The feelings with which we face this new age of
right and opportunity sweep across our heartstrings like some air out of
God's own presence, where justice and mercy are reconciled and the judge
and the brother are one. We know our task to be no mere task of politics
but a task which shall search us through and through, whether we be able
to understand our time and the need of our people, whether we be indeed
their spokesmen and interpreters, whether we have the pure heart to
comprehend and the rectified will to choose our high course of action.
This is not a day of triumph; it is a day of dedication. Here muster,
not the forces of party, but the forces of humanity. Men's hearts wait
upon us; men's lives hang in the balance; men's hopes call upon us to
say what we will do. Who shall live up to the great trust? Who dares
fail to try? I summon all honest men, all patriotic, all forward-looking
men, to my side. God helping me, I will not fail them, if they will but
counsel and sustain me!
FIRST ADDRESS TO CONGRESS
[Delivered at a joint session of the two Houses of Congress, at the
beginning of the first session of the Sixty-third Congress, April 8,
1913.
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