hown themselves alien and sinister.
Some new things, as we look frankly upon them, willing to comprehend
their real character, have come to assume the aspect of things long
believed in and familiar, stuff of our own convictions. We have been
refreshed by a new insight into our own life.

We see that in many things that life is very great. It is incomparably
great in its material aspects, in its body of wealth, in the diversity
and sweep of its energy, in the industries which have been conceived and
built up by the genius of individual men and the limitless enterprise
of groups of men. It is great, also, very great, in its moral force.
Nowhere else in the world have noble men and women exhibited in more
striking forms the beauty and the energy of sympathy and helpfulness and
counsel in their efforts to rectify wrong, alleviate suffering, and set
the weak in the way of strength and hope. We have built up, moreover,
a great system of government, which has stood through a long age as in
many respects a model for those who seek to set liberty upon foundations
that will endure against fortuitous change, against storm and accident.
Our life contains every great thing, and contains it in rich abundance.

But the evil has come with the good, and much fine gold has been
corroded. With riches has come inexcusable waste. We have squandered a
great part of what we might have used, and have not stopped to conserve
the exceeding bounty of nature, without which our genius for enterprise
would have been worthless and impotent, scorning to be careful,
shamefully prodigal as well as admirably efficient. We have been
proud of our industrial achievements, but we have not hitherto stopped
thoughtfully enough to count the human cost, the cost of lives snuffed
out, of energies overtaxed and broken, the fearful physical and
spiritual cost to the men and women and children upon whom the dead
weight and burden of it all has fallen pitilessly the years through.
The groans and agony of it all had not yet reached our ears, the solemn,
moving undertone of our life, coming up out of the mines and factories,
and out of every home where the struggle had its intimate and familiar
seat. With the great Government went many deep secret things which we
too long delayed to look into and scrutinize with candid, fearless eyes.
The great Government we loved has too often been made use of for private
and selfish purposes, and those who used it had forgotten the p