The Fargo forum and daily republican. [volume] (Fargo, N.D.) 1894-1957, 1910-06-07

the ages that have gone by, the grea
nations, the nations that have ex
panded and that have played might!
part in the world, have in the enc
grown old and weakened and van
ished; but so have the nations whose
only thought was to avoid all danger
all effort, who would risk nothing, ant
who therefore gained nothing. In the
end the same fate may overwhelm al
alike; but the memory of the one type
perishes with 1t, while the other leave:
its mark deep on the history of all the
nations of mankind.
"a nation that seemingly dies may
be born again; and even though in the
physical sense 1t die utterly, it may
yet hand down a history of heroic
achievement, and for all time to come
may profoundly influence the nations
| that arise in its place by the impress
OF what it has done. Best of all is il
| to do our part well, and at the same
time to see our blood live young anC
vital in men and women fit to take uI
| the task as we lay it down; for Sc
shall our seed inherit the earth. But
If this, which is best, is denied us
|
that If we choose we can be torch
| bearers, as our fathers were before us
! The torch has been handed on from
nation to nation, from civilization to
| civilization, throughout all recorded
time, from the dim years before his
tory dawned, down to the blazing
| splendor of this teeming century OF
| ours. 1t dropped from the hand of
the coward and the sluggard, of the
man wrapped in luxury or love OF
ease, the man whose soul was eaten
away by self-indulgence; it has been
kept alight only by those who were
mighty of heart and cunning of hand
What they worked at, providing it was
worth doing at all, was of less matter
than how they worked, whether in the
realm of the mind or the realm of the
body. If their work was good, If what
they achieved was of substance, then
high success was really theirs.
"While freely admitting all of our
follies and weaknesses of today, 1t is
yet mere perversity to refuse to realize
the incredible advance that has been
made in ethical standards. / do not
believe that there is the slightest
necessary connection between any
weakening Of virile force and this adj
vance in the moral standard, this
growth of the sense of obligation to
| ones neighbor and Of reluctance to do
that neighbor wrong. We need have
scant patience with that silly cynicism
which insists that kindness of char
acter only accompanies weakness of
| character. On the contrary just as in
private life many of the men of strong
est character are the very men of
Hottest and most exalted morality, so
l believe that in national life as the
ages go by We shall find that the per-
manent national types will more and
more tend towards those in which, while
rugged strength and courage, rugged
strength and courage, rugged capacity
to resist wrongful aggression by others,
will go hand in hand with lofty scorn
of doing wrong to others. This is the
type of Timoleon, of Hampden, of
Washington and Lincoln. These were
as good men, and disinterested and
unselfish men as ever served a state;
and they were also as strong men as
ever founded or saved a state. Surely
such examples prove that there is
bine justice and strength in the same
nation. The really high civilizations
must themselves supply the antidote
to the self-indulgence and love of ease
which they tend to produce.
Every modern civilized nation has
many and terrible problems to solve
within it's own borders, problems that
arise not merely from juxtaposition of
poverty and riches, but especially
from the self-consciousness of both
poverty and richness. Each nation
must deal with these matters in it's
own fashion, and yet the spirit in
which the problem is approached must
ever be fundamentally the same. 1t
must be a spirit of broad humanity;
of brotherly kindness; of acceptance
of responsibility, one for each and
each for all, and at the same time
spirit as remote as the poles from
every form of weakness and senti-
mentality. AS in war to pardon the
coward Is to do cruel wrong to the
brave man whose life his cowardice
jeopardizes, so in civil affairs it is re-
voting to every principle of justice to
give to the lazy, the vicious, or even
the feeble and dull-witted, a reward
which is really the robbery of what
drawer, wiser, ADLER men have earned
The only effective way to help any
man Is to help him to help himself
and the worst lesson to teach him is
that he can be permanently helped at
the expense of some one else. True
liberty shows itself to best advantage
in protecting the rights of others and
especially of minorities. Privilege
should not be tolerated because it is
to the advantage of a minority, nor
yet because it is to the advantage of
a majority. No doctrinaire theories
of vested rights or freedom of con-
tract can stand in the way of our
cutting out abuses from the body po-
little. Just as little can we afford to
follow the doctrinaires of an impos-
sible-and incidentally of a highly UNI
desirable-social revolution which, in
destroying individual rights (includ-
ing property rights, and the family,
would destroy the reasons why either
the advance or the preservation of
| mankind is worth while 1t is an evil
and dreadful thing to be callous to
sorrow and suffering, and blind to our
duty to do all things possible for the
betterment of social conditions. But
it is an unspeakably foolish thing to
strive for this betterment by means
SO destructive that they would leave
no social conditions to better. In
dealing with AL these social problems,
with the intimate relations of tbo