The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1916-04-25

sought natural boundaries. whether of
high mountains or Of broad rivers. or
of the sea itself. One war after an
other is to be explained in terms of a
nations definite purpose to possess it
self of geOgra phic unity as it's home
! There has been by no means equal
I care taken by the nations to esta blish
- " protect an ethnic unity. A
strong people has usually felt conf
dent that it could hold an alien ele-
ment in subsection and yet preserve
national integrity and unity of spirit.
So one after another of the greater
nations of the world has. in seeking
for geographic unity. insisted on in
cooperating in its own body polite
alien and often discordant elements
and holding them in stern subsection.
| The examples are too familiar to be
recited here.
Nation Building Brought War.
This process of nation building has
gone on until the nation has come to
be conceived as an end itself, and SUI
pcrior to the rules of law. to the con-
ventions of morality and to the pre-
ccpts of religion. A form of patriot
ism has been developed all over the
world which finds in the nation itself
the highest human end. The logical
result, and indeed the almost neces-
sary result. of this type of thinking is
the war which is now creeping over
the worlds civilization and destroying
it with the sure pitilessness of an AL
pine glacier. This war which is the
Nemesis of nation building conceived
as an end itself. Unless a nation, like
an individual. have some purpose,
some ideal, some motive which lies
outside of and beyond self-interest and
ACKNOWLEDGMENT, war must con-
tinue on the face of this earth, until
the day when the last and strongest
n,-I in, hi ierI,t
shall look out from a rock in the Car
ibbeaE 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 bury him.
Inspired for Liberty.
''In the history of nations the story
of our America has a place that is all
it's own. The American nation came
into being in response to a clear and
definite purpose. A theory of human
life and of human government was
conceived and put into execution on a
remote and inaccessible part of the
earth's surface. The moving cause of
the American nation was the inspira-
( ton for civil and political liberty and
for individual freedom which was al
ready stirring in the minds of west
ern Europe in the sixteenth and sew
enteenth 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 venture
some 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 and France
were responding in steadily increasing
( measure to the same ideals that led
the Puritan to Massachusetts bay and
Cavalier to Virginia.
ION 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 a nation but the material
out of which a nation could be made.
There is a sense, a deep and striking
sense, in which the same remains alb
solutely true today. There is not yet
p nation, but the rich and fine ma
terial out of which a true nation can
be made by the architect with vision to
plan and by the builder with skill ade-
quate to execute.
Were Joined Together.
when a common oppression forced
the separate colonists together, they
still sadly lacked that devotion to a
unity higher than any of it's COM
ponent parts, which would have saved
so much loss and so much suffering