the sands of future time.

But today we may look forward to stupendous events; today there are
mighty epiphanies quickening earth, not to be assigned to periods of
future time, but at hand, so near that our living selves shall see their
birth, and participate in their consequences. Nor can we stand as
spectators of this worldwide hope; we must not only hear the evangel
whose first mighty murmur is drifting to our ears from the future, we
must take it up with heart and voice and help to sound and resound it.
There is tremendous work lying ahead, not only for our children, but for
us. Weighty deeds will presently have to be performed by all adult
manhood and womanhood--deeds, perhaps, greater than any living man has
been called to do--deeds that exalt the doer and make sacred for all
history the hour in which they shall be done.

On Time's high canopy the years are as stars great and small, some of
lesser magnitude, some forever bright with the splendor of supreme
human achievements; and now there flashes out a year concerning which,
indeed, no man can say as yet how great it will be; but all men know
that it must be great. It is destined to drown all lesser years, even as
sunrise dims the morning stars with day; it is a year bright with
promise and bodeful with ill-tidings also; for in the world at this
moment there exist stupendous differences that this year will go far to
set at rest. This year must solve profound problems, determine the trend
of human affairs for centuries, and influence the whole future history
of civilization. This year may actually see the issue; at least it will
serve to light the near future when that issue shall be accomplished.

There has risen, then, a year that is great with no less a thing than
the future welfare of the whole earth. It must embrace the victory of
one ideal over another, and include a decision which shall determine
whether the sublime human hope of freedom and security for all mankind
is to guide human progress henceforth, or the spirit of domination and
slavery to win a new lease of life. On the one hand, this year of the
first magnitude will shine with the glory of such a victory for
democratic ideas as we have not seen, or expected to see, in our
generation; on the other, its bale-fire will blaze upon the overthrow of
all great ideals, the destruction of a weak nation by a powerful one,
and the triumph of that policy of "blood and iron" from which every
enlightened man