The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1900-12-07
were, what they believed, what they en-

were, what they believed, what they en-
dured, what they achieved They say
perhaps that they were contending in
those days for great rights and making
sacrifices for great privileges which
they having won-we sit down and en-
joy Precisely; l do not challenge the
fact, / am merely trying to remind you
what has come of it. With them were
great ideals, a passionate devotion to
principle, an utter Indifference to the
price of personal and religious freedom
IL they only could secure it,
with US is the enjoyment of all that
they contended for; and of so much
more that If they We're to come back
to-day and see the homes and the dress
and the manners of their descendants
they would think themselves in London
in the time of the Charles's or in Yer
sellles in the time of the Louis, but GER
talnly not in the Philadelphia or the
New York of their earthly probation.
observe now, | am not Undertaking to
say that it Is not natural that this
should be so or that there is any valid
reason for expecting that it should be
otherwise They came here that they
and we, their children, should have
chance! and we have had it and our
social conditions are the result of it.
But we may wisely recognize that these
conditions have their dangers
Again, I have spoken of this CONNER
cial spirit as the dominant note of the
age, and understanding what we ordi-
nar1ly mean by Our age''-that it is
the people of our time, language, Gus
toms and manners and the like. 1t is
especially so much of it as we are very
fond just now of calling the Anglo
Saxon peoples. Other nations have been
fond of calling our English ancestors a.
nation of shopkeepers, and the distinc-
ton clings to their descendants on both
sides of the Atlantic. Now, their civil
1zatlon and ours happens to be to-day
the dominant civilization-at any rate
in Christendom; and so what may be
said to be distinctive in these times in
them and in us may justly be said to
indicate what / may call the spirit of
the age.
But the social problems of our coun-
try find their determining causes not
alone in the spirit of the age, but also
and largely in the peculiar conditions
of our national life. These are those of
a republican form of government and
of democratic ideas and of social order
and life What these have gained for
us T do not need to point out to you.
What they have cost US, however, we
are also obliged to recognize If, for
instance, / were an Englishman or
Corn a ~ 4,,f,
and had the forming of a ca
reer of diplomacy or warfare, or art, or
even of trade; and if l had gifts of a
marked character and should achieve
marked excellence, should be part of
q system which could reward me in
many ways which are especially dead |
to human ambitions, but no one of |
which is within the reach of anybody in
this land Victory or Westminster
A hhev'' said Nelson before The battle !
IF Trafalgar: and when Kitchener did |
MS great work in Egypt the other day
10 you suppose that there doomed out |
upon that dark horizon beyond the Nile |
10 vision of those splendid honors which |
fitted him to be q peer of the realm of |
Great Britain and covered him with re- |
splendent decorations of a grateful en- |
)ire? The manufacturer Of the famous !
IIrupp gun with which Germany won
ler most memorable victories over |
France was made a baron, and the iron
worker of yesterday became straighta-
way the fellow of kings and of the
laute nobelesse. In England a man of /,
science discovers an antiseptic dressing |
or gunshot wounds, another discovers
| star- another the mysteries of deep