Hall of Flags, Massachusetts State House, Boston.

This is the final and concluding service of work begun by your organization at the outbreak of the last war. It has been a service worthy of great commendation by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. You were at once called out for the purpose of doing guard duty here in the Commonwealth along the water front and along the avenues of transportation. Later than that it was your organization that responded to the call for help that came to us as a result of the great calamity in the city of Halifax, and a splendid response was made, excellent not only for its kind but especially for its promptness. 

Again during the epidemic of influenza that swept over the Commonwealth with such disastrous results the authorities, — civil authorities, health authorities of the Commonwealth and cities and towns, turned to you for assistance in meeting the strain and stress of those days, and had it not been for your organization it would have been with great difficulty that that epidemic could have been checked, or that those suffering from it could have been adequately cared for. 

Again in the Fall of 1919, when disorder threatened the City of Boston, it was to the State Guard that the government of Massachusetts turned for the purpose of restoring to this city that orderly government which we are accustomed to live under in this Commonwealth, calling the entire force out, which remained in service from the very first part of September up to the latter part of December. 

The stained-glass skylight in the Hall of Flags featuring the seals of the original 13 states with the Algonquin of Massachusetts at center. Photo credit: Steven Markos.

A most notable service has been performed by the State Guard of Massachusetts. I know of no other Guard of any of the States of our Union that has rendered more prompt, more efficient response to every call of duty than that which has characterized the officers and men of your organization. 

As the Chief Executive Officer of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, I know that I voice the general approbation of all her citizens in extending to you her congratulations upon your service, and in offering you sincere thanks for the way in which that service has ever been performed. 

These stands of colors that have marked the headquarters of your brigades in the field and behind your troops have marched from time to time, will be gratefully received by the authorities of the Commonwealth, treasured and cherished in accordance with that for which they stand as an everlasting emblem. For the present it is the desire of the Commonwealth that the officers of the different units should maintain them in their charge until a fitting place is provided for their assembling under the roof of the State House of this Commonwealth. We receive the colors for that purpose, and ask you to keep them for that purpose in behalf of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, whose government you have preserved, and whose standing among the other states of the nation you have at all times enhanced, ennobled and glorified. 

— Governor Calvin Coolidge, receiving flags of State Guard in the Hall of Flags, December 23, 1920

…[T]he other thing we need to remember is the observance of the law. That ought to be fundamental, though I am afraid it is not in all respects. It is the only safeguard we have for our rights and for our liberties. I say the observance of the law. If we could secure that, almost all of the vexatious questions that face us at the present time would fade away with tomorrow’s sun.

So let us preach, insofar as we can, an observance of the law, not for the benefit of any supposed class, but again for the benefit of all the public and in order that we may bring about the greatest condition of prosperity and happiness to all our people. 

And an observance of the law means a government…not of men, but of laws. It means no dictation by one man, whatever his position may be, and it means no dictation by a million men, whatever position they may hold. 

It means always action under and according to the Constitution. And if we can establish that condition, then we Americans can maintain the authority of the law, and we can maintain the freedom of action that come from it, and we can carry our nation forward and ever forward into a better condition than ever before existed. 

— Calvin Coolidge, excerpt of an Address to the Home Market Club, May 14, 1920

Governor Coolidge, standing at the State House in Boston with high school cadet Francis Jenkins,  who served at the time on the staff of Colonel Benyon, June 1920. Photo credit: Leslie Jones Collection. 

We gain our progress in civilization not altogether from an assumed equality but to a great extent from variety. I said a moment ago that you had your profession, and others have their professions. Civilization and learning and science are so broad now that no one undertakes to comprehend them all, and it is an age of specialists, — it is an age of division of labor, and it is only as we work along lines of that kind that we are able to make any progress; and that has laid upon us a new burden that did not exist in generations that have gone before when each individual was self-sustaining and could take care of himself, and if he didn’t, it mattered very little to those who were about him.

It matters a great deal now, and that has put a new duty upon citizenship and one that must be realized and met and fulfilled, and we have not the privilege that we had then to refrain from carrying that occupation like your Society should day, ‘We will do not more work until something has been done in government or in economic relations that is to our satisfaction?’ 

You see what happens now when those who have cast their lot in transportation say, ‘We will refrain from doing the work that we are engaged to do.’ You can imagine what would happen if those who are engaged in agriculture would say, ‘There, we will stop our production until we have accomplished something by an exertion of a pressure of that kind, that we desire to accomplish either in a governmental way or in an economic way.’

That is not government — that is what they refer to as mass action. And unless we can carry our affairs orderly, peacefully, according to the laws of the land and under the Constitution, and each bearing the burden that the duty he has assumed puts on him to bear, we can’t sustain the kind of a civilization that we have chosen to make our own, it will break down and we shall find ourselves in a condition of anarchy on the one hand or of despotism on the other…

— Calvin Coolidge, excerpt of address to the Massachusetts Medical Society, June 9, 1920