As true today as when Hawthorne wrote it. Or to put it the way JFK did: "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country."If you were to be asked what was the most difficult thing to do in all this world, I don't suppose a single one of you would answer, "To love America."
Yet that is exactly what it is—the very hardest job you will have your life through.
I can almost hear a loud shout, and that shout seems to be saying:
"Hard to love America? Why, that 's the nicest, easiest thing on earth! We just could n't help it, let alone finding it difficult."
Well, it depends. It depends on what you mean when you use the word love.
If you mean a warm sort of glow and pride, a delight in the fact that you are American and live in America, an exciting lift to your heartstrings when the band plays "The Star-Spangled Banner" and a general conviction that you had rather be an American boy or girl than any other boy or girl the world holds, then I agree with you. That is easy. It is too easy. It is so easy that you will realize, if you think about it at all, that it cannot be all there is to love—not nearly all.
Soon, in a few years, you boys and girls are going to have America in your keeping. According to what you are, what you do, America will be. It is you, boys and girls to-day, who will to-morrow be the law-makers, the governors, the congressmen, and Presidents and voters. You and America will be one. If you really love her, you are going to give her the best of yourselves. And that means the hardest sort of work, the most understanding service. It means that you will not be blind to her faults. The sort of love that spoils what it loves is really a kind of hate, because it is mere selfishness. The man or woman who is contented to say that everything that is American is the best there is and needs not to be improved or changed is simply lazy or stupid or insincere. If you truly love America, you must keep her advancing, you must keep her noble, you must be glad of criticism that is constructive and of example that is helpful.
The boy or girl who grows up thinking only of what America is going to give him or her does not love America, for loving is giving. And to love well, you must give wisely. That is why I began by saying that the hardest thing in life would be to love America. It must mean so much or it means nothing.
Let us take one item, and see what love means in regard to it.
There are the great natural beauties and resources' of America. Her huge forests, her superb mountains and streams and lovely lakes, her fertile fields and singing valleys. There are her living creatures, animals and birds and fishes, all part of her existence and her value.
If you mean to love America, you must, as far as your own strength and power go, see that these splendid parts of her life as a country are conserved and improved. You should take the trouble to know what laws are needed to save these things when they are threatened, and they are always threatened, because a large part of America is made up of people who have no real love for the country at all, but who wish to serve themselves only. It is these people who cut down the forests ruthlessly, if by doing so they can make momentary profit for themselves. It is these people who ruin streams and kill all the fish in them by turning factory refuse into the clear water, who shoot game out of season, who destroy and devastate for their own sakes and to pay or please themselves, leaving America, which they may pretend to love, to suffer. And all of us who look on idly and allow America to be thus despoiled and hurt do not love her either—not so much as our own ease, at least.
Perhaps you begin to see that loving America isn 't the easiest thing in the world, after all?
I know one boy who trained himself to be a forest ranger, and who now rides the trails of the far Northwest watching over hundreds of miles of forest and mountain. He told me, long ago, when he was still training, that he loved America.
"I 'm going to make my living, like any of the fellows," he told me; "but I 'm going to make it working for America; I 'm not going to make it out of her." And he laughed.
You don't need to be a forest ranger to work for America. Whether you are a lawyer or a doctor or a business man or a farmer, you can always work for America if you want to, even while you work for yourself. But each one of you should try to do something definitely for this country of yours, which you love. It is your country, and yet not quite yours, for it is only held in trust. After you, come others; and if you try, you can hand it on better and finer and more beautiful than it was when you took it over.
But you can't do all this easily. You must know what America needs and how to get it. You must bring your brains and your hands and your time to her service. You will need to be interested, and you will need to interest others. But surely, if you love America, all this will be a labor of love.
The other day I read a letter in one of the newspapers written by an American who had just come back from a trip right across the continent and up and down it. And he wrote that what struck him most was the dirt and litter spread everywhere. The city streets and parks from coast to coast were strewn with papers and rubbish, he said. Down in the Grand Cañon, along the trails of the Yosemite, even, he saw rubbish left by traveling campers. From the car windows he saw untidyness, and along river banks and lake shores it met him.
"What 's the matter with us?" he wanted to know. "Are we the dirtiest people in the world, or don't we care a hang what our country looks like?"
If we do care, we are going to take hold and see that things are cleaned up and that the dirty and untidy and careless people are made to take more thought of the welfare of others and the beauty of this country, that should be worth a little trouble to us all. In this same matter, I remember when I was at the San Francisco Exposition of 1915. Nothing on earth was ever lovelier, ever more a dream come true than that radiant and exquisite city of enchantment, all color and gracious form, banked flowers and reflecting waters. But by the time the afternoon had come and the luncheon parties had done their worst, never was there any place so littered and covered and degraded with torn papers and empty boxes and debris. It was sad and horrible. One day I spoke of this to a young Californian, a boy or twenty or so.
"There ought to be better supervision here, since the people won't take care of the place themselves," I said.
But he would not admit that anything was wrong. "We are a free people out here," he said. "We don't want a lot of laws and interference."
But no people is free that regards license and selfishness as freedom. True freedom is jealous of the freedom of all. The American who prefers to save himself trouble at the expense of every one else, and who strews ugliness in the place of beauty, is not a good American ; he does not love his country and is not fit for her freedom. One might as well say that a woman who kept her home dirty and messy, her children unwashed, and herself unkempt was a good housekeeper and loved her home. Laziness and untidyness are forms of selfishness, not of freedom.
There are splendid things to do for America, and you boys and girls who are now growing up to take your places at the great task of making a country will do them. You will do them, or they will not be done. You are the future. Are you really thinking of this? Are you loving America well enough to plan a little and study a litHe and work a- little toward the time when you will be called to take hold of the job?
Is it not thrilling to know that it is you who will have to answer so many of the questions the world is asking to-day? Not only will you, loving our America, work for her outer robe of beauty, for the preservation of her natural resources and glories, for the cleaning of her cities and towns, but you will work for her spirit.
You cannot all be leaders, though from among you must come leaders and guides. But you can each and all be true Americans. It will be you who decide whether or not America is to remain true to the great ideals that have led her in the past, that have wavered and darkened at times, but have always brightened again. No one can tell what rocks are ahead. The tide runs and takes us with it, and the helm passes from our hands to yours. You will have to steer, and, according to your steering, will you make harbor or go to wreck. The wreck will perhaps be only for a time. But if you are trained, if you care, if you love, you will not fail to make harbor.
We should none of us ever forget that we are, among other things, citizens.
Boys and girls, you think of your future, and what you will do for it, how you will prepare for it. Do not forget, too, to think of America's future, and to prepare for that. It is worth preparing for. It is a greater future than your own, more enduring, more important. And it will owe part of itself to you.
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