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Wilson, Woodrow, 1856-1924

"President Wilson's Addresses"


These are some of the things we ought to do, and not leave the others
undone, the old-fashioned, never-to-be-neglected, fundamental
safeguarding of property and of individual right. This is the high
enterprise of the new day: To lift everything that concerns our life as
a Nation to the light that shines from the hearthfire of every man's
conscience and vision of the right. It is inconceivable that we should
do this as partisans; it is inconceivable we should do it in ignorance
of the facts as they are or in blind haste. We shall restore, not
destroy. We shall deal with our economic system as it is and as it may
be modified, not as it might be if we had a clean sheet of paper to
write upon; and step by step we shall make it what it should be, in the
spirit of those who question their own wisdom and seek counsel and
knowledge, not shallow self-satisfaction or the excitement of excursions
whither they cannot tell. Justice, and only justice, shall always be our
motto.
And yet it will be no cool process of mere science. The Nation has been
deeply stirred, stirred by a solemn passion, stirred by the knowledge of
wrong, of ideals lost, of government too often debauched and made an
instrument of evil.


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