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The
Invisible Power of Rotary
Friends of
the Victory Convention, I greet you and congratulate you on your
opportunities to participate in the affairs of a convention
which gives promise of being at the same time more inspirational
and more practical than any previous Rotarian gathering.
 Since
the last meeting of the International Association of Rotary
Clubs, the dove of world peace has fluttered painfully,
exhaustedly home. Never has it been more welcome than it was at
that expectant, breathless hour. The spirit of broken hearted
mothers and widows and fatherless children flung open the window
to let it in, and strong men of vision and human sympathy have
resolved that it shall never depart again.
Men are
asking: "Did the awful holocaust pay?"
Certainly
not in material things. Indemnities are baubles when compared
with the lives of men. Empires rise and fall, but truth is
everlasting.
Real values
are never to be found in material things. Invisible things are
priceless, Victory is invisible, and when the final reckoning
shall have been made, it will be known that Victory, the prize
invisible, was really won by the legions of unseen, unheard
things. Men? Yes, millions of them, mother's sons, But who
sustained those men thru tired march and sleepless watch? who
but spirit indomitable, invisible? And many of those very
millions have themselves been taken from their broken ranks of
living men and mustered into the ranks of the hosts invisible.
The war was worth while. It taught us the value of unseen
things; that liberty can never be dear at any price.
Rotary is
interested in the larger values, in the invisible, eternal
things for which men are willing to die.
A
material Rotary would soon be a dead Rotary. A Rotarian
who sees nothing in Rotary beyond the business he can
get out of it is a dead Rotarian and the sooner he can
be buried the better for the cause.
Rotary, being invisible, spiritual, is intelligible to
the higher order of things. Diamonds cannot comprehend
Rotary, but friendship, sympathy, integrity, devotion,
idealism can.
The
progress of men will depend henceforth on their ability to learn
of things invisible. The forces of the eternal cosmos are
gradually coming under the dominion of man. Electricity is an
invisible force, but not spiritual. Love is both. The world
lived for many ages before the electrical current became the
servant of man. The flickering flame of spiritual force came
with the dawn of intelligence. Man cannot live without it.
Now that
the war is over, will there be anything left for Rotary to do?
More, far more than ever before. There never has been such a
call for clear minded, high minded, right minded men.
Civilization seems at times to tremble, but it will survive and
be stronger and better than ever before, because, thank God,
today men think. Remember that in the final analysis men are
square, and that is applicable to both employers and employes.
The countries which we represent, and all civilization besides,
need Rotary, need it every hour.
I desire to
avail myself of the opportunity presented to express my profound
appreciation and deep gratitude for the wonderful efforts of the
great men who have allied themselves with Rotary. Their devotion
is boundless and they constitute living guarantees of the
usefulness of Rotary.
If it could
ever have been truly said that Rotary was insular in its
viewpoint, that time is past. Rotarians now understand that the
best rule to apply in cases of doubt is the broadest and most
generous which the circumstances will permit. Rotary is not tied
to tradition. All of the field of human usefulness is open. It
has no occasion for lavish expenditure. Its ways are simple; may
they ever be so, to the end that Rotary may remain pure. If
these things may be, Rotary will not seek smooth paths for men
strong as they stumble onward.
The men
back of Rotary today are too broad of vision to be interested in
narrow conceptions. They recognize the fact that Rotary has
taken its place among the enduring world forces, among the ‑
invisible things of value which cannot be measured in dollars
and cents.
Note:
The above is the annual message from the Founder of Rotary to
the International Convention. It was read by Secretary Chesley
R. Perry at Salt Lake City,, Utah, Tuesday morning, 17th June,
1919.
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