Our duty to our country is, of course, part of our duty to God; and therefore our duty to our country can not possibly be made an excuse for not doing our duty to God. It is well to have this fact firmly fixed in our minds, for many people think it is right to do things in the name of patriotism or love of country, -- especially in time of war, -- which they would think it wrong to do in a purely personal capacity.
What do we man by our country? The United States, as a geographical expression, apart from its colonial and other possessions, is the home of the nation; but, when we speak of "our country", we really mean the nation, or the people of the United States, in possession of its home.
But this nation consists of something like one hundred millions of people in the United States, -- without including its dependencies, -- and is this vast number of people what we mean by our country?
"Country" means land with its hills and valleys, mountains and plains, rivers and streams, big and little lakes, harbors and seaboards, fertile lands and barren tracts, rock and swamp, -- and all this, although it is merely a vast quantity of physical matter clothed in wonderful forms, is but a symbol of what we really mean when we promise to do our best to serve God and our country. The soil, with all its varieties, is the place upon which we rest our feet and from which we draw the manifold necessities for physical life, such as food, wood, and metal; but our country in a deeper sense is the human life which the land supports, and this we call the nation; but there is something even deeper than the nation regarded merely as a vast population in the mass, and that is the nation regarded as composed of individual men, women, and children.
We know that the welfare of our bodies depends upon the circulation and health of our bolld; and that there are in the blood minute little organisms, like the small animals, upon which the health of the blood depends. If the blood contains the right proportion of a certain kind of "corpuscles", as these little organisms are called, it will be healthy and will make the whole man strong; but if the corpuscles are not in their right proportion, the blood will be wrong, the circulation will be poor, and the power of resisting physical disease will be weak.
It is just so with the life of the nation as a whole. It depends ultimately upon the strength of every individual citizen, and, even more than that, upon the strength of every man, woman, and child, and of every inhabitant within its borders.
It is the duty of every single individual in these United States to be as strong as he possibly can be in his body, his mind, and his character; and, by so doing, he will be serving his country int he very best way possible. This is the most important way of doing our duty to our country and corresponds exactly with our duty to God; if we begin by serving our country in this way, we shall find out many other special ways of being useful to it.
Of course, every nation, -- like every club or society, -- has to be organized; and this means that arrangements have to be made so that it will be governed as well as possible, according to laws which are good and wise and approved of by the people themselves. The national organization consists of men who are elected to make such laws, and these we call Senators and Congressmen; of men whose duty it is to decide whether the laws are consistent and whether they have been broken or not in particular cases, and these we call the courts and judges; and, thirdly, of men under the direction of the President of the United States, whose duty it is to enforce these laws. And in every single State there is a separate organization, similar to this one, in which the Governor takes the place of the President.
In trying to say exactly what we mean when we promise to do our best to serve our country, we have to take into account the general character and spirit of these laws, because so much of the life of the nation depends upon the standards which the laws uphold and the manner in which they are enforced.
If we wanted to compare one country with another, to find out in what respects they were different, one of the best ways would e to compare the character, the spirit, and the working of the laws of each of the two countries. Just as the character of a man depends more than anything else upon the principles which he loves and lives by (not necessarily those which he professes), so the character of a nation depends largely upon the quality and spirit of its laws and the manner in which they are obeyed or disobeyed.
We cannot serve our country in a better way than by strengthening and raising the national character; and this we can do first, in the way just mentioned, by being the best men we know how to be. And, next, by using all our influence to secure just laws and to see that they are faithfully and wisely administered.
But, just as there must be both officers and privates in the army and navy, so there must be both officers and privates in the civil government of the country; and, in the nature of things, there must be vastly more privates than officers. Generally speaking, the privates have individually a far smaller range of influence than the officers; but in our country, the ultimate responsibility for good government rest upon the private, -- or each one of the people. According to our system, every officer of the government must receive his position and authority directly or indirectly from the people, and this gives to every private citizen a measure of responsibility as well as dignity.
When we promise to do our duty to our country, we must remember that the judgement we use in casting our votes and the influence which we exert on questions of public policy will depend upon the faithfulness with which we keep our promise.
