Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1918-12-31
THE OLD YEAR, PASSING,
SHOUTS HER CHALLENGE! !
At the Peace Conference and Elsewhere We
Shall See What the World Can Learn
by Hard Experience

OTHER years have been filled with the
~ red tumult that was to decide, the
fate of mankind. Yet it is upon 1919, the
year now waiting just around the cor
ner, that pundits Of the future will look
back when they try to read the heart of
this age and write their findings down
as history.
The war isn't over. 1t is in the coming
year that it will be won or lost. Forces
as great as any that met on battlefields
will meet for mastery at the Peace Con-
ference. Life will have a new beginning
or it will take up the burden of hatreds
and superstitions and drift on to the
next disaster. We are at the end Of the
play-at the last act. When the curtain
falls we shall know whether the stu
pendous drama is to have a happy end
ing or whether it is to be-un uncom-
pleted story.
If we were an imaginative people we
should be touched profoundly by the
sight of the solitary American who
moves against the vast background of
sorrowing world, against all the tides Of
national selfshness and passion, against
vanity and ignorance, to keep the saving
truth steadily revealed. We should won
der why any man must have to plead at
the very seats of empire for all the un-
protected of this world. We should
wonder why any man should be willing
to risk so greatly for the sake of
strangers and even, in the last analysis,
to befriend an enemy. We should be
reminded again that destiny always Sc
lects a lonely man in crisis-when
great things are to be done.
But we are not meditative. "Another
venturer upward after the light" we
say. We hope for the success of that
adventure without knowing how really
wonderful it is-without pausing to re-
member that every departure from the
elemental principles which the President
represents in Europe has led nations end
lessly and inevitably to one catastrophe
after another.
1t will be said that this old year was
the most terrible year in the worlds his
tory. That will be but half true.
Times, like men, are burdened with
evil inheritances. The old year came to
the world under burden Of accumulated
evils and errors unequaled in human rec
ords.
But if there is some dim paradise
where old years go when they die to
mediate in peace, this year will have
great tales to tell in the shadowy COM
pany of other old and forgotten years.
1t saw incredible things.
1t saw a million men die for a great
thought that was in their hearts. 1t
saw plain men without number who went
from the pleasant, ordinary ways of life
and endured martyrdom because of the
voices Of their free conscience. 1t
opened a place in the councils of the
world where men might. preach the wis
dom of the heart-that forgotten wisdom
that is most important of all in human
affairs.
1t swept the whole world in tempests
of grief. Yet, at the same time, this
old year brought evil thrones down to the
dust and permitted forsaken millions to
lift their faces up from the ground in
which they were trampled toward the
light. 1t gave to one man the might OF
a hundred million people to be used in
the causes of troubled humanity every.
where. '.....
No king, no maker of empire can ever
again look back upon 1918 without 9
graver sense of his duty. For it was in
this year that the guiding lights of g
common human purpose were set up high
above every storm to be visible to the
eyes of all men everywhere, to burn the
brighter after every peril, above all the
confusion of nations. Even in these days
these symbols are to thoughtful men al
comforting as lights upon a troubled
sea. Fixed and imperishable they are
to burn high and forever, safe from
every marauding hand!
That was the great triumph Of thi!
old year.
IL aOdsn't such a bad old gear!
The New Year comes clothed in mys
terry. But it comes with a great inheri
tance. All the men who died left i
something Of their greatness, something
of their high purpose. It will have
new power of eloquence. The memories
alone that have been left to it shoult
give it passionate determination to d,
great things in the thoughts of men, il
their hearts, in their enterprise outside il
the world. There is no man in business
who cannot feel, if he thinks at all, tina
all that he has and hopes to be wa
preserved for him through the sacrifices
of men whom he never saw, whose names
he does not even know. How can ther,
ever again be hatred and misunderstood
ing between groups in America? o.