to go forth and fight in the Great War--not for themselves, not for
their own glory, nor their own safety, but for the soul of the world.
And the old spirit of America rose and responded. The long inward
struggle, seen only by the wise, only by those who knew how God's truth
conquers in this earth, working beneath the surface, deep in the heart
of things, the long inward struggle of the spirit of America for its own
was won.

So it came to pass that the richness of the continent was poured out for
an ideal, that the genius of those who had seemed to be serving only
Mammon was devoted passionately to a principle, and that the blood of
those who came in seeming greed to America was shed gloriously in the
high emprise which called America to this new world crusade. Moses in
the burning bush speaking with God, Saul on the road to Damascus, never
came closer to the force outside ourselves which makes for
righteousness,--the force that has guided humanity upward through the
ages,--than America has come in this hour of her high resolve. And yet
for fifty years she has come into this holy ground steadily, and
unswervingly; indeed, for a hundred years, for three hundred years from
Plymouth Rock to the red fields of France, America has come a long and
perilous way--yet always sure, and never faltering.

To have lived in the generation now passing, to have seen the glory of
the coming of the Lord in the hearts of the people, to have watched the
steady triumph in our American life of the spirit of justice, of
fellowship over the spirit of greed, to have seen the Holy Ghost rise in
the life of a whole nation, was a blessed privilege. And if this tale
has reflected from the shallow paper hearts of those phantoms flitting
through its pages some glimpse of their joy in their pilgrimage, the
story has played its part. If the fable of Grant Adams's triumphant
failure does not dramatize in some way the victory of the American
spirit--the Puritan conscience--in our generation, then, alas, this
parable has fallen short of its aim. But most of all, if the story has
not shown how sad a thing it is to sit in the seat of the scornful, and
to deny the reality of God's purpose in this world, even though it is
denied in pomp and power and pride, then indeed this narrative has
failed. For in all this world one finds no other place so dreary and so
desolate as it is in the heart of a fool.

THE END

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