country.

You may not be able to pay in good, red blood, you may not be able to
pay much in the coin of the republic, but if each of us does not pay in
whatsoever coin we have, there will come soon to us the days in which
we shall realize that we are thieves and robbers, enjoying that to
which we have no right, won so hardly with the deaths and wounds of men
and the salt tears of women. In the New World that shall be born after
the birth-pangs of the present days, we shall realize that we have no
place, our souls shall shrink and shrivel as we gaze on the honor scars
of those who have paid, and we shall be elbowed to the outskirts of the
crowd, as the people bow before the men whom the President and people
delight to honor--the men sightless, the men limbless, the memory of
the men lifeless.

CHAPTER XXXVI

NOT A FIGHT FOR "RACE" BUT FOR "RI