BOSTON AND NEW YORK

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

_The Riverside Press Cambridge_





INTRODUCTORY NOTE


There are certain fundamental principles of sound community life which
cannot be stated too emphatically or too often. Few public men of to-day
have shown a finer combination of right feeling and clear thinking about
these principles, with a gift for the pithy expression of them, than has
Governor Calvin Coolidge. It was an accurate phrase that President
Meiklejohn used when, in conferring the degree of Doctor of Laws on him
at Amherst College last June, he complimented him on teaching the lesson
of "adequate brevity."

His speeches and messages abound in evidences of this gift, but in the
main the speeches are not easily accessible. It has seemed to some of
Governor Coolidge's admirers, as it has to the publishers of this little
volume, that a real public service might be rendered by making a
careful selection from the best of the speeches and issuing them in an
attractive and convenient form. With his permission this has been done,
and it is hoped that many readers will welcome the book in this time of