Americus times-recorder. [volume] (Americus, Ga.) 1891-current, 1910-06-09
NOT MADE CRAVEN Ri FEARS OF
THE FUTURE.

Roosevelt believes in facing the
future with hopefulness, in standing
ready TO do our part in the worlds
great arena, without fear and if posi-
bic, without reproach, in being IN
daunted by the croaking prophets o.
evil. His philosophy is much better
than that OF the man who shrinks afraid
Of what time may hold in store, who
shigers with anticipatory dread, who
already sees desolation where none ex-
lists It is far better TO encourage
than to discourage, and, say what We
will of Roosevelt, there is no question
ing that Le strikes the note Of con-
fdence and encouragement. When
ever he exposes the infection of evil
he also lays bare the sources OF cure,
as he sees them. How much better
is this than the bowling and Wailing
and tearing Of hair and rendfng Of
garments, of those who are horror
struck with their own imaginings,
who have constructed fetch OF de-
SPAR and call on humanity to lie pros
trate in the dust before it.
In his address at Oxford, Roosevelt
had this to say:
There are questions that We OF the
great civilized nations are ever tempt
ed to ask of the future. Is our time
Of growth drawing 70 an end? Are We
as nations soon to come under the
great law Of life? None can tell.
/ Forces that we can see and other
| forces that are hidden, or that can but
dimly be appreciated, are at work all
around US, both for good and for evil
4 The growth in luxury, in love of ease,
/ in taste for yapid and frivolous eX>
citement is both evident and un-
healthy. The most omnibus sign is
/ the diminunition of the birth rate, and
/ the rate Of natural increase, now 70
/ larger or lesser degree shared by
most of the civilized nations of CEN
/ tral and western Europe, of America
and Australia a diminution so great
that if it continues for the next cen
fury at the rate which las obtained
10 the last twenty-five years, all he
more civilized peoples will be sta
tionary, or else have begun to 90
backward in population, while many
OF them will have already gone very
far backward.
There is much that should give us
! concern for tie future. But there is
much also that should give US hope.
No man is more apt to be mistaken
than the prophet of evil. After the
French revolution in - 1880, Niebuhr
hazarded the guess thA all civilization
was about to go down with a crash,
that we were about to share the
fall of third and fourth century Rome
IA respectable but painfully over
worked comparison. The fears once
expressed by the followers of Nautilus
as to the future Of the world have
proven groundless as regards the civil
lied portion of the world it is strange
indeed to look back at Carlyle's pro-
lphecies of some seventy years ago, and
then think Of the teeming life of ac-
achievement and the life of conquest OF
| every kind, and the noble efforts
crowned with success which, have
been ours for the two generations
since he complained to high heaven
that all the tales had been told and
all the songs sung and that all the
deeds really worth doing had been don
L believe with all my heart that a
great future remains for us; but
whether it does or does not, out duty
lis not altered. However the battle
may go, the soldier worthy of his
name will, with utmost VigOr, do his
lallotted task and bear himself az
yaliantly in defeat as in victory. Come
what will, We belong to people who
have not yielded to the craven fear OF
being great. In the ages that have
gone by, the great nations, the ma
tons that have expanded and that have
played a mighty part in the world
4. have in the end grown old and weak
/ ened and vanished; but so have the
nations whose only thought was TO
avoid all danger, all effort; who would
risk nothing, and who, therefore, gain
ed nothing In the end the same fate
may oyerwhelm all alike; but the
memory of the one type perishes with
it, while the other leaves it's mark deep
on the history of all the future of
mankind"