We gather here on this 22nd day of February, 1958 to pay our homage to the 226th anniversary of the birth of George Washington. There is no place which more greatly marks his immortal grandeur than these fields of Valley Forge.

This national shrine needs no description; the events enacted here require no recounting to the American people. The very name, Valley Forge, swells within us pride in our nation.

These peaceful fields hold a glory peculiarly their own. It was not the glory of war for which these fields are remembered. No great battle was fought here. It was not the pomp of victory, for no martial triumph was won here. It was not the scene where peace was signed by which independence of a great nation was won. A thousand other fields mark the tombs of the courage, the glory, the valor, the skill, the martial triumph of our race. Yet the instinct and the judgment of our people after the abrasion of the years has appraised this place as a foremost national shrine.

It was the transcendent fortitude and steadfastness of these men who in adversity and in suffering through the darkest hour of our history held faithful to an ideal. Here men endured that a nation might live. It is a shrine to the things of the spirit and of the soul.

George Washington and his men at any moment could have surrendered their ideals to the widespread spirit of despair and discouragement. They could have abandoned their claims to freedom. They could have deserted their hopes and forsaken their faith.

Here Washington and his little band of hungry and almost naked patriots kept alive the spark of liberty in the world. They met this, the deepest crisis of the Revolution, with steadfast fortitude; they conserved their strength; they husbanded their resources; they seized the opportunity which, with the turn of the tide led on to victory. It was a triumph of character and idealism. Here was one of those moral victories that are the glory of the race. Without such victories the life of man would descend to a sheer materialism for "where there is no vision the people perish." There mankind could claim no distinction, sing no songs, dream no dreams, inspire no hope, and grasp no faith.

Our citizens in every war have flocked to arms at the call of country. They have responded willingly, because in every emergency they have had before them an ideal of liberty and the freedom of their country. Some wars in history have been instigated by old and cynical men for cruel or selfish reasons. Some wars have been fought for power and possessions. But war for liberty has endowed our race not alone with the precious possession of freedom but has inspired every succeeding generation with that idealism which is the outpouring of man's spirit.

An ideal is an unselfish aspiration. It is a thing of the spirit. Our ideals are the cement which binds our society. They provide the mainspring of progress. It is this spirit which has made possible the success of our great democratic experiment. They have tempered our acquisitiveness, have strengthened our sense of civic responsibility, and have made service to fellow man a part of our national character.

This peculiar significance of Valley Forge should strike with especial force in this particular moment of our national life. To each and every one of us it is an hour of unusual stress and trial. The nation is beset with difficulties and confusions. These temporary reverses in the march of progress have been in part the penalty of the malign inheritances of world forces beyond our control.

Many have doubt and grave concern for the future. But no one who reviews the past and realizes the vast strength of our people can doubt that this, like a score of similar experiences in our history, is a passing trial. From this knowledge must come the courage and wisdom to improve and strengthen us for the future.

Numerous are the temptations under the distress of the day to turn aside from our true national purposes and from wise national policies and fundamental ideals of the men who built our Republic. Never was the lure of the rosy path to every panacea and of easy ways to imagined security more tempting.

For the energies of private initiative, of independence, and a high degree of individual freedom of our American system we are offered alluring substitutes with the specious claim that everybody collectively owes each of us individually a living rather than an opportunity to earn a living.

And the equally specious claim that hired representatives of scores of millions of people can do better than the people themselves, in thinking and planning their daily lives.

Our government was an experiment in securing to a people the maximum of individual freedom. And the human spirit has blossomed in independence and self-respect. It brought America to a greatness unparalleled in the history of the world.

Amid the scene of vastly growing complexity of life we must preserve the independence of the individual from the deadening restraints of government, yet by the strong arm of government equally assure his fair chance, his equality of opportunity from the encroachments of special privileges and greed or domination by any group or class.

We must not be misled by the claim that the source of all wisdom is in the Government. Wisdom is born out of experience, and most of all out of precisely such experience as is brought to us by the darkest moments. It is in meeting such moments that are born new insights, new sympathies, new powers, new skills. Such conflicts as we are in the midst of today cannot be won by any single stroke, by any one strategy sprung from the mind of any single genius. Rather must we pin our faith upon the inventiveness, the resourcefulness, the initiative of every one of us. That cannot fail us if we keep the faith in ourselves and our future, and in the constant growth of our intelligence and ability to cooperate with one another.

The memory of Americans who glory in Valley Forge even as they glory in Yorktown tell us the truth which echoes upward from this soil of blood and tears, that the way to the Nation's greatness is the path of self-reliance, independence, and steadfastness in time of trial and stress.

Valley Forge met such a challenge to steadfastness in times and terms of war. Our test is to meet this challenge in times and terms of peace. It is the same challenge. It is the same test of steadfastness of will, of clarity of thought, of resolution of character, of fixity of purpose, of loyalty to ideals and of unshaken conviction that they will prevail.

We, too, are writing a new chapter in American history. If we weaken, as Washington did not, we shall be writing the introduction to the decline of American character and the fall of American institutions. If we are firm and far-sighted, as were Washington and his men, we shall be writing the introduction to a yet more glorious epoch in our Nation's progress. If, by the grace of God, we stand steadfast in our great traditions through this time of stress, we shall insure that we and our sons and daughters shall see these fruits increased many fold.

Valley Forge is our American synonym for the trial of human character through privation and suffering, and it is the symbol of the triumph of the American soul. If those few thousand men endured that long winter of privation and suffering, humiliated by the despair of their countrymen, yet held their countrymen to the faith, and by that holding held fast the freedom of America, what right have we to be of little faith? God grant that we may prove worthy of George Washington and his men of Valley Forge.

Herbert Hoover.