ences of despair
change often to triumph and calm confidence. Sometimes it is faith in
life, sometimes a faith in death, sometimes assurance of boundless
justice in some fair world beyond. But whichever it is, the meaning is
always clear: that sometime, somewhere, men will judge men by their
souls and not by their skins. Is such a hope justified? Do the Sorrow
Songs sing true?

The silently growing assumption of this age is that the probation of
races is past, and that the backward races of to-day are of proven
inefficiency and not worth the saving. Such an assumption is the
arrogance of peoples irreverent toward Time and ignorant of the deeds
of men. A thousand years ago such an assumption, easily possible,
would have made it difficult for the Teuton to prove his right to life.
Two thousand years ago such dogmatism, readily welcome, would have
scouted the idea of blond races ever leading civilization. So wofully
unorganized is sociological knowledge that the meaning of progress, the
meaning of "swift" and "slow" in human doing, and the limits of human
perfectability, are veiled, unanswered sphinxes on the shores of
science. Why should AEschylus have sung two thousand years before
Shakespeare was born? Why has civilization flourished in Europe, and
flickered, flamed, and died in Africa? So long as the world stands
meekly dumb before such questions, shall this nation proclaim its
ignorance and unhallowed prejudices by denying freedom of opportunity
to those who brought the Sorrow Songs to the Seats of the Mighty?

Your country? How came it yours? Before the Pilgrims landed we were
here. Here we have brought our three gifts and mingled them with
yours: a gift of story and song--soft, stirring melody in an
ill-harmonized and unmelodious land; the gift of sweat and brawn to
beat back the wilderness, conquer the soil, and lay the foundations of
this vast economic empire two hundred years earlier than your weak
hands could have done it; the third, a gift of the Spirit. Around us
the history of the land has centred for thrice a hundred years; out of
the nation's heart we have called all that was best to throttle and
subdue all that was worst; fire and blood, prayer and sacrifice, have
billowed over this people, and they have found peace only in the altars
of the God of Right. Nor has our gift of the Spirit been merely
passive. Actively we have woven ourselves with the very warp and woof
of this nation,--we fo