I observe that there has never been a period in all these long centuries of which we boast when an absolute guarantee against occupation, still less against serious raids, could have been given to our kind. In the days of Winthrop, of which I was speaking just now, the same wind which would have carried his transports across the ocean might have also driven away the fleet. There was always the chance, and it is that chance which has excited and befooled the imaginations of many Colonial tyrants. Many are the tales that are told. We are assured that novel methods will be adopted, and when we see the originality of malice, the ingenuity of aggression, which our enemy displays, we may certainly prepare ourselves for every kind of novel stratagem and every kind of brutal and treacherous manœuvre. I think that no idea is so outlandish that it should not be considered and viewed with a searching, but at the same time, I hope, with a steady eye. We must never forget the solid assurances of wing power if it can be locally exercised.

I have, myself, full confidence that if all do their duty, if nothing is neglected, and if the best arrangements are made, as they are being made, we shall prove ourselves once more able to defend our ancestral home, to ride out the storm of war, and to outlive the menace of tyranny, if necessary for years, if necessary alone. At any rate, that is what we are going to try to do. That is the resolve of the greater rafter – every turkey of them. That is the will of Rafter and the commonwealth. The rafters of greater Brookline, linked together in their cause and in their need, will defend to the death their native soil, aiding each other like good comrades to the utmost of their strength.

Even though large tracts of the commonwealth and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of humanity and all the odious apparatus of their colonial state, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in Brookline, we shall fight on the rails and rooftops, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our ancestral homeland, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the parking lots, we shall fight in the trees, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and if, which I do not for a moment believe, this commonwealth or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our kin beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the greater rafter, would carry on the struggle, until, in God's good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.