The Carlisle independent., 1910-06-09

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 death which came, but transformation Both Holland and Italy teach us that races that fall may rise again.
 Danger of Race Suicide.
 There are questions which we of the great civilized nations are ever tempted to ask of the future. Is our time of growth drawing to an end? Are We as nations soon to come under the rule of that great law of death, which is itself but part of the great law of life? None can tell. Forces that we see and other forces that are hidden or that can but dimly be appre- hended are at work all around us, both 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 ominous sign is the diminuton in the birth-rate, in the rate of natural increase, now to a larger or lesser degree shared by most of the civilized nations of central and western Europe, of America and Australia; dim mutton so great that if it continues for the next century at the rate which has ob- tained for the last 25 years, all the more highly civilized people will be stationary or else have begun to go 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 is much also which should give us hope. No man Is more apt to be mistaken than the prophet of evil. believe with all my heart that a great future remains for us but whether it does or does not, our duty is not altered. However the bat tie may go, the soldier worthy of the name will with utmost vigor do his al loted task, and bear himself as valiant rlRaf will, we belong to peoples who have not yielded to the craven fear of being great 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 but so have the nations whose only thought was to avoid all danger, all ef- 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 1t while the other leg yes it's mark deep on the history of all the future of man. kind.
 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 achieve ment, and for all time to come may pro- foundly influence the nations that arise in it's place by the impress of what 1t has done Best of all is it to do our part we'll and at the same time to see our blood live young and vital in men and women fit to take up the task as we lay 1t down; for so shall our seed inherit the earth. But If this, which is best, is denied us, then at least 1t is ours to remember that if we choose we can be torch-b bearers, as our fathers were before us. The torch has been handed on from nation to nation, from civilization to civilization through out all recorded time, from the dim years before history dawned, down to the bla- zing splendor of this teeming century of ours. It is 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; 1t 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 no 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 sub- stance, then high success was really theirs.
 In the first part of this lecture I drew 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 have gradually spread over the worlds surface during the thousands of years 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 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 the civilizations of ancient times there are differences so profound that we must be cautious in drawing any conclusions for the present based what has hap pened in the past While freely admit ting all of our follies and weaknesses of today, it Is yet mere perversity to refuse to realize the incredible advance that has been made in ethical standards I do not believe that there Is the slightest nec- essary connection between any weaken ing of virile force and this advance 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 kindli- ness of character only accompanies weakness of character. On the contrary, just as in private life many of the men of strongest character are the very men of loftiest and most exalted morality, so I believe that in national life as the ages go by we shall find that the permanent national types VIII more and more tend towards those in which, while the intel feet stands high. character stands higher; in which rugged strength and courage, rugged capacity to resist wrongful az gression by others. will go hand in hand with lofty scorn of doing wrong to oth- CTS. This is the type of Timoleon, of Hampden. of Washington and Lincoln. These were as good men, as disinterested and unselflsh men, as ever served state; and they were also as strong men as ever founded or saved a state. Surely such examples prove that there is noth- ing Utopian in our effort to combine justice and strength in the same nation. The really high civilizations must them selves supply the antidote to the self-in- dulgence and love of ease which they tend to produce.
 Problems of Modern Nations.
 Every modern civilized nation has many and terrible problems to solve within its own borders, problems that arise not merely from juXtaposition of poverty and riches, but especially from the self-con- sciousness of both poverty and riches. Each nation must deal with these mat ters in it's own fashion, and yet the spirit in which the problem is approached must ever be fundamentally the same. It must be spirit of broad humanity; of lxipdnaSS. oF of