THANKSGIVING PROCLAMATION.
By Theodore Roosevelt
Yet another year of wide-spread well-being has passed. Never before in our history or in the history of any other nation has a people enjoyed more abounding material prosperity than is ours, a prosperity so general that it should arouse in us no spirit of reckless pride, and least of all a spirit of heedless disregard of our responsibilities, but rather a sober sense of our many blessings and a resolute purpose, under Providence, not to forfeit them by any action of our own. Material well-being, indispensable tho it is, can never be anything but the foundation of true national greatness and happiness. If we build nothing upon this foundation, then our national life will be as meaningless and empty as a house where only the foundation has been laid. Upon our material well-being must be built a superstructure of individual and national life lived in accordance with the laws of the highest morality, or else our prosperity itself will, in the long run, turn out a curse instead of a blessing. We should be both reverently thankful for what we have received, and earnestly bent upon turning it into a means of grace and not of destruction. Accordingly, I hereby set apart Thursday, the 29th day of November next, as a day of thanksgiving and supplication, on which the people shall meet in their homes or their churches, devoutly acknowledge all that has been given them, and pray that they may in addition receive the power to use these gifts aright.