Unfettered Heritage

May we speak of that for which all the thankfulness we have is yet not adequate⎯thankfulness that our fathers kept faith wit us and counted no sacrifice too great to give their children a right to freedom in a free land. There were many things they could not achieve in their day, but they did not imperil the future by any unwillingness to meet and to solve and to pay for their own problems. We have learned one of the greatest lessons of life when we learn to live not only for ourselves but also for those who follow. Some of the greatest satisfactions men ever achieve, come not immediately to them, but to their children. Those things which we would have liked for ourselves and which we have reached for but fallen short of, we often realize with greater joy by making it possible for our children to achieve them. And a person has never known one of the greatest compensations in life until he has had the surpassing experience of seeing himself and his plans projected into the next generation. That is how civilization has grown⎯by the debt each generation pays to those who follow, since they cannot directly pay their debt to those who have gone before. And so we are grateful that our fathers kept faith with us, and we ask for strength and wisdom to pass on to our children and our children’s children a free and unfettered heritage, unburdened by any compromising ways of ours.