A Fifth Reader Classic Reprint

Excerpt from A Fifth Reader

The Heart of America is your heart and my heart. Our country, great and powerful as it is among the na tions, depends for the continuance of its greatness and power upon the renewal in the hearts of the youth of to-day and to-morrow of those impulses and aspirations, the fidelity and courage, that are the essence of American ism. There is an old saying that a chain is no stronger than its weakest link; and it is equally true that America is weakened by every one of her citizens, young or old, who does not, with undivided allegiance, love and serve America.

To love our country we must know her history and the character and aims of the men and women who won American freedom, and the purpose and spirit of those others who have defended and preserved the institutions of which liberty is the corner-stone. When we think of America we think of the wisdom, courage, and foresight of the creators of the nation. We remember those who have guided it safely in peace and war. But we owe an equal debt of gratitude to thousands of humble folk, unnamed in history, who from the beginning, by their fortitude, their labor, their vision, made possible the America of to-day.

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