The Green Forest tribune., 1910-04-29

hOioSe to iHlelleCl, ana to elaborate and specialized training of the intel lect; and yet know l shall have the assent of all you present when I add that more important still are the com monpiace, everyday qualities and vir- tues.
 The Evils of Sterility.
 In the next place the good man should be both a strong and a brave man; that is, he should be able to hght, he should be able to serve hls country as soldier if the need arises. There are well-meaning phil osophers who declaim against the un- righteousness of war. They are right, only they lay all their emphasis upon the unrighteousness War is a dread 1ul things, and unjust war is a crime agalnst humanity. But it is such a crime because it is unjust, not because It Is war The choice must ever be in favor of righteousness, and this whether the alternative be peace or whether the alternative be war. The question must not be merely. is there
 
 must be, is the right to prevail? Are the great laws of righteousness once more to be fulfilled? And the answer from a strong and virile people must be, Yes" whatever the cost Every honorable effort should always be made by the individual in private life TO Keep out of d brawl, to keep out of trouble; but no self-respecting indi- yidual, no self-respecting nation. can or ought to submit to wrong.
 Finally, even more important than ability to work, even more important than ability to fight at need, is it to remember that the chief of blessings for any nation is that it shall lave it's seed to inherit the land It was the crown of blessings in Biblical times, and It Is the crown of blessings now. The greatest of all curses is the curse of sterility, and the severest of all condemnations should be that visited upon willful sterility The first es. sentlal in any civilization is that the man and the woman shall be father and mother of healthy children, so that the race shall increase and not decrease. If this is not so, if through no fault of society there is failure to increase, 1t is a great misfortune. If the failure is due Co deliberate and Wllltul fault, then it is not merely misfortune, it is one of those crimes of ease and self-indulgence. of shriuk- ing from pain and effort and risk, which in the long run nature punishes more heavily than any other.
 Idle Achievements.
 If we of the great republics. if we. the free people who claim to have emancipated ourselves from the thral dom Of wrong and error, bring down on our heads the curse that comes upon the willfully barren, then it will be an idle waste of breath to prattle or our achievements. to boast of all that we have done. No refinement of life, no delicacy of taste, no material progress, no sordid heaping up of riches, no sensuous development of art and literature, can in any way con- pensate for the loss of the great fundamental virtues; and of the great fundamental virtues, the greatest is the races power to perpetuate the race
 But if a mans efficiency is not guid., ed and regulated by moral sense. then the more efficient he is the worse he is, the more dangerous to the body polite. Courage, intellect, all the mas terful qualities, serve but to make a man more evil if they are used merely for that mans own advancement. with brutal indifference to the rights of others. It speaks i'll for the com. munity if the community worships these qualities and treats their DOS sessors as heroes regardless of wheth- CT the qualities are used rightly or wrongly. It makes no difference as to the precise way in which this sinis- ter efficiency is shown. It makes no difference whether such a mans force and ability betray themselves in the career of money maker or politician, soldier or orator, journalist or popu- lar leader. If the man works for evil, then the more successful he is, the