28

Their Paths Are Peace

The Cultural Gardens constitute a verdant symbol of the perpetual renewal of the human spirit through past cultures and future aspirations.

As divergent elements of an harmonious whole, they represent democracy and brotherhood as set forth in the American ideal.

They are testimony to the faith of their founders that in the visions of poet and prophet, of artist and musician, are after all to be found the supreme realities of history, and that it is the dreams of men which forge the destinies of nations.

If, as has been said, imagination rules the world, clear recognition of the place of those who have consistently envisioned the upbuilding of human civilization, will bring speedier realization of their dream and ultimate fulfillment.

The "Choir Invisible, whose music is the gladness of the world," may be heard without jarring, discordant influences in the Cleveland Cultural Gardens.

Like a green diadem crowing the trail of hope to world peace, these gardens recall Emerson's lines on the Parthenon and other man-made masterpieces of the earth:

"For out of Thought's interior sphere
These wonders rose to upper air
And Nature gladly gave them place,
Adopted them into her race
And granted them an equal date
With Andes and with Ararat."

The ways of Cleveland's Cultural Gardens are ways of pleasantness. All their paths bespeak the peace of a world without hate, without fear, without mistrust, without greed, seeking only the common good in the light of an eternal day.

Cleveland--proud to possess this true garden spot of the nation where ideas and foliage flourish in unison--possesses it, however, only in the geographical sense. For in the more profound sense of dedication to cosmopolitan friendship and universal culture, the Cultural Gardens of Cleveland belong to America and to the world.

Drawing B.H. Rosenbaum