SHORT TALK BULLETIN - Vol.II     July, 1924      No.7 
 
FOURTH OF JULY 
 
by: Unknown 
 
As Freemasons, it is no perfunctory spirit that we remember the 148th ( 
217th in 1993) anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of American 
Independence, July 4th, 1776.  It is a part of the history of our country 
and the history of our Craft, in this country; and it is our belief that a 
people who forget, or treat lightly, a great past, cannot have a great 
future.  If they are indifferent to, or take as a matter of course, what 
cost so much in suffering and sacrifice, they are not worthy of the 
treasure they posses. 
 
Happily, the old disputes which led up to the American Revolution, and the 
legacy of enmity which it left, are now faded and forgotten, and we think 
with kindness and respect of the land against which our forefathers fought.  
Since that far-off time America and Britain have joined hands in a vast 
enterprise, and their sons have fought side by side in a World War for the 
liberation of mankind and the redemption of civilization.  But the American 
Revolution itself still stands, not only as the birth-hour of our Republic, 
but as the beginning of a new and great era in the history of humanity, the 
meaning and measure of which we do not yet see or understand. 
 
No story outside of fairyland is more romantic than the history of the 
growth and development of our Republic.  He is a strange man, and no 
Patriot at all, who can read the record and not feel his heart beat faster, 
stirred by a holy memory and an honorable pride.  From thirteen thinly 
settled states, united in the struggle for freedom and in loyalty to a 
newly written Constitution, our Nation has grown to be one of the greatest, 
strongest, more far-reaching nations on earth; a human marvel and a social 
wonder.  Never has there been such a flowing together of peoples, such a 
blending of bloods, as in America; it is a fraternal achievement in which 
many races and many faces mingled to build a freer and gentler Fatherland 
of Mankind. 
 
Among the creative forces by which America has been made so great, none has 
been more benign than the influences of Freemasonry.  The real history  of 
Masonry in America belongs of right to the genius of poetry, and its story 
is an epic.  Silent, ever-present, always active, by its constructive 
genius our Fraternity built itself into the very foundations of the 
Republic.  When our fathers affirmed that "Governments derive their just 
powers from the consent of the governed,"  Masonry was present assenting to 
one of its own principles.  What patriotic memories cluster about old Green 
Dragon Tavern in Boston!  Webster called it "the headquarters of the 
Revolution," and there was also the headquarters of Freemasonry, where the 
Boston Tea Party was planned. 
As in Massachusetts, as throughout the Colonies, Masonry was everywhere 
active, indirectly as an Order, but directly through its members, in behalf 
of a nation "Conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all 
men are created equal;" which is one of its basic truths.  It was not an 
accident that so many Masons signed the Declaration of Independence, or 
that Washington and most of his Generals were members of the Craft.  Nor 
was it by mere chance that our first President was a Mason, sworn into 
office on a Bible taken from a Masonic Altar, by the Grand Master of New 
York.  Such facts are symbols of deeper facts, showing the place and power 
of Masonry in the making of a nation. 
 
Along the Atlantic Coast, among the Great Lakes, in the Wilderness of the 
Middle West, in the far South and the far West, everywhere, in centers of 
populations and in little Upper Rooms on the Frontier; the Lodge stood 
alongside the Home, the School and the Church.  Who can measure the 
influence, much less estimate the worth, of thousands of Masonic Altars in 
this land where, all down our history, men have met in the name of God and 
the moral law, seeking to create that influence and sentiment which gives 
law its authority and touches with intellectual and spiritual refinement 
the life of society!  Only a pen endowed with more than earthly skill could 
trace such an influence and tell such a story. 
 
As Freemasons we believe that the things that made our Republic great in 
the past - made it not only possible, but powerful - are the things that 
will make it still greater in the future.  A great English editor recently 
wrote an article asking the question, what has made America great?  Not its 
rich resources, he said, because other lands - Russia, for example - are 
equally rich.  Nor is it intelligence and enterprise of our people, because 
others are also intelligent.  No, what has made America great, he said, is 
its form of government.  If ever, of any men, it can be said that our 
fathers were divinely taught and divinely led when they instituted our form 
of government, in which individual initiative is united with social 
responsibility - liberty under law, liberty founded in right and reason, 
modified by private duty, public obligation, and a sense of the common 
good. 
For that reason we need today, all of us, a new baptism of the spirit of 
citizenship, of public-mindedness, of devotion to the state for what we can 
put into it and not for what we can get out of it.  So, and only so, can we 
make our form of government effective for its high ends, and vindicate the 
wisdom of our fathers.  Today hardly half of our people who are entitled to 
vote ever do so on any issue.  Even the excitement of a Presidential 
campaign, such as that in which we are now engaged (July 1924), does not 
bestir them from their lethargy.  With such negligence and indifference how 
can the words of Lincoln be fulfilled when he declared this to be a 
"Government of the people, by the people, for the people?"  The facts show 
that it is not the foreign element who fail to vote, but those who are of 
American ancestry and training. 
 
