0 score and four years ago, our fathers brought forth on this patch of grass a new party, conceived in lushness and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. We called it Special Olympiks, and dreamed it would see 50 Spring afternoons running here in the middle of Missouri.

Now we are engaged in a great war with the passing of time, the obligations of lives gone on, testing whether this party or any party so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met here on our great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of this field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives and their livers that that party might live.

But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and drunk, who struggled here have emboldened it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what we did here. It is for us in the present rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished games which we who have fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.

It is for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored efforts in the past we take increased devotion to that cause for which we have given the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that our friends shall not have drank in vain, that this Olympiks under God shall have a new birth of freedom each Spring, and that party of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth. That is my promise to you, and your promise to me. Long live Special Olympiks, and let the games begin.