has made it possible for man to win, do not create
citizenship because of the loose organization of society; because
individualism is rampant, and men, failing to understand the intricacies
of the vast and complex life of their country, fall back on private
life and private ambitions, and leave the honor of their country and the
making of laws and the application of the national revenues to a class
of professional politicians, in their turn in servitude to the interests
which supply party funds, and so we find corruption in high places and
cynicism in the people. It is necessary for the creation of citizens,
for the building up of a noble national life, that the social order
should be so organized that this sense of interdependence will be
constantly felt. It is also necessary for the preservation of the
physical health and beauty of our race that our people should live
more in the country and less in the cities. I believe it would be an
excellent thing for humanity if its civilization could be based on rural
industry mainly and not on urban industry. More and more men and women
in our modern civilization drift out of Nature, out of sweet air,
health, strength, beauty, into the cities, where in the third generation
there is a rickety population, mean in stature, vulgar or depraved in
character, with the image of the devil in mind and matter more than the
image of Deity. Those who go like it at first; but city life is like the
roll spoken of by the prophet, which was sweet in the mouth but bitter
in the belly. The first generation are intoxicated by the new life,
but in the third generation the cord is cut which connected them with
Nature, the Great Mother, and life shrivels up, sundered from the source
of life. Is there any prophet, any statesman, any leader, who will--as
Moses once led the Israelites out of the Egyptian bondage--excite
the human imagination and lead humanity back to Nature, to sunlight,
starlight, earth-breath, sweet air, beauty, gaiety, and health? Is it
impossible now to move humanity by great ideas, as Mahomet fired his
dark hosts to forgetfulness of life; or as Peter the Hermit awakened
Europe to a frenzy, so that it hurried its hot chivalry across a
continent to the Holy Land? Is not the earth mother of us all? Are not
our spirits clothed round with the substance of earth? Is it not from
Nature we draw life? Do we not perish without sunlight and fresh air?
Let us have no breath of air and in five mi