Here is where Masonry can render a real service, as well as in helping to 
create a more vivid sense of the sanctity of law.  The increase of 
lawlessness in America in the last twenty-five years has been appalling.  
Even before the Great War  some kinds of crime had increased fifteen 
hundred percent.  For anyone to think lightly of our constitution, or any 
part of it, is to strike a blow at the basis of ordered civic life.  To 
obey only such laws as suit our fancy or interest our appetite, is to lead 
the way to anarchy.  Others, by the same principle, may disregard other 
laws - even those protecting life and the ownership of property - and the 
result will be chaos.  Lincoln was right when he said that obedience to law 
must be the political religion of our Republic. 
The growth of racial rancor among us bodes no good for us or for our 
children.  If left unchecked. it will poison private fellowship and pollute 
germs of ills sure to breed all sorts of social diseases.  As has been 
said, no one race made America; it is a fraternal adventure of many races, 
each adding something of precious worth to the total achievement.  Seven 
nationalities were represented on the Mayflower alone.  By the facts of its 
history, no less than by the spirit of its laws, America must know nothing 
of the Saxon race, nothing of the Teutonic race, nothing of the slavic 
race.  It must know only the Human race, of whose future and fulfillment it 
is the last great hope and promise, if it is true to its genius of liberty, 
toleration and fraternity. 
 
There is room for everything in America except hatred.  If we have been 
careless and sentimental in the past about allowing so many people of 
different races to enter our country, we must correct the error.  But those 
who are already here are entitled to our regard, and only love, good will 
and the spirit of fraternity can Americanize men and women, much less 
little children.  Americanization is not a formula - it is a friendship.  
If we allow people of many races to knock at our doors, we do not want them 
to "knock" our institutions after we open the doors and admit them. Nor 
must we "knock" them.  People whom we admit through the gates of America 
must not be foreigners, but friends.  If they are often clannish, it is 
because we are indifferent.  What we want for all is not simply freedom and 
opportunity, but fraternity - mutual respect and good will. 
 
Here Masonry, by its very genius and purpose, can render a real service to 
the Republic, and at the same time strengthen its foundations.  An instance 
in point is the Roosevelt Lodge in Rhode Island. almost every charter 
member of which was a man of a different race.  The purpose of the Lodge 
was to bring men of many races together at the Altar of Masonry, and it was 
a happy thought to name the lodge for the man who, more than any great 
American of recent times, exemplified in his spirit and temper the wider 
fraternity of races.  He was the incarnation of fraternalism, and by that 
token, a truly great Mason whose soul goes marching on, leading us out of 
bitterness toward brotherhood. 
 
Since the Great War there has been an unhappy revival of religious 
intolerance in America.  In nothing was the founding of our Republic more 
significant than in the new relation which it established between Church 
and State.  Our fathers separated the two forever, but they gave equal 
liberty and honor to all elevating and benign religions.  Such is also the 
spirit and teaching of Freemasonry, a great and simple principle which our 
Craft had learned and practiced before the name "United States" had ever 
been spoken.  Toleration is not enough; we need insight, appreciation and 
understanding if we are to have many races without rancor, and many faiths 
without fanaticism.  Our religion must be a part of our patriotism, and our 
patriotism must be religious in its depth, warmth and power.  America is 
our Holy Land - sacred to our thoughts and dear to our hearts - and we dare 
not let it be darkened by lawlessness, defiled by racial rancor or 
disfigured by religious intolerance.  Narrowness of thought and littleness 
of spirit are out of place in the land of the large and liberal air where 
the future of humanity lies. 
 
So, once more, in memory of our national birthday, all Freemasons ask all 
Americans of every race, creed and condition to renew their vows of love, 
honor and loyalty to our Constitution, our President and our flag, which is 
the immortal symbol of all that is sacred in our life, law and history.  
Nay more, we ask all to join hands and hearts in behalf of a greater 
America tomorrow, worthy of the mighty America of the past to which, like 
the men who signed the Declaration of Independence, "We Mutually Pledge to 
Each Other our Lives, Fortunes and Sacred Honor.  
 

