the safe guardianship of the nation and with free access to all who may claim admission to enjoy it. In like manner many of the battlefields, whereon the nation spent its blood that it might be what it is and what it hopes to be-these have been taken over by the nation itself and set apart and kept as holy places of pilgrimage. They are free from the despoiling hand of any individual owner. They are adorned with monuments recording the brave deeds of the men who fought there. They serve as constant reminders of the duty we owe to our country and to the debt we owe to those who made it and who saved it for us. And the loyal veneration with which these fields of blood have been cherished here in the United States finds no counterpart in any country in Europe, no matter how glorious may be its annals of military prowess. Even Waterloo is in private hands; and its broad acres, enriched by the bones of thousands, are tilled every year by the industrious Belgian farmers. Yet it was a Frenchman, Renan, who told us that what welds men into a nation, is "the memory of great deeds done in common and the will to accomplish yet more." According to the theory of the conservation of energy, there ought to be about as much virtue in the world at one time as at another. According to the theory of the survival of the fittest, there ought to be a little more now than there was a century ago. We Americans to-day have our faults, and they are abundant enough and blatant enough, and foreigners take care that we shall not overlook them; but our ethical standardhowever imperfectly we may attain to it-is higher than that of the Greeks under Pericles, of the Romans under Cæsar, of the English under Elizabeth. It is higher even than that of our forefathers who established our freedom, as those know best who have most carefully inquired into the inner history of the American Revolution. In nothing was our advance more striking than in the different treatment meted out to the vanquished after the Revolution and after the Civil War. When we made our peace with the British the native Tories were proscribed, and thousands of Loyalists left the United States to carry into Canada the indurated hatred of the exiled. But after Lee's surrender at Appomattox, no body of men, no single man indeed, was driven forth to live an alien for the rest of his days; even though a few might choose to go, none were compelled. This change of conduct on the part of those who were victors in the struggle was evidence of an increasing sympathy. Not only is sectionalism disappearing, but with it is departing the feeling that really underlies it—the distrust of those who dwell elsewhere than where we do. This distrust is common all over Europe to-day. Here in America it has yielded to a friendly neighborliness which makes the family from Portland, Maine, soon find itself at home in Portland, Oregon. It is getting hard for us to hate anybody-especially since we have disestablished the devil. We are good-natured and easy-going; Herbert Spencer even denounced this as our immediate danger, maintaining that we were too tolerant of evil and that we needed to strengthen our wills to protest against wrong, to wrestle with it resolutely, and to overcome it before it is firmly rooted. We are kindly and we are helpful; and we are fixed in the belief that somehow everything will work out all right in the long run. But nothing will work out all right unless we so make it work; and excessive optimism may be as corrupting to the fiber of the people as "the Sabbathless pursuit of fortune," as Bacon termed it. When Mr. John Morley was last in this country he seized swiftly upon a chance allusion of mine to this ingrained hopefulness of ours. "Ah, what you call optimism," he cried, "I call fatalism." But an optimism which is solidly based on a survey of the facts cannot fairly be termed fatalism; and another British student of political science, Mr. James Bryce, has pointed out that the intelligent native American has -and by experience is justified in having-a firm conviction that the majority of qualified voters are pretty sure to be right. Then he suggested a reason for the faith that is in us, when he declared that no such feeling exists in Europe, since in Germany the governing class dreads the spread of Socialism, in France the Republicans know that it is not impossible that Monarchism and Clericalism may succeed in upsetting the Republic, while in Great Britain each party believes that the other party, when it succeeds, succeeds by misleading the people, and neither party supposes that the majority are any more likely to be right than to be wrong. Mr. Morley and Mr. Bryce were both here in the United States in the fall of 1904, when we were in the midst of a presidential election, one of those prolonged national debates, creating incessant commotion, but invaluable agents of our political education, in so far as they force us all to take thought about the underlying principles of policy, by which we wish to see the government guided. It was while this political campaign was at its height that the French visitor to the Russian novelist was setting his notes in order and copying out his assertion that we Americans were mere money-grabbers, "systematically hostile to all idealism." If this unthinking Parisian journalist had only taken the trouble to consider the addresses which the chief speakers of the two parties here in the United States were then making to their fellow citizens in the hope of winning