No; I am sorry that I have never been on the Eastern Shore." He said,
"Never been there? Well, I am sorry for you." He said, "You know, we are a
strange people down there--a strange people." He said, "We have some
peculiar legends; some stories that have come down to us, generation after
generation; and while other people may not believe them, we do; and one of
the stories is that when Adam and Eve were in the Garden of Eden, they fell
sick, and the Lord was greatly concerned about them, and he called a
meeting of his principal angels and consulted with them as to what to do
for them by way of giving them a change of air and improving their health;
and the Angel Gabriel said, 'Why not take them down to the Eastern Shore?'
And the Lord said, 'Oh, no; that would not be sufficient change.'"

And so, as you go throughout the United States, you find men attached to
different parts of our continent, making their homes in different places,
and not thinking often about the great country to which they belong,
excepting as it is represented by that flag; and every one of those local
attachments is a valuable asset to our country, and nothing should be done
to minimize them. When the boys come back from France, every one of them
says, "The thing I most desired while I was in France was to get home, for
there I first realized how splendid and beautiful and generous and rich a
country America was." We want to make these men who come to us from abroad
realize what those boys realized, and we want to put inside of their
spirits an appreciation of those things that are noble and fine in American
law and American institutions and American life; and we want them to join
with us as citizens in giving to America every good thing that comes out of
every foreign country.

We are a blend in sympathies and a blend in art, a blend in literature, a
blend in tendencies, and that is our hope for making this the supremely
great race of the world. It is not to be done mechanically; it is not to be
done scientifically; it is to be done by the human touch; by reaching some
door into that strange man, with some word or some act that will show to
him that there is in America the kind of sentiment and sympathy that that
man's soul is reaching out for.

This _is_ God's own country. We want the boys to know that the sky is blue
and big and broad with hope, and that its fields are green with promise,
and that in every one of our hearts there is the desire t