responsibility which it involves. I pray God I may be given the wisdom
and the prudence to do my duty in the true spirit of this great people.
I am their servant and can succeed only as they sustain and guide me by
their confidence and their counsel. The thing I shall count upon, the
thing without which neither counsel nor action will avail, is the unity
of America - an America united in feeling, in purpose and in its vision
of duty, of opportunity and of service.

We are to beware of all men who would turn the tasks and the
necessities of the nation to their own private profit or use them for
the building up of private power.

United alike in the conception of our duty and in the high resolve to
perform it in the face of all men, let us dedicate ourselves to the
great task to which we must now set our hand. For myself I beg your
tolerance, your countenance and your united aid.

The shadows that now lie dark upon our path will soon be dispelled, and
we shall walk with the light all about us if we be but true to
ourselves - to ourselves as we have wished to be known in the counsels
of the world and in the thought of all those who love liberty and
justice and the right exalted.


***

Warren G. Harding
Inaugural Address
Friday, March 4, 1921