ope of
a peaceful solution of our social questions, for they will never be
large enough to satisfy. But such is not the case. Men struggle for
material success because that is the path, the process, to the
development of character. We ought to demand economic justice, but most
of all because it is justice. We must forever realize that material
rewards are limited and in a sense they are only incidental, but the
development of character is unlimited and is the only essential. The
measure of success is not the quantity of merchandise, but the quality
of manhood which is produced.

These, then, are the justifying conceptions of the spirit of our age;
that commerce is the foundation of human progress and prosperity and the
great artisan of human character. Let us dismiss the general indictment
that has all too long hung over business enterprise. While we continue
to condemn, unsparingly, selfishness and greed and all trafficking in
the natural rights of man, let us not forget to respect thrift and
industry and enterprise. Let us look to the service rather than to the
reward. Then shall we see in our industrial army, from the most exalted
captain to the humblest soldier in the ranks, a purpose worthy to
minister to the highest needs of man and to fulfil the hope of a fairer
day.

IV

AT THE HOME OF DANIEL WEBSTER, MARSHFIELD

JULY 4, 1916

History is revelation. It is the manifestation in human affairs of a
"power not ourselves that makes for righteousness." Savages have no
history. It is the mark of civilization. This New England of ours
slumbered from the dawn of creation until the beginning of the
seventeenth century, not unpeopled, but with no record of human events
worthy of a name. Different races came, and lived, and vanished, but the
story of their existence has little more of interest for us than the
story the naturalist tells of the animal kingdom, or the geologist
relates of the formation of the crust of the earth. It takes men of
larger vision and higher inspiration, with a power to impart a larger
vision and a higher inspiration to the people, to make history. It is
not a negative, but a positive achievement. It is unconcerned with
idolatry or despotism or treason or rebellion or betrayal, but bows in
reverence before Moses or Hampden or Washington or Lincoln or the Light
that shone on Calvary.

July 4, 1776, was a day of history in its high and true significance.
Not because the underlying prin