Alike for the nation and the individual, the one indispensable requisite is character.

If I have to choose between peace and righteousness, I'll choose righteousness.

The liar is no whit better than the thief, and if his mendacity takes the form of slander he may be worse than most thieves. It puts a premium upon knavery untruthfully to attack an honest man, or even with hysterical exaggeration to assail a bad man with untruth.

The immigrant must not be allowed to drift or to be put at the mercy of the exploiter. Our object is not to imitate one of the older racial types, but to maintain a new American type and then to secure loyalty to this type. We cannot secure such loyalty unless we make this a country where men shall feel that they have justice and also where they shall feel that they are required to perform the duties imposed upon them.

Freemasonry teaches not merely temperance, fortitude, prudence, justice, brotherly love, relief, and truth, but liberty, equality, and fraternity, and it denounces ignorance, superstition, bigotry, lust tyranny and despotism.

Americanism is a question of principle, of idealism, of character. It is not a matter of birthplace, or creed, or line of descent.

We should not forget that it will be just as important to our descendants to be prosperous in their time as it is to us to be prosperous in our time.