habits and
stiffen its aspirations into rules and plans of action, so civilization
as a whole must create within and around it a structure of ordered and
systematic thought and action within which the higher forces now
recognized and disengaged may be all the more free to do their work.
Without such a mechanical or apparently unspiritual basis these forces
can only work fugitively, erratically, and so ineffectively, as they did
in the Greek world. To the prosaic business of creating or recreating
and maintaining in being such a structure a large part of our energies
must be devoted, and in all this from the Romans we have still much to
learn. If we decline to learn and digest this lesson, turning from such
concernment in disgust or disdain, our lives will be lost in vain
dreams, in idle longings and empty regrets; and the kingdom of Freedom
and Truth will be taken from us and given to others who have known how
to grow up and to face like men the hardships and hazards without which
it cannot be won or held. From the inspiring visions of these ideals we
must turn as we did when we and our world were Roman, to the serious and
sober task of creating a political and legal structure on which the
eternal spirit of European civilization can resume its work of
extending, deepening, enriching, the common life of Humanity.

It seems as if we--the heirs of their experience--bound to face a more
appalling problem, are bankrupt, even of hopes, having lost both the
ideal of a life worth living on this earth and that of some large and
complex organization rendering this life possible. But this is not so,
for the forces which in Antiquity created and for long maintained a
civilization at first desirable and then strong, are not spent. Still
they make the Greco-Roman civilization which is ours a thing worth
living and dying for; still they hold us together in a unity and concord
deeper than ever plummet can sound, obscured but not destroyed by the
present noise and confusion of battle. Still at heart we care--and not
we only but also our enemies and all neutrals benevolent or
malevolent--for the ends for which civilization exists, for the peace
and order and justice which are their necessary conditions: we still
have minds to devise and wills to execute whatever is necessary to its
progress. Still we are willing to learn of history and resolved to
better its instruction, to know ourselves and our world and adjust our
ideas and our acts t