s of toil, and war, and
suffering, to make the Europe that we have. It took a thousand years of
wrestle for the very life itself, to build Rome before. To be sure, we
inherited all that this past of agony had bought the world. For us Rome
had lived, fought, toiled, and fallen. For us Celt, Saxon, Norman had
wrought and striven. We started with the accumulated capital of a
hundred generations. It was perhaps natural to suppose we might escape
the hard necessity of our fathers. We might surely profit by their
dear-bought experience. The wrecks, strewn along the shores, would be
effectual warnings to our gallant vessel on the dangerous seas where
they had sailed. In peace, plenty, and prosperity, we might be carried
to the highest reach of national greatness.

Nay! never, unless we give the lie to all the world's experience! There
never was a great nation yet nursed on pap, and swathed in silk. Storms
broke around its rude cradle instead. The tempests rocked the stalwart
child. The dragons came to strangle the baby Hercules in his swaddling
clothes. The magnificent commerce, the increasing manufactures, the
teeming soil, the wealth fast accumulating, they would never have made
us, after all, a great people. They would have eaten the manhood out of
us at last. We were becoming selfish, self-indulgent, sybaritic rapidly.
The nation's muscle was softening, its heart was hardening. If we were
to become a great nation, we needed more than commerce, more than
plenty, more than rapid riches, more than a comfortable, indulgent life.
If we were to be one of the world's great peoples, a people to dig deep
and build strong, a people whose name and fame the world was to accept
as a part of itself, we must look to pay the price inflexibly demanded
at every people's hand, and count it out in sweat drops, tear drops,
blood drops, to the last unit.

We have been patiently counting out this costly currency for three slow
years. I pity the moral outlook of the man who does not see that we have
received largely of our purchase.

From a nation whom the world believed, and whom itself believed, to be
sunk in hopeless mammon worship, we have risen to be a nation that pours
out its wealth like water for a noble purpose. Never again will 'the
almighty dollar' be called America's divinity. We were sinking fast to
low aims and selfish purposes, and wise men groaned at national
degeneracy. The summons came, and millions leaped to offer all they ha