Perhaps no equal period in our history
has been so fruitful of important reforms in our economic and
industrial life or so full of significant changes in the spirit
and purpose of our political action. We have sought very
thoughtfully to set our house in order, correct the grosser errors
and abuses of our industrial life, liberate and quicken the
processes of our national genius and energy, and lift our politics
to a broader view of the people's essential interests.
It is a record of singular variety and singular distinction. But I
shall not attempt to review it. It speaks for itself and will be
of increasing influence as the years go by. This is not the time
for retrospect. It is time rather to speak our thoughts and
purposes concerning the present and the immediate future.
Although we have centered counsel and action with such unusual
concentration and success upon the great problems of domestic
legislation to which we addressed ourselves four years ago, other
matters have more and more forced themselves upon our attention--
matters lying outside our own life as a nation and over which we
had no control, but which, despite our wish to keep free of them,
have drawn us more and more irresistibly into their own current
and influence.
It has been impossible to avoid them.
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