Descendants of New England pioneers are proud of their ancestry and glad to proclaim the fact that so far as the United States are concerned, New England is in deed the cradle of religious liberty.
The lawlessness of frontier life in America has been pictured as a remarkable phenomenon. In reality, it was the natural consequence of indiscriminate mixing of volatile substances.
It would not be fair to the critics of Rotary, who include some of the most brilliant of the British and American writers, to charge them with prejudice.
It did not come naturally; in fact, it would be difficult to conceive of any more dogmatic and less tolerant people than the first settlers on New England shores.
In course of time, religion came with its rites invoking the aid of good spirits which were even more powerful than the bad spirits, and thus for the time being tempered the agony of fears.
While the struggle for religious liberty had proceeded without large-scale bloodshed in New England and elsewhere in the United States, the struggle for political liberty had not fared so well.
If there is anything worse than international warfare, is civil warfare, and the United States was destined to experience it in the extreme of bitterness.
How strange it is that murder has the sanction of law in one and only one of the human relationships, and that is the most important of all, that of nation to nation.
One's nativity is not of his own choosing, but whatever it may be, it is entitled to respect; and all nations have honorable place in the world's family.
