The Birmingham age-herald., 1916-05-17

border. Thoughts may be- bandits Thoughts may be raiders. Thoughts may be invaders. Thoughts may be disturbers of international peace; and when you re- fleet upon the importance of this coun- try keeping out of the present war, you will know what tremendous elements we are all dealing with.
 ALL IN SAME BOAT
 ''We are all in the same boat. If some body does not keep the processes of peace going. if somebody does not keep their passions dsengaged, by what inn partial judgment and suggestion is the world to be aided in solution when the whole thing is over? If you are in conference in which you know nobody is distinterested, how are you going to make plan? I tell you this, gentlemen, the only thing that saves the world is the little handful of disinterested men that are in it.
 Now I have found a few disinterested men. I wish I had found more. I can name two or three men with whom I have conferred again and again and again, and have never caught them by an inadvertance thinking about them selves for their own interests and I tie to those men as you would tie to an anchor. I tie to them as you would tic to the voices of conscience if you could
 
 who have no axes to grind, Men who love America so that they would give their lives for it and never care whether anybody heard that they had given their lives for it; willing to die in obscurity if only they might serve! Those are the men and nations like those men are the nations that are going to serve the world and save it. There never was a time in the history of the world when char acter, just sheer character all by itself, told more than it does now. A friend of mine says that every man who takes office in Washington either grows or sWells and when l give a man an office I watch him carefully to see whether he is swelling growing. The mischief of swell enough to burst. If they would only swell to the point where you might insert pin and let their gases out, it would be a. great delight. I do not know any pastime that would be more divert ing, except that the gases are probably poisonous, so that we would have to stand from under. But the men who grow, the men who think better a year after they are put in office than they thought when they were put in office, are the balance wheel of the whole thing. They are the ballast that enables the craft to carry sail and to make port in the long run. no matter what the weather is.
 HAS BEEN THROUGH FIRE
 -,So l have come willing to make this narrative of experience to you. l have come through the fire since I talked to you last. Whether the metal is purer than it was, God only knows; but the lire has been there, the fire has pene- trated every part of it, and if I may be- lieve my own thoughts l have less parti- san feeling, more impatience of party maneuver, more enthusiasm for the right thing, no matter whom it hurts, than ever had before in my life. And 1 have something that it is no doubt dangerous to have, but that I cannot help having. have a profound intellectual contempt for men who cannot see the signs of the times. I have to deal with some men who know no more of the modern pro- cesses of politics than if they were living in the eighteenth century, and for them have profound and comprehensive intellectual contempt. They are blind. They are hopelessly blind, and the worst of it is l have to spend hours of my time talking to them when I know before start as much as after I have finished that it is absolutely useless to talk to them. am talking in vacuo
 The business of every one of us gen. tlemen, is to realize that if we are cor respondents of papers who have not yet heard of modern times we ougrr to send them as many intimations of modern movements as they are willing to print. There is a simile that was used by very interesting English writer that has been much in my mind. Like myself, he had often been urged not to try to cnanse so many things. l remember when I was President of university a man said to me- Good heavens, man, why don't you leave something alone, and let it stay the way it is?' And I said, If you will guarantee to me that it will stay the way it is I will let it alone; but if you knew anything you would know that if you leave a live thing alone it will not stay where it is It will develop and will either go in the wrong direction or decay I reminded him of this thing that the English writer said, that if you want to keep a white post white you cannot let it alone. It will get black. You have to keep doing something to it. In that instance you have got to keep it white, because there are forces at work that will get the better of you. Not only will it turn black, but the forces of moisture and the other forces of nature will penetrate the white paint and get at the fiber of the wood and decay will set in, and the next time you try to paint it you will find that there is nothing but punk to paint
 ''Then you will remember the Red Queen Alice in Wonderland or Alice Through Looking Glass'-I forget which, it has been so long since I read them who takes Alice by the hand and they rush along at a great pace, and then when they stop Alice looks around and says, But we are just where we were when we started Yes, says the Red Queen, You have to run twice as fast as that to get anywhere else.
 ARE GOING BACKWARD
 That Is also true. gentlemen, of the world and of affairs. You have got to run fast merely to stay where you are and in order to get anywhere, you have is what people do not realize. That is the mischief of these hopeless dams against the stream known as reaction aries and standpatters and other words of obloquy. That is what is the matter with them; they are not even staying where they were. They are sinking