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Rotary's Greatest Opportunity to Serve
 When
Paul Harris wrote the article "Rotary's Greatest Opportunity to
Serve" in July 1917 for the
Atlanta Convention, America had just
entered WWI. The "Hands Across the Seas" resolution was posted
directly opposite the first page of his article.
Inspiring Message from Paul P. Harris, Read at the Rotary
Convention at Atlanta
Fellow Rotarians, Friends:
I
hail you men of Rotary about to engage in a great eventful
gathering. I greet my brother Rotarians of Great Britain, of
Canada, of Cuba, and that great majority of Rotarians, my fellow
countrymen of the United States. This is the hour for American
Rotarians.
When the emergency arrives, man arises to meet it. When Country
calls, all men must respond. National assets must be assembled.
No national asset is comparable with that of right minded, warm
blooded, patriotic men. Rotary is one of our Nation's great
assets. When all men are responding to our Country's thrilling
call, we cannot remain silent. Rotary's supreme purpose is to
serve; never service more appropriate than on the present
occasion. How and where we shall serve remains for you to
determine. May wisdom characterize your deliberations.
Individual effort when well directed can accomplish much, but
the greatest good must necessarily come from the combined
efforts of many men. Individual effort may be turned to
individual needs but combined effort should be dedicated to the
service of mankind. The power of combined effort knows no
limitation. This superlative power no man may appropriate to his
own use. This is the world's sub‑conscious conclusion. We must
clearly understand the justice of it and measure up to its
requirements.
Rotary, even in its most sanguine moments, has fallen short of
realizing its own strength. On no occasion has the cumulative
power of all Rotary ever been felt. We shall strike a mighty
blow some day and we thenceforth shall know ourselves.
Times of great political upheaval have marked the stages of
greatest progress. Seeds germinate in newly turned soil. In
these days of turmoil many a worthless habit will be forgotten,
many a worthy habit acquired.
Civilization will attain such heights that it will make one
dizzy to look back upon the spot where we are now standing in
the year of our Lord 1917. With almost ridiculous ease and
dispatch, problems which have puzzled the sages of many
generations are being solved during these high tension days.
Pernicious influences which have for generations obstructed
progress will be obliterated as the chalk marks on the
blackboard are obliterated by an eraser in the hands of a little
child. Rotary must make haste even to keep up: but we must do
more,
we must lead.
(This
phrase may have influenced an RI president 89 years later)
Events succeed events with lightning‑like rapidity. At this
writing, it would seem that many American boys in the fullness
of hope and vigor must lay down their lives. Can there be any
possible return commensurate with the awful sacrifice? That
depends upon you and me, and to what extent we avail ourselves
of the opportunities presented. Perhaps this world conflict
may even be a blessing in disguise. It will be worth something
to us as a nation to be brought to a serious account with
ourselves, to be given to understand ourselves better with
respect to our relation to other nations, and to appreciate our
responsibilities with respect to the affairs of the world. We
are a light hearted people but other nations shall be given to
understand that we can be serious at times. We shall come, as a
result of the war, to a new and higher appreciation of the young
manhood which must bear the brunt of the shock in this clash of
nations.
It
sometimes seems that the forces of good are demoralized; not
less can be said of the forces of evil. However weary Right may
be, Wrong is much more so. These are mighty days, days of
incomparable opportunity ‑ of opportunity undreamed. Off with
the useless old, on with the useful new. There will never be a
better chance than now. Humanity must rise triumphant from this
vale of sorrow, ennobled by its suffering.
Even during these days which seem the darkest, we have much to
be thankful for; not the least of which is the fact that
Rotarian nations stand together. The Stars and Stripes and the
Union Jack have at last been twined together. Tho grown into
National manhood and to bearing responsibilities of our own,
this is a sort of home coming celebration after all.
Would we could have heard the blare of the trumpets as the Royal Fusileer's band played The Star Spangled Banner on the wonderful
morning when Pershing and his staff first set foot on British
soil. The music must have stirred the little band of Americans
assembled there as the peals of the Liberty Bell stirred their
fathers who listened in awed silence more than a century ago.
Whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder. Long live
our allies and long remain the bond which binds us! May it hold
fast during the mighty strain of war and in happy time of peace
and may the alliance increase in membership till it includes all
men. The day the last shot is fired will be the time of all
times since the beginning of the world for the alliance of
nations to enforce
world peace.
We
have occasion again to be thankful that in this distressing
period of struggle we have as the executive bead of this Nation
a man possessed not only of fine, scholarly attainments,
humanitarian instincts and gentlemanly qualifications but also a
man of world vision, In its new aspect as a world power, our
Nation will never have occasion to regret its choice nor to be
ashamed to be represented in council of the ablest diplomatic
representatives of all nations by Woodrow Wilson whom we are all
proud to consider the ideal of American citizenship.
Britain is being remade. The United States of America is to be
remade. Economic conditions are to be reformed. This war will
give birth to a new and saner social consciousness. The American
of tomorrow is to be a broader visioned, more democratic,
healthier, happier, stronger, kindlier, more sympathetic man.
Knowing more than heretofore of other people, he will be more
charitable toward other people. These are to be some of the
by‑products of war and in the achievement of these results, the
most promising of the youth of our land are approaching the
volcano's crater in France. The young manhood of other liberty
loving nations have unflinchingly faced the fiery ordeal and out
boys will do likewise without the bat of an eye.
We
are in the war. The Central Powers must have little understood
the temperament of the American people if they failed to see
that the consequences of their acts would be war. The history of
this Nation has been an unceasing protest against oppression. We
are fighting today in the interests of the same old, time
honored cause, Liberty. We are forging no curious link in the
chain which constitutes American history.
The United States of America has neither land nor dollars to
gain. We seek only recognition of man's inalienable right to
live in peace with his fellow man. There must be an
international as well as a national conscience.
It
will not be ours to engender hatred, wrest territorial
possessions from, nor to inflict vengeance upon, our foe. Hatred
is the friend of none, a reactionary quantity, more likely to
injure him who cultivates it than to injure him who is the
object of it. Neither territorial misappropriation nor vengeance
wrecking have ever ‑helped any nation in a fight for permanent
peace.
This does not mean that we shall be satisfied with anything
short of a decisive victory. The German war lords have been so
long defiant of the laws of civilization that liberty will not
be secure until Germany is brought to a full understanding of
the fact that the forces of justice are prepared to deliver just
that measure of force which is necessary to preserve order on
this terrestrial sphere. Criminal insanity must be dealt with.
No stark mad nation may be permitted to disturb the peace of the
world. Culture is all right in its place, but the world's
history records no successful attempt to impose either religion
or philosophy upon a free people by the use of the sword.
Whatever of Kultur we need in our national business we can
obtain; we can obtain it in Berlin whither our boys in the
company of a few million of their friends are already bound.
Rotary was born this side the sea. It could as well have been
born in any other land of freedom. It could not have had origin
in despotism. This great international quarrel has become
America's quarrel, it has become Rotary's quarrel, for Rotary
has ever been the foe of injustice. Rotary is the Twentieth
Century leveler of caste, destroyer of hypocrisy, the foe of
artificiality, the lover of things genuine, and the ally of
truth and righteousness.
We
are anxious to make progress. We have much work to do, work that
is particularly and distinctively ours, but Rotary will never
permit itself to be so engrossed in its own affairs, however
worthy, as to be heedless of humanity's urgent need.
It
is my sincere hope that we may derive great inspiration from the
Atlanta convention and that it will not be found necessary to
omit any features of importance to the life of Rotary, but let
us remember that the needs of our Country are more imperative at
this time than the needs of Rotary. Perhaps we shall realize in
the end the utmost of good to ourselves as a result of present
sacrifice.
Did your board of directors act wisely in concluding to hold the
convention this year as usual? Who can doubt it? If there was to
be just one convention to be held in the present decade, I would
be of those who with fervor would say, "Let it be in the year of
1917," for this is the year of Rotary's greatest opportunity.
This is our first war convention; may it also be our last.
‑PAUL P. HARRIS, Chicago, Ill.
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