No man can boast that he understands America. No man can boast that he
has lived the life of America, as almost every man who sat in this hall
in those days could boast. No man can pretend that except by common
counsel he can gather into his consciousness what the varied life of
this people is. The duty that we have to keep open eyes and open hearts
and accessible understandings is a very much more difficult duty to
perform than it was in their day. Yet how much more important that it
should be performed, for fear we make infinite and irreparable blunders.
The city of Washington is in some respects self-contained, and it is
easy there to forget what the rest of the United States is thinking
about. I count it a fortunate circumstance that almost all the windows
of the White House and its offices open upon unoccupied spaces that
stretch to the banks of the Potomac and then out into Virginia and on to
the heavens themselves, and that as I sit there I can constantly forget
Washington and remember the United States. Not that I would intimate
that all of the United States lies south of Washington, but there is a
serious thing back of my thought.
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