d
more aggrandisement, the business man more commerce, and the tradesman
more traffic of his kind--if only he put by the flag. Most treacherous
and insidious the temptation will come to the man, young and able,
everywhere. It will say, "You have ability; come into the light--only
put that by; it keeps you obscure. And what purpose does it serve now?
Be practical; come." And you may weaken and yield and enter the light
for the general applause, but the old idea will rankle deep down till
smothered out, and you will stand in the splendour--a failure,
miserable, hopeless, not apparent, indeed, but for all that, final. You
may stand your ground, refuse the bribe, uphold the flag, and be rated
a fool and a failure, but they who rate you so will not understand that
you have won a battle greater than all the triumphs of empires; you will
keep alive in your soul true light and enduring beauty; you will hear
the music eternally in the heart of the high enthusiast and have vision
of ultimate victory that has sustained all the world over the efforts of
centuries, that uplifts the individual, consolidates the nation, and
leads a wandering race from the desert into the Promised Land.

VI

If we are to justify ourselves in our time we must have done with
dispensations. Many honest men are astray on this point and think
attitudes justifiable that are at the root of all our failures. What is
the weakness? It is so simple to explain and so easy to understand that
one must wonder how we have been ignoring it quietly and generally so
long. A man, as we have seen, acknowledges his flag in certain places;
in other places it is challenged and he pulls it down. He is dispensed.
He believes in his heart, may even write an anonymous letter to the
paper, will salute the flag again elsewhere, but he will not carry his
flag through every fight and through every day. When a particular crisis
arises, which involves our public boards, public men, and business men
in action, that requires a decision for or against the nation, he will
find it in his place in life not wise to be prominent on his own side,
and he is silently absent from his meetings--he gives a subscription but
excuses himself from attendance. He satisfies himself with private
professions of faith and whispered encouragement to those who fill the
gap--words that won't be heard at a distance--and, worst of all, he
thinks, because some stake in life may be jeopardised by bolder action