de such independence less necessary,
and tends to attach a different function to the church. A basis of
association narrower than the whole complex of human powers and
interests will not serve. National organization provides such a basis.
The perversity of human nature may cause its ultimate failure; but it
will not fail because it omits any essential constituent in the
composition of a permanent and fruitful human association. So far as it
fulfills its responsibilities, it guarantees protection against
predatory powers at home and abroad. It provides in appropriate measure
for individual freedom, for physical, moral, and intellectual
discipline, and for social consistency. It has prizes to offer as well
as coercion to exercise; and with its foundations planted firmly in the
past, its windows and portals look out towards a better future. The
tendency of its normal action is continually, if very slowly, to
diminish the distance between the ideal of human brotherhood, and the
political, economic, and social conditions, under which at any one time
men manage to live together.

That is the truth to which the patriotic Americans should firmly cleave.
The modern nation, particularly in so far as it is constructively
democratic, constitutes the best machinery as yet developed for raising
the level of human association. It really teaches men how they must
feel, what they must think, and what they must do, in order that they
may live together amicably and profitably. The value of this school for
its present purposes is increased by its very imperfections, because its
imperfections issue inevitably from the imperfections of human nature.
Men being as unregenerate as they are, all worthy human endeavor
involves consequences of battle and risk. The heroes of the struggle
must maintain their achievements and at times even promote their objects
by compulsion. The policeman and the soldier will continue for an
indefinite period to be guardians of the national schools, and the
nations have no reason to be ashamed of this fact. It is merely symbolic
of the very comprehensiveness of their responsibilities--that they have
to deal with the problem of human inadequacy and unregeneracy in all its
forms,--that they cannot evade this problem by allowing only the good
boys to attend school--that they cannot even mitigate it by drawing too
sharp a distinction between the good boys and the bad. Such
indiscriminate attendance in these national sch