HEROISM AND SOMETHING MORE.
Some say it is the weakness of our movement that we depend too much on heroism and patriotism and other of the weaker instincts and uncertain qualities of human nature and therefore the movement must fail. Successful movements appeal to the more substantial motives and instincts, such as cupidity, sectional pride, etc.
While it is true that we appeal first of all to the patriotism of our citizens, to the heroic in man and to those deep religious and moral sentiments of which heroism and patriotism are the highest product, and while it is true that we regard these sentiments when fully drawn out and properly applied, and during great occasions of National peril, as being stronger than cupidity, sectional pride, or even regard for life, and that the exercise of these qualities by vast bodies of men have repeatedly, during each century throughout the history of our race, saved the dominance of the Caucasian race and all those principles and institutions that give value to the modern world, and, while we intend during the four years to come, preparatory to the greatest crisis of history, to continue to appeal first and foremost and all the time to patriotism and heroism, love of justice and fellow feeling, still, we intend to utilize every force and every means that will aid in bringing about the better world for which we hope.
We recognize that while in a moment of enthusiastic ardor, a man will give his life for a principle, and that during hours of deep religious fervor, brought about by the preaching of gifted orators, people renounce their old ways of living and often divide up their property with the church and the poor, that such occasions are comparatively rare, while every man born of woman desires food about three times a day, that he desires clothing and suffers for the want of it during every one of his sleeping and waking hours, that during a large portion of his life intense feelings and regard are turned toward some woman, and that nearly all men are at nearly all times vain, not in any bad sense, but that they desire the respect and the confidence of their fellow men, and when opportunity offers, strive to be conspicuous and influential, and desire to be feared and loved and admired for unusual qualities, possessions or acts.
Therefore, to make our movement completely and wholly successful, we appeal first to patriotism and heroism, the noblest and highest qualities produced by centuries of religious and moral training, but secondarily we appeal to men's ambition, their love of gain, their desire to eat, to be clothed, to marry, to become influential, their vanity, their imagination, their love of activity and all the qualities that they possess.
It does not lessen a soldier's courage for him to know that if victorious in battle he is to be promoted, or that if a city is taken or a country conquered, he is to have a plantation where he can rest in peace when his gray hairs come with his children healthy and happy about him. There is no need to dissect with the surgeon's knife of close analysis the motives and minds of men in order to separate every little vanity from the noble and unselfish impulses with which it is interwoven, nor to cut away and lay apart from the strong patriotic desire to serve one's country, every little individual and personal hope that in the event one's country is served and saved, those who bear the brunt of the battle will be especially favored and secure first recognition in the universal enjoyment consequent upon such victory. By taking human nature as we find it with its admixture of the heroic and prosaic, its mingling of selfish and altruistic aims, we seek to make every impulse serve the cause of humanity by contributing to the one end—triumphant Democracy.