The Forrest City times., 1910-06-10
FORREST CITY, ARK. FRIDAY AFTERNOON, JUNE TO- 1910

came far quicker than 1t needed to come,
 because of shortcomings on her part to
 which both Great Britain and the United
 States would be wise to pay heed Her government was singularly ineffective, the decentralization being such as often to l permit the separattst. the particuIarfst | spirit of the provinces to rob the central
 authority of all efficiency. This was bad l enough. But the fatal weakness was that i SO common in rich. peace-loving societies. I where men hate to think of war as posst- i hle. and try 10 Justif" their own reluctance 1 te face it either by high-sounding moral
 platitudcs or else by a philosophy of
 short sighted materialism. The Dutch l were very wealthy. They grew to be- l ueve that they could hire others to do l their fighting for them on land; and on
 sea. where they d.d their own fighting 1 and fought very well. they refused in i time of peace to make ready fleets so ef- i HC!crt as either to insure the Dutch i against the peace being broken or else l to give them the victory when war 1 came. To be opulent and unarmed Is to l secure ease in the present at the almost i certain cost of disaster in the future l It Is therefore easy to see why Holland l lost when she did her position among the 1 powers. but it Is far more difficult to ex- l plain why at the same time there should have come at least a partial loss of posi- l ton In the world of art and letters Some l spark of divine fire burned itself out in the national soul. As the line of great statesmen. of great warriors by land and sea came to an end, so the line of the
 great Dutch painters ended. The loss of pre-eminence in the schools followed the loss of pre-eminence In camp and in council chamber
 In the little republic of Holland as in the great empire of Rome, It was not 1 death which came, but transformation.
 Both Holland and Italy teach us that
 races that fall may rise again.
 Danger of Race Suicide
 l There are questions which we of the great civilized nations are ever tempted to ask of the future Is our time of growth l drawing to an end? Are we as nations 1 soon to come under the rule of that great law of death, which is Itself but part of the l great law of life? None can tell Forces 1 that we can see and other forces that are 1 hidden or that can but dmly be appre- l hended are at work all around us. both 1 for good and for evil The growth in lux
 ury, in love of ease in taste for vapid and frivolous excitement. is both evident and unhealthy The most omlnous sign l is the diminution In the brth-rate, in the 1 rate of natural increase. now to larger l or lesser degree shared by most of the i civilized nations of central and western 1 Europe. of America and Australian dim 'A-N''-N'+A l next century at the rate which has ob- l tained for the last 9 years. all the more l highly civilized people will be stationary
 or else have begun to 20 backward in
 population, while many of them will have
 already gone very far backward
 There Is much that should give us con cern for the future. But there ia much
 also which should give us hope No man
 IS more apt to be mistaken than the l prophet of evil l believe with all my
 heart that great future remains for us; | but whether it does or does not our
 duty is not altered. However the bat
 He may go, the soldier worthy of the
 name will with utmost vfgor do his al-
 Ioted task, and bear himself as valiant | " In defeat as in victory. Come what
 VIII. We belong to peoples who have not l yielded to the craven fear of being great. 1 In the ages that have gone by. the great nations, the nations that have ex-
 banded and that have played a mighty
 part in the world. have in the end
 grown old and weakened and vanished; i;
 but so have the nations whose only
 thought was to avoid all danger. all eff 1 fort, who would risk nothing, and who
 therefore gained nothing. In the end the same fate may oVerWhelm all alike: but the memory of the one type perishes with | It while the other leaves it's mark deep l on the history of all the future of man | kind.
 In the first part of this lecture I drew 1 certain analogies between what had oc- cured to forms of animal life through
 the procession of the ages on this planet
 and what has occurred and is occurring | to the great artificial civilizations which 1 have gradually spread over the world 8 | surface during the thousands of years 1 that have elapsed since cities of temples
 and palaces first rose beside the Nile and | the Euphrates. and the harbors of | Minoan Crete bristled with the masts of 1 the Aegean craft. But of course the parallel IS true only in the toughest
 and most general way Moreover. even
 between the civilizations of today and 1 the civilizations of ancient times there
 are differences SO profound that we must | be cautious in drawing any conclusions
 for the present based on what has hap
 pened in the past. While freely admit
 ting all of our follies and weaknesses of
 today. 1t Is yet mere perversiry to refuse ! to realize the incredible advance that 1 has been made in ethical standards I do l not believe that there Is the slightest nec-
 essary connection between any weaken 1 ing of Virle force and this advance in i the moral standard. this growth of the
 sense of obligation to ones neighbor and
 of reluctance to do that neighhor wrong
 Problems of Modern Nations.
 Every modern civilized nation has many
 and terrible problems to solve within its i own borders, problems that arise not
 merely from juxtaposition of poverty and ! riches but especially from the seR-con- l sciousness of both poverty and riches l Each nation must deal with these mat
 ters in its own fashion, and yet the spirit
 In which the problem Is approached must l ever be fundamentally the same IL
 must be a spirit of broad humanity; Of l brotherly kindness; of acceptance of re
 sponsbility, one for each and each for 1 all and at the same time a spirit as re-
 mote as the poles from every form of
 weakness and sentimentalty. As In war
 to pardon the coward Is to do cruel
 wrong to the brave man whose life his
 cowardce jeopardizes. so in civil affairs
 it is reVolung to every principle Of
 justice to give to the lazy. the vicious. CT
 even the feeble and dull Witted a reward
 which Is really the robbery of what i braver. wiser abler men have earned
 The only effective way to help any man
 is to help him to help himself: and the
 worst lesson 10 teach him Is that he can
 be permanently helped at the expense ef
 some one else. True liberty shows itself
 to best advantage in protecting the righ4s
 of others and especially of minorities
 Privilege should not be tolerated becalAss
 it is to the advantage of a minority, n.r
 yet because 1t IS to the advantage of a