unless we append to it a similar specific body of particulars as to what
we consider the essential business of our own day.

Liberty does not consist, my fellow-citizens, in mere general
declarations of the rights of man. It consists in the translation of
those declarations into definite action. Therefore, standing here where
the declaration was adopted, reading its businesslike sentences, we
ought to ask ourselves what there is in it for us. There is nothing in
it for us unless we can translate it into the terms of our own
conditions and of our own lives. We must reduce it to what the lawyers
call a bill of particulars. It contains a bill of particulars, but the
bill of particulars of 1776. If we would keep it alive, we must fill it
with a bill of particulars of the year 1914.

The task to which we have constantly to readdress ourselves is the task
of proving that we are worthy of the men who drew this great declaration
and know what they would have done in our circumstances. Patriotism
consists in some very practical things--practical in that they belong to
the life of every day, that they wear no extraordinary distinction about
them, that they are connected with commonplace duty. The way to be
patriotic in America is not only to love America but to love the duty
that lies nearest to our hand and know that in performing it we are
serving our country. There are some gentlemen in Washington, for
example, at this very moment who are showing themselves very patriotic
in a way which does not attract wide attention but seems to belong to
mere everyday obligations. The Members of the House and Senate who stay
in hot Washington to maintain a quorum of the Houses and transact the
all-important business of the Nation are doing an act of patriotism. I
honor them for it, and I am glad to stay there and stick by them until
the work is done.