Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1916-05-05

itself of a geographic unity as its
home. There has been by no means
equal care taken by the nations to
establish and to protect an ethnic
unity. A strong people has usually
felt confident that it could hold an
alien element in subjection and yet
preserve national integrity and unity
OF spirit. So one after another of the
greater nations of the world has, I'm
seeking for geographic unity, insisted
on incorporating in its own body
polite alien and often discordant ele-
ments and holding them in stern sub
lection. The examples are too
familiar to be recited here.
Highest Human End
This process of nation building
has gone on until the nation has come
10 be conceived as an end in itself,
as superior to the rules of law, to
the conventions of morality and to
the precepts of religion. A form of
patriotism has been developed all
over the world which finds in the ma
tion itself the highest human end.
The logical result, and indeed the
almost necessary result, of this type
of thinking is the war which is now
creeping over the worlds civilization
and destroying il with the sure pitt
lessness of an Alpine glacier. This
war is the Nemesis of nation building
a nation, like an individual, have
some purpose, some ideal, some mo-
tive which lies outside of and beyond
self-interest and self-aggrandizement
war must continue on the face of this
earth until the day when the last and
strongest man, superb in his mighty
loneliness, shall look out from a rock
in the Caribbean upon a world that
has been depopulated in it's pursuit
of a false ideal, and be left himself to
die alone with none to mourn or to
bury him.
"In the history of nations the story
of our America has a place that is
came into being in response to a clear
and definite purpose. A theory of
human life and of human govern
ment was conceived and put into
execution on remote and inaccessible
part of the earth's surface. The
moving cause of the American ma
ton was the aspirations for civil and
political liberty and for individual
freedom which was already stirring in
the minds of Western Europe in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
These aspirations gained in force as
the art of printing multiplied books
and as the periodical press came into
existence. The high-minded the
courageous, the venturesome were
drawn across the wide ocean toward
the West, carrying with them for the
most part the liberal ideas and the
advanced thought that were steadily
increasing their hold upon the peoples
of Western Europe. Great Britain.
Holland, France were responding in
steadily increasing measure to the
same ideals that led the Puritan to
Massachusetts Bay and the Cavalier
to Virginia.
Difficulties Overcome
"On this Atlantic shore distances
were great and communication diff
cult. In addition there were social
economic and religious differences
that kept the struggling colonists
apart. The result was that there grew
up here not nation but the mate
rial out of which nation could be
made. There is a sense, a deep and
striking sense, in which the same
remains absolutely true to-day. There
is not yet nation. but the rich and
fine material out of which a true ma
ton can be made by the architect with
vision to plan and by the builder with
skill adequate to execute.
when a common oppression forced
the separate colonists together they
still; sadly lacked that devotion to a
unity higher than any of its com
ponent parts, which would have saved
so much loss and so much suffering
during the days of Revolution and of
the first steps toward a national
government. An enormous step for
ward was taken when the national
government was built; in the adoption
of the Constitution of the United
States and cornerstone was laid for
one of the most splendid structures
in all the history of all nations. Then
followed sharp political divergence.
There were those who would lay