votes, he would have discovered that these practical politicians, trained to perceive the subtler shades of popular feeling, were founding all their arguments on the assumption that the American people as a whole wanted to do right. He would have seen that the appeal of these stalwart partisans was rarely to prejudice or to race-hatred-evil spirits that various orators have sought to arouse and to intensify in the more recent political discussions of the French themselves. An examination of the platforms, of the letters of the candidates, and of the speeches of the more important leaders on both sides revealed to an American observer the significant fact that "each party tried to demonstrate that it was more peaceable, more equitable, more sincerely devoted to lawful and righteous behavior than the other"; and "the voter was instinctively credited with loving peace and righteousness, and with being stirred by sentiments of good will toward men." This seems to show that the heart of the people is sound, and that it does not throb in response to ignoble appeals. It seems to show that there is here the desire ever to do right and to see right done, even if the will is weakened a little by easy-going good-nature, and even if the will fails at times to stiffen itself resolutely to make sure that the right shall prevail. "Liberty hath a sharp and double edge fit only to be handled by just and virtuous men," so Milton asserted long ago, adding that "to the bad and dissolute, it becomes a mischief unwieldy in their own hands." Even if we Americans can clear ourselves of being "bad and dissolute," we have much to do before we may claim to be "just and virtuous." Justice and virtue are not to be had for the asking; they are the rewards of a manful contest with selfishness and with sloth. They are the results of an honest effort to think straight, and to apply eternal principles to present needs. Merely to feel is only the beginning; what remains is to think and to act. A British historian, Mr. Frederic Harrison, who came here to spy out the land three or four years before Mr. Morley and Mr. Bryce last visited us, was struck by the fact-and by the many consequences of the fact-that "America is the only land on earth where caste has never had a footing, nor has left a trace." It seemed to him that "vast numbers and the passion of equality tend to low averages in thought, in manners, and in public opinion, which the zeal of the devoted minority tends gradually to raise to higher planes of thought and conduct." He believed that we should solve our problems one by one because "the zeal for learning, justice and humanity" lies deep in the American heart. Mr. Harrison did not say it in so many words, but it is implied in what he did say, that the absence of caste and the presence of low averages in thought, in manners, and in public opinion, impose a heavier task on the devoted minority, whose duty it is to keep alive the zeal for learning, justice and humanity. Which of us, if haply the spirit moves him, may not elect himself to this devoted minority? Why should not we also, each in his own way, without pretense, without boastfulness, without bullying, do whatsoever in us lies for the attainment of justice and of virtue? It is well to be a gentleman and a scholar; but after all it is best to be a man, ready to do a man's work in the world. And indeed there is no reason why a gentleman and a scholar should not also be a man. He will need to cherish what Huxley called "that enthusiasm for truth, that fanaticism for veracity, which is a greater possession than much learning, a nobler gift than the power of increasing knowledge." He will need also to remember that Kings have their dynasties,-but not the mind; But Wisdom, dying, leaves no heir behind. HENRY RUSSELL MILLER THE SECOND BIRTH Henry Russell Miller, manager of the Crescent Press, Pittsburgh, is well known both as an author and as a public speaker. This address was given, for the Kiwanis Club of Pittsburgh, to the Thirty-Seventh Annual Encampment of the Union Veteran Legion, held in Pittsburgh, September 13-14, 1922. SOLDIERS OF THE UNION:-War is a habit of the nations, and the end, alas! is not yet. The story of man seems but a monotonous repetition of the ancient theme, until at last a heartweary, blood-drained world has learned to hate it. And here we come upon a paradox. War the institution, the insatiate monster that devours whole peoples, a world verging upon sanity has learned to abhor. But the warrior, the individual soldier, he who bears the burden, pays the costs, he is always the hero. Strong youth marching to or from the war, victor or in defeat, wears ever upon his brow a halo-not always deserved, since war sometimes does dreadful things to the man as it does to the nations-but not often out of place. Whence this worship of the soldier? "Saul has slain his thousands, and David his tens of thousands," sang the women in the camp of ancient Israel. But that is not the answer. The world does not love its killers, nor the soldier because he has slain-rather because of something almost godlike in the soldier spirit, ready for a cause beyond and greater than himself to give up that to which most men, in all miseries and through all misfortunes, cling to the end-not the most precious thing in life, but life itself. Not the killer but the sacrifice is acclaimed and lives on in glory undimmed when those who toil only for gain are forgotten. Your Legion can never die. You live, you live in strength un |