The Richmond Virginian. (Richmond, Va.) 1910-1920, 1910-06-01
POTENTIAL. GREAT MEN"

1t Is an old observation that big crises make
the great men necessary to meet them. Since
antiquity, experience has taught this truth or
rather that the great men wing like IN
sentient germs III the husk of mediocrtv waiting
for the flash of circumstance TT disclose their
worth. 1t is this potential greatness that Il the
hope of civilizations and governments: without
it, the deadening decentralization of time and
ease would be certainly fatal i'll the end
IT was to tltis truth that Governor Mann adj
dressed himself in his Memorial Day address,
when he said;
Il used to think, boy, that there
could never be another Washington in
the worlds history. But | was mis-
taken. From the very county in which
Washington was born, i'll Virginia,
there was called Robert +. Lee to make
name in the worlds history. Md
from the bows of to-day, if the country
ever needs another Washington or
other Jefferson or another Monroe or
another Marshall or another Lee Nir-
glnia will be ready to produce him.
1t is encouraging retrospect to consider
that the War Between the States developed so
rapidly many men of really large stature
Without the aid of its dollhouse heat many of
the names now so illustrious now seemingly SO
impossible of emulation by modern products,
would never have been known outside the mar
row local limits in which their owners would
have spent their lives. The example of Lee
would have been lost to the world. Jackson
would have remained pedagorue. Grant would
have beer lost III obscurity, the scores Of men
whose names are now secure in history and whose
work still affects the life ot the nation would have
gone to the grave without expression. 1t is not
conceit, but history, to say that in the event Of
war calling for captains, of great governmental
adjustments calling for statesmen, the need
would find the man a. certainly as, soon or
late, it has always found him in the past.
OF late there has been some twadde about the
degeneracy of Southern men in public life. The
New lork sun, we believe 1t was, came forward
with the obyiosls comparisons between the old
time giants and the men who to-day repre-
sentmg the South before the people. The re-
suit was nothing more than 81 thoughtless half
truth-a half truth unmindful of the fact that
these the days of peace the days. on the
whole OF prosperity when problems in the larg,
view are in the orderly and routine course oil
solution, and when the best leadership is of tha
inconspcuous sort which looks to the raising OF
the from the bottom, and which sees the
greatest national good to consist IN the humble
but universal advance of the individual 1t is
because the country is the whole contended
because the times permit the exceptional man te
follow the more natural and more kindly in
stincts of his nature that there is not in evidence
that fire of self-sacrfcc ont Of which true great
uoss must bo born. he occasion is wanting, and
J the man who would force it, would achieve no,
greatness, but ridicule.
But when the time colnos--ss it must and
, will---there is Il fine assurance in tho thought
that, in the mass of those in training for blind
and obscure destiny, there is an ever increasing
number waiting only the nick of the flint and
steel of the crisis to release the pent-up fire OF
their souls.