There are some traditions running through not only the laws but the social customs of our forefathers which it is well for us to understand as clearly as possible, to cherish in our own lives, and to uphold as the dearest heritage of the nation. One of these is that spirit which, in connection with our sports and all the affairs of life, we call "Fair Play"; this find its place int he workings of our Courts of Justice and is represented by the maxim that an accused person shall be treated as innocent until proved guilty.
Another tradition is that we do not believe, as a nation, that any one has a right to govern without the consent of those over whom he rules provided they are capable of self-government.
Another is that no superior advantage of physical or intellectual force, or the possession of material wealth, shall be used to oppress the weak in defiance of justice.
Another is that every man's right to sell his own labor or skill as he thinks best shall be respected.
Nations do not achieve perfection any more than individual men, and there are many sad instances in which our people have fallen below the standards of their best traditions. A physician must know the disease of his patient if he wants to help; and a good citizen must know the dangers that threaten the health and happiness of his country in order to serve it intelligently.
We must acknowledge and face the fact that the governments of many of our large cities has been so dishonest as to compare unfavorably with those of almost every other country in the world, and that the customary lynching of negroes in the South is a remnant of barbarism which condemns us, just to that extent, as an uncivilized people. It is no excuse to say that the lynchings are reactions against criminal brutality. We know that brutality will not cure brutality, and that the strong hand of justice governed by the law is the only influence which can ultimately subdue lawlessness.
There is plenty of work to do for good scouts, whether they be men or boys; and the larger questions here just touched upon are some of those about which we should "be prepared" to act with wisdom and fortitude when the time comes. If the boy is father to the man, the boy scout is surely father to the good citizen who loves his country.
In the meantime, our own town or village represents to us the country at large, of which, of course, it is a vital part. The different public services in the town, such as the Fire Department, the Police Department, the Village Improvement Societies, the Wardens of forests and trees, the Sanitation Commission, should all have the active cooperation of boy scouts and their scout masters. By working for the public service at home, along these lines, we are not only doing our duty to our country now, but are preparing ourselves for larger uses by and by whenever duty calls.
One of the most conspicuous ways of serving our country is by military service, and in time of war it is one of the most necessary.
If all nations felt obliged in honor (as we hope they may some day) to be just and fair in their relations to one another, questions in dispute between them might be settled by courts of arbitration, and war would become unnecessary; but, so long as there are nations in the world who deliberately make use of war as a means of conquest and an element of policy, any prosperous nation like our own, if unprotected, would be at the mercy of the highly trained and organized forces of the such a nation. It is therefore imperative for us to be prepared to protect ourselves from invasion and to repel by force the aggressions force. But this, while it involves preparation and a reasonable training in physical strength and alertness, is a very different thing from building up a huge army and navy for the purpose of overawing weaker nations.
Even from the point of view of worldly policy alone, -- apart from the law of chivalry that "Right is Might" in the long run, -- it is a vain and foolish thing for nations to imagine that they can base peace and prosperity upon sheer armed force. A decent regard for the interests of other nations, a just and humble appreciation of our own national shortcomings, and a determination to seek the prosperity which includes rather than excludes that of others, are a more powerful bulwark against disaster than the most ingenious machines for the wholesale slaughter of men.
But it is not only against human enemies that it is our duty to protect our country, but also against the myriads of disease-bearing insects like flies and mosquitoes, and disease bearing animals like rats, and the countless invisible germs of disease in the form of minute animalcula or microbes. In addition to these, it is our duty to fight against them, and the most general of these conditions is that of filth. As dirt, in the long run, leads to filth, the most efficient way to fight filth is to anticipate it by cleaning up dirt of every kind. It is absurd to be squeamish about clean dirt which is unavoidable when we have to work with our hands; but, unless all dirt is removed at proper times, -- such as when we wash our hands before meals, -- clean dirt will in time degenerate into filth, and become a suitable breeding-ground for disease-carrying animalcula.
There is a great deal to be learned on this subject, and these things should be considered in their proper place; it is enough to point out here that the injury to our country from preventable disease and filthy conditions is comparable to that of loss of life in war; and that in war time, the loss of life from infections disease very commonly exceeds the loss from actual wounds inflicted.
When we realize our duty to our country as a whole, and the fact of the individual responsibility of every man as one atom of the nation, which, according to its strength or weakness to the whole body of the nation, it makes us appreciate the value of discipline and the necessity of obedience to law, so that all the parts of the boy politic will obey the dictates of its brain with promptness and efficiency. But it would be a great mistake to train men In obedience unless they were also taught the duty of obeying the law from their own initiative. When obedience is merely blind and without intelligence, it will ultimately become foolish and a source of danger to the nation; but, when obedience is alert and prompt and at the same time appreciates the am and purpose of authority, it strengthens the individual as well as the nation. When the individual is weakened by obedience, the nation itself must ultimately be weakened also; but when the individual is strengthened by it, the nation also is strengthened.
In the public service it is often inevitable that we should be commanded to do things without understanding the reason for the command; and in such cases our duty requires that we should act in temporary blindness. But, if in our spirits we are striving to obey the law for the good of our country, the opportunity will present itself later on for learning the meaning of the command. A citizen who loves the laws of his country will habitually try to understand the principles according to which all commands are given, although there will be many details which it would be impossible for him to grasp at first. An intelligent trust and confidence in the authorities as established by law is part of the equipment of a free citizen and part of his duty to his country. If his confidence should prove later onto have been misplaced, he can use the means accorded to him as a citizen to have inefficient officers removed and competent men put in their place.
The success of what we call free or liberal government depends upon a deep-seated love and respect for law in every individual citizen. This love and respect are part of our Anglo-Saxon heritage, and it is one which is joyfully appreciated and shared by those of our citizens who are descended from other nationalities and who are sometimes the keenest in their love of law-abiding freedom.
The right balance between obedience and the organization of the mass, on the one hand, and the capacity for intelligent initiative in the individual, on the other, can be illustrated by the position of the soldiers of ancient Rome in battle. Long before the days of rifles and quick-firing guns, the main weapon of the infantry of Rome was the short sword which the soldier held in his right hand, while on his left arm was fashioned a small shield. The theory of Roman fighting was to draw out the maximum strength of every individual soldier, and so he was allowed plenty of room -- three feet of space on all four sides in which he could swing himself and his sword to the best advantage. The Romans did not sacrifice the individual to the mass, and yet their obedience and discipline were excellent; and, so long as they kept up their hardihood and uprightness of character, their soldiers were unconquerable. If is interesting to compare with this method that employed by Alexander the Great, King of Macedonia, in the use of the Macedonian phalanx. This was an arrangement by which a company of men were formed in close ranks, over-lapping their large shields so as to form something like the back of a tortoise and using as a weapon a long spear. At first, of course, the phalanx seemed impregnable; but, in the long run, the individual men lost the habit of trusting to their own courage while depending upon the support of the mass around them. When this point had been reached, it was only necessary for a squadron of cavalry to throw their weight against the mass, in order to break it up and reduce it to a crowd of comparatively feeble individuals.
We shall do our duty to our country better by taking the Roman soldier as a type of citizenship that any "invincible" organism which reduces the individual to the mere part of a machine; but we must also remember that it was because the Roman soldier was brave and intelligently obedient to law that he could be trusted to fight in comparatively extended formation.
From its very birth our nation has stood for law-abiding liberty and liberal institutions, which we believe tend to develop and dignify the individual man; and, through the individual man, the nation as a whole. With us the state exists for the individual and the individual for the state; in other words the government is responsible to the people. Abraham Lincoln described it as a government "of the people, by the people, for the people."
Our duty to our country is involved in our duty to God. Each one of us, be his influence great or
small, has a responsibility for the good of the country in ways which he must be alert to notice and
be prepared to faithfully fulfill. It makes no difference whether we are big or little, whether we are
senators or small boys; the only essential thing is that we shall fight for the right, -- whether as
officers or as "privates in the ranks